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| LS Lowry: 'Going to Work' |
Absolutized individualism in modern society.
Capitalism, Labour, and Class-struggle.
by Herman Dooyeweerd
(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 595, 596. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)
See preceding extract HERE
The growing influence of individualistic tendencies in society during the first half of the 19th century and the irreconcilable struggle of the Christian idea of free inter-individual relationships against them.
The correlated differentiating and integrating tendencies in modern inter-individual societal relationships cannot fail to result in an individualistic process of disintegration in modern society if they are not counter-balanced by a due unfolding of the organized institutional communities and voluntary associations.
This disintegration is what actually happened under the leading of the Humanistic science-ideal in the first phase of the Industrial Revolution. The rationalized and absolutized idea of free inter-individual relations dominated the entire industrial sector of Western society and gave it an extremely individualistic and merciless capitalistic form. It is true that the process of differentiation and integration tends to increase the interweaving of individual interests. But in the free inter-individual societal relations the unrestrained striving after separate interests gave rise to fierce antagonism, which even lacked the remedy indicated by Hegel, viz. the formation of organized occupational classes.
The process of unlimited one-sided technical rationalization in economically qualified industrial life sharpened the contrast between the interests of labour and capital to a real class-struggle. Labour was viewed apart from the human personality as market ware, and in the factories the labour-community was to a high degree affected by the individualist, exclusively contractual viewpoint. The unlimited competition on the market made the Hobbesian picture of the state of nature, as a condition of "homo homini lupus [est]” ["man is wolf to man."] into a terrible reality.
As the inter-individual societal structures are indissolubly interwoven with those of the institutional relationships, so family and kinship as well as the State were also affected by this morbid process of disease in “free society”. Societal groups for the promotion of private interests tried to seize the political power to make the institution of the State subservient to their social ends. The factor of private economical interest and the poisonous ideology of the dogma of class struggle penetrated the political party system. Family- and kinship-life of the labourers were denatured by the encroachment of the impersonally rationalized industrial labour-relations. In international political relations the “sacred egoism” of the separate States was elevated to the highest law.
Such individualistic tendencies in social development form an irreconcilable antithesis with the Christian idea of free inter-individual relations. The civitas terrena ["Earthly City" (Augustine)] revealed itself in this individualistic process of distintegration, and Christianity was doomed to decay whenever it thought of making a truce, or concluding a peace-treaty with this kingdom of darkness. (NEXT)
(Extract from A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol III pp 595, 596. ‘Structures of Individuality of Temporal Human Society’)
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