Individualism: background, statement, merits and limitations

1. Meaning

Individualism (also called laissez-faire, from the French “let do, let pass”) is the theory that the individual is the end and the State only a means. The individual is the best judge of his own interest; the State exists to protect his life, liberty and property and should otherwise interfere as little as possible. Its slogan is “that government is best which governs least” (associated with Jefferson and Thoreau). The State is a necessary evil: necessary because without it there would be disorder, evil because every law restricts freedom.

2. Background

• Reaction against absolutism and mercantilism. Seventeenth and eighteenth century monarchies regulated trade, granted monopolies and controlled religion. The rising commercial middle class wanted freedom from these controls.
• Natural rights. John Locke (Two Treatises of Government, 1689) held that people have natural rights to life, liberty and property before government exists, and create government only to protect them.
• The Physiocrats in France (Quesnay) coined laissez-faire, laissez passer and argued that the economy follows a natural order that State interference disturbs.
• Classical economics. Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations, 1776): each person pursuing his own gain is led by an “invisible hand” to promote the public good; free competition allocates resources best.
• Industrial Revolution. Factory owners wanted freedom of contract and trade.
• Utilitarianism (Bentham, early Mill) and Darwinian biology (Herbert Spencer’s survival of the fittest) added further arguments.

3. Statement of the theory

(a) The arguments

1. Ethical. Development of personality needs freedom of choice; State interference makes people dependent and weakens self-reliance. Mill (On Liberty, 1859): over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
2. Economic. Free competition, self-interest and the price mechanism produce the greatest wealth. The State is a poor businessman.
3. Biological. Herbert Spencer (The Man Versus the State, 1884): society progresses through struggle and the survival of the fittest; State help to the weak interferes with natural selection.
4. Political. Every extension of State power increases the danger of tyranny and bureaucracy.
5. Practical. State action is slow, expensive and inefficient compared with private enterprise.

(b) Functions allowed to the State

The individualist State is a police State or night-watchman State. Its functions are limited to:

• Protection against foreign aggression.
• Maintenance of internal order and protection of life and property.
• Protection against breach of contract, fraud and injury.
• Administration of justice.

Adam Smith added certain public works that private persons will not undertake (roads, bridges) and some education. Everything else (trade, industry, wages, health, religion) belongs to the individual.

4. Merits

• Respect for the individual. It places the dignity and freedom of the person at the centre and treats him as a responsible adult.
• Check on State power. It is a lasting warning against bureaucracy and authoritarian government.
• Economic dynamism. Free enterprise produced the great industrial growth of the nineteenth century.
• Self-reliance and initiative. It encourages enterprise and responsibility.
• Lasting influence. Fundamental rights, limited government and the market-oriented reforms of the late twentieth century (including India’s 1991 liberalisation) draw on its ideas.

5. Limitations and criticism

1. The State is not an evil. Aristotle’s view, that the State exists for the good life, is closer to experience. Green and Laski saw the State as a positive good that creates the conditions for development.
2. Individual is not always the best judge. Children, the uneducated and the poor may not know or be able to secure their interests; consumers cannot judge the safety of drugs or food.
3. Freedom of contract is unequal. A starving worker and a factory owner are not equal parties. Nineteenth-century laissez-faire produced child labour, long hours, slums and exploitation, which led to the Factory Acts.
4. Competition leads to monopoly. Unchecked markets concentrate wealth and eliminate competition, defeating the theory’s own logic.
5. Spencer’s biology is misapplied. Human society progresses by cooperation as much as struggle; the weak are not unfit, often only unlucky.
6. Ignores social goods. Education, public health, roads and environmental protection need collective action.
7. Outdated. Depression, two World Wars and the rise of the welfare State after 1945 showed that modern conditions require positive State action; Keynes’s General Theory (1936) justified it in economics.

6. Individualism and political obligation

For the individualist, obligation is conditional and limited. One obeys because the State protects natural rights (Locke), and one may resist when it violates them. There is no duty to support State action beyond its proper sphere.

How this is examined

January 2026 (100 marks) Q.5: “Explain the theory of individualism with merits and demerits”; January 2026 (80 marks) Q.3(b): “Write a note on individualism”; February 2025 Q.3(a): “Explain the limitations of individualism”; August 2024 Q.3(a): “Explain the background, statement, merits and demerits of individualism”. Use the four syllabus heads and name a thinker for each argument.