I thought that it was mostly Ayn Rand / Austrian economists who used those terms so it’s odd to hear Adam Curtis make that an explicit part of his analysis.
I thought that it was mostly Ayn Rand / Austrian economists who used those terms so it’s odd to hear Adam Curtis make that an explicit part of his analysis.
Adam Curtis is a rabid anti-communist liar as you can tell from the podcast episode. From what I gather, the "collectivism vs individualism" "discussion" while not entirely incorrect, seems like it appears most often as an anti-communist talking point about how there's no free will or whatever "under communism" in order to distract from what communism is really about: worker power (which yes, is collective), anti-imperialism, and improving people's living conditions.
Only people living in the imperial core with all their needs met, not having to think about their living standards, get to talk about "individualism" or whatever instead of talking about healthcare and the work week and empire. Think of all those people who are essentially like "yeah communism reduced infant mortality so what who cares?" (I've directly interacted with them on Twitter and Reddit at least) as if its just a given that infant mortality is low automatically and that people aren't hungry or depressed, and so on. They will never appreciate communist movements in history because they can't wrap their head around how much misery their rulers create in the world.
And the actual debate isn't really collectivism vs "individualism". It's collectivism vs selfishness and domination. There are no communists that resent "the individual", people in countries like the US just think selfishness is individualism. And it makes people scared when they see Russians or whoever create a society that isn't so hyper-selfish and it makes people realize how gross this "individualism" actually is. "Collectivism" (i.e. community) is one of the things that people miss about the Soviet Union, and is something that Americans support in thought, but not when its associated with communism or when it means we have to actually make sacrifices.
This is all just my opinion though lol.
You've phrased it extremely well. I only ever hear this dichotomy from people in already comfortable positions who assume their comfort is due to some inherent magnificence they possess. So they assume any other arrangement would diminish their personal comfort or dilute their clear greatness. Just look at what they really mean when they talk about individualism. It's always wrapped in up in some kind of personal expression, like what types of words they should be allowed to say or what type of media they consume, or it's about their rights to extract as much profit as possible.
Also, nearly every single person I've talked to who talks about this dichotomy and takes the side of the individual will also possess a belief that more than 99% of other humans are complete vacuum brained robots and that only a select few people have the capacity to truly live properly. The Ayn Rand acolytes are the extreme example, with those books Anthem and Fountainhead showcasing what I mean. The assumption in her awful terrible novels is that there are simply inherently superior people walking among us disgusting hogs and we despise them out of jealousy and wish to use our collectivism to drown out their talents because we're just spiteful and evil and have nothing of our own to offer.
Which is why I'm skeptical of their calls for individuality, since those very same people are usually quick to categorize large swaths of humanity as slack-jawed rubes. Solipsism.