Individualism as Idolatry

I. The Origins

Karl Marx caught a glimpse of the truth, but placed his offerings at the wrong temple, to the wrong God.

The problem is real.

Man is heterogeneous, coordination is his enemy.

To strip the individual of individualism is to coerce control in pursuit of progress. Progress is the natural output of coordination, the cost of which is the individual. Collectivism dissolves the individual into the mean. Without external pressure, genius disappears in the vacuum of merit.

For Marx however, a system of governance that does this at scale and delegates authority — if not sovereignty — is a far lesser evil than to pursue other solutions. Das Kapital reduces this complexity to an economic level for the reader; the proletariat are heroic, and the bourgeoisie and aristocratic classes are immoral harnesses set upon the productive capital of mankind. In our world — and his — of waning religious influences, capitalism is identified as a dangerous anathema to humanity flourishing.

II. Ideological Fracture

Consequences originate from the fact that Marx has no solution to innovation without individualism. Marxian socialism is therefore an entropic solution to coordination. For collectivism to be properly achieved, this God demands compliance and assimilation to the atomic economic unit; the proletariat.

Reduction of Man to the means of production.

However, compliance to the collective can only optimize so far. Stagnation of socialist regimes is an observed phenomenon, especially within the lens of autocracy — and often, without some external stimuli or internal policy concessions or violence, this form of governance rapidly disintegrates.

Almost all autocratic socialist regimes have implemented some form of this policy; The Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields — purging individualism with force even beyond propaganda. The diagnosis here was ultimately correct, but the solution of stripping individualism in favour of collective coordination is a parasite to the polis — it feeds and detracts, rather than propels progress.

Ironically, modern socialists are even further from the solution. Rather than attempt to solve coordination at scale without total obliteration of the self, the majority of modern socialists can only be described as radical, and often highly educated, individualists — acting as sworn enemies of capitalism.

No longer are they the proletariat, they are the professional protestor.

The majority of socialist activists masquerade as minority interest groups — cobbling together an infinite number of 'fracturing' identities that feel maligned by the God of capitalism. In their discarding of inherited categories like nationality, sexuality and even ability — labels append to their identity like false medals and stolen valour — each declaring their right to recognition. This mode of socialism is ideologically incoherent; it unifies beneath the common enemy of capitalism — but remove that, and it disintegrates under the weight of its own contradictions.

III. Defining Decay

How did this mutation happen — especially so rapidly? The civil liberties movement of the last century had legitimate targets and outcomes — the dismantling of systemised racism, gender and economic imbalances all produced net positives across the fabric of humanity.

However, with those systems then corrected — or at least sufficiently weakened to the point of progressive deterioration — the movement metastasised into what we see today.

When there is no legitimate target — this energy, again, becomes entropic.

Socialism has become a hydra; new heads emerge not because real injustice demands it — but simply because there must consistently be a new target for the outrage for the movement to remain coherent. As the passing of time continues, this accelerates into larger and larger contradictions.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine puts this paradox plainly — modern feminists of the liberal left allied with the Islamic hard-right; diametrically opposed in foundation, unified against capitalism.

Zohran Mamdani is that diagnosis and contradiction made flesh. While likely to be remembered only as a minor historical footnote, his existence is living testament to the lengths at which modern socialism is comfortable to warp, bend and transmute itself to remain relevant. Zineb Riboua wrote a deconstruction of this type of weaponized identity realpolitik — and traces the origins to language promulgated by socialist thinkers around the onset and height of the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962).

She deconstructs the emergence of 'de-colonization' as a heroic narrative from the likes of Fanon, Césaire and Jean-Paul Sartre, and their unique substitution of the proletariat with a new form of oppressed — the colonized. In their works, the colonized and their culture is deemed to, almost by default, hold some virtuous characteristic — some spiritual quality that for decades or centuries has been shackled, chained and harnessed by the Western powers and their obsessive capitalistic religion.

In the case of Mamdani, Islam becomes a symbol or political marker designating him as oppressed — as Riboua puts it, 'faith recast as resistance'. This act hollows out the entire religious value of Islam, and wears it as coalition armour — despite the fundamental tenets being totally at odds with others that rally behind the banner. It is treated as nothing but an oppression vector, and in doing so denigrates and demeans the very value of it as a symbolic and powerful religion. Mamdani is the terminal expression of the entropic project — dissolution at the doctrinal level.

IV. False Altars

Capitalism is no safer a harbour. Although socialism stands as an abject failure to solve for coordination, capitalism does not immediately stand as the divine dichotomous opposite — far from it in fact. It produces even worse outcomes for humanity when weighed against the social, economic and environmental effects — but importantly the psychic toll it takes on participants. Everything is zero-sum; success and failure determined only by the yardstick of capital returns to allocators.

This compounds with globalism and the interconnectivity of the internet; comparison is the thief of joy and social networks are temples ripe for looting. It is hard to explain the rise of hustle culture amongst capitalistic participants — but ultimately it is the natural outcome of a system that optimises for value extraction, where creation is a mere byproduct. The system builds tools to fuel the extraction of profits, and on the promise of coin and freedom — great minds across our species attract like moths to flames in technology, finance and other parasitic sectors where value extraction is asymmetric and highest.

We do not see capital allocators for music, literature, art — things we ourselves define as 'the humanities' — and instead see capital wantonly thrown across the table to an endless stream of software companies all competing for consumer wallets. Even then, to these builders, the process is one of inherent ego-death; the VC acts as the universal toll collector on the road built by the sovereign individual. Synthetic value derived from generative act. In doing so, it has similar consequences to socialism; individuals are stripped of not their ability to create — but rather their desire to do so. This paradox is one that capitalism struggles to resolve, and in the process causes collateral damage we are yet to truly fathom.

V. Sovereign Hopes

Generative sovereignty is the answer to systemic entropy. To create is an act of both rebellion and equally divinity. Ayn Rand espoused a version of this individualism half a century ago in her objectivist novels — but the philosophical output rejects the divine.

Instead, human non-compliance in a universe defined by free will is itself the ultimate act of divinity; regardless of the output and importantly the timeline.

Even Roark found himself at the firm before sponsors permitted his sovereignty over the Wynand Building.

To be a sovereign individual from birth to death is an impossible task in the face of any collective; to become one is to take the first steps on the path of redemption. And in taking such steps, you serve the collective — not by rejecting coordination, but by inspiring it.

If you are reading this from inside the machine.

You are not the idolator.

You are not the poor masses that congregate around the temple wailing for collective rebellion to strike down cruel masters.

You are not the pharisees that grow fat and bloated with profit, starving the poor of coins for the blessings of false gods.

You are the sovereign individual.

Pirates burned ships. They also built them.

— C