A further line of cleavage between political families concerns the relationship between the individual and society. Is the collectivity an end or a means for the individual? And inversely, is the individual an end or a means for the collective? These two questions define the opposition between individualism and collectivism.

The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises gave a decisive clarification of this issue. He wrote: Only the individual thinks, only he reasons, only he acts.

This means that individualism, properly understood, opposes the notion that social entities such as "society" or "the nation" could exist independently of the individuals who compose them. A collectivity has no existence of its own beyond the actions of its individual members. We cannot meaningfully speak of the action of the state, a country, a company, or a trade union. Why? Simply because these entities have no will or thought of their own. They act only through the intermediary of individuals.

Consider a language: French, English, German. Each exists only through those who speak it. If no one speaks it, it ceases to exist. The same principle applies to all social bodies.

This methodological point of view can be transposed to the moral and political sphere. The only moral agent is the individual. It is the individual who can be qualified as good or bad, just or unjust. There is no just or unjust society in itself; one must examine the relationships between individuals. To judge morally, one must refer to acting individuals, not to collectivities.

Another point Mises emphasizes: the individual is not an isolated atom. Individualism should not be confused with self-sufficiency or misanthropy. The human being is a social creature. Individualism promotes cooperation and association, provided that they rest on the free consent of the participants. The human being can only develop his full potential in relationship with others, on the condition that this cooperation is voluntary.

This individualism has deep roots, traceable to Christianity, to Greek and Roman philosophy. But let us cite the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. For him, individualism defends the capacity and the right of individuals to judge for themselves, to choose their own objectives, and to act accordingly.

This is the inalienable right of every being to remain master and possessor of his person and of the goods he has legitimately acquired, and to be in a position to define his own ends and values. This leads to the affirmation that the human being is an end in himself, not a mere means. A pen is a mere means, discarded when no longer needed. Only a being endowed with reason is an end in himself.

This is both an anthropological principle (grounded in the human capacity for autonomy and self-governance) and a moral principle. Kant's famous formula, Sapere aude ("Dare to think for yourself"), taken from the poet Horace, was made the motto of the Enlightenment in his 1784 essay What is Enlightenment? It symbolizes the exit from minority: a state in which people are incapable of using their understanding without the direction of a superior class or authority.

Kant encourages people to emancipate themselves, to think for themselves, to assume full responsibility for their thinking. One of the obstacles to this autonomy, Kant notes, is laziness and cowardice: the temptation to take refuge in ready-made thinking, which is also what leads to collectivism.

The consequence for institutions is clear: they exist to serve the flourishing of individuals, their protection, and the realization of their full potential. Society is a means, not an end.

Collectivism emerges in part because it offers a kind of ease, a protection, a security that is seductive to many. The individualism that affirms each person's autonomy can seem frightening. Is everyone ready to assume full responsibility for their existence? Not always, and it is sometimes simpler to rely on an authority that imposes a way of life.

In the collectivist conception, the private interests of individuals must be systematically subordinated to decisions made in the name of a superior entity that supposedly embodies the general interest or the common good. This entity may be the state, the nation, the church, but today, with social democracy, it is above all the democratic majority. The rule of the majority determines right and wrong, true and false.

The collectivity becomes the priority. Collective objectives surpass individual goals, and institutions serve society even at the expense of persons.

A major thinker of collectivism is Karl Marx, who justified the superiority of the collective over the individual through what he called historical materialism:

Consciousness is not primary but secondary, determined by social existence: the state of economic and social relations, the opposition between classes. The individual is nothing outside this reality. He thinks through his social class, lives, conducts himself, and acts as his class dictates, but unconsciously. Hence the Marxist imperative to become conscious of the interests of one's class in order to realize them.

As Mises observed: There is no uniform collectivist ideology, but many collectivist doctrines. Each exalts a different collective entity.

We can classify collectivisms into two groups. Right-wing collectivisms, such as National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism, exalt the nation and race as entities superior to the individual. Left-wing collectivisms, communism and socialism, give priority to the working class and social equality, treating the social class as the supreme entity that defines the individual.

The spectrum ranges from social democracy to National Socialism, but these doctrines converge in a shared hostility toward individual freedom and a justification of violence.

Karl Popper, the Austrian-born philosopher who emigrated first to New Zealand and then to Britain, analyzed these oppositions with particular clarity in The Open Society and Its Enemies:

Two models of society, two principles of social organization entirely at odds with each other. The closed society is collectivist, resting on tribal mentality: a refusal of critical freedom, of external exchanges and progress, and the idealization of a static order. The open society recognizes the individual's right to judge for himself, giving primacy to free choice of values, beliefs, and relationships.

Totalitarianism is the modern expression of the closed society. It represents the most radical form, relying on dogmatic ideology that leads to systematic censorship, state propaganda, cult of the leader, and mechanisms of control and surveillance. The individual does not exist as such; there is a form of dehumanization in which the individual loses his roots, his memory, and his beliefs, becoming totally absorbed by the community and therefore easily manipulated.

Popper emphasizes with great pertinence that the open society remains inherently fragile. This society that favors critical thinking, individual freedom, and responsibility can easily slide into collectivism through a fascination with authority.

Why? Perhaps through a lack of security. The responsibility that individualism implies can seem frightening and risky. One must make one's own choices and can fail. The temptation arises to seek refuge in communal protection or in nostalgic tendencies toward an idealized past. The open society faces challenges that threaten it still today, notably the communitarian impulses we see developing in our time, and the recurring temptation of violence.