German Collectivism featuring Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

In debates about Libertarianism and Anarchism you will often hear these terms get flung around. In the following I will try to give a detailed definition of both terms and some historical context.

Collectivism

To understand the concept I think it is nice to start of with some comedy. We Germans like to either sort people by social class or cultural background. When there is a random person in the media being interviewed their job is usually stated to have an idea of their social background. In the following clip of the once really German comedy show Switch you can see a person being referred to as an "Arbeitsloser Arbeitsloser" which translate to "unemployed unemployed".

Scene is at 2:00. As a little cookie you have a Hitler/The Office mash up from 0:05-1:50 ;)

I am not sure how much foreign readers can laugh about that joke, but you will so often hear "the unemployed baker", "the unemployed Office Worker" when it comes to these interviews with people in poor neighborhoods and being unemployed unemployed, that his job is already living off social welfare by not having a job, but he does not even have that job at the moment.

As a German I think I can tell you a lot about this concept. After all we are known to be a rather authoritarian society and one of the big German influential Philosophers Hegel is known to be the father of collectivism. Marx has adopted a lot of Hegels theories and is generally referred to as a Hegelian.

To be completely honest: I did not read much 1st hand literature by Hegel, just a lot of stuff about him (2nd hand literature). He was very wide spread when it comes to his works on philosophy, education and science. A lot of what he preached like giving historical context to sources/ideas/statements is still getting beaten into us at School. It is a concept I would agree on, though. Hegel voiced critcism towards Kant who would be generally much on the side of individualism.

It is hard to explain in detail why people like Hegel thought that living the collective spirit is important for society, but there is one example that might convince you that it is not all bad? Sports. Have you ever been to a live sport event? You are friends with all who wear your colors, it does not matter if you have shared interests, tastes or anything in common at all, the people will have your back and sheer with you just cause you are in their team. Group chants, Laola waves, it is all fun and most people involved in it would agree I think. I'm actually not a huge Sports guy

Hegel was often said to be an conservative authoritarian shill because he argued that the order of Lords and Kings is natural and in perfect harmony with Christianity, since the State is God. Reading this statement a lot of Libertarians would jump his throat but I think this is premature, after all being organized in bigger units made us what we are today.

One of the values that you will still see a lot of young and old people endorse in Germany is to not be selfish and live for some sort of greater good. For nationalists this is to live for the German people and for the (state) socialists that is to live for all people of their class. If some of you feel like Marx took out the God in Hegels theories and replaced them with leftists values... that is exactly what he did and that is why mainstream leftism often seems more like a cult than a group of intelligent individuals.

While Hegel outspokenly admired the capabilities of the free human spirit, I am really not sure if Marx did the same. I think Hegel often gets unrightfully put in a corner of authoritarian collectivism, because he just said that the individual is not the driving force in progress. Hegel could also be much better understood as a realist like Machiavelli instead of an moral ideologue like Marx and Kant.