This brings us to the third suspect in the philosophical lineup: the collectivists.
Collectivism is the political theory that states that the will of the people is omnipotent, an individual must obey; that society as a whole, not the individual, is the unit of moral value.
Altruism demands that an individual serve others, but doesn’t stipulate whether those others should be one’s family, or the homeless, or society as a whole. Collectivism states that, in politics, society comes first and the individual must obey. Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics.
The collectivist view that society’s will is omnipotent is a necessary result of modern and contemporary philosophy. The immediate and most obvious influence here belongs to Marx.
According to Marx, and to all Communist theory, the individual is and should be subordinate to society. Marx is a strict determinist in his view of human nature, holding that social and economic forces “condition” man, shaping every aspect of his character, personality and life. Since society is his master, it stands to reason that a man should spend his life as its slave, obeying its every command. An individual has no value in himself; he is merely a splintered fragment of the group; he must serve its needs.
But where does this view originate? How did truth become a matter of what the group believes? What about an individual discovering reality as it is and on his own, regardless of the group he belongs to? How did truth become social?
The answer lies in the theories of the German philosopher who dominated the thinking of the nineteenth century in general and of Karl Marx in particular. That philosopher is G.W.F. Hegel.
Hegel holds that truth evolves
