Don't Join

In The Autonomist’s Notebook, under the category [Organization](http://usa big.com/iindv/articles_stand/antbk/antbk.php#organization), the first entry is:

Don’t join!

In my article, “Ayn Rand’s Mistake,” I quote part of Rand’s July 20, 1941 letter to Mr. Channing Pollock, in which she laid out her intentions for an individualist movement:

“To be heard, however, we must be organized. This is not a paradox. Individualists have always been reluctant to form any sort of organization. The best, the most independent, the hardest working, the most productive members of society have always lived and worked alone. But the incompetent and the unscrupulous have organized. The world today shows how well they have organized. And so, we shall attempt what has never been attempted before—an organization against organization. That is—an organization to defend us all from the coming compulsory organization which will swallow all of society; an organization to defend our rights, including the right not to belong to any forced organization; an organization, not to impose our ideology upon anyone, but to prevent anyone from imposing his ideology upon us by physical or social violence.” [Emphasis mine.] Anti-Collectivist Collectivism

Ayn Rand said her, “organization against organization,” was not a paradox, but in fact, as she learned, it was paradoxical, and could not work. It is an attempt to use collectivism to fight collectivism.

In the real world, you can fight fire with fire, because it is not a violation of a principle, and, in fact, is the application of a principle, that what has burned cannot burn again. The principle that Rand violated was the simple truth that wrong is always wrong, and one can never achieve what is right by doing what is wrong.

Rand thought it was only forced organization that was wrong and that a voluntary organization could be used to fight against forced organization. Truly voluntary organization, however, does not require one to submit to any authority, or to subordinate one’s own preferences or choices to others, or to join and become a “member” of something. For better or worse, the so-called “Tea Party” demonstrations are examples of voluntary organization—one is free to participate or not and does not have to “join” anything.

So long as “organization” only means voluntary cooperation and participation with other individuals doing the same, there is nothing wrong with the concept. It is when “organization” means a, “thing,” that one becomes a part of, a movement, a program, or a campaign that is regarded as a collective entity with a purpose and end of it’s own, that an organization ceases to be totally voluntary. The moment one joins an organization, even if one’s own goals and purposes perfectly coincide with that of the organization, as a member of an organization, those ends are no longer one’s own, but those of the organization, the collective.

There is another observation in the Rand quote above. “Individualists have always been reluctant to form any sort of organization. The best, the most independent, the hardest working, the most productive members of society have always lived and worked alone.” It is not because they are anti-social, but because they have discovered they work best alone, because others always have a tendency to slow them down and to get in their way.

Perhaps most important for the individualist is the matter of identity. Others may be comfortable being identified in terms of some group or organization they belong to, but the individualist’s identity is himself, the “I” which is his own conscious mind—while he may agree with some and have the same objectives as others, no group, movement, organization, or ideology can ever contain his identity.

To be free, one must be totally free in every aspect of one’s life, to think and act without any limit or restriction, without tying oneself to any other individual or group of individuals in any way whatsoever.

[The exception, of course, is romantic love.]