The Climate of Collectivism
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emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1803 to engage Europe in a decade of wars. The reaction of German intellectuals was horror, but their understanding of the crisis was not to blame Rousseau but rather to blame the Enlightenment for its anti-feudal sentiments. Napoleon was partly to blame, for he took advantage of the small countries that made up Europe at the time, ended monarchies, opened government offices staffed by citizens, formalized equality before the law, and extended property rights. The Enlightenment had grown desperate and was now imposing their ideas by the sword. To the Germans, the Enlightenment could no longer be thought of as a disaster over the Rhine but as an occupation from which an escape was needed. In connection to the occupation of Germanic states, the poet Johann Hölderlin wrote, “Kant is the Moses of our nation.”
Themes of Collectivism From the ideas of Rousseau, collectivist thinking split into Left and Right. The general themes of both are anti-individualism, strong government, control of religion (either to promote it or suppress it), the view that education is primarily for (political) socialization, ambivalence toward science and technology, and tolerance if not deployment of group conflict, violence, and war when it serves the state. For all their differences in the emphasis and application of these themes, collectivist Left and Right had a common enemy: liberal capitalism, with its individualism, limited government, separation of church and state, education for intellectual development, and its generally optimistic outlook on peace and trade among all nations. While Left or Right collectivists might try to span a bridge between Marx and
