ABSTRACT
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were quite critical of individualism. By itself, social collectivism is probably no more interesting than social individualism. Methodological individualism is a fairly recent development. It became popular only with the rise of capitalist society because that society attenuated the connections between the individual and the social whole. Groups, nations, ethnic groups, corporations, states, bureaucracies, and so on are all composites of separate individuals. Individuals are always social; they always depend on their social context for their identity. One can understand why individuals have certain interests only if one studies the history of the social institutions in which those individuals live. The modern tendency to explain social processes in terms of individual interests and desires has its own history. Family ties, social connections, and traditions are for the individual so many "means towards his private purposes" to be used and manipulated.
