Opinion

The individual first: private property, liberty and the error of collectivism

By Daniel Sardá · April 22, 2026

There is an idea that returns again and again in political debate: that the collective should come first and that the individual has value only within it. I defend the opposite. Not because community does not matter, but because community is legitimate only if it respects the real persons who compose it.

That is the starting point of a coherent defence of individual liberty, private property and an open society: not a cult of selfishness, but the recognition that the one who thinks, suffers, chooses and answers morally for actions is the individual, not an abstraction called “the collective.” That logic lies at the centre of the principles of classical liberalism.

The individual is the primary moral unit

All ethics, all politics and all forms of social organisation eventually land on concrete persons.

All of that happens in individuals.

That is why, when someone says that the collective should have moral priority over the person, they are saying something very serious: that an abstraction may claim authority over the conscience, time, body and labour of concrete human beings.

That is the central error of collectivism. It does not understand the person as an end in himself or herself, but as a functional piece of a superior design.

Tolerance does not come from the collective; it comes from the individual

Sometimes it is said that if the individual comes first, society falls apart and tolerance disappears. I think the opposite is true.

Tolerance makes sense only if we first recognise that the other person is an autonomous moral subject: someone with the right to think differently, live differently, believe differently and choose differently. If that recognition does not exist, then tolerance is not a principle, but a revocable concession of power.

In other words: tolerance presupposes the moral primacy of the individual.

When the collective comes first, difference is easily perceived as threat, deviation or disobedience. When the individual comes first, difference may be uncomfortable, but it does not thereby lose legitimacy. That is the real basis of liberal pluralism.

Private property is not a whim: it is an extension of human agency

The defence of private property does not begin in economics. It begins in a simple moral idea: if a person works, produces, saves, builds or exchanges legitimately, it is just that he or she should be able to use and enjoy the fruits of that effort.

This is not only about things. It is about life-time stored in goods, tools, savings, projects and patrimony.

That is why the liberal tradition, from John Locke onward, has insisted that each person has “property” in his or her own person and that labour links self-ownership to the right to possess what one has produced or legitimately acquired.

To take someone's property by force is not only bad economic policy. It is a moral aggression. It is to say: “your effort does not fully belong to you; it belongs, ultimately, to others.”

History was already showing this pattern before modern liberalism

My argument is not anachronistic. I am not saying that Persia, Athens or Song China were “liberal” in the modern sense. I am saying something more basic: long before liberalism existed as a doctrine, it was already visible that societies with more room for trade, property, pluralism and decentralised decision-making tended to be more dynamic than societies that were more rigid, militarised or centrally controlled.

1. Achaemenid Persia: lighter integration and greater stability

Under Cyrus and Darius, the Persian empire applied a comparatively more flexible policy than other empires in the region. According to Britannica on ancient Iran, it was a conscious policy of those rulers to allow many conquered peoples to preserve their religions, customs, business practices and even part of their forms of government.

That does not make Persia a liberal utopia. But it does show something important: a political order that leaves more room for local life, trade and institutional diversity tends to integrate better than one based mainly on terror and forced uniformity.

2. Athens and Sparta: commercial openness versus military rigidity

Athens and Sparta offer a classic contrast. Not between capitalism and communism, of course, but between a polis more open to exchange and movement and another structured as a militarised society dependent on mass servitude.

Britannica on fourth-century Greece notes that the Piraeus was a densely populated, multilingual and multiracial port, a major magnet for immigrants. The academic article *Measuring institutional quality in ancient Athens* argues that fourth-century Athens scored surprisingly high in comparative economic freedom.

Sparta, by contrast, relied on the exploitation of helots and a social structure obsessed with internal control.

3. Song China: commerce, monetisation and sophistication

Another useful case is Song China. Britannica's sections on Song culture describe a vast commercial expansion, widespread paper money, giant cities and a far more monetised and specialised economy.

Again: it was not modern liberalism. But it does confirm a relevant pattern for current debate: when a civilisation allows exchange, specialisation and economic activity to become denser, it becomes richer, more complex and more innovative.

4. Late Rome and the failure of price controls

There are also examples of the opposite. When political power tries to replace economic coordination with decrees, it usually collides with hard limits.

The classic case is Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices. Britannica notes that in AD 301 wages and maximum prices were fixed for hundreds of goods, with severe penalties for violation. The result was that the measure could not be effectively enforced and was eventually abandoned.

Liberalism is not one single life plan

One of the most common criticisms of liberalism is that it is “dogmatic” or “imposing.” That confuses two different things.

Liberalism does establish a normative framework:

But it does not impose one single model of the good life. It does not force everyone to live in the same way, or to organise themselves under one moral, economic or spiritual pattern.

That is exactly the opposite of strong collectivism, which usually requires uniformity to sustain itself.

The real test of tolerance

Here is a very useful question for any serious debate:

If a group of people wants to live communally, share goods, organise collectively and distribute internally according to its own principles, what moral authority would a liberal have to stop them, provided everything is voluntary?

The answer is simple: none.

Within a liberal framework, people can create:

All of that can exist as long as it does not violate the rights of third parties. Liberalism does not need to prohibit those experiments because its principle is not to impose individual property into every corner of life, but to protect freedom of choice and association.

Now reverse the question:

If, within a communist or collectivist system, a group of people wants to live with private property, free exchange and economic autonomy, is that really allowed?

That is where the decisive difference appears.

We are social beings, but that does not justify subordination

Affirming the primacy of the individual does not mean denying that we are social beings. Of course we are. We have family, community, language, customs, friendship, loyalties, cooperation and moral duties toward others. That is also why modern contrasts between person and community should be used with care, something that appears again in the comparison between Confucius and Laozi.

But it does not follow from that that a collective structure has the right to absorb our will.

Human social life is not born only from central plans. It is born mainly from spontaneous bonds, evolved norms, voluntary cooperation, exchange, affection and reciprocity.

Conclusion

My defence of liberalism does not begin with an abstract cult of the market or with a denial of community. It begins with something more basic:

That is why I still think the correct question is not whether community should exist. Community will always exist.

The real question is different:

do we want a community formed by free persons who cooperate, or a collective structure that demands obedience and then calls that virtue?