Modernity and Individualism

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Protestant Reformation [had an] emphasis upon individualism, literacy and the patriarchal nuclear family, and the Enlightenment, with its emphasis upon rationality, faith in human progress, the development of the scientific method, etc. The period of modernity was characterized by a high degree of centralization of control of production, increasingly large scale capitalization of industry, and a high degree of routinization and standardization of products and processes. Modernity reaches one of its high points of development in the industrial practices of “Taylorism” (follow this link for a Wall Street Journal backgrounder on Taylorism archived on the Cool Fire Technology site) in which the worker’s actions are segmented and standardized, effectively making each worker interchangeable, and “Fordism” (follow this link for Ruppert’s account of Fordism by Mark Ruppert of Syracuse University) which adds to Taylorism a systematic attempt to control the workers’ off-the-job life as well–hence Ford’s planned communities, housing, control of media, adult education, etc

Does modernity = individualism? Short answer: No.

As it is stressed in the passage above, individualism has its roots in the Enlightement, but Modernity has to do with industrial production, Taylorism, Fordism.

Marxist literature does equate modernity with individualism but .. Marxists are morons. An obviously failed ideology cannot be used as a measuring stick for all other ideologies. Right?

In the post-modern, electronic cottage world we are living now, individuals have a tremendous amount of computing power, means of communication, and means of organizing, creating knowledge. This is real power and is the basis of all the changes we are seeing across the world today.