A Summary:

From Utopia to Ideology: Emersons Assent of Liberal Individualism

Bercovitch describes the confrontation between socialist and liberal ideologies in
Jacksonian America, in which, according to his view, a decisive shift in Emersons
thought occurred.308
The history of the term individualism
The term was first coined in 1820s by some French radicals to signify the vice of the
age. It represents the European socialist attack on free enterprise. 19 th-century critics
of liberal society generally adopted the term in this negative sense. 309
The journal entry on December 1842 made Emersons stance towards the socialist
criticism of individualism ambiguous. He endorses its condemnation of individualism
as the vice of the age, but he also aligns individualism with Conscience against the
systemic forces of church and state. 310
In an entry several days later, he offers his vision of the good society: The Union is
only perfect when all the Uniters are absolutely isolatedUnion ideal---in actual
individualism, actual union. The journal passage seems to be a striking endorsement
of systemic individualism. The remedy is not to abandon it, but to draw out its
potentials. 311
Emersons hesitation to embrace the Jacksonian ideologues wholeheartedly (the
hiatus, the fragmentary opposition in the second journal) signifies his aversion to
identifying the ideal with any system. 312
The Jacksonians defend individualism as a social, economic, and political system, i.e.
institutionally. For Emerson, individualism centers on the independent Self. (perpetual
inchoation, against repose in any form, against telos itself.)313
He advocates self-reliance against all norms and conventions, especially those of
liberal individualism. He recast the concept of progress into an attack on social
progressivism: Progress is not for society. Progress belongs to the individual.
Here, Bercovitch points out that the proper term for this outlook is called
individuality, the belief in the absolute integrity. Spiritual primacy, and inviolable
sanctity of the self. The term is European, radical, and anti bourgeois, first developed
in explicit antagonism to the perceived defects of systemic individualism. 314-315
It is this utopian vision that underlies Emersons reluctance in the 1842 journal to
invest the ideal in individualism. It also contributes to his sometime surprising
endorsement of socialist ideas. Emersons objections to the Communities turn on
means, not ends.

Emersons hesitation about adoption or rejecting either extremes (the socialist and the
liberal ideology) indicates a search for a proper paradox that would connect the two.
And that search marks a turning point in his career. The key to the shift lies in his
confrontation with the theory and practice of socialism. 318
The 1844 debacle of the Brook Farm gave a decisive shift to Emersons attitude
towards socialism, which through the 1840s had been increasingly challenged and
finally rejected by Emersons drawing out of his liberal underpinnings of his
thought.327
Here, New England Reformers is a key text which is an eloquent summary of his
ruminations from 1840 on about socialist theories and schemes. And it is in this essay
that he proclaims explicitly The union must be ideal in actual individualism. The
hesitation in the 1842 journal is finally revolved. This is also Emersons first public
use of the word individualism. 329
Through out the later years of the 1840s, his invective against socialism grew sharper
and more pointed. The period from 1842 to 1850 also witnessed his unabashed
endorsements of what can only be called free-enterprise ideology. 330
By then, it seemed to Emerson that the liberalism was a better mean than socialism of
attaining the end of the ideal state. 333
The European revolutionary practices in 1848 confirmed his belief that the utopian
state based on individuality could only be achieved by liberal individualism. 338
His later essays (Natural Aristocracy, Wealth, Power, American Civilization and The
Fortune of the Republic) were marked by an endorsement of social Darwinism and a
sustained apologia for modern liberal culture.340
The radical individuality he envisioned in 1842 now has its broad foundation in the
American liberal culture.341
To sum up, the journal entries of November/December 1842 may be said to have
launched Emerson on a journey form utopia to ideology. The European Forty-Eight
marks the return of Emersons utopian to its ideological home. It was not a
transcending of its culture but measuring its depths. Emersons role as prophet was to
carry the basic premises of America as far as they would go, to what was
ideologically conceivableand thereby to challenge his society in the act of drawing
out its grounds of consensus.
Emersonian dissent reminds us that ideology in America works not by repressing
radical energies but by redirecting them into a constant conflict between self and
society: the self in itself, a separate, single, non-conformist individuality versus
society en masse, individualism systemized. 342-343
The question:
Is it really possible to criticize America?