Taking the modern for nature: methodological individualism as an interesting mistake

Abstract

Marx claims that what early modern writers took as the isolated individual in nature, was actually the individual in modern civil society. This is a mistake, but an interesting one. The paper traces the idea of the methodological individualist isolated individual in Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Austrian and neoclassical economics. The idea is untenable because it prevents a distinction between the individual and the economy in which it supposedly pursues its interest. But the mistake pushes beyond itself, pointing to a tenable alternative, plural individuality. The alternative view is thus grounded in its contrary, rather than simply rejecting it.