Division-of-labor individualism requires a powerful state that becomes the individual’s master

Evidence

In its purely societal version, this conception of the task of the individual evidently points toward the constitution of a more comprehensive whole that is composed of the differentiated elements. The more specific the achievements (but also the needs) of the individuals, the more urgent becomes their reciprocal supplementation. In the same measure, the total organism which has grown out of the individuals engaged in the division of labor and which includes and mediates their interrelated effects and countereffects, shifts, so to speak, into a location high above them. The specificity of the individual thus requires a powerful political constitution which allocates his place to him, but in this fashion also becomes his master. It is for this reason that this individualism, which restricts freedom to a purely inward sense of the term, easily acquires an anti-liberal tendency. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 2930

Categorization

• XREF: Pairs naturally with Simmel’s triad/quantitative-individuality theme from earlier reading — the ‘third party above the dyad’ as political master echoes the externalizing witness role.