Frank Cunningham is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at the University of Toronto, Adjunct Professor of Urban Studies at Simon Fraser University, and author of The Political Thought of C.B. Macpherson: Contemporary Applications (2019). Read a chapter, "Urban Challenges" free until December 21.

The political-economic theorist C.B. Macpherson coined the term ‘possessive individualism’ to describe a society where nearly everything is a marketable commodity, people regard their possessions and their own abilities and talents as private property, and consumerist greed is pervasive. This is labelled by Macpherson a ‘market society’ which is characteristic, in his view of contemporary liberal democracies. In his 1962 book tracing the historical roots of possessive individualism – dating from the times of Hobbes and Locke – Macpherson concludes that its features are fatalistically accepted as the human condition or, worse, actively embraced, and he decried the absence of a compelling competing vision in liberal-democratic political culture.

A decade later Macpherson revised this pessimistic viewpoint by identifying an alternative perspective within the history of liberal and democratic thought, elements of which go as far back as Aristotle and which can be found in the classic liberal-democratic works of such as J.S. Mill and John Dewey. He called this alternative ‘developmental democracy,’ by which he meant the vision of a society where everyone is afforded the opportunities and the resources to develop what he called their ‘truly human potentials’ to the fullest. Macpherson meant such potentials as ‘the capacity for rational understanding, for moral judgment and action, for aesthetic creation or contemplation, for the emotional activities of friendship and love’ among other things.

Unlike the potentials of possessive individualism for such as unrestrained consumption or competition for profit or jobs, those of developmental democracy thrive on social cooperation. While some people have completely internalized values of consumerism, greed, and competition, most accommodate to possessive individualist styles of life because they do not perceive a realistic alternative. Against this, Macpherson argues that a combination of humanistic use of modern technology and social-movement and other democratic campaigns to wrest political power away from those who profit from the dominance of a capitalistic market economy can make possible life pursuits compatible with developmental democracy. The result would be a liberal-democratic version of socialism.

Before entering the University of Toronto my studies in political theory and philosophy were dominated, in the first discipline, by power-political interest group theory (a main target of criticism by Macpherson) and, in the second discipline, by abstract value theories that, when they touched base with real politics at all, led to inconsequential forms of liberal centrism or to capitalist-accommodating social democracy. Then I encountered Macpherson, who was the leading political theorist of what was the Department of Political Economy in that university. His critical and visionary views broke with what I had come to regard as the sterile, dominant ones.

While several of my political-theoretical opinions changed in the ensuing years, the most important aspects of Macpherson’s ideas stuck with me. Moreover, while Keynesian and other welfarist measures tempered some features of a market society during parts of the 1960’s and ‘70’s, in today’s neoliberal world, possessive individualism stares us in the face at every turn. Hence this book. As an exposition of Macpherson’s work, it is meant to contribute to what I see as a revival of his thought. This is seen in recent scholarly publications, in the reissuing of five of Macpherson’s major books by his original publisher, Oxford University Press (I was commissioned by the press to write introductions to them), and of course in the publication of this book.

The first part of the book explicates and defends Macpherson’s core theories. The second departs from much of this kind of exegetical work by applying his thought to a selection of contemporary challenges. In doing this I have attempted to follow my advice of many years to students and colleagues who have pursued political theory, which has been not just to generate abstract ideas, but to apply them to existing, problematic realities – in short, to answer the ‘So What’ question. In writing this book I have found out why so few followed my advice. Applying general social and political theory is hard!

The contemporary challenges I selected (among many possible ones) are: neoliberalism, global problems (globalization and environmental crises), intellectual property, racism & sexism, and a selection of urban challenges. Of these only a forerunner of neoliberalism was addressed by Macpherson himself (in his criticisms of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman). So the rest required interpretive application. This exercise should help in evaluating Macpherson’s thought in a proof of the pudding manner, but the primary aim is to seek assistance in the work of this innovative, progressive thinker in actually confronting these challenges.