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>because what that really means is a whole collection of real people doing real things

She doesn't just mention real people, she also says "and families" in the same breath, which is the part I always found most strange of the whole argument. So "society" doesn't exist but "families" do? Why stop there, specifically? Aren't families just "individual men an women" as well?

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hgomersall 14 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, she definitely added some political fluff to the point. I think the broader point that she wasn't saying "individualism is great, sod everyone", which is often how its portrayed, still stands.

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mike_hearn 14 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes they are. That's what she meant: society doesn't exist and families/individual people do. The distinction is that you can ask a family or a person to do something and decide if they did it or not. You can't ask "society" to do anything: what does that actually mean? Who does it? Everyone can just point the finger at everyone else.

Thatcher was making this argument because in the 1980s the [British] left was still very Marxist, so they tended to demand extremely expensive things and when challenged as to who will do/pay for that they'd answer with society. It was a form of rhetorical evasion because what they actually meant was "someone else but not me". Thatcher was railing against that tactic by pointing out that there isn't some specific entity with a big wad of cash you can go to called Society and ask them to do something. Society is your neighbours, your friends, your coworkers, your family, it's you and everyone around you. So if you say society should pay, what you actually mean is the people around you should pay but not yourself, without being willing to say so clearly.

Arguably the post-Marx neo-left actually did listen to her and stopped talking like that. You didn't hear people like Tony Blair claim that "society" would pay for their latest ideas. But the old left were never willing to give up the stupid linguistic game playing and reacted by fully stripping her words of context, to try and make it sound like she rejected the idea of bonds between people. Which is not only not what she said, but the conservatism she stood for was all about the primacy of friends/family/workplace/church/social clubs etc, vs the alternative Tony Benn style worldview in which the primary organizing unit of people was either the state or the unions.

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ethbr1 14 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Society is your neighbours, your friends, your coworkers, your family, it's you and everyone around you.

That's... incomplete.

Society is the obligations and responsibilities collectively imposed on these people.

It's indicative that part of Thatcher's intent was to remove the obligation of people to each other.

More profitable when choosing to help others is instead at one's discretion...

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hgomersall 13 days ago | parent [-]

Really? Does she not say that explicitly?

"It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation [...]"

She certainly puts the framing as individualistic, but I think she very much understood the obligations are a necessary part of the system.

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ethbr1 12 days ago | parent [-]

There's a difference between a government-enforced obligation and a moral one.

The latter has never worked at scale to remind the wealthy that they need to look after the societies which allowed them to create that wealth.

	▲	hgomersall 12 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, and a big part of the framing that Thatcher used was to emphasise the obligation of those that might need direct support from society, but ignores the obligations of those that have become wealthy from the implicit support. I think the point you are making, which I agree with, is that the obligations are required everywhere, and should be enforced if not forthcoming.

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robocat 14 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> someone else but not me

This is the core behind so much popular rhetoric about taxation (the 99%, wealth taxes, supporting individuals ripping off businesses). The selfish motivation where you accuse the people you want to tax of being selfish.

The second part is cutting down the successful - a very popular game down under. Although we do laud our sportspeople.