The Problem of Collective Moral Responsibility: Qualitative Case Study of Anton Makarenko's Collectivist Pedagogy

Abstract

The article seeks to address a fundamental gap in collective moral responsibility research by exploring a collectivist rather than the dominating individualist perspective on the relationship between a private individual and the collective whole. In particular, it presents a qualitative case study of ideas of outstanding Ukrainian teacher, methodologist and theorist of education, founder of the pedagogical school Anton Semenovych Makarenko and his collectivist pedagogy as a major educational paradigm implemented within the context of the Soviet state and society. The analysis of the concepts of collective experience, communist personality, collective, distribution of powers, responsibility, and discipline contributes to a better understanding of the nature of individual and collective moral responsibility. At the same time, the article argues that a consistent implementation of the collectivist worldview results in an essentially flawed misbalanced relationship between an individual and the collective of people. In the Soviet context, such misbalance is evidenced in the phenomena of the cult of personality and state paternalism. As a consequence of identifying responsibility with discipline, the individual personality is deprived of its moral and utilitarian autonomy, devalued, and forcibly assimilated by the collective whole perceived as the highest authoritative source of moral judgement and the sole distributor of moral responsibility. Consistent implementation of the collectivist worldview in the context of Soviet society inevitably leads to an imbalance in the relationship between individual and collective principles and, ultimately, the justification of any coercion and violence by the state as such a team performing the highest guardianship and pedagogical function.