I have been much enlightened by the numerous contributions to this   
discussion, but I should like to add one last word (from me, that is!) in an   
attempt to establish at least some general agreement.  
  
We are historians of economic thought. We may be other things beside, but   
our sole claim to claim to the attention of other participants in this   
discussion is our shared interest in, and study of, the history of ideas   
insofar as these relate to what we now call 'economics'.  
  
I wish to suggest that whether 'individualism' of any kind is a good or a   
bad thing, whether it is logically coherent or philosphically defensible,   
whether 'methodological individualism' is the best or the only way to   
explain the phenomena we are professionally concerned with, whether   
'individualism' of any kind is ideologically tainted, suspect or immoral; it   
does appear to be the case that Anglophone economic thinkers have chosen to   
think in that way for a long time.  
  
I have already mentioned Paley, deeply influential on Anglophone social   
theory for nearly a century. (His Moral and Political Philosphy was the most   
widely used text-book in that field both in the USA and Britain until the   
mid-1860s.) The utilitarianism he promoted --secularized and popularised by   
Bentham -- dominated the normative aspects of Anglophone economic thought   
for most of the 19th C and is still not without influence.  
  
When it comes to mere 'economic analysis', MI is almost as long established.   
As everyone in this conversation knows, the earliest formally specified   
construct in Anglophone economic theory is Malthus's demand schedule ('High   
Price of Provisions', 1800): in which the different (price-inelastic)   
demands of 40 individuals are aggregated to produce a negative functional   
relation between quantity demanded and price. The most famous and   
intransigent declaration of MI in our literature is that of Nassau Senior   
(Outline of Political Economy, 1836). His first 'elementary proposition'   
(i.e. axiom) is 'That every man desires to obtain additional wealth, with as   
little sacrifice as possible'. The Edinburgh Review, noticing this book in   
Oct 1837, remarks of 'the English School' that what they call  'Political   
Economy . . . is a science . . . whch regards Man in the abstract, and,   
simply as a wealth-creating animal, laying aside for the occasion all, the   
other tendencies of his complicated nature'.  
  
The Edinburgh Review drew attention to a seeming difference between the   
methods and assumptions of 'the English School' and those of the 'foreign   
school' -- mainly 19th C. French and German authors. On the continent there   
seems to have been an almost equally long tradition of 'anti-Anglophone'   
economic thinking, looking for other and putatively better ways of   
conceptualizing and analyzing economic phenomena. (But Marx, by the way,   
explicitly identified himself and his methods with 'the English School'. See   
'Afterword' to the second German edn of Capital 1873)  
  
Our business as historians of economic thought, I believe, is best   
summarized by Spinoza: 'Non ridere, non lugere, nequi detestari, sed   
intelligere'.  What we want to know and explain is why Anglo-American   
economic thought has been dominated, at least since the end of the 18th C.,   
by 'individualism' of some kind; and why this tendency has been resisted,   
from time to time, by thinkers in the French and German traditions.  
  
Anthony Waterman