THE SELF, SOCIETY AND CONSERVATIVES

I've been trudging through a very interesting book by Philip MIrowski, Machine Dreams, that lays out some fatal problems with the neo-classical (e.g., Chicago) school of economics, one of them being its inability to account for any structures higher than the individual.  In passing, Mirowski mentioned a statement by Margaret Thatcher which I had completely forgotten about though I now remember that at the time I thought her remark was absurd.

There's a site devoted to Thatcher which has many of her dicta and this is the background for her society remark:

1987 Sep 23 We
Margaret Thatcher
Interview for Woman's Own ("no such thing as society")
Document type: speeches
Document kind: Interview
Venue: No.10 Downing Street
Source: Thatcher Archive: COI transcript
Journalist: Douglas Keay, Woman's Own
Editorial comments: 1600-1720. An edited version of the interview was published on 31 October 1987 (under the title "Aids, education and the year 2000!"), pp8-10. Douglas Keay faithfully reproduced MT's reflections on society, although in the transcript the phrase "There is no such thing as society" occurs a few paragraphs below its position in the published text. Most unusually a statement elucidating the remark was issued by No.10, at the request of the Sunday Times and published on 10 July 1988 in the "Atticus" column: it follows the interview transcript.
Importance ranking: Key
Word count: 9686

Here's the relevant excerpt:

Douglas Keay, Woman's Own

[Question paraphrased for reason of copyright] ... in deterioration … . [mistranscription?]

Prime Minister

What is wrong with the deterioration? [mistranscription?] I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and[fo 29] there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

This part was put in the Sunday Times, presumably at Thatcher's request:

[+Appendix: statement issued to Sunday Times, published 10 July 1988:][fo 45]

All too often the ills of this country are passed off as those of society. Similarly, when action is required, society is called upon to act. But society as such does not exist except as a concept. Society is made up of people. It is people who have duties and beliefs and resolve. It is people who get thing, s done. [ Margaret Thatcher] She prefers to think in terms of the acts of individuals and families as the real sinews of society rather than of society as an abstract concept. Her approach to society reflects her fundamental belief in personal responsibility and choice. To leave things to ‘society’ is to run away from the real decisions, practical responsibility and effective action.”