New principles and characteristics emerged within a society that were entirely different from those that applied to individuals. In other words, there were rules that applied only to collective wholes and not to individual members. Further, these emergent rules functioned along scientific lines and responded to methods of planning. Marxists went so far as to assert that it was the individual, and not society, that was the true abstraction. In its extreme form, these social holists even denied that the individual existed without society.
Real man is necessarily always a member of a social whole.
Karl Marx argued this point by using a sort of Robinson Crusoe example. Marx contended that an individual who grew up in isolation on a desert island would not be a human being. The adult Robinson Crusoe was clearly a human being, but his humanity resulted from a prior history of socialization. Classical liberals countered that a person who had been raised in utter isolation would still be a human being. For example, he would have a scale of preferences and would act to achieve the highest one first.