another attempt to explain a non-connection

Twice in the past week, I have read or heard the claim (from first-rate thinkers who ought to know better) that a metaphysics of individuals either leads to or is motivated by doctrines of political individualism.

No. There is no necessary connection between these, and it is not a difficult point to demonstrate.

Political doctrines of individualism are taxonomical doctrines. They are not flat ontologies, but single out one privileged kind of entity (namely, individual people) as the source of all political and economic legitimacy.

But the metaphysics of individuals does no such thing. It does not regard individual people as the only real political entity or as the only possible source of political legitimacy. An individual voter/consumer is not necessarily more real than the quarks in his/her body or the parties, unions, societies, or classes to which he/she belongs. We must not confuse two utterly different senses of the word “individual.”

If you want to say that object-oriented ontology arises from “American individualism,” then you’ll also need to argue that Aristotle’s theory of substance arises from “Macedonian individualism.”