As a moral philosophy, collectivism recognizes groups as potential moral agents.
(Contrast with individualism.)
In politics, collectivism is an emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of different classes or groups, and proposes collective strategies for improving the conditions of those classes and groups considered to be disadvantaged.
Collectivism does not necessarily deny individual rights, but it considers group rights primary.
(Compare with communitarianism.)
[bk]
In collectivism, the "collective is the ultimate value, to which individual goals are subordinate."
R.W. Grant, The Incredible Bread Machine
[rwGrant]
'Collectivism' is defined as the theory and practice which make a collective or collectives rather than individuals the ultimate and fundamental unit of political, social, and economic concern.
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Presumably it is on present usage correct to characterize all socialists as being, as such, collectivists: while the nearest approach in our time to any actual realization of Bakunin's ideal of a collective would seem to be the self-managing 'associations of labour' in Yugoslavia, Israeli kibbutzim, or the collectives set up by the Spanish anarchists during the Civil War.
[...]
Collectivists in theorizing insist that the claims of collectives must, in general and normally, if not always and without exception, override the claims of individual members.
[krauth]
It seems to me that one thing all forms of collectivism share is that individual choice is always subordinate to The Group, be it the fascist volk or a local soviet or an anarcho-syndicalist people's council or whatever other fiction of 'society' the state decides to use.
[...]
Fascist collectivists try to prevent mixed race sex, socialist collectivists try to prevent 'undemocratic' private trade, but the principle of collectivism is always the same. If an individual does something he wants to do in a collectivist 'society', it is because the political collective allows him to do it, not because it is his right to do as he pleases with those who are willing participants.Perry de Havilland, Liberarian Alliance
[libertarianAlliance]