COLLECTIVISM
"collectivism ... treats society as if it were a super-organism existing over and above its individual members, and which takes the collective in some form (e.g., tribe, race, or state) to be the primary unit of reality and standard of value." -- Prof. Fred D. Miller HERE
"Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group -- whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called 'the common good'." -- Ayn Rand, HERE
"Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others." -- Ayn Rand, Letters of Ayn Rand
"G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), and Karl Marx (1818-83) ... both viewed political phenomena as the inevitable result of historical processes, and regarded collectives as of greater reality and value than their individual members." -- Prof. Fred D. Miller HERE
"A social system is a code of laws which men observe in order to live together. Such a code must have a basic principle, a starting point, or it cannot be devised. The starting point is the question: Is the power of society limited or unlimited?
"Individualism answers: The power of society is limited by the inalienable, individual rights of man. Society may make only such laws as do not violate these rights.
"Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes." -- Ayn Rand, Textbook of Americanism, HERE
"Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage -- the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. [...] When men began to be indoctrinated once more with the notion that the individual possesses no rights, that supremacy, moral authority and unlimited power belong to the group, and that a man has no significance outside his group -- the inevitable consequence was that men began to gravitate toward some group or another, in self-protection, in bewilderment and in subconscious terror. The simplest collective to join, the easiest one to identify -- particularly for people of limited intelligence -- the least demanding form of "belonging" and of "togetherness" is: race. [...] It is thus that the theoreticians of collectivism, the 'humanitarian' advocates of a 'benevolent' absolute state ... led to the rebirth and the new, virulent growth of racism in the 20th century." -- Ayn Rand in "Racism", HERE
Statism
"STATISM is that particular form of collectivism in which individuals are forced to be subservient to government (as distinguished, if possible, from a religious or cult leader, roving invader or local gangster). Anyone in government who wants to extend his power, or anyone else (who has political influence) with agendas to advance, monopolies to secure, axes to grind or revenge to take -- can make claims that certain governmental actions would be in the national, state, society or even family interest and must 'therefore' take precedence over any individual interests whatsoever. With this 'justification' the people in government can proceed to enforce such claims, often enthusiastically, sometimes brutally, but always with impunity." -- Rick Gaber
Relevant Comments
"Collectivism is the ancient principle of savagery. ... Collectivism is not the 'New Order of Tomorrow.' It is the order of a very dark yesterday." -- Ayn Rand
"... So here we get the two essentials of Nazism: the rejection of reason and the mind in favor of the worship of brute emotion, and the elevation of the collective over the individual. What, then, distinguishes the ideas of the modern intellectuals from the philosophy of the Nazis? The addition of an altruist twist. The Nazis were certainly pro-self-sacrifice, because they advocated (and enforced) the sacrifice of the individual self to the collective aggrandizement of the race. But the modern intellectuals declare that they are even more altruistic because they want to sacrifice our own race to other races." -- Robert Tracinski, HERE
"If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged 'good' can justify it -- there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations." -- Ayn Rand, HERE
"People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell, HERE
"The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization." -- Mikhail Gorbachev, June 8, 1990
"Collectivism is the real-world manifestation of the subjective, emotion-based feral animal origins of humanity, like some recurring echo emanating from the primitive reptile brain that physically exists in all of us. It is the antithesis of rational objectivity, something that no amount of fancy verbiage from Marx or Chomsky or Himmler or Plato or Rousseau can disguise in their respective paeans to force and unity over intellect and evolution. Collectivism is a fancy word for tribalism. It is a hold over, an atavistic throw back ..." -- Perry de Havilland, HERE
"Totalitarianism is collectivism. Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group -- whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called `the common good.´ Throughout history, no tyrant ever rose to power except on the claim of representing `the common good.´ Napoleon `served the common good´ of France. Hitler [was] `serving the common good´ of Germany. Horrors which no man would dare consider for his own selfish sake are perpetrated with a clear conscience by `altruists´ who justify themselves by -- the common good." -- Ayn Rand, HERE
"But I want you to LOVE ME!!!!" -- Franz-Josef, Emperor of Austria-Hungary, as he screamed at a subject while having him horsewhipped.
Click the pic to see the story of this COLLECTIVIST CURRENCY:
"... statism systematically violates the rights of individuals and is, therefore, immoral. Because it suppresses the mind and violates men’s rights, it thereby causes abysmal poverty and is utterly impractical." -- Andrew Bernstein, HERE
"All politicians are collectivists. They don't care about privacy."
-- Professor Ian Angell
"Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents." -- James Madison, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1788
"Isn't it somewhat remarkable that we can go back a a few hundred years and find no shortage of quotations from our founding fathers warning us against the dangers of democracy, yet today teachers and politicians use the word as if it were an offering of gold." -- Neal Boortz
"'Democracy' does not mean freedom." -- Mark Da Cunha
"The issue here is liberty, and democracy is far from a synonym for that." -- Perry de Havilland
"Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner." -- Robert A. Heinlein
"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." -- James Bovard
"Lynch mobs are democracies." -- Neal Boortz
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