A moral, principled society must protect individual rights so that we can act on our judgment, free from collectivist coercion. Collectivism is the theory that life belongs not to the person, but to the group or society of which she is only a part. The individual has no rights of her own and she must sacrifice her beliefs and goals for the “greater good” of the group.
For collectivists, the group, not the individual, is the basic unit of moral concern. Political ideologies appeal to either ideas of individualism or collectivism. Individualists speak of “individual rights” or “individual freedom,” whereas collectivists appeal to “the common good” or “obligations to society.” At the philosophical center of this debate is a fundamental question of whether a person’s life belongs to him (or her), or to a community, society or the state.
Individualists believe that an individual’s life belongs to the person, and that the person has an inalienable right to act according to his own judgment; the individual is sovereign, and is the basic unit of moral concern. He is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. In collectivist regimes, authority figures demand obedience to the collective requiring that we accept our place within the social hierarchy, and perform only the roles expected of us for the benefit of the group. Collectivist cultures fancy external explanations for the cause of an event, and assign less personal responsibility for outcomes