collectivism

collectivism, any of several types of social organization in which the individual is seen as being subordinate to a social collectivity such as a state, a nation, a race, or a social class. Collectivism may be contrasted with individualism (q.v.), in which the rights and interests of the individual are emphasized. The earliest modern, influential expression of collectivist ideas in the West is in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Du contrat social, of 1762 (see social contract), in...