Why Did Marxism/Communism Scapegoat the Middle Class?

[HK.227]

'Collectivist ideology' just means humans cooperating with each other and pooling their assets toward a common goal.

Utter rubbish, as that would make every group of cooperating individuals on the planet ideological collectivists.
Collectivism prioritizes collective rights over individual rights in the same way that Individualism ("Libertarianism" in the current popular incarnation) prioritizes individual rights over collective rights. Nothing more.

 

[AConcernedCitizen]

Utter rubbish, as that would make every group of cooperating individuals on the planet ideological collectivists.

Every group of cooperating individuals on the planet are ideological collectivists in practice.

Collectivism prioritizes collective rights over individual rights in the same way that Individualism ("Libertarianism" in the current popular incarnation) prioritizes individual rights over collective rights. Nothing more.

When an Ayn Rand book club pools their assets to rent space at the local community center, if the majority wants to hold the meeting at 6:30 and a minority wants to hold the meeting at 5:30, the meeting will generally be held at 6:30, against the wishes of the minority. They 'demand' that the individual pay membership dues that are used for a 6:30 meeting, thereby prioritizing the collective desires of the book club over the desires of the individual. The individual's only recourse is to leave the book club. If they remain in the book club, they must continue to pay membership dues that will be used to benefit the collective needs of the book club, rather than their own needs as an individual.

 

[HK.227]

Every group of cooperating individuals on the planet are ideological collectivists in practice.

That is cooperation, and has nothing to do with political collectivism.
A common example of a collectivist weighed law in practice is the confiscation of a piece of land for fair market value, in order to build infrastructure on it, because that infrastructure is for the common good.
A common example of a individualistically weighed law in practice is that the police can't enter your home without a warrant, because your right to privacy in this case outweighs the common good that could be attained by ignoring it.

Every policy falls on one end of the collectivism/individualism scale or the other. Taxation is collectivist. Freedom to your personal religious beliefs is individualist. Other examples that tend more towards the extremes of the scale, but are still real life examples could be the abolition of all individual rights of ownership, or the right to kill any member of the collective who dares walk onto your land.


To get back to what started this scuffle over definitions, collectivist ideologies (those that are further towards the collectivist end of the aforementioned scale) value the collective higher than the individual, and will therefore always weigh the rights of the citizens according to that belief. Problem being, that when you always have the option to sacrifice the individual for the good of the group, you can always get rid of any individual who stands in your way. Therefore individuals must have "certain unalienable rights" in order to safeguard against tyranny.