Community and collectivism are opposites. Community is valuable and powerful; it is individuals freely choosing to cooperate and identify with each other to achieve more than they can individually, as we do in the open-source community.
Collectivism is a fraud. It pretends to be about community, but it is actually about the use of force. Collectivists want us not only to bow to their desire for power over others, but to thank them for coercing us and praise them as our moral superiors.
Sometimes it feels good to quote somebody who agrees with you.
READER COMMENTS
GIVCO
Oct 6 2011 at 3:59pm
– Stuart Hall, “The Toad in the Garden: Thatcherism Among the Theorists”, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (1988)
Daniel Kuehn
Oct 6 2011 at 5:24pm
That’s a good one.
My one concern is that a lot of people who are pro-community get vicious about other people who are pro-community by calling them collectivists. Quotes like this are dead on… but they also give ammunition to people who want to see evil collectivists around every corner and conveniently attach the “collectivist” label to anyone they happen not to like.
N.
Oct 6 2011 at 5:44pm
Community also allows for right of exit.
Collectivism… not so much.
Jeremy, Alabama
Oct 7 2011 at 10:26am
Very good quote.
Collectivism is a kind of community where not enough people agree with you, so you threaten them with death (e.g. see recent Rosanne, Michael Moore) until their morale improves.
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