What do you think about individualism?

First they take your 5th home by the sea, then your baby.

I want the individual to be able to flourish and achieve their potential. That is why I am opposed to capitalism, which chains the individual to working for someone else rather than themselves.

I personally consider individualism and communism to be intertwined, not incompatible. As Marx put it, "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all".

Ultimately, what I want as a person is to lead a fulfilling existence, to achieve my potential, to fulfill my aspirations, to make my dreams a reality. I don't want my daily life to be shallow, depressing and boring; I want it to be enticing, satisfying and exciting.

I want to learn, work and play my own way, to my own benefit. I don't want to toil my life away in some office or factory to the profit of some faceless bourgeois profiteer.

Personal initiatives will be of little help, though. In order to achieve this state of affair, collective action and far-reaching policies are required. If we wish to ever catch a glimpse of the future society in which this could be possible, we need to fight a war; a class war. And win.

I am a communist not because I believe in some sort of higher ideal ordering my self-sacrifice but because it serves my self-interests to support politics that have the potential to free myself and others from the shackles of capitalism.

I am a communist BECAUSE I am an individualist, not in spite of it.

Damn, that image is aesthetic.

You can have both individualism and collectivism together.

It's from the 2012 "Architecture of Density" series by Hong Kong-based German photographer Michael Wolf, if you're interested.

Do you like spouting contradictions?

It's a Hegelian thing, you wouldn't understand.

If you think individualism and collectivism aren't contradictory.

I mean they aren't contradictory.

how so? Generally speaking, you either empower the individual or the collective.

The ideology at its core makes the fundamental mistake of seeing the human as an individual and only an individual, or most "importantly" as an individual.

In fact, we are a social species, and the feats we achieve and the ideas we create are possible only by virtue of this collectivity or sociality.

However, it is as much of a mistake as to see the human as only or most importantly the collective. We are not ants or bees.

We are both individual and social. Neither is more important, fundamental, or essential to our being than the other. We are ourselves by virtue of both our individuality and our sociality. We cannot exist alone, and yet we cannot forget that we are all separate individuals.

Only communism allows for us to truly realize and actualize ourselves as such; as equally social and individual beings.

Individual rights by necessity need to be balanced against each other, which means when making decisions or implementing policies, whatever protects or enhances the rights and freedoms of as many people as possible is the correct option. So in the context of politics there is no difference between individual rights and collective rights, and collective rights are best served by socialism.

So basically any individualist should also be a socialist.

Human beings are both social and act in collectives and individual and act independently.

The strength of the collective is dependent on the strength of the individuals it comprises of, the strength of individuals are dependent on the strength of the collectives to which they belong.

In other words, there's a dialectical relationship between the individual and the collective and you cannot understand human society without understanding both aspects and the inner relations between them.

Our normative goal should be individualism, where people can live their lives however they want to and fulfill their potential as individuals, without coercion just because society demands so. But it's stupid to confuse the normative and the positive in this case. People don't actually act solely as individuals, it's relations between social groups that determine how our lives look like, not just our personal decisions, so it's wrong to analyze society using individualism.

I agree rand.

Stop impeding on my right to own jewish slaves.

property is a right GIVEN.

By whom?
Whoever owns the land in the first place

Depends on the context, duh.

Ideological supermarket yadda yadda.

All for it. It just cannot exist under capitalism. Also Ayn Rand as an individualist was absolutely awful. In fact I would say she was awful in general for ideology, and just mediocre as a writer.

By this definition slavery is OK

Why?

Sure. And your slaves have every right to kill you in your sleep in order to become free.

Nope, only capitalism, free markets and property rights

...

I never said it's the most practical… Or even that property is something I agree with.

I for one am all for the abolishion of property.

Yeah, let's abolish property so we can all be slaves ;)

Wut?

...

read Oscar Wilde

Western ultra individualism- is nothing but glorified hedonism.

this.