COLLECTIVISM
What is collectivism?
Collectivism is a reference-group doctrine of behaviour. It involves the coordination of conduct that a society achieves through social control. Much of this will be informally arranged, although at the limits it is often enforced by laws or regulations. Some libertarians are under the illusion that both collectivism and social control are illegitimate, and to be resisted whenever possible.
But without the collectivism that social control provides, we would not enjoy potable water supplies, nutritious food, sewerage or garbage collection, reliable consumer products, or safe traffic conditions (even though all of these could be improved, their existing margins of safety would drop precipitously if social controls were eliminated).
The situation where collectivism "gets a bad name" usually involves perceptions of public prejudices and preferences being forced upon dissenting individuals. If "the community" feels that some individual or group has discreditable opinions or unseemly habits, this minority may be required to "tow the line" rather than express their views or lifestyles. But on those occasions when some of this same minority agrees with prevailing discreditable opinions, they are then strangely silent about "rights being trampled on".
If familial conditioning, public education, and social propaganda are working effectively, opinion is so subtlety formed and reasonably reinforced that dissenters are seen as exceptional deviants that deserve minimal tolerance and little respect. This is, of course, only a caricature, both in terms of how it would work and the results it would produce - but it usually is the "official version" that the social establishment will seek to propagate and defend.
How is collectivism manifest?
Most of the effort at social control that supports collectivism occurs "from the bottom up". People influence each other's behaviour by encouraging what they find acceptable, and discouraging of what they find unacceptable. The techniques for this run all the way from smiling and frowning, to rewarding and punishing. The prospect for a libertarian utopia in which only minimum expectations would prevail, is virtually nonexistent - people want to prescribe how others behave, and will use a variety of ways to do so, even regarding inconsequential habits and traditions. Constitutional limits on the exercise of arbitrary intimidation are necessary, but the majority will often be very impatient with such provisions or the rationale for them.
References
Donald Black
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF RIGHT AND WRONG, reviseded.
Academic Press, New York, 1998
Martin Innes
UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CONTROL
Open University Press, Buckingham, 2003