Collectivism As a Paradigm Driven By Free Association

Since a collective is made up of a group of persons or individuals, it implies that collectives are voluntary. If a collective isn't voluntary, furthermore, it can't be considered a collective by the very nature of a collective, which requires all members of the collective to be like-minded (part of the cohesive element of collectivism, which you should be familiar with from a more in-depth, academic understanding of collectivism theory.

Collectivism is, incidentally, a crucial element of the free market; here's a piece on the collectivist nature of the free market, from a libertarian point-of-view:

http://fff.org/.../article/tgif-individualist-collectivism

There are a wealth of works by individualists who claim that collectivism is forced or coerced, but interestingly enough, no collectivism advocates so much as hint at the possibility that collectivism is imposed upon people; additionally, many moderates, and even some individualists (such as in the paper above) recognize that coercion is, at the very least, not necessarily part of collectivism.

One could argue that a collective can be forced, but the vast majority of historical collectives were not forced, and those that were forced or coerced, have always proven historically to be dysfunctional. Coercion is a dysfunctionality of any society, individualistic or collectivistic.

The Soviet Union was dysfunctional and wasteful, had communication and social integration problems, and ultimately fell due to the societal entropy caused by the lack of collective cohesion, due to its coercive nature. Forced collectives never succeed, because they're not healthy or stable.

On the other hand, free association collectives, such as the democratic process, unionization, political parties, the stock market, the free market generally, the U.S. constitution, free software development, user-generated content (such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and social networks like Facebook), etc.-- these are all crystal clear examples of historical collectives that continue to survive and thrive, precisely because they maintain the supporting element of free association, for any collective to remain healthy and stable.

So, perhaps to prevent any further misunderstanding, I will clarify: All healthy and functional collectives are necessarily decentralized and free associating. A collective is unstable, dysfunctional, and corrupt in proportion to its lack of adherence to these two principles, especially the principle of free association.