# Who are more collectivist - left or right wingers?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-more-collectivist-left-or-right-wingers/687800>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 6, 2014, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-more-collectivist-left-or-right-wingers/687800 "2014-05-06T11:33:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-more-collectivist-left-or-right-wingers/687800/21 "2014-05-11T09:43:17Z")

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> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> Four words: You didn’t build that. Cheered on the left, booed on the right.
> 
> And I mean those words in the sense that Obama actually meant them. They still would have been booed by the right if they didn’t distort it to mean what they did.

I’d boo too if somebody was calling me on my bullshit. Obama’s message was true: nobody succeeds solely due to their own efforts. So the conservative efforts to spin this came off as another example of reality denial.

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**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-more-collectivist-left-or-right-wingers/687800/22 "2014-05-11T09:49:04Z")

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> [@njtt](#):
>
> So communists and socialists are not left-wing according to you? :dubious: (From a left point of view, diversity sensitivity and tolerance for alternative lifestyles are not at all antithetical to collectivism, they are necessary if the collective is to flourish. Collectivism does not mean everyone has to be the same, it means everyone has to work together, co-operatively, to build a better world. Given the inescapable fact that people _are_ different from one another, achieving this goal requires us to be tolerant and sensitive to people’s diversity.)
> 
> I don’t think you know what “collectivism” means at all. It has nothing to do with viewing abstractions, like “the market” holistically (which is what you are describing).
> 
> Faith in the market is pretty much the opposite of collectivism. It is assuming that good things will happen _despite_ no effort of co-operation being made. Stalin’s Collective Farms were (in intent, anyway) collectivist … hence the name.

I would certainly agree that communists and socialists are left wing. I just don’t see what that has to do with the rest of your post.

It’s seeming to me that a lot of the terms being thrown around here - including collectivist - are pretty fuzzy in their meaning and people can stretch them around to mean whatever they want. So someone can say that the “left” is “collectivist” because the terms have no precise meaning.

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