What is "Individualism?"

Back in the sixties when I undertook what was to be a five-year intensive study of "personal motivation," I didn't understand what that meant politically. I didn't understand that to be an "individualist," I could not be a socialist (collectivist). Later on in life, as I learned more, I figured out that a collectivist cannot be an individualist because that very philosophy denies the importance of the individual and wishes to suborn it to the importance of the group. Unfortunately, collectivism does not recognize the fact that a "collective" is merely a "collection of individuals," with each individual within the group primarily interested in his/her own interests. This destroys the whole idea of the "collective" because nobody is interested in the goals of the collective unless those goals coincided with his/her own. That's why I will never be a collectivist (socialist) because that (those) philosophies just do not work. They put the interests of the group above those of all the individuals within the group. Therefore, those "group interests" must be imposed on those individuals Therefore, for a socialist (collectivist) society to flourish for any time at all, it must be a "dictatorial" society with the power to by force force its ideas on all the individuals within the "collective." If it is not, there is no way a "collective" will work because it destroys individual initiative. People will do "just enough" to get paid. they will not do anything more and if they find a way to collect by doing nothing, they will. They'll "line up" to prove how "needy" they are because "need" becomes a "demand" on the earnings of those capable and willing to earn for themselves.