The issue is not individualism vs collectivism, it is scale.
Ancient people lived together in tribes. This is somewhat the synthesis of individualism and collectivism: What's good for you is good for your family, your tribe.
The tribe was destroyed by the Roman Empire (or even older authoritarian civilizations) by removing natural tribal solidarity through reducing such natural social cohesion to core families, thereby isolating them into separate living spaces for better control, esp taxation. Divide and conquer.
Higher orders of social cohesion have been provided by governmental institutions since then (school, religion, etc).
We're used to this societal structure to this day. It's not natural.
Who knows, maybe we will see some kind of neo-tribalism in the internet age now, families in-spirit. Like-minded people can and should come together and self-organize most affairs of their lives in a largely self-sufficient way (see aquaponics, open source ecology and village construction set, 3D printing, biotecture, etc). This is the only sensible countermovement I can see against the estrangement that modern life brings, no matter if you call it "capitalism" or "socialism", power-of-the-might "individualism" or "totalitarian" collectivism.
Nicely put.
Also like to add that specialization in the old days is the reason for tribalism to exists. All members of a tribe must contribute in his own unique way for whole tribe to survive and thrive. Large scale production have change how society organize itself.
Quoting this for future reference.
