I was, of course, being facetious, and poking some fun at Geoff. I will disagree with you on one item though, far from being non-Western, "collectivist" ideals are thoroughly grounded in Western thought and European philosophy. It goes all the way back to Plato's Republic, a perverse political pornography which seems to hold a strange attraction for modern conservatives. Socrates, or at least his mouthpiece, Plato, was a great admirer of Spartan fascism and an open enemy of Athenian democracy, he worked tirelessly to subvert it, collaborated with the oligarchical tyrannies that briefly supplanted it, indoctrinated aristocratic youth against it, and eventually drank hemlock for refusing to renounce his opposition to it.

And of course, Karl Marx was German, (I consider his Jewish roots irrelevant) and many of the original socialists and anarchists (that's a libertarian who owns no property) were also western European. Socialism came primarily from Germany, and France and only later took root in Russia. Europe had just replaced its baronial rural aristocracy with an urban bourgeois one that was just as ruthless. Whatever you may think of socialism, it is not a cultural phenomenon, it was the inevitable political reaction to the abuses and rapacity of 18th century mercantilism and 19th century industrial capital.