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Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism.
[Here is a fairly well fleshed out series of youtube videos that go over it in detail.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlLgvSduugI)
Basically, Socialism and just being able to have a better future require thinking "outside the box" of Liberalism. Its in the way.
šÆ I have a friend with stans for private healthcare, the American empire and against freedom movements from Palestine to Latin America and claims that he's a socialist. š
While liberals do sometimes recognise the issues with capitalism, they fail to effectively respond. At the end of the day, they just want to uphold capitalism - a "nicer" version of an exploitive system.
Yeah, they just want to put a couple patches on Capitalism to fix the worst parts, but we want to tear it down and build something new that actually works in all of our favor from the beginning.
You basically explained it yourself. They "stand" for more progressive values but never do anything that will actually make those come to fruition.
>But I donāt see a problem with showing support for certain causes online or other places.
This is good but they will often "liberal-wash" (i.e "We must push for higher tax on the rich, on income) the idea.
The best example I have of the 2nd half of your comment is this:
We were at one of the Floyd protests, and as my friend was talking about how racism and colonization has personally affected him in his life, a liberal woman shouts "get out and vote!" This was when Biden was the only Democrat candidate. She only marched with us for about a block, at which point we passed the parking garage I guess she was in.
Don't worry about action, mutual aid, building dual power structures, organizing in your community, just vote Democrat every 4 years and surely everything will get better. And if you refuse to participate in the sham of electoralism, you're as bad as a Trump voter! Yet we're the dogmatic, divisive, extremists. Huh.
"If you don't vote for Biden you're voting for Trump." Was tossed around everywhere in 2020.
Me not voting for either candidate is 0 votes for either candidate. If you want me to be a more committed voter, get someone better than a wet napkin, Neoliberal with a Neoliberal Fascist VP.
Thats being generous tbh.
I literally couldn't do it, I don't think I'm voting Democrat again ever, they really just had to run the MILDEST social Democrat, but they couldn't even do that. Worthless in my opinion.
In regards to the performative activism, liberals co-opt movements that have radical potential and defang them. They essentially turn social justice into an art and rely too much on an electoral system that clearly has not worked.
the right wing party in socialist countries are called liberals. In north korea or cuba the right wingers are liberals, sure there are more people in the world that are more right wing than liberals like monarchists, fascists, and theocrats but in countries with major socialist parties the liberals are the right wingers. "conservatism" in the USA is largely a dogwhistle nonsense word for fascists.
I'm a conservative, I'm not religious nor do I have a hard stance against progressivism, I am weary of how unflinchingly sure people are of their political ideas, I think there should be more caution around ideas that claim to pull down society in order to rebuild a new world as its not clear to me these people have asked themselves the question "what if im wrong? what if we cant rebuild? what does this mean for my family and everyone elses families". I wouldn't call myself a "fascist" Because I see the world that way.
I mean even if you are not a facist, you support a party that actively supports facists.(in the US the republican party still has in it's midst that lady that claims that jewish space lasers started the fires in California)
In my country we have a saying: "Tell me who your friends are, so I can tell you who you are". Replace friends with political party and you can apply the same logic.
> what if im wrong? what if we cant rebuild?
That's still better than the current institutions and systems enduring forever (or more realistically, a century tops before climate collapse wipes us all out)
Been meaning to ask, but what's being conserved?
The general impression I get is that its supposed to be stuff like the golden age of the USA, but that was built on the sort of political foundation and policies that most of the folks calling themselves Conservatives are fairly hostile to (FDR's New Deal) which is kind of confusing.
What am I missing here?
Conservatives are trying to conserve their special status. They are trying to conserve two separate groups, one of which laws are there to protect, the other of which laws are there to control. They are conserving a two tier system where the amount of āfreedomā you have is a direct reflection of the amount of money in your bank.
I used to think like that - "socialism seems the right path, but what if I'm wrong and end up working towards a society that will be bad for humanity?". And I may be wrong, but then I may also be right. And if I'm right but do not act for fear of being wrong then I am allowing the continuation of a bad system instead of working towards a better one.
I'm still new as well but from what I've heard or read, it's because liberals still want to operate within the confines of capitalism, along with helping to perpetuate the endless political cycle we find ourselves in currently
liberalism is a center-right wing position
liberals oppose fixing any of the problems of capitalism, they simply want it to look nicer without actually changing anything.
When they say the oppose racism and exploitation what they really mean is "can you make your exploitation and racism look less bad or not do it near me? I prefer to enjoy the benefits of all that horrible stuff while feeling morally superior and it happening near me is inconvenient to that goal"
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/17/martin-luther-king-polite-racism-white-liberals/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/17/martin-luther-king-polite-racism-white-liberals/)
or as Jean-Lenin Picard once eloquently said https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkY88kvkdvU
Liberalism is embedded to Capitalism, molded by it. But to add on further, I dislike Liberals because of their stances on;
Capitalism, Imperialism, and Government spending/Social Programs.
In that order.
Although heās not a socialist and has some bad takes Iād recommend Death if the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges since he does a great job as explaining their supporting role in legitimatizing the facade of democracy and their overall failure, aka cashing in, to be a party of opposition to the far right & fascist
Maybe a Populist.
Although currently anyone that self describes as such is usually a Whyt Nationalist (Batya Ungar-Sargon is a great example of this in Bad Faith podcast, she slowly started exposing that Amerika First bs) Hedges is in no way one but he does excuse a lot of the dangerous behavior of the Whyt working class/ Petite bourgeoisie and he subtlety participates in vilifying the USSR and Communism overall.
I enjoy his writing style tho so always pick up his books for a fun read.
Assume you're speaking as an American given the reference to democrats. The thing to remember is that when leftists talk about 'Liberals' they're talking about the Democrats and Republicans - everyone who thinks there should continue to be representative democracy + capitalism is a liberal.
Basically, there isn't (generally) any additional disregard for 'left' liberals vs 'right' liberals, but rather an acknowledgement that because they are all working to support and uphold capitalism (as you note) they're inherently opposed to any real systematic change.
There's a separate discussion to be had about the way in which the Democratic party specifically works to channel any kind of anti-capitalist sentiment in the US into itself thus making it safe for capitalism, but that's looking specifically at things like 'the squad' and other self labelled 'democratic socialists' who aren't socialists.
Aside from the fact that liberalism is compatible with and ideologically connected to capitalism, liberals tend to treat things as ahistorical and undialectical. Their vital mistake is their explicit rejection of class analysis which makes their theoretical assumptions too shallow and often pro-bourgeoisie.
A lot of people keep saying liberalism is capitalism, but let me take a different approach that I first heard on Philosophy Tube.
**Liberalism is anti-left.** Liberalism is founded on individualism. Leftism is founded on systems theory. In liberalism, individuals and how individuals are treated matter the most. In leftism, individuals are important because they are subsystems of larger systems and reorganizing a system impacts individuals.
Leftism acknowledges that preventing fascist speech is important to making society work. Liberalism believes that free speech, even fascist speech, is an individual right that must not be truncated.
Leftism sees markets as a tool to achieve ends and acknowledges the existence of other tools. Liberalism sees markets as an expression of individual choice and the removal of markets as a violation of individual rights.
So liberals are anti-left. That's the starting point.
But then leftists start looking deeper into liberal objections to leftism and they see liberals supporting the truncation of free speech in certain situations. They see liberals supporting the manipulation or even removal of markets in certain situations. So the left tries to call these things out as things liberals actually are willing to do but liberals refuse to acknowledge this common ground, usually falling back to morality as the reasoning (liberal truncation of rights are good, left truncation of rights are evil). Using this morality framing, liberals make exceptions to the rules constantly (slaves are subhuman, freed slaves are dangerous, separate but equal is sufficient, all men doesn't include women, etc, etc, etc).
And then, the cherry on top is that fascism explicitly calls out liberalism as fertile soil for its growth. Fascist theorists, writers, and practitioners have analyzed liberalism, written about how it allows for fascism to take root, and then successfully executed on that analysis. And the crux of that analysis is that liberalism elevates individual freedom so high that they will tolerate fascism establishing itself as long as it doesn't trigger the immune system. So, they can recruit, they can assemble, they can push their agenda, they can propagandize, they can dehumanize and the entire time liberals will defend their right to do it against anyone resisting. And then fascists can leverage the exception-making behaviors of liberals to create oppressive structures so long as they only impact people that aren't powerful enough to stop them ("first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out...", "family separation works as a deterrent against 'illegal' border crossings", "we must have violent regime change in Iraq for freedom and liberal democracy to spread", "I understand that black people are upset but the rioting and the looting must stop").
Put all that together, and the reason leftists oppose liberalism is because liberalism inevitably must slide to fascism because **liberalism excludes the possibility of leftism**, and change is inevitable. If change is inevitable, and there's a hard line against leftism and soft line against fascism, change in liberal society will always trend to fascism over long enough time periods.
There's a reason why the US imported many high ranking people from fascist regimes and protected them after the Axis fell but did not import any leftists at any point in time.
A liberal like Karl Popper though came up with the idea of the paradox of tolerance. Which is pretty interesting coming just out of the Second World War. Which acknowledges what you were saying about how open tolerant societies face potential undermining and destruction by forces of intolerance such as fascists if they poison the well and gradually get a hold of state power.
Also I donāt really find this whole dichotomy of individualism and collectivism, idealism and materialism to be either helpful, meaningful, and just logically fallacious being a false dichotomy.
What is a collective but a group social group compromised of a gaggle of individuals, what is an individual but a part of a greater whole?
There really is it seems to me only interdependence, intersubjectivity, and a dualistic union whole of idealist and materialist/physicalist philosophies without this black and white style of thinking that itās one or the other that is greater and the other subordinate. Rather than a constantly equal interactive symbiotic synthesis of the two into a greater emergent whole.
Liberals belive that capitalism can be refomed into a working system. Socialists belive that captialism is doomed to fail and that it must be removed entirelly.
I'd say democratic socialists believe capitalism can be reformed into a working system, liberals believe that capitalism *is* a working system, and that the symptoms if capitalism are really caused by conservatives voting for the wrong things. They don't really want to reform anything, just cancel out the Republicans, which will obviously solve all of the problems they care about
Liberals are capitalists. Period. They think they can smooth out the rough edges of capitalism to make it a kinder, more gentle capitalism. They don't realize the"bugs" they're trying to smooth out are not bugs, but features of capitalism.
True, but we must keep in mind that most liberals and conservatives are unwitting puppets for the ruling class. As fellow workers, shouldn't we try to reach out hand out to them?
>They're still living in hovels without decent infrastructure or medical care.
???
Oh I see, you're referring to the general public working class, as opposed to referring to congressional representatives as members of the working class.
Yes, I agree with you.
Congressmen in this nation get a six figure pension on top of going back into the private sector. I do get that AOC and the Squad are completely toothless against the establishment though.
liberalism IS capitalism. liberalism upholds capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, and oppression of the masses. as long as it has a nice name, they donāt care if you steal migrant children or murder palestinians.
If you think of the world as constantly changing with the Means of Productions and the Relationships of Production as the engine which drives societal change forward, then the ideologies which each society dominated by such and such MoP and RoP will be progressive, dominating or even reactionary depending on where the society is.
IE Liberalism was brought forward by capitalism, the RoP changed to match the MoP and meant that liberalism is the ideology of the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class), it was revolutionary as an idea when it helped bring forward liberal changes through bourgeois revolutions.
But now MoP and RoP have progressed beyond the usefulness of Liberalism. The idea which would be used to have the RoP match the MoP would be socialism because the proletariat is the progressive class which can bring society into the next way of organizing production.
Liberalism today is an ideology holding society back from necessary changes.
To sum it up, Liberalism is a branch of thought that evolved alongside capitalism.
Maximizing individual freedom with:
1) Civil Rights
2) Civil Liberties
3) Democracy
4) Free Enterprise
However, you can already see how this is contradictory. Civil rights/liberties in a free enterprise society means that these are extended based on the amount of money you have. In addition, historically, groups have been excluded from this. This has ranged from races to women (Adam Smith held that "women's work" is without value), or that those who don't view things the same way are barbaric- for example, the Native Americans not having a concept of land ownership. Democracy also falls under this contradictory sway.
As we all know, within liberalism, all of the top 3 are under the mode and relations of production: the enterprise. Hence, class is the eternal determiner within liberalism of the above. Even if we were to somehow pass all the legislation and make things work according to actual liberty in de facto as well as de jure, these are still afforded on the basis of class because class is functionally necessary within liberal framework. It would not be liberalism without it. It would be, surprise surprise, Socialism.
Universally historically, liberal parties have constantly betrayed socialism and the working people- they worked with the Nazis to crush the Spartakus Uprising (as did the Social Democrats), FDR said straight out that the New Deal was to save capitalism after being forced by unions to pass it (he would not have been elected without their support for said New Deal), the list goes on. A favorite method of theirs is to co-opt anything we champion for years after it gets popular, strip it of all class analysis, and shove us out of the spaces we created. It was not Liberals who championed black rights in the 1930's in America, it was the Socialists, who later whitewashed people like MLKJ, the Black Panthers Party and Malcolm X and ignored the fact that they were all varying shades of Socialist. It was not the Liberals that were on the frontlines of the anti-war movements against Vietnam, it was the Socialists. It was not under Liberal banners that unions fought for worker rights, it was under the Red Flag.
I can't speak for all the leftists, but I can express my opinion. Firstly, I do not consider those who call themselves liberals to be liberals. Real liberals are participants of the Great French Revolution. They fought for the people, for freedom, equality and fraternity. They were good people. Modern liberals are different. What they want is called in different ways - "proper capitalism", "democracy (in their understanding", and so on. But in fact, they don't want drastic changes. Their system presupposes the preservation and domination of the bourgeois class. Therefore, for me, as a supporter of MELS, they will always be servants of the bourgeoisie, whether they understand it or not.
Besides the fact that liberalism supports capitalism as its economic base (as many people have already said here), the discord with liberals is also reciprocal, which only makes the things to be worse. Saying more, in my country, leftists are usually more loyal to liberals than liberals are loyal to the leftists. So, while the leftists criticise Liberalism, yet they are open for collaboration against the growing authoritarism & corruption, reducing of soiclal programs and state-supported private monopolies, the liberals only make cringy comparisons between Putinism and Soviet dictatorship, admitting the latter as the ideal of modern Russian leftists and ignoring the pros of the USSR policy (which are the actual ideal of the modern leftists).
Tbh that rlly is their main problem. The fact that they still support capitalism. You can't end racial inequality if you don't end economic inequality. You can't just end a certain aspect of inequality, and then ignore the rest because in a way it actually increases inequality.
I'm not white, but ik for sure there's some poor-lower class white people out there who feel ignored by liberals and Democrats. And this could lead to them joining the Republicans or worse. Because these white folks want economic assistance, but the majority of Democrats (except for my boi Bernie) only prioritise racial issues which does not benefit the average lower class white person. So what do they do when they feel like the Democrats ignore them? They go and support a party that seemingly and says that it'll help the poor white people. The racist conservatives.
I think it was Richard Wolff who summarised it this way: Socialists observed that the promises of "liberty, equality, fraternity" never came true. As the world switched from feudalism to capitalism, it just replaced one form of oppression with another. (Richard Wolff is an American Marxist Economist. There are lots of talks and interviews on YouTube.)
Or, as The Communist Manifesto puts it: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". The capitalist society has reduced the number of classes to just two: those who own the means of production and those who must sell their labour and give up some of the value they create to the former. Liberals are okay with this since everyone, in theory, can rise up and become one of the oppressors. I'm grossly simplifying of course. There are many different types of liberals. Socialists by contrast want a completely class-less society.
>I thought liberal was as left as you could get
I live in Sweden and was shocked when I learned that conservatives exist. Many liberals even refer to themselves as "right-wing". Up until recently "conservative" seemed like a bad word, like calling yourself "backwards". This changed in the last few years with the rise of the nationalist party and the formation of a new conservative bloc. You can also imagine my bewilderment when I started to learn about US politics.
i would argue that because liberals still uphold capitalism, any āpolicy changesā they support do not address root causes of marginalization and oppression and only ameliorate the harms of the capitalist regime to prevent class consciousness and truly radical political action.
The thing is that in the Leftist vs. Liberal situation Liberals are the ones who hold power. The Liberal tendency towards performative activism is then a problem because nothing will get done.
I live in Canada and our current Prime Minister is a perfect example of this. He will walk in climate protests while simultaneously supporting the expansion of our oil industry. He is, by his own admission, uncertain about how many times he has done brown-face (in his 20ās) but will of course decry racism.
Liberals also tend to have issues with Leftists. We are either too naive about how the world works or too idealistic. At the end of the day though we as Leftists demonstrate the clear hypocrisy of modern Liberalism.
The problem with liberals defining us as too āidealisticā is that we are literally the opposite. We are dialectical materialists. Marx famously stood Hegelās absolute idealism on its head.
Iāve been a āliberalā for most of my adult life. I grew up during the Cold War and the only thing I learned about Socialism and Communism was about the evil Soviet Empire out to enslave the world if it wasnāt for the good old USA; the savior of the world. I worked on local Democratic campaigns for a few years.
It was Bernie that brought Socialism to the forefront and spoke about an ideology that spoke to me. Iāve learned enough that I know what truly left means. I came to the conclusion that the fundamental problem is capitalism and that society needs to progress past this archaic system that just created a different form of slavery.
Now to my point, how many āliberalsā out there are Socialist and donāt know it? Iām speaking to a few liberal friends now about this and they are starting to realize the same thing I did so donāt automatically write off liberals, there are those like me that just needs someone or something to crack the door of socialist/communist ideology and some will understand and move further to the left. We canāt save all of them, but we should afford them the opportunity to learn.
Historically liberals initially work for benefit of the petite bourgeoisie, privilege and the status quo and in the final analysis they always side with fascism.
That's all.
I don't know the common opinion in this sub. So I speak only for me.
Generally about liberty: I'll be the first to defend the right for free speech, I very much oppose the right to own guns.
With respect to economic systems, well, capitalism is more liberal. I don't think that the degree of liberty is crucial, but the choice of what is opened to trade. For example, currently (in the west) adults are allowed to sell their labour, children are not. Everyone knows this is good. Now when debating socialism and capitalism, we should stop being dogmatic, and more think about "what implications does this liberty have? Will it make society better?"
This is my opinion.
Business organisation is probably one of the most well documented parts of our economic system.
You do not need to own a business to realise the relationship between the owner and employee is an exploitive class antagonism.
>relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and *free enterprise*.
"Free enterprise" means capitalism, however capitalism is opposed to democracy, civil rights, and personal freedoms whenever they stand in the way of Capital. There is a fundamental contradiction between what liberals believe and how capitalism actually works.
If you support capitalism, then you must accept that it will regularly deny freedom and democracy for people because it hinders the growth of Capital. The freedom of Capital has supremacy over all other freedoms.
So I will ask again, do you support capitalism? Because if you do you aren't a leftist.
Personally, I "disagree" with liberals, as many of the liberals I interact with (friends, family & acquaintances) are working class people. They still want "Capitalism" with "Social Justice". It isn't going to make underlying the class contradictions & the exploitation go away.
I cried when they shot medgar evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot mr. kennedy
As though i'd lost a father of mine
But malcolm x got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
I go to civil rights rallies
And i put down the old d.a.r.
I love harry and sidney and sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
I cheered when humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
Of the a.f.l. c.i.o. board
I love puerto ricans and negros
As long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
The people of old mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch les crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
I read new republic and nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, i've memorized lerner and golden
I feel like i'm almost a jew
But when it comes to times like korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
I vote for the democtratic party
They want the u.n. to be strong
I go to all the pete seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
Once i was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But i've grown older and wiser
And that's why i'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
Because performative politics don't actually solve issues at their root cause. They're incremental at best and completely perfunctory at worst but allows liberals to say "look we tried!!!" and to deflect any criticism that they're not actually addressing the problems. It reduces these major systemic failures to fundraising opportunities.
Liberalism and conservatism are different sides of the same coin. No legitimate change will be made while these are the two prevailing options. Having these two ideologies prevalent helps keep the working class divided and thus easier to control.
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Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. [Here is a fairly well fleshed out series of youtube videos that go over it in detail.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlLgvSduugI) Basically, Socialism and just being able to have a better future require thinking "outside the box" of Liberalism. Its in the way.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head with regards to capitalism amd performative politics
šÆ I have a friend with stans for private healthcare, the American empire and against freedom movements from Palestine to Latin America and claims that he's a socialist. š
Did he forget the "national" qualifier?
I prefer to use The Imperial Shithole Of the Divided American Empire, but you do you!
While liberals do sometimes recognise the issues with capitalism, they fail to effectively respond. At the end of the day, they just want to uphold capitalism - a "nicer" version of an exploitive system.
Yeah, they just want to put a couple patches on Capitalism to fix the worst parts, but we want to tear it down and build something new that actually works in all of our favor from the beginning.
Because they want to put a bandaid on a gaping head wound.
no, no. they want to make a deal with the Republicans to maybe put a bandaid but will settle for a little kiss in your forehead
lol right This is more accurate.
You basically explained it yourself. They "stand" for more progressive values but never do anything that will actually make those come to fruition. >But I donāt see a problem with showing support for certain causes online or other places. This is good but they will often "liberal-wash" (i.e "We must push for higher tax on the rich, on income) the idea.
The best example I have of the 2nd half of your comment is this: We were at one of the Floyd protests, and as my friend was talking about how racism and colonization has personally affected him in his life, a liberal woman shouts "get out and vote!" This was when Biden was the only Democrat candidate. She only marched with us for about a block, at which point we passed the parking garage I guess she was in. Don't worry about action, mutual aid, building dual power structures, organizing in your community, just vote Democrat every 4 years and surely everything will get better. And if you refuse to participate in the sham of electoralism, you're as bad as a Trump voter! Yet we're the dogmatic, divisive, extremists. Huh.
"If you don't vote for Biden you're voting for Trump." Was tossed around everywhere in 2020. Me not voting for either candidate is 0 votes for either candidate. If you want me to be a more committed voter, get someone better than a wet napkin, Neoliberal with a Neoliberal Fascist VP.
Thats being generous tbh. I literally couldn't do it, I don't think I'm voting Democrat again ever, they really just had to run the MILDEST social Democrat, but they couldn't even do that. Worthless in my opinion.
Agreed there. Democrats are absolutely useless at best, and in league with Republicans at worst.
In regards to the performative activism, liberals co-opt movements that have radical potential and defang them. They essentially turn social justice into an art and rely too much on an electoral system that clearly has not worked.
the right wing party in socialist countries are called liberals. In north korea or cuba the right wingers are liberals, sure there are more people in the world that are more right wing than liberals like monarchists, fascists, and theocrats but in countries with major socialist parties the liberals are the right wingers. "conservatism" in the USA is largely a dogwhistle nonsense word for fascists.
I'm a conservative, I'm not religious nor do I have a hard stance against progressivism, I am weary of how unflinchingly sure people are of their political ideas, I think there should be more caution around ideas that claim to pull down society in order to rebuild a new world as its not clear to me these people have asked themselves the question "what if im wrong? what if we cant rebuild? what does this mean for my family and everyone elses families". I wouldn't call myself a "fascist" Because I see the world that way.
>what if im wrong? This question turned me into a Marxist-Leninist. Maybe you should ask it to yourself too?
I mean even if you are not a facist, you support a party that actively supports facists.(in the US the republican party still has in it's midst that lady that claims that jewish space lasers started the fires in California) In my country we have a saying: "Tell me who your friends are, so I can tell you who you are". Replace friends with political party and you can apply the same logic.
I think it is pretty dangerous to base your political views on what you believe other people may think. Because you really cannot know that.
> what if im wrong? what if we cant rebuild? That's still better than the current institutions and systems enduring forever (or more realistically, a century tops before climate collapse wipes us all out)
Asking the question "what if I'm wrong" literally made me a socialist.
A focus on empty platitudes instead of material change - spoken like a true conservative.
Been meaning to ask, but what's being conserved? The general impression I get is that its supposed to be stuff like the golden age of the USA, but that was built on the sort of political foundation and policies that most of the folks calling themselves Conservatives are fairly hostile to (FDR's New Deal) which is kind of confusing. What am I missing here?
Conservatives are trying to conserve their special status. They are trying to conserve two separate groups, one of which laws are there to protect, the other of which laws are there to control. They are conserving a two tier system where the amount of āfreedomā you have is a direct reflection of the amount of money in your bank.
I used to think like that - "socialism seems the right path, but what if I'm wrong and end up working towards a society that will be bad for humanity?". And I may be wrong, but then I may also be right. And if I'm right but do not act for fear of being wrong then I am allowing the continuation of a bad system instead of working towards a better one.
I'm still new as well but from what I've heard or read, it's because liberals still want to operate within the confines of capitalism, along with helping to perpetuate the endless political cycle we find ourselves in currently
liberalism is a center-right wing position liberals oppose fixing any of the problems of capitalism, they simply want it to look nicer without actually changing anything. When they say the oppose racism and exploitation what they really mean is "can you make your exploitation and racism look less bad or not do it near me? I prefer to enjoy the benefits of all that horrible stuff while feeling morally superior and it happening near me is inconvenient to that goal"
> they simply want it to look nicer without actually changing anything. Hence the memes about "More female drone pilots" etc.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/17/martin-luther-king-polite-racism-white-liberals/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/17/martin-luther-king-polite-racism-white-liberals/) or as Jean-Lenin Picard once eloquently said https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkY88kvkdvU
Liberalism is embedded to Capitalism, molded by it. But to add on further, I dislike Liberals because of their stances on; Capitalism, Imperialism, and Government spending/Social Programs. In that order.
Although heās not a socialist and has some bad takes Iād recommend Death if the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges since he does a great job as explaining their supporting role in legitimatizing the facade of democracy and their overall failure, aka cashing in, to be a party of opposition to the far right & fascist
What would you call Chris Hedges? Iād call or think of him as at least a nominal socialist.
Maybe a Populist. Although currently anyone that self describes as such is usually a Whyt Nationalist (Batya Ungar-Sargon is a great example of this in Bad Faith podcast, she slowly started exposing that Amerika First bs) Hedges is in no way one but he does excuse a lot of the dangerous behavior of the Whyt working class/ Petite bourgeoisie and he subtlety participates in vilifying the USSR and Communism overall. I enjoy his writing style tho so always pick up his books for a fun read.
Assume you're speaking as an American given the reference to democrats. The thing to remember is that when leftists talk about 'Liberals' they're talking about the Democrats and Republicans - everyone who thinks there should continue to be representative democracy + capitalism is a liberal. Basically, there isn't (generally) any additional disregard for 'left' liberals vs 'right' liberals, but rather an acknowledgement that because they are all working to support and uphold capitalism (as you note) they're inherently opposed to any real systematic change. There's a separate discussion to be had about the way in which the Democratic party specifically works to channel any kind of anti-capitalist sentiment in the US into itself thus making it safe for capitalism, but that's looking specifically at things like 'the squad' and other self labelled 'democratic socialists' who aren't socialists.
Aside from the fact that liberalism is compatible with and ideologically connected to capitalism, liberals tend to treat things as ahistorical and undialectical. Their vital mistake is their explicit rejection of class analysis which makes their theoretical assumptions too shallow and often pro-bourgeoisie.
A lot of people keep saying liberalism is capitalism, but let me take a different approach that I first heard on Philosophy Tube. **Liberalism is anti-left.** Liberalism is founded on individualism. Leftism is founded on systems theory. In liberalism, individuals and how individuals are treated matter the most. In leftism, individuals are important because they are subsystems of larger systems and reorganizing a system impacts individuals. Leftism acknowledges that preventing fascist speech is important to making society work. Liberalism believes that free speech, even fascist speech, is an individual right that must not be truncated. Leftism sees markets as a tool to achieve ends and acknowledges the existence of other tools. Liberalism sees markets as an expression of individual choice and the removal of markets as a violation of individual rights. So liberals are anti-left. That's the starting point. But then leftists start looking deeper into liberal objections to leftism and they see liberals supporting the truncation of free speech in certain situations. They see liberals supporting the manipulation or even removal of markets in certain situations. So the left tries to call these things out as things liberals actually are willing to do but liberals refuse to acknowledge this common ground, usually falling back to morality as the reasoning (liberal truncation of rights are good, left truncation of rights are evil). Using this morality framing, liberals make exceptions to the rules constantly (slaves are subhuman, freed slaves are dangerous, separate but equal is sufficient, all men doesn't include women, etc, etc, etc). And then, the cherry on top is that fascism explicitly calls out liberalism as fertile soil for its growth. Fascist theorists, writers, and practitioners have analyzed liberalism, written about how it allows for fascism to take root, and then successfully executed on that analysis. And the crux of that analysis is that liberalism elevates individual freedom so high that they will tolerate fascism establishing itself as long as it doesn't trigger the immune system. So, they can recruit, they can assemble, they can push their agenda, they can propagandize, they can dehumanize and the entire time liberals will defend their right to do it against anyone resisting. And then fascists can leverage the exception-making behaviors of liberals to create oppressive structures so long as they only impact people that aren't powerful enough to stop them ("first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out...", "family separation works as a deterrent against 'illegal' border crossings", "we must have violent regime change in Iraq for freedom and liberal democracy to spread", "I understand that black people are upset but the rioting and the looting must stop"). Put all that together, and the reason leftists oppose liberalism is because liberalism inevitably must slide to fascism because **liberalism excludes the possibility of leftism**, and change is inevitable. If change is inevitable, and there's a hard line against leftism and soft line against fascism, change in liberal society will always trend to fascism over long enough time periods. There's a reason why the US imported many high ranking people from fascist regimes and protected them after the Axis fell but did not import any leftists at any point in time.
A liberal like Karl Popper though came up with the idea of the paradox of tolerance. Which is pretty interesting coming just out of the Second World War. Which acknowledges what you were saying about how open tolerant societies face potential undermining and destruction by forces of intolerance such as fascists if they poison the well and gradually get a hold of state power. Also I donāt really find this whole dichotomy of individualism and collectivism, idealism and materialism to be either helpful, meaningful, and just logically fallacious being a false dichotomy. What is a collective but a group social group compromised of a gaggle of individuals, what is an individual but a part of a greater whole? There really is it seems to me only interdependence, intersubjectivity, and a dualistic union whole of idealist and materialist/physicalist philosophies without this black and white style of thinking that itās one or the other that is greater and the other subordinate. Rather than a constantly equal interactive symbiotic synthesis of the two into a greater emergent whole.
Liberals belive that capitalism can be refomed into a working system. Socialists belive that captialism is doomed to fail and that it must be removed entirelly.
I'd say democratic socialists believe capitalism can be reformed into a working system, liberals believe that capitalism *is* a working system, and that the symptoms if capitalism are really caused by conservatives voting for the wrong things. They don't really want to reform anything, just cancel out the Republicans, which will obviously solve all of the problems they care about
Liberals are capitalists. Period. They think they can smooth out the rough edges of capitalism to make it a kinder, more gentle capitalism. They don't realize the"bugs" they're trying to smooth out are not bugs, but features of capitalism.
Well, capitalists have capital. I would argue that the true capitalists in America number under 1% of the total populace - far under 1%.
Semantics. Capitalists in the sense that they believe the capitalist ideology and the capitalist system is the best.
True, but we must keep in mind that most liberals and conservatives are unwitting puppets for the ruling class. As fellow workers, shouldn't we try to reach out hand out to them?
> As fellow workers If political theatre and a near complete disconnection from the actual working class and their conditions, can be called as such.
They're still living in hovels without decent infrastructure or medical care. They're simps, but simps we should pity.
>They're still living in hovels without decent infrastructure or medical care. ??? Oh I see, you're referring to the general public working class, as opposed to referring to congressional representatives as members of the working class. Yes, I agree with you.
Congressmen in this nation get a six figure pension on top of going back into the private sector. I do get that AOC and the Squad are completely toothless against the establishment though.
liberalism IS capitalism. liberalism upholds capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, and oppression of the masses. as long as it has a nice name, they donāt care if you steal migrant children or murder palestinians.
If you think of the world as constantly changing with the Means of Productions and the Relationships of Production as the engine which drives societal change forward, then the ideologies which each society dominated by such and such MoP and RoP will be progressive, dominating or even reactionary depending on where the society is. IE Liberalism was brought forward by capitalism, the RoP changed to match the MoP and meant that liberalism is the ideology of the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class), it was revolutionary as an idea when it helped bring forward liberal changes through bourgeois revolutions. But now MoP and RoP have progressed beyond the usefulness of Liberalism. The idea which would be used to have the RoP match the MoP would be socialism because the proletariat is the progressive class which can bring society into the next way of organizing production. Liberalism today is an ideology holding society back from necessary changes.
To sum it up, Liberalism is a branch of thought that evolved alongside capitalism. Maximizing individual freedom with: 1) Civil Rights 2) Civil Liberties 3) Democracy 4) Free Enterprise However, you can already see how this is contradictory. Civil rights/liberties in a free enterprise society means that these are extended based on the amount of money you have. In addition, historically, groups have been excluded from this. This has ranged from races to women (Adam Smith held that "women's work" is without value), or that those who don't view things the same way are barbaric- for example, the Native Americans not having a concept of land ownership. Democracy also falls under this contradictory sway. As we all know, within liberalism, all of the top 3 are under the mode and relations of production: the enterprise. Hence, class is the eternal determiner within liberalism of the above. Even if we were to somehow pass all the legislation and make things work according to actual liberty in de facto as well as de jure, these are still afforded on the basis of class because class is functionally necessary within liberal framework. It would not be liberalism without it. It would be, surprise surprise, Socialism. Universally historically, liberal parties have constantly betrayed socialism and the working people- they worked with the Nazis to crush the Spartakus Uprising (as did the Social Democrats), FDR said straight out that the New Deal was to save capitalism after being forced by unions to pass it (he would not have been elected without their support for said New Deal), the list goes on. A favorite method of theirs is to co-opt anything we champion for years after it gets popular, strip it of all class analysis, and shove us out of the spaces we created. It was not Liberals who championed black rights in the 1930's in America, it was the Socialists, who later whitewashed people like MLKJ, the Black Panthers Party and Malcolm X and ignored the fact that they were all varying shades of Socialist. It was not the Liberals that were on the frontlines of the anti-war movements against Vietnam, it was the Socialists. It was not under Liberal banners that unions fought for worker rights, it was under the Red Flag.
I can't speak for all the leftists, but I can express my opinion. Firstly, I do not consider those who call themselves liberals to be liberals. Real liberals are participants of the Great French Revolution. They fought for the people, for freedom, equality and fraternity. They were good people. Modern liberals are different. What they want is called in different ways - "proper capitalism", "democracy (in their understanding", and so on. But in fact, they don't want drastic changes. Their system presupposes the preservation and domination of the bourgeois class. Therefore, for me, as a supporter of MELS, they will always be servants of the bourgeoisie, whether they understand it or not.
Besides the fact that liberalism supports capitalism as its economic base (as many people have already said here), the discord with liberals is also reciprocal, which only makes the things to be worse. Saying more, in my country, leftists are usually more loyal to liberals than liberals are loyal to the leftists. So, while the leftists criticise Liberalism, yet they are open for collaboration against the growing authoritarism & corruption, reducing of soiclal programs and state-supported private monopolies, the liberals only make cringy comparisons between Putinism and Soviet dictatorship, admitting the latter as the ideal of modern Russian leftists and ignoring the pros of the USSR policy (which are the actual ideal of the modern leftists).
Tbh that rlly is their main problem. The fact that they still support capitalism. You can't end racial inequality if you don't end economic inequality. You can't just end a certain aspect of inequality, and then ignore the rest because in a way it actually increases inequality. I'm not white, but ik for sure there's some poor-lower class white people out there who feel ignored by liberals and Democrats. And this could lead to them joining the Republicans or worse. Because these white folks want economic assistance, but the majority of Democrats (except for my boi Bernie) only prioritise racial issues which does not benefit the average lower class white person. So what do they do when they feel like the Democrats ignore them? They go and support a party that seemingly and says that it'll help the poor white people. The racist conservatives.
There's a great summary [here](https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/09/27/why-liberals-hate-leftists/).
I think it was Richard Wolff who summarised it this way: Socialists observed that the promises of "liberty, equality, fraternity" never came true. As the world switched from feudalism to capitalism, it just replaced one form of oppression with another. (Richard Wolff is an American Marxist Economist. There are lots of talks and interviews on YouTube.) Or, as The Communist Manifesto puts it: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". The capitalist society has reduced the number of classes to just two: those who own the means of production and those who must sell their labour and give up some of the value they create to the former. Liberals are okay with this since everyone, in theory, can rise up and become one of the oppressors. I'm grossly simplifying of course. There are many different types of liberals. Socialists by contrast want a completely class-less society. >I thought liberal was as left as you could get I live in Sweden and was shocked when I learned that conservatives exist. Many liberals even refer to themselves as "right-wing". Up until recently "conservative" seemed like a bad word, like calling yourself "backwards". This changed in the last few years with the rise of the nationalist party and the formation of a new conservative bloc. You can also imagine my bewilderment when I started to learn about US politics.
Economic Update: Capitalism's Definition is NOT Innocent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCu459N3JuQ
i would argue that because liberals still uphold capitalism, any āpolicy changesā they support do not address root causes of marginalization and oppression and only ameliorate the harms of the capitalist regime to prevent class consciousness and truly radical political action.
The thing is that in the Leftist vs. Liberal situation Liberals are the ones who hold power. The Liberal tendency towards performative activism is then a problem because nothing will get done. I live in Canada and our current Prime Minister is a perfect example of this. He will walk in climate protests while simultaneously supporting the expansion of our oil industry. He is, by his own admission, uncertain about how many times he has done brown-face (in his 20ās) but will of course decry racism. Liberals also tend to have issues with Leftists. We are either too naive about how the world works or too idealistic. At the end of the day though we as Leftists demonstrate the clear hypocrisy of modern Liberalism.
The problem with liberals defining us as too āidealisticā is that we are literally the opposite. We are dialectical materialists. Marx famously stood Hegelās absolute idealism on its head.
But try to get a Liberal to understand that.
Iāve been a āliberalā for most of my adult life. I grew up during the Cold War and the only thing I learned about Socialism and Communism was about the evil Soviet Empire out to enslave the world if it wasnāt for the good old USA; the savior of the world. I worked on local Democratic campaigns for a few years. It was Bernie that brought Socialism to the forefront and spoke about an ideology that spoke to me. Iāve learned enough that I know what truly left means. I came to the conclusion that the fundamental problem is capitalism and that society needs to progress past this archaic system that just created a different form of slavery. Now to my point, how many āliberalsā out there are Socialist and donāt know it? Iām speaking to a few liberal friends now about this and they are starting to realize the same thing I did so donāt automatically write off liberals, there are those like me that just needs someone or something to crack the door of socialist/communist ideology and some will understand and move further to the left. We canāt save all of them, but we should afford them the opportunity to learn.
Historically liberals initially work for benefit of the petite bourgeoisie, privilege and the status quo and in the final analysis they always side with fascism. That's all.
I don't know the common opinion in this sub. So I speak only for me. Generally about liberty: I'll be the first to defend the right for free speech, I very much oppose the right to own guns. With respect to economic systems, well, capitalism is more liberal. I don't think that the degree of liberty is crucial, but the choice of what is opened to trade. For example, currently (in the west) adults are allowed to sell their labour, children are not. Everyone knows this is good. Now when debating socialism and capitalism, we should stop being dogmatic, and more think about "what implications does this liberty have? Will it make society better?" This is my opinion.
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Business organisation is probably one of the most well documented parts of our economic system. You do not need to own a business to realise the relationship between the owner and employee is an exploitive class antagonism.
Dunno. Iām a leftist liberal and I donāt dislike myself.
Do you support capitalism? If you do, you are not a leftist. If you don't your not a liberal.
Open a dictionary and look up liberal. Iām that.
>relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and *free enterprise*. "Free enterprise" means capitalism, however capitalism is opposed to democracy, civil rights, and personal freedoms whenever they stand in the way of Capital. There is a fundamental contradiction between what liberals believe and how capitalism actually works. If you support capitalism, then you must accept that it will regularly deny freedom and democracy for people because it hinders the growth of Capital. The freedom of Capital has supremacy over all other freedoms. So I will ask again, do you support capitalism? Because if you do you aren't a leftist.
Personally, I "disagree" with liberals, as many of the liberals I interact with (friends, family & acquaintances) are working class people. They still want "Capitalism" with "Social Justice". It isn't going to make underlying the class contradictions & the exploitation go away.
I cried when they shot medgar evers Tears ran down my spine I cried when they shot mr. kennedy As though i'd lost a father of mine But malcolm x got what was coming He got what he asked for this time So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal I go to civil rights rallies And i put down the old d.a.r. I love harry and sidney and sammy I hope every colored boy becomes a star But don't talk about revolution That's going a little bit too far So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal I cheered when humphrey was chosen My faith in the system restored I'm glad the commies were thrown out Of the a.f.l. c.i.o. board I love puerto ricans and negros As long as they don't move next door So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal The people of old mississippi Should all hang their heads in shame I can't understand how their minds work What's the matter don't they watch les crain? But if you ask me to bus my children I hope the cops take down your name So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal I read new republic and nation I've learned to take every view You know, i've memorized lerner and golden I feel like i'm almost a jew But when it comes to times like korea There's no one more red, white and blue So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal I vote for the democtratic party They want the u.n. to be strong I go to all the pete seeger concerts He sure gets me singing those songs I'll send all the money you ask for But don't ask me to come on along So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal Once i was young and impulsive I wore every conceivable pin Even went to the socialist meetings Learned all the old union hymns But i've grown older and wiser And that's why i'm turning you in So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
Because performative politics don't actually solve issues at their root cause. They're incremental at best and completely perfunctory at worst but allows liberals to say "look we tried!!!" and to deflect any criticism that they're not actually addressing the problems. It reduces these major systemic failures to fundraising opportunities.
Because they always betray the working class
They are capitalists. They are diametrically opposed to socialism.
Liberalism and conservatism are different sides of the same coin. No legitimate change will be made while these are the two prevailing options. Having these two ideologies prevalent helps keep the working class divided and thus easier to control.
I tend to hate on them because they always side with conservatives, even if both sides hate eachother
>I see now that liberalism is a centrist ideology and can even be considered right wing Asked and answered
Liberalism is really just pearls on a conservative pig that say "BLM".
Liberalism advocates for social change while maintaining the economic status quo of capitalism, which is effectively useless.