I get that these terms get tossed around without people knowing what they mean, and I’m not against language evolving. But liberalism was never really intended to describe wherever you are on a progressive-conservative spectrum.
Pulling from Wikipedia, but it’s a similar definition in most texts.
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law.
Classical liberals just tended to look progressive compared to people who weren’t liberals, because, well, read the definition. The countervailing force to liberalism is authoritarianism. It’s more of a government legitimacy and structure philosophy.
rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law.
One of those things is not like the others, and that’s the fundamental problem with liberalism. Private property is antithetical to liberty, equality, and consent of the governed because it enables the exploitation of labor and creates a class hierarchy. By defending the individual’s “right” to private property liberals betray every other value they claim to uphold.
That’s a self-contradictory definition.
For example, ownership of limited resources (something which fall inside that “right to private property” part) actually reduces the “liberty” of most people (which is another part in that definition) because it means a few control access to those resources, something which is painfully obvious in the current prices of housing.
And don’t get me started on how the natural positive feedback-cycle that comes from the “right to private property” - whose ultimate effects can be described in simple terms as “the richer you are the richer you get” - in practice ends up subverting pretty much all of the rest: the rich aren’t treated by the law the same as the rest (because even in the fairest of Justice Systems they can afford better legal representation that those who aren’t as rich), they have far more political power than those who aren’t as rich (because they can buy politicians, which the poor can’t) and it’s a lot easier for them to ensure their rights are abide by than it is for those who have less money for lawyers and courts.
In fact that whole definition feels like the kind of thing concocted by a Think Tank or Marketing Agency to swindle those who can’t think their way past vague flowery positive sounding verbiage.
Liberalism is functionally as much pro-Liberty as the National Socialist Party Of The German Worker was functionally pro-Worker or the Democratic Republic Of North Korea is functionally pro having citizens freely choose who governs their country.
You’re comparing the “right to private property” thing to capitalism and communism, and considering it from the economic vantage, which is precisely what the OP was saying isn’t what the term was for.
Compare it to feudalism. “You’re allowed to have things that are yours, and the king can’t just take your farm”.
There are certainly systems that can be described as free that don’t acknowledge the concept of exclusive ownership, but they usually have to carefully define terms to handle why you can’t take your neighbors wedding ring while they’re showering.
The term is not without economic connotations, of course, but that part was not meant to imply a specific unlimited right. You could address everything on your list and be well within the definition because “you can have possessions” isn’t contradictory with public ownership of scarce or critical resources.
If the definition is so open-ended that just that specific part can be have almost diametrally opposite effects depending on how it’s interpreted, then it’s meaningless and we can only determine what Liberalism really is by looking at the praxis of what it actually does when those who claim to practice it are in power.
The practice of Liberalism is invariably a system were in the more visible and direct ways (mainly the way Justice is enforced) people are given more Liberty than in other systems, yet at the same time that effect is entirelly offset by the second order effects of the resource allocation practices supported by Liberalism and the de facto implementation of the “right to private property” part, since the capture by a few of limited resources systematically restricts the Liberty of most people and the passing of such property from ancestors to descendants keeps such capture (which generally reflects either first-mover advantages or the multiplicative effect of previously held wealth) locked for generations, potentially forever.
I think the plight of Afro-Americans in the US is a wonderful example of how Liberalism in practice works: on one hand Liberals loudly demand equal rights and treatment under the Law for Afro-Americans (this is the visible, positive side), yet at the same time they support and reinforce the very resource allocation systems and interpretation of “right to private property” which keep the poor and downtrodden and their descendants poor and downtrodden, something which in practice seriously affects those who were previously discriminated against, which in America are overwhelmingly Afro-Americans since their ancestors were almost all Slaves: as they were discriminated against including in their access to property, their ancestors did not capture anywhere as many limited resources as the ancestors of those who were not discriminated against, and because how that “right to private property” that the Liberals enforce works, that means that their descendants today are far more likely to be poor, and because of the very system of resource allocation supported by Liberals, poverty means not getting to eat as good food, have access as good healthcare, live in as good housing, sleep in as good beds.
Mistreatment at the hands of the authorities will severely hurt and harm some Afro-Americans at some point of their lives, maybe even for years. Poverty because of “respecting the private property” of those who themselves or their ancestors captured limited resources harms most Afro-Americans 24/7 their whole lives (unsurprisingly, people in poorer areas even have a life expectancy of at least 10 years less than people in richer areas) - overtly Liberals demand “equality” of treatment whilst in practice they support the very systems than locks in the inequality from past discrimination and transform said inequality into life-long suffering.
(To add insult to injury, poverty itself also increases one’s likelihood of being mistreated at the hands of the authorities and increases the hurt and harm caused by it)
Liberals claim to want equal treatment for Afro-Americans whilst making sure the very system around them, because of their ancestors having been severely discriminated against, de facto treats them far, far, worse than most others whilst that specific manifestation of injustice (suffering merely because one was born to poor parents) is put forward as “the way things are”.
No, it really isn’t “the way things are”, it’s the product of how “right to private property” is interpreted.
I wasn’t talking about judging the system, advocating for it or against it.
My entire point was “you can own things” encompasses “no one can take your house” as well as “privitazation of every aspect of public life”.
You’re arguing against a strawman based on the assumption that a broad principle can’t be judged on principle, but must instead be judge on the worst outcomes of the worst implementation of those principles.Much like how “Democracy” encompasses a wide array of systems that are attempts to implement “people are ultimately in control of the systems that govern their lives”. Democracy also has open ended results, and applying the same criteria and judging the concept of Democracy based on observed negative outcomes with positives accounted for leads to the conclusion that people should not be in charge of the systems that govern their lives.
If you invert the principles of liberalism as stated above, you end up with a pretty bleak sounding world that I would not like.
That doesn’t mean that I’m a proponent of the specifics of modern free market liberalism.What’s your notion for what a world would look like without a right to own property, no right to self governance, no right to equality before the law, no right to political equality, and no right to liberty?
What I’m hearing you say is that you’re opposed to failures to live up to the espoused principles, and opposed to cases where taking one of the principles to an extreme undermines the others. I readily agree. The implementation of how private ownership has been enforced and interpreted has been problematic very, very often. I do not think that means I should have no ability to own things, but rather that we need to make it clear the right isn’t absolute to the individual.
It’s terminology derived from the conversation surrounding “people” versus “kings”, as opposed to “individuals” versus “society”. Flipping it around creates friction because an outcome you would accept from a vote and fair trial is different from what you would accept from royal fiat.
My point is that “right to private property” is a far too vague “principle” for something which covers a huge number of often very different situations (from ownership of objects and pets, to that of other people and land), some of which have massive implications on another principle of Liberalism (which is supposedly the main one) - Liberty.
That “principle” alone can nullify everything else in that definition depending on interpretation, making the whole thing flawed because it includes such a massive trap.
I would say that the praxis of how Liberalism is implemented proves that point when it comes to, for example, Land Ownership which is invariably inheritable (which is actually stretching the definition of “right to private property”) - something that is key in entrenching wealth (and hence liberty) inbalances across generations - as well as tending towards the highly individualistic “the owner of the land has supreme power over it” and away from accepting limitations to such supreme power when in the common interest (though, granted, in the US there are actually pretty weird cases which are the opposite of it, in the form of the power that Housing Associations have in the US, plus in other countries there are laws that allow Land to be forcefully purchased to, for example, make roads).
Anyways, I’m not saying that Liberalism has “failed to live up to the espoused principles”, I’m saying that the combination of principles it is made up of per that definition in Wikipedia does not even add up to a coherent set of principles that can be achieved together because it contains inner contradictions - it cannot live up the espouse principles because if you increase some (most namelly “right to private property”) you reduce others (“liberty”) - in other words, to have more Liberty for more people you have to limit the rights of private property is various areas (the most obvious in past times was the when treating people as property - i.e. Slavery - whilst nowadays Land Ownership is key in reducing the Liberty of the many because it makes a world were most people are born landless and unable to acquire land).
To use a methaphor, you cannot claim that an assemblage of sprokets setup in such a way that some work against others, is a “machine” for making all the sprokets turn, since it will never be able to do so.
So what would you have instead of the right to private property?
Do you think that government derived from the consent of the governed is equally vague?
I’m not persuaded by the argument that taking one part to the extreme resulting in issues makes the whole thing invalid. To adapt your metaphor, you can press the clutch and shift a car into 1st on the freeway. Many bad things will result. This isn’t an argument that cars are fundamentally flawed, but that you shouldn’t do the bad thing.
to have more Liberty for more people you have to limit the rights of private property is various areas
Totally agree. That’s not a contradiction to the concept of a right to private property, that’s an invitation to a more nuanced discussion about what the management of property should look like in society.
Well, if the principles of Liberalism have to be picked and chosen - “some more of this some less of that” - rather than all being objectives to be maximized, with very different policies and outcomes for a political governing body depending on they picked and chose to maximize and minimize, then that definition itself isn’t sufficient to define a Political Ideology.
When you wheel out this definition and claim “this is Liberalism” in the context of politics you’re not actually presenting a political ideology, rather you’re presenting a bag of ingredients to make political ideologies with, quite a broad range of political ideologies even since some of the ingredients in that bag don’t actually work well with each other.
It makes total sense in the context of discussing politics for other people to point out concrete implementations of Liberalism as being “Liberalism”, since those things are the actual political ideologies cooked from the Liberalism bag of ingredients, though in all fairness it would be more correct for them to say “this is what’s made with with Liberalism” rather than “this IS Liberalism”.
Anyway, this circles us around to my original point that when talking about politics you can’t just point out to the Wikipedia definition of Liberalism and claim that’s the one true definition of Liberalism because what’s there is not a political ideology but just a bag of ingredients which can be used in quite arbitrary ways - that’s kind of like pointing out at a bag of fruit, sugar, eggs and flour and claiming it’s the one true Cherry Cake to dismiss other people pointing at actual cakes.
What makes a progressivist changes depending on the society they are in.
When liberalism was first invented, it was extremely progressive. People that deny it today are extremely regressive. But yes, it’s not progressive anymore, it’s just the bare minimum.
That’s just not true. Nearly every liberal revolution that occurred in the West was followed by at a century of abject mass poverty. This is because Liberalism posited that everyone who wanted a good life could work hard and get it so there was no need for the wealthy to contribute to society if they didn’t want to. Conservatives (not American conservatives who are actually liberals) said this would be bad and that one reason to maintain the monarchy and the aristocracy was to maintain the system of nobilesse oblige which had been developed to provide for the common good.
The people who spawned liberalism were all ultra wealthy and they hired people to write treatises to make their ideas into palatable systems. John Locke worked for the Earl of Shaftesbury and personally held investment in the Royal Africa Company, England’s slave trading monopoly.
In so far as liberal ideas were progressive, that was primarily their propaganda to get peasants turn on their lords, join the rebellion and fight for the merchants. Once the merchants were in charge, Liberals crushed any populism with the military.
got a source to back this up? Am genuinly curious.
Capitalism and extreme poverty by Jason Hickel
The Great Transformation by Polanyi (About England)
“What about the Poor?” From France
There’s a bunch more I am not familiar with regarding Latin American liberal transitions and there are others about different European countries.
But also, this is why Marx and Engels got anywhere at all
I like this framing as liberalism is just the trojan horse the wealthy used to justify their takeover of the aristocrat class. It is the propaganda used to placate the masses because they don’t know what is actually going on.
No wait. That’s not it at all. Liberalism is the whole thing. It contains within it the myths and propaganda to motivate the masses to its defense, but it is not identical with those things.
Liberalism is, fundamentally, a political movement of, by, and for commercial interests. Commercial interests were international and thus could have greater span of control than national interests. But commercial interests could not be totalizing because national interests were locked into monarchical/noble/aristocratic structures that explicitly locked out commercial interests.
The idea of personal autonomy was absolutely felt earnestly and genuinely by the merchant class because they had gone out, many risking their own lives, and managed to find that one deal that made them an eye-watering fortune and then they had to work politics tirelessly to keep their wealth. They genuinely felt that they should be free by virtue of their wealth, so when they said men should be free to pursue their interests, they genuinely meant it.
They weren’t being devious by defining men to be white European men. That was in-built to their culture already. The Overton Window, so to speak, didn’t include a position that black people were men.
But yes, they ALSO said to the peasants “you can one day be as rich as us” and they sort of meant it
Oof, if you believed that last line that you can be rich you might just have fallen for propaganda.
You are very generous to their motives.
I don’t believe it. I’m saying they actually believed it and saw themselves as heroes. They didn’t really consider the poor to be worth thinking about and fully believed they would produce a utopia with their ideals.
Neoliberals are right wing
All liberalism is on the right. The left starts at anti-capitalism. It’s been that way for quite a long time now. Liberals just like to act like they are “center-left” because it helps maintain the capital order.
You can be anticapitalist and liberal at the same time, you just need to believe that people should have the right to live as they’d like.
Technically correct, but this combination of beliefs only appears in people who have no political education or class consciousness.
There are different opinions when it comes to what truly defines liberalism, but you would be hard pressed to find one that does not include the advocacy of a market economy and the right for an individual to own the means of production.
This is because liberalism arose as an alternative to mercantilism, where the state has more control over the economy. Under mercantilism the state had the means to control trade and the production of a large amount of goods meant to control the balance of import and export.
When you combine a market economy with the right of individual ownership over the means of production you end up with capitalism. When the founding fathers of America spoke about the right over personal property, they weren’t only talking about land ownership. That had already been an established right for men of their class in England since the late 17th century. They were speaking about property rights that were currently affecting their own lives, mainly the right to own and operate their businesses without the permit of the government.
You are free to have a personal definition of the word “liberal” that differs from the widely accepted academic definition. It’s just not helpful in discussion to assume everyone else uses that definition.
Okay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Yup. Checks out. Rights of the individual, government through consent, etc…sounda like I’m using the commonly accepted academic definition.
Are you perhaps using the American definition provided by Fox News/tankies, that the meme references?
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law.
Left out a VERY important part of that definition there, bucko.
You fundamentally cannot be a proponent of liberalism without fundamentally supporting capitalism. It’s literally part of the definition of liberalism.
Correct. Prior to the concept of liberalism, all property was owned by the king and nobility. Liberalism includes the idea that non-nobles can own property. It also predates the distinction between private and personal property by a good 200 years.
You can be anticapitalist and liberal at the same time
No, that doesn’t even “check out” on the NATOpedia article. Even that article is explicit that liberalism is fundamentally a pro-capitalist ideology with private property as a core aspect. But it is fun watching you did a hole for yourself, step into it, then declare victory.
And how is the OP meme referencing anything “tankies” say, other than that the person speaking in the OP image is someone you would call a “tankie”? See that little hammer and sickle next to her name? You really are deeply confused, aren’t you.
It actually specifies property in general. Now, I know tankies like to see that and append “private” in front, but Liberalism has been around for hundreds of years longer than marxism, and prior to liberalism, property was handed out by the king, and owning property meant you were a noble.
The idea that non-nobility can own anything, including personal property, is a liberal idea.
I know tankies like to see that and append “private” in front
Private property is meant to include personal ownership of things other than land.
prior to liberalism, property was handed out by the king, and owning property meant you were a noble.
You’re talking about land… In most systems of feudalism the king granted land to the landed gentry who would then rent out that land for income.
Individuals still owned personal property like homes, businesses, and horses. They just didn’t own the land that property occupied.
The idea that non-nobility can own anything, including personal property, is a liberal idea.
That’s just wildly inaccurate… People have been owning different types of property since before recorded history. The only places this isn’t the cultural norm for humans in general is a select sect of small communal societies who share everything.
There are people who will claim that the property isn’t truly owned because it’s on someone else’s land. But that would be like saying you don’t truly own your home if you have to pay property taxes.
personal property is a liberal idea
Hahaha holy shit man I can’t, you heard it here first folks, owning things was invented in the 1600s, nobody had stuff before that and no society had laws or ideas about it.
Yeah, that’s like saying you live in a forest fire, but believe folks can decide to not just spontaneously combust
One describes the level of control authorities have over your life, the other is an economic system.
I know that conflating the two would really make tankie arguments much simpler, but unfortunately they are separate dimensions of politics.
That’s just pure ideology based in propaganda. Liberalism is inherently pro-capitalism, and you are deluding yourself if you don’t understand that. You can’t separate politics and economics, that’s why marxists use the term “political economy”.
If the idea that people should have the freedom to control their own lives is inherently capitalist, you’ve just convinced me that capitalism is inherently good.
You’re missing the part of the definition of liberalism that upholds the right to private property, which is the core foundation of capitalism.
There are other ideologies that uphold the right to control your own life that don’t also uphold private property, such as socialism.
The right to private property is also the core foundation of being able to own property of any kind without being (a) the king or (b) granted a title of nobility by the king.
The distinction between personal and private property arose a few hundred years later.
Ok, well since kings don’t rule the world anymore, how about e use the definition that is relevant to today’s systems?
Propaganda has burrowed so deep into your thinking. Capital accumulation is inherently oppressive.
I didn’t know that freedom to live your life as you see fit was the accumulation of capital.
Your continued conflation of personal liberty and capitalism is the core of your confusion. Fix that flaw in your understanding, and you might be able to reckon with the reality of political economy without these propaganda fairtales obscuring the truth.
Uh huh.
Don’t forget to pay rent this month.
Rent? What’s that? Some poor people thing?
Very Free. Much Liberty!
People aren’t digging your comment because I think you haven’t distinguished between liberal social values of upholding personal liberty and free and fair elections, with the liberal economic value private ownership of capital. The former makes sense and non-negotiable. The latter is becoming obsolete overtime.
I think some of the people who are unhappy with my comment have a vested interest in conflating the two as well, tbh.
C’est la vie.
I see you’ve got into argument with .ml users 😂 not all of them are bad but they are in their own bubble and see everything in material dialectics.
Genuinely, what do you find preferable to examining the world through a scientific lens?
A lens is not the only tool in science.
Neoliberalism is a fascist coercion deployment and the imperial Jingoism to Socialism’s more sentimental Maoism
Capitalists are like cucks for billionaires. Think of the billionaire as a shark and the capitalists as Remora fish. /s
Liberals share one central feature with fascists; they both support private property rights. So if liberals have to choose between socialism and fascism they will always choose the latter.
This is supported by history.
So you’d like it if this current government seized your property?
Private property are things that are held by shareholders and landlords, not your own possessions.
Socialists believe fixed public assets like utilities and bridges and hospitals, belongs to everyone not a small class of monied interests.
This is why they are hated by both liberals and fascists.
Private property is capital is the means of production. Socialists believe that the means of production belong to everyone. So factories, farms, financial institutions, etc. — not just hospitals and infrastructure, but the entire engine of the economy.
In leftist theory, there is a difference between “private property” and “personal property/belongings.”
Private property is property owned specifically for generating profit. For example, owning a home to rent it out, or shares in a company.
Personal property/belongings are things you use. For example, the home you live in, your car, your toothbrush, etc. Under socialism, if multiple people use something, then you all partly own it, e.g. you would also partly own the business you work for (“the means of production”). You own everything you use and nothing you don’t
The liberalism that is practiced in the US is neoliberalism, the same thing practiced throughout the developed world, and we don’t see ideological movements in power specifically because business interests have historically intervened to overthrow those governments in order to install friendlier regimes that let them plunder natural resources.
But then neoliberalism ultimately favors property rights over human rights, and as Marx observes in Das Kapital the owner class will influence the courts to favor property and business over the public good. It’ll also hack law to gain influence over the government to deregulate and protect the power of the wealthiest plutocrats and companies.
Democracies and leninist economies have existed. They just get put down before they have much of a chance to flourish. Even Wilson favored monarchists over communists.
In the US, we can’t imagine anything other than capitalism because of over a century of propaganda inserted into our primary schooling. That campaign has only gotten more and more conservative and now MAGA ideology is taught in class. This was deliberate, as the US education system was always regarded as an instrument of control and worker indoctrination.
Liberalism, in all of its forms current and historic, has always valued property over human lives. Property is the guiding principle of liberalism.
I’ll grant you that’s likely to be true for all forms of government informed by liberalism, but that’s because charters tend to be written by landowners (and in the US, slave owners), so we have a long run of people creating governments contrived to let its framers keep their property and political power.
But I suspect within political theory, there exist forms of liberalism in which the human rights of individuals outweigh the right to property, especially large scale ownership. In fact, economic theory has long observed that the extreme consolidation of wealth is corrosive to economic systems, to government, to the rule of law, and to society. Combined with the historic trend of wealth to consolidate upwards and eventually capture political power (discussed by Marx in Das Kapital), this means any such system will only be quasi-stable, ultimately leading to corruption of the government and collapse of the economy. It’s also the point of the game Monopoly.
According to Wikipedia regarding property rights, Controversy [centers] upon who is deemed to have property rights protected (e.g. human beings or also corporations), the type of property which is protected (property used for the purpose of consumption or production) and the reasons for which property can be restricted (for instance, for regulations, taxation or [nationalization] in the public interest).
Curiously, there is a stark contrast between the right to own possessions, and a right to own large-scale real-estate and capital (id est, the means of production) and it may be in the best interest of society to heavily restrict or even abolish the latter.
But as we’ve seen in the case of the USSR, we’d have to do that worldwide, as there will always be Wilsons out there eager to rollback such a government towards capitalism again, or create a doctrine of containment (Wilson called it quarantine ) and force a trade embargo. So long as there are plutocrats there will be militaries looking to conquer and annex. (Heck, right now, our current plutocratic class is looking to create robotic military forces that can be controlled by AI.)
Huh. It reminds me of the international response to the 1789 French revolution, which was to demand of France that they select and erect a new monarch, since a republic or a democracy that worked might incite revolts in their own kingdoms.
Wilson
Gotta give you props for knowing about the Siberian War, not a whole lot of people do.
It’s 2026 and any talk of political labels outside an academic setting is useless.
Hitler wasn’t a Socialist; North Korea isn’t a Democratic Republic; the Chinese Communist Party has numerous billionaires.
Pick actual candidates and vote for them without tying yourself in knots over what they call themselves.
Second, stop pretending there’s some giant ‘Left’ majority in the US. Mamdani won NYC with 51% of the vote; Harris got 65%. She got more total votes and a higher percentage than the guy who called himself a Socialist.
I like Mamdani, and I voted for him, but if he gets re-elected it’ll be because he’s a savvy pol, not because of some Left wave.
Mamdani won NYC with 51% of the vote; Harris got 65%. She got more total votes and a higher percentage than the guy who called himself a Socialist.
What Harris are you talking about? Kamala Harris? And what election? Because if you’re talking about the presidential election, she got like 48% of the popular vote. And what do you think the effect of cuomo ratfucking the election and splitting the vote was, on Mamdani’s performance?
I think you misunderstood them, aren’t they referring to the vote in NYC? Harris won in NYC by a good margin
Yes, I was referring to the NYC vote.
I thought that would be obvious, but apparently some folks need more explanation
Thanks for replying to them.
Yeah no that wasn’t very clear. Still it’s a very misleading (or ill thought out) argument. As others have pointed out, you’re comparing apples and oranges here because the races had different number of realistic options for the electorate to choose from.
Actually, it’s an either/or option.
Either you vote for the Democratic Socialist, or you don’t.
Mamdani was running against Andrew Cuomo, who had to resign as NY Governor after being outed as a sexual predator. The GOP candidate was Curtis Silwa, a radio shock jock with zero government experience.
If there was a big Socialist majority in New York, it chose to stay home.
And exactly one person couldn’t figure out what I was talking about, so I think it’s more on them than I what I wrote.
Mamdani was running against Andrew Cuomo, who had to resign as NY Governor after being outed as a sexual predator. The GOP candidate was Curtis Silwa, a radio shock jock with zero government experience.
One, two, three! Three candidates, ah ah ah!
Or are you saying that candidates with no government experience don’t count? Because then I must ask how Hillary Clinton managed to lose a presidential election where she was the only candidate.
So you’re saying that there were three candidates running and all three were Socialists?
And yes, quoting a Sesame Street character certainly makes me think that you are a knowledgeable commenter.
And I’ll repeat the original comment.
Mamdani got fewer total votes than Harris got in New York City. Harris got 65% of New York City’s votes, and Mamdani got 51%.
Understanding academically defined political terms is not the same thing as arguing arbitrarily defined cultural differences.
Academically defined political terms != actually used political terms in the US and even some other western countries now.
Being a liberal in mainstream USian political discourse can mean a lot of things, usually includes being pro choice, against mass deportations by ICE, etc, pro LGBTQ rights, etc. Often includes being pro healthcare for all as well as free higher education for all, despite the latter ones not being liberal policies in the classical sense of liberalism. Looky here
Social liberalism has been used without the ‘social’ qualifier in the US since the 30s now if Wikipedia is to be believed. You start talking negatively about liberals, a lot of people will assume you mean you want to own black people, hunt gay people for sport, ban abortions and perhaps lower the age of consent, because being “liberal” has started to mean being pro individual liberties, equality and improving everyone’s quality of life. Things you would, in the original definitions of the terms, associate with ideologies to the left of liberalism.
Liberalism, in the US, is then actually somewhere between liberalism and social democracy, closer to the latter, despite the name being closer to the former. The left wing here on the fediverse in particular engages in language prescriptivism over descriptivism this way.
Yes, I, too, wish these terms had stayed static because it sucks when the same word means different things to different people, but that’s not the reality we live in.
Notice that nowhere here do you talk about anything regarding economic systems, relation to the means of production or property ownership. You just reiterate about culture war issues.
The terms ARE static. You’re just ignoring anything to the left to focus on the differences in your slice of the right. Which is ironically what the OP is about.
Yes, that’s what we need now more than ever as we approach the general election in the US: More in-fighting amongst anti-fascists.
idk if I’d call tankies antifascist. They just think it’s the wrong color
Liberalism is therefore a right of center, a.k.a. conservative, ideal.
When Liberalism requires and promotes directing money towards a commons used to lift and/or equalise people in need, that’s where it’s starting to touch upon left of center.
Conservatism is not just right of center. Conservatism is monarchism. Liberalism is mercantilism. Communism is class dissolutionism.
When Liberalism requires and promotes directing money towards a commons to aid the poor, it’s still not on the Left, it’s just trying to prevent rebellion. They’re called concessions.
If conservatism was monarchism and liberalism was mercantilism that is what they’d be called. They’re different and it matters especially when discussing these concepts specifically together.
It’s like calling pink red or turquoise blue. They’re related but they are not the same and we don’t call them the same for a reason.
If conservatism was monarchism and liberalism was mercantilism that is what they’d be called.
I understand why that would appear to be the case. But it’s not. Conservatism and Liberalism are political philosophies and movements. Monarchism is a system of governance. Conservatism the movement supports Monarchism the system. Liberalism the movement supports Capitalism the system. Just because they are one-to-one doesn’t mean they are identical.
it matters especially when discussing these concepts specifically together.
It does matter indeed, I agree with you, and it’s important that we understand that Liberalism cannot lead to universal liberation because it is foundationally tied to private property. Eliminating private property is an illiberal move, and it is the foundational move of communism. Moving from aristocracy to private property ends Monarchism and it is the foundational move of Liberalism. Conservatism fought against private property in favor of the old system. Liberalism fought for private property in favor of Capitalism. And Communism fights against private property in favor of universal liberation.
Conservatism the movement supports Monarchism the system. Liberalism the movement supports Capitalism the system.
It doesn’t. That’s a complete misunderstanding of all four of those terms.
And Communism fights against private property in favor of universal liberation.
I think you have your head twisted a tad.
Liberalism also fought in favor of universal liberation. Not understanding that or how liberalism lead to conversations for socialism is a glaring hole in one’s historical understanding. Either both Liberalism and Communism fight/have fought for universal liberation or, following your logic, Communism fights for a specific system structure as well because “universal liberation” actually doesn’t mean anything you could define. With that in mind it probably would read more like, Communism fights for Authoritarianism.
Communism demands extreme power towards a central point, it relies extensively on what you’d call the state having the first and final say in things. Whether that state is successfully run by “the proletariat” or not is a whole other conversation. But historically stacking all that power in the center begins to circle back towards monarchism maybe without a hereditary line but still you’re handing all power to a single political entity and that’s some heavy Authoritarianism.
You can’t just say it’s a misunderstanding of the four terms and then not present any argument to the contrary. What am I supposed to do? Provide you the historical context of Liberalism emerging during a time of increasing trade and promoted by people working explicitly for the large merchants and bankers? Or provide you the historical context of how Conservatism emerged as a response to Liberalism in defense of monarchy? Like, I have no idea how ignorant or knowledgeable you are on this topic, only that you think I misunderstand. Give me something.
Liberalism also fought in favor of universal liberation.
It absolutely did not. John Locke was a major shareholder in the Royal Africa Company, the slave trading monopoly of England. He wrote the constitution for the colony of Carolina, and explicitly wrote that every “freeman” would have total control over his “negro slaves”. Does that sound like the father of Liberalism fighting for universal liberation? No. It does not.
Not understanding that or how liberalism lead to conversations for socialism is a glaring hole in one’s historical understanding.
So now you’re moving the goal posts to “liberalism led to conversationa for socialism”? You think I don’t understand the history of philosophy and how we build on what came before? You know what led to conversations about abolition? Slavery. Slavery itself brought about conversations of abolition. Would you say that the institution of slavery is somehow the progenitor of the abolition movement? No. You would not.
The conversation about socialism emerged because of the failure of Liberalism to actually achieve its lofty rhetoric. And when analyzed materially, it was shown that Liberalism cannot lead to universal liberation because of it’s fundamental attachment of private property and thus it is inescapable from capitalism. This is not only theory. It was theory used to explain why Liberalism was sold the masses on universal liberation and near-utopia promises and yet a century or more of Liberalism resulted in prolonged horrible terrible conditions for the vast majority of people.
Either both Liberalism and Communism fight/have fought for universal liberation or, following your logic, Communism fights for a specific system structure as well because “universal liberation” actually doesn’t mean anything you could define.
This is ridiculous. Like straight ridiculous. I have to imagine you’re having an emotional reaction where you feel like I am insulting or attacking you because I cannot understand how you can write these words with a clear head.
You’re saying that because I don’t think Liberalism was structured on universal liberation because it privileged white male Christian land-owning Europeans and everyone else was either genocided, enslaved, or left to suffer and die of neglect and poverty, that somehow this means Communism is not fighting for universal liberation? Like, it doesn’t make any sense at all.
How do we know Conmunism is for universal liberation? Because it analyzed the failures of liberation, identified a root cause for the failure (class society) and then developed a theory to eliminate class society, and then executed it. Because when communists overthrow liberals they immediately set to work addressing mass poverty and eliminate the majority of it within 10 - 30 years. Because they developed the theories of national self-determination that the entire world now uses as a framework against settler colonialism. Because Communist theory explicitly states that a society built on limited liberation is doomed to fail as the contradiction between classes sharpens until there is a collapse and communists movements never set out to build a society that they know will collapse eventually.
With that in mind it probably would read more like, Communism fights for Authoritarianism.
This more than anything makes me think you have no idea of Liberal history. During the first 100 years of any liberal society they were constantly crushing workers rebellions with their military. The Americans, the English, the French, all had Liberal revolutions and then spent a century repressing their working population to force them work under intolerable conditions. Honestly, it wasn’t until the Bolsheviks were successful that progressive Liberalism really started to take root because suddenly all the Liberal robber barons were afraid that the workers would actually try to win.
Communism demands extreme power towards a central point, it relies extensively on what you’d call the state having the first and final say in things.
Yup. That’s how a democracy would be run if it were designed to enforce universal liberation instead of allowing robber barons to hire private police to beat striking workers to death. The central point is required for democracy to actually have an effect at the national level and the first and final say is required to override special interests.
But historically stacking all that power in the center begins to circle back towards monarchism maybe without a hereditary line but still you’re handing all power to a single political entity and that’s some heavy Authoritarianism.
Ok, jackass, now I’m upset. You think I don’t understand political philosophy terms but you’re going to sit here and say that communism trends toward monarchism? Are you high? Could you read fucking book on the topic before running your fucking mouth? Christ why do I even bother to assume you people are arguing in good faith.
Fuck off until you read something.
You wrote an entire manifesto just to prove you can be confidently wrong at an exceptional length, embarrassing.
Apparently “historical context” means picking whichever examples tickle your fancy and declaring everything else irrelevant. You accuse me of not understanding political theory while casually collapsing liberalism, capitalism, democracy, and authoritarianism into whatever argument you need at the moment. If your position requires this much profanity and condescension to survive basic scrutiny, maybe the books you keep telling me to read aren’t helping as much as you think? Shame.
Ok, jackass, now I’m upset. You think I don’t understand political philosophy terms but you’re going to sit here and say that communism trends toward monarchism?
Wow. Someone is triggered. What do you call a consolation of wealth, eliminating dissent and turning your state into a personal checkbook? Have some kids to take power and you’re a monarchy. Pathetic Korea has already done this, Cuba is sorta on the fence of doing this with Raul Castro. Let’s see how the others are doing, Laos has the Siphandone Family, and the Phomvihane Family hm weird how much of their cartel holds power. How about Vietnam, what’s that? Con Ong Chau Cha? You say that means “Children of the Father”? It’s basically slang for nepotism and insider coercion of privilege kids? Hm where have I seen that sort of structure in the government before…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
Enjoy your reading you angry little troll.
https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/china/
Modern slavery in China
Estimated number living in modern slavery:
5,771,000 (4.0 per thousand)
https://www.endslaverynow.org/act/action-library/learn-about-forced-labor-in-china
Great Communism you got there. Hope it stays the fuck away from me.
“cOmMunIsm LiBeRaTEs”
“bUt jOhN lOckE oWnEd StOcks!!!”
I feel like this all ignored the complete bastardization of any sense of language or definition in American politics. None of these words mean anything and engaging in it is playing party to the fucked up games people have invented to delay any sort of growth or action.
“Neoliberal conservativeism” was a thing. They’re all nazis now. ‘Liberals’ is a slur against anyone who isn’t left enough. ‘Liberalism’ is the blood-shy self-blind median our parents and grandparents wanted for us so we didn’t have to watch our friends die in imperialists wars in Asia. Libertarianism was supposed to be a rejection of any of this and got coopelted by some of the most evil freaks in the system. The Left represents the most meaningful and poplist messaging we can mannage and is still consumed by bickering from people who can’t walj and chew gum or breathe at the same time.
Stop trying to argue the labels.
Ah, the Great American lie. Well one of them. The idea that American liberalism is somehow different. And yet when you actually start examining it it looks exactly the same. I mean you just said that liberalism in America is Anti-Imperialist and anti-war. If you’ve never opened a history book I suppose you might have come to that conclusion. How else you do it I have no fucking idea.
If you actually read what I said it’s what out parents and grandparents wanted to achieve in lieu of imperialism and war. They were wrong because they couldn’t face the truth that the country their parents died for in WW2 would go on the put a boot on the neck of any country that tries to challenge their one sided control over worldwide economics.Then they died in droves in Korea and Vietnam for an ideal they just couldn’t believe mislead them.
If you actually read it, of course.
Top comment:
Stop trying to argue the labels.
Rest of comments arguing labels.
But, I think we need a banner to gather under, don’t we? Maybe it’s “proletariat”, but not many people know what that means. Your typical American family hasn’t a clue. Most of us aren’t arguing about labels on social media. Most of us are posting TikToks of our dogs, and watching Mr. Beast or Cocomelon(?), apparently. And, whoever-the-hell Charli Grace D’Amelio is. They know “socialist bad” and capitalism is money and they like money. They know Rs on the ballot let them have guns and promise lower taxes.
Man, looking at Nextdoor where I live is disheartening.
The truth is dead. There is no democracy, there is no politics. Just rich people throwing bones.
USA is just an oligopoly.
And they’re using a.i. to make it a sloppy oligopoly.
Challenge: say ‘sloppy oligopoly’ six times really quickly.
It rhymes too well. Makes it easier to say. A good tongue teaser has similar sounds but not in a way that they rhyme.
You would say that you dirty capitalist liberal scum.
Representative democracy is worthless anyways. It favors short term, short-sighted solutions to problems that require long term, sometimes painful corrections. But the party that implements such policies will be heavily punished as soon as the public feels that pain. So instead the public continues to vote in short-sighted but temporary joy seeking politicians.
An epistocracy combined with a civic service model would be far better. To be able to vote you must demonstrate a baseline capability of intelligence and rational thought along with having performed civic service in some way. Otherwise you cannot vote and simply live life normally.
Democracy is simple and instinctual, democracy has the mechanisms to solve the issues you mention, that is what the parliament is for.
But democracy requires good faith, unity and solidarity. The oligarchies have bombarded the baseline of those three by means of the new technologies.
I have hope thought, this conflict between the few against the majority is always there. Twitter made Obama president, Twitter made Trump president.
It doesnt help when the people acting ingood faith, unity, and solidarity have immoral intentions. You can have a fully functioning government that is completely evil. There has to be some inherent conflict to keep us continously evaluating societys trajectory.
Reading this comment indicates you have a lsss-than-desirable understanding of politics.
I want you to literally get a dictionary and encyclopedia and look up each term you just used. You’re about to learn some wild shit and become slightly less chauvinistic and ignorant.
You noticed you got downvoted, and I’m going to explain this for you very slowly, but if you can show me where in any real execution of the terms in our national political discourse you can find a unanimous adoption of your ‘dictionary definition’ of these terms then I’ll concede you are so, so much more smarter than me. I don’t think Fox news has ever spit at a dictionary. You missed the fucking point.
No point was missed. You demonstrated, during your rant about how people misuse words, that you don’t know what most of those very words mean.
I’ll say it again. If you open up an encyclopedia of your choice and look up these mystifying words like “libertarianism” and “socialism”, you’ll actually get a real, concrete meaning for each of them, which would help a LOT in your quest to point out that others pervert political vernacular.
But go ahead, say it again reeeeeal slow for me. I rather enjoy when chucklefucks try and fail to patronize me.
Actuall I will not. You’re bait and too stupid to get it anyway. Bye.
Yeah, this tankie (cloeobroken or whatever the fuck) needs to fuck off. I see it’s not just me that they like to harass.
Good try little buddy.
Not true but it’s why Marx saw socialism as the necessary intermediary.
Couldn’t agree more. They want to take from the working and give to the lazy. but dont worry they dont want kids so they wont be around for long
The left is the right just called the left. They are one in the same. Bought by the donor epstein class. America is doomed.
