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.
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.
Technically correct, but this combination of beliefs only appears in people who have no political education or class consciousness.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Uh huh.
Don’t forget to pay rent this month.
Rent? What’s that? Some poor people thing?
Very Free. Much Liberty!
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.
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.
Capitalists are like cucks for billionaires. Think of the billionaire as a shark and the capitalists as Remora fish. /s
The left is the right just called the left. They are one in the same. Bought by the donor epstein class. America is doomed.
Neoliberalism is a fascist coercion deployment and the imperial Jingoism to Socialism’s more sentimental Maoism
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
Not true but it’s why Marx saw socialism as the necessary intermediary.
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.
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.
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%.
