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
Lazy is a lazy term.
More and more people have been working three jobs and living pay check to pay check and still can’t afford basic expenses. But i guess you will tell them that they should work harder nonetheless because your entire worldview is “fuck you, got mine.”
I go to work, company takes my labor and gives it to the lazy shareholder. Checks out.
They want to take from the working and give to the lazy.
And who taught you that work vs lazy should determine who gets what?
Not true but it’s why Marx saw socialism as the necessary intermediary.
Capitalists are like cucks for billionaires. Think of the billionaire as a shark and the capitalists as Remora fish. /s
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.
Thinking of the world as two directions is literal one dimensional thinking. The real problem is a society willing to operate with just one neural weight.
that’s the american way.
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.
Liberals just like to act like they are “center-left” because it helps maintain the capital order.
Also because liberalism started as the “left”; being anti-monarchy and advocating for a representative democracy. It’s well after when liberalism became the status quo that it became the default ideology and thus became the new conservative or right.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
This is quite the nothing-burger reply you’ve assembled. What’s the definition of Liberal you’re operating on?
Honestly, I’ve reread your first sentence so many times. I might make a hat with it.
Here ya go.
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.
Great, that’s the same one I follow, but you’re not the one I was asking.
If that is the definition you’re working on, it’s pro-capitalism.
Also, it’s a public forum, dillweed. Didn’t matter you didn’t ask me specifically.
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.
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.
Liberalism doesn’t distinguish between Private Property and Personal property.
You’re conflating.
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
This is supported by history.
This submission is exactly the divisive shit fascists love to see. Congratulations.
Fascists love people who bitch about boomers - they ignore all the young people coming up conservative and all the old progressives.
Fascists love people who bitch about various kinda of left-wing or pseudo-left-wing groups and ADORE threads where people argue over what those terms even mean. It all distracts from uniting against fascism.
Fascists love the "both sides’ bullshit - especially because it contains enough grains of truth that it is very compelling (like a lof ot their propaganda, they sometimes raise some good points that get lost in the fascism) - because ti causes people not to vote. Mostly progressives.
Fascists love this thread.
I fucking don’t.
You know what causes progressives to not vote? Telling them to fuck off and supporting a genocide.
There is no equivalent for liberals; liberals aren’t going to not vote because ICE isn’t hauling off enough of their neighbors or they don’t have to fill out enough forms and pay enough money to prove they deserve healthcare or that trans people don’t need to jump through enough hoops to get their medications.
You know what happens when a progressive doesn’t vote in the general election? Fascism wins.
The time to act is BEFORE the general, BEFORE the primary.
Oh fuck off, the dems ratfuck progressives every primary.
Fuck off yourself, since fascism is your only alternative IN THE GENERAL ELECTION (generally speaking).
Alternative? When the DNC ensures the only alternative to fascism in the general election is fascism, you get fascism.
This just reads like crybaby astroturf bullshit. Those issues are important to liberals too. Liberal by definition means you are PRO LIBERTY. Name one thing in that list that doesn’t align with being pro liberty. Go on I’ll wait
Here’s a book going through all the major liberal philosophers and how they handled the contradictions of liberalism: https://infoport.co/wp-content/uploads/Domenico-Losurdo-Gregory-Elliott-Liberalism_-A-Counter-History-Verso-2011.pdf
In practice, when they come into conflict, the freedom for bourgeoisie to exploit the working class outweighs all others. This takes different meanings in different contexts. There’s a few parts that might take a few rereads to get what they’re actually saying, such as English colonists arguing that the crown is treating them like slaves, by restricting their freedom to tyrannize the Indians and slaves, without a hint of irony.
Liberalism means you value property over humans. Always has been.
bOtH sIdEs aRe tHe sAmE
I’ve done my share of bitching about boomers but damn it you’re right.
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.
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
The auth-left does oppose the auth-right, so your pedantry is both unnecessary and unappreciated as it drives the exact divisiveness among [whatever preferred term you choose for the group we both know I’m talking about] that I’m criticizing.
Tankies don’t have left aligned values, only left aligned appearance.
Frankly this is some No True Leftist stuff. Tankies want to bring about socialism via an intermediary step of brutality. You could definitely argue that such a step is not True Socialism, and I think you’d be right, but I took a shit today that wasn’t True Socialism so does that mean the next thing I did was not socialism?
For the record, I don’t like tankies either, but there’s plenty of space to push back against them without relying on bad faith arguments.
You aren’t browsing their coms. They want to put leftists “on the wall” -sic, too. Everyone’s pretty fortunate that they don’t go outside and stick to ordering delivery
So what? Whether the auth-left or the auth-right, talk about pedantic. It’s the auth. IT’S THE AUTH.
and I don’t appreciate your lack of appreciation
I’m well-aware both flavors of hyper-authoritarianism are bad, I’m pointing out that your picking fights with people who oppose fascism is the exact counter-productive bickering I was criticizing.
There was this dude at work I was trying to get to watch the first couple episodes of andor season 2 because the bickering in the woods rang so similar to liberals and leftists arguing, especially online. The rebels capture Andor(literal revenge driven super antifa spy and movement leader) by chance while he’s undercover and proceed to bicker among themselves and split their ranks in half while an ambush draws closer. Too busy with vanity and their purity tests to find common ground with their allies
Fascinatingly, just like in Andor, peace-makers between the bickerers are vilified too.
Pretty dumb, but then again we’re not that different from the lesser apes.
idk if i’d call liberals antifascists; not credible as that. they specialize in losing to fascists while blaming everyone but themselves
Motherfucker we are the og antifats you better get your shit straight
Eighty percent of all nazi casualties were inflicted by the Red Army
we are the og antifats
Holy historical revisionism.
What shit did you smoke to have you spout such bullshit?
Historically, liberals enabled and worked with the fascists to disenfranchise the communists and the anarchists, ya know, the actual OG antifascists.
The funny thing is there’s a comment from just a few minutes ago saying the auth-left definitely doesn’t oppose fascists either.
So if we want to play games with terms and further the exact infighting I’m criticizing, I guess nobody apart from anarchists is against fascism? Doesn’t make any sense, but I guess you don’t have to make sense if you’re just here to bicker.
By my understanding, the left seeks to diffuse political power as widely and evenly as possible, while the right seeks to consolidate it.
Communism works only if there’s a mechanism to assure that the command economy actually serves the public and not the political class. So when we look at USSR, it was authoritarian since Stalin.
Similarly the Democratic Republic of the Congo was a Leninist Democracy until France came in and installed a puppet dictator. It’s still called the Democratic Republic, I think.
Reagan did the same thing to Grenada in 1983. That was especially conspicuous since there weren’t any major resources or strategic points involved. It was about black folks making a public-serving government work.
This is why I don’t understand what Tankies are, unless they’re to the left what Christian Nationalists are to Christianity.
So when we look at USSR, it was authoritarian since Stalin.
That’s a popular view, promoted most by Troskyists and Orwell.
That said, the original bullshit of dissolving the Soviets by the claim the Party was the voice of the people was actually done by . . . Trotsky.
Makes sense actually.
Similarly, the seeds of the dissolution of democracy are built into the Constitution of the United States, in the preservation of institutionalized slavery and safeguards against mob rule is est, the loss of white male landowner power to poors, blacks and women as they respectively gain suffrage. It was meant all along to be democracy but not really.
Isildur should have thrown the damn ring into Mount Doom when he had the chance.
Totally. There’s a great book called The Founder’s Coup, which goes into exhaustive detail about how the Constitution was absolutely designed to stop democracy - most specifically, that which could threaten debt collection. See Shay’s Rebellion, a very ignored topic on much US casual history.
By my understanding, the left seeks to diffuse political power as widely and evenly as possible, while the right seeks to consolidate it.
No, that discounts the Auth-Left, who consolidates power in the form of a Vanguard Party and/or autocrat.
Communism works only if there’s a mechanism to assure that the command economy actually serves the public and not the political class. So when we look at USSR, it was authoritarian since Stalin.
It was authoritarian before that, but Stalin was definitely the cherry on top.
The rest of your comment is true; capitalists have an extensive history of installing pro-capitalist dictatorships.
This is why I don’t understand what Tankies are, unless they’re to the left what Christian Nationalists are to Christianity.
To me, a “tankie” is more or less the Auth-Left, more or less a Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist, in the sense that they believe that as long as the goal is ostensibly some form of socialism (or “socialism”), no amount of brutality, cruelty, or immorality can be too far.
On lemmy.world, they hail from @lemmy.ml 99% of the time, and you’ll see them doing mental gymnastics to defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and denying things like the Holodomor and the Uyghur genocide. You’ll also see them making moves to take down the USA rather than reform it for the better, no matter how many people suffer and die in the process. There’s a lot of overlap with accelerationism in my opinion, as I suspect a lot of the people in this thread and others are trying to convince people the DNC isn’t worth voting for because it will help the GOP win, bringing on a second US civil war and/or a massive and bloody world-wide class-war/revolution, killing millions or even billions but possibly resulting in a socialist government faster.
Tankies will claim that any non-tankie slaps “tankie” on any socialist or communist, but that’s not true for any reasonable person, hopefully myself included.
Surprising no one, the tankies were very upset by being described here, including one whom I’ve blocked that replied something below.
Go ahead, ask them if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is imperialist or if China’s oppression of the Uyghurs is a genocide, and watch the definition of “imperialism” and “genocide” change before your very eyes.
The common theme is “as long as it somehow opposes western capitalism, nothing can be immoral.”
Tankies will claim that any non-tankie slaps “tankie” on any socialist or communist
Except they do. I don’t know which of you taught the liberals that word, but it was a very very bad move. Now it means “anyone who criticized Joe Biden while he tried to start WWIII”.
you simultaneously accuse me of bickering and try to get me to defend a caricature of a position… that you constructed for me
i said liberals are not credible opponents of fascism. my reasoning being they are not really opposed to fascism as much as upholding capitalism.
MLs oppose both, i can work with them on those things at least. with liberals i have to worry that they’re going to turn me into the police.
The ridiculous part of this that you don’t seem to see is that liberals oppose fascism mildly and you refuse to ally with them to get rid of fascism.
Fascism is just over there in the corner smirking, glad you hate liberals too.
Liberals oppose fascism mildly
Free Palestine.
liberals oppose fascism mildly
mildly
I feel like the argument here makes itself. The point of post is that liberals don’t actually do anything significant to oppose fascism, or as you put it, only “mildly” opposing fascism.
oppose fascism mildly
What does this mean?
Because their opposition does not work.
Let’s look at Germany, their favorite example. The liberal position was to compromise with the fascists, and attempt to put in Hindenberg as the stop gap. The problem was that Hindenberg was unwilling to EVER accept liberal or social democratic (SPD) government. And so when he couldn’t find conservatives to keep power, he put the Nazis in power.
The “mild” opposition of liberals is only for fascism - they’re very good at holding down the left while they let the fascists take power, and that’s exactly the problem.
my issue is that liberals aren’t going to resolve fascism because they create the material conditions for fascism.
fascism doesn’t appear from nowhere, it emerges from the immiseration and instability that capitalism produces, something liberals are content to ‘manage’ without resolving.
Okay, imagine someone is blasting your house with a high-pressure hose, breaking all its windows, flooding it, etc.
Your argument is to target the people who make plastic because that hose nozzle has plastic, rather than either convincing them to stop selling hoses to psychopaths or targeting the psychopath with the hose.
Again, the guy with the hose is just glad you’re focusing your efforts elsewhere while he destroys everything you have.
liberals not make a silly metaphor to defend their failing position challenge: impossible
that metaphor is incoherent and doesn’t really engage anything i said, so i’ll pass
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.
It’s a big conundrum:
- On one side, most people when told actual policies which are generally considered left-wing (say, Free Education) agree with them
- On the other side, most people don’t have the attention span to read long lists of policies (hands up anybody who ever read the entire electoral program of even just one candidate in an election they voted in) so even the most well-intentioned politicians end up using short political terms with vague-ish definitions which are easily subverted, to describe their own set of policies or those of others.
So we end up with Liberal this, Socialist that and if you try and get down to tightly defined nitty-gritty details of their meaning, no two people fully agree on the definitions.
Any fool can see the difference between Black and White.
The trouble starts when we start arguing over ‘eggshell’ vs. ‘clouds’ vs. ‘salt.’
Find the actual candidates available and pick the best one.
NYC Mayor Ed Koch wasn’t my favorite politician, but I love this quote.
"If you agree with me 51% of the time, just vote for me. If you agree with me 100% of the time, talk to a psychiatrist.’
He won 51% of a three-way race, which means moderate Democrats and independent voters had another option that wasn’t a Republican, and he still kicked both of their asses with a majority.
I support what you’re trying to say but your argument is built around a very disingenuous framing of the election outcome.
A better argument is that Mamdani won DESPITE being a known socialist. He won despite the tag. Just like he won despite his religion and name.
Understanding why he won despite those things is how we can best use his election to inform our other candidate and voting choices.
He won despite running against a known sexual predator and a radio shock jock.
The argument I keep hearing is that there’s a giant Left majority that stays home every election because they can’t stand voting for corporate Dems.
When the time came for these folks to show up and vote for a Socialist they didn’t vote?
Judging from the hammer and sickle, OOP thinks North Korea is a Democratic Republic, and the billionaires in the CCP are all self-made unlike the ones in the GOP…
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
Thanks for the clarification, that wasn’t very clear indeed! Then OP’s argument is stopped dead in its tracks by the fact that the mayoral election had more than two candidate, and the presidential election did not.
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.
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.
Ok, but now suppose you were to alter time and space and switch them so that each is now running for the other’s office.
We’d have President Mamdani and Mayor Cuomo.
Yeah most Americans wouldn’t call themselves leftists. But most Americans would agree with leftist policies. Anything less than that and Americans will just be voting by party, name recognition or by how bad the Republican candidate is.
You tell me how to alter time and space and then I’ll consider it.
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.
In this context you’re wrong.
OP talks about the economic distribution scale of politics (for capitalism to be relevant), where (fiscal) conservatism stands in opposition to socialism.
There are plenty other ways to divide ideologies, but capitalism is irrelevant to most of them, including the one you’re proposing (power distribution?)
Conservatism is a very specific political philosophy. Liberalism is a very specific political philosophy.
“Conservative” the adjective that is not about politics is about reducing risk. “Liberal” the adjective that is not about politics is about reducing restraint.
Conservatism the political philosophy emerged as a response the development of Liberalism the political philosophy. Liberalism’s position was that the source of political power should be private property. Conservatism’s position was that the source of political power should be heritage/lineage.
Separating economics from politics makes very little sense conceptually and it results in mass confusion, like we have in the USA today. There are no (or very very few) Conservatives in the USA today. The USA is split between two factions of Liberalism. On the one hand you have Liberals who wish to reduce restraint on individuals with wealth and power. These would be classical Liberals. On the other hand you have Liberals who wish to restrain individuals with wealth just a little bit as a concession to the masses and to offer the masses a few concessions, most of which are symbolic and not pragmatic, to ensure that the masses do not revolt.
There are no fiscal conservatives in US politics. Republicans have almost never reduced spending when they take office. They shift where the budget goes, but they don’t spend less. That’s not fiscally conservative, it’s factional priorities. Democrats do not spend more than Republicans when in office. That’s not meaningfully different. They prioritize other allocations. Again, factional priorities.
Fiscal conservatism does not stand in opposition to socialism. Liberalism stands in opposition to socialism, because Liberalism situates the source of power in private property and socialism is a private property abolitionist movement.
Capitalism is not irrelevant to the separation of ideologies. How could it be when literally the feudal economic system literally could not manage the economies of states sufficiently which gave rise to the capitalist mode which needed a political power system that allowed it to function which monarchy could never do? Capitalism and Liberalism are fundamentally interconnected.
You are missing the forest for the trees.
In the US political landscape there is de facto a group identifying themselves as conservative, in contrast to other groups identifying as liberal, libertarian, socialist, among others.
Your models and perspectives might be self satisfying, but are for this context irrelevant — reality doesn’t agree with you.
Missing the forest for the trees means missing the bigger picture for the smaller specifics. In this case that applies to you, not me.
The history of Liberalism is older than the US and spans more countries. The forest here is political philosophy. The USA is a tree.
To assume that the USA, which is only 250 years old, and it’s local use of the word “Conservative” which has not even been for 200 years, is “the forest” in this metaphor is exactly the sort of skewed perspective Americans have on the world.
The USA’s usage of the terms Liberal and Conservative are local, short term aberrations. It is the US that is missing the forest for the trees. And this is important. It’s why people in the US who are fighting the Republicans think they are “on the left” and why they get so confused when actual leftists won’t make common cause with them.
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.
…what do you think the conservatives conserve?
Liberalism is based on the word liberty, i.e. the right to self determination. Mercantilists are generally liberal. As is anyone that isn’t trying to conserve the monarchy.
…it depends who or what you’re talking about doesn’t it?
Monarchism is pretty clear about what it is, support of a monarchy or basically a bloodline that rules the government. Conservative is a broad political outlook that depends entirely who or what topic or group you’re talking about. You can be a social conservative, you can be fiscally conservative, National conservative. None of those have anything to do with a monarchy.
Mercantilists are literally not liberal at all. Mercantilism and Liberalism at a time were completely opposed to each other, you know laissez-faire capitalism and whatnot. Mercantilism is about government regulated trade where Classic Liberalism was about unregulated trade. A social liberal has basically nothing to do with Mercantilism. Then you have neoliberalism which is a rehash of classical Liberalism electric boogaloo style.
Honestly China’s system is closer to being like mercantilism than the neoliberal governments today because of their focus on exports and heavy handed government intervention but you wouldn’t really call what they’re doing mercantilism.
So it’s all pretty different. Words matter you know?
Oh, no, no, no. There is a very specific thing that conservatives conserve. Its like the people that claim the US civil war was about “states rights”–states rights to do what?
Conservatives are traditionally an explicitly monarchist party. They just didn’t call themselves monarchists, because the French were getting a bit choppy when it came to kings back then. Liberals were the anti-monarchists. Even now, modern conservatives all seek to implement some sort of hierarchical power structure, economic, social, whatever.
Mercantilism is a rebuke of government controlled trade. Hence mercantilism–from merchant. Regular folks could become merchants and make fortunes that were not the purview of the crown.
No they’re not. In some countries conservatives might embrace those ideas but that is not true across the board. I’d agree conservatives generally support power structure but claiming they’re monarchists just isn’t true. Conservatives in China for instance have absolutely nothing to do with a monarchy.
Mercantilism is literally not a rebuke to government controlled trade. It is government controlled trade. Like you can literally Google this and read about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
It was intended as a means for the crown to have even more control. It maximized wealth and authority of the central state which is why the term laissez faire came about. You’re literally mixing up a core belief of Liberalism with Mercantilism.
Not a meme 👎
Oh, shut up, Lauren.
Why
