What do words even mean when they just change every few years? A year ago a Liberal was someone opposed to conservatives. Now it’s a bad word? I really don’t understand
Nothing changed. I gather this is an Anarchist community and they have higher standards than just being opposed to conservatives
The the rest of the world uses it very differently than the US. In most places a liberal is, at best, very slightly left of center, but would still be considered conservative. And with how instances like hexbear, .ml, and grad consistently trash talk centrists harder than bonafide right wingers, “liberal” has become a dirty word here on Lemmy.
But if you’re American, being a liberal is more or less synonymous with being on the left.
Both Classical Liberalism and Neoliberalism are pro-capitalist ideologies. While the Republican party is more conservative in both social and economic issues, both parties still operate within the framework of neoliberalism.
In America we only have the Democrat and Republican Parties which are usually labeled as Liberal and Conservative respectively. Since the Democratic party is relatively left of the Republican party, their is the conflation of the label Liberal and Left in America. But that’s not really accurate when looking at the Ideologies of the parties.
While there is Social Democracy, which is like a tamed capitalism where some of the profits are redirected towards social welfare. I’d say it’s anti-capitalism, which is inherent to both Socialism and Anarchism, that aligns the different types of leftist ideologies.
On Liberalism:
What is neoliberalism? A political scientist explains the use and evolution of the term
How the Democrats Traded the New Deal for Neoliberalism
On Leftist ideologies:
Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Communism and Revolutions
Capitalism, Global Poverty, and the Case for Democratic Socialism
This is widely misunderstood. Liberalism doesn’t start with axiomatic capitalism as a first principle, but rather acknowledges that it’s hard to have individual liberty without the concept of individual material ownership. Even most contemporary forms of anti-capitalism have sort of come to terms with the idea that some form of capitalist structure is a near inevitability in the context of material and labor scarcity, and that beyond that you are really just debating different forms of harm reduction. And that’s really the important thing - to understand that we are all just talking harm reduction here. The idea of eliminating capitalism entirely is a bit like curing cancer. It’s a long term goal which requires technology and conditions which simply do not exist at this time, but there is not like some weird faction in the medical community which is ideologically opposed chemotherapy because it doesn’t go far enough, like there is in (outdated) leftist philosophy.
I Strongly disagree. The capitalist mode of production is axiomatic to Liberalism. Private ownership of the means of production is what is being referenced, not personal property.
I also strongly disagree about a capitalist structure being an inevitably and impossible to eliminate in the modern age. The alternative, a socialist mode of production, where companies are owned and governed democratically by all the workers, is completely viable. It’s a democratization of the workplace. People over profits instead of the current profits over people.
Locke saw individual liberty as defined through private property, contract, and market—in other words, by individual ownership of economic possessions that could not be arbitrarily usurped by the state. Freedom for Locke amounted to more than absence from external restraint; it also meant living in conformity with a nonarbitrary law (to his left critics, a protocapitalist law) to which the individual had consented.
Liberalism doesn’t start with axiomatic capitalism as a first principle, but rather acknowledges that it’s hard to have individual liberty without the concept of individual material ownership.
This is a misunderstanding of what socialists mean when they say we need to abolish private property. To socialists, private property and personal property are two very different things. Private property (also sometimes referred to as the means of production and sometimes but not always includes real estate) is specifically used to turn a profit, whereas personal property (stuff like your TV, couch, food, bed, car, etc.) is property that is owned by individuals. Socialists do not believe that personal property should be abolished, but they think that private property should.
That being said, my personal beliefs are that we should have an economic system that guarantees all basic human needs to all humans, which includes housing, food, healthcare, water, sewage, power, internet, heating/cooling (depending on location and climate) while giving the workers ownership over the businesses that they work for (essentially forcing large corporations to become worker-owned co-ops) while incentivizing small businesses to continue to be created and invested in. I’m not sure how to feel about forcing small businesses to be worker-owned co-ops, since I feel like that would decrease incentives to start them and invest time and money into them.
Professor Richard Wolff calls this socialism or Marxism, but it doesn’t have the centralization of economic power that previous socialist experiments had, with the USSR being the largest example.
As I understand it, that’s some Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson shit.
Back in the 70s liberal/liberalism meant pretty much the same thing in the U.S. as elsewhere. Nixon even called his reelection something along the lines of “a victory for western liberal democracy.” Part of liberalism is a focus on rights of the individual, including civil rights. Civil rights and many other liberation movements of the era used the language of that aspect of liberalism.
Enter a bunch of religious assholes of the time. They loved all the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, right to private property, greed, etc. of individual rights but had a big problem with women wearing pants and expecting to be able to go to work without being sexually assaulted, gay people existing openly and breathing, and probably the civil rights movement too but it was going out of style to be open about that. They started using liberal/liberalism in a denigrating way to describe feminists, LGBT people, and any other group that got their puritanical knickers in a twist.
After a couple decades the terms were completely divorced from their original political theory definitions which would, I think, have Republicans considered more liberal than Democrats. But I suppose that could depend on which aspects of liberalism you give more weight to.
I think it’s been conflated with neoliberal, which is centrist at best and many blame for allowing the rise of the alt-right.
In reality, historically, liberal ≠ neoliberal but people who may have identified as such a decade or two ago prefer just left - outside of their specific ideologies (democratic socialism, communism, anarchism, etc).
Thems fighting words
Really? Why? I usually respond with yes I’m liberal, much more than what Americans think of liberal, I’m European level liberal.
Well because we’re not liberals. We’re anarchists.
No, you’re not. You have a job and a home and a life. You’re not an anarchist, you’re just a North American kid playing pretend
lol, you know nothing about me (or anarchism for that matter)
You say you’re an anarchist but you have all the modern frills and comforts, take part in the system and society. So no, you’re not an anarchist unless you’re living off the grid and actively causing damage to the system
Thank you once again for showing you don’t know what anarchism is.
same energy
You don’t even know what “liberal” means but here you are acting like you know the first thing about anarchy as an ethical and political philosophy. Dude, just…
Yeah that’s the point, you change the meaning of a word and get pissy when someone can’t follow your new meaning. And you’re also pissy cause I called you out for what you are. A fake. You’re not an anarchist, you just like the skins y of it. Unless you’re actually physically damaging the system, you’re not an anarchist.
You kids are a joke. I’ve done more for the left then you will ever do. Cause I actually go out and get involved, not just sit on a computer calling myself a badass lol
I don’t think you said a single correct thing just now. Starting with, you weren’t even fucking talking to me. You clearly don’t know what anarchism is, and when that was pointed out, you didn’t even fucking look it up. You just doubled down on your ignorant assumptions. We both know you are ignorant, this is pointless posturing. You’re choosing to be ignorant and then being smug about it. And this makes you feel like you won the argument somehow? It was never an argument to begin with, it was you saying ignorant things and other people trying to give you a clue. Take a look at yourself.
“Kids,” he says. And yet, he uses sophistry like, “words can mean anything.” You usually only hear shit like that from genuine children. You don’t know what liberalism is, you don’t know what anarchism is (it’s not about being a badass???), you issue ad hominems (I know kids with a better grasp of leftist politics than you have), and you don’t even know who you are talking to. Does that about sum up your contributions or did I miss something?
The only things you know about anarchy are the capitalist propaganda against it. That’s why you act like it’s not even a real political philosophy, that it’s something that only children could subscribe to. Maybe, just once, listen to what an actual anarchist (ie, NOT ME, you fucking dumbass, I never said I was an anarchist, just that you’re ignorant about anarcism) tries to tell you? No, of course you won’t, because you are so much more comfortable in your smug ignorance.
So… a centrist libertarian?
european liberal?!
“Compost material” indeed
Seems like a dangerous thing to say with your user name!
you’re not familiar with composting, i see
I believe I am. What do you mean?
do you put excrement in your compost?
what a strange dialog :)
Haven’t you heard of a composting toilet?
Composting feces requires more care than basic materials like plants but it is very obviously doable.
yes, i know people who use “composting toilets”. It’s more about what to do with “human excrement” than how to nourish the soil but, yes, you’re right, alors, merde!
