Comment on What is the difference between an American liberal and a liberal outside the USA?
TheUnicornOfPerfidy@feddit.uk 1 day ago
It’s wild to me that almost everyone seems to be mixing up classical liberalism and neoliberalism to a some significant degree; two wildly different paradigms only related by name. The former is defined by the freedom of the individual, the latter by the freedom of markets. The conflation of the two is wildly good marketing from the neolibs.
Liberal philosophers John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill were massive advocates for the abolition of slavery, women’s equality, free speach, worker cooperatives, inheritance tax, etc.
The father of neolibrolism Milton Friedman believed in unfettered free markets, minimal government, deregulation and monetarism (influencing the economy through the supply of money)
Yes.
In the US it seems to be conservative capitalist neoliberals probably in the democratic party who are called liberals.
In the EU it seems to be your description of emancipation, equality, individual freedoms and societal security funded by taxes, basically leftist takes who are liberals.
I’m started to become convinced that there is a coordinated effort to misdefine the term liberal among the political left in order to divide us.
I see supposed progressives dedicating significant amounts of time demonizing liberals (when they mean neoliberal), despite the fact that they would mostly agree on policy if that was the topic of conversation.
Enacting progressive taxation, punishing white collar crime, establishing strong environmental protections, establishing a strong social safety net, ensuring high quality universal healthcare, enforcing anti-trust legislation, and enacting electoral finance reforms are all things that liberals support… but instead they are often shouted down by progressives online for being status quo capitalists?
We’re fight the rise of literal fascists right now, but instead of joining forces we keep arguing about labels among people we agree with.
Imperfect allies are still allies. We need unification against the ultra wealthy.
Enacting progressive taxation, punishing white collar crime, establishing strong environmental protections, establishing a strong social safety net, ensuring high quality universal healthcare, enforcing anti-trust legislation, and enacting electoral finance reforms are all things that liberals support
Those are all things that the liberals of old supported. But the parties that call themselves “liberal” today are usually strictly neoliberal. So that’s what people have come to associate with the term.
Which parties call themselves liberal, but are actually neoliberal?
In Germany, where I’m from, FDP (“die Liberalen”) is a prime example. They are notorious for campaigning on civil liberties issues and then, once in government, dropping most or all of them in favor of radical deregulation and tax gifts for rich people.
Nemo@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
It’s so frustrating. Neoliberalism is explicitly a postliberal ideology.