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Andrzej@lemmy.myserv.one 1 year ago
Do you know what the word ‘liberal’ actually means
FozzyOsbourne@lemm.ee 1 year ago
alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
It means you support capitalism, hence why “liberalization of the economy” means selling off public utilities, land, and resources.
FozzyOsbourne@lemm.ee 1 year ago
[deleted]alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
It’s also the definition used in any serious literature since the mid 1800s.
BakerBagel@midwest.social 1 year ago
My parents used to called corned beef stew “Pig soup” so my brother and i would eat it. That doesn’t mean it was pork in there.
saltesc@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s not true.
Here a chicken definitely came before an egg. Read up on laissez-faire. There are also entire groups of anti-capitalist liberals and liberal ideologies as moat agree that capitalism breaks the fundamental rule of encroaching on people’s freedoms, which is obviously the main point.
Adam Smith was famously big on this, but also Henry George, the father of Georgism which is a famous liberal economic ideology that is staunchly opposed to capitalism for its many dangers to liberalism. It’s even from the US.
You can’t just take what you learned from the US media and US social media and force that onto everyone else. You’re spreading misinformation about ideologies in the hopes people won’t notice.
Aux@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You cannot be open minded, tolerant and support human rights and freedoms while opposing capitalism. If you oppose capitalism - you’re pretty much an authoritarian shill.
TheTetrapod@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This doesn’t even make sense, you’re very confused.
VARXBLE@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Very bad take. Do better.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Care to elaborate? Why is wanting to democratize production more authoritarian than wanting many competing dictators?
Andrzej@lemmy.myserv.one 1 year ago
Look rather than dunk on you, I’m going to recommend Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast, because it gives a fair overview of what the liberal revolutions were about, why socialism grew out of that moment, and how there came to be this irreconciliable beef between liberalism and socialism. The whole thing is great, but 1848 is the real crisis point if all you care about is the schism.
Ragdoll_X@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Glytch@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A liberal believes capitalism is broken and needs to be fixed.
A socialist believes capitalism is working as intended and needs to be destroyed.
Andrzej@lemmy.myserv.one 1 year ago
Liberals are, to quote Phil Ochs: “ten degrees to the left of center in the good times, ten degrees to the right of center when it affects them personally”
FozzyOsbourne@lemm.ee 1 year ago
[deleted]ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
In the US political media ‘Liberal’ is deliberately used to reference the policies of the Democratic Party, which is demonstrably Neoliberal. This confusion is working as intended.
Thanks Rush Limbaugh and all the hellspawn you’ve enabled.
Andrzej@lemmy.myserv.one 1 year ago
With respect, if you describe yourself as liberal, vote for an economically liberal party, and refuse even to accept economic policy as part of the question, I think the “authoritarian leftists” have your number tbh
dudinax@programming.dev 1 year ago
The very idea that a liberal can’t be socialist and a socialist can’t be liberal is nonsensical. They are orthogonal concepts.
The division between liberals and socialists is plainly promoted in order to divide people.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s because the socially liberal definition is almost exclusively American, and lemmy has a large number of EXTREMELY Eurocentric users. Almost like a weird mirror world of the typical “everything is assumed to be American until proved otherwise” in most social media.
According to lemmy, there’s the American definition, and then there’s the correct definition. And they’re not being tongue in cheek about it, they’re serious.
satansbartender@lemmy.world 1 year ago
First time I’ve heard of that podcast and it sounds interesting. Is there a season that touches on it more than others or is it just an overarching theme throughout the different seasons and revolutions covered?
gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m going to echo everyone else recommending this podcast, it’s absolutely incredible non-fiction story telling and it will really deepen your understanding of how we all got to this point in history.
To answer your question, I actually think season 8 (all about the French Commune in 1871 and how external pressures can end up causing liberals and socialists to go to war with each other) is the best one for explaining it, but it will be really confusing if you don’t listen to season 7 first (which is all about 1848, when France revolted against a liberal monarchy and most of western Europe went “hey, we should do that too, but differently”), which will be really confusing if you don’t listen to season 6 first (all about France 1830, when the people who would be overthrown in 1848 came to power) and all its supplemental episodes (all about different western European leaders who would see rebellions in 1848).
Season 3 (all about the French revolution everyone knows about in the 1790s) will help understand a few things going on in 6 and 7, and is also worth listening to just to understand why and how liberalism got going, but I don’t think it’s strictly necessary to get seasons 6-8, and 3 is ridiculously long season because the French revolution is just an insane series of back and forth plot twists that doesn’t let up.
That all said, if you’re prepared for something ridiculously long, the final season (all about the Russian revolutions, 1905 and 1917) is an incredibly informative and interesting listen too, and kind of completes the series (this is extremely reductive, but season 1-3 are sort of the “liberalism was a big improvement over what came before it” seasons, 6-8 are sort of the “but liberalism had its problems, which socialism tried to answer” seasons, and 10 is the “but socialism has its problems too” season).
Lastly, it doesn’t really touch on the liberalism vs socialism thing, but season 4 (a history of the Haitian revolution that highlights how incredibly destructive racism and colonialism are) is probably the one season I would make everyone in the world listen to if I could.
gastationsushi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I highly recommend this podcast. He does a great job of differentiating what the different authors say and what are his own opinions. And he adds corrections to the episode when listeners point out his mistakes. The French, Haitian, 1848, and Russian revolutions really changed how I see the world. Be warned, they can hit dozens of episodes each.
The American and English civil war are OK, not Duncan’s fault, it’s just the non Anglo revolutions were better material IMO.
Atin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I recommend Revolutions too. Mike Duncan is an awesome researcher and writer.
daltotron@lemmy.world 1 year ago
added, should I begin at the beginning or are there recommended episodes I should listen to first over others?
Anamana@feddit.de 1 year ago
Pff… you’re way too nice to not be a liberal
Andrzej@lemmy.myserv.one 1 year ago
There’s a difference between ideology and affect. I’m sure plenty of Nazis are “nice”
Neon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted.
Liberal literally means free. As in “If it doesn’t harm me, you’re allowed to do it”. So yes, openminded, permissive, tolerant.
Don’t know why a lot of the US-Americans had to twist the meaning of it.
rockSlayer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Because in politics, liberal means something else entirely. It’s an ideology defined by support for capitalism.
Amputret@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Free as in markets, not free as in people.
Klear@lemmy.world 1 year ago
In Americans politics, and you guys are completely bonkers.
Neon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s absolutely not what it means
In the very closest definition, liberal means “if there isn’t a law against it, you’re allowed to do it”
liberal more broadly is just as simple: “if it doesn’t hurt me, you’re free to do it”
I mean, what do you think a “liberal democracy” is? The majority of Europe is made up of liberal democracies while also being social-democratic. France is a liberal democracy despite being heavily unionized and having huge welfare. How does that work?
It works because that’s not what liberal means.
Socially-Liberal, for example, is when you are liberal (freedom-loving / diversity-loving) in social aspects. You support gay marriages, you support freedom of religion, you support cultural diversity. Other Examples include religiously-liberal, culturally-liberal, or even politically liberal (you support the right to different political opinions than yours)
What comes closest to what you think it is is economically-liberal. Which essentially says that “as long as it doesn’t hurt me, you’re free to do what you want economically”. But even that isn’t what you mean. Is Pollution and accelerating Climate change harming me and therefore not protected under liberalism? yes, says the absolute majority of liberals.
Is lobbying harming me by making my Voice less weighted? Yes, say a lot of us.
So not even economically-liberal is a good term to describe what you mean.
I don’t know, what a good term for it is. But it isn’t Liberal. So please, for the love of god, stop misusing it. Words have meaning. Invent a new one if you have to, they all began that way anyways.
maxenmajs@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I understand we don’t like capitalism on Lemmy, but I’m curious how liberalism fares versus the other capitalism-supporting ideologies that are more commonly found in the world.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 year ago
In European politics.
American liberals do not support free markets. They’re advocates of greater regulation amd stronger unions.
alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
The Israeli flag guy would think freedom means the freedom to exploit others.
Neon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The lemmy.ml guy would think freedom means the freedom to roll with tanks over peaceful Protestors demanding Freedom and Democracy.
See? Prejudice isn’t nice, right?
daltotron@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“free” means nothing though, it’s just a substitute for other values. It’s not just free as in “if it doesn’t harm me, you’re allowed to do it”. As another commenter pointed out, one person, they would espouse the freedom to have and own and use guns for self-defense, right? I could just as easily make the argument that guns, collectively, when this right is enabled, impinge on my freedom not to live in a gun-free, potentially less violent, or at least less lethal, society. The freedom provided by publically subsidized or collective single payer healthcare, vs the freedom to "not have to pay for everyone else’s healthcare. If I just rely on freedom as a value, it indicates nothing. It’s a sock puppet ideology. There’s always another value there which is being substituted for it. Liberalism can’t just equal freedom, or else it’s just totally meaningless. While it does have a broad specific meaning as it refers to a specific school of thought, it’s not totally meaningless as it otherwise would be.
Liberalism is a political and economic philosophy which espouses the merits of the free market as a collective decision making structure, which can allocate resources according to price signals. I.e. take resources in the economy and allocate them to where they best need to go, which is sort of what any idea of the economy has to do. It also generally espouses an idea of a naturally occurring meritocracy and rational actors, which the free market relies upon to be of real merit. At the extreme end you get shit like idiot anarcho-capitalism and the austrian school of economics, which is very resistant to government interventionism and kind of holds a religious adherence to free markets and their freedom from governance or regulation by governments. Guys like adam smith. Maybe in the middle you have more standard forms of liberalism, that still support free markets, but also support a pretty decent government and sort of see the two as being opposed to one another. Probably that would slot in a little more into neoliberalism, on the side of markets, and then classical liberalism leaning more towards government intervention. And then on the far end you get shit like nordic government and social democracy more broadly, which would try to engage in capitalism while still building out large support structures, as generally opposed to democratic socialism which seeks to basically eliminate conventional capitalism altogether. You also maybe get “market socialism” somewhere in there, inasmuch as a kind of inherently contradictory ideology like that can exist.
None of what I said really has any commentary on general social issues. You won’t find it in there, in any of those mostly economic philosophies, you won’t find positions on gay rights or trans rights, generally, civil rights more broadly, or drug use, or crime and punishment. There’s not any position on civil rights more broadly which is specifically intrinsic to any of those philosophies. Nothing on “open-mindedness”. The same could be said of communism, or really any economic philosophy outside of like, normal fascism, which everyone kind of has a hard time defining. Libs, mostly, but I won’t elaborate on that one until you press me on it.
In any case, that’s what liberalism as an economic philosophy all tends to mean, tends to refer to, that’s the larger, broader category. As you might intuit, it’s mostly just kind of, “capitalism”, in it’s many different forms. None of this is meaning-twisting, this is all just shit that’s existing in the academic literature for a long while. I’m not a language prescriptivist, so I’m not going to say that it’s wrongly used, when it’s not strictly conforming to academic definitions, and I will freely admit that most of the reference I see to it in colloquial conversation is kind of just like, to mean “woke”, you know, to refer more to socially progressive outlooks more broadly. But I think it’s important to question kind of why that is, why it’s seen as this thing that’s only kind of half-invisible to the population, why it’s completely divorced, colloquially, from any economic definition, and instead just refers to like, ahh, that guy, that guy’s a lib, that guy thinks black people should have rights, what a lib cuck, kind of a thing.
Tracking the warping of language is a pretty important thing to do, because it tells you all about the intentionality with which it’s used, the broader political strategy, the core philosophies of the people using it, it tells you where they’ve come from and what they’re referring to. More specifically, these kinds of changes of meaning that take place within certain words, they serve to cordon off, or, serve as an evidence of the cordoning off, of certain populations from others. The word is transformed in such a way as to make communication between groups impossible, and is also transformed in such a way as to totally eliminate that to which it previously was in reference to.
I don’t think using liberal to mean “socially progressive” is necessarily the wrong way to do things, but I do think that the academic definition, the academic reference, the idea there, it still has a lot of value. If one serves to obfuscate the other’s shorthand, I would find that to be kind of a tragedy.
Aux@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You should either replace Ukrainian flag with a Russian one or Israeli flag with Palestinian.
joyjoy@lemm.ee 1 year ago
“I apply my butter liberally.”
menemen@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This discussion is funny from a German pov, as our local liberal party (the FDP) is pretty right wing.
orrk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
that’s because liberalism in Europe is mainly “liberty” for rish people to do what they want
Tryptaminev@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Isn’t it the same in the US though? They still don’t have universal healthcare or basic worker protection like protecting women from being fired over giving birth.
orrk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
see, the difference is, in the US they already won, tho in the American context liberal s still more progressive than the neo-cons/fascists on the other side
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Liberalism can be right wing or left wing.
Eh. Its traditionally in that “economically conservative, socially liberal” pocket, wherein you can do whatever you want so long as you’ve got enough passive income.
Fascists tend toward a more rigid social caste system (ideologically) wherein being rich isn’t enough to save you from state violence. That’s a big part of its popular appeal, particularly when liberal institutions decay into kleptocracies.
Traditional Marxism tends toward the social egalitarianism that fascists can’t stomach (race mixing, gender equality, and worker internationalism) while advocating full public ownership that liberal rent-seekers can’t stomach.
So, in the modern political spectrum, liberals tend to be “centrists” who use their economic influence to rent out social egalitarianism. Fascists tend to be “right wing”, advocating for those same private entities to purge themselves of unpopular social groups. And Marxists tend to be “left wing”, advocating for an abolition of rents and a full egalitarian economy.
But if you go back a century (or move over to a country that’s more left or right leaning) the colonial era monarchies and theocracies end up forming the right-wing pole, while fascists join liberals at the social center, and Marxists join a much more lively native anarchist community that’s in its last-gasp efforts to resist colonial occupation.
Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If you are saying gender equality is Marxist then I am guessing you haven’t read much Marx friend. Marx was very about women being relegated to traditional gender roles and was more about whole “seperate spheres of excellence” thing. You are thinking more of the likes of Saint Simone and Robert Owen’s Owenites.
Feminist scholarship has tried to adapt Marx by stripping out the veiws about women and applying his rhetoric more unilaterally but that’s not his text and quite frankly there are other contemporary philosophers and movement leaders which did it better.
There is this habit to slap the name Marxist on a the most idealized reads of the work and call it his because he’s the name people know and the few well known political labels on the far left or because people who have claimed the label of his movement after his death decided to non-canonically add to his work- but I personally wish that people could normalize other schools of leftist philosophy and not treat Marx particularly as the magnet that all of us will inevitably be drawn to or attribute stuff to him that he doesn’t particularly deserve. Marxism as a sort of brand name philosophy is misleading and disappointing to those who read his work and find that their ideals aren’t actually well represented there.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If you are saying gender equality is Marxist then I am guessing you haven’t read much Marx friend. Marx was very about women being relegated to traditional gender roles
Marxism does not end with Marx any more than Newtonian Physics ends with Newton.
That said, I’ve seen plenty of liberal writers approach the original works with cynical and dishonest takes. So it helps to cite your reference if you want to be taken seriously.
that’s not his text and quite frankly there are other contemporary philosophers and movement leaders which did it better.
Sure. Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Chavez, etc, etc.
but I personally wish that people could normalize other schools of leftist philosophy and not treat Marx particularly as the magnet that all of us will inevitably be drawn to
It’s hard to escape Marx’s gravitational pull without abandoning 19th century modes of industrial economics.
So long as colonial powers continue to apply old liberal economic theories of endless expansion and consolidated ownership in the face of diminishing returns, Marx’s insights into failing rate of profit fueling economic contradictions will remain relevant.
Sidyctism@feddit.de 1 year ago
Are they? I would say the CDU under Merz is more likely to work with the AfD
Neato@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
It has 2 common definitions:
You’re almost never going to hear the right-wing use #1. Authoritarian communists will use #2 as a catch-all for modern capitalism.
lugal@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
The US is such a right wing country that liberals are the mainstream left. In Europe, liberals are centrists and they aren’t further to the right than American libs.
Neato@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
The meme says “American Republicans” so I thought we were considering this from an American pov. Definitions are going to change going to other countries and doubly so when talking about politics.
archomrade@midwest.social 1 year ago
It isn’t just about it meaning something else when ‘going to another country’. ‘Liberal’ has an actual definition with a history.
I’m honestly kind of confused about american liberals digging their heals in on this definition when it has historically been taken to mean something they don’t seem to agree with anymore.
lugal@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
But the definition doesn’t really change. Take universal healthcare. A liberal idea that’s considered common sense in Europe and left wing in the US. Obamacare would be something you expect from a center right European and a left American. Both are called liberal.
And if the meme was from an exclusively American pov, it wouldn’t specify “American Republicans”
sukhmel@programming.dev 1 year ago
Yeah, this is about as confusing as it gets, I feel like those labels rarely make much sense :(
archomrade@midwest.social 1 year ago
It’s extremely frustrating hearing this repeated so often here.
It’s fine if this is the colloquial definition you’re used to hearing and using, but this is certainly not the way it’s used outside of American politics and pretending like it’s the only use comes off as both ill-informed and condescending.
When used derisively from the left, rest assured it is not referring to either of your adopted generalizations but a very specific ideology.
thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
ok, so among English speaking countries, how is it more often used?
saltesc@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Look up liberalism for liberals.
I wasn’t aware Americans made up their own meaning. Now I understand why upvoted comments mentioning “liberal values” receive a flurry of downvotes while I’m asleep, Americans have lost the meaning of another word, probably due to their media.
Though, just checking, the American dictionaries seem entirely correct still. Are you all confused?
archomrade@midwest.social 1 year ago
Like I said, it’s fine assuming your own definition if that’s the one most familiar to you, but that doesn’t mean you have to stubbornly double down on semantics when confronted with a competing definition. When used derisively from the left it is almost certainly being used in the original sense of the word as per John Locke
jaspersgroove@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The definition I see most often used here in Lemmy is: Liberal - literally anybody who doesn’t have Xi Jinping’s cock alllllllll the way down their throat
Neato@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
Ok. But this meme says American Republican.
archomrade@midwest.social 1 year ago
The meme also says ‘authoritarian communists’ but there are plenty of anarchists and socialists who use liberal as a disparagement.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
That works both ways. Pretending the European usage of the word is the only use comes off just as ill-informed and condescending.
archomrade@midwest.social 1 year ago
The people who are using liberal derisively are playing off the american liberal self-identity. They’re acknowledging both definitions in the jab.
Andrzej@lemmy.myserv.one 1 year ago
I’m sorry but this is just flat out wrong in the way that only an American can be wrong
Neato@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
Thanks for your input. I learned a lot.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Liberalism has never meant “leftism in general.” It has always been an ideology supporting the individual via private property rights. Neoliberalism is the modern form of it.
Liberalism was considered left when feudalism was right, but liberalism has never meant leftism.