• DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Liberal is sort of two separate things - a brand adopted by usually a party that markets itself as socially progressive and a philosophy of property forward law that creates a punch out of individual rights to citizens (and to a much lesser extent subgroups) to things like freedom of movement, freedom from unlawful seizure of property, freedom of expression and “style of life”.

    If you have existed on the outside of the left wing you might only be familiar with the brand aspect. The criticism of the wider left in general of these “Liberal” branded parties is that they are often performative in their progressive nature. The brand is just marketing.

    The hotbutton discussion however inside the wider left in regards to the political philosophy of Libralism is that both the Republicans and Democrats are by technical definition Liberals and that base philosophy has within it the political prerogative of constantly upholding protections on keeping the absurd aggregation of wealth in private firms (something Libralism at it’s core is designed to do). A large number of different leftist philosophies see this as a core problem. Therefore in leftist spaces self identifying Liberals are usually flagged as dupes of a branded center-right party - not as progressives who support social causes of wider acceptance.

    Libralism as a philosophy is kind of the air we breathe. It’s not left nor right. It creates a body of individual rights but Capitalism is used as a measure of what constitutes personal autonomy. Someone dying from a lack of success is acceptable because at it’s core Liberalism is designed to coerce (most) people to perform perpetual labour in return for protection inside the system. The system creates classes of people who are citizens who are protected and by doing so it creates exceptions to citizenhood (like prisoners, refugees, immigrants or indigenous peoples) who can be exploited.

    Most Democracies are philosophically a sort of blended patchwork of Liberalism and Socialism with some other stuff mixed in. The two are either compatible or opposing depending on which school of Socialism you are talking about.

    • PolarPirate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      That actually makes a lot of sense. Thank you. I was raised very conservative, migrated libratarian, and am slowly leaning more libertarian socially but centrist economically. Where I’m from “Liberal” is sort of an insult for the far left so it’s weird to see it used within the left. I’ve never seen that before.