Image of tweet by Kim from Kansas @kim_from_kansas:
Capitalists would like you to believe that liberalism is the left-most edge of the economic spectrum, precisely because it is the left-most point on the spectrum that doesn’t threaten their power.
True leftism threatens the power of capitalists. Liberalism is not leftism.
So, we’re all agreed then that tankies aren’t leftist, right? Because the claimed “communist” countries, such as Russia and China, are extremely capitalist in the worst possible ways.
Agreed. Leftists must not abide the consolidation or entrenchment of power & power (the two are the same).
Tankies justify this, and are therefore garden variety right wing authoritarians.
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Feature, not bug.
When I think of “neo-liberals”, I think of corporate Democrats. They serve their own set of wealthy oligarchs, and do minimal lip service to the needs of normal people. They are in the center. The right has gone completely off the spectrum into an authoritarian fascist nightmare. There are many billionaire oligarchs who fund them and create their media propaganda. I’m progressive. I suppose some think that is the “left”, but it’s really just wanting government policy which prioritizes the needs of working people.
but it’s really just wanting government policy which prioritizes the needs of working people.
A literal impossibility as long as capitalism exists
The Russian, Chinese, Iranian etc. governments, billionaires, fascists and the fossil fuel mafia use disinformation to drive wedges between factions of all people who want them to pay up. They use chaos operatives to divide us and cause strife among us. We are under attack by a global RW fascist insurgency. Let’s stand together and defeat them/it.
I’m struggling slightly to understand your point. Are you saying this in contrast to the point made in the post, as in stand together as leftist and liberals in the fight against fascism?
That’s what I’m asking. Yes.
I think the objection that myself and other leftists would offer, is that the fight is against fascism is fundamentally a fight against, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy, and that capitalism is in many ways a progenitor and protector of the other two. The wealth generated by capital, captures regulatory bodies, manipulates voters, generates disinformation, all in service of perpetuating itself. A notable example is in your own comment, the power of the capital used by the fossil fuel industries to influence elections, buy political power, misinform voters, because the base scientific reality is that their industry cannot function in a world that is inhabited by people.
So for fossil fuels and tangentially, billionaires, the global issues cannot be tackled without recognizing that the core of capitalism is itself a vital part of the building of fascism.
To re-frame this in hopes of giving insight, imagine we were talking about racial justice in America, and one party was arguing that with various other ways to fight inequality, the police as an institution, have fundamentally rotten, and end goal needs to be abolition. The other party argues that we need to come together and stop the right wing fascists like proud boys, et al, that support white supremacy. So when you say we need to come together and tackle the issues without dismantling the tools that are use to create them, it sounds hallow.
We need to dismantle the tools that create fascism.
Yes, including capitalism, it’s primary driver.
Absolutely. Billionaires are a scourge. (And millionaires) Greed is shit.
Indeed! So if liberalism as an ideology, wants to keep billionaires, don’t you think it’s a little counter to that logic to say liberals and leftists need to come together and not dismantle the primary driver of fascism?
Generally, liberals are too feckless to fight fascism. But if some of want to join, I guess so.
This is so weird to anyone outside the US because your ‘left’ party is …definitely not. In some countries they’re further right than right wing parties.
If you’re an Aussie there’s a whooole extra layer of joke here
Capitalist bastardisation of liberalism is not liberalism. Capitalism does not create freedom/liberty/rights unlike liberalism. Capitalist is always an antiliberal hierarchy.
Liberalism is anticapitalist by nature. So is leftism. They can overlap or they can be separate.
This is like saying “crony capitalism isn’t capitalism!” Let go of the word, it does not mean what you think it means.
Liberalism is an individualist ideology, stemming from the movement of wealthy professionals to gain independence from the nobility. It the movement had the power it did in the first place because of capitalism.
It is intrinsically tied to imperialism and the exploitation of people with less bargaining power. No number of prefixes or adjectives can change that.
The word means what it means. It helped people gain freedom from authoritarianism, and today that authority is held by capitalists. It’s just capitalist apologia to associate them together
And what does it mean? Because that’s a bold fucking thing to say when you haven’t put forth a definition, or anything thing tying it’s use to anti-capitalism.
Wanting the rich to pay a little more in tax, claiming you want to see more women in boardrooms and black-owned businesses, or announcing that you think that queer folks should have basic human rights isn’t anti-capitalism, but even through the myopic American lens of the world it’s the basic extreme of what a liberal is.
What I’m saying is that nobody needs to give value to how American capitalists appropriate the word. We can dismiss that newspeak
Looks like you too might benefit from some light reading:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
https://blacklikemao.medium.com/how-liberalism-helps-fascism-d4dbdcb199d9
You seem to be conflating capitalist “liberalism” with actual liberalism. I was trying to be very clear; there is nothing liberal under capitalism
And you seem to intentionally be missing the point because you’re a liberal who doesn’t like hearing what the word actually represents, so are trying to redefine it (or at best, cling to an outdated and now irrelevant definition).
So again - perhaps you might benefit from some light reading.
First: don’t assume
Second: you can do a test. List the attributes of liberalism and see which are true under capitalism. Add a ✔️ or ❌. For funsies, you can also check the overlap with anticapitalism or leftism or any other ideologies
After all, reality has a leftist-liberal-progressive bias
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Maybe an anarchist instance is the wrong place to laugh at freedom
