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Exactly, heavy taxation on the ultra wealthy and wealth caps are incredibly popular topics in liberal circles. I swear some people have never actually talked to a liberal and just attack some strawman they’ve lumped in together with conservatives.
I’m leftist and anti-capitalist, but I also recognize that most liberals are people who want the same things leftists do, but simply haven’t thought deeply enough about what the true root causes of society’s issues are. It’s an issue of tactics rather than a fundamental disconnect in core principles and values. Ultimately they want a more equitable, less stratified society where society helps and supports the disenfranchised. The same thing leftists want. They just don’t understand that capitalism has to go in order to achieve it.
Liberals, unlike conservatives, are actually generally quite reasonable people since they aren’t motivated by hatred. As leftists, we should be doing everything we can to educate them and bring them into the fold, rather than tearing them down.
I think you are being overly generous here. The number of middle class or wealthy liberals who want meaningful wealth distribution is vanishingly small. I’ll leave this comment because I agree with your closing sentiment, but please be mindful of rule 3. This is a space for lefty memes, not involved political discussion, or liberal apologia.
Well said. Education over isolation is the only way we’ll move forward.
Liberals are Centrist they’ve always been centrists for 400 years.
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You’re complaining about making the political axis reductive and yet your entire comment completely ignores the existence of actual French leftists during the revolution. The Liberals in France might have helped to begin the revolution, and they were certainly the ones that help to end the revolution, but they weren’t the only members of the revolution. They helped to murder and destroy the French left During the Revolution and in the years that came after. Surely you aren’t arguing that Babeuf was a liberal? But his mere existence shows the great flaw in your theory. The French liberals were to the right of him and a number of other French revolutionaries. So how could they be the extreme radicals you claim they were?
You can only say that Liberals are the left if you’re looking at it solely from the perspective of extreme conservatives and regressives. Yes if that’s the only way you view history is through their eyes then everything can look leftist. That does not mean it is though. The Liberals of the American and French Revolution were those that that wished for the culmination and empowerment the burgiose. The ascendancy of the capitalist class. Nobody who works for this ascendancy can be called leftist. You’re basically making the Overton window argument. That because we are at a time of extreme right wing thought that centrism would have been only moderately right wing. We know that’s not true. Just look at the Shakers in England during their Civil War. A people most would classify as a Proto communist movement.
The concept of Centrism that modern Centrists jerk themselves to sleep over is the idea of “hearing both sides” of an argument and establishing a compromise position.
I’m curious who you think Robespierre was compromising with.
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What you are saying fits the american “liberal” label. What you are describing I would call social democrat, not a liberal. People calling themselves liberal in europe are, examples from sweden: compares public insight into publicly funded privatly owned companies to soviet, are for privatization of welfare institutions, collaborates with the far right, calls rightwing newspapers communist, and are against free speech at universities.
To be fair though, the meme is probably targeting socdems anyway so I guess fair enough.
Aren’t SocDems a type of liberal?
Yes. And so are non ancap libertarians.
It’s a pretty broad label that covers basically everyone that believes in some form of democracy and capitalism. The combination of Americentrism and declining public education that created the “liberal is when Democrats” is… Annoying.
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What’s most important is that you get to feel smugly superior.
The irony of you saying this is earth-shattering.
k
Thanks for thinking about me!
No need to thank me. I’ll always will be dedicating all my thoughts and prayers to the shitlibs.
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never heard of the “thoughts and prayers” trope eh? I guess I expected too much of you.
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You pretend the comment I was responding to was trying to discuss in good faith?
Very mature
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“Discuss in good faith”
Reads comments…
Hey look it’s the guy in the meme!!!
Liberals absolutely arent centrists, Social Democrats are centrist. Liberals are right wing, fundamentally you cannot be a leftist while supporting a “free” capitalist economy and minimal government (thats what Liberalism is).
Nah dude a liberal can be right wing and another lib can be left. You can be a liberal soc dem if you want
There is a set definition for what liberalism is.
Because it considers private property a core foundation it literally can’t be left wing. Leftists (whether socialists or anarchists) believe private (not personal) property should be abolished.
From your linked article:
The diversity of liberalism can be gleaned from the numerous qualifiers that liberal thinkers and movements have attached to the term “liberalism”, including classical, egalitarian, economic, social, the welfare state, ethical, humanist, deontological, perfectionist, democratic, and institutional, to name a few. Despite these variations, liberal thought does exhibit a few definite and fundamental conceptions.
Yup. A single set definition alright.🙄
And they all still enshrine the sanctity of private property which was my point when referencing the definition. All the variations of liberalism still boil down to a capitalist ideology.
Again, this meme is suggesting that liberals are against any form of wealth redistribution. Capitalism and wealth redistribution are not mutually exclusive. Social programs, funded through taxation, is a form of wealth redistribution commonly found in capitalist nations.
Didn’t say you couldn’t attempt some wealth redistribution under capitalism but it’s not really related to what the discussion was. The left/right dichotomy for political economics isn’t based on whether there’s an attempt at wealth redistribution it’s whether the economic system is capitalism.
Also at the end of the day you can try to gain concessions from the capitalist class through social programs but there’s a hard limit on what will be allowed and as soon as the capitalist class is able to they will push for austerity for the working class. It’s been seen numerous times in history.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum
You don’t define what’s left and what is right. Most people agree that liberal can mean left, central, right or right wing
I accidently responded to the wrong message last time. In the vast majority of countries Liberal is right wing, America is an outlier because of the red scare. Fundamentally Liberalism isnt left wing, its just the most left wing option Americans have so they they see it as left wing. Fundamentally if you believe in private property, capitalism, few social programs, funding genocide, and imperialism you are a right winger.
(Ex: the German political spectrum)
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What are the tenants of the neoliberalism economic philosophy?
Edit: not saying the philosophy definition is the only def, just pointing out there are multiple common usages so when someone says ‘liberal’ without defining the term it’s ambiguous.
Classic liberalism =/= neoliberalism
The meme doesn’t say neoliberals. It says liberals.
“Not like that! We meant we should debate whether trans people should exist or not! Redistributing wealth is just evil.”
“OK FINE! You can own the means of sexual reproduction if you stay the hell away from the means of production, ya pleb!”
“Actually, scratch that, we need more wage slaves to make line go up.”
The only wealth redistribution they allow is from the poor to the rich. Bonus points if they can:
- Increase tax pressure on the poor.
- Make it so the poor vote for tax cuts.
- Hand out said tax cuts to the rich.
- Profit from “donations”.
The liberal play book is so dumb and yet so effective.
EDIT: To all those that got offended by the dunk on liberals, consider this: When did your liberal government in practice and in a meaningful capacity increase tax pressure on the rich and allocate the increased funds to the benefit of the poor? Also, if you are not for more equitable redistribution of wealth, what are you even doing in this community?
You’re forgetting the vehicle of modern plundering: the Corporation
The corporation is the weapon the capitalist class uses to make liberal democracies into dictatorships of the bourgeoisie.
They don’t only exploit human resources but also natural resources and communal resources.
The extraction of surplus value is usually done with no regard for and to the direct detriment of the well-being of the foundation on which value is being created.
You spelled conservative wrong buddy
US liberals are conservatives where I am from.
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I am living in a liberal (social) democracy and can give numerous reasons as to how and why it is currently failing, even as it is internally miles ahead of any shithole capitalist hellscape such as the US. Goals and ideals matter if they are based upon a factual understanding of material reality.
I am much more interested in a qualitative argument about socialist policy founded on proper material conditions, rather than what you deem to be the historical, and thus I infer the inevitable future, truth of a socialist system.
I am also not going to engage with effort if I do not see some effort in return, which I really do not at the moment.
I am much more interested in a qualitative argument about socialist policy founded on proper material conditions, rather than what you deem to be the historical, and thus I infer the inevitable future, truth of a socialist system.
… while fixating on the historical and therefore inevitable failures of any alternative.
Effort would be wasted against a double standard. If you only want to discuss practice, then the only relevant comparisons are to other real things that already happened. If you get to defend how and why those countries fucked up, by appealing to goals and ideals, and saying they were just shit at doing them - so does everyone else.
This conversation is never worth having unless it’s apples-to-apples.
Things rarely go “swimmingly” for the left because it fights against existing power structures, and those power structures fight back. And the countries that tend to have socialist revolutions also tend to start out with terrible conditions, bad enough for people to rise up, and then made worse by the devastation of conflict. Then they have to grapple with future threats from invasions, sanctions, and clandestine subversion.
In spite of this, many socialist countries have made major improvements to people’s lives, especially in comparison to what the previous regime had been doing.
For example, Cuba was a gangster state under the dictator Batista, who was in league with the American Mafia and plundered the country for his own profits and those of wealthy plantation owners. After the revolution, in spite of sanctions, life expectancy improved greatly surpassed the US, literacy skyrocketed, and the country now has the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, who are regularly sent abroad to provide aid. Cuba recently (2022) passed an amendment to its constitution which greatly strengthened LGBT rights and gender equality.
Not really, the ones that had promise were conquered by capitalists, and all states should be abolished anyways.
Do you have any examples of right wing governments that don’t primarily exist to protect the interests of their oligarchy?
Stalin and Mao, famous capitalists. Yeah? Otherwise, no, history has some prime examples of leftists fucking things up amongst themselves.
If you’d like to compare those historical examples to theory, instead of defending them purely as-they-were - great. But then so would anyone discussing any liberal democracy. It would be dishonest to demand a defense of practice alone unless we’re judging against practice alone.
Hear me out, this isnt a flame.
The word liberal has lost some of its historic connotations.
I am a believer in Economic Liberalism, broadly defined as;
Economic liberals tend to oppose government intervention and protectionism in the market economy when it inhibits free trade and competition, but tend to support government intervention where it protects property rights, opens new markets or funds market growth, and resolves market failures.[2]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism
Genuine question: Which party do I vote for?
As I see it, none of them are championing economic liberalism.
Note: before someone replies with: what about climate change, inequality etc. These are market failures that Economic liberals believe should be fixed by government.
As I see it, liberal economics is politically dead.
Do you think the government should enforce some limits on wealth accumulation? Genuine question, because this doesn’t appear on neither the pro nor con lists in that definition and I’d like to hear a take of a self described economic liberal on this
I don’t think total accumulation of wealth would be a problem in itself IF it was taxed properly.
If I was in charge I’d do the following:
- Simplify the tax code and remove exemptions.
- Set a threshold for inheritance tax, say $5m, and tax anything above that at close to 100%.
- Setup a department to review and adapt to tax avoidance strategies I.e. billionaires taking out loans to avoid paying themselves in dividends, which would have been taxed.
- Make the tax code progressive e.g. you pay more tax the more you earn. Set this up for capital, income, pension etc. Tax it all at the same level.
I think this provides enough of an incentive to work hard but removes the inter generational plutocracy issues.
Equality of opportunity and all that.
P.S. In my opinion, the accountancy profession should not need to exist. Rules should be simple enough for an average person to follow.
Markets can only fail so long before the ideology that requires them to be bailed out dies with them.
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If you think someone can “earn” a billion dollars, you’re beyond saving. You get that through exploiting laborers, not your own labor.
This is satire right? Like 9/10 satire of a neolib there, I almost believed you were suggesting labor didn’t make the wealth hoarded by nonlabor.
