this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2024
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Define liberal please because I don't like being called one.
In the same way that some people will shill for billionaires or for some billionaire-owned company, aka a corporate shill. People who fail to see that (capitalist) companies are just a way to extract profit. In the same vein, some people fail to see that nation states are just instruments of power. Some are better than others in different ways of course, but I get real itchy when people jump to defend a nation at the first smidgeon of criticism. I hate nationalism.
Liberalism is the dominant ideology of capitalism, it is a wide set of social and political views that serve capitalism through the absorption of bourgeois attitides and its primsry vehicle of political legitimacy is bourgeois democracy, like parliamentarianism. Every person living under capitalism has absorbed some liberalism, including every anarchist and communist. But those who critically engage sufficiently can shed the label because they understand the system sufficiently and work against it.
You are repeatedly exoressing a litany of thoughts rooted in unexamined liberalism. One that is usually retained by baby leftists in Western countries is racism and xenophobia. They will see the value of organized labor and social justice but cannot tie it to imperislism and fall in line with who the Capitalists tell them is their enemy
What do you think of people who say it's hypocritical for queer people to support Palestine? Because to a socialist you sound like that when spreading imperialist pinkwashing against China.
A shill is someone paid to profess to have views other than their own. People shilling for a product makes sense, it is an old salesman tactic.
Who do you think is paying me to be right about China all the time?
On the contrary, every communist that has ever existed knows this. We write about it all the time. Projecting this liberalism onto communists is just telling on yourself.
Existing in the real world as we do, your "anti-nationalism" is really just nationalism in favor of Western powers, despite your professibg to be against them. You repeat their talking points! What do you think the outcome is of uncritically repeating sinophobic or russophobic falsehoods? Why do you think we are even talking about those two countries? It is because US empire has decided to focus on them as targets of derision and marginalization.
What, exact, nationalism are you pushing back against? What is making you itchy? Because all I see are people defending China against piss-poor talking points.
You say liberalism is dominant in capitalism, you say it has a wide set of mechanisms that serve it, you say everyone in a capitalist country absorb them. You do not elaborate on what those specific mechanisms are, you just say there are mechanisms. This is not a definition of liberal. This is you telling someone liberalism exists in, and is important to, capitalism.
I did not give an extensive definition because the self-description of liberalism, by liberals, is at odds with the historical actions of liberalism. It could be distracting and take a while to get the point across.
For example, liberalism self-defined with maximizing individual liberty while it also advocated for the "freedom" of corporations to work you as many hours as it could while shitting down your unionizing effort with violence. Liberalism also self-defined as favoring democracy and everyone having a say, but implemented this in a racist and sexist way that placed capital in charge while also colonizing others and depriving them of self-determination.
The common thread is really just that it is the dominant ideology of capitalism, its function is to extoll the virtues of capitalism and tying it to an illusion of liberation and self-determination while actually working against both of those things, as under capitalism, capital works against both struggles. The person that liberals have you read as foundational to liberalism, John Locke, worked to support an American settler colony and its slavery rules and explicitly supported child labor. Then, as today, there is a difference between how political figures present themselves and what their advocacy actually entails.
Now you have given a definition for liberalism. You could have done this in the previous reply, or could have just told the person no. Instead you gave a vague non-answer.
I actually have no given a definition of liberalism outside of the core I did originally. I have only listed a few self-claimed qualities and their inconsistency.
I also gave a rationale for why I went in this direction. Notice the complete lack of engagement with it.
Oh no, you did, you laid out the basic tenets of it's individualism, and how that has served capitalism. The last post you just said it served capitalism without elaborating on aspects of its individualistic ideas. You didn't get into depth, but you mentioned the very surface level concepts.
I didn't speak about individualism at all, actually.
It's not clear to me what your point is. Did you read my longer response to you? Do you have anything to say about it?
Uh.. what? I said you brought up how it held individualism as important, but the pitfalls of that in how it serves capitalism. This is a copy/paste of a line in your reply. How do you now deny this, when you said that?
Yes, I know what I said. I don't conflate a mention of individual liberty tp be the same as discussing individualism itself.
So do you have any point to make? Any response to the bulk of what I said?
gonna stop reading right here since I've stated I'm anticapitalist and it feels like going in circles. sorry but can only answer so many of these huge comments in a day. If there's an argument you really want me to engage with please let me know
Anyone can call themselves anything. Are they always correct?
If you deigned to keep reading, condescending liberal, you would find that I explained how this works.
No. You can reply to what I said if you want to discuss this topic or you can acknowledge that you aren't ready to discuss these things. This is not asking very much. I'm not asking you to read a book. It is about 3 average-sized paragraphs worth of text. I am not holding you to a deadline, either. But you can't just dance around in bad faith and expect patient responses.
Holy fucking shit what a coward you are. This person @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml has done more in good faith to actually educate you about things no leftist should be ignorant about than you deserve. You have this tremendous opportunity to genuinely learn from someone with a wealth of knowledge and actually deepen your understanding of the world and even the ideology you claim to subscribe to, but instead you plug your ears and pretend there's nothing to be gleaned from this generous education you're being offered all because it conflicts with your preconceptions, your misconceptions which is cognitively uncomfortable. But that really does just come down to cowardice. I hope one day you can recognize this, recognize the importance of and necessity for self crit. If not, you'll forever be stuck as you are, the proverbial useful idiot for the same empire you claim to wish to see an end to.