Ohhh, a juicy struggle sesh!
Good post, too.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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It's amazing just how accurately Huxley describes what we see happening in the west today.
~~Nice title which suggests you have absolutely no idea what liberal means (in this or any other context) and you thought this was an attack against liberals.~~
Update:
I made a mistake. I didn't notice the actual community name and had a knee-jerk reaction to the subject as an attack on "liberals" as is commonly used when talking about politics in the U.S.
In review, I see that you are having a more intellectual conversation and I should have taken more time to see that in the first place. Apologies.
Seems that it is in fact you who have no clue what liberalism is. Liberal democracies are dictatorships of capital, and they quickly pull off their mask in times of crisis. Freedom under liberalism primarily refers to freedom of those who own private property to exploit others for their benefit. The imposition of the capitalist system that is at the root of liberalism is fundamentally based on violence and coercion, forcing individuals to conform to its principles or face dire consequences.
Liberalism has two distinct aspects: political liberalism, which champions individual freedom and democracy, and economic liberalism, which is synonymous with capitalism. While appearing compatible, the two faces of liberalism clash once the interests of capital come under threat. Political liberties are inevitably sacrificed to protect the economic interests of the ruling class.
When threatened by populism, liberalism readily abandons its political ideals in favor of preserving the capitalist economic system. It ultimately serves as nothing more than a mask for capitalism, concealing its exploitative nature behind a facade of individual freedom and democracy.
The concept of property, central to liberalism, is presented as a cornerstone of freedom. However, it ignores the fact that individual property can represent a theft from the community, and its protection justifies state violence. Liberalism’s commitment to freedom of expression is undermined by its legal and constitutional protections of property, which remove the issue of property rights from the realm of political discourse.
I have updated my original comment. Thank you for your response.
👍
We do know what “liberal” means. Here is very first sentence from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law.
By “private property,” what is meant is “the means of production.” Liberalism is the philosophy of the bourgeoisie, otherwise known as the capitalist class.
I have updated my original comment. Thank you for your response.
Private property isn't as supportive of capitalism as it initially seems. Classical laborists (e.g. Proudhon) and their modern intellectual descendants (e.g. David Ellerman) argue that the positive and negative results of production are the private property of the workers in the firm. This argument immediately implies a worker coop structure mandate on all firms and rules out capitalism. Capitalism is so indefensible that even private property requires the abolition of capitalism
Private property isn’t as supportive of capitalism as it initially seems.
Private property is the very foundation of capitalism. The capitalist class owns the means of production, and the working class must sell the only thing it can—its labor—to survive.
Classical laborists (e.g. Proudhon) and their modern intellectual descendants (e.g. David Ellerman) argue that the positive and negative results of production are the private property of the workers in the firm.
They can argue that all they like, but the facts on the ground are that the capitalists own the private property, and the state enforces that ownership though its monopoly on violence. It’s a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, usually in the form of bourgeois democracy, and occasionally, in times of crisis, in the form of fascism.
Private property rests on the principle of people getting the fruits of their labor. In other words, private property appropriation has a labor-basis that capitalism denies. Capitalism violates the very principle behind private property by giving workers 0% joint claim on the positive and negative fruits of their labor
"Property is theft!" -- Proudhon
The employment contract is what really enables capitalist appropriation.
I agree with your critique of capitalist liberal democracy