• @[email protected]
    8•3 days ago

    See the problem with this stupid labeling is that everyone has a different definition so no one knows what the fuck anyone else is saying. Just knock it off with the labels, attribute the quality or idea you mean instead of a lazy fucking label…

    You know how many conversations Ive been in where i was confused until i realized the word meant different things to us. Seriously the labeling in politics is getting out of control, everyone groups everything up into a category because it makes it easy to manipulate people against it, so noone knows what the word means anymore because everyone is defining it as something different every day.

    Not using labels is double plus good…

      • @[email protected]
        1•2 days ago

        Around 15-20 years ago these idiots so easily manipulated with labels in the US were only on the fringe (or at a minimum, less obvious in their existence), now they’re a political force. Do not sit there in smug self assurance that it definitely cant happen there, because that’s how it begins…

        Then again I dont think the first world countries have the world have been cutting education for decades now. And you also didnt have Regan and Citizens United.

      • @[email protected]
        4•2 days ago

        It fits alot of topics. People just stop learning by middle school and go through their lives ignorant to the world outside of their limited personal experience. It’s not surprising that the world’s population is so easily manipulated into being scared of everything…

  • @[email protected]
    17•3 days ago

    Remember the poem? ‘First they came for the communists’. They never came for the liberals, they worked with them. There has always been a difference, and there will always be a difference.

    • @[email protected]
      5•3 days ago

      “Fun” fact about the quote (or poem) you refer to: It’s by Martin Niemöller and meant in a self critical way. He was a conservative Christian and really couldn’t bother about godless communists or Jews. Only when they came after him we woke up.

  • @[email protected]
    31•4 days ago

    I think european liberals would rather work with fascists than even collaborate with the left, let alone call themselves “left”… oh, wait, they do.

    • Waryle
      15•3 days ago

      Macron is turbo economical liberalism, and he does everything he can to not be affiliated with the left.

      He even dissolved the Assemblée Nationale (our Parliament), and when a left-wing coalition came out on top, which should have secured them the prime minister’s seat, Macron delayed the appointment for months trying to buy time for the right to secure an agreement with the far right, and ended up choosing a prime minister from a right-wing party who did had only 7% of votes.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•4 days ago

      US liberals also would rather work with fascists, but they would call themselves left regardless.

  • @[email protected]
    20•3 days ago

    By definition absolutely. But most countries’ “Liberal Party” is almost always conservative.

    • @[email protected]English
      20•3 days ago

      Not by definition at all.

      A political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.

      It’s not necessarily right either, but it’s closer to that than left.

      • @[email protected]
        9•3 days ago

        Just to add a little bit to it:

        “The greatest good for the greatest number”, a basic leftwing principle, sometimes collides with “everybody should be free to do what they want with their own things and willing adults”, a basic liberal principle, for example when it comes to some people excessivelly hoarding resources or using their ownership of an exclusive resource to extract rents from others, because it goes against the “greatest good for the greatest number” even whilst it is aligned with the whole freedom to do what they want with their own things.

        At other times both are perfectly aligned: for example when it comes to the freedom from discrimination for those with a different sexual orientation than the majority, since that freedom both fulfills the “the greatest good” principle and the “freedom to do what they want” one.

        Now, if one really digs down on it, maximum freedom turns out to actually require different ownership laws (if exclusive resources have owners rather than being shared, then the freedom of the non-owners is being restricted), but in decades of following and even being involved in politics, I have yet to hear a single Liberal (even those who supposedly are not Neoliberal) even mention that specific form (probably the most widespread and highest impact one) of restriction on the Freedom of most people, much less suggest changing it.

    • @[email protected]
      82•4 days ago

      I think the best way to put it is that a leftist is someone who believes that workers should own the wealth that they create, while a liberal is someone believes in “socially progressive causes” without examining the underlying systems that bring about the necessity of “socially progressive causes”.

      For example, a liberal would want more woman CEOs, while a leftist would want to get rid of CEOs.

      • JayTreeman
        37•4 days ago

        Slight addendum: liberals fight against any real progress until it’s inevitable and then take credit

      • @[email protected]
        5•3 days ago

        Liberals want to throw money at problems forever, Leftist want to tackle the root causes so they end.

        Liberals are licking the wounds, leftists are applying antibiotic and bandages

          • Optional
            6•4 days ago

            Neat. How do they do that? Big zoom meeting or something?

            • @[email protected]
              3•3 days ago

              Democratically, generally.

              It doesn’t mean everybody has to decide and approve everything, but you could vote for who does. That’s one method, at least. Some workplaces might find having no management at all better. But the important thing is it’s up to the workers (who are also the owners)

              • Optional
                2•3 days ago

                Right but technically how does it happen? Does everyone have to gather in the same room? Mail-in votes? How long does it take? Are there ‘campaigns’ for leaders?

                I don’t mean to suggest it’s bad, just that it seems really slow and potentially problematic from a lot of angles that current corporate structure doesn’t have.

        • @[email protected]
          13•4 days ago

          That’s a fair question, but there are many different answers. Not all leftist schools of thought fully advocate for removing a management style hierarchy, though some do. Some ideas push for rotating management with either a round robin selection, a raffle system, or democratically elected managers. Not dissimilar to how many countries run their governments.

          Alternatively, if it fits the workflow, a flat style structure where no one inherently has a defined role, so teams form naturally to work on what they want or deem necessary. Someone will still often fill the role of “project manager” mind you, but the who and how are determined based on what works best for the situation. Not unlike letting students form their own groups for projects.

          If you are genuinely curious, there is no shortage of books, YouTube videos, and websites just waiting to opine about their preferred methodology that would give you a much more authentic and robust understanding. Or I bet if you thought about it, you could even come up with some variations yourself.

          The important point to get across for leftists is that the structure of economic production should be such that its aim is to benefit the general populace as evenly or equitably as possible. This is opposed to an “owner class” who uses their power, usually in the form of wealth, to take control the economic means of production, who then sets out to have the workers create more value than they will be given in return, so that the “owner” can take the excess value generated by the workers to increase their own wealth and/or power.

          tl;dr
          The lynchpin question for leftists isn’t “who runs the factory?”, but “who reaps the rewards?”.

          • Optional
            1•4 days ago

            It sounds very theoretical. I don’t know of a large modern example.

            The main problem with organizing work is that it’s very very difficult to do and the more people involved the more difficult it is. A hierarchical structure may not be ideal, but as with American democracy, it’s the worst thing we can think of besides everything else that has been tried.

            tl;dr
            The lynchpin question for leftists isn’t “who runs the factory?”, but “who reaps the rewards?”.

            See, I would look at that as the linchpin question for capitalists.

            • @[email protected]
              10•4 days ago

              I like how you scrolled past a comment with a huge list of worker co-ops just in the US (there are also multinational ones) to tell someone else that it sounded too theoretical and complicated to work, lmao.

            • @[email protected]
              6•4 days ago

              See, I would look at that as the linchpin question for capitalists.

              I mean, it is the lynchpin question for capitalists as well, the origination of modern leftist thought was a critique of capitalism. They basically share all of the same questions.

              And it is difficult to do, though no more difficult than our current systems. Large scale systems are always hard to manage. But how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. We don’t need to completely undo society to start moving towards a more equitable future.

              And it is highly theoretical, no doubt about that. That’s how you start to improve anything, you theorize about solutions, impliment the best ones you can, and iterate overtime.

              A hierarchical structure may not be ideal, but as with American democracy, it’s the worst thing we can think of besides everything else that has been tried.

              That’s not actually true, work has been organized in a multitude of ways throughout history to various levels of effectiveness. And the outcomes of these structures have been largely situational. Saying hierarchical structures are the “least worst” is a broad generalization. Also, as I already pointed out, not all schools of leftist thought do away with hierarchy in the management of work. The only thing leftist schools of thought universally push for is changing the distribution model of value generated from said work.

              Though if hierarchical structures are kept, how the hierarchy is determined is obviously usually changed as well. Given that our current model ties these decisions to the “owner” of the business, who’s status as owner would need to be removed or at least reimagined to work within the new value distribution model.

              Also, I have to refute your “American Democracy is the worst thing we have tried except all the others”. That is just a thought killing statement meant to prevent discussions of better options.

              We know for a fact that capitalism creates an ultra wealthy class that is comprised of a very small percentage of the population while also leaving a significant portion of the population in abject poverty. Even when it has the resources to support it’s entire population, at least at a “base necessities” level, as is the case in America.

              You could argue that you don’t agree with the various solutions presented by any and all leftist (though it sounds like you really haven’t bothered to research it either), but understand that it is this inherent and unnecessary cruelty that pushes people to seek out a better system. And from a leftists point of view, every single person in poverty is a failure of the current system, every person who dies from inadequate health care coverage a reason to rework our systems, every extravagant dinner a billionaire eats while a child goes hungry proof that this system is in dire need of change.

              Maybe you believe capitalism is somehow the best solution to these problems, and that we could do no better, that we truly have reached the “end of history”, but I doubt it. But if you think we could do more to help people, then you too might be more of a leftist than you realize.

              And while most of us on the “far left” would love to see a future where we do away with the capitalist class, most of us would settle for health care and school lunches in the near future for now.

      • @[email protected]English
        3•4 days ago

        Liberalism stands for individual liberty, equality before the law, political freedom, government limited by a constitution and the sanctity of private property (and capitalism). The last point is the most important when making the distinction.

    • @[email protected]
      25•4 days ago

      Both Classical Liberalism and Neoliberalism are at their core capitalist ideologies. While the Republican party is more conservative in both social and economic issues, both parties still operate within the framework of neoliberalism.

      In America we only have the Democrat and Republican Parties which are usually labeled as Liberal and Conservative respectively. Since the Democratic party is relatively left of the Republican party, we see the conflation of the label Liberal and Left in American politics. But that’s not really accurate when looking at the Ideologies of the parties.

      There is Social Democracy, which is still a capitalist ideology where some of the profits are redirected towards social welfare. This is more common in Western Europe and will still rachet towards Fascism.

      Leftist ideologies, such as Socialism and Anarchism are fundamentally anti-capitalist, unlike liberalism and neoliberalism. Richard Wolff explains socialism and capitalism very well.

      On Liberalism:

      What is neoliberalism? A political scientist explains the use and evolution of the term

      Liberalism and Neoliberalism

      How the Democrats Traded the New Deal for Neoliberalism

      On Leftist ideologies:

      Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Communism and Revolutions

      Capitalism, Global Poverty, and the Case for Democratic Socialism

      • @[email protected]
        5•3 days ago

        Well if soc dems aren’t left then i guess I’m not left.

        I didn’t know we were taking anything left of soc dem seriously yet, as we haven’t proven any sort of successful means of governing people that far left.

        • @[email protected]
          6•3 days ago

          Worker cooperatives already exist. I recommend reading or listening to Richard Wolff about what differentiates socialism and capitalism from each other.

          Social Democracy is State-regulated Private Capitalism. The same contradictions between the Capital owners and workers still exist, leading to the same problems. This is why we also see a rise in Fascism in Western Europe.

          Securing social democratic reforms of the sort won in the 1930s (such as taxation of corporations and the rich to support mass social services and jobs) requires much more than mere state regulation of private capitalism. The forces behind private capitalism mobilized to retake full control of the state in ways designed to preclude any repeat of New Deal or social democratic responses to crises.

          Richard D. Wolff | Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees

          • @[email protected]
            3•3 days ago

            Worker cooperatives can’t run an entire country. They can barely run a single business, but only if the business is small.

            • @[email protected]
              7•3 days ago

              That’s not true. It’s simply a democratic structure. All workers share in ownership instead of a private few. Profits are not horded, they are reinvested into either more compensation for the workers or into the business. If you think Democracy can’t run a country I disagree.

              • @[email protected]
                1•3 days ago

                I’m familiar with the concept, you don’t need to explain it. I’m just saying it can’t work in the real world yet

                • Vivian (they/them)
                  3•3 days ago

                  It does work though?

                  For example Duralex, a famous French glass tableware/kitchenware manufacturer, started transitioning to a worker cooperative in July of this year. This is a company that has like 25 million euros in revenue per year (2023), so I don’t think we can consider it “small”.

                  This was approved by the Commercial Court of Orléans fyi and I don’t think they’d have done that if it “can’t work in the real world”.

      • J Lou
        2•3 days ago

        At its core, liberalism is fairly anti-capitalist. There are many arguments against capitalism from liberal principles such as the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. The workers in the firm are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but receive 0% claim on the positive and negative production while the employer solely appropriates 100% of the positive and negative result of production

        @politicalmemes

        • @[email protected]
          7•3 days ago

          I Strongly disagree. The capitalist mode of production is axiomatic to Liberalism. Private ownership of the means of production is what is being referenced, not personal property. The alternative, a socialist mode of production, where companies are owned and governed in a democratic structure by all the workers, is completely viable. It’s a democratization of the workplace and economy.

          Locke saw individual liberty as defined through private property, contract, and market—in other words, by individual ownership of economic possessions that could not be arbitrarily usurped by the state. Freedom for Locke amounted to more than absence from external restraint; it also meant living in conformity with a nonarbitrary law (to his left critics, a protocapitalist law) to which the individual had consented.

          • J Lou
            1•3 days ago

            Liberalism refers to both a coherent political philosophy and a historical political tendency. The former liberalism is anti-capitalist. Yes many historical liberals were pro-capitalism, but this position makes their liberalism incoherent.

            Private property rests on the principle that workers have an inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Capitalism violates this norm. Locke was wrong

            A market economy of worker coops isn’t socialism

            @politicalmemes

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      16•4 days ago

      From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics:

      Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies.

      …

      In modern politics, the term Left typically applies to ideologies and movements to the left of classical liberalism, supporting some degree of democracy in the economic sphere. Today, ideologies such as social liberalism and social democracy are considered to be centre-left, while the Left is typically reserved for movements more critical of capitalism, including the labour movement, socialism, anarchism, communism, Marxism and syndicalism

      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. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.

      (Emphasis added)

      Basically, liberals care more about equality of opportunity, while leftists care more about equality of outcome. (And, of course, conservatives actively oppose equality and promote hierarchy.)

      On a “political compass,” leftism is the left half (obviously). Liberalism is a fuzzy blob centered somewhere below and right of center, but big enough to extend at least a little ways into the other quadrants because of how many different kinds of “liberalism” there are.

    • sp3ctr4l
      12•4 days ago

      Liberals view the status quo (the underlying mechanisms of the government, economy and society) as sacrosanct, legitimate, that it just needs to and will allow itself to be tweaked a bit, that the rules must be followed lest we collapse into chaos.

      Leftists view the status quo as widely illegitimate, that a vast multitude of the rules which society operates by are contemptible and functionally evil, and are willing to break the rules to meaningfully change society, that often the entire point is that breaking rules is the only way to establish newer and more just ones.

      …

      Liberals view Leftists as an extreme part of their fold because they often have similar goals.

      Leftists view Liberals as often sharing goals, but as ultimately delusional, magical-thinking self righteous fools, as their methods of achieving these often similar goals are laughably naive, impotent and ineffective, thus functionally making them into conservatives.

    • @[email protected]
      7•4 days ago

      You can pretty much boil it down to Liberalism is capitalist, leftism isn’t (although where the line is depends who you ask and how left they are).

      The confusion mostly comes from from conservative neoliberals lumping social liberals in with the left, even though they’re only separated by a philosophical debate on what “individual freedoms” are and if they’re more important than a completely unregulated economy or not.

    • @[email protected]
      6•4 days ago

      Conservatives want us to go backwards. Liberals want us to stay the same Leftists want us to go forward

    • Omega
      7•4 days ago

      Leftists are semi-radical progressives.
      Progressives are liberals.
      Liberals are conservatives.
      Conservatives are authoritarians.

      • @[email protected]English
        10•4 days ago

        Based on what? Do I need a matrix to keep track of this stuff? What’s a label and what’s an adjective here?

        • Optional
          8•4 days ago

          About 8 months before the election a bunch of people claiming to be . . Uh . . not . . liberal . . . started posting everywhere about how genocide Joe was going to destroy us all and how liberals were evil scum and apparently they hate trans people too or something.

          The whole operation was textbook russian disinfo, but it was also really-young-people-pissed-at-the-lack-of-immediate-change-towards-luxury-gay-space-communism, which, I’m pretty sure most of us went through at some point.

          TL;DR: yeah, I dunno.

        • Omega
          2•4 days ago

          If you look at the American political spectrum of non-Authoritarians, progressives are the ones pushing for change to fix everything, liberals want to make smaller more conservative changes. Both work together to help America debating on more drastic or more mild tweaks.

          Republicans have policies to dominate the population and maximize profits for the rich. They don’t exist on the liberal-conservative spectrum as a party, except incidentally.

        • @[email protected]
          2•4 days ago

          Just one simple rule i think. After plotting all political ideologies on a line left to right:

          Person A claims they’re at X point on line of political spectrum. You can probably safely assume where they actually are is at X+1 (to the right) subconsciously.

          So liberals are actually probably more right than they think, is what the meme is saying at least

    • @[email protected]
      1•4 days ago

      that’s the biggest difference between the two groups: the leftists are at least vaguely aware that something in our system is not right and the liberals don’t care to pay attention because they’re too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.

  • Omega
    28•4 days ago

    We need to start calling liberals what they are. Conservatives.

    And we need to start calling the conservatives what they are. Authoritarian elites.

    • @BoobaAwooga
      8•4 days ago

      Go touch grass. You’d rather divide the left instead of unite and push back against actual fascism. Only people who say this sort of shit are people who are chronically online and completely disconnected from reality

      • Omega
        12•4 days ago

        Get your head out of your ass. There’s a reason why Progressives keep getting frustrated. We’re literally the liberals reaching across the aisle and voting for conservatives. It’s not condemnation, it’s just reality.

        And I’ll vote for a conservative who supports freedom over an authoritarian any day. If anything it’s admirable that that both the liberals and conservatives in the party work together as well as they do.

        We are the freedom party. And the other party is authoritarian.

    • @[email protected]
      13•3 days ago

      Not really, no.

      The Nazis let a liberal party live as “opposition.”

      The socialists got purged.

        • @[email protected]
          5•3 days ago

          Sorry, it wasn’t phrased well. The Nazis let the members of the Zentrum live and sometimes maintain their positions, partly thanks to their strong ties or leadership roles in the Catholic Church. It wasn’t even actually dissolved by the Nazis, unlike their competition, they voluntarily dissolved after losing support and it was afterwards that the Nazis passed the Law Against the Formation of Parties.

    • @[email protected]
      10•4 days ago

      Honestly, that’s just it. You’ll get people on the right using hyped rhetoric about “the left”, “liberals”, “leftists” and other synonyms that can be used to describe anyone from Hillary Clinton to AOC and beyond. Are there people (particularly in the “and beyond” category) that an average person may be concerned with? Sure. Are they clearly explaining that they don’t mean half the country? Absolutely not.

    • @[email protected]
      1•3 days ago

      For the average Republican voter yes. Neo-Nazis and rulers are probably more intelligent though.

  • @[email protected]
    20•4 days ago

    Left-wing can be relative to the nation. The most meaningful faction of American “left” is the Democratic Party. The global definition is based on socialist vs capitalist ideological splits, in which all forms of ideological liberalism are right wing or, in the case of social democracy, arguably what centrist actually means.

    The Democratic Party is therefore left-wing internally and right-wing globally, thus people saying “America does not have a left wing.”

    Leftists are socialists. It is not relative. Democrats are not leftists. Bernie Sanders is, as a democratic socialist. You are not “An American leftist” because you like billionaires existing but don’t want to genocide brown and gay people. That’s just liberalism as it is supposed to be.

    This is also why a leftist would deny that “liberalism” is left wing. Liberalism is a broad ideological judgement and can be assumed to be using the global standards as a result, America does not have sole claim to defining it. So American liberals are the American left, but liberalism itself is right-wing.

    This really isn’t that complicated if you know the basic meanings of the words in question, which is why liberals find it so confusing. Liberalism is the status quo position of the American electorate and moving beyond it requires education while going along with the binary party politics does not.

    Edit: this was supposed to be a response to the first comment instead of me telling OP things they already know

  • @[email protected]
    5•4 days ago

    Americans are so divisive they love to hate even on their own side. No true leftists, according to all of them

  • @[email protected]
    3•4 days ago

    So this election was lost hard because of infighting and the resulting apathy so great thanks for adding more infighting by shitting on the inferior “liberals”

    • @[email protected]English
      3•4 days ago

      When I hear “liberal” or “left” now, all I hear is, “infighting little bitches with 1,000 messages and no focus”. I hear FAILURE.

      • @[email protected]
        2•3 days ago

        People, who I can tell from your tone already, might’ve voted until reading the kind of shit you’d write and then use that as an excuse to stay home, are a large part of the reason Trump got close to the same number of votes 4 years ago but Kamala got several million less than Biden did.

        The point is that I don’t give a fuck what they call themselves or what various things they believe differently than me, I just needed their vote. And the purity tests damn sure did not work in favor of that.

        Do you honestly think there is any chance in hell that scolding people for not being left enough got anyone to vote for Harris?

        • @[email protected]
          1•2 days ago

          I think your boogeyman leftist who scolds people who wanna vote Harris had a marginal to no effect on the results.

          In my opinion people who vote Trump are of course racist and misogynist but also desperate for change. And I think they are stuck in Republican media that tells them Trump doesn’t really wanna infringe women’s rights that much and immigrants are roving the country, wrecking communities. They are stuck with sky high cost of living with no change in their wages for decades and to them Trump will bring change to the system, I don’t know why but apparently they do. And his solution is outlaw being different. You and I know that’s not a solution to anything, but they buy it.

          I believe their plight is real, although their world view about other people and what the real problem is has nothing to do with reality. But Democrat messaging amounts to “everything is fine, we’ll keep everything the same” and nobody believes that. Harris has some good policies that she brought up once or twice, but for the most part she goes with the 50k home loan if you’ve been a good kid thing. That won’t change shit for people who aren’t even close to buying a house. Lead your campaign with anti price gouging policies for example if you want to campaign with something people want and understand. I could go on a rant about catering to right wing voters as well and how it’s a stupid strategy.

          The problem people like you seem to have is your belief that people are only obligated to vote Kamala and that you expect them to have the same level of trust in the Democratic party as you. They aren’t and they don’t. The party establishment insist that the number say the economy is growing therefore everyone is fine. Is that really the vibe that people are feeling?

  • nifty
    2•3 days ago

    Unconstrained campaign financing and lobbying will always dilute the power of democracy and liberalism, but liberalism is a good alternative to bloody revolutions or forced changes. Humanist philosophies prefer liberalism to some degree, but I could be wrong 🤷‍♀️

    • @[email protected]
      4•3 days ago

      Interesting, is it not, that liberalism was the bloody revolution against tyranny until now it threatens to kill humanity itself and all reform must then be gradual.

      • nifty
        1•3 days ago

        Not necessarily, democracy has often come about without blood shed. I am unconvinced the practical implementations of far left ideals are going to be devoid of human nature. Committees responsible for production vs CEO managing it does not still preclude greed or popularity contests. The in fighting in left leaning groups is a distraction. First tax the rich enough so that they cannot subvert democracy, everything is secondary