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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Ok, cool. I'm asking out of genuine curiosity. How does this post make you feel? You're in the overlap of the targeter and the targeted.
As a show of good faith, let's commiserate. I agree that our "founding fathers" weren't good people by today's standards, but I'm in the camp that their ideas of classical liberalism were fine. I feel shame that our country is built on genocide, slavery and exploitation, but at the same time, I want to hold our current leadership to a higher standard and ahem prosecute them. I understand that you don't agree with classical liberalism, and that's fine, I'm not looking to pick a fight. But I imagine you feel some confusion and conflict as I do?
Respectfully, your position doesn't make sense. Liberalism brought us here. Liberalism was built on top of the slave trade, of colonialism, of plunder. This system produces people like Epstein and Trump.
With all due respect, that's sounds like leaps of logic, like saying he scientific theory leads directly to and only to nuclear warfare.
Does classical liberalism only lead to slave trade/colonialism?
Copying over @Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 's comment reply to you:
Do you know how many enlightenment figures were wildly racist, how many of them profited from slavery while pretending to stand for freedom? Scientific racism is a direct evolution from this.
As for whether liberalism now would lead to more of the same, of course it would, it has no built-in method for people to not be exploited, to discourage greed, to stop genocide, etc. How would you suggest we prevent any and all of this within liberalism?
I've been thinking for a long time that any large-scale organization will lead to greed, corruption, injustice, et al. It's only since I've been reading about ML that I learned I lean anarchist. Vanguard parties sound like a bad idea to me.
Why? Seriously, think about it. Are you appealing to a supernatural explanation like "human nature," or a materialist answer? Is the presence of any corruption or greed unacceptable or incapable of countering with structures and checks?
Why are vanguards a bad idea, in your eyes? The working class should organize, and the most politically advanced should organize in parties. Can you imagine if we refused to let scientists perform research? If we refused to let surgeons handle surgery? Why should revolution be any different? Any long-term, complex project should be led by those who study and train for it.
I was looking at some old ReadFanon comments yesterday, and I was just reminded of this one
And for anyone else reading this who doesn't know of the below essay. I think the paragraph that starts with "I've seen plenty of de facto vanguards emerge" leads into https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
That's a great comment, thanks for linking it! And ReadFanon hit the nail on the head, so to speak, we have to train and practice for revolution, while being cognizant that distrusting any and all formalized structure sets us back, as these formalized structures appear whether we acknowledge them de jure or not. Jo Freeman's essay is also wonderful for showing how we really need to formalize vanguards, so as to legitimately democratize them and prevent people from naturally dominating the space.
This is a very idealistic view of history. Ideology did not create material conditions, material conditions created ideology (and ideology was used as a tool to reinforce material conditions)
The slavery, genocide, capitalism and colonialism came first. Then liberalism was created to justify it. And I do want to emphasise that all of those 4 things were justified using liberal logic, that was the point of liberal logic.
The first liberals deemed the "unenligtened" to be subhuman, incapable or governing themselves, worthy of being treated like livestock and as fundamental threats to the ruling order. This was their justification for doing everything they did, you can read their writings on native Americans and Africans and see exactly what classical liberalism was all about.
Later waves of liberals ended up using liberal logic to abolish slavery. Great. But the reason they did this was because the capitalist mode of production had superceded the slave mode of production. The surplus of proletariats hated competing with slaves and having their wages be reduced. Meanwhile the northern bourgeoise often had friction with the southern planters since the planters were rentiers extracting wealth from the whole economy like parasites.
Modern liberals now proclaim themselves to be great champions of "liberty" (the liberty for the bourgeoise to buy property), but they by in large continue to support capitalism and western imperialism*. And frankly, why wouldn't they? That was what the ideology was created for.
*you can see this in their insistence upon using "white man's burden" arguments whenever foreign intervention comes up
Are we talking about liberalism or neoliberalism? My understanding is that liberalism is, ostensibly, grounded in enlightenment ideals.
Neoliberalism is a subset of liberalism. Liberalism is older than neoliberalism, and was in fact built on the slave trade and colonialism.
That is effectively the case in history, and I don’t think OP is denying that, but the philosophical basis is more about individual human rights. I think OP is asking how Americans feel about how far from those ideals we have strayed, which is completely off the fucking map. For my part, I question the cost to society that prioritizing individual liberties like property rights has had, but I don’t think that capitalism itself is inextricably linked to “classical liberalism”, and Americans tend to insist that it is. It’s a confusion born out of ignorance and propaganda.
The “Founding Fathers” were shit people, but the constitution as an evolution of enlightenment ideals is a pretty sound document, we just haven’t lived up to the doctrine. The same could be said about communism as practiced by authoritarian regimes.
Liberalism was pushed by capitalists in fighting the aristocracy. In that sense, it was progressive, but only in that context. Now, it's outstayed that welcome, and is used to fight against progress. We have lived up to the constitution, it was designed to protect capitalist profits and rule as a settler-colony founded on genocide.
As for communism, the various socialist countries have lived up to Marxist ideals. The problem is that, at least in the eyes of some typically western communists, socialism in real life means having all of the struggles and imperfections that come with being real, and these imperfections can't compare to the perfect, almost religiously pure ideal of socialism in western leftist heads. If we uphold Marxism correctly, we support this existing socialism, warts and all, for being dramatically progressive and liberatory for the working classes.
Hey, i appreciate the chillness and will try to respond in kind. I can understand feeling conflicted, but personally I severed any emotional connection with this country several years ago after I could no longer reconcile my shrinking self-conception as "an american" with my growing self-conception as a human being. It's not just that they were seperate; they were fully att odds with each other in a very physical, material way. If I recognize that there is no deep fundamental difference between my humanity and anyone else's, and if I consider myself part of the human family, I can't ignore the devastation that this military-economic-cultural thing we call America has wrought on our family. If I see myself as a cell in the body of nature, I can't help but look at the effects of America and see it for a cancer. That doesn't mean everyone in it is "bad" or "evil" of course, and i personally don't believe in these concepts to begin with. The reality is more messy and complex than any quick moral assessment can say, but at the highest level the practical assessment is simple: America is a boat anchor on the neck of humanity. It's military enforces an economic system that's killing the world, the ideology it spreads is parochial and antisocial, and we who live inside it are both it's victims and it's accomplices, forced to work our lives away for rich pedophiles while economically supporting atrocities on other people elsewhere.
The desire to hold leaders to a higher standard is totally understandable, but the question of what they lead renders it moot in this case. American leaders are people who sit at the helm of a world-spanning death machine, and no decision they make, no matter how high-minded and well intentioned, can change it's basic function, which is to churn human, plant and animal life into profit. Like Darwinism, the evolutionary pressures of capitalist imperial politics actively selects for these wretched people, and against anyone who might even try to rein in it's excesses, even as ineffective that would be. The only way to hold the leaders of this system to a higher standard is to hold the system to a higher standard, and the highest standard this system can realistically be held to is to be dismantled and replaced with something capable of producing stable and equitable results. Capitalism itself is like a nanobot Grey Goo apocalypse: instead of breaking down everything to produce more nanobots it breaks everything down into profit. I consider it an existential threat to life on earth,and anything that upholds capitalism or stands in the way of it's destruction to be an acceptable loss for the preservation of the biosphere.
I hope I haven't gone on too long, but I feel that gets to the heart of it. For the love of humanity and all living things, I've forsaken any attachment to this predatory so-called society.
Not an American here, but do you not see the contradiction here? From an outside perspective this reads the same as a German saying
Like I'm genuinely confused here.
I'm guessing I got downvoted because I said I'm fine with classical liberalism?
Yes, being fine with the system of capitalism and all it entails when it's clear that we need to advance to socialism is a problem.
Every Western country is a mix of capitalism and socialism. The US absolutely should move towards the socialism end but capitalism won't vanish, most importantly because it's detractors never offer a viable alternative.
Pretty much a guarantee that a big chunk of people wasting time and resources on an internet discussion board are in some way benefitting from capitalism.
Capitalism and socialism are modes of production, ie descriptors for the principle aspect of a given economy. Having a public sector does not mean you have a socialist sector, just like having a private sector does not mean you have a capitalist sector. Public sectors in capitalism serve to support the private, and private sectors in socialism support the public. Determining which aspect is principle, ie governs the large firms and key industries, and which class controls the state, is how we check for capitalism vs. socialism.
Socialism is a viable alternative, see the PRC, where public ownership is the principle aspect and the working classes control the state.
The English-speaking internet does have a large portion of labor aristocrats, ie those who benefit from super-exploiting the global south, but that doesn't mean socialism isn't a necessary advance. Imperialism is decaying, thankfully, which necessitates socialism, not to mention the moral victory.
I'm also looking for a reason to believe that the MLs here aren't a bunch of angsty edgelords who just use ML as an excuse for lashing out. You definitely seem like the rare exception, Cowbee, and I appreciate you for it.
i used to mock my woke older sister when i was young for espousing ml perspectives because i assumed it was just angsty teenage edgelord know-it-all behavior and it prevented me to learning about leftism until i was middle aged.
i've learned that others characterize mls as you've done; so it's clear that it's a social phenomenon; and i wonder if this sort of characterization is leveraged somehow to social engineer americans away from socialism, since the epstein files suggest global scale mass social engineering.
I can't assess if I think this way because of American indoctrination right now, but y'all just seem so mean and angry.
Everything I see come out of ML instances here has the same sneering, tribal in-group-good-out-group-bad attitude that I see not only MAGA people post, but also what I've seen queer people post that drive "normies" away and push them into conservative rabbit holes.
I understand y'all are frustrated with liberals and liberalism and the capital-W West. I agree that the injustices of these systems is sickening. But these memes are being broadcast outside any echo chamber, and they attack individuals personally, who also use very different terminology.
Lemmy's MLs have terrible optics and, frankly, I think that's hurting your cause a lot more than MLs seem to care. You'll never get their support and they'll resist you and your cause.
It's fascinating that you chose these words because Republican strategists focused on "nice" and "friendly" aesthetics to make Trump win and I'm wondering if this vindicates their strategy. (You can see this in Trump's penchant for labeling his enemies as "angry" or "nasty" rather than using any sort of substantive arguments like he used in the past before running for president).
And frustrated is putting it very lightly. The likes of the state department and the icc have been confirming Marxist talking points for decades but liberals dismiss it as nothing more than unsubstantive conspiracy theory nonetheless; literally making things worse while patting themselves on the back for being the "adults in the room" as a result.
The Epstein illuminati reveled in their ability to control both maga and "lesser evil" liberals and they're successfully getting the entire world to blame Russia for a mossad kompromat operation despite the American government admitting that this has been happening .... in writing .... Again.
This is a memey Internet forum not a ML party formation. Genuinely what do you expect?
Also the stuff about the queer posting is just wierd. How many "normies" are wandering onto lemmy queer spaces in the first place? And if seeing some wierd memes is enough to "push" someone into conservatism then they were already a conservative.
This is some pretty severe pot calling the kettle black coming from a .world liberal
See? This is precisely what I'm talking about
You were talking about people pointing out blatant hypocrisy?
We deal with a lot of people telling us all sorts of bs and speaking over us when we talk about historical facts that we actually researched, or even our own lived experiences for those of us who live through invasions, coups and so on.
We see the genocides going on right now, and when we sit down to learn more we find out that there have been endless such cases perpetuated by the same capitalist class for capitalist interests, we learn about the torture, the humiliation, the meticulous extermination of whole peoples with their languages and cultures gone forever, just because their labor or their land has value that capitalists wanted to extract and plunder. I'm too young to have lost someone personally, but when my parents were children we had a US backed dictatorship that disappeared children like them, alongside leftists, liberals, indigenous people... The US taught our military torture methods and bribed them to keep going, and when they were finally gone we inherited a fucking DEBT that we literally can't repay you, and because we can't repay you we need to keep getting loans from your country, with strings attached, like more austerity, as our people die homeless and cold. And if we succeed to get a proper socialist government while playing by the rules that your government imposes, they'll just coup us, like they did to Salvador Allende. Surely you see why we're angry now. It's not personal. If you don't wanna talk to us, you can opt out, it's whatever to us.
I 99.5% agree and sympathize. I know how lucky I am that the biggest existential threats I've faced are depression and joblessness, and a lot of my friends are much less lucky. I don't know how to fight for them while also making sure they're safe.
The remaining half a percent is when you say it's not personal. A lot of these memes and a lot of comments I get from MLs seem quite personal, treating "liberals" as a monolith.
That's just because you lack understanding. Liberals are "treated as a monolith" because each individual on their own is irrelevant compared to the systems and superstructures they uphold. You're stuck in the individualist view which is largely unhelpful for serious or proper political analysis which the jokes and memes then flow from.
MLs have a lot to be frustrated about. We advocate organizing in real life, which has its own frustrations, and when most people are still supportive of capitalism it's a constant uphill battle. We arn't angsty edgelords using ML as an excuse, but often tired and drained because we are MLs, leading to many of us lashing out.
So Marxist socialism and classical liberalism are mutually exclusive?
Leftism starts at anti-capitalism. Liberalism is pro-capitalism. Simple as.
Yes
My curiosity is genuine piqued. Any recommendations to read about this in particular?
If you want to learn about Marxism, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. I'll also copy over @Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 's reply to you, which you cannot see:
Thank you comrade for copying over my comments
No problem!
Engels and lenin had good writings for beginners. You might want to read principles of communism, or state and revolution to get some basic context and theory. The first one is structured like an FAQ and is short. The latter you can find english translations that are quite accessible.
Once you understand the basic principles of marxism, you will understand just how different the whole philosophy really is. If you get deep into the theory, you might see that Marxism is basically a whole separate branch of philosophy that breaks away from the enlightened tradition of western philosophy. In some small sense, I see Marxism as a refuation of liberalism.
Sadly .world accounts won't see this.
Any kind of socialism is mutually exclusive from classical liberalism; not necessarily on every bullet point but broadly speaking. The common thread among the various socialist ideologies is typically that the economy and society exist to provide for the needs of the people.
Liberalism is the ideology supportive of capitalism. Marxism is supportive of socialism. I think it's important to recognize that liberalism was driven by capitalists to fight the aristocracy while justifying their own future rule.
Marxism opposes it in theory, not practice. Soviets had nomenklatura - senior party members and officials who controlled key positions in government, industry, the military, and media. They didn't "own" factories but they controlled them.
This place is so overwhelmingly biased that it will most likely refuse to acknowledge this and maintain their simplistic black-and-white views. Marxists simply abolished the term "aristocracy" in a formal sense while continuing such practices.
Administration is not itself a class, and is necessary for any large-scale economy. Marxism opposes capitalism in theory and in practice. Management of industry is not the same as owning said industry. Marxism has never been about eliminating managament, because managers are not a class in and of themselves, but instead a section of the proletariat that perform necessary roles in coordinating production, distribution, and logistics.
Where did you get the idea that Marxists oppose administration from? It certainly isn't found within Marx and Engels' writings, without severe misunderstanding. Moreover, you're displaying black and white thinking in believing administration under socialism is the same as capitalist ownership outright.