If you go further Left

Marxist-Leninists: “WhERe iS tHe leFt uNiTy?”

Buried with all the Anarchists and Trotskyists cold bloodedly murdered by Lenin and Stalin.

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

- Emo Philips

You say that as if the DNCs campaign strategy wasn't to absolutely abandon the left and try to court "moderate republicans", which we very obviously just learned don't actually exist.

I mean, the lessons are likely to be permanent, regardless. This might be the last few months of peace before the US turns into an authoritarian terror wasteland via project 2025. Hopefully it won’t, but all three branches of government have been compromised, which leaves little hope.

I love how anything outside of what the democratic party wants to do is labelled "ideological purity" even though democrats endlessly shriek at anyone who does not toe the democratic party line. Democrats had their way, again, and lost, again. How about we try something new instead of democrats constantly trying to appeal to fascists while pretending to be the only thing to stand against fascism?

Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism.

In the US, socialism has historically been shunned and not represented in the political sphere, to the point that the right started using "liberal" derisively and associated the term with socialism. Internationally, the term retains more of its original meaning, for example, in the UK the "Liberal Democrats," are more like libertarians.

Liberals are generally conservative, meaning they support the status quo or gradual change. US "conservatives" are sometimes more accurately called reactionaries or regressives, because they don't just want to preserve the status quo but to actively roll back progress that has already been made.

Because leftism is a very broad term, it's difficult to define exactly what leftists believe in an uncontroversial way, but generally speaking leftists support radical change away from capitalism.

The cause of the confusion:

Liberalism is the political project which gave us the 18th century liberal revolutions of for instance, the US and France. It centers invidivual freedoms like free speech, association, and the right to own and use private property without interference from the government. It can be seen as a reaction by the land owning middle classes of the 17th and 18th centuries to the power of divine right monarchs, and is the founding principal of both the Democratic and Republican parties. It centralizes human rationality and debate of ideas as means of finding true paths to the future.

Leftism is an umbrella term which holds a few groups in it (Most notably Social democrats, Communist Socialist, and Communist Anarchist ideologies). It can be traced back through history to many times and places, but modern forms of it originate in the utopian socialism of post-revolution France. Leftism promotes the primacy of human well being and equality (or at least more equally distributed material wealth) over property rights. Generally this takes the form of support for the abolition of class society (owner class vs worker class), belief in worker-centered policy, trade unionism, worker cooperativity, and internationalism... but again, it is a big umbrella, and there is a lot of deviation from this formula. In place of rationalism and debate of ideas, Leftism generally centers material conditions and material outcomes of policy.

Liberalism is a moral philosophy based on individual rights, liberty and equality - this is universally agreed apon terminology almost everywhere apart from here on Lemmy. Here for some reason people keep referring to classical capitalism as liberals like it's a historical discussion about the economic system of the 16th-18th centuries. We should really be using neoliberalism or libertarianism instead now days, because those are new words that evolved specifically to reduce confusion and refer to similar economic ideas but in modern context.

The real idiots are the liberals, who knew they had to capitulate to the left to win and refused anyway.

"Worker solidarity as long as the worker in question agrees with me about pretty much everything"