this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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[–] BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 80 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Most of the people in this thread:

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 52 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I had one of those historical tour hosts look at me like I was an idiot because I didn't know the ins and outs of the fur trade. Lady, I don't go to bed at night thinking about 1800's economics. Just tell me what you know.

[–] rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] credo@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I hear it’s going to make a comeback soon.

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 6 points 2 weeks ago

I bought stocks in a bunch of fur trading companies.

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[–] TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee 28 points 2 weeks ago (14 children)

I don’t understand the difference and I don’t think I ever will

[–] betheydocrime@lemmy.world 75 points 2 weeks ago (34 children)

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@fedia.io 31 points 2 weeks ago

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

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[–] Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

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

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 15 points 2 weeks 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.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.

[–] rhombus@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] jlou@mastodon.social 5 points 2 weeks ago
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[–] mumblerfish@lemmy.world 28 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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@jlai.lu 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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.

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[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

You're all equally left as far as the right is concerned.

[–] spongebue@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks 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.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 10 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Not really, no.

The Nazis let a liberal party live as "opposition."

The socialists got purged.

Eventually everyone not in the party was suspect. The fascists will come for us all.

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[–] Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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

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

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

Democrats should actually do that. Maga vs conservative. It would be a huge marketing win.

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[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

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

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[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] lugal@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week 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.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

By definition absolutely. But most countries' "Liberal Party" is almost always conservative.

[–] Tinidril@midwest.social 19 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

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[–] PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

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...

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[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

You can go further and say that they're inherently enemies.

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