this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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This is actually a misconception! Liberalism (or neoliberalism, as the pejorative goes) is about allowing individuals the ability to dictate their own life on their own terms. Liberals want most of the same things you do, probably: clean air, a reduction in carbon emissions, everybody has a roof over their heads. guaranteed access to healthcare, and dense, walkable cities. The difference is the means by which liberals want to achieve these things. Liberals believe that the government should play as small a roll as necessary to guarantee these things, usually through economic incentives and staying out of the way of the free flow of commerce. Liberals do employ government action when necessary (i.e, making it illegal to dump toxic waste in to rivers).
Liberals also believe that the government should strongly guarantee legal equality and should generally do what it can to provide equal opportunities to everyone. Liberals think it should be illegal to discriminate against someone based on sex, race, sexual orientation, and other factors of one's birth.
The point of liberalism is to lower the horizons of government. In the 16th century Europeans were quite busy slaughtering each other over what the official religion of their kingdom should be. Liberalism emerged as way to manage sectarian conflict from spilling over into actual violence by disestablishing state churches, or at least significantly reducing the political power of clergy. Liberals apply this principle to other aspects of governance
Liberals are pro-capitalism, which is the ultimate mechanism for inequality.
"Neoliberalism" isn't a pejorative, it's a political philosophy that has dominated the Western world for about 50 years, though it has roots much further back. It is a philosophy embraced by both Republicans and Democrats. It's about privatization of services, lowering taxes, and deregulating corporations. It's why we have for profit healthcare in the US, for example.
That's a completely US-centric view. All your liberals might be capitalists, elsewhere, various forms of social liberalism are very much alive and kicking. It's one half of the ingredient in the EU's compromise of "social market economy": It's a thing both social liberals and democratic socialists can lay claim to and, indeed, in policy terms there's gigantic spaces of overlap. Parliament-wise it's most directly represented mostly by Green/EFA but floats in various forms and shades in pretty much all parties, especially Renew though the neolibs are also part of that one.
It's also ancient, dating back to the mid-1800s, bringing you things such as credit unions.
From a different angle: Marx was wrong, there's indeed petite bourgeois who are capable of class consciousness. Also, understanding macroeconomics and how trickle down is bullshit. They may be millionaires but that's still a billion away from a billion, they want people to have money in their pockets so you have money to visit their cinema or whatever.
Also once upon a time neoliberalism meant ordoliberalism but that's a historical note. The current use refers to BS that indeed makes the word itself a pejorative, just as "shit" is a pejorative for shit.
I'd be curious what liberal party in what country you mean.
AFAIK the liberal parties in Europe like Germany, France and UK want exactly what the US neoliberals want, to dismantle the social equality state, deregulation, private schools, private healthcare etc. But they are usually smaller third parties after Social Democrats and Conservatives. But even the Christian Conservatives in e.g. Germany are more socialist than the third party liberals, and to the left of the Democrats in the US.
Of course, ever since the "Third Way" after the fall of the USSR and Clinton, the social democratic parties of Europe also have become far more neoliberal.
The question is really who's liberty? The liberation of the masses from economic exploitation? Or the liberty of the capitalists to exploit the masses? There is absolutely no doubt what is meant today with liberalism.
And their virtue signalling you can mostly ignore. Why would they want to solve an issue they could run on next election?
Taking Germany as an example: The FDP, once upon a time, had a large social-liberal wing and was in coalition with the SPD, but that's long gone by now they're firmly neoliberal. The Greens are social-liberal, the Pirates are, and so is Volt. A social-liberal party that's part of Renew instead of Greens/EFA would be Radikale Venstre.
Part of the stated goals of the feed-in tariff system the German Greens cooked up was, aside from saving the planet by boosting renewables, to de-monopolise the market, to distribute ownership of the means of electricity production wider, and they indeed were successful we now have plenty of wind mills here that are owned by municipal-level cooperatives. Couple of farmers, the local machine shop, couple of pensioners, that's enough own capital to convince the local cooperative and public banks to chime in with a credit, build the thing. Left to pure environmentalism they might've passed laws requiring the big monopolists to build more renewables, a more traditional leftist approach would be to build state-owned renewables, the Greens instead created, through smart regulation, market conditions that made it possible for small fish to get into the fray, out-flanking the monopolists.
That is, you missed something in your dichotomy: The liberation of the small fish from the accumulation power of the big fish. That policy is 110% ordoliberali: Regulate the market such that market failures are corrected. Neoliberals generally do the opposite, remove regulation that prevents failures because that pleases their monopolist overlords, or even regulate to fail though at that point it probably should be called straight-up kleptocracy.
Now you're being a doomer. Yes, that happens, generally in politics not limited to any spectrum, but it's also self-destructive as voters will consider you unfit to rule. It's not like we're limited to two parties over here, things can and do shift.
I agree that things in Germany are, by and large, far saner and far better than the US or the UK. The conditions of the market, the news media and government institutions is better, which allows the liberal dogma to work better. But it's far from good enough.
And yes I'm a doomer lol. It's simply a question of numbers: billions vs millions.
I'm not an ideologue and think a mix of ideologies is important, but the fundamental problem is the vast accumulation of wealth (=economic power) that brings unstoppable degeneration and collapse. Especially with social media being completely corrupt, and mainstream news media even in Germany only spouting misinformation and imperialist war propaganda and a pro genocide stance, things will deteriorate to the state of the US.
...and Axel Springer blasting anti-Green propaganda because the neolibs understand perfectly well how dangerous soclibs are for their programme. Neolibs rely on the narrative of "small businesspeople getting shafted", soclibs can solve the same issue for the same clientele, but by shafting the bourgeois instead of the proletariat.
Small private businesses are not a systemic problem. Sure there's capital accumulation going on but the "vast" is missing. The accumulation curve is exponential, at the lower end where those small businesses are it basically looks flat.
Care still has to be taken when it comes to lobbying etc, there small business interests don't necessarily align with soclib programmes. Ironically, currently SMEs are lobbying the EU to dilute the supply chain act requiring companies to monitor human rights in their supply chain, while Nestle and other big fish lobby for it to not be diluted. But so far from what I see the soclib parties here are firm on these issues.