Let's meet in the middle
Let's meet in the middle
100 comments
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I always say neoliberals will affirm your identity and support your right to be who you are!... As you die in the gutter of exposure and capital defense force brutality. Sorry, free market forces! 🤷
You can't eat pride ribbons. You can't live in pride ribbons. A neoliberal is better than a scapegoating fascist, but so is an empty soda can. Neoliberals are also equally as effective as an empty soda can in opposing fascism, the inevitable outcome of capitalism when left to run amok instead of straightjacketed to serve society as it must be.
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Neoliberal doesn't actually mean " The newest Brand of liberal" NeoLibralist regimes historically have also been exceedingly anti-queer. The term was coined in the 80's to describe a burgeoning different brand of liberal government that focused on cutting spending by privatizing swaths of the government. Think Thatcher, Regan and the modern Republican party... See also the early Nazis who historically privatized huge amounts of government to pad the wallets of their supporters but the label was applied retroactively.
If they are getting rid of government services and outsourcing them to a private company that's "Neoliberal politics". You are right that they are effective as an empty soda can at stopping facism but that's because they are usually better positioned to assume power, give up on democracy and go fascist but they aren't the group you're calling out here.
Really the bar for what "liberal" means is a system with a basic set of rights of the person that cannot be infringed upon by the government, universal rights of the person to own stuff (though not all stuff) and a dedication to some kind of democratic system. Basically it's become democracy's basic format and practically everyone in government who isn't a fascist is some variation of liberal or at least playing by Libralism's rules. It's not a statement on socially progressive or socially conservative rhetoric. You're probably better off specifying " Social Progressives" if you want to be accurate to whom you're talking about.
It's kind of the same rules as "NeoClassisism" which isn't constantly updated to mean the newest thing. That term got coined to specifically refer to an art style that is now 300 years old. Neo these days practically never refers to anything cutting edge.
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No they're just using the Tankie definition of (neo)liberal: "my enemy". It's part of the theory of social fascism, which claims that everyone who disagrees with me is a fascist.
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It's more like the definition used by Right leaning government to cast Progressive social agendas as the downfall of society because in their case you slap "Neo" on something to mean "Untested and scary". This isn't so much a "Tankie" thing so much as a Fox News thing.
They get away with it because people aren't taught or don't absorb the actual technical meanings of different labels for subtypes of political philosophy. Hence why "liberal" has become buzz word to mean "civil rights and social emancipation enthusiasts", "conservative" is abandoned to be this wishy-washy ground that evokes both a retaliatory resistance to social movements and/or a sort of nebulous (often false) vision of fiscal austerity and "communist" a brush to tar a variety of social movements with that handily has an implicit conspiracy aspect.
None of these definitions are accurate but they serve to muddy the water. That's really the point of it. To rob us all of accurate ways to discuss political matters and to create team sport like voting blocks.
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Look, what matters here is that everyone is included equally under oppressive capitalist movements which aim to drain of us of our lifeblood and monetize our very cells.
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so... why didn't the left stop fascism? I hear a lot of talk about killing people, but it's been three months and nothing has happened.
Are we all just yappers?
You can bitch all you want, but the right won, and they won exactly what they wanted. So bitching about it on the left isn't going to make us anymore likely to win, is it?
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We have no leftwing party in the United States
I phone banked for Sanders on 2 campaigns.
I don't see Neoliberals or Fascists as winning, just different degrees of losing.
I no longer have the slightest hope of ever "winning" a prosocial government here. We're too oligarch captured.
I talk and comment to maintain my sanity in an insane capitalist hellscape I lack the power to change.
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We have no leftwing party in the United States
probably because the left is so dysfunctional they cant form a cohesive group that people want to vote for.
I no longer have the slightest hope of ever “winning” a prosocial government here. We’re too oligarch captured.
perhaps join the liberal fight, and fight against things like oligarchy, which liberals are not for, because it's obviously bad for institutions. The better the institution is at helping the people, the better the people are.
I talk and comment to maintain my sanity in an insane capitalist hellscape I lack the power to change.
Liberalism is basically the only option you have here, realistically. Anything you can do to change the political tide and get people to care about the importance of good governance, is a good thing.
You could plot a coup and overthrow the government, but we're not delusional, and that's obviously not happening anytime soon so, might as well explore other routes.
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Liberals are for oligarchy. How can you be anti-oligarchy if you are pro-capitalism and pro-markets?
Weird how the left is crushed and weak when the entirety of the US 20th and 21st century is crushing anti-oligarchy (a.k.a left) forces. Maybe it isn't a failure of the goal, but that willing yourself into power isn't going to magically make it happen.
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wow look another facetious argument.
I'm not pro "oligarchy" i'm pro liberal governance, oligarchy is by definition, not liberal. It gives excised power to people with money, that is by definition not liberal.
I'm pro capitalism because i think capitalism as a decentralized method of controlling the markets and businesses (i also think that regulation is important, because i don't have brain damage like libertarians seem to, but for some reason anytime someone on the left hears that someone is a capitalist, they assume they must be anti-regulation also), is the best way to go about it. State controlled markets simply cannot work, unless someone proposes a white paper disproving me, i will maintain that point. But if you can deterministically create an economy, that supports the needs of everyone in that economy, feel free to disprove me. The problem is that you can't because it's such an incredibly complex problem.
pro market economy isn't really a bad thing? I like people being able to buy and sell things, it's good. It's problematic sometimes, and rough other times, but that's just how it is. The market will generally bring itself to a normalized position over time.
i am literally against elon musk being in the government, people in the government having and owning investments, i think it's corruption plain and simple, i'm against corruption because it obviously leads to a negative outcome for the people the system is supposed to work for, again, liberalism does not like that.
Maybe it isn’t a failure of the goal, but that willing yourself into power isn’t going to magically make it happen.
it certainly won't be the left doesn't even have a plan of what to do when they get into power, the liberals don't really either, but we at least know what we want governance to look like, and that's a great start.
The left hates the current form of US government, and the things they want that they can clearly spell out, are not forms of governance, merely policy, so i'm not sure how they plan to get from step 2, to step 5 without falling in a hole somewhere.
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Liberalism is not inconsistent with regulation. Oligarchy introduces inefficiencies to the market. Liberal Democrats have been generally open to and supportive of regulations which oppose oligarchic monopolies, and mitigate externalities. They certainly have their flaws, too many to enumerate here, but they generally want the market to run as "purely" as possible, without the confounding effects of oligarchy. Oligarchy and monopolies upset the mechanisms of the market, and the liberals are the ones passing regulations to try to prevent that. This much is obvious by the existence of regulations, and the near absence of legislators to the left of liberals.
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Liberalism is not fully mutually exclusive with regulation, but liberal regulation is to try to maintain capitalist markets against their own failures. Yes, they can be willing to engage in some regulation to try to maximize future markets and capitalism. But they are pro-oligarch and pro-inequality, liberals are trying to maintain it long-term even if the most extreme excesses of oligarchs must be reigned in for the short term.
But most importantly, Oligarchy and monopolies aren't an "upset" or disruption of markets, but the obvious and natural outcome. Profits are optimized by consolidation and removing competition. And even if competition is maintained, once one company wins the competition there is monopoly, and the fact that most capital intensive industries have a natural barrier to entry (it would take billions of dollars of venture capital to enter and be a very weak competitor with the incumbent) means that markets have oligarchy and monopoly as their natural and necessary outcome.
A homeless guy can't just immediately become a billionaire by saying that there should be a competitor of genetic testing with 23andMe.
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but liberal regulation is to try to maintain capitalist markets against their own failures.
wow you discovered why governments exist! Good job, do you want a gold star sticker? If the markets and economies didn't fail, you wouldn't need government, ever, for anything. The entire point of the government is to fix problems like this.
A homeless guy can’t just immediately become a billionaire by saying that there should be a competitor of genetic testing with 23andMe.
no, but if he's a good public speaker, he might be able to get large investment rounds for a competitor to them, and then if the engineers and experts at that company, do a good job, he technically could become a billionaire, though that's unlikely from just one success.
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But they are pro-oligarch and pro-inequality, liberals are trying to maintain it long-term even if the most extreme excesses of oligarchs must be reigned in for the short term.
The liberal approach is stretching that short term out forever. They will always reign in outliers and apply bandaids to keep the charade going, directly targeting oligarchy and inequality to keep up appearances that liberal capitalism works. The other guys wanna get to the end already, where they own everything forever. Oligarchies stagnate markets, and liberals don't want the music to stop.
The eligible voting population is about 30% for oligarchy, 30% for the liberal charade, 5% for some other opinion, and 35% totally politically apathetic. The point was that if you want to actually accomplish something in a democracy, you need demographics. You've gotta find 30% to challenge the actual pro-oligarchy demographic somewhere.
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Who said Margaret Thatcher was a great person? That's a wild straw man.
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You should read about what happened to domestic left parties and people after WWII. Also what the US did to left elements abroad. The state of the left in the US today didn't evolve naturally to its current status quo.
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you mean like the communists? And japanese internment camps?
There's definitely bad things in there, don't get me wrong. But my original statement is still true.
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Well said.
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100 comments