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
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
At its core, liberalism is fairly anti-capitalist. There are many arguments against capitalism from liberal principles such as the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. The workers in the firm are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but receive 0% claim on the positive and negative production while the employer solely appropriates 100% of the positive and negative result of production
I Strongly disagree. The capitalist mode of production is axiomatic to Liberalism. Private ownership of the means of production is what is being referenced, not personal property. The alternative, a socialist mode of production, where companies are owned and governed in a democratic structure by all the workers, is completely viable. It’s a democratization of the workplace and economy.
Locke saw individual liberty as defined through private property, contract, and market—in other words, by individual ownership of economic possessions that could not be arbitrarily usurped by the state. Freedom for Locke amounted to more than absence from external restraint; it also meant living in conformity with a nonarbitrary law (to his left critics, a protocapitalist law) to which the individual had consented.
Liberalism refers to both a coherent political philosophy and a historical political tendency. The former liberalism is anti-capitalist. Yes many historical liberals were pro-capitalism, but this position makes their liberalism incoherent.
Private property rests on the principle that workers have an inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Capitalism violates this norm. Locke was wrong
A market economy of worker coops isn’t socialism
Well if soc dems aren’t left then i guess I’m not left.
I didn’t know we were taking anything left of soc dem seriously yet, as we haven’t proven any sort of successful means of governing people that far left.
Worker cooperatives already exist. I recommend reading or listening to Richard Wolff about what differentiates socialism and capitalism from each other.
Social Democracy is State-regulated Private Capitalism. The same contradictions between the Capital owners and workers still exist, leading to the same problems. This is why we also see a rise in Fascism in Western Europe.
Securing social democratic reforms of the sort won in the 1930s (such as taxation of corporations and the rich to support mass social services and jobs) requires much more than mere state regulation of private capitalism. The forces behind private capitalism mobilized to retake full control of the state in ways designed to preclude any repeat of New Deal or social democratic responses to crises.
Richard D. Wolff | Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees
Worker cooperatives can’t run an entire country. They can barely run a single business, but only if the business is small.
