I think at some point, most of us have been liberals. From a young age, most in the west (or at least the US) have grown up with a liberal view of the world instilled into them: people have power by voting; therefore, society is good because good people will vote for good people, and good people will do good things to make society better. A relatively well-off liberal will spend the first decade or so in ignorant bliss, not aware of the world around them. It is not until the liberal begins to realize that the world is not so perfect after all that they come to doubt things.
If voting will lead to good people in power and lead to a world where politicians do good things… why isn’t the world good?
The liberal stands at a crossroads.
There is a single, very simple option–that things actually are good. Liberals who believe this are often the ones that turn into ghoulish social darwinist hacks, arguing that inequality, oppression and such don’t really matter, and it’s all a matter of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, that some are just naturally lazy, etc… it’s a very naive way of looking at things, and the people who subscribe to this tendency tend to be quite naive and privileged as well.
However, especially in today’s world, such ignorant bliss is becoming increasingly less viable. So, which way, liberal?
There is of course the option to reject liberalism’s framework entirely. It’s an ideology of weakness, of women in videogames… that path doesn’t lead to more liberalism and it’s been discussed thoroughly, so I won’t go into it.
The liberals who no longer buy into the success of their ideology must come to a new conclusion: that liberalism has been betrayed, stabbed in the back, even. The most important part of a liberal’s political development comes from who exactly they believe betrayed liberalism.
A quite simple, establishment friendly answer is: foreign actors. Russians, Chinese, the communists, whatever… they’re influencing our elections, they’re buying out our politicians. The advantage of this approach is a form of clean-wehrmacht maneuver, where they can acknowledge the failure of liberalism while at the same time absolving themselves of all moral responsibility: it’s the dirty racist/homophobic/authoritarian foreigners responsible for everything wrong, if it weren’t for them we’d be living in a democratic utopia! This kind of western exceptionalism, as you might imagine, often backslides into eurolib-style liberal fascism when things really hit the fan.
Other liberals, who examine the world a bit more closely, may conclude that capitalism is the problem. With all the problems in the world today, it’s hard not to. They see how much influence the rich have over political processes, and conclude that they are causing bad things. However, while this form of liberalism seems more aligned with leftism, it does contain one crucial flaw: it does not recognize that liberal democracy upholds capitalism by nature, but rather views western political structures as inherently apolitical and natural. This may be why they cling to reformism, as they naively believe that capitalist institutions can be peacefully reformed away from destructive capitalism, just as a gambler believes with skillful maneuvering they may be able to strike it rich gambling.
That’s the end of my writeup about liberals, I was gonna write more but I got bored and didn’t know what to write thanks for reading everyone
inequality, oppression and such don’t really matter, and it’s all a matter of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, that some are just naturally lazy, etc…people who subscribe to this tendency tend to be quite naive and privileged
nothing to say, pretty self-evident
foreign actors…they can acknowledge the failure of liberalism while at the same time absolving themselves of all moral responsibility
ol’ reliable, using the immigrant card like the fascists but without being “raciss”
they naively believe that capitalist institutions can be peacefully reformed away from destructive capitalism, just as a gambler believes with skillful maneuvering they may be able to strike it rich gambling
basically, you know how it is
Good observations all around. I’d also argue that material conditions are another important factor. As people see their standard of living collapse, the fact that the system isn’t working becomes a lot more tangible for them. And eventually people do become disillusioned. At that point, they open up to new ideas. Our job, as communists, is to educate people who’ve lost faith in liberalism and help them understand what’s actually happening in the world around them.
Yeah, that’s precisely it! I feel material conditions showing liberalism’s failures are a big part of this move towards apologetics/attempted salvations of liberalism, and as those too crumble we have a good opportunity to educate people we should take advantage of.
Exactly, education is by far the biggest task at the moment.
Liberals becoming socialists is akin to the religious becoming atheists. Once their eyes are open to the rational, there is no going back.
That’s how it was for me, for both. They certainly were major turning points in my life.
yep me too! my radicalization coincided with me finally abandoning faith and it made me much happier and much more secure despite the tumult.
Agreed, I was indoctrinated from a young age so liberating myself from religion was a huge relief, though it came with a lot of anger cause of the lengths they went to scare me into believing their bullshit.
Good stuff, bro.
It’s kinda funny that I was yesterday thinking about more or less this. The choice that opens up once you see the cracks in the world around us. When I considered the choices they were: idealism and conservatism. We all know that lullaby from reactionary sirens that sing: ‘‘Once you get older and start making money, you’ll stop being a lefty, hihihihi’’. I’m sure we’ve all heard its call that beckons us to preserve this wholesome chungus, to protect our gains and compete amongst us. The other choice is the western leftist that retreats into idealism, of that socdream where if we just make the right choices, like you alluded to when describing libs, we’ll finally get it right.
I was one of the latter until I realized how the game was played. Can’t vote yourself out of it. In the Global South they did vote themselves out and were pushed back into the pit by our so-called ‘‘democracies’’. The case of Allende, Mossadegh, Torrijo, Arbenz, Goulart, hell, even an upstanding liberal nation down under got cockblocked by some Governor General. The undies were trying to be upstarts, and we can’t have that. ‘‘This is democracy manifest!’’, famously shouted one of them during an altercation with authorities that mimicked what had happened to us in the South. Not even amongst themselves can they ever conceive that the ‘‘promises’’ of the system come true. Those ‘‘promises’’ are the cracks in the world, and it’s about time this ol’ liberal shanty town built on lies is burned down.
Yeah, that’s why learning history and having a bigger global and historical context is so important, it just opens your worldview up so far beyond the basic liberal narrow worldview.
Good writing. Your writing makes me remember Mr. Hayek.
“Well, I would say that, as long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America — is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition it may be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as something permanent, but as a temporary arrangement”
- Interview in El Mercurio (1981)
I am sorry if my english is bad.
The Phone Calls are severely damaging to my sense of self I don’t want to want them to die but I kinda do
