Do you think Liberals and Leftists are the same thing?

N

Nikkolas

Active member
Or is it just a case of "they're different but it's a difference without a meaning to me"?

I spend most of my times on Lefty forums or watching Lefty video creators. It's why I have no illusion to how much these two groups fundamentally hate each other. Have you not heard the popular Leftist line "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds?" Ultimately Leftists believe all Liberals aer a second from selling out to the most awful reactionaries and they cannot be viewed as allies or trusted in any real sense.

And in turn, Liberals view Leftists as entitled LARPers.; spoiled white rich kids more concerned with ideological purity than actually helping people.

And this is just the politics of it. Their philosophies are also extremely different. Rawls ushered in the modern era of liberalism but he was still okay with hierarchy and wealth inequality. Every Leftist without fail will decry "hierarchy." I would saytaht's one of the more pertinent differences between Progressives and actual Leftists.
 
Nikkolas said:
I don't really disagree with the first paragraph. Leftist hostility to hierarchy is kinda like being hostile to oxygen. Hierarchies are an invaluable part of human organization. They're not just necessary, they're rewarding. A perfectly equal world is not only impossible, it's undesirable. Some people want to be led and controlled.

I really like Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor for eloquently laying this out.

To quote from DH Lawrence's essay on it:
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They are hostile cause they are not in charge, that all it is. Its not their hierarchy.

Just like how liberals say we are all equal but then hand over tons of advantages to one side and demand people protect said side. This proves that equality is a lie.

Or we are for free speech until we are the power then we throw away free speech.

Leftists attack Centrists a lot for compromising with the Right because, deep down, they know peace is not possible and some viewpoints and ideas must be pushed out of the mainstream if not all of existence for their views to truly take hold. That sounds pretty hierarchical to me.
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Centrists to me are either liberals or leftists in denial or just calling themselves centrists for whatever reason be it political or ability to be smug moral superiority.

Most compromise is left leaning aka not compromise but capitulation which leads to more capitulations later.
 
Another point I made before, the liberal and the left talk a big talk about diversity and how its good for various reasons but the leftist wants it to replace the white people, the same leftists that rage against colonization, Imperialism and cultural appropriation.

Here is the irony of the situation, if immigrants migrate to the West and successfully integrate, they will lose their culture over time and just become another low paid wagie consumer for corporates, a person who has no culture or heritage, no identity* just like how a leftists say that white people have no culture and they claim to love other cultures and that other cultures are beautiful and better then the West. You'd think they would want to keep them away from the West if that was the case, no?

* = they may have an identity as part of the LGBTQ+++ whatever but that is also consumerist nonsense and means nothing.
 
They are definitely different things. The right wing question I think generally revolves around the nature of that difference.

I think the easiest summary of that debate is if their opposed ideas, or different stages of the same idea.

Like, is being a leftist just the logical end state of continuing to persue the logic of liberalism, or were the leftists always something different, but were able to subvert liberalism to the radical ends of leftism?
 
JagerIV said:
They are definitely different things. The right wing question I think generally revolves around the nature of that difference.

I think the easiest summary of that debate is if their opposed ideas, or different stages of the same idea.

Like, is being a leftist just the logical end state of continuing to persue the logic of liberalism, or were the leftists always something different, but were able to subvert liberalism to the radical ends of leftism?
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Leftism is the end point of liberalism I say.

Some would say that it's corrupted liberalism like saying that liberalism of the past which had god tied to it was good. But religion dies under liberalism which means that you will have godless liberalism as an invetability.

It was under liberalism that racism and sexism became taboo and being accused of being these was bad like an accusation of blasphemy. Liberals have long accused the Republicans of every ism in the book. Leftists just pushed it into everything.
 
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Generally leftists consider Liberals to be either naive and politically uninformed or privileged and thus defending/justifying the current order. For a socialist leftist-someone like Beto O’Rourke or MSBNC news channels are Liberals, they defend the current sociopolitical order.

Liberals consider Leftists to be either in certain cases-real threats to the social order, thus requiring them to be put down, or in less climactic times, people who question or oppose the order and don’t accept slow reform and “working within the system”

I would say the main difference is, a leftist in some form or another wants to get rid of capitalism, how they go about doing this and what they want to replace with can involve hundreds of possibilities, a Liberal is someone who believes that while the system might be flawed, you can make it work for everyone, and that it doesn’t need to be overthrown.

But this really depends on the exact Overton’s Window we’re using and what country we’re talking about.

Liberals and Leftists intersect a lot with things like social democracy, and the welfare state. On social or cultural issues it’s very much a matter of country. The Liberal may want to increase women’s wages, the Leftist may want to get rid of wages and wage slavery all together. With a spectrum in between of more women minority or otherwise as CEOs to scholarships and affirmative action.

That said-a leftist sees these actions as either one steps on the road to truly dismantling capitalism and the current order, or more cynically a way to prevent challenges to the order-“more black businesses just means more POC with a stake in defending capitalism”. The Liberal sees these goals as good in either themselves, or if they are particularly conscious of revolutionary upheaval, concessions to prevent it.

That isn’t to say their ideas aren’t intellectually related both come from the 19th century and would not exist as they currently do without the industrial Revolution. Just that there are differences and generally Leftists are actually quite hostile to Liberals. Sometimes more hostile than to conservatives or reactionaries.
 
Lord Invictus said:
Generally leftists consider Liberals to be either naive and politically uninformed or privileged and thus defending/justifying the current order. For a socialist leftist-someone like Beto O’Rourke or MSBNC news channels are Liberals, they defend the current sociopolitical order.

Liberals consider Leftists to be either in certain cases-real threats to the social order, thus requiring them to be put down, or in less climactic times, people who question or oppose the order and don’t accept slow reform and “working within the system”

I would say the main difference is, a leftist in some form or another wants to get rid of capitalism, how they go about doing this and what they want to replace with can involve hundreds of possibilities, a Liberal is someone who believes that while the system might be flawed, you can make it work for everyone, and that it doesn’t need to be overthrown.

But this really depends on the exact Overton’s Window we’re using and what country we’re talking about.

Liberals and Leftists intersect a lot with things like social democracy, and the welfare state. On social or cultural issues it’s very much a matter of country. The Liberal may want to increase women’s wages, the Leftist may want to get rid of wages and wage slavery all together. With a spectrum in between of more women minority or otherwise as CEOs to scholarships and affirmative action.

That said-a leftist sees these actions as either one steps on the road to truly dismantling capitalism and the current order, or more cynically a way to prevent challenges to the order-“more black businesses just means more POC with a stake in defending capitalism”. The Liberal sees these goals as good in either themselves, or if they are particularly conscious of revolutionary upheaval, concessions to prevent it.

That isn’t to say their ideas aren’t intellectually related both come from the 19th century and would not exist as they currently do without the industrial Revolution. Just that there are differences and generally Leftists are actually quite hostile to Liberals. Sometimes more hostile than to conservatives or reactionaries.
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Fundamentally, don't take the left at their word when it comes to economics. See what has happened or what they actually do. Like with the Soviet union, was it a non-hierarchical no capitalism paradise? No. You still had elites richer then everyone else doing bribery and negotiating or offering things to each other and politicking with each other iirc.
 
They’ll always provide excuses for that sort of thing, even if the result always ends up that way.

I’d say leftists and liberals are metaphysically very much similar in that they deny a higher reality or Power, and are primarily concerned with the material. The capitalist like Jeff Bezos and Bob Avakian may be opposed as to who should produce, distribute and own or possess material things, but they agree that material things are all that exists or all that fundamentally matters.

Which is why I would say Libertarians and the Republican Party today, are basically right Liberals. In that profit is what fundamentally concerns them.
 
Nikkolas said:
Or is it just a case of "they're different but it's a difference without a meaning to me"?

I spend most of my times on Lefty forums or watching Lefty video creators. It's why I have no illusion to how much these two groups fundamentally hate each other. Have you not heard the popular Leftist line "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds?" Ultimately Leftists believe all Liberals aer a second from selling out to the most awful reactionaries and they cannot be viewed as allies or trusted in any real sense.

And in turn, Liberals view Leftists as entitled LARPers.; spoiled white rich kids more concerned with ideological purity than actually helping people.

And this is just the politics of it. Their philosophies are also extremely different. Rawls ushered in the modern era of liberalism but he was still okay with hierarchy and wealth inequality. Every Leftist without fail will decry "hierarchy." I would saytaht's one of the more pertinent differences between Progressives and actual Leftists.
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Liberalism is nowadays a word which Communists stole to cover themselves up. That is why so many conservatives talk badly about liberals: they really mean Marxists. As far as actual liberals go, I don't dislike them in the way I do leftists, but I don't like them either. Frankly, I see them as well-meaning but misguided souls who follow an ideology that ultimately did pave a way for marxism / communism / progressivism, due to its emphasis on individualism, materialism and liberty - which meant that there was nothing to stop leftists from taking over.
 
They seem to follow the same cores, nithlistic, zelous and rootless, the difference seems to be on how hostile they are (On a scale from chill to twitter) that varies from time from time
 
Liberalism and leftism refer to things that, quite frankly, nobody amongst the mainstream left actually stands for. They don't care about liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law; and they certainly don't care about social equality and egalitarianism, or stand against social hierarchies. The only thing the mainstream regressive left cares about, is themselves; their egos and their lust for power.
 
The actual liberals, as in people caring about liberties and freedoms, are all on the right and conservative spectrum right now.

What we consider 'liberals' now is an empty shell of a term applied to radical leftists.

This is why they hate the term 'classical liberal', because it undermines their ownership of the term, and shows that people caring for freedoms and liberties aren't on the left side now.
 
Archmagnus said:
The actual liberals, as in people caring about liberties and freedoms, are all on the right and conservative spectrum right now.

What we consider 'liberals' now is an empty shell of a term applied to radical leftists.

This is why they hate the term 'classical liberal', because it undermines their ownership of the term, and shows that people caring for freedoms and liberties aren't on the left side now.
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We need to make sure that classical liberals, are just called Actual Liberals. That should clear things up immensely.
 
And you guys still think that liberals ever truly cared about freedom. Lol. How quickly the liberals turned to tyranny when they basically got hegemony.
 
In my experience, "liberals" on the Left are in denial of the radical factions they align with and will turn a blind eye to their violence and totalitarian views. "Liberals" prefer a nanny state that would "softly" punish dissent under the guise of rule of law even as they are blind to the soft-totalitarianism if these policies. There don't want the abolition of private property, but they will favor policies meant to make the rich pay their "fair share". In reality, the middle class, blue collar worker, and small business owner pay for it.

Leftists, meanwhile, want straight up revolution, wealth redistribution, trials, executions, and gulags.
 
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