this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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Liberalism, at its core, is an ideology of emancipation that historically sought to dismantle oppressive hierarchies and champion freedom and equality for all. While some argue that liberalism centers on private property and has been co-opted to justify systems like chattel slavery, labor exploitation, and enclosure, this interpretation reflects a distortion of liberalism's original emancipatory intent. Liberalism, like anarchism, fundamentally opposes the concentration of power that limits individual freedom—whether by monarchs, states, or capitalists. Though the liberal tradition has been manipulated to defend private property at the expense of broader freedoms, its true essence aligns with rejecting systems of exploitation and inequality. Far from being incompatible, leftist, Marxist, and anarchist critiques of property-based hierarchies often arise from the same commitment to universal liberty that defines liberalism in its purest form.
Nobody is free until everyone is.
I highly recommend reading Losurdo - Liberalism, a counter-history. It debunks this myth that liberalism was about emancipation for all.
No. That's not true at all. Liberalism is a philosophy that centers power on private property whereas conservativism centers power on a sovereign monarch. Under liberalism, private property is the center of power, and that included chattel slavery. Liberalism is the doctrine that allows you to kill people for trespassing on your property. The logic of liberalism is that every square inch of the universe will be owned by someone and if you own nothing then you can die. Under liberalism, it is better that the homeless die than the state truncate the right of land owners in order to redistribute available wealth.
Liberalism is the philosophy that brought us enclosure. It's the philosophy that brings us private military contractors. It's the philosophy that brings us labor exploitation in factories.
Marxism is inherently ILLIBERAL. Marxism explicitly opposed the existence of private property. Leftism in the modern era is anti-private property and therefore it is illiberal.
You've gotten liberalism confused with anarchism.