I keep seeing posts from this instance referring to capitalists as liberals. Since when are capitalism and liberalism related? As far as I've always known, liberalism is a social ideology, while capitalism is an economic system.
Why do y'all refer to all capitalists as liberals when at least half (probably more, at least in my experience) are conservatives?
I, for example, consider myself a liberal, but I'm most certainly not a capitalist. I'm stuck in a capitalist society in which I have to play by the rules if I want to feed my family, but that's as far as my support for the system goes. I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans feel this way.
Looking it up, the definition of liberalism specifies a belief in maximum personal freedom, especially as guaranteed by a government. Considering that 90% of governments in the world are endlessly corrupt, capitalist or not, I'd much prefer one that guarantees its citizens rights as a matter of course rather than begrudgingly grants them privileges that can be taken away without public oversight.
Do y'all really trust your governments to look after your best interests? As a U.S. American, I know I wouldn't trust my government or politicians to do anything but enrich themselves at my expense, but I don't have to; my rights are guaranteed by our constitution.
Now if we could just get them to stop funding and committing genocide...
EDIT: So many incredibly well thought-out and researched responses! I have a lot of reading and thinking to do, so thank you all for your input. I'll likely be referring back to this post for a while as I learn more about the world outside my U.S.-centric bubble. My biggest takeaways from all this after a quick perusal of the replies are that liberalism has a very different meaning outside the U.S. and has a lot more to do with private property, especially land ownership, than I'd thought.
My time is limited and there are so many responses that I likely won't be replying to (m)any any time soon, but know that I appreciate all the knowledge bombs y'all have dropped.
"Maximizing personal freedom" is just a roundabout way of saying "property rights". Property is the primary freedom that is defined and enshrined in US law -- all other freedoms stem from that. In this country, you are free to do what you like... provided it's on your own private land. Renting? Need the landlord's permission. Out and about? You need to follow city or county laws. Homeless? If you don't have a permanent address, you're not a real person as far as most of our institutions - both public and private - are concerned.
Our government was founded on liberal principals -- if those principals were merely about preserving people's agency, why were the freedoms of native peoples so completely crushed? A semi-nomadic life, with a concept of stewardship - rather than ownership - of the land, is just a different shape agency can take. And yet our liberal government could not tolerate such a state of existing. The people of this land were corralled, were marched, were slaughtered by thousands and millions. Because it was never about agency. The slogan of the country, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, was originally written to be Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Property.Liberalism is an ideology that exists to justify the power people were already wielding thru private property. It is how capitalist argued in favor of their own position, couched in language tailored to appeal to more than just other capitalists. It's similar to how the logic of feudalism came after wealthy and well armed families slaughtered their way to the top, to stabilize their comfortable position within society.
Minor correction, the original Locke slogan was "Life, Liberty, and Property", not "Pursuit of Property". He was making a (clumsy, ridiculous) deontological argument that one must never infringe upon the "Life, Liberty, or Property" of another as a means of defending aristocratic property relations against egalitarian movements that would redistribute land.
ah, my bad. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" was originally in the declaration -- although a quick scouring of the wikipedia would suggest historians disagree if that was a purposeful allusion to Locke's "Life, Liberty, and Property". The story I heard growing up was that Jefferson originally drafted it as Locke's quote, and it was revised to 'happiness' -- probably apocryphal then
Lol so basically the government isn’t supposed to infringe on your rights and property as people? Incredible. I can see how corporations lick their lips and point to that as proof that regulations are unconstitutional. After all, corporations are people just like you and I
Exactly, though traditionally it was that the property rights of the owner of the corporation should be able to do with the corporation as he pleased, the "corporations are people" thing is a more recent and much more harebrained framework.