Ep 126 – Combat Liberalism

spacesocialism says:

Given that you’ve posted about Mao, it might be appropriate to quote him here; ‘if you havent studied, you have no right to speak.’

Liberalism is not a ‘wobble term.’ It is a disctinctive ideology based on the freedom of wealth, it was, at one point, revolutionary, and stood in contradisctinction to the hegemony of aristocracy across europe which (in short) said ‘power lies in blood.’ Liberalism was the ideology of the first whose power came from private property, and for whom the reproduction of that power required the freedom of wealth, the freedom of wealth to move, to be traded, and other liberal notions of freedom (freedom of speech, freedom of sexuality etc) that developed from this principle material need (though remain very much connected to it) and all stem from the necessity of early capitalism to escape the yoke of aristocracy and fuedalism. As such we can understand that our economy today is liberal capitalism, in so far as private capital accumulation is the goal of indivdiuals in an economy, and that freedoms in a society are closely intertwined with wealth. Freedom of speech? Well you guys can pay for a web blog and I am rupert murdoch and own newspapers all over the world – my freedom to speak is supported by my capital. For those who lack the capital to own a computer, their freedom of speech is severly curtailed. Freedom of movement? Well I own a private jet, and others cannot afford a dingy.

Now this is why Marxists can talk coherently about liberalism, where as the right cannot. To conservatives *and this was true in the same debates 150 years ago* liberalism is softening the barriers of tradition and class for the sake of freedom of exchange, and of capital, but because modern conservatives are utterly reliant on liberal freedoms they cannot define it as an ideology because they are some of it’s biggest proponents (‘the freer the market, the freer the people.’)

It is important that liberalism is understood this way, it is not a social cause beyond it’s historical period, and now it fixes things in place. Liberalism stands against wealth redistribution by collective action, liberalism stands against the overthrow of monopolies by the people – liberalism is an individualised philosophy, in liberalism, only the individual exists – social movements that form are simply affinities of concern between indivdiuals, and no one can think or act outside of self interest – in fact, self interest is the only motive force in history.

You understanding of chinese history is a CIA fairy tale and you should be ashamed for spouting this and insulting the acheivements of 1bn people. China’s agricultural reforms were not a 1984 style butchery of personal liberties, quite the opposite. And I don’t know if you’ve looked at china recently but they ended the famines which ravaged the region for thousands of years. There’s no perfect system, mistakes were made (such as killing sparrows – which is frankly a much smaller mistake than europes attempt to deal with the plague by killing cats and leaving rats to spread the disease – few chinese died from their mistake where as 50% of the population died from ours) but look at the increases in life expectancy, literacy, employment, wages, living standards, healthcare, education etc – you cannot stick your fingers in your ears and should LA LA LA at history which is very much what this podcast seems to be aiming to do.