What is liberalism? What is/are its defining premise(s), principles, or characteristics...

Maybe you'r retarded, and we do realize that we are culturally/socially liberal, but that we understand the concept of liberalism to be a little more nuanced than that and so don't just jump in and label ourselves liberals. Read the fucking thread.

Even with your retarded definition, you're still wrong.

Nope, you're just triggered by the fact that SJWs are better at being leftists and liberals than you are.

So you're okay with totalitarianism?

…what?

SJWs are better at being leftists than you are. You fags just scream idpol, but they're the ones looking out for niggers and bitches.

I don't think you understand what is going on here.

No.

Enlightenment values essentially, John Locke, Adam smith, etc and so forth

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So then you believe in freedom.

Freedom means about a thousand different things depending on who you ask. For the classical liberal freedom is based in property rights. For the commie it means freedom from alienated labour. It's almost meaningless

So you're a liberal.

Sure. Marx was just writing about "niggers and bitches".

No one said anything about your lord and savior.

If I could eradicate everyone who spouts liberal at every possible juncture for no particular reason I would. I don't think that's very liberal though is it

So since you're a liberal you oppose taking away people's right to have their own possessions and property, like the right to have their own private/personal property in the form of a house/farm/factory/small business?

you had the freedom to ignore the b8
no you don't

You think it's bait because you're so easily triggered.

I'll try to clarify my point. I am not at all in favor of totalitarianism, authoritarianism, etc. I'm closer to Ancom than anything. However, one can never actually "have freedom".

Even if you achieve a society that is classless, each individual is still beholden and reliant on the whims and needs of others. So long as you are apart of a collective, you aren't free. And even if you were to go live on your own, you would still not be free, as the material necessities of your own existence would shackle your being.

Therefore, you can only be more or less enslaved. As socialists and communists, we seek to end a very specific type of oppression, but achieving that will not make us "free".

Let this thread not devolve into what can be described as petty unfruitful squabbling that happens to appear intentionally ill-intended.

It's been read by an online-available anarchist source (possibly FAQ) that classical anarchism is the synthesis of classical liberalism and socialism. Do you seen anything in this?

So then you're talking in circles. You either believe in freedom and are anti-totalitarian, or you don't believe in it and you're okay with totalitarianism.

Also yes, believing in equality means you are a feminist. Only problem there is that equality is bullshit.

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the only anime i watched in my whole life is Angel egg
the OST is perfect to listen to while playing dark souls 1

nice taste bud

You realize the Islam is anti-communist right?

i would say that anarcho-syndicalism is the real liberal and social synthesis

Anarchism is totalitarian.

Not to me really. John Locke, considered the grandfather of liberalism is pretty much alllll about private property rights. Proudhon on the other hand is all about the abolition of private property. Perhaps I believe that classical anarchism attempts to achieve the same Liberty that liberalism does, the same imagined society, but as far as I can see that's from completely different angles

Hover over the flag. You should recognize the joke.

That's forcing people to not have their own property which is the opposite of freedom. Proudhon was a closet totalitarian.

Leftists can't make jokes.

exactly the right is the biggest joke in existence

Holy shit, this is so wrong that it contradicts the title of the book that Proudhon wrote on this.
Nobody is this stupid on accident if they are literate, so you are either straining yourself to not acknowledge different opinions or too brainwashed to care.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm just saying that forcing people to give up their property is the opposite of a belief in freedom. Anarchists are closet totalitarians.

Then how do you expect to enact social change? Happy feelsies? Revolution is not instigation of violence, it is building up the courage to retaliate against formalized violence.

It was never theirs

Of course it was theirs, how was it ever not theirs? Don't hide behind pithy aphorisms while you take away people's homes and businesses from them and tell them that they're not allowed to own anything.

Why is 'social' change even good? What you want is an excuse to kill innocent people because you're miserable.

I like how you added 'social' to try to bait me into 'admitting' I'm a Tumblrkid. Almost got me.
If you want to understand our opinions, maybe you should actually read the books our theory is rooted in.
If you don't want to kill people you know are harming others, you are probably unfit by virtue of Darwinian evolution.

You think I haven't?

If you can't tell what it really means to harm other people you are probably mentally defective.

Nope.
If you think "private property" refers to personal belongings, you are in no position to question others' intellectual standing.

Because you think that anyone who has read leftist literature would convert to your beliefs.

Exactly this. Private property and personal property are the same thing, contrary to what you claim.

You're the one telling others what they are thinking. Idiot.

I am not claiming that political theories are objective laws of the universe. However, lolbert assertions that they have RAHTS that are literally unthinkable to question is why we do not care about their opinions.
At least fascists are pragmatic. Sometimes.

Because I understand your beliefs and think they're fucking stupid.

Those lolberts, and many normies are lolberts, will not just expect you to believe them that they have a right to private property. They have guns and will kill every communist scum who tries to take their private property. They're much more pragmatic than the brainwashed faggots on this board.

You are literally practicing Orwellian doublethink: you claim to understand our belief that personal belongings are not the same as private property as an economic term, while simultaneously claiming that we do not actually subscribe to this belief and will act against it.

This could ordinarily be solved with a bullet to the temple, but contrary to your apparent belief, we do not give two shits about you or your shitty house.

I'm not saying you don't prescribe to that belief I'm saying it's an arbitrary dichotomy. Private property and personal property are basically the same thing, there's no difference between the two. Abolishing one is undermining the other entirely.

That still makes zero sense. If we don't consider personal property to be private property, why would we bother touching the former? From your perspective we're only dealing with specific kinds of private property that have no bearing on average Joe dickhead.

Because in truth there will be no way to distinguish the two. They are so thoroughly similar that the differentiation of the two is impossible.

Are you retarded?

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Right, I forgot banks look like suburban abodes.

Do you think this is still the 19th century or something? There are shit tons of people who don't even work in factories anymore. Many people work and employ people right out of their homes and apartments. Many people have stores right above their houses. Their deeds to those stores is the same as their deeds and their homes. You're imposing an outdated belief system on a fucking service sector economy.

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It's as if you've never read the manifesto before.

People can't do the one without the other.

Acknowledging existence is not condoning it.

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A man's factory is his personal property.

What does this even mean?

The fact that aren't aware of that fact and that you're laughing at it proves you are stuck in the past.

But by definition it is not, it is private property, because it is used to produce commodities

And yet, collective ownership of the means of production remains possible even in this framework. This is how cooperatives work, though they are still under the demands and pressure of capitalism.

Property cannot be personal if it is defined by its use to produce for others.

So let's say me and my pals are producing commodities at my house, and I'm paying them to do it. What the fuck are you gonna do about it? You're trying to force people to not have the right to produce commodities for a profit, you're fucking retarded.

If you're okay with coops then there's no reason not to okay with non-coop factories.

Ebin.

Yes it can be personal, because it's personally owned by an individual, who bought that factory. A man ought to be able to produce things for others for his own damn profit.

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Simplest way to understand it is to look at the philosophers who are commonly associated it with it such as Locke and Rousseau and understand the time that they existed in. The French Revolution espoused liberalism as it was a way of throwing off the chains of authoritarian oppression. Liberalism is not inherently evil by any means, I have a lot of respect for enlightenment figures who developed it as an ideology as it was literally a revolutionary form of emancipation from the existing status quo.
The problem is that it became the status quo, it became about muh freedums instead of our freedom.
One thing I've pondered about marxism is whether communism would really be the final form of material conditions. I'd imagine something else would challenge this status quo eventually.

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Nothing, if you're democratically owning those means of production, and you can't turn a profit in socialism, in the same way as you can't not pay taxes in capitalism. Your surplus value must be reinvested in society in some form.

Only if he does not use it to produce for others.
Do you think saying things over and over will make us believe it? You have the right to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

This is why you're beliefs are fucking stupid. You're forcing people to give up their freedom for people they don't even care about.

That's how communism works.

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Well the fact that you don't care about them to the degree that you are not willing to sacrifice the freedom to exploit them, says a lot about you as a human being.

Reign of terror was individuals realising that the idealism of liberalism wasn't going to work if they wanted to actually shed their oppression.

fuggin pleb

youtube.com/watch?v=azKNngXBICs

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You can't force altruism faggot. That never works.

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they went full retard and started killing innocent people

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No, but you're a product of your environment. Change the environment, change the human being. This is why transitional stages are necessary. Altruism will be the natural state of human beings once they have been brought up in fully automated luxury communism.

Have you ever read Aristotle's politics?

You are not an island, faggot. If you want to be independent of the needs of society, then don't participate in it at all.

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What are you talking about? My comment has no correlation with your single sentence. Please elaborate.

People are innately self-interested. Your altruism is fucking defective and would destroy any economy you touch. That's what happens when people implement communism.

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If you own the means of production, you have de facto control over others to a varying degree. Ergo, the people who want to take them from you are already influenced by your role in society.

Forced altruism doesn't work.

you split those hairs boi

I agree. Good thing socialism isn't altruistic!

Nothing wrong with a man owning a damn factory.

psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201212/the-evolutionary-biology-altruism

pnas.org/content/75/1/385.full.pdf

nature.com/news/2010/100825/full/news.2010.427.html

I don't disagree? My comment was in regards to people realising that liberalism was not viable as a form of emancipation. When you have enemies on all sides, you'd be insane not to become paranoid and defensive in order to ensure the success of your revolution. In the early days of the struggle (i.e at least a generation) there will be the ongoing threat of sliding back into the prior society. Being all sunshines and lollypops and saying "lets let everyone have a say" is folly.
I'm not sure what your comment means in relation to my post.

There are considered two kinds of liberty, positive and negative. Negative is the freedom from coercion. You are free to do all within your power as long as others aren't affected. This seems like a perfectly reasonable position.

Owning things is always great. How people own them is our beef. People should not be making money off of surplus labor because a piece of paper says they have magical claim to it.

FUCK. I meant to quote someone else.

/r/ing the boat picture - the one about free choice.
To me it sums up liberalism. If people say they want to hire you for 5 bucks an hour and its that or starve, you choose the 5 bucks. Liberalism suggests that this is fine because it ignores the fact that we aren't in a vacuum.
Marxism understands the fact that society shapes your behaviour and your options in a way that classical liberalism doesn't.

Fair enough, all is forgiven comrade.

This one?

That's the one, thanks.
Ironically modern "liberals" take concepts of structure too far - they narrow in on specific circumstances to the point that they miss the forest for the trees.

But you've framed this as someone offering to hire you and it's either work for them or starve, the inevitability that you'd starve without some form of work to eat is not related to the offer of the job, the simple fact is that if you do want to eat then you have to do some form of work.

The boat example is silly because it ignores the ability to make contracts, if you want to be guaranteed safe passage on a boat then simply sign a contract where the terms are stated including conditions for compensation should the terms not be met.

As an anology it also fails, because the choices are constrained deliberately by the boat owner in this case but in real life the fact that you need food to live is not engineered by the person offering you a job, it's simply inherent to life.

Moaning about someone who is offering you the best deal that you can get is extremely stupid, if you don't like a deal that's being offered then go get a better deal, if you cannot then in what world does it make sense to complain about your best option?

muh contracts
Every time.

is the other way around Liberalism is intrinsically linked to capitalism .

First time on leftypol so you're going to have to expand on this and make an actual rebuttal because I don't get any of the memes here yet.

What is wrong with contracts? Negotiating the circumstances before hand is surely a responsible thing to do?

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Or the world you live in needs changing. Think bigger.

testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing

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A political ideal pioneered by the ruling class to serve their own interests. It operates under the farce of free markets, rule of law, secularism, limited state powers and all that but the essence of it was always simply capital accumulation for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. The United States is the ideal system for liberal policy, but examples as different as Pinochet's Chile and South Vietnam can qualify as liberal. Along with nationalism (capital accumulation for the state) and reformism (capital accumulation for workers) it serves as one of the driving political forces in capitalist society.

No, words have meanings. Just because you accept bourgeois newspeak doesn't mean everyone else does.

The posters that replied to you are either tankies or just lazily explained the difference between personal and private property.

You can own a factory if you are the only one that works there, making it personal property. If you work with others, then it is no longer personal property, it would be cooperatively owned by all the workers who work there. So everyone would earn their surplus value, no share holders getting rich off of labor they did not do themselves wage slavery.

The only small bit of surplus extracted from the workers surplus will be put into a account for workplace maintenance. The rest of the funds is democratically decided by the workers on how to use.

Overall you will have a better economy because people will earn a hell a lot more and will be able to spend more. Instead of having just a few individuals being able to buy anything.

This is how credit started, people were not able to buy things because they had no money, so banks figured out a way to get people to buy things with money that don't have to help keep the economy going.

This stupid dichotomy hinges on the belief that you should be able to do whatever you want with someone else's private property but you should leave along their personal property, in spite of the fact that in the real world nobody believes this difference exists. In the real world, they are the same thing. The dichotomy implies that you and your commie buds will be fucking with people's factories/businesses/farms/homes. You won't. Private property is personal property. Proudhoun, Marx, Kropotkin are a bunch of faggots advocating crime. There's nothing wrong with profiting off of the labor of others.

It doesn't need changing, you mean that you'd prefer if it changed, because it would suit your specific circumstance. You can't get a universally moral system from utilitarianism because people have competing interests, that is to say if you change the world to make it better for you, you may make it worse for someone else.

What would stop democratically owned businesses having a majority of people working there, gang together to restrict the value allowed to filter back to certain workers? Just like with democracy and modern government with tax, people can (and do) vote to keep more for themselves at the expense of other people, there's no reason to believe this wouldn't occur in business as well.

Capitalism and the free market allow for democratically and joint owned businesses already, so why if they're so superior do they not exist in any great quantity?

People will only earn more if the business itself actually earns more which means making good decisions and there's no evidence to show that it being done democratically vs being done by a professional (a CEO) will yield better growth.

As for money piling up with a few individuals, that is what stimulates economies, to get growth of jobs you need investment in business and investment comes from saving, not spending. TO produce new value that doesn't already exist (definition of growing the economy) you need new tools, R&D, suppliers etc. Those things are bought with either loans which come from banks which are only loaned out because people save rather than spend, or they come from private investors who themselves have saved large sums of money.

Credit doesn't come out of thin air, credit lent is always someone else's money, and no, fractional reserve banking doesn't create money out of nothing, all lent money from FRB is marked as an outgoing for the bank and if not repaid is a real debt of real money.

The only thing that makes private property into public property is the immoral initiation of aggression.

psychology is pop pseudo-science no wonder you pinkos believe in that

Is it in the interest of those workers to have the other workers quit and lower the total amount of production they can profit from?
No?
Then why would they pull that shit?

Usually they require some kind of union organization and mutualists banks, but the state tends to crack down on those.
Then why

But the job market is full of people who are willing to work for varying amounts of money, some are willing to work for less. People pull that kind of shit because they can, who cares if someone stacking a shelf leaves because some people in the business are getting more money, because there will be another guy willing to take his place.

These kinds of businesses do exist, there was a bread place mentioned in the Micheal Moore documentary and he makes the same argument. So they can exist inside a capitalistic society, the actual reason they don't in any great quantity is that a hierarchy of people with smart people at the top and idiots at the bottom make better decisions than democracies.

It's just evolution of businesses, the weak ones dies and the strong ones prosper.

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state capitalism isn't liberal

People would be paid for the labor they produce, highly sought after skilled workers like doctors or managers would be paid more for their labor than someone that is a janitor.

Work places will compete over these skilled workers because they will overall increase the quality of the production(more wealth). People already do this with coops, workers hire skilled people just like with any other workplace. If they were not pay for what they contributed in surplus, there would be some other workplace that would and they would leave.

Why isn't there more worker owned places? That is simply because the whole system is built against worker ownership, coops are the closest thing we have to it but it is still inherently capitalist.

Lets just ignore the average persons wage, multi-billionaire corporations like Walmart or fastfood companies like McDonalds, if this truly was the case then most people who work at these companies wouldn't be in debt, poverty, or both.

Is it better to have a stable economy or an unstable economy built on debt which is destined to witness a nasty recession?

A CEO is a glorified manager that rules over the workplace with only the share holders interest in mind, if he doesn't, the share holders will find someone else.

There are coops as big as corporations that do fine with worker elected managers that make decisions that are in the interest of everyone at the workplace. The mondragon corporation is a good example.

The problem with how much money the banks loan out is that they have created a situation in which for every dollar someone has in their own account there is someone else who owes a dollar. On an wide scale there will be equivalent amounts of debt as there is money. The problem with this is it leads to a debt trap in which it is pretty much impossible to reduce debts without causing a recession.

positivemoney.org/how-money-works/how-banks-create-money/

positivemoney.org/issues/debt/

Nobody actually uses the word "liberal" in Europe, this is an American neo-logism to differentiate between the American free-market whiggism of the Republicans, and the social democrat side of the democrats. Further these two positions are differentiated in the US also according to social issues, such as abortion, lgbt rights etc.

In Europe no one calls himself a "liberal" because it is a completely ahistorical term to use. Liberalism in Europe means being pro-democracy, market economy, in favor of the secular state etc.

In Europe parties are almost always split in terms of three positions: The traditionalist Right, The Left, and the Center.

The Center can be center-left (pro-welfare, social democracy, greater control of the market etc.) or center-right (more in favor of neo-liberal policies, sometimes in favor of conservative issues like no support for gay marriage, less taxes, greater market freedom etc.)

The US is the most classcucked nation of earth, and as a result never had a real leftist labor movement after WWII, so everything marginally to the left is referred to as "liberal", which makes no sense since today liberals in Europe as referred to as neo-liberals which are effectively very much into the right side of the spectrum politically.

Hopefully I cleared up some of your confusion OP.

Also to point out to OP was that liberalism in Europe was used as an opposing party to the monarchists or those on the left economically (those who wanted more control in the market economy)

The old liberals then are today referred to as classical liberals, those on the right economic spectrum as neo-liberals or ordoliberals, an those who are left on social issues, but centrists on economics, are referred to as social-liberals.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_by_country#Europe

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

Europe here, what this user said it's pretty much 99% correct.

Every time I see "liberal" used to describe something that has barely anything to do with the left, I can't help it but think how "classcucked" is the USA, as this user says.

Also,

pic related

holy fuck why are there so many shit threads. it's like summerfag city in here.

The sentiment of classical anarchism being in some way, the synthesis of classical liberalism and socialism, can be explained by viewing anarchism as having incorporated early liberalism's general social stance of skepticism and defiance (although less extreme than that of anarchism) towards that organization of power having monopolized the use of violence which is the state and socialism's economic program of the collectivization towards the means of production. It embodies one characterizing aspect from each ideology: the social take from liberalism and the economic take from socialism.

What do you mean by the term being ahistorical? Is it meant by you, that since today's age is one of liberalism and that almost all of society is affiliated (if applicable) with some strain or form of liberal thought, it is is a relatively futile term due to its non-descriptiveness today? Finally, other than the difference of historical context, is there a real contrast to be seen between an individual who can accurately be described as a neoliberal and a classical liberal today? That is, are there differences of economic proposals and thought between neoliberalism and classical liberalism; is there such thing as a classical liberal who couldn't be defined as a neoliberal in today's age?

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