The following is oversimplified, but it should get the point across:
Imagine a spectrum running from 100% socialist to 100% capitalist.
The Berniecrat-style Democratic Socialists are 55% socialist and 45% capitalist; they’re socialists. The Social Democrats, one step to their right, are 55% capitalist and 45% socialist. They’re capitalists. Both use a mix of economic policies, but each is to one side or the other of the centre point.
DemSoc and SocDem policies tend to appear rather similar, which is unsurprising given their ideological proximity. Moderately regulated markets with a safety net to catch those who fall through the cracks.
The SocDems are trying to make capitalism as inoffensive as possible; the moderate DemSocs are trying to make socialism as unintrusive as possible. The SocDems put a bit more power and wealth into the top half of the income distribution, the DemSocs put a bit more into the bottom half.
It’s a spectrum; the changes in policy are gradual, and neighbouring ideologies are more similar than distant ideologies. Parties such as the ALP in Australia began as DemSocs, but are now mostly SocDems thanks to the rightward drift of the last few decades.
Unsurprisingly, I have a somewhat different point of view on liberalism. It would take a very long post to explain and justify why in detail, but as a quick summary:
Liberal and libertarian free-speech politics-by-debate ideology is based upon the false premise that political disputes are settled by reasoned argument.
Firstly, this premise just isn’t true. Politics is, and always has been, about power. The current ruling class did not gain their position by the virtue of their arguments; they got there because they had the money and guns. Access to political power and resources in the present reality is very heavily influenced by inherited wealth and privilege. Liberal capitalist meritocracy is a myth.
Secondly, and of more practical concern in the current situation: politics-by-debate ideology is competely defenseless in the face of fascism. The marketplace of ideas does not work when confronted with disingenuous participants who do not respect their rights of their opponents. To borrow from Sartre:
You can argue all day with fascists, bringing your very best logic and evidence to the table, and it won’t do a damned thing. Nazis don’t see anyone outside their group as fully human, and they will attempt to subjugate or kill their victims as soon as the opportunity presents itself. To quote from another thread where related topics were discussed:
Liberal ideology claims that it can control extremism and oppression by codified legal rights. The counter to this is that rights on paper are worthless when the state does not respect those rights, and that the best guarantee against oppression is to vest political power in the hands of the majority.
Both the current reality and American history in general suggest that the liberal approach is ineffective at resisting oppression and exploitation.
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On the more general theme of why I am not a liberal:
The history is important [1].
The original parliamentary parties were conservatives; the landed nobles who forced their kings to surrender some power during the Renaissance. Then in the 18th century, after the rise of capitalism, a new group of merchants and industrialists gained enough wealth that they were able to successfully challenge the power of the conservative aristocrats.
These were the liberals [2], and it is from their newfound dominance that the concept of “liberal democracy” was born. But note that it was still only people with money that had any say in running the government.
About a century later, the radicals arose. These were people who were “radical” in the sense that they believed that working-class people should be allowed to vote. The advancing development of firearms had rendered traditional methods of suppressing uppity peasants less reliable, so after long and painful struggle, the workers got the vote.
But they still didn’t have any money, and their power was severely constrained by the moneyed classes’ deliberate corruption of democracy.
Then the socialists showed up, and began to argue that the peasants should not just have a say, they should be in charge, because they are the majority and they do nearly all the work.
This is the basis of where the “dictatorship of the proletariat” idea comes from. That sounds like a cartoonishly menacing phrase, but all it really means is that in any true democratic state, the largest group is going to have the dominant say, just by weight of numbers.
The current US political system is deliberately designed to prevent that from happening. Some of that is openly acknowledged (e.g. the original justification for the electoral college), some of it is not (e.g. the functional disenfranchisement of the American working class via voter suppression and the gerrymander).
Which leads into the argument presented in this thread:
https://twitter.com/elenthemellon/status/911321825182920705
Anyway…that was all a bit rambly, but it might provide some things to talk about.
My background is neuroscience, philosophy of science, scientific history and military history; I’m not accustomed to discussing political theory in detail. The basic ideas are in my head, but explaining it clearly and with accurate terminology is still something that I’m working on. My general political position is somewhere between Naomi Klein and Akala, and both of them are much more eloquent than I am.
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[1] So important that I am now going to oversimplify it to such a degree that historians are probably spontaneously combusting around the globe. But it does the job for what I’m trying to say here.
[2] Being a bit loose with terminology here; ideology and party names are not the same thing. Whigs etc.
