I'm not a socialist, I'm a liberal, and yes there's a difference

[ksmith]

A very interesting analysis. Thanks to scbutler for pointing it out.

"Anyone who's spent time around radical leftists knows that one of the worst insults you can level at them is "liberal". Liberals aren't socialists, or radicals, or anything like that. Liberals want to keep capitalism and reconfigure it to satisfy their ideas of fairness and equality; to a socialist, this is all a matter of quibbling over the terms of oppression rather than abolishing it. A liberal, then, to a socialist, is someone who speaks about equality and fairness while acting to ensure that neither will come about. The goals of socialists and the goals of liberals are completely at odds with one another, and to conflate the two is to make it difficult to talk about either liberalism or socialism, and by extension makes it difficult to discuss other political ideas which are similar-or completely dissimilar- to them."

Discussions like this are why I'm an LJ addict.

Comments

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I hope we can reclaim the word liberal. I'm so tired of it being used as a slur.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

The technical term for that is "demonization".

[mcurry.livejournal.com]

I'm not a liberal, I'm a socialist, and though I don't consider the label liberal to be some sort of great insult, I would certainly like it if people understood the difference. Of course, clear definitions like the one above don't really reflect the range of opinions that make up either, but it's better than thinking they're the same thing.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Like any primer, it's a good place to start.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

I'd say this definition of socialism might even run a little closer to communism than it does to socialism, but then we'd never be able to argue about this sort of thing if we all agreed.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

Those who are more interested in winning elections than in rational discussion are happy to lump oranges and apples into "fruit" and toss babies out with bathwater.

Hence the liberals = socialists = Communists that leads to comments like "All Democrats are really Communists..."

There's a big whacking gap between conservatives and big-L Libertarians, too, but it suits some to ignore it.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

They'll ignore it as long as those other folks vote their way. If those folks stop, they'll be demonized along with the rest.