this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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[–] TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee 27 points 3 days ago (14 children)

I don’t understand the difference and I don’t think I ever will

[–] betheydocrime@lemmy.world 74 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I think the best way to put it is that a leftist is someone who believes that workers should own the wealth that they create, while a liberal is someone believes in "socially progressive causes" without examining the underlying systems that bring about the necessity of "socially progressive causes".

For example, a liberal would want more woman CEOs, while a leftist would want to get rid of CEOs.

[–] JayTreeman@fedia.io 31 points 3 days ago

Slight addendum: liberals fight against any real progress until it's inevitable and then take credit

[–] 4lan@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Liberals want to throw money at problems forever, Leftist want to tackle the root causes so they end.

Liberals are licking the wounds, leftists are applying antibiotic and bandages

[–] Faresh@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

Liberalism stands for individual liberty, equality before the law, political freedom, government limited by a constitution and the sanctity of private property (and capitalism). The last point is the most important when making the distinction.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (3 children)
[–] SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

That's a fair question, but there are many different answers. Not all leftist schools of thought fully advocate for removing a management style hierarchy, though some do. Some ideas push for rotating management with either a round robin selection, a raffle system, or democratically elected managers. Not dissimilar to how many countries run their governments.

Alternatively, if it fits the workflow, a flat style structure where no one inherently has a defined role, so teams form naturally to work on what they want or deem necessary. Someone will still often fill the role of "project manager" mind you, but the who and how are determined based on what works best for the situation. Not unlike letting students form their own groups for projects.

If you are genuinely curious, there is no shortage of books, YouTube videos, and websites just waiting to opine about their preferred methodology that would give you a much more authentic and robust understanding. Or I bet if you thought about it, you could even come up with some variations yourself.

The important point to get across for leftists is that the structure of economic production should be such that its aim is to benefit the general populace as evenly or equitably as possible. This is opposed to an "owner class" who uses their power, usually in the form of wealth, to take control the economic means of production, who then sets out to have the workers create more value than they will be given in return, so that the "owner" can take the excess value generated by the workers to increase their own wealth and/or power.

tl;dr
The lynchpin question for leftists isn't "who runs the factory?", but "who reaps the rewards?".

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[–] Mozingo@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago (3 children)
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[–] Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Both Classical Liberalism and Neoliberalism are at their core capitalist ideologies. While the Republican party is more conservative in both social and economic issues, both parties still operate within the framework of neoliberalism.

In America we only have the Democrat and Republican Parties which are usually labeled as Liberal and Conservative respectively. Since the Democratic party is relatively left of the Republican party, we see the conflation of the label Liberal and Left in American politics. But that's not really accurate when looking at the Ideologies of the parties.

There is Social Democracy, which is still a capitalist ideology where some of the profits are redirected towards social welfare. This is more common in Western Europe and will still rachet towards Fascism.

Leftist ideologies, such as Socialism and Anarchism are fundamentally anti-capitalist, unlike liberalism and neoliberalism. Richard Wolff explains socialism and capitalism very well.

On Liberalism:

What is neoliberalism? A political scientist explains the use and evolution of the term

Liberalism and Neoliberalism

How the Democrats Traded the New Deal for Neoliberalism

On Leftist ideologies:

Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Communism and Revolutions

Capitalism, Global Poverty, and the Case for Democratic Socialism

[–] ghen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Well if soc dems aren't left then i guess I'm not left.

I didn't know we were taking anything left of soc dem seriously yet, as we haven't proven any sort of successful means of governing people that far left.

[–] Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

Worker cooperatives already exist. I recommend reading or listening to Richard Wolff about what differentiates socialism and capitalism from each other.

Social Democracy is State-regulated Private Capitalism. The same contradictions between the Capital owners and workers still exist, leading to the same problems. This is why we also see a rise in Fascism in Western Europe.

Securing social democratic reforms of the sort won in the 1930s (such as taxation of corporations and the rich to support mass social services and jobs) requires much more than mere state regulation of private capitalism. The forces behind private capitalism mobilized to retake full control of the state in ways designed to preclude any repeat of New Deal or social democratic responses to crises.

Richard D. Wolff | Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics:

Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies.

...

In modern politics, the term Left typically applies to ideologies and movements to the left of classical liberalism, supporting some degree of democracy in the economic sphere. Today, ideologies such as social liberalism and social democracy are considered to be centre-left, while the Left is typically reserved for movements more critical of capitalism, including the labour movement, socialism, anarchism, communism, Marxism and syndicalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.

(Emphasis added)

Basically, liberals care more about equality of opportunity, while leftists care more about equality of outcome. (And, of course, conservatives actively oppose equality and promote hierarchy.)

On a "political compass," leftism is the left half (obviously). Liberalism is a fuzzy blob centered somewhere below and right of center, but big enough to extend at least a little ways into the other quadrants because of how many different kinds of "liberalism" there are.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Liberals view the status quo (the underlying mechanisms of the government, economy and society) as sacrosanct, legitimate, that it just needs to and will allow itself to be tweaked a bit, that the rules must be followed lest we collapse into chaos.

Leftists view the status quo as widely illegitimate, that a vast multitude of the rules which society operates by are contemptible and functionally evil, and are willing to break the rules to meaningfully change society, that often the entire point is that breaking rules is the only way to establish newer and more just ones.

...

Liberals view Leftists as an extreme part of their fold because they often have similar goals.

Leftists view Liberals as often sharing goals, but as ultimately delusional, magical-thinking self righteous fools, as their methods of achieving these often similar goals are laughably naive, impotent and ineffective, thus functionally making them into conservatives.

[–] rhombus@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You can pretty much boil it down to Liberalism is capitalist, leftism isn’t (although where the line is depends who you ask and how left they are).

The confusion mostly comes from from conservative neoliberals lumping social liberals in with the left, even though they’re only separated by a philosophical debate on what “individual freedoms” are and if they’re more important than a completely unregulated economy or not.

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 3 days ago

There are anti-capitalist liberals though

@politicalmemes

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 5 points 3 days ago
[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

that's the biggest difference between the two groups: the leftists are at least vaguely aware that something in our system is not right and the liberals don't care to pay attention because they're too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.

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