the difference between American liberalism and American leftism.
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There is no difference, because neither really means anything. Both “liberal” and “leftist” vaguely refer to people on the left side of the political spectrum, but mostly are just insults that Republicans throw at Democrats. If you are a “liberal” or “leftist”, then you probably don’t use those words to describe yourself.
Liberals don’t care who pays for all the free stuff, or even that it necessarily be paid for at all. Leftists have very specific targets in mind for who should be made to pay for all the free stuff, and making them pay is almost as important as -sometimes even more important than- the free stuff itself.
Liberalism is a subset of leftism, just like conservatism is a subset of rightism.
American liberalism is barely left of centrism and shares many centrist viewpoints. There are arguments that American liberalism shares a few rightist viewpoints, but I won’t comment on them here.
There’s no definition of American Leftism, because the political spectrum exists independently of nations.
Basically, your question is equivalent to asking the difference between oranges and citrus fruits. If Oranges=Liberalism and Limes=Conservatism, then Political Spectrum =Citrus and left/right=different taste groups.
Edit: a whole bunch of down votes, and nobody disputing. Typical partisans disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing.
Liberals are more centrist, and often fall into the neo-liberal camp.
Leftists are progressives.
American liberals *tend* to be lenient on social issues while maintaining a somewhat laissez faire attitude towards trade. Many associate themselves with the left.
Leftists tend to be more in favor of strictly government regulation on trade, bigger spenders etc. they do not consider themselves liberals (generally).
It depends on who you ask.
To Americans who’re right-of-center they’re synonyms for anyone left-of-center.
To progressives liberal means the center, and an outlook that capitalism and the government are in general good, but need to be improved via the passing of laws and policies.
Some liberals and progressives use leftist as a synonym for progressive, or the people further left of liberals, but I’m not sure how common it really is as a term. Generally they believe capitalism has been a net negative and society needs to be rebuilt to best serve people.
Excellent question and great responses. It’s very tricky. Leftists imo are more radical; they want systematic change rather than selective change like the liberals, many of whom support democrats. I just say I’m progressive although that’s super vague. I’m in Canada now and align more with the NDP for the most part.
OKAY so people are using this as an opportunity to push a political agenda instead of answering the question.
The closest you can come to definite terms here is American liberalism and general “leftist” thought. As most political terms, they are broad and can mean many things in different situations. American liberalism generally is the philosophy of individualism, a democratic egalitarian social order, and libertarian in economic and cultural ideology (the idea that people should be free to conduct their own affairs without government interference, not the libertarian party). When people think of liberalism, some of the big philosophers they think about are John Stewart Mills, John Locke, and John Rawls. Rawls, arguably, is the spokesperson for American Liberalism.
Leftist thought is not necessarily the opposite of liberalism, it just has fundamental disagreements. Leftism, GENERALLY, is anti-capitalist, collectivists socially, and anti-class structure. The big thinkers here are Mark Fisher, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, and (of course) Karl Marx. But “leftism” is such a nebulous term, it can mean anything from “anti-capitalist American left” to “Stalinist” to “Anyone to the left of Donald Trump”. This term is really one where you need to figure out how people are using it and that usually means figuring out where THEY are politically.
These things are the same as any other country, leftists are anti-capitalist and liberals are not.
The American Left is presently exceptionally weak and doesn’t have much of a voice; so people see liberals and conflate them with the left, even though they are not leftists. That’s just the farthest left that a lot of Americans think someone can actually be. They have not really encountered leftist ideas.
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