the difference between American liberalism and American leftism.
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Liberals are true capitalists. The US is a “liberal democracy” and “Liberalism” as Adam Smith championed it focuses on the individual, including individual rights/civil liberties, free trade not subject to protectionism, and allowing money and people to freely travel across borders. They take a more right wing approach to the economy, with mild concessions given in the form of Medicaid, Medicare, etc. Regarding social issues, they tend to believe inequality due to discrimination is wrong, but inequality due to economic factors is just. Today, they rarely include class in their discussion of policy, but they did used to. Over the course of the 20th century, the US made great strides while it was competing with the Soviet Union. This included making concessions to the working class, including poor black citizens and other minority communities. However, when the Soviet Union fell, the government, with bipartisan support, passed NAFTA, which led to the hollowing out of rust belt, Appalachian, rural communities in general. Liberalism then became concerned more with cultural issues than broad, sweeping economic ones (could go into the history of the new deal and the great society and why they both worked, but it’s a long discussion). Generally, now, liberals favor small, incremental change to the economy in the form of complicated policy that generally just redistributes money instead of de-commodifying entire industries.
Leftists on the other hand focus on class, and see problems associated with race or gender as being rooted in class. They believe that all social problems are ultimately traceable to material conditions (slavery is a great example- it was economic factors and the southern aristocracy’s dependence on cotton that perpetuated slavery while the north industrialized and outlawed the practice. The slavers were landed gentry who owned extremely large plots of land- capital was concentrated in the hands of a select few). However, it’s not so simple as saying, for instance, “if you’re poor you’re more likely to commit crime.” Capitalism ultimately erodes and degrades all social bonds and leads to alienation, anger, a lack of care for your fellow human being, which causes a host of social problems. Leftists believe in the de-commodification of industries like healthcare, housing, education etc. They would tell you these things should be publicly owned, with greater democratic input into how they’re ran. A leftist would tell you that inequality due to discrimination OR wealth is unjust. It is incredibly difficult to break out of the working or ragged classes, and even if you do climb out, you are constantly precarious- one medical emergency for instance can wipe out everything you have. This is partly due to the fact that, it stands, most people do not have “capital,” they do not have a mode of production or a method by which to generate capital. Regular people have “money,” which we are always giving back to the capitalists in the forms of rent, car payments, bills, household goods, etc. They do this by selling their labor either to the capitalists or to the public in the form of services. Labor is the only commodity available to most people, and leftists believe that it is the workers who actually generate capital for the capitalists, as they’re the ones doing the work to actually generate it. Yet, the capitalists keep the lion’s share. A leftist would say this is unjust while a liberal would say it is just.
TL;DR- liberals are still ultimately capitalists like conservatives, but they do believe in some semblance of a safety net, while leftists believe the inertia of the state and industry should be redirected toward people instead of profit.
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