I want to thank the defenders of misogyny

[BainsBane]

289. Liberalism is a political ideology that accepts the legitimacy of capitalism

Classical liberalism emerged in the late Enlightenment, in the writings of people like Adam Smith and John Locke. It championed the individual as the true repository of rights and promoted free markets. It is the political corollary of capitalism. Liberalism has long been associated with opening up markets and embracing values of individualism over the common good. It's meaning has changed somewhat in the US to refer to the left of a very narrow political spectrum. The left in this country was imprisoned, deported, purged, and blacklisted from the 1910s through the 1950s. It was destroyed. Leftism has traditionally been oriented toward Marxism, toward a critique of capitalism. Liberalism does not challenge capitalism; it seeks to maintain and perpetuate it by--now in US context--taming its excesses. FDR is lauded here as a great liberal president, and indeed he was. His greatest accomplishment lay in shoring up capitalism by co-opting the frustration of people's movements (led by the Communist Party, among others). The focus on FDR as a benevolent benefactor is particularly pernicious because it creates a false expectation that government works for the benefit of the people. The New Deal was made by people's movements; FDR's noblesse oblige enabled him to co=opt their goals and assuage the ravages of capitalism.

We live in a capitalist state. The nature of our government is to serve the interests of capital. No president--even if he wanted to, and none have wanted to--can undo that because the constitution places the values of individualism, which are central to justifications of capital, at its core. The endless fixation on political saviors like FDR, Obama, or Bernie Sanders works against understanding the problem and collective action. It rests hope in a single individual to transform society. The counterpoint to that is projecting all frustrations with that society onto other individuals, like Hillary Clinton or again Barack Obama. Such a focus on particular politicians blinds people to the overall structures that work against their interests and in support of capital.

The problem with liberals imagining they represent the left is that they ignore a whole world of leftist movements throughout the world and in their own nation's history. I have even had people here tell me Che Guevarra was a populist, when in fact he was a revolutionary socialist. Such comments reveal an inability to distinguish movements that challenge capitalism from ones that accommodate it. Populists rev up the population in pursuit of personal power and the ongoing stability of the capitalist state. Socialists seek to overturn capitalism and replace it with collectivism, as in Cuba. Liberals accommodate capitalism, accept structural inequality, and simply seek to lessen it or regain their own position atop the capitalist world order.