What are your thoughts on liberal anti-capitalism and reclaiming liberalism for the radical left?
Liberal anti-capitalists typically show that capitalism is illiberal through demonstrating how it violates liberal principles. An example would be David Ellerman in:
https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf
He argues that capitalist employment violates liberal principles of justice such as the norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match implying a theory of inalienable rights
I don’t have any issue with someone wanting to reassert the liberal basis for Leftist philosophies, but I think that this is one of those things that only makes sense to do in Leftist spaces.
There are too many misperceptions and bastardized meanings that have layered onto Liberalism as a concept in the minds of most people living under capitalism, such that before you can begin reasserting the Leftist agreement with actual liberalism, you are going to have to completely undo the years of capitalist propaganda that has reworked liberalism into being the same as (modern) Libertarianism or Neo liberalism, both of which the average person just calls Liberalism.
And that’s not even getting into the de-Capitalism-ization of Libertarianism, which was originally a leftist, anti-capitalist and anti-government movement, but was completely corrupted/co-opted by the Right in US politics in the 50s, into the current AnCap shitshow.
tl;Dr the amount of work and influence that would be required to correct the definitions around liberalism in the minds of the genpop, as a prerequisite for reclaiming the term for Leftists, is beyond our capabilities, outside of Leftist spaces.
My thoughts are… that I’ll see if ChatGPT or something can remove the chaff from that PDF, because oh man, is it full of it.
Here is a short introduction to the core argument against capitalism based on liberal principles: https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/
