I keep seeing posts from this instance referring to capitalists as liberals. Since when are capitalism and liberalism related? As far as I've always known, liberalism is a social ideology, while capitalism is an economic system.
Why do y'all refer to all capitalists as liberals when at least half (probably more, at least in my experience) are conservatives?
I, for example, consider myself a liberal, but I'm most certainly not a capitalist. I'm stuck in a capitalist society in which I have to play by the rules if I want to feed my family, but that's as far as my support for the system goes. I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans feel this way.
Looking it up, the definition of liberalism specifies a belief in maximum personal freedom, especially as guaranteed by a government. Considering that 90% of governments in the world are endlessly corrupt, capitalist or not, I'd much prefer one that guarantees its citizens rights as a matter of course rather than begrudgingly grants them privileges that can be taken away without public oversight.
Do y'all really trust your governments to look after your best interests? As a U.S. American, I know I wouldn't trust my government or politicians to do anything but enrich themselves at my expense, but I don't have to; my rights are guaranteed by our constitution.
Now if we could just get them to stop funding and committing genocide...
EDIT: So many incredibly well thought-out and researched responses! I have a lot of reading and thinking to do, so thank you all for your input. I'll likely be referring back to this post for a while as I learn more about the world outside my U.S.-centric bubble. My biggest takeaways from all this after a quick perusal of the replies are that liberalism has a very different meaning outside the U.S. and has a lot more to do with private property, especially land ownership, than I'd thought.
My time is limited and there are so many responses that I likely won't be replying to (m)any any time soon, but know that I appreciate all the knowledge bombs y'all have dropped.
Hey, this is more of a linguistic history answer.
In the US, some writers like Mill or Painewere more popular, who truly saw liberalism as an emancipatory force that could uplift minorities into respectable culture. You can still see this in the left liberal running joke "more black girlbosses", wherein emancipation is a small number of a minority becomes business owners. This concept of "liberalism" became more popular with Lincoln and FDR and is now what Americans imagine "liberals" are. Their opposite, conservatives, evolved from monarchists to supporters of a nascent aristocracy, to local business interests (which means oil interests, agribusiness, etc). Conserving current power, as it were.
In Europe, however, other writers were popular, and liberalism remained more of an umbrella term for the property rights parties.
Liberals think their philosophy is about republicanism, democracy, individual rights eyc. but the socialist critique would argue that it has always been about a universalisation of property rights, specifically under the hegemony of Western European pedigree. Even other concepts of property rights are there to be brutally swept aside if they cannot be linked in to the hegemony, and liberal democracies are very comfortable with non-democracies without civil rights, and are comfortable violating the sovereignty of republics that don't hook into their markets.
Before liberalism, there were a lot of different kinds of property that could be taken or used in different ways or by different people. A lot of property was considered "rented" from the monarch, but there was also the church lands and the commons. An idea of an individual peasant owning a specific section of grass didn't exist, or at least wouldn't remotely be enforced. The encroachment of exclusive inviolable property advanced over centuries, to the point where the main form of aristocracy with power was ones that made the jump to becoming capitalists. The emancipation of slaves was in part justified with giving them access to the ability to own property.
Slaves were an interesting case as a big part of the expansion of liberalism was arguments over slavery, as they were a special type of property. A capitalist may believe that he is entitled to the produce of his property, but the church argued that the slaves souls were God's domain, and thus holy acts (like marriage, baptism, birth) were outside the purview of the capitalist, could not be prevented or exploited. This squabble and others like it was a big part of the secularisation of liberalism and squashing out the power of the church, argues Losurdo in "Liberalism: A Counter-history", rather than "Enlightenment values" as Whig history would claim.
Of course now, liberals would argue, we don't have slaves and so long as sweatshop workers in Indonesia have the right to own property, regardless of their actual access or ability, they are not slaves. Indeed, one could argue that many liberals think of slavery as being barred from property relations. This can be seen every time a business owner is barred from a property relationship. Something something freedom rar rar.
Obviously, not every liberal is a capitalist.
"True" idealised liberalism hasn't ever existed, but every time it has gotten close it has resulted in so much human misery and squalor that capitalists as a class have released the reigns a bit (great depression, postwar welfare etc).