I went from conservative teenager in the early 2000s to a Ron Paul libertarian to socialist by 2010-11. Chris Hedges and Jeremy Scahill radicalized me and I skipped right over a lib phase
Similar. Grew up in a right wing household. Went libertarian because it was the closest ideology I knew of to what I believed. Quickly learned how awful libertarians were and how the invisible hand doesn't actually exist. Self identified as "apolitical" but was actually somewhere on the bottom left of the political compass for a while, with Orwell and Chomsky to thank for that. Then found Marx.
I'm proud to say I never really was. My bedroom decorations when I was a kid included a decorative chairman Mao plate and a Soviet flag.
The closest I got to being a lib was a phase I went through with anarchism. My dad was a lib and I remember one time when I was kid him freaking out because I stood my ground in saying that I wasn't proud to be Canadian.
Ultimately you are right, some libs stop being libs, but it's never going to be enough as long as the material conditions support them being libs. I think it's anti Marxist to rely on people's good will to change, so I think the primary focus should be on anti imperialism and supporting the third world proletariat in resisting Western imperialism in any way possible.
If third world people can resist imperialism in a significant way, material conditions will change in a way that heightens contradiction dramatically in the west and open up the room for positive change. But as long as the west continues to enslave most of the world, the majority will go along with it.
It's like recycling. Recycling is the perfect metaphor for modern liberalism. They will recycle to pay themselves on the back, but heave to centrism the minute a policy is suggested that means the will need to take the bus to work.
Voting for the harm reduction candidate and making a big deal out of it is the recycling of politics.
Progressive neolibs unironically believe exploitative and extractive forms of "free trade" is the most efficient way to lift developing nations out of poverty, and that they follow "evidence-based policy" (by which they mean "empirical" studies done by international-development and trade economists, funded by NGOs and running econometric regressions using e.g. World Bank data). If you condemn this approach to solving world poverty, they may straight up ask you, "why don't you care about the global poor?" because they don't have the imagination needed to envision an alternative trade system that's actually equitable for all people regardless of nationality instead of just being a Pareto improvement.
These neolibs will also claim credit for the rapid rise in the PRC's living standards (because of all the western capital invested in the late 20th century) despite the PRC's economy having features of central planning with partially publicly-owned companies while most other developing countries to receive such investment have had the Chicago-boy austerity and privatization treatment forced onto them by one of the IMF, World Bank, or WTO with significantly less success, the same sort of schemes which they bitterly oppose when proposed by Republicans, Tories, etc. in their own countries. When they eventually notice this contradiction they either stop being progressive or they stop being neoliberals.
Libs will not "wake up" because capitalist imperialism benfits them.
A lib is just an imperialist with a bad conscience.
eh some libs stop being lib, we were all libs at one point
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werelibs? gonna need a lot of silver for that
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werelib! werelib? there. what? there lib. there warcriminal.
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I went from conservative teenager in the early 2000s to a Ron Paul libertarian to socialist by 2010-11. Chris Hedges and Jeremy Scahill radicalized me and I skipped right over a lib phase
Similar. Grew up in a right wing household. Went libertarian because it was the closest ideology I knew of to what I believed. Quickly learned how awful libertarians were and how the invisible hand doesn't actually exist. Self identified as "apolitical" but was actually somewhere on the bottom left of the political compass for a while, with Orwell and Chomsky to thank for that. Then found Marx.
I'm proud to say I never really was. My bedroom decorations when I was a kid included a decorative chairman Mao plate and a Soviet flag.
The closest I got to being a lib was a phase I went through with anarchism. My dad was a lib and I remember one time when I was kid him freaking out because I stood my ground in saying that I wasn't proud to be Canadian.
Ultimately you are right, some libs stop being libs, but it's never going to be enough as long as the material conditions support them being libs. I think it's anti Marxist to rely on people's good will to change, so I think the primary focus should be on anti imperialism and supporting the third world proletariat in resisting Western imperialism in any way possible.
If third world people can resist imperialism in a significant way, material conditions will change in a way that heightens contradiction dramatically in the west and open up the room for positive change. But as long as the west continues to enslave most of the world, the majority will go along with it.
It's like recycling. Recycling is the perfect metaphor for modern liberalism. They will recycle to pay themselves on the back, but heave to centrism the minute a policy is suggested that means the will need to take the bus to work.
Voting for the harm reduction candidate and making a big deal out of it is the recycling of politics.
Libs don't have a "bad conscience" about imperialism whatsoever, they think it's good, just go on r/neoliberal
I mean performatively progressive liberals.
Progressive neolibs unironically believe exploitative and extractive forms of "free trade" is the most efficient way to lift developing nations out of poverty, and that they follow "evidence-based policy" (by which they mean "empirical" studies done by international-development and trade economists, funded by NGOs and running econometric regressions using e.g. World Bank data). If you condemn this approach to solving world poverty, they may straight up ask you, "why don't you care about the global poor?" because they don't have the imagination needed to envision an alternative trade system that's actually equitable for all people regardless of nationality instead of just being a Pareto improvement. These neolibs will also claim credit for the rapid rise in the PRC's living standards (because of all the western capital invested in the late 20th century) despite the PRC's economy having features of central planning with partially publicly-owned companies while most other developing countries to receive such investment have had the Chicago-boy austerity and privatization treatment forced onto them by one of the IMF, World Bank, or WTO with significantly less success, the same sort of schemes which they bitterly oppose when proposed by Republicans, Tories, etc. in their own countries. When they eventually notice this contradiction they either stop being progressive or they stop being neoliberals.
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