Liberalism and Socialism

The only time in my life (prior to writing this post) when I ever Self Identified as a Liberal was after I was already a Socialist.  

I now understand that I was actually a type of "Classical Liberal" the entire time I was an Austrian-School Libertarian with some Paleo-Conservative Characteristics (or Ron Paul Libertarian for short). But at the time I was fully tricked by the way Conservatives used the word Liberal.  By this point I understood that not all Liberals were Socialists, the mainstream Democratic Party certainly wasn't.  But I still bought into the idea that Socialism is a line you cross from being very Liberal.  But I quickly learned that Socialists and Communists don't like being called Liberals, one person I interacted with on Twitter got really angry and offended at my associating our shared values with Liberalism.

But since at least 2018 I've been using the word Liberal the way most Online Leftists use it.  But lately as I've been learning more and more about the history of modern Political ideas in 2023, I'm starting to wonder if I was actually right the first time and Socialism should be thought of as Sub-Genre of Liberalism, as a child of Liberalism that got disowned at some point.

The Wikipedia Page for Liberalism defines the core definition this way "Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law".  The only one of those values that even at face value looks incompatible with Socialism is Private Property.  And I already on this blog did a post on how Private Property existing or not is irrelevant to the definition of Communism, and it's relevance to Capitalism I would argue conflicts with the idea of viewing it as an innate Human Right, plenty of the Third World Governments the CIA considered Communist enough to overthrow and replace with a Junta were people who merely Redistributed Land Ownership.  But even if you feel Private Property can't exist at all under your interpretation of Socialism, is removing only one of six core values enough to make something not Liberal at all?

Wikipedia does go on to list Market Economics as one of the secondary optional values depending on the type.  Meanwhile Market Socialism also exists though I don't support it.  And to my shock the page didn't use Merit or any derivative words at all, Meritocracy is the real Justifying Ideology of Capitalism, not anything innate to Liberalism.

John Locke is often considered the father of Liberalism but James Tully argued that on property Locke's views were not compatible with Capitalist ideology at all, he was co-opted.  Rousseau was another Enlightenment Figure who both Liberals and Socialists see an intellectual ancestor.  David Ricardo was a Whig Economist who influenced certain strands of Socialism.  And even Adam Smith was cited as an influence on some Socialists not in merely an "I'm debunking him" way. American anarchist Benjamin Tucker wrote in Individual Liberty:

The economic principles of Modern Socialism are a logical deduction from the principle laid down by Adam Smith in the early chapters of his Wealth of Nations,—namely, that labor is the true measure of price. ... Half a century or more after Smith enunciated the principle above stated, Socialism picked it up where he had dropped it, and in following it to its logical conclusions, made it the basis of a new economic philosophy ... This seems to have been done independently by three different men, of three different nationalities, in three different languages: Josiah Warren, an American; Pierre J. Proudhon, a Frenchman; Karl Marx, a German ... That the work of this interesting trio should have been done so nearly simultaneously would seem to indicate that Socialism was in the air, and that the time was ripe and the conditions favorable for the appearance of this new school of thought. So far as priority of time is concerned, the credit seems to belong to Warren, the American,—a fact which should be noted by the stump orators who are so fond of declaiming against Socialism as an imported article.

Ryan Chapman described Marxism as a Critique of Liberalism.  But you can Critique something from within, Marx was literally employed by a Republican Party News Paper in New York where he and the Earliest American Marxists Campaigned for Abraham Lincoln, and also saw his ideas as developing out of certain factions of the French Revolution, not all of whom I would properly label Socialist.

This notion that Liberal should be just as much of a Dirty Word to us as it is to Conservatives is weaponized by various NazBol or Class Reductionist types, seeing all the WOKE talk from Breadtube as fundamentally Liberal ideas and that's why they're Capitalist Torjan Horses.  But then even some Anarchists like CuckPhilsophy and Zoe Baker will make videos on how the Left shouldn't care about Equality or Human Rights.

But Breadubers also use Liberal as a Dirty Word.  They when not using the proper definition seem to define it based on Centrist Democrats, especially when critiquing what they call the "Liberal" takes on Race, Gender or Queer issues.  There are non Socialist even Anti-Socialist Liberals who are Woke SJW Critical Race Theorists.

It also factors into the Leftist Critiques of the Basic Income I've been fighting back against.  Leftists don't want to support something that sounds "Liberal" same as Conservatives don't want to support something that sounds "Socialist".

Etymologically the word Liberal and Libertarian both have fundamentally positive meanings coming from Liberty, so maybe we should stop conceding to Pro-Capitalists that they have a Monopoly on them.  

In fact if anything it should be Defenders of Capitalism who are excommunicated. 

Isaiah 32:5-8 

"The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.  For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.  The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.  But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand."

The word Liberal didn't refer to an ideology at all yet in 1611, making these verses all the more Prophetic.