this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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I was a card carrying Libertarian after high school, before my sense of empathy developed more fully.
Same. The world seemed so simple back then, until I matured. I suspect a lot of people are emotionally stuck
I can also relate, a classic libertarian utopia sounds great until you realise poor people exist. I think a lot of individuals are just afraid of personal growth because it often means admitting you were wrong.
Well, it's not something you just institute overnight. Just like with communism, if you try that you'd end up with a pretty big mess, because people will manipulate the framework for their own personal gains. Instead it's something you work towards slowly, through education and efforts to balance the system until it's not really needed anymore.
The keys always have to be:
Our actions weave into the fabric of society, and future generations are formed from that same fabric. It takes time to shift how our nature manifests into actual behavior.
Humans don't work that way and never will.
That is just capitalist propaganda
Are the history books capitalist propaganda too, then? Because I'm not aware of any instance in history when a stable society emerged with no governing authority and no one taking advantage of anyone else. To my knowledge, at least one of those things always ended up happening, and quickly.
Most humans are selfish and jealous by nature. Not all, but most, and it only takes one jerk to ruin it for everyone. Any system that ignores this fact, and does not have some strategy for dealing with it, is doomed to failure.
The only way I foresee your vision ever becoming reality is if a technological revolution enables a post-scarcity economy, as seen in some science fiction like Star Trek. This could remove the main driver for humanity's selfishness. Maybe. But we aren't even close to having the technology needed to accomplish that.
In many ways I still consider myself libertarian, but moreso in anti authority leaning than Republican but with a cooler label. Many of my peers in highschool and university clicked with the pro guns, pro expression sentiment, but when it came actually letting queer people and religious minorities live their lives, or allowing women control over their own bodies and healthcare, they always seemed to side with the Authoritarians in power threatening the to restrict these people. Not to mention many of them had no problem with authority as long as it came from a corporate entity or oligarch.
I still identify with the term Libertarian, but have stopped using it because it truly doesn't represent what it was supposed to mean anymore.
There is such a thing as a "Libertarian Socialist", which seems to be what you are looking for. A lot of Libertarian Socialists also just call themselves "anarchists"; and "anarchism" essentially just means something like "anti-authority" or "anti-hierarchy".
If you want to maybe explore it a bit:
Homage to Catalonia is a book written by George Orwell where he tells of his time in Spain fighting alongside the anarchists and socialists in Spain (against the fascists supported by Hitler and Mussolini, and against the republicans backed by Stalin).
The Dispossessed written by Ursula K. Le Guin; it's a sci-fi story about a society living on a moon, who are anti-capitalists and supposedly anarchists (whether they are anarchists or not is one of the focus points of the story).
If you just want to read theory instead, you can also search for Pyotr Kropotkin, and Emma Goldberg.
Thanks. Seeing Orwell's name attached to one of your recs is a good sign.
yeah it’s a shame that libertarian basically means closeted republican these days
is there a better term?
I’d consider myself pretty libertarian-minded in the whole ‘you live your life and I live mine’ style, but not in the ‘let corporations do whatever they want to workers and the environment’ style
Do you believe in a democratic government undertaking tasks of social benefit? Like building roads and rails
as long as the money isn’t being wasted or contracts being handed out to companies owned by politician’s friends, yeah
I often go with Anti-Authoritarian when describing my beliefs. I've played around with the Anarchist label as well, though it seems to have the same affect on Communists who want an edgier label (which is ironic, considering both groups have clashed with each other throughout history)
I like many concepts of Anarchy, but until we have Star Trek levels of free unlimited power and food, I don’t think it would work.
There have been examples of anarchy working. Unfortunately, most of the ones I know of were around during World War 2 and got crushed between 2 larger opponents, or backstabbed by one of them.
Anarchists - and other socialists in Catalonia - during the Spanish Civil War, were stuck between the fascists and the republicans (Soviets), sided with the Soviets and ended up being betrayed. Homage to Catalonia by Orwell is a good book about the civil war and the anarchists.
Korean People's Association in Manchuria were destroyed by Japan a few years before WW2 during a war between China and Japan IIRC, and apparently some of its leaders were also killed by "Korean communists" (the same ones that ended up forming North Korea).
The Black Army of Ukraine fought the Red and White armies at separate times; one time they joined the Red Army against the White Army, and were betrayed.
You might have noticed a pattern there, which is also why a lot of anarchists are not found of Marxist-Leninists or Stalinists.
And honestly, 'conservative' shouldn't be a bad word either. But it's been morphed into this fascist hate machine, and it's hard to see what you've become when you're on the inside.
It's not like Democrats are screaming to tear down the Walmarts and Dollar Generals, and bring back local businesses and repairable products. Neither side is all that great, it's just that one is teetering on genocidal. I'm not saying don't vote democrat, because you absolutely have to if you want to head off what's coming. But we need to start looking at this problem more holistically, if we don't just want to perpetuate it in future generations.
The term “fundamentalist” was coined because “conservative” was a bad word, and that was over a century ago. Conservative hate is nothing new.
Source? I never heard fundamentalism was coined as an alternative to saying conservative. Fundamentalism could be described as conservative but I don't think the 1920s fundamentalists were trying to avoid that in any way.
That's called being a Democrat
A "Democrat" is a member of the "Democratic Party" of the USA, it is not a political ideology in itself. Democrats are usually economic Liberals and don't care that much about workers or the environment, but some are Social Democrats (Bernie Sanders). They are also usually socially progressive.
The Republican Party is also composed mainly of economic liberals; however, they are typically socially conservative.
Democrat isn't really an ideology though as much as it's a coalition of voters. They can be anyone from Communists and socialists to conservatives who don't align with the Republican party. The majority of politicians within the party tend to be free market liberals akin to Clinton, with a few European style Social Democrats akin to Bernie Sanders and AOC. As someone who supports gun ownership and rejects the existence of corporate welfare and monopolies, I might not identify with many of the politicians within the Democratic party. Likewise I take issue with the Republican's stances towards human rights, the establishment of religion, and putting the legitimacy of elections into question. I might be more comfortable with voting Democrat, but the party's platform would not be how I would describe my ideology.
Republicans love co-opting things after all. Libertarians in that sense are just republicans who realized saying that is an automatic red flag.