Why don't liberals 'get it'?

[Skyhilist]

I honestly don't understand. I have been around liberals my entire life. Talk to them about most subjects like science, or math and they seem to grasp logical perfectly fine and often (the more intelligent ones) are even developing their own new theories in these fields. But talk to them about politics and they lose all sensibility, abandoning logic for banal, overused bourgeois arguments that are usually reduced to little more than "there is no alternative and also small businesses are good it's just the damn multinationals ruining everything."

You can rebut their arguments perfectly. You can explain your logic clearly. At the end of the day they still take up the irrational position of exploiting the exploitation of labor. Prove them wrong in other fields such as math or science using sound logic though, and many of these liberals will admit they're wrong and listen to you.

So why is it so different with politics? Why is the reasoning of liberals so badly impaired when it comes to this subject compared to others? Sure we've got a bourgeois media, but we've also got a group of people who often times show themselves capable of thinking critically and for themselves in other fields... but are then just totally mentally incapacitated when it comes to politics. Why is this?

[BIXX]

I think it's because in the public school system (at least in the U.S.) teaches people how to use math well and use science well and whatnot (for the most part). However, it doesn't train us to use this information logically. For example, schooling teaches you the complicated way to do everything, but not how to recognize that you can avoid the complicated way.

So the school system makes us learn that capitalism is the best thing we've got, and that we must work with it.

Plus, the school system tells us routinely tells us a few things:
1. Capitalism is great
2. Communism is a failure.
3. Anarchism is immature and dangerous.

If you were told these things and had no idea what each of them actually were, and you couldn't ask questions to clarify each of them, which would you choose? Then, the school system goes on to tell us that communists want a dictatorship where everyone is poor, disagreement is muffled via death, and there is a general sadness. Then it tells us that capitalism is democracy, everyone deserves what they get, whether they get nothing or they get the entire world, because "they worked hard for it".

This adds up to years and years of propaganda against communism and anarchism. Seeing as you have never had to opportunity to see what communism really is, you are almost forced to believe that communism is evil.

Of course the school system is teaching us something wrong, however, most people trust the authority of teachers.


Of course there are other things, but I think this is a main contributor.

[Red Economist]

Politics is pretty close to religion in the sense that certain beliefs are central to the way people think as a philosophical way of organising knowledge and beliefs and are accepted largely on faith alone. Science and Maths are much more flexible because they are the content of people's arguments and are more subject to proof, rather than the very structure of them.

Religions (and Political Ideologies) organise concepts in such a way as to achieve a logical consistency, where as science is driven by the ability to demonstrate that a theory does produce the expected results.

For example:

Communists define human nature in terms of a person's ability to produce, liberals define it in terms of a person's ability to think, and religion goes back a bit further and turns human nature into saving a person's 'soul'.

which becomes:

Communist> Freedom is the ability to produce and satisfy our needs
Liberal> Freedom is the ability to choose without the coercion of the state.
Religions> Freedom is serving god and realising their spiritual connection with said deity.

But you can't prove any of them beyond a certain point as all the evidence is open to interpretation and therefore dependent on what a persona already believes.

But Science and Maths do have their limits. They have breaking points. The battle between religion and science is a question of proofs (faith vs. an experimental method/reason) rather than individual arguments. And (I suspect) if you start breaking down logic in maths you'll end up with the same problems. e.g. Why does 2 mean 2?:confused:

[slum]

i think recognizing the class nature of politics and how capital works (exploited labor, periodic crises etc) leads to a lot of frightening and/or chaotic implications for people who may not have revolution in their own class interest (not to say that no liberals are workers). people defend themselves against any kind of radical idea, even when it can be 'logically' proven, if it has a real potential to upset their harmonious worldview. science and math could potentially have revolutionary implications, but mostly those debates take place on an abstract level.

i think bourgeois cultural hegemony is the primary factor, for reasons users have noted above.

[Questionable]

The reproduction of false social consciousness is an essential part of capitalism. Why are we targeting liberals specifically? We may as well ask why any bourgeois ideology "doesn't get it," from fascists to libertarians.

[RadioRaheem84]

The reproduction of false social consciousness is an essential part of capitalism. Why are we targeting liberals specifically? We may as well ask why any bourgeois ideology "doesn't get it," from fascists to libertarians.

It may have to do with the fact that liberals clearly see themselves as the moral center between two "extremes".

[Rooiakker]

Cause it's just so RATIONAL. All extremism is bad, everyone's opinion is important. Especially the Fascists. Why change the system when we can put a bandaid made of money over it.

/pretty much what I used to think when I was a liberal. Luckily I got my head on straight in high school.

[Jimmie Higgins]

The reproduction of false social consciousness is an essential part of capitalism. Why are we targeting liberals specifically? We may as well ask why any bourgeois ideology "doesn't get it," from fascists to libertarians.Yeah I think this is a good way to look at it. All three of these are examples of petty-bourgois views in capitalism: all three see people interacting with the market as induviudals, all three want to ease the problems and "unfairness" of "big capitalism" on the one hand and reign-in the unrulyness of the masses and laborers on the other.

Bourgoise ideas hold the most sway all else being equal since on a surface level, because we do have to live in capitalism, we do interact as induvidual sellers of our labor power (or skills, for professionals) and we have to compete and we have to be "responcible" and "work hard" if we hope to try and advance (though I think we'd all agree that working hard doesn't really translate to anything - it's not will or dedication that ultimately mean anything - but as a worker, it will take "sacrifices" and "hard work" to save or try and advance in our jobs even if we don't suceede at that). Their ideology couldn't be as persuasive if, from a limited surface view, it had absolutely no relationship to the experiences and views of other groups in society.

On top of this, for the previous generations, liberalism had some measurable benifit that allowed people to see some "progress" as better than none and so worth supporting. Right now, people tend to support liberal ideas as a lesser evil and defense against the advancing of right-wing ideas and policies. So they only hope for "less-bad" austerity or whatnot. But in the post-war era, it would be harder to argue with liberal policies that were massivly subsidizing home-loans and allowing (in the US) tons of (white) workers to achieve home-ownership at really low rates ($50 down and $15 a month in the mid-1950s in the Bay Area for - white -vets). Social Security, Medicare, some federal action on racial liberalization (lip service at first and then action after the civil rights movement began), and health programs and massive housing and job security for other industrial countries at the same time. Contradictions, poverty, and oppression were all still there, but it was a much more robust liberalism than the straw-man version of it today which few people support as a way forward, only as a way to save reforms from the past.

But then, if liberalism is so bankrupt - even moreso when compared to Keynsian-era liberalism, why do so many workers still cling to it? I think this has to do with political confidence and perceptions of "what's possible". When the global justice movement or Occupy happened, there were sudden shifts to the left of liberalism among small groups of people who saw that there was an alternative that might be possible - even if it was unclear what that might be.

[Alexander99]

Classic liberalism is dumb because if you follow it to its logical conclusion it will lead to a monopoly of big business and corporate totalitarianism. There is something vulgar and sinister about being so optimistic about capitalism.

Classical liberalism is a kind of sick ideology that is anti-human because unlike Burkean Conservatism it doesn't have "the philosophy of human imperfection " and distrust mans capacity to reason and act rationally. It is not skeptical enough of human nature. If you aren't skeptical of yourself and see yourself as wrong you cannot develop as a person. That is at the heart of what is wrong with classical liberalism. They don't accept that capitalism has a corrosive affect and that to develop as humans it has to be tamed or overthrown. Burkean Conservatives are skeptical of human nature and capitalism which is something they share in common with Communists, they just have a radically different way of addressing it.

Classical liberals and economic Libertarians rub me up the way something rotten more so than Conservatives because their refusal to accept a free-market is dangerous and that capitalism is corrosive is a kind of direct confrontation to me personally. The complete lack of humanity in their arguments is sick and disturbing.

[guy123]

google: Their morals and ours (1938) Leon Trotsky

"....
Undoubtedly the currents grouped above have certain common features. But the gist of the matter lies in the fact that the evolution of mankind exhausts itself neither by universal suffrage, not by “blood and honor,” nor by the dogma of the immaculate con ception. The historical process signifies primarily the class struggle; moreover, different classes in the name of different aims may in certain instances utilize similar means. Essentially it cannot be otherwise. Armies in combat are always more or less symmetrical; were there nothing in common in their methods of struggle they could not inflict blows upon each other.

If an ignorant peasant or shopkeeper, understanding neither the origin nor the sense of the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, discovers himself between the two fires, he will consider both belligerent camps with equal hatred. And who are all these democratic moralists? Ideologists of intermediary layers who have fallen, or are in fear of falling between the two fires. The chief traits of the prophets of this type are alienism to great historical movements, a hardened conservative mentality, smug narrowness, and a most primitive political cowardice. More than anything moralists wish that history should leave them in peace with their petty books, little magazines, subscribers, common sense, and moral copy books. But history does not leave them in peace. It cuffs them now from the left, now from the right. Clearly – revolution and reaction, Czarism and Bolshevism, communism and fascism, Stalinism and Trotskyism – are all twins. Whoever doubts this may feel the symmetrical skull bumps upon both the right and left sides of these very moralists.


Marxist Amoralism and Eternal Truths

The most popular and most imposing accusation directed against Bolshevik “amoralism” bases itself on the so-called Jesuitical maxim of Bolshevism: “The end justifies the means.” From this it is not difficult to reach the further conclusion: since the Trotskyists, like all Bolsheviks (or Marxists) do not recognize the principles of morality, there is, consequently, no “principled” difference between Trotskyism and Stalinism Q.E.D.

One completely vulgar and cynical American monthly conducted a questionnaire on the moral philosophy of Bolshevism. The questionnaire, as is customary, was to have simultaneously served the ends of ethics and advertisement. The inimitable H.G. Wells, whose high fancy is surpassed only by his Homeric self-satisfaction was not slow in solidarizing himself with the reactionary snobs of Common Sense. Here everything fell into order. But even those participants who considered it necessary to defend Bolshevism did so, in the majority of cases, not without timid evasions (Eastman): the principles of Marxism are, of course, bad, but among the Bolsheviks there are, nevertheless, worthy people. Truly, such “friends” are more dangerous than enemies.

Should we care to take Messrs. Unmaskers seriously, then first of all we would ask them: what are your own moral principles? Here is a question which will scarcely receive an answer. Let us admit for the moment that neither personal nor social ends can justify the means. Then it is evidently necessary to seek criteria outside of historical society and those ends which arise in its development. But where? If not on earth, then in the heavens. In divine revelation popes long ago discovered faultless moral criteria. Petty secular popes speak about eternal moral truths without naming their original source. However, we are justified in concluding: since these truths are eternal, they should have existed not only before the appearance of half monkey/half man upon the earth but before the evolution of the solar system. Whence then did they arise? The theory of eternal morals can in nowise survive without god.

Moralists of the Anglo-Saxon type, in so far as they do not confine themselves to rationalist utilitarianism, the ethics of bourgeois bookkeeping, appear conscious or unconscious students of Viscount Shaftesbury, who at the beginning of the 18th century! deduced moral judgments from a special “moral sense” supposedly once and for all given to man. Supra-class morality inevitably leads to the acknowledgment of a special substance, of a ’’moral sense’’, ’’conscience’’, some kind of absolute which is nothing more than the philosophic-cowardly pseudonym for god. Independent of “ends”, that is, of society, morality, whether we deduce it from eternal truths or from the “nature of man”, proves in the end to be a form of “natural theology”. Heaven remains the only fortified position for military operations against dialectic materialism.

At the end of the last century in Russia there arose a whole school of “Marxists” (Struve, Berdyaev, Bulgakov, and others) who wished to supplement the teachings of Marx with a self-sufficient, that is, supra-class moral principle. These people began, of course, with Kant and the categorical imperative. But how did they end? Struve is now a retired minister of the Crimean baron Wrangel, and a faithful son of the church; Bulgakov is an orthodox priest; Berdyaev expounds the Apocalypse in sundry languages. These metamorphoses which seem so unexpected at first glance are not at all explained by the “Slavic soul’ – Struve has a German soul – but by the sweep of the social struggle in Russia. The fundamental trend of this metamorphosis is essentially international.

Classical philosophic idealism in so far as it aimed in its time to secularize morality, that is, to free it from religious sanction, represented a tremendous step forward (Hegel). But having torn from heaven, moral philosophy had to find earthly roots. To discover these roots was one of the tasks of materialism. After Shaftesbury came Darwin, after Hegel- Marx. To appeal now to eternal moral truths” signifies attempting to turn the wheels backward. Philosophic idealism is only a stage: from religion to materialism, or, contrariwise, from materialism to religion.


“The End Justifies the Means”

The Jesuit order, organized in the first half of the 16th century for combating Protestantism, never taught, let it be said, that any means, even though it be criminal from the point of view of the Catholic morals, was permissible if only it led to the “end”, that is, to the triumph of Catholicism. Such an internally contradictory and psychologically absurd doctrine was maliciously attributed to the Jesuits by their Protestant and partly Catholic opponents who were not shy in choosing the means for achieving their ends. Jesuit theologians who, like the theologians of other schools, were occupied with the question of personal responsibility, actually taught that the means in itself can be a matter of indifference but that the moral justification or judgment of the given means flows from the end. Thus shooting in itself is a matter of indifference; shooting a mad dog that threatens a child – a virtue; shooting with the aim of violation or murder – a crime. Outside of these commonplaces the theologians of this order made no promulgations.

In so far as their practical moral philosophy is concerned the Jesuits were not at all worse than other monks or Catholic priests, on the contrary, they were superior to them; in any case, more consistent, bolder, and perspicacious. The Jesuits represented a militant organization, strictly centralized, aggressive, and dangerous not only to enemies but also to allies. In his psychology and method of action the Jesuit of the “heroic” period distinguished himself from an average priest as the warrior of a church from its shopkeeper. We have no reason to idealize either one or the other. But it is altogether unworthy to look upon a fanatic warrior with the eyes of an obtuse and slothful shopkeeper.

If we are to remain in the field of purely formal or psychological similitudes, then it can, if you like, be said that the Bolsheviks appear in relation to the democrats and social- democrats of all hues as did the Jesuits – in relation to the peaceful ecclesiastical hierarchy. Compared to revolutionary Marxists, the social-democrats and centrists appear like morons, or a quack beside a physician: they do not think one problem through to the end, believe in the power of conjuration and cravenly avoid every difficulty, hoping for a miracle. Opportunists are peaceful shop. keepers in socialist ideas while Bolsheviks are its inveterate warriors. From this comes the hatred and slander against Bolsheviks from those who have an abundance of their historically conditioned faults but not one of their merits.

However, the juxtaposition of Bolshevism and Jesuitism still remains completely one-sided and superficial, rather of a literary than historical kind. In accordance with the character and interests of those classes upon which they based themselves, the Jesuits represented reaction, the Protestants, progress. The limitedness of this “progress” in its turn found direct expression in the morality of the Protestants. Thus the teachings of Christ “purified” by them did not at all hinder the city bourgeois, Luther, from calling for the execution of revolting peasants as “mad dogs”. Dr. Martin evidently considered that the “end justifies the means” even before that maxim was attributed to the Jesuits. In turn the Jesuits, competing with Protestantism, adapted themselves ever more to the spirit of bourgeois society, and of the three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience, preserved only the third, and at that in an extremely attenuated form. From the point of view of the Christian ideal, the morality of the Jesuits degenerated the more they ceased to be Jesuits. The warriors of the church became its bureaucrats and, like all bureaucrats, passable swindlers.
..."

[cyu]

Actually, plenty of them "get it" - but the interesting thing is that after they "get it", they stop giving themselves the "liberal" label and adopt a new label. That was me, for example.

More:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/your-political-evolutioni-t180316/index.html

=]

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

As a former 'liberal' myself, I can tell you quite plainly that the reason alot of American liberals are terrified of socialism is because they've been force fed a load of bullshit and falsehoods about socialism itself. Socialism is always shown to such totalitarian hellholes like Cambodia or Albania or the Soviet Union in its worst days. They're told that individuality is crushed in the name of 'the collective', that everyone becomes lazy and that there is no incentive to work. That free speech and freedom of thought are ruthlessly suppressed, and that we all have to become monk-like ascetics constantly prostrating ourselves before busts of Marx and Lenin. No one can have fun, no one can have leisure.

This is, of course, all complete and total bullshit. But that kind of indoctrination is very hard to break.

So don't hate these liberals. Pity them. Have compassion for them. And work to enlighten them.

After all, I was a liberal once. Now look where I am. :grin:

[Jonesan]

Our public education system is a huge part of it. People are taught from a very young age that capitalism is the [B]only[B] system that would ever work, it serves the common good, it helped build civilization, etc. Any kind of class analysis about anything is always completely ignored.

People live for millenia being subjugated within power systems and passively accept them. They might critique the abuses and excesses of the system, but they still believe that's just the way things are supposed to be. An example of this would be that most slave societies were accepted by the slaves. Of course they might not like the abusive slavemaster, but they don't take the next logical step, which would be that slavery is no good at all ..... simply because that's not how they've been taught to think.

Two words: manufactured consent.

[guy123]

Marxism says a person's class determines his political power-not his thoughts.
Therefore-
1. for neoliberal bourgeois who are big-business-we must fight them.
2. for petty bourgeois liberals-as trotsky said very nicelly in "their morals and ours" this confusion comes from being in the middle of the two camps, and they will only come to us if the working class is strong enough and they will be convinced that the working class can lead the way. A successful revolution must throw the petty bourgeois liberals into the working class camp. Capitalism cannot work without the petty bourgeois liberals-they are the people that give it the numerical backing, otherwise it would just be the upper bourgeois who benefit directly or indirectly from it, who are a very small number of people.
thus-the greater the strength of the working class-the easier the petty bourgeois liberals will be convinced of our way.

[Alexander99]

Its a liberal world we live in (in the developed West) so its a lot easier to be a liberal than anything else. Liberals have won all the major battles over the last 50 years both economically and socially.

Liberals can't get beyond the individual and the collective. It can't conceptualise democratic institutions that constrain capital and the state. Liberalism undermines liberty because it can only conceptualise the individual and collective and not society and the liberties protected by democratic institutions.

[Lucretia]

It may have something to do with the massive propaganda apparatus the bourgeoisie has at its disposal, the very same apparatus, by the way, that makes a vanguard party necessary.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Honestly, I think part of what makes talking to liberals so fruitless is an unwillingness to take risks. I've seen to many occasions when a supposed radical, will happily utilize the worst liberal tropes to advance some particular point ("Free education would be good for the economy!"), rather than patiently calling into question the fundamental assumptions than underly liberal discourses.

That said, I also think the desire to win arguments by utilizing superior rationality and logic has some serious liberal baggage to it. It's also a piss poor substitute for creating solidarity through common activity, and demonstrating principles in practice.

[cyu]

It is easier to convert a liberal when you're both debating a pro-capitalist, than it is to convert a liberal when you're debating the liberal.

[L1NKS]

Why is the reasoning of liberals so badly impaired when it comes to this subject compared to others?
It is because they are everything but liberal.

[RadioRaheem84]

It is because they are everything but liberal.

No they're liberal alright and a dyed in the wool Economist reading Krugman loving policy wonk technocratic nerd is ten times more insufferable than a progressive or a conservative who's questioning capitalism.

In my opinion they're the worst to deal with because they believe idealistically so much in institutional legitimacy. Your regular conservative is usually not someone in power and tends to listen to right wing punditry because it offers an anti-establishment outlet no matter how Orwellian it may really be.

There is no reasoning with a liberal at times because they truly see themselves as this moral center in a world of extremes. They think they're rational and scientific approach to everything is the much needed cure for ills of this world.

So the problem is not capitalism but a lack of spending on education, not enough social entrepaneurships or NGOs sponsored by rich mogul think tanks like the Clinton or Gates Foindations, not enough technocracy, not enough taxing the wealthy, and not pro-market solutions to social problems. Government doesn't need to be cut according to the liberal it needs to be reformed and made more efficient to fit today's economic model.

That's the liberal.

[Klaatu]

...This adds up to years and years of propaganda against communism and anarchism. Seeing as you have never had to opportunity to see what communism really is, you are almost forced to believe that communism is evil...


The U.S. showers the children with this negative propaganda about communism/socialism, while praising capitalism... I say this: if capitalism were so great, it would not need this propaganda in order to survive. It's just like the flag pledge-of-allegiance and religious indoctrination. If these things cannot stand on their own merits (if they had any) they deserve to fail.

I for one would like to see the failures of capitalism taught in the schools (and there are many) as well as the merits of socialism. Instead, the exact opposite happens. There is an inherent prejudice in most Americans' thinking on this. And media (such as Fox News) works day and night to keep the myths alive.

[MarxSchmarx]

I think other posters have done an excellent job articulating the social processes that operate to reinforce capitalism.

But one issue that deserves attention, and that our movement has to sooner or later confront, is that liberals, like many people who care about politics, are pragmatists.

When the OP speaks of how readily liberals embrace science, they do so because science has been shown to be quite practical. By contrast, capitalism is as robust as ever, and there are few if any plausible, ongoing examples of a liberatory socialism on any scale of consequence. In contrast to the "angel they don't know" a reformist society like say Norway strikes liberals as the best they can do, albeit it is a serious struggle to maintain (for Norwegian liberals) or strive for (for everyone else).

The argument for socialism is not a logical argument. At best, right now, it relies on appealing to people's rational self-interest and basic human decency. At this stage of history, to some degree we ask liberals to accept that socialism is preferable to, say, having an economy more or less run like Norway, despite the mixed empirical evidence. This is especially true if the liberals are more or less personally "doing OK" under capitalism. Their immediate economic evidence by and large doesn't contradict the idea that most economies could strive to be like Norway, more or less. But they have very, very little to grab onto right now in terms of thinking whether most societies could strive to be like 1930s Catalonia or something.

It is also a big reason why, before the crimes of Stalinism were exposed, the Soviet Union was such a boon to the left in many capitalist countries. The appeal to self interest and morality is only as effective as the weight of the empirical evidence, and until it was shown otherwise the USSR was a plausible instance that a liberatory alternative to capitalism could be pursued.

I think this contradiction would be lessened without the incessant capitalist propaganda. But I also think that propaganda is less and less effective with each passing year. And when that happens, we will probably find a core group of reasonable, good people who can never bring themselves to support something that has little empirical backing.

I think we will never, ever really persuade those liberals.