Dear liberals,
You may have noticed that I spend a lot of time criticizing you! This is because I am a socialist. And though I’m sure you have all kinds of preconceptions about what that means, I assure you: socialists have always criticized liberals. And we have good reasons for doing it.
In this article I’d like to lay some of them out. I don’t expect you to agree with me about any of this, but I do hope that we can at least arrive at a more accurate understanding of where the points of disagreement actually are.
What is a liberal?
The most important thing to understand about socialist criticism of liberals is that we are not using that word in the way that you probably do. In the contemporary United States, “liberalism” is usually used to mean something like “the ideology of the Democratic Party.”
But historically, and in most of the world to this very day, “liberal” means something quite different. Put simply, liberalism is capitalism’s spin on the Enlightenment. It takes all kinds of values and beliefs that have been extremely widespread since the 17th century — freedom, rationalism, egalitarianism — and it interprets them in ways that defend and are compatible with capitalism’s system of private property.
To see what I mean by this, consider healthcare. In the Marxist tradition, freedom comes from having all of your basic needs met so that you can choose what kind of life you want to live. For this reason we consider healthcare a right that we have a collective responsibility to ensure for each other. But under liberalism, freedom is expressed in the ability to choose whether or not to have healthcare, and to choose not to help someone else get healthcare. This means that it is commodified into a product in the free market that you can choose to purchase or not, but that no one has to provide for you.
Or consider egalitarianism. In the Marxist tradition, equality means that everyone should be free from economic exploitation. For this reason, we argue for a system where everyone is a worker who exercises control over the means of production. But under liberalism, equality does not apply to economic exploitation; some people are free from it (the capitalists, who control the means of production) while most people are not (workers, who have to sell their labor to capitalists to survive). This is not considered a tolerable form of inequality by Marxists, but it is tolerable for liberals.
I could go on, but you get the idea. It is true that liberals and socialists are both committed to Enlightenment values as we understand them. Sometimes we understand them the same way: for example, liberals and socialists both oppose inequalities of race, gender, and so on. But just as often, as in the cases above, we understand the legacy of the Enlightenment quite differently.
By this definition, one can see that “liberalism” is the ideology of Democrats — but that it is also the ideology of libertarians, some Greens, and even some Republicans. It is the dominant ideology of our time, one that reigns in just about any country with a capitalist economic system (excluding some that are arguably autocratic). Socialists oppose this ideology because we oppose capitalism.
Anticapitalism is non-negotiable
That last point has to be grasped in all of its implications to really understand the opposition between socialists and liberals. It is true, as noted, that liberals and socialists share many of the same values and beliefs. We also share values and beliefs that other ideological groups, like reactionaries and fascists, do not. For this reason we may occasionally find common cause or engage in alliances of convenience.
But ultimately, liberalism is our enemy because capitalism is our enemy. We view capitalism as a system of oppression that is just as destructive and unacceptable as other forms of oppression like homophobia and nationalsim. In a real sense it is even more harmful than other forms of oppression, because whereas they typically only oppress minorities, capitalism oppresses the majority. Almost everyone in the world is a worker. Almost everyone in the world is having their labor exploited for profit by the ruling class. They deserve emancipation.
This position, in my experience, seems to be the most difficult for liberals to appreciate, so let me spell it out even more explicitly. Socialists do not consider capitalism to be some “secondary” form of oppression that is less problematic or consequential than those forms of oppression that liberalism fight. We do not think of the fight against it as something that should be put off or delayed to deal with other problems first. Anticapitalism is a cause that is just as urgent, for us, as any of the causes that liberals prioritize.
“Progressivism” is still capitalism
Another point of frequent confusion often emerges around the fact that some forms of capitalism are plainly better for workers than others. A capitalism that features a generous welfare state, for example, is obviously preferable to one characterized by austerity. The liberal is then tempted to ask: shouldn’t socialists accept “progressive” economics as a kind of compromise position, or as a step towards their goals?
This reasoning is understandable, but it misapprehends how socialists think about economics. Capitalism, in our view, is a system of private property that creates all kinds of serious social and economic problems. “Progressive” capitalism can treat some of those symptoms, but it doesn’t actually treat the underlying problem, which is the institution of private property. And that’s why progressive economics always finds itself playing an endless game of whack-a-mole with capitalism; as soon as it solves one problem, another pops up.
We think that progressive capitalism is going to be caught in this stalemate with capitalism forever unless something is done about the private property system. And that stalemate is ultimately terrible for workers.
So the solution that socialists propose is nationalizing private property. That is our agenda. So any compromise with that agenda will not simply be “something that helps workers, for now” — it will be a compromise with our goal of nationalization.
Again, let us return to healthcare. In 2016 and 2020, the campaign of Bernie Sanders got extraordinary support from socialists in the United States — even though, realistically, he was never going to overthrow the capitalist system. Why did socialists support this? Because Sanders did propose a meaningful compromise with us: nationalizing some industries, in particular the health insurance industry. That is a real compromise with our position, and that is why socialists generally found him acceptable.
Contrast that with the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren. Like Sanders, she was never likely to overthrow the capitalist system. But unlike Sanders, her intention to nationalize the health insurance industry was dubious at best. She designed her healthcare plan in such a way that this would be the last step and one that was optional, which socialists interpreted as her leaving herself an exit ramp. So we did not consider this a meaningful compromise and did not generally support her.
If Democrats understood this basic principle and were willing to work with it they would find socialists much more cooperative than we are now. It isn’t enough to propose some piece of legislation that “helps workers” but leaves the capitalist system in place; if you really want to “make progress” towards socialism, you have to make progress towards nationalization.
The limits of cooperation
Unfortunately, there is little evidence that most Democrats are willing to work towards nationalization. On the contrary, particularly since the Carter administration, the Democratic agenda has been the Third Way agenda of “moderate” privatization. This means that Democrats are not just useless for socialists — they are actually actively working against our core agenda.
This presents us with a serious problem, particularly in the long term. Whenever an election approaches, liberals make a compelling case that socialists should set aside their core agenda and vote for Democrats for the sake of advancing the parts of our agenda we share — and of keeping right-wing radicals out of office. In the short term, this logic makes a certain amount of sense. In the long term, however, voting for capitalist Democrats in every election means that we will never be able to advance our agenda.
So what can we do about this?
One approach is to pressure Democrats to compromise with socialists through the usual modes of citizen activism — primarily through criticism (and praise if they actually comply). Criticism can also serve the cause of legitimizing third party challengers who might be willing to advance our cause.
Another approach is to try to run socialists on the Democratic ticket. This is difficult, primarily because some of our main constituencies — working class and disaffected voters — are wildly underrepresented in Democratic primaries. The Democratic party is also staffed entirely by capitalists who have on occasion in the past leveraged their positions to stop socialist candidates.
A third approach is to make our vote for Democrats contingent on them offering a meaningful compromise on the socialist agenda. In order to do this credibly, however, you have to be willing to withhold their vote if they refuse to play ball.
Finally, a fourth approach is to try to build a socialist third party — which means campaigning against Democrats between and during elections. But launching a third party in the United States is extraordinarily difficult for systematic reasons that everyone is familiar with.
As you know, socialists try all four of these approaches. What else is there? Certainly Democrats should be able to understand why “do nothing and just accept capitalism forever” isn’t an option that socialists are realistically going to go along with. We have to do something to try to end capitalism, and this naturally is always going to be against the interests of a party that overwhelmingly supports capitalism. There is no way socialists can be socialists and also be compliant with this Democratic Party.
Some advice
So where does that leave us? At first glance, it seems like Democrats and socialists are at an impasse. Democrats want our vote, but we want socialism, and it is rare that both objectives are even potentially compatible.
Unfortunately there is really no clever way around this conflict; we are just two opposing political factions that want different things. But I do think there are a few considerations that can make this conflict less heated.
First, please remind yourself that a lot of people other than socialists refuse to vote for Democrats. We are never the sole cause of your losses; there are millions upon millions of Americans who just don’t vote at all, or who vote for other parties. And frankly, a lot of them are much more gettable than we are. So while it may be fun to scapegoat us for your defeats, maybe you should spend more time thinking about the Democrats who just stayed home to watch Netflix. Because there are a lot more of them than there are of us.
Second, consider the ways that having a left flank opposition works to your advantage. For example, when Republicans call you Marxists, you can credible say “no, those guys are the Marxists.” When you’re trying to pass some kind of progressive economic initiative, you can say “look, our plan to expand Medicaid is pretty unambitious and moderate when you put it in perspective. We could be trying to nationalize all of healthcare like the socialists want to, but we aren’t.” The right understands this very well: getting outflanked pulls the political center of gravity in your direction. That’s why they spend little time criticizing the radicals to their right and all of their time punching left.
Third, I know this is hard to believe but we really do spend a lot of time criticizing Republicans too. In the past month for example 10 of my 19 articles were aimed at Republicans, and several of the others were not aimed at Democrats. I often think there is a selection bias problem going on here where Democrats only pay attention to socialists when we’re criticizing them — and thus think that this is all we ever do. But Republicans remain the most rabid antisocialists in our country, so I promise you, we have no love for them.
Again, I do not expect this post to resolve anything, but I hope that it at least clarifies our differences. We have a real disagreement about what to do with the capitalist system of private property, and we have a real disagreement on electoral strategy. Everything else emerges from there.
Love and kisses,
Carl
Thanks for reading! My blog is supported entirely by readers like you. To receive new posts and support my work, why not subscribe?
Refer enough friends to this site and you can read paywalled content for free!
And if you liked this post, why not share it?