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Liberals: We love LGBTQ+ folks.
Their bosses: New policy: fuck LGBTQ+ folks.
Liberals: Well, that’s ok too, we guess.
@dbattistella Alt text: first photo: screenshot of social media post:
Jason Hickel V @jasonhickel|
XI ...
The problem with liberalism is that it rests on a fundamental contradiction that cannot be resolved. It will always fail, it will always collapse, and this explains everything about our current moment.
Liberals try to hold two commitments at once: on the one hand, they are firmly committed to capitalism; on the other, they express support for principles like human rights, democracy, equality, freedom of speech, environment and the rule of law. This duality is the core of liberalism.
But there's a problem. Capital accumulation requires cheapening labour and nature. This eventually comes into direct conflict with principles like rights and equality. And whenever this conflict appears, the liberal ruling class sides with capital, abandons their lofty principles, and throws workers and nature under the bus. Every. Single. Time.
This results in flagrant displays of hypocrisy. They run on nice-sounding platforms but end up either betraying their promises or actively working against their stated values. They'll slash public services, bail out banks, imprison journalists, beat up students, expand fracking, coup democratically elected leaders in the global South, bomb liberation movements, fund a genocide - they'll even trash international law itself - anything that's needed to maintain the conditions for capital accumulation.
At most, they may try to negotiate mediocre compromises, a few social policies here and there - some abortion rights, a tiny increase in the minimum wage - but nothing that might pose any serious threat to capital accumulation. Thus the soul-crushing slowness of liberal incrementalism. Ultimately they are unwilling to take any of the obvious steps that would actually resolve our urgent social and ecological crises.
This is why nobody trusts liberal politicians. This is why they come across as so fantastically insincere, and even sneering. This is why they feel so spineless and *empty*.
@dbattistella Alt text, second photo, continuation of same post:
This results in flagrant displays of hypocrisy. They run on nice-sounding platforms but end up either betraying their promises or actively working against their stated values. They'll slash public services, bail out banks, imprison journalists, beat up students, expand fracking, coup democratically elected leaders in the global South, bomb liberation movements, fund a genocide - they'll even trash international law itself - anything that's needed to maintain the conditions for capital accumulation.
At most, they may try to negotiate mediocre compromises, a few social policies here and there - some abortion rights, a tiny increase in the minimum wage - but nothing that might pose any serious threat to capital accumulation. Thus the soul-crushing slowness of liberal incrementalism. Ultimately they are unwilling to take any of the obvious steps that would actually resolve our urgent social and ecological crises.
This is why nobody trusts liberal politicians. This is why they come across as so fantastically insincere, and even sneering. This is why they feel so spineless and *empty*.
The center cannot hold. Liberalism will always collapse, inevitably handing power to fascists, and this is not acceptable. There is only one way to overcome this deadly impasse, and that is to mobilize a socialist alternative. A political movement that can unite the working-classes, overcome capitalism, deliver real economic democracy, and enable us to achieve rapid progress toward social and ecological goals.
12:16 PM • Nov 11, 2024 • 465.7K Views
Exactly this. I would add that liberalism is not a transhistorical set of ideas or values - democracy, freedom, human rights, etc - but a historically specific ideology that came together in the Enlightenment. It is, precisely, the ideology of capitalism (and those ideas and values it claims like democracy and human rights are to be found in various forms in many different cultures).
This is why its central contradiction, that Hickel identifies, was present at its very inception, in the fact that the Founding Fathers could declare 'all men are created equal' but own slaves, or that John Locke or Voltaire - or any of Liberalism's great progenitors - were guilty of similar contradictory beliefs.
And it is, of course, why 'democracy' is sidelined now in the parliamentary space, but never extended into the workplace.
Anybody know, by the way, why Jason Hickel seems to have stopped posting here ?