"‘Liberal’ and ‘capitalist’ paired as a hyphenated compound word seems like an oxymoron, leaving one to wonder, what do civil liberties and democracy have to do with an economic system that often infringes on the aforementioned liberal defining characteristics? Well, A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms by Giampaolo Conte analyzes the historical scope of capitalist reforms, particularly through the British economy, under the guise of liberalism from the nineteenth century and beyond. In just four chapters, while grazing the philosophy of Marxism through figures like Antonio Gramsci, Conte offers a clarifying historical perspective on the evolution of capitalist reforms. Conte’s engagement in this historical project reignites a conversation on the ability of capitalism, a system that thrives on exploitation and violence, to textually morph into an ostensibly paradoxical philosophy, that is, liberalism, to gain submission (domestically and internationally), expand dominance and accumulate capital. A History of Capitalist Transformation displays how domestic social classes and semi-peripheral states (developing nations) have both fallen prey to the expansion of internal and external capitalist reforms. According to Conte, the action of falling prey is caused by the presentation of liberal-capitalist reforms as they are presented through the cultural, moral and civic values of liberalism and not the violent and individualist values of capitalism (38)."

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/21887_history-of-capitalist-transformation-a-critique-of-liberal-capitalist-reforms-by-giampaolo-conte-reviewed-by-julia-bradley/

#Capitalism #Liberalism #EconomicHistory #Reformism #PoliticalEconomy

Liberals will always be fake and hypocritical individuals...

"[T]o find the real driving force of this shift, you have to look at the party’s efforts to stop Bernie Sanders.
(...)
It is hard to overstate how rampant, dishonest, and often ridiculous this smear campaign was. Sanders’s movement was perennially (and wrongly) derided as a bunch of “Bernie Bros,” meaning a collection of young, often white, and usually angry and misogynistic men who it was dangerous to appeal to. (Now, of course, this same crowd laments the Democrats’ loss of young men and ponders how to win them back.)

When leftists disputed this smear, that was held up as further proof of rampant sexism among Sanders’s supporters. Pro-Democratic voices eagerly took up Trump’s invented label of “alt-Left,” claiming that this movement shared the worldview of the global far right, was making “common cause” with it in a “deeply xenophobic axis” targeting immigrants, and that its “disgust with ‘identity politics’” had “created a kinship” with the alt-right — meaning, with white supremacists.

When Sanders said in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss that Democrats needed to move beyond “identity politics” and that it was not enough to pitch a candidate’s diversity to voters — a view that is now, apparently, uncontroversial within the party’s power brokers — a host of pro-Democratic pundits pounced on him. It was just the first of countless similar, tiresome controversies and race-and-gender-based attacks ginned up against him as he prepared to run again."

https://jacobin.com/2024/11/democratic-elites-identity-politics-sanders

#USA #DemocraticParty #Liberals #Liberalism #IdentityPolitics #Woke #Wokism

"The terrible effect of this agreement was and is to disarm the Left by convincing it that the American people are not to be trusted at the ballot box—they won’t vote for socialism, or for racial justice, or for income redistribution, but they will vote for candidates who deceive them."

"The Left's Will to Powerlessness"
https://jameslivingston.substack.com/p/the-lefts-will-to-powerlessness #USPol #USPolitics #Leftists #Liberalism

this, from jason hickel, says it all.
#uspol #politics #jasonhickel #trump #liberalism