The Liberal Myth: A Roadmap to Political Clarity

Billy Bob's Short Takes
Provocative discussions of contemporary events by a seasoned observer.

Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives—all liberals, and all at the service of the ruling oligarchy, a tiny, hyper-rich percentage of the population.

I like to discuss liberalism because I think it is a very misunderstood ideology.  I think it is important to proliferate a proper understanding of what liberalism is and what liberalism represents.

So in the Marxist binary that I find so useful for explaining why things are as they are, socialism is the ideology of the working class while liberalism is the ideology of the ownership class.  Liberalism is anti-socialist, anti-collectivist, and anti-democratic because ultimately, the wealthy do not want their individual rights and freedoms (bestowed upon them by virtue of their wealth) to be curtailed by a government that represents the working class and that would seek to implement "authoritarian" and "collectivist" policies beneficial to the material and political interests of the working class majority.

Liberalism then is best understood as the ideology of the capitalist class.  It is the ruling class ideology that pretends to be based upon the principles of individual rights and individual freedom.  By framing their ideology in this way, they are able to claim a moral justification for all the immoral things that an oligarchic empire needs to do in order to defend itself from the threats that justice, democracy, and morality actually pose to their oligarchic system.

Like all of us, while I was growing up I was indoctrinated to misunderstand and misperceive reality.  I thought that politics was about Liberalism wanting to progress society and Conservatism wanting to maintain traditional things like religion, the family, and gender roles.  I bought into this understanding because no one took the time to explain reality to me.  So I had a very narrow conception of liberalism and I thought conservatism was its opposite.

What I discovered later was a far superior way to understand things. This other perspective is superior because it provides an infinitely more satisfactory explanation for why things are the way they are.  This alternative perspective is grounded in the reality that during the age of capitalism, politics is the struggle between two classes to control the state apparatus.  Classes are determined by how one relates to the means of production—or put more simply, a particular group's specific self interest. In general, the means of production are the resources and tools that make it possible for products and services to get created. (This a very broad definition, as the mix has varied under various forms of social organisation—ancient slavery, feudalism, serfdom, and lately capitalism). Under capitalism, most people relate to the means of production as workers but a few relate to the means of production as owners.

Politics in such modern societies is therefore the class struggle that exists due to the often oppositional interests between workers and owners.  So, from the perspective of the working class, socialism is the ideology that wants to see working-class interests dictating government policy, while liberalism is the ideology of the ownership class and they want the ownership class interests dictating government policy.  Therefore, from the working class, Marxist, and socialist perspective, this is the difference between democracy and oligarchy.

Liberalism though sees things differently.  It purposefully denies the reality of oppositional class interests and engages in extreme and abstract idealism not rooted in any existing reality.  This idealism is weaponized against the masses and their efforts to achieve a more democratic system, while it is also weaponized against those countries and governments that are inconvenient to oligarchic interests. (Note that this "idealism" is not dreamy altruism or the frequent young's altruistic tendencies. It is simply the belief that the world of ideas is the only reality, and that the physical world—concrete reality—is not real. Idealists, therefore, the bourgeois by definition, the lords of capital, think that ideas are more fundamental than material things. This is mighty convenient when you benefit directly from a social order characterised by horrible man-made features: widespread poverty and ever-mounting inequality; endless wars; pervasive disease; a regime of mass communications grounded in and riddled with huge lies; and an official political system ("democracy") which is no such thing at all, but its opposite, etc., etc.).

Allow me to provide two examples so you have a better idea of what I am referring to.  Let's take an international geopolitical example. Liberalism asserts the abstract principle that every country is sovereign and therefore a small country has the right to ask another large country —Russia, for example—to protect it from a large neighbor.  In reality, though, things don't work like that and everyone knows it.  In reality, the US would never allow anyone in its hemisphere to join a military alliance with Russia or China, yet Russia violates our "Western liberal values" because they don't allow NATO—an overtly aggressive military alliance pointed at Russia— to set up a military base just a few minutes flight time, from Moscow.

Another domestic example of abstract liberal values being selectively cared about, cynically exploited, and weaponised against the masses, in furtherance of oligarch interests, is the principle of individual freedom.  In the US, everyone has the individual freedom to influence politics by purchasing political parties, media platforms, and owning large portions of entire industries including healthcare, insurance, and real-estate.  It ought to go without saying that for 99.99% of the citizenry, such "freedoms" are absolutely useless because we don't have the wealth necessary that would give us the freedom to own mass media outlets, entire political parties, or entire industries.  Anatole France—a master of irony—laughed at such bourgeois pretensions by stating with a straight face that, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

Nevertheless, it would be a violation of "Western Liberal Values" for the US government to censor private media.  So the way that the oligarchy deals with speech, is to make sure that all the platforms of mass media are owned by class-conscious billionaires and these billionaires are free to run their platforms however they see fit which of course, is to platform ideas that promote oligarchic interests while censoring ideas that are threatening to those interests.

There is an international geopolitical aspect of this example as well.  In those countries that have succeeded in overthrowing the oligarchy and have put in place democratic governments that decide policy based on the best interests of the working class majority, liberals condemn them for not sharing our "liberal values" because they censor divisive speech and blatant lies designed to weaken and eventually overthrow the people's democratic government and return power to the oligarchs. The protection of a workers' democracy "information space"—information sovereignty—from foreign propaganda manipulations is a necessity as great as building a competent army and police to defend the new state from the inevitable attacks of the overthrown exploiting class and their allies abroad.  All of this is by now a matter of amply documented historical fact. 

It ought to be clear and obvious then, how liberal ideology maintains and promotes oligarchic interests against the democratic interests of the masses.  The last point that needs to be clarified is that all ideologies that promote individualism and oppose collectivism ought to be considered "liberal". So, conservatism, republicanism, paleoconservatism, neoliberalism, libertarianism, and anarchism, are all offshoots of "Big L" liberalism in so far as they oppose collectivism and are predicated on the primacy of the individual. 

So, we can see how liberal idealism is weaponized by the imperialists in order to politically attack those governments that are inconvenient to their interests and we can see how liberalism is exploited domestically in order to maintain oligarchic rule here at home.

Essentially Liberalism—taken to its extreme dimensions under WOKE ideology—is the selective use and cynical manipulation of abstract principles of "individual rights" and "individual freedom" within the reality of existing class struggle and oppositional class interests, to benefit one side of this conflict... the side that represents only a puny minority of the people.  Enlightened and informed people ought to reject liberalism and recognize it as detrimental to their own working-class interests and democratic aspirations.

ADDENDUM

Caleb Maupin
Jun 6, 2022

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE

Billy Bob is a dedicated anti-imperialist activist and blogger. He is an editor-at-large with The Greanville Post. He also hosts the Blowback roundatable.  You can reach him at his Facebook page HERE.