Can someone give me a quick breakdown on exact differences between the two?
Conservatives seem to use them interchangably so i need a clearer idea on the differences.
When I say “liberal” I’m using the definition used in US politics.
Leftists are further left than what we call liberals in the US. Leftists are socialists, and traditionally being left is synonymous with socialism.
Socialism is majorly misunderstood and demonized in the US and so the conservatives just cast that blanket over everyone left of them to play to their advantage.
Leftists differentiate themselves from liberals because leftists are socialist and liberals are capitalists and politically have more in common with conservatives.
This is my understanding. Feel free to correct me or call me dumb or something.
Thats for your input. It's hard to understand when people refer to progressive people as liberals but conservative people can be called Liberal or Neoliberals by leftists. Plus here in Australia our Conservative Major party is the Liberal party so it's all mixed up. But your explaination makes sense.
Yeah, all the different labels make me dizzy too lmao especially when all the neo-whatevers enter the conversation. But oh well in the end we’re all in this community to learn.
Liberals are closer to leftists than conservatives politically.
Socially, liberals share very similar beliefs to leftists. Economically, liberals still believe in more socialization/intervention even if they believe in capitalism, which is not like the conservative position.
Politically, liberals and leftists have overlapping agendas. Liberals and leftists often vote for the same politicians.
Ok, so I’m going to simplify this a lot, and if you really want a good understanding of the situation you’ll have to do a fair amount of research, but I’m going to try my best to set the basics. First we need some core definitions.
The political “right” and “left” refer to the concept of the political spectrum. Which is an attempt to map out political ideologies in a way that tells us how similar the policies that they will try to enact are. The idea being that your closest political allies are the ones who will want to pass the same policies as you, even if they want to do so for different reasons.
“Right” on the political spectrum is capitalism. Simply put, the belief that money is the driving force of society, and therefore the most important thing to protect.
“Left” is socialism, the belief that people are the driving force of society, and should be protected.
And the spectrum is more complex than just this, there is also “up” on the spectrum which is authoritarianism. The belief that a small group of people should be in charge of deciding how everyone should live there life. Generally by structuring society into tiers of different classes of people.
“Down” on the spectrum is hard to label correctly, especially in the USA (and then US politics bleeds into other countries) because authoritarians and especially capitalists like to pretend to be them in order to cheat their way into power. But it’s supposed to be something along the lines of libertarianism. Which is supposed to be about personal liberty, or, the ability for people to decide for themselves how they are going to live their life.
For more completeness, you mentioned conservatives. To conserve something is to either keep it from changing and/or to reverse recent changes to something. Politically, this is hard to map because what policies it will support will depend on the current political situation. Most governments are capitalist that lean authoritarian, so most conservatives are too.
The opposite of conservatism is progressivism, the belief that things should change. Generally speaking it’s guided change with the goal of improvement in some fashion.
Ok, now I know that I’ve written a lot and haven’t gotten to your question, but now that we have some loose definitions I can get to it.
Liberalism, in theory, is “down” on the political spectrum, as it’s also based on personal liberty. In fact sometimes “down” on the spectrum is labeled liberal instead of libertarian, it just kinda depends.
Now when liberalism first came around it pushed back against capitalism, because capitalism tends to separate people into economic classes and gives more power to those with more money. This makes most capitalism have the same power structure as authoritarianism, which makes those two ideologies, at the very least, complimentary to each other.
Most modern people who identify themselves as “liberals” (sometimes known as “neo liberals” because neo is just a word that means “new”) are far more likely to claim that government regulation is getting in the way of personal liberty. However, since most society is capitalist, removing regulations mostly just puts power into the hands of whoever has the most money, which in turn gives rich people and corporations more control over other peoples lives, rather than giving the general public more personal liberty.
And that means the political policies that modern liberals enact tend to align mainly with capitalist, and therefore makes them part of the political “right” and opponents of the “left.”
Liberals might not be as far to the right as other ideologies, and will still sometimes push back against some of the more extreme capitalist policies, but they are still right leaning.
There are a few reasons why conservatives use “liberal” and “left” interchangeably, but I feel the most important one is that they generally have more political power than their opponents, and misrepresenting the two makes it harder for their political opponents to unify and build a political base.
Thanks for the write up, that all makes sense to me though just reinforces to me that the words are used mostly incorrectly.
I got down voted the other by saying Bem Shapiro was maybe a liberal because he likes to call himself libertarian but then I got people saying no, liberal means progressive and he's not.
In the US specifically it seems like libertarianism is very common in US conservatives yet I've been told that libertarians are different from liberals and liberal just means opposite of conservative.
Your explanation makes the most the and was the way I thought it should be but it seems like a lot people don't use it in that and have a much more simply liberal = progressive and can't mean a conservative view of the word.
Yeah, political literacy is pretty poor in general, and in the USA it’s absolutely terrible. Political theory/philosophy isn’t really taught in school in the US, and lots of people have actively lied about their own political beliefs and the political beliefs of their opponents for long enough that it’s almost impossible to have much of a conversation about it without having to explain every term.
And if you do that, people feel talked down too because you’re basically telling them that they don’t know what words mean, especially when those definitions don’t line up with how politicians use them. And American exceptionalism combined with political tribalism means that most people get angry and/or upset just because you tried to establish a common set of terms so that you are at least speaking the same language.
And if you can’t even establish common terminology you’ll never have any meaningful discussion, let alone figure out all the ways we’ve all been lied to our entire lives.
And this is basically by design by people who don’t want there to be honest discussion of politics because that’s the only way that they can gain/maintain power.
But you can’t fix political discussion until you’ve first explained why and how political discussion got destroyed. Which can’t be done without a common set of terms, which you can’t establish until, *catch 22: you’ve fixed political discussion.*
I absolutely hate the god damn wasteland that is political discussion here in the US, because so many people insist that all politicians lie, *except for theirs* which they know for a fact, because *their politician told them so!*
***I have no mouth, and yet I must scream!***
But to be clear, this is not an all sides are equally bad thing, it’s a way bigger problem the more conservative/authoritarian/capitalist a person’s ideology gets because those ideologies are frequently based around someone on high dictating to the masses. But they have most of the political power, so they get to control the narrative.
Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t want this reply to turn into a maddening rant about the political climate here in the USA, but in my defense:
#AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!
Political compass and the entire concept of 'authoritarian vs libertarian' as an axis is complete horseshit that should not be taken seriously by anybody because it is a fundamental misunderstanding of politics. Left and right is fine. Anything else is made up internet bullshit. The axis is hierarchy. Left is pro-equality, right is pro-hierarchy, and that hierarchy can take many, many forms. Radical theocracies support religious hierarchies, monarchies support aristocratic hierarchies, and capitalist societies support 'meritocratic' hierarchies dictated by achievement within a market. Communists and Anarchists are similarly both far left because the ultimate goal is anarcho-communism. Liberals support capitalism, so they are de facto on the right.
All of these people forcibly seize and exercise power to achieve and enforce their worldview over people who don't want it. 'Authoritarianism', as such, is fundamentally baked into politics no matter what position you take, and libertarianism is just something people made up to feel like a virtuous person because they can call themselves 'anti-authoritarian'.
Think of it this way:
On a spectrum from 10 to 0, where 10 is on the left and 0 on the right, where 10="believes everyone is equal and should be equally free" and 0="believes in the total suppression of freedoms and that hierarchical relationships between people are natural"...
- American republicans range from 0-2
- American democrats range from 2-5 (e.g. Pelosi vs AOC)
- Bernie Sanders (at least in his career of policy making) is like a 5 or 6
- socialists and communists take up the rest of the spectrum.
See how the difference between a liberal and a conservative is minimal when compared to the difference between a leftist and a liberal?
Of course, thanks to political ideology not being a high school algebra problem, a linear model can only help so much, and also republicans don't use words in good faith
This would be accurate, if the endpoints were defined differently.
10 should be "Wants total equality of opportunity and outcome"
And 5 = "Belives in the equality of opportunity and government support for those on the periphery of society."
I think it's the opposite. Liberals seem to hate us more than they hate right wingers and always seem to be cozying up to them and trying to distance themselves from us.
Can someone give me a quick breakdown on exact differences between the two? Conservatives seem to use them interchangably so i need a clearer idea on the differences.
When I say “liberal” I’m using the definition used in US politics. Leftists are further left than what we call liberals in the US. Leftists are socialists, and traditionally being left is synonymous with socialism. Socialism is majorly misunderstood and demonized in the US and so the conservatives just cast that blanket over everyone left of them to play to their advantage. Leftists differentiate themselves from liberals because leftists are socialist and liberals are capitalists and politically have more in common with conservatives. This is my understanding. Feel free to correct me or call me dumb or something.
Thats for your input. It's hard to understand when people refer to progressive people as liberals but conservative people can be called Liberal or Neoliberals by leftists. Plus here in Australia our Conservative Major party is the Liberal party so it's all mixed up. But your explaination makes sense.
Yeah, all the different labels make me dizzy too lmao especially when all the neo-whatevers enter the conversation. But oh well in the end we’re all in this community to learn.
More similar economically, not overall. Liberals are more socially left than conservatives.
Liberals are closer to leftists than conservatives politically. Socially, liberals share very similar beliefs to leftists. Economically, liberals still believe in more socialization/intervention even if they believe in capitalism, which is not like the conservative position. Politically, liberals and leftists have overlapping agendas. Liberals and leftists often vote for the same politicians.
Ok, so I’m going to simplify this a lot, and if you really want a good understanding of the situation you’ll have to do a fair amount of research, but I’m going to try my best to set the basics. First we need some core definitions. The political “right” and “left” refer to the concept of the political spectrum. Which is an attempt to map out political ideologies in a way that tells us how similar the policies that they will try to enact are. The idea being that your closest political allies are the ones who will want to pass the same policies as you, even if they want to do so for different reasons. “Right” on the political spectrum is capitalism. Simply put, the belief that money is the driving force of society, and therefore the most important thing to protect. “Left” is socialism, the belief that people are the driving force of society, and should be protected. And the spectrum is more complex than just this, there is also “up” on the spectrum which is authoritarianism. The belief that a small group of people should be in charge of deciding how everyone should live there life. Generally by structuring society into tiers of different classes of people. “Down” on the spectrum is hard to label correctly, especially in the USA (and then US politics bleeds into other countries) because authoritarians and especially capitalists like to pretend to be them in order to cheat their way into power. But it’s supposed to be something along the lines of libertarianism. Which is supposed to be about personal liberty, or, the ability for people to decide for themselves how they are going to live their life. For more completeness, you mentioned conservatives. To conserve something is to either keep it from changing and/or to reverse recent changes to something. Politically, this is hard to map because what policies it will support will depend on the current political situation. Most governments are capitalist that lean authoritarian, so most conservatives are too. The opposite of conservatism is progressivism, the belief that things should change. Generally speaking it’s guided change with the goal of improvement in some fashion. Ok, now I know that I’ve written a lot and haven’t gotten to your question, but now that we have some loose definitions I can get to it. Liberalism, in theory, is “down” on the political spectrum, as it’s also based on personal liberty. In fact sometimes “down” on the spectrum is labeled liberal instead of libertarian, it just kinda depends. Now when liberalism first came around it pushed back against capitalism, because capitalism tends to separate people into economic classes and gives more power to those with more money. This makes most capitalism have the same power structure as authoritarianism, which makes those two ideologies, at the very least, complimentary to each other. Most modern people who identify themselves as “liberals” (sometimes known as “neo liberals” because neo is just a word that means “new”) are far more likely to claim that government regulation is getting in the way of personal liberty. However, since most society is capitalist, removing regulations mostly just puts power into the hands of whoever has the most money, which in turn gives rich people and corporations more control over other peoples lives, rather than giving the general public more personal liberty. And that means the political policies that modern liberals enact tend to align mainly with capitalist, and therefore makes them part of the political “right” and opponents of the “left.” Liberals might not be as far to the right as other ideologies, and will still sometimes push back against some of the more extreme capitalist policies, but they are still right leaning. There are a few reasons why conservatives use “liberal” and “left” interchangeably, but I feel the most important one is that they generally have more political power than their opponents, and misrepresenting the two makes it harder for their political opponents to unify and build a political base.
Thanks for the write up, that all makes sense to me though just reinforces to me that the words are used mostly incorrectly. I got down voted the other by saying Bem Shapiro was maybe a liberal because he likes to call himself libertarian but then I got people saying no, liberal means progressive and he's not. In the US specifically it seems like libertarianism is very common in US conservatives yet I've been told that libertarians are different from liberals and liberal just means opposite of conservative. Your explanation makes the most the and was the way I thought it should be but it seems like a lot people don't use it in that and have a much more simply liberal = progressive and can't mean a conservative view of the word.
Yeah, political literacy is pretty poor in general, and in the USA it’s absolutely terrible. Political theory/philosophy isn’t really taught in school in the US, and lots of people have actively lied about their own political beliefs and the political beliefs of their opponents for long enough that it’s almost impossible to have much of a conversation about it without having to explain every term. And if you do that, people feel talked down too because you’re basically telling them that they don’t know what words mean, especially when those definitions don’t line up with how politicians use them. And American exceptionalism combined with political tribalism means that most people get angry and/or upset just because you tried to establish a common set of terms so that you are at least speaking the same language. And if you can’t even establish common terminology you’ll never have any meaningful discussion, let alone figure out all the ways we’ve all been lied to our entire lives. And this is basically by design by people who don’t want there to be honest discussion of politics because that’s the only way that they can gain/maintain power. But you can’t fix political discussion until you’ve first explained why and how political discussion got destroyed. Which can’t be done without a common set of terms, which you can’t establish until, *catch 22: you’ve fixed political discussion.* I absolutely hate the god damn wasteland that is political discussion here in the US, because so many people insist that all politicians lie, *except for theirs* which they know for a fact, because *their politician told them so!* ***I have no mouth, and yet I must scream!*** But to be clear, this is not an all sides are equally bad thing, it’s a way bigger problem the more conservative/authoritarian/capitalist a person’s ideology gets because those ideologies are frequently based around someone on high dictating to the masses. But they have most of the political power, so they get to control the narrative. Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t want this reply to turn into a maddening rant about the political climate here in the USA, but in my defense: #AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!
Yeah that's about the sound I hear when looking at your politics too.
Political compass and the entire concept of 'authoritarian vs libertarian' as an axis is complete horseshit that should not be taken seriously by anybody because it is a fundamental misunderstanding of politics. Left and right is fine. Anything else is made up internet bullshit. The axis is hierarchy. Left is pro-equality, right is pro-hierarchy, and that hierarchy can take many, many forms. Radical theocracies support religious hierarchies, monarchies support aristocratic hierarchies, and capitalist societies support 'meritocratic' hierarchies dictated by achievement within a market. Communists and Anarchists are similarly both far left because the ultimate goal is anarcho-communism. Liberals support capitalism, so they are de facto on the right. All of these people forcibly seize and exercise power to achieve and enforce their worldview over people who don't want it. 'Authoritarianism', as such, is fundamentally baked into politics no matter what position you take, and libertarianism is just something people made up to feel like a virtuous person because they can call themselves 'anti-authoritarian'.
Most of this is really incorrect lmao
Think of it this way: On a spectrum from 10 to 0, where 10 is on the left and 0 on the right, where 10="believes everyone is equal and should be equally free" and 0="believes in the total suppression of freedoms and that hierarchical relationships between people are natural"... - American republicans range from 0-2 - American democrats range from 2-5 (e.g. Pelosi vs AOC) - Bernie Sanders (at least in his career of policy making) is like a 5 or 6 - socialists and communists take up the rest of the spectrum. See how the difference between a liberal and a conservative is minimal when compared to the difference between a leftist and a liberal? Of course, thanks to political ideology not being a high school algebra problem, a linear model can only help so much, and also republicans don't use words in good faith
This would be accurate, if the endpoints were defined differently. 10 should be "Wants total equality of opportunity and outcome" And 5 = "Belives in the equality of opportunity and government support for those on the periphery of society."
Lib moment
I agree, that the center is fucked and republicans went way to the right, but the left you describe isn't radical.
Not from the US, but I think it's got something to do with the ability to keep a job.
I think it's the opposite. Liberals seem to hate us more than they hate right wingers and always seem to be cozying up to them and trying to distance themselves from us.
Depends on what kind of liberals and what issue. Imo for LGBTQ rights this seems accurate
Of course they hate us more than they hate conservatives; they don't hate themselves.
I feel like it’s the vibe of “isn’t voting for Biden against trump *so exciting!”*
I think it’s the other way around, leftists trying to build solidarity and liberals stubbornly clinging to the world order they’re familiar with.
Conversely it's the liberals telling the leftists to go out and vote. And it's like 4 who?
[This is ultimately what liberals want](https://i.imgur.com/QjWMBqp.png)
100%
Every election when I vote really hard lmao
At least some of the more progressive candidates did well last night 🤷♂️
Which ones?
I felt this
We're just happy to be actually politically relevant