âClassical liberalism provides the intellectual resources to condemn the Jakarta killings. â
Communism probably also provides intellectual resources that would enable you to condemn most of the many very bad things communists have done, but that doesnât mean that those outcomes arenât relevant to assessing how good an idea communism is in practice.
Not that you said otherwise, and I am a liberal, not a communist. But I do think sometimes liberals can be a bit too quick to conclude that all crimes of liberal regimes having nothing distinctive to do with liberalism, while presuming that communist and fascist and theocratic crimes are inherent products of communism/âfascism/âtheocracy. (I have less than zero time for fascism or theocracy, to be clear.)
Communism probably also provides intellectual resources that would enable you to condemn most of the many very bad things communists have done, but that doesnât mean that those outcomes arenât relevant to assessing how good an idea communism is in practice.
But much less clearly so than classical liberalism. Communism lacks any clear rejection of violence, provides no robust mechanism for resolving disagreements or conflicts, and doesnât advocate for universal individual rights. Lenin, one of its most influential theorists, explicitly advocated for a âdesperate, bloody war of exterminationâ.
So itâs no surprise that communism almost always led to disaster and essentially never to a prosperous, flourishing society, in contrast to classical liberalism, which much more rarely led to disaster and much more often to flourishing.
Less clearly, sure. Iâm mostly warning about complacency about liberals being safe from error just because you can use liberal ideas to criticize bad things liberals have done, rather than defending communism. Certainly lots of communists have, for example, attacked Stalinism in communist terms.
I donât really understand why liberalism is getting the prefix âclassicalâ here though. The distinction between âclassicalâ and other forms of liberalism, like social liberalism, is more about levels of government support for the poor through the welfare state and just how strong a presumption we should have in favour of market solutions vs government ones, with agreement on secularism, individual human rights, free speech, pluralism, a non-zero sum conception of markets and trade etc. I also think that insofar as âliberalsâ have an unusually good record, this doesnât distinguish âliberalsâ in the narrow sense from other pro-democratic traditions that accept pluralism: i.e. European social democracy on the left, and European Christian democracy, and Anglosphere mainstream conservatism 1965-2015 on the right. If anything classical liberals might have a worse record than many of these groups, because I think classical liberal ideas were used in the 19th century by the British Empire to justify not doing anything about major famines. Of course there is a broad sense of liberal in which all these people are âliberalsâ too, and they may well have been influenced by classical liberalism. But they arenât necessarily on the same side as classical liberals in typical policy debates.
Iâm mostly warning about complacency about liberals being safe from error
I can certainly agree with that. :)
I donât really understand why liberalism is getting the prefix âclassicalâ here though.
Mostly to reduce the chance of misinterpretation. In the US, âliberalâ is often used interchangeably with something like âleftistâ, âDemocratâ, or âprogressiveâ, and I wanted to make clear that I donât want any of these connotations. I also wanted to emphasize the core principles of liberalism, and avoid getting bogged down in specific policy debates.
âClassical liberalism provides the intellectual resources to condemn the Jakarta killings. â
Communism probably also provides intellectual resources that would enable you to condemn most of the many very bad things communists have done, but that doesnât mean that those outcomes arenât relevant to assessing how good an idea communism is in practice.
Not that you said otherwise, and I am a liberal, not a communist. But I do think sometimes liberals can be a bit too quick to conclude that all crimes of liberal regimes having nothing distinctive to do with liberalism, while presuming that communist and fascist and theocratic crimes are inherent products of communism/âfascism/âtheocracy. (I have less than zero time for fascism or theocracy, to be clear.)
But much less clearly so than classical liberalism. Communism lacks any clear rejection of violence, provides no robust mechanism for resolving disagreements or conflicts, and doesnât advocate for universal individual rights. Lenin, one of its most influential theorists, explicitly advocated for a âdesperate, bloody war of exterminationâ.
So itâs no surprise that communism almost always led to disaster and essentially never to a prosperous, flourishing society, in contrast to classical liberalism, which much more rarely led to disaster and much more often to flourishing.
Less clearly, sure. Iâm mostly warning about complacency about liberals being safe from error just because you can use liberal ideas to criticize bad things liberals have done, rather than defending communism. Certainly lots of communists have, for example, attacked Stalinism in communist terms.
I donât really understand why liberalism is getting the prefix âclassicalâ here though. The distinction between âclassicalâ and other forms of liberalism, like social liberalism, is more about levels of government support for the poor through the welfare state and just how strong a presumption we should have in favour of market solutions vs government ones, with agreement on secularism, individual human rights, free speech, pluralism, a non-zero sum conception of markets and trade etc. I also think that insofar as âliberalsâ have an unusually good record, this doesnât distinguish âliberalsâ in the narrow sense from other pro-democratic traditions that accept pluralism: i.e. European social democracy on the left, and European Christian democracy, and Anglosphere mainstream conservatism 1965-2015 on the right. If anything classical liberals might have a worse record than many of these groups, because I think classical liberal ideas were used in the 19th century by the British Empire to justify not doing anything about major famines. Of course there is a broad sense of liberal in which all these people are âliberalsâ too, and they may well have been influenced by classical liberalism. But they arenât necessarily on the same side as classical liberals in typical policy debates.
I can certainly agree with that. :)
Mostly to reduce the chance of misinterpretation. In the US, âliberalâ is often used interchangeably with something like âleftistâ, âDemocratâ, or âprogressiveâ, and I wanted to make clear that I donât want any of these connotations. I also wanted to emphasize the core principles of liberalism, and avoid getting bogged down in specific policy debates.