I often get criticized for ideological inconsistency by mixing #liberal and socialist values in my posts.
I often cite #Voltaire, #Hayek, #Popper and other fathers of the liberal movement when it comes to civic rights, freedom of speech and expression, and defense against conservatism, totalitarism and dogma.
And I often use the language of #Marx, #Gramsci and Rosa Luxemburg when I talk about inequality and class struggle, capitalism, common resources, common access to the means of production and workers alienation.
But the more I think about it, the more I start to actually see them as complementary sides of the same coin.
It actually makes perfectly sense to me to be strongly liberal when it comes to individual freedoms, and strongly socialist when it comes to regulating the market.
You can’t have individual freedoms and universal rights in an economic system that is prone to unregulated exploitation and formation of oligopolies that no longer obey to the rules of an open and competitive market.
And you can’t have a fair and sustainable economic system without freedom of expression, freedom of growth and enterprise and equal opportunities.
Liberalism without a socialist core is the post-1970s neoliberal degeneration advocated by Friedman, Reagan and Thatcher. It’s cynical capitalism on steroids/cocaine, it’s assured enshittification and establishment of rent-seeking behaviour perpetrated by an unaccountable handful of oligopolies who only respond to their shareholders.
And socialism without a liberal core is the Soviet-like degeneration that the world has experienced throughout the 20th century.
And I wish that such a liberal/socialist doctrine had more political representation out there, instead of being embodied by political forces that are often in mutual exclusion with one another.
