• NeilBrü@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      Communism is a liberal political and economic philosophy that finds its roots in The Enlightenment.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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        25 days ago

        This is about as valid as saying liberalism is descended from Thomas More’s Utopia because he was an English humanist and thus all liberalism is Utopian thought. Or mercantilist, for that matter.

        Kind of, sure, in the sense that socialism developed after capitalism, and Marxism and anarchism were mostly framed as having to develop from liberal/capitalist nations, but not in the way you mean it, or a useful way at all. For one thing, “liberalism” that doesn’t embrace capitalism is not liberalism ya goof.

        • NeilBrü@lemmy.world
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          24 days ago

          According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future:

          Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law.

          I agree with this definition, above.

          Furthermore, liberalism and its subsequent offspring - socialism (and all its variations), communism, anarchism, etc. - are antitheses to monarchism and divine right.

          What is your definition of liberalism?

          • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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            24 days ago

            That’s close enough, I just know what “private property” means in this context (that’s the capitalism part btw) and that constitutional monarchies are acceptable to most liberal theorists, as the “absolute” power, aka the ability to make laws, is held by more or less democratic bodies.

            Thus the UK being a liberal nation (there’s actually quite a lot of English law history that states that the monarch is not above laws, as America has recently found out is not apparently true for Presidents), and all socialist schools not being liberalism anymore than capitalism is merchantilism.