The Problem with Liberalism

A philosophy of contradictions

Lamartine rejects the Red Flag before the Hôtel de Ville, Paris, on 25^th of February 1848 by Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux

The Lie of Liberty

Liberalism is a worldview comprised of both political and moral philosophy built around the concept of liberty. What exactly “liberty” means depends on who you consult, as it has been taken to encompass many different, and often contradictory or overlapping, things by liberal thinkers over the past three-and-a-half centuries. While liberalism and liberal political theory projects an ideal of universal human emancipation grounded in formal liberty and state neutrality, its material praxis demonstrates that liberalism is fundamentally the political economy of capital accumulation; that is to say that liberalism believes that capital is the prime driving force for the maximization of human happiness. Through obfuscation, a reduction of freedom to private property rights and market relations, liberalism abstracts away concrete economic coercion, transforming the former mode of governance into a dictatorial oligarchy that secures absolute freedom for the few through the structural coercion of the many.

Inside the liberal lexicon there is a neat, almost hypnotic comfort. Terms like choice, liberty, neutrality, rights, nature, justice, etc. are tossed about as though they were, and have always been, absolute truths descended from the heavens, endowed by a creator, floating in the purgatory of idealism, entirely detached from the dirt, sweat, and blood of human history. Liberal theory compels us to imagine a world of unencumbered individuals, equal in their free will, who transcend the state of nature and enter the marketplace as free actors, signing contracts, both social and legal, with a nod and a handshake. It is a neat, tidy picture, and a complete fantasy.

When we open the pages of political philosophy, we are asked to debate these concepts without affording any argument calling attention to the hypocrisy of the notion of justice used to justify chattel slavery, colonialism, globalization, ecocide, genocide, and the “legal” usurpation of democracy by fascism in liberal societies. We are told that The Enlightenment, the liberal revolution of society, the death of mercantilism and feudalism, and the birth of capitalism are the climax of historical progression. We are invited to ponder whether “negative liberty” is superior to “positive liberty” and vice-versa, or whether the state can remain a neutral arbiter—an invisible yet public hand, so to speak—while sitting atop a mountain of private wealth. Caught up in this complex web of theoretics, we ignore the most fundamental reality of our existence: freedom is not a legal abstraction, it is a material condition.

What does “freedom of trade” mean to the slave? What does “freedom of assembly” mean to the mass of laborers shot dead when they get too powerful? What does “freedom of contract” mean to the wage-slave who must sell their labor-power to an owner or face eviction, hunger, and immiseration? Under the brutal reign of capital, the liberal promise of “freedom” reveals itself historically to be a cruel, dastardly joke. Liberalism does not liberate the human being anymore than they were free in the state of nature; it emancipates property and legalizes abstractions. It transforms the absolute right of the few to hoard capital into the ultimate definition of “liberty,” while condemning the vast majority to a life of silent, structural compulsion.

Wealth, Not Will

We must stop treating liberalism as an imperfect attempt at universal human liberation. It is not. In both its historic origins and its contemporary applications, liberalism is, and has always been, the political philosophy of capital accumulation, bourgeois rule, and oligarchic power.

From John Locke’s obsession with protecting landed estate to Isaiah Berlin’s insistence that poverty is merely an “inability” rather than a coercion, liberal thought consistently erects a wall around wealth. We are to believe that the state remains “neutral” while millionaires and billionaires gobble up equity in multinational conglomerates and cartels, engage in the “free trade,” that is the purchasing, of “fair” elections, and monopolize the vital resources needed for human survival. Yet, the moment the class of paupers organizes to challenge this inequality, the “neutral” liberal state drops its velvet glove and reveals the iron first of law, police, and state violence.

Even the most revered liberal thinkers could not hide the inherent contradictions of their project. John Stuart Mill, widely celebrated as a champion of individual liberty and utilitarianism, had no trouble writing in On Liberty that “despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians.” Therein lies the true history of liberal praxis: a pristine regime of formal rights at home, bankrolled by the cruelest forms of imperialist plunder, colonial domination, and hyper-exploitation abroad.

Beyond Abstractions

If we are to break free from the stranglehold of capitalist hegemony, we must first tear down the theoretical scaffolding that protects it. We must refuse to let bourgeois intellectuals define human freedom down to a list of paper guarantees. A right written on parchment is an empty gesture when a person lacks the material means to exercise it. Real, substantive freedom cannot exist in a world where liberty is measured by what a person is legally permitted to do, rather than what they are actually materially empowered to achieve.

True liberation, true liberty, demands an uncompromising guarantee of life’s material foundations: universal, high-quality housing, comprehensive healthcare from the cradle to the casket, fully funded education from early childhood through the university level, and dignified, meaningful labor. Universal liberation requires the end of people holding ownership in any form over other people, over the finite resources of the planet, over land & property that—at the end of the day—we are all mere guests on and stewards of. Freedom is not the liberty to starve on the street like a dog with all the political emancipation offered by the constitution in your pocket. Freedom, true freedom, is the absolute assurance that your fundamental human needs are met as a non-negotiable social right.

So long as labor remains a commodity bought and sold to maximize capital and swell corporate cartelistic profit, the worker remains alienated from their own existence. Substantive freedom past the parchment requires that working people become the true masters of their physical and mental production, owning the fruits of their toil, directing their own labor efforts, and shaping their own destinies free from the tyranny and instability of the market. We must reject the illusion that formal political rights alone can set us free, and fight instead for a world where material equality turns the promise of human liberation into a lived reality; in other words, we must fight for total human emancipation.