Microblog Memes

I don't agree that liberal people are the same as bourgeoisie. Liberalism is a bourgeois ideology, but not every liberal is a member of the ruling class.

Political definitions are historically and contextually dependent. I would agree with your assessment down to the letter, in the 18th century there were revolutionary liberals who wanted to overthrow autocratic feudal systems to implement universal private property ownership. This was a progressive development in society because feudalism was the primary mode of social reproduction for centuries and centuries. One of Karl Marx's mentors, Ludwig von Westphalen, was a good example of these historic conditions in practice.

Westphalen was a Prussian civil servant and reformer. He was technically a noble, his father was made nobility, but Ludwig believed in all those progressive values: he was an educated reformer, who believed in truth, justice, equality, achievable by seizing control of common lands, and through a legal system and other measures, allow land (and other assets used to make profits) to be owned by private individuals. This had basically already proven to crush the power of nobility in several places, England for example was like the first capitalist country having deposed the power (but not the form) of their aristocracy in the 17th century. French and american bourgeois revolutions in the 18th century made liberal capitalism quite popular, especially since the bourgeoisie, at that time and under feudalism an administrative middle class that had developed basically everywhere, could overthrow the kings and queens and run things themselves. This was progress.

But once bourgeois revolutions were carried out everywhere and the bourgeois ruling class were in control, they stop being revolutionary and become the status quo, which means they defend liberal capitalism with the powers and violence of the state. Marx works out the fundamental conflict of interests between the ruling bourgeois class and the toiling peasants and developing proletarian "working" class, proving that the working class who operate the machines and do the work for the capitalists have the potential to overthrow the bourgeoisie and make a new more fair and just society.

Experiments in 20th century socialism proved this to be a fairly complicated matter, since socialism is internationalist, many problems arise when socialists try to create a socialist state -- as Engels says about the bourgeoisie and their lofty ideals, "these great thinkers were constrained by the limitations imposed on them by history."

But basically the bourgeois class during revolutionary times, pulled a switcheroo when seizing power. They sold their ideas to the toiling masses who very much were done with their despotic kings and queens, and took them up as their own. But once seizing power the bourgeoisie set about establishing capitalism, not truth, justice, and liberty, as the ruling dictate.

So today there are sort of different kinds of liberals: progressives, who IMO share (or once shared) the progressive "spirit" of change and development with socialism, and capitalists who will dispose of those ideals if it allows them to accumulate more private capital.

So the definition is contradictory, but to Marxists every "thing" is made up of two other things in contradiction to each other. In Marxism change occurs when a contradiction is resolved. So its not unusual to look at Marxist conceptions of "things", such as a liberal in this instance, as being very strange and wrong. The method we use, dialectical materialism, which is a terrible name but w/e, takes a long time to understand, but it is much better at describing history, where one change leads to another, and another, forwards and backwards through time.