Reminder to Progressives: Abortion is an Economic Issue

[moonshaz]

Bernie Sanders traveled to Nebraska this week to throw his support behind Omaha Democratic mayoral candidate, Heath Mello, who is running against the incumbent Republican mayor, Jean Stothert. A Mello win, Sanders has said, would give hope to other “progressive Democrats” in conservative states

Comments

[rainbows_]

kat1031's comment was helpful in terms of explaining this!

"That's actually completely opposite of the origins of the term. Liberalism in political philosophy is not people-centered at all. It's capital-centered. Political liberalism is 19th century free market capitalism. Adam Smith is a liberal economist. John Locke is a liberal political theorist. Neo-liberalism refers to a return to those root ideas of capitalist market liberalism in the 1930s as a way of redeveloping an economic theory that reigned in complete laissez-faire capitalism but was not socialist. Privatization of industry in the name of efficiency is neo-liberal. Free trade is super neo-liberal.

Liberals traditionally are center/center-left. In the UK, the Liberal Democrats and Labor illustrate the differences between (neo)liberal political ideals and socialist political ideals. The progressive movements of the early twentieth century were in opposition to liberal political parties because liberalism is pretty exploitative of non-capital interests like small farmers and labor."

[moonshaz]

So "liberal" means different things in different contexts? I guess I shouldn't be surprised since that's trùe of a lot of words.

From what I can see, a lot of people who identify as "liberal" don't fit tne definition of "liberal" used in political philodophy OR the definition of "neoliberal" as I uunderstand it. All the people that would fit the definition of "neoliberal" are people I would describe as conservatve! Which makes me feel like "neoliberal" is a confusing term that is more useful in a college course on political science/philosophy than in the "real" world. But maybe that's just me, lol!

Thanks for taking the time to explain all this. I still have VERY mixed feelings about the term "neoliberal," and  tbh, I still find it alienating, but at least I see where it came from now..