I know what liberalism is. But the first time I encountered that it is used so often was when I looked into English-speaking social media sites like Reddit two years ago.
Spoiler
It is not common to know about reddit here, I live in Bratwurstland. I just wanted to join the pigeon subreddit back then.
Bourgeois, bourgeois class consciousness, bourgeois thinking, bourgeois revolution, etc. The same with petty bourgeoisie etc. etc.
I have the complete collected works of Lenin physically available in german. I have the most important writings of Marx and Engels with me, as well as Tito, Thälmann, Karl Liebknecht, Stalin, Trotsky, Plekhanov, even Lykassenko and some more. (I dont just buy writings I like, but also writing I dont like)
Liberalism didn’t come up that often, only when it was actually about liberalism. But the way liberals are often referred to on English-language social media sites, including here, is a bit strange to me.
Idk about other languages that much. I also didn’t encountered this kind of usage of liberal in the russian version of Lenin’s writings. Bourgeois, bourgeois class consciousness, bourgeois thinking, bourgeois revolution, etc. The same with petty bourgeoisie etc. etc.
Maybe there some here who know what I am talking about and can explain it to me.
Edit: Why did Voyager destroyed my formattig many times
Edit2: Thank you all for your engagement. You helped me a lot how to understand it more correctly if I read it from someone using english language .
Perhaps the difference is just that the term liberal has more historical relevance in English-speaking countries. The specific ideology was invented by British and French thinkers, especially influencing the leaders of the American Revolution.
On common usage, liberal is associated with the view that “liberal” political parties promote live and let live social morals, whereas in political and economic usage it has a real definition of someone who is in favor of laissez faire free markets under capitalism, without government intervention.
Is this true in the non-English-speaking world?
Mao wrote the notorious “Combating Liberalism” essay, but I don’t speak Chinese, so I can’t verify how direct that translation is. It is possible that the original text referred more generically to bourgeois ideology, and not specifically the classical liberal movement in western Europe.
The poster is confused why the term liberal is used so often in English Marxist contexts, so it seems plausible that non-English Marxists do not often refer specifically to liberalism.
Would there be much of a difference in the modern world? Liberalism is the successful form of bourgeois society. All those medieval burghers and small producers may have been bourgeois but they weren’t really liberal. Today you only really have the liberal kind of bourgeois, unless we’re splitting hairs about modern fascists.
Correct, there is not much of a difference. It is a question of translation. A translation into English may opt to use the word “liberal” in certain places because of the precise connotations of that word to an English-speaking audience. In other languages they may opt to translate the concept of bourgeois/liberal ideology into a word that does not specifically refer to the classical liberal movement.
At least regarding the languages you speak it makes a difference. I swear, that the usage of “liberal” is nothing I find very often in marxist discussions or writings in german. Otherwise I would not ask this questions, which also got already answered.
In german this writing from Mao is translated as “Gegen den Liberalismus”, created in the late 30s. Few years ago Thälmann still almost always mentuoned bourgeois, but not liberal that much. This where my question came from. Simply using now “liberal” probably makes sense in the english speaking world. But at least where I live it is not common to use it in that way.