Defining Liberalism, Socialism, and Leftism

In short, liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. It asserts that individuals have a variety of rights, however, it’s the right to private property that liberalism takes as fundamental. All other rights are conditioned by the fundamental right to private property. Liberals justify their ideology by assuming an ahistorical and idealist mode of theorizing. This ideology limits the horizons of our political future by rejecting total systemic change and focusing on mere reforms to the capitalist status quo.

Here’s our full explanation:

In the contemporary US, the term “leftism” is generally used in a way that assimilates socialism and liberalism, thereby obscuring the central disagreement between socialists and liberals. Understanding the difference between socialism and liberalism is of essential importance to us as socialists committed to ending capitalism.

Socialism is a socio-economic system in which there is public ownership over the means of production (the land, factories, raw materials, tools, machinery). This makes it possible to orient the economy around meeting human needs and sustaining our environment and natural resources. When we all collectively own the means of production, we can make political and economic decisions democratically. For more on socialism, see the wiki entry on socialism and attend the Political Education Committee’s Socialism 101 and 102 educationals.

Liberalism is typically understood as a moral and political philosophy that asserts that citizens have rights to freedom of thought, speech, pursuits, and private property, and that governments ought to protect these rights. But what’s distinctive about liberalism is the way that it enshrines the right to private property – that is, the right to private ownership over the means of production – as paramount and conditions all other rights so that they are compatible with the right to private property. Generally, this means that the rights of working class people are degraded, while the rights of those who own the means of production are elevated and enhanced.

For example, liberals recognize a right to pursue any sort of work that you choose. No one is legally bound to work for any specific employer, nor are they legally bound to any specific career path. But in actuality, what this means differs quite dramatically depending on your economic class. For those who own the means of production (capitalists), it means that they can use their means of production however they wish, provided that they don’t directly violate the legal rights of others. This means that capitalists are free to exploit the labor of the working class, to fire their workers even if this will ruin their lives, and to produce commodities that serve no important purpose but degrade our natural environment and waste precious resources.

For those who lack ownership of the means of production, freedom to pursue any sort of work that you choose means freedom to quit one’s job and attempt to find a new one. But it does not mean that there is any guarantee that you’ll find one, nor that you are free from the larger system of wage slavery. For working class people who are unable to find a job, this freedom means nothing more than the freedom to be homeless.

Similarly, the liberal understanding of freedom of speech has no issue with capitalists possessing ownership over media outlets and spreading whatever sort of propaganda they please. So long as they own the outlet, it is their property to do with as they wish. Hence, liberals conveniently ignore the inherent power imbalance created by such ownership. Likewise, capitalists who are invested in the extraction of fossil fuels or the sale of tobacco products are free to spread harmful misinformation about their products.

Even the right to freedom of religion is taken to include a right to proselytize, for instance, with billboards that declare that non-believers or those who receive an abortion will rot in hell for an eternity. Capitalists are also free to deny business to queer couples, if they so choose.

In taking the right to private property as foundational and as conditioning all other rights, liberalism is the ideology of capitalism – the socio-economic system in which there is private ownership over the means of production and economic decisions are made undemocratically by private businesses seeking to maximize their profits no matter the cost to the rest of us.

Socialism and liberalism also strongly diverge in the mode of analysis and the theorizing they employ. Liberals tend to ground their philosophy in an abstract, idealized, and ahistorical understanding of human nature. In contrast, socialists utilize a materialist mode of analysis, which means we seek to understand how our social and political structures, as well as our individual thoughts, feelings, and patterns of behavior, are all decisively shaped by the ways in which we live and work to survive and reproduce ourselves.

We can see an example of the liberal mode of analysis by considering the ideas of some of the foundational theorists of liberalism. For example, in his 1689 Second Treatise of Government, John Locke (the father of liberalism) imagines what humans were like as they existed in a “state of nature,” before the establishment of any government. Locke posits that in this state, humans possess a “natural right” to acquire private ownership over the means of production, and he theorizes that the entire point of government should be to protect this natural right to private property.

Similarly, Adam Smith begins his 1776 The Wealth of Nations by positing that human beings have a “natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange things” with one another. For this reason, capitalism is depicted as the natural result of human nature, and pre-capitalist feudal arrangements are viewed as obstacles standing in the way of a fully rational capitalist economy tailored to fit human nature.

These ideas are still with us today. To take one of many examples, a 2005 Cato Institute paper asserts, “Property rights are prefigured in nature by the way animals mark out territories for their exclusive use in foraging, hunting, and mating.” The paper concludes, “the human mind is ‘built’ to trade.”

What unites liberal thinkers is that they posit an abstract notion of human nature that is not grounded in any actual history or scientific analysis. It’s circular logic that they’ve generated by reflecting on the patterns of behavior that they see all around them – patterns that exist within the context of capitalism – which are then projected across history to rationalize the capitalist status quo. In contrast, socialists seek to understand the patterns of behavior, the ideas that we hold, our political systems, and the events happening everyday all around us by investigating how they are shaped by our present socio-economic system – capitalism.

Essential to the materialist mode of analysis preferred by socialists is an understanding of class. Socialists define class as a relationship between groups of people and the means of production. The bourgeoisie (meaning the capitalist class) are those who possess ownership over the means of production and use their ownership to dictate the terms of our economy. The proletariat (meaning the working or laboring class) are those who lack ownership over the means of production and who therefore have to sell their labor-power to a capitalist in exchange for a wage, under the terms set by the capitalist.

In contrast, liberals generally ignore class entirely. When liberals do speak of class, they tend to focus on “the middle class,” and very occasionally “the working class.” But when liberals use these terms, they either don’t define them at all, or they define them in terms of income-levels. Generally, they admire the middle class, and they assume that the middle class is composed of virtuous and self-sufficient people. The working class is pitied and often viewed as in the circumstances that they are in because of their poor choices and lack of prudence. Liberals use the terms ‘middle class’ in a very expansive way, so that they include nearly everyone but the ultra-wealthy and ultra-poor. The effect of these usages is to obscure the reality and centrality of class to capitalism, as well as its importance to the eventual destruction of capitalism.

The difference in the socialist and liberal mode of analysis leads to another difference between socialists and liberals – the difference in their political objectives and their horizons for the future. Because liberals see capitalism as the most efficient and rational socio-economic system, all progress is seen as a matter of reforming capitalism so that it is further perfected, more just, and more compatible with environmental sustainability.

For instance, liberals in the US often champion the New Deal as a paradigmatic example of progress. We see this championing of the New Deal reflected in the call among liberals for a Green New Deal – a set of policies that aim to stimulate the economy, promote equality, and take steps to addressing the climate crisis, all while leaving the system of global capitalism intact.

In contrast, socialists recognize that policy reforms under capitalism will never be lasting nor far-reaching. For instance, although certain segments of the working class were able to achieve conditions of relative affluence thanks to the New Deal, Blacks, latinos, immigrants, and women (among others) were all generally excluded from access to these benefits. Moreover, by the 1970s, capital and the ruling class already began clawing back the New Deal gains. This is a process that has been ongoing the past 50 years – the state has targeted and destroyed radical labor unions, while absorbing the rest into the capitalist state structure; they have eroded the welfare state; and strengthened the ability of capital to exploit workers.

Because our goal as socialists is to achieve a genuinely democratic socio-economic system that serves all people and sustains the environment, we must reject capitalism and therefore we must reject liberalism. We must reject the idealistic modes of thinking that liberals employ to rationalize capitalism, and we must reject the liberal insistence on limiting our political horizons. We must remain steadfast in our commitment to actual socialism, and we must rely on rigorous scientific and material analysis that reckons with the reality of our class society.

But we can only do this by recognizing the differences between socialism and liberalism and rejecting attempts to obscure these differences with vague terms like “leftism.” Although liberal politicians who are called “left” may indeed favor policy reforms that constitute genuine improvements in the conditions of the working class, they are still liberals committed to the capitalist quo and all that entails – undemocratic economic and political systems that leave our collective lives up to the whims of capitalists pursuing their own self-interest at the expense of our planet and collective well-being.

09/23/2025