Hello, comrades. I was wondering why we allowed “liberal” to become a dirty word? A “liberal” is someone favorable to progress or reform, and also someone in favor of individual rights and liberties.
I understand American fake liberals largely discredited the word, but in Lemmygrad forums, I see true liberalism every day: people discuss progressive ideas all the time, and are very tolerant of each other. Why do we allow American fake liberals to ruin the experience for us all? The word “liberal” should once again ring positive, while fake liberals should be called “faux liberals” which they are, don’t you agree?
I got used to different meaning of those words. In my country, the Communist Party was the ruling party up to the early 1990s, so for me, “reactionary” means someone who wishes to restore the communist rule. In a similar way, I interpret the word “liberal”, but I understand most people here adhere to the US-centered interpretation.
no, stupid mfer, YOU are the one using the “popular” american definition, which is liberal = socially progressive and is very overly simplistic and disconected with historical materialism. it feels like you don’t even read what people are telling you in the comments of this post, and that definition of “reactionary” doesn’t make sense either because reactionary means to move back according to the dialectical model of history, not to a more progressive country, i can only assume this is a product of westernization and decommunization that was forced on every country of the eastern block.
Well, clearly I was wrong, esp. when I said “people discuss progressive ideas all the time, and are very tolerant of each other.”
I’m beginning to understand how the lack of tolerance for alternative interpretations among the leftists caused the 1948. split between Yugoslav brand of communism and the one in the Eastern Bloc. Thankfully we never followed a prescribed recipe about how we should design our own leftist state.
To me, reaction simply means movement in the reverse direction.
Creating socialism is not about interpreting a bible and it has nothing to do with this, you’re using different meaning for a word that has a well stabilished meaning and you keep insisting on it like it changes anything in the material world, not to mention you keep conveniently ignoring half the shit people tell you and then act in so much bad faith, let me explain it again: reactionary does mean going in a reverse direction but acording to a dialetical understanding of models of production, going back from capitalist to becoming socialist is not reactionary, i feel like you have such an insanely idealist world view when you act like the word you use shapes the material reality. And again you ignored what i said about you’re being the one using the United States definition of what is liberal.
I have not ignored, but tried to understand what people told me. How exactly did you conclude I did anything “in bad faith”? What is wrong with you?
That’s not my world view. Physicists are materialists, yet they can also insist on alternative interpretations. For example, energy is the ability to do work, but according to a relativistic interpretation, it is also equivalent to matter.
I learned that interpretetion long before I even heard about the US definition.
…that’s just not how natural sciences work, that’s not even what energy is, those are not different interpretation for the same thing and i’m afraid to ask how that translates into politics, that’s the dumbest thing i’ve read, i’m just done with you. This isn’t even about what liberalism is anymore, so whatever.
That’s exactly what energy is. Energy is a property of a body which becomes apparent when it is doing work. Work is, then, the amount of energy transferred to or from a body. In relativistic terms, E=mc^2 a.k.a. mass-energy equivalence. That relation tells you a completely different thing about energy.
This doesn’t translate to politics, but goes to show that completely different interpretations of the same thing can exist in materialist sciences.
I’m toning down my aggressiveness but i can’t avoid to comment how you seem to think you’re smarter than you are, but that’s okay, the thing is not all energy does work but yet it still exists, energy is a mathematical abstraction and not a material thing, the definition of energy is much more complex than that and it’s most modern accepeted definition in academia is mostly by Emmy Noether as the quantity that is conserved in a system with time translation invariance, and Albert Einstein’s relativty is not even E=mc^2 but E =√((mc2)2+(pc)^2), it only refutes the conservation of energy of a system but it is not a different definition of energy and that is not how epistemology for natural sciences works, because how limited the theory is to the things you observe you’re not reinterpreting a meaning, you’re creating a new theory. This doesn’t works in political theory works, the Marxist theory adapts to the material reality because of dialectical materialism and the different conditions they migh find themselves in but it doesn’t get reintrepeted like it is a fucking bible, fuck it, you might even do a little revisionism from time to time if you think it’s better. Not to mention what a grotesque error it would be to try and compare marxist theory with natural sciences.
Listen, if you’re a liberal just call yourself such and stop calling yourself a socialist or if you’re a socialist don’t call yourself a liberal, have in mind this: the words you use to describe things doesn’t matter, they don’t reflect the material reality, it’s just a tool of communication, if you keep changing the meaning of things and pretending you’re doing something you’re only going to create confusion and embarrassment, all you’re doing is having a different meaning than everyone else inside your head but you’re communicating as if the definition you give to a word matters in a clash of ideas.
although i’m pretty sure your actual politics will end up being liberalism because you seem to be a proud idealist.
I am very much a socialist. I simply thought it would be a good idea to recognize how things evolved over the last century and perhaps assign new meanings to certain words, including liberalism. I see that creates a lot of confusion and negative karma, so I concluded it is more trouble than it is worth.
As to E^2 = (mc^2) ^2 + (pc)^2 there is a typo in your post I believe, but that’s beside the point. This equation is for the total energy when a particle is moving. When it’s not moving, p=0 so the rest energy is E=mc^2. I disagree that energy is an abstraction. I believe it is very real.
What makes you believe I think I’m “smarter than I am”? You keep analyzing me, trying to investigate my motives and whatnot. I don’t really understand why you’re doing that. I have no special motives beside what I wrote: I wanted to see if people want to assign additional meaning to the word “liberal”, mainly because without that word, it’s difficult to explain the difference between Yugoslav and Soviet style socialism. The Soviets were far more rigid, so how would you call the Yugoslav style?