Liberals have to reject liberal revolutions because upholding the values of those revolutions to their logical extent just leads you down to socialism. Liberalism is ahistorical and has been since at least 1871.
there’s a good quote from Trotsky (yes, bare with me) about how liberals disavow the French revolution and Marxists are the true inheritors of that struggle’s legacy.
The Great French Revolution was indeed a national revolution. And what is more, within the national framework, the world struggle of the bourgeoisie for domination, for power, and for undivided triumph found its classical expression.
Jacobinism is now a term of reproach on the lips of all liberal wiseacres. Bourgeois hatred of revolution, its hatred towards the masses, hatred of the force and grandeur of the history that is made in the streets, is concentrated in one cry of indignation and fear – Jacobinism! We, the world army of Communism, have long ago made our historical reckoning with Jacobinism. The whole of the present international proletarian movement was formed and grew strong in the struggle against the traditions of Jacobinism. We subjected its theories to criticism, we exposed its historical limitations, its social contradictoriness, its utopianism, we exposed its phraseology, and broke with its traditions, which for decades had been regarded as the sacred heritage of the revolution.
But we defend Jacobinism against the attacks, the calumny, and the stupid vituperations of anaemic, phlegmatic liberalism. The bourgeoisie has shamefully betrayed all the traditions of its historical youth, and its present hirelings dishonour the graves of its ancestors and scoff at the ashes of their ideals. The proletariat has taken the honour of the revolutionary past of the bourgeoisie under its protection. The proletariat, however radically it may have, in practice, broken with the revolutionary traditions of the bourgeoisie, nevertheless preserves them, as a sacred heritage of great passions, heroism and initiative, and its heart beats in sympathy with the speeches and acts of the Jacobin Convention.
Imagine a liberal saying the words of Robespierre today?
No doubt if all men were just and virtuous; if cupidity were never tempted to devour the people’s substance; if the rich, receptive to the voices of reason and nature, regarded themselves as the bursars of society, or as brothers to the poor, it might be possible to recognize no law but the most unlimited freedom; but if it is true that avarice can speculate on the misery and tyranny itself on the despair of the people; if it is true that all the passions declare war on suffering humanity, then why should not the law repress these abuses? Why should it not stay the homicidal hand of the monopolist, as it does that of the common murderer? Why should it not concern itself with the subsistence of the people, after caring so long for the pleasures of the great, and the power of despots?
I once just completely tied up a lib in knots who was poo-pooing private property getting damaged by protests by asking them “So you think the Boston Tea Party was a bad idea and unjustified?”
Liberalism is ahistorical and has been since at least 1871.
One of the main point Marx discovered when he studied economic theories (leaving 3 thick books worth of notes in the process) was that after Ricardo liberal economics stopped developing further and instead took two steps back and became ass-eating ouroboros of delusion, because otherwise it would bring them to the same point Marx himself was. And so, the liberal historiography inevitably also stopped right on the French revolution, cutting it in the good and bad parts obviously along their anachronistic post-revolution class interests. Or as would Lenin put it, their fear of revolutionary workers and peasants greatly overwhelm their fear of monarchs.
Liberals have to reject liberal revolutions because upholding the values of those revolutions to their logical extent just leads you down to socialism. Liberalism is ahistorical and has been since at least 1871.
there’s a good quote from Trotsky (yes, bare with me) about how liberals disavow the French revolution and Marxists are the true inheritors of that struggle’s legacy.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp03.htm
Imagine a liberal saying the words of Robespierre today?
ok that’s cool but today nancy pelosi was like “go back to china” at some pro-palestine protestors
I once just completely tied up a lib in knots who was poo-pooing private property getting damaged by protests by asking them “So you think the Boston Tea Party was a bad idea and unjustified?”
One of the main point Marx discovered when he studied economic theories (leaving 3 thick books worth of notes in the process) was that after Ricardo liberal economics stopped developing further and instead took two steps back and became ass-eating ouroboros of delusion, because otherwise it would bring them to the same point Marx himself was. And so, the liberal historiography inevitably also stopped right on the French revolution, cutting it in the good and bad parts obviously along their anachronistic post-revolution class interests. Or as would Lenin put it, their fear of revolutionary workers and peasants greatly overwhelm their fear of monarchs.