The authoritarian left and the liberal left have so little in common that it’s frustrating the term “left” encompasses both.
And the authoritarians try to reconcile this issue by saying we liberals are actually on the right. How wonderful!
There is a difference.
A lot of people who claim to be liberal, just aren’t left wing. The good example is the FDP party in Germany.
To quote Wikipedia: The FDP’s political position has variously been described as centrist, centre-right, and right-wing. The FDP has been described as liberal, conservative-liberal, classical-liberal, and liberal-conservative. Other sources have described the party as libertarian or right-libertarian.
There are left wing liberals, but don’t act like they usually call themselves liberal.
To be clear, you were saying Capitalism is left wing. They are using Liberal, as in Libertarian, not as in the actual meaning of Liberal as in Capitalist.
The “authoritarian” left is just the framework of every revolution that actually won. There is a very special kind of Western detached romantic chauvinist “left” that believes only in failed and failing pure leftism and tragedy and is shocked and outraged at what it means to win, to establish defenses, to keep a nation or nations running.
There is no liberal left. Liberals are the mainstream political and are by definition conservative under global capitalism.
Many of those aforementioned nations aren’t exactly still running, though.
