Liberal delusion—or, liberalism leads to communism

I’ve mentioned this before, and it is well known—but I feel compelled to state it again: liberalism leads to communism. To take feminism as an example: if you establish equality before the law, as liberals wish, you will find that inequalities between men and women will persist—not in the same way as before but persist just the same. What then follows is second-wave feminism or progressive liberalism.

It’s based on the old statement “the rich man and the poor man both have the equal right to sleep under the bridges of Paris”—we are all equal before the law, yet obviously some people have pre-existent social advantages that let them enjoy their rights to a greater extent or even exercise them at all; hence in the golden age of press barons it wasn’t “just anyone” who could set up their own newspaper operation—even though everyone had an equal right to free speech. The Internet has changed that somewhat, but the general point still applies—the liberal “equality of rights”, as Marx correctly noted, rests on hypocrisy.

If we assume, as liberals do, that the “only thing” that held women back was prejudice and irrational religious beliefs then if women fail to perform as men when they have legal equality, the reason “must be” some hidden prejudice or, perhaps, the historic legacy from legal disability that has crippled them. Hence, in order that they enjoy their full rights, there should be some restorative action—so that certain people have rights+, so that they can exercise their rights as the previously enfranchised, essentially propertied white men in the West, always did; perhaps, in theory, as with affirmative action, it will only be temporary.

This is where “positive rights” and “human rights” come from—“human rights”, partly influenced by the Soviets, guarantee things like “the right to housing” (because, obviously, if you do not have a secure home it is difficult to exercise your freedom of speech in the way a Victorian gentleman, amid his velvet claret curtains and aspidistras, would compose a stern letter to The Times after his butler served him his buttered toast and tea—rather hard with the rent-collector knocking at your tenement flat’s door and water pouring through the roof).

This attempt to let everyone exercise their rights leads to a reaction from classical liberals—they maintain all rights are negative. Yet when they set out on their “rights revolution” in the first place they maintained that they stood for “the rights of man” and that “all men are created equal”—if so, how can they explain the fact that even with the legal disabilities removed we still see disparities between groups who exercise these negative rights?

Were not the “wretched of the earth” wretched because kings, priests, and aristocrats oppressed them—denied them their rights? Classical liberals do not deny this is so—yet all men (and women) do not flourish when equal before the law; ergo, these “classical liberals” are like the kings, priests, and aristocrats of old—perhaps they cannot see that clearly, due to their own vested interests, yet neither could the kings, priests, and aristocrat see either. If you are not prepared to grant “positive rights”, you are about the same as the ancien regime, you are a bit of a king yourself—fancy yourself as such—and want to hold on to your privileges (your “private law”).

The above critique is in Marxism: it promises to resolve the contradiction created by liberalism, to reconcile the individual and collective—to expose and remove the classical liberal hypocrisy. Other people, the progressive liberals, have reached the same conclusion in a non-Marxist way; obviously they will, anyone who takes liberalism seriously will reach the same conclusion. It is why anyone who rejects claims by feminists or anti-racists is regarded as a “fascist” (i.e. a neo-aristocrat)—despite their hot protestations that they are for reason, the Enlightenment, and “true equality”.

To fail to accept that people are unequal due to the legacy of historic oppression or due to “hidden” prejudices (unconscious biases, perhaps) means that you secretly believe in inherited privilege and aristocracy—even though you claim you do not, perhaps sincerely do not. You think it’s “in the blood” really—and your individualism is an ideology, a subjective interest generalised, that you hide behind. Hence liberalism must lead to communism, since equality before the law does not lead to “white male outcomes”—as liberals expect—and so, it being inadmissible within the liberal worldview to say people are inherently different, there must be state action to allow the people to realise the rights that are still withheld from them.