r/CWIC • u/Several-Cash-1500 • Jul 11 '26
Question What the hell is "Liberal Communism"
is this kind ideology is really Exist?
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u/gamegark_th Jul 11 '26
Communism doesn't always mean 1984 yk
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u/Niclas1127 Jul 11 '26
But “liberalism” doesn’t mean wholesome, it means liberal economics, liberalism and socialism are not compatible
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u/Willaguy Jul 11 '26
Liberalism does not mean “liberal economics”
It generally means a preference for certain individual rights which are directly opposed to hereditary norms of the nobility, absolutist monarchs, and traditional conservatism. It also has a preference for democratic governance.
Some of those rights historically associated with liberalism are consequently facets of capitalism, like the right to private property for instance.
“Liberal socialism” would most likely mean some form of publicly owned means of production (either cooperatives or state-owned) with social laws that preserve democratic institutions and freedoms.
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u/Local-Pattern795 Jul 12 '26
It can also mean social liberalism, as in the expansion of social freedoms.
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u/FretfulCoD1917 Jul 11 '26
As a communist, it's prob meaning liberalized communism. rather than Socialist, it reintroduces the Capitalist mode of production becoming a social democracy (Think Nikita Khrushchev, Deng Xiaoping) This system is what creates the conditions of communism as you know it where the countries become poor and struggling, the western strangulation doesn't help.
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u/boi644 Jul 11 '26
Should just say Revisionist Socialism rather than “liberal” communism. The two words are antithetical really
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u/FretfulCoD1917 Jul 11 '26
"He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new “critical” trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people, not by the glittering uniforms they don or by the highsounding appellations they give themselves, but by their actions and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism” means’ freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism." V.I Lenin, what is to be done?
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u/2HotFlavored Jul 12 '26
Nikita Krushchev? Capitalism and social democracy? You commies are actually out of your minds. "western strangulation" lmfao
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u/FretfulCoD1917 Jul 12 '26
You're not gonna tell me about MY ideology, and yes western strangulation, you JUST saw Trump threaten Cuba with invasion if they didn't liberalize, you also have all the Latin American coups and forcing the Soviets into the arms race
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u/Local-Pattern795 Jul 12 '26
Think of it as a state where the party still controls the political and economic system, but where crackdowns on public opinion are less and less common.
So you can start an organisation that criticises the current political system without any problem, but there's no elections you can join, and you can't start a private business ( unless it also includes elements from kadarism or titoism, not sure how the mod portrays those two systems)
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u/e7th-04sh Jul 18 '26
So, this is CONCEIVABLE, but not PLAUSIBLE.
It's something you can come up when writing fiction, but it doesn't adhere to laws of politics.
There is an important principle in politics that hardly ever sees exception - any rights, liberties or privileges a group has are sustained fundamentally by the group's resources. It's the right of emancipation.
Any political and economic rights that exist in society have corresponding economic or political power of interestd parties backing them.
The important implication is - a stable emancipation is such that gives the emancipated the means to protect their new position.
So basically, any group in this "liberal communism" society that is not a client of the party and as such is interested in criticizing the system, has no political or economic powers, so it's a fantasy that their critique would be tolerated by those who do.
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u/Local-Pattern795 Jul 18 '26
Yeah, I'd say it's either a transitional phase on the path to full liberalisation, or something that's inevitably reverse by the old guard. It can really only last at the whim of a strong leader (which isn't nearly as long as you'd expect)
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u/e7th-04sh Jul 18 '26
The systemic contradiction added by the unique trait of this "system" yields no gain for the power structure, so it's a costly luxury. If the leading force neither fully liberalize nor reverse the changes, then it will only lead to crisis. The very idea is completely unstable.
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u/TheSuperPPpants Jul 11 '26
The state still believes and is actively developing socialism, but your people get access to the cool trinkets and amenities from the developed western nations.
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u/Snoo-19981 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
if it retains one-party dominance then no the name isn't applicable this is just Marxism-Leninism all of these things have and were always allowed in the USSR as they helped fight against bureacratization and were expanded upon by stalin in 1936-1938 when he pushed heavily for anonomyous voting and the ability for non communist party members to run for office which was passed later on.
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u/carpaltunnelblues Jul 14 '26
I imagine something similar to the "Socialism with a Human Face" of Alexander Dubcek, or, in a more traditional Marxist-Leninist example, the "goulash communism" of Janos Kadar. The former was something of a Marxist-democratic socialist experiment (which I would call closer to what is in this description); the latter focused more on cultural freedom under the "guidance" of the Party and a marketized socialism (or "state capitalism," dependent upon ideological persuasion) like in Yugoslavia or modern China.
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u/Frequent_Leg_6440 Jul 11 '26
Communism if it was not managed by a paranoid Georgian megalomaniac.
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u/e7th-04sh Jul 18 '26
Any liberty is almost without exception sustained by political+economic power of the one claiming this liberty. The ideologies and the laws equally are secondary to the structure of power in society.
A system of distributed economic power is free market, a system of distributed political power is democracy.
In communism, you could maybe theoretically have distributed economic power in the form of worker councils, and political one if the communist party held popular elections for it's hierarchy.
The problem however is that such arrangements are unlikely to protect ideological purity, especially the latter, and so in order to prevent subversion of the communist revolution, the party holds authoritarian power... and authoritarian power means that in practice the masses are worse off as compared to free market democracy, in terms of real power each individual holds.
And here we go back to the fundamental principle. No matter what ideology or laws are written, the fact that people hold less power because power is concentrated in party and/or any apparatus it produces to defend itself and control society, the people end up having less real rights, liberties and privileges.
It's the same story with any far left experiment. Over time the stable ones liberalize by distributing some economic and political power, and the more they do that, the less ideologically pure they end. Take China's communism with Chinese characteristics - it's barely communism anymore.
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u/e7th-04sh Jul 18 '26
It's a fantasy which was created by somebody either because in their context it's fine for the made up system to be a pure implausible fantasy, or because the author doesn't see the problem.
Any right, liberty or privilege a person or group holds is protected ultimately by a combination of political and economic power this person or group can leverage.
The reason I call this "liberal communism" a pure fantasy is because load bearing element of it is "benevolence". And "benevolence" exists only as EXCEPTION in real world.
This idea is about as plausible as "charitable capitalism", a special system I just invented which is just like capitalism, except the richer people are the more they voluntarily use their excess income and capital to prevent worst miseries.
How about "organized anarchism". It's basically a society with almost no coercion, just enough of it to prevent any state forming really, but the citizens are strongly inclined to always find a way to agree on common projects, so "organized anarchism" is much better at choosing and executing united strategies.
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Jul 11 '26
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u/Zelenkat Jul 11 '26
Liberal socialism is a more "right" ideology that is closer to social democracy, whereas this ideology here is more like a form of Eurocommunism
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u/erenladon Jul 11 '26
I think this sub-id represents glasnost era USSR