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US Republicans are not liberals – they are staunch conservatives who support the American dream, free enterprise, Protestantism, the right to bear arms, and ban abortion and euthanasia. If not for all the liberals, they would have kept slavery. In general, they would do anything to preserve the country as it was created by the “founding fathers”. Nor can socialists traditionally be called right-wing, because socialism is based on completely left-wing ideas of universal equality. Feminism, LGBT rights, religious freedom, the pension system, trade unions – these are all left-wing ideas that have made their way into the constitution.
Try to distinguish between left-right and liberal-conservative ideas. There are definitely no real liberal parties in our country now. If you look at the current members of the parliament, everyone is fighting for the preservation of traditional values. Some even advocate values that replaced the current traditional values 100 years ago. We don't have any right-wing parties either. Even Alexey Navalny is not an ardent supporter of the right-wing ideology. He defends the idea of inviolability of private property, but at the same time is a supporter of decent social guarantees from the state. Which in reality is difficult to implement, unfortunately. In their election programs, absolutely everyone competes in who will pay the largest pensions, who will impose the largest taxes on large businesses (and this is also not marketable, since small businesses do not want to become large), who will defeat corruption, etc.
If you really want to find out where to look for right-wing liberals or right-wing conservatives in our country, then just use Google and see the difference between the trends, but without mixing them. It consists in how a particular current answers a certain list of questions. And then see how parties or individuals do it. The problem with Russian politics is that there are no different views on solving problems, but there are different people who want to solve the same problems in the same way, which is due to the uniformity of the electorate – grandmothers and state employees go to the polls, and we have very few business representatives and they are not too rich to cooperate and lobby their interests in politics.
In post-Soviet Russia, there is complete confusion about who is who and who is who. In the 90th year, Yeltsinists, knowing about the well – established concepts of “left-right” among the people, where “left” is always, by definition, right, called themselves “left” and communist supporters “right”. Although it was exactly the opposite. It's played! In '93, they also, with the help of captured media, called the defenders of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, who demanded compliance with the Constitution and existing laws – “red-brown”. It's played! Today, and for many years now, the ideological heirs of Yeltsin – the party of the ruling large-capitalist elite (“Our Home Russia”, “Unity”, “United Russia”) calls itself” nationwide”,”socially oriented” (see the last speech of the GDP at the congress of the EP). It is neither one nor the other. There is no single people, a civil nation of people who live on a monthly pension of 10 thousand rubles and barely survive and live on 10 thousand euros and do not know what country to spend time in and how long they are on a yacht! By definition, it can't be social-oriented in a country where both the owner of a huge holding company and the cleaning lady pay income tax at the same level! There is no national “unity” in the country under the leadership of a party that continues to advocate for a multinational, multi-level and multi-legal structure of the Federation! This path leads us along the path of disintegration along international borders.
In short, today we have two” left ” socially oriented parties – the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the SR. And two” right-wing ” parties, the LDPR and the EP, representing the interests of capitalists. Read the programs of political parties and find out what they vote for and how they vote in the State Duma. Everything else is just chatter and self-promotion.
so, in order:
A liberal is anyone who considers human life to be the highest value. If we talk about more or less large political parties, then Yabloko is a classic liberalism.
Republicans, in general, are not considered liberals in the United States. In a broad sense, liberals are considered democrats; in a narrow sense, progressive socialists. Libertarians, for example, are considered liberals in the social sphere and conservatives in the economic one. The fact is that philosophical liberal thought in the United States and Europe has been developing towards socialism since the middle of the twentieth century.
In the post-Soviet tradition, communists were considered to be left – wing, liberals were considered to be right-wing. This division is still sometimes used, but gradually, as in the Western tradition, nationalists began to be called right-wing. If we talk about the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, they have been playing the nationalist and conservative card since the nineties, communism is not really there, rather Stalinism – they are really more right-wing than left-wing. Although, right and left, this is absolutely a conditional designation, from this and confusion.
An interesting question that has too many uncertainties to wait for a definite answer. There are many variations of ideas about liberalism, but there are even more opinions about the essence of what Russia has been like since the beginning of the 20th or even 19th century.
If the essence of the political and economic state of present-day Russia and some of its allies is expressed in the wording: NEP – 2, then there are no “real” bourgeois liberals in it yet, except for some tourists, since only some representatives of the third generation, born under real capitalism, who have absorbed respect for the LAW with their mother's milk, become real liberals.
Maybe the Nolan diagram will help you: wikipedia.org
There are two key parameters: economic freedoms and personal freedoms. For liberals, in theory, both are important, although the term itself is interpreted differently, somewhere it is called the right, somewhere on the contrary the left. If both parameters are set to the maximum, libertarianism is obtained. The right has a maximum of economic freedoms, a minimum of personal freedoms, while the left has the opposite, if all freedoms are at a minimum, then totalitarianism results.
If we take some specific examples in Russia, then Maxim Katz can be considered a liberal in both parameters-he is for expanding personal and political freedoms, and against totalitarianism, and at the same time for market mechanisms everywhere – his love for paid parking, for example, respect for Chubais and Gaidar. Well, in general, big businessmen in this system of values-well done.
Navalny and his associates will clearly be to the left, closer to the center. On the one hand, they are pro-capitalism, but they pay a lot of attention to inequality. Here already Chubais with his privatization and Rusnano turns out not so good, not to mention all sorts of rich Putin's friends.
Yabloko will be even more to the left of Navalny. Well, they themselves say that they have a left-liberal ideology. They raise the issue of social injustice even more, and accordingly personal freedoms are more important than economic ones, the latter require more restrictions.
We have some strange Communists in general. They are clearly in favor of limiting economic freedoms, progressive taxes, everything cheap or free, high pensions (which are not very clear where to get). This is certainly more populism, and speculation on the Soviet theme. At the same time, they certainly do not fight for any personal freedoms, and therefore it is difficult to call them leftists. You can ask them what they think about gay people, for example:)
“Systemic liberals” who are in and around the government, such as Gref, Nabiullina, Kudrin, Ulyukayev, are clearly in favor of economic freedoms. Livanov is also referred to there, he is in favor of ensuring that everything in education is regulated by the invisible hand of the market. At the same time, as for political freedoms – all these dudes are silent. Because if they said anything about it, they'd be kicked out of the government for nothing.
In general, our regime turns out to be such a right-wing totalitarian one, and with a lot of ideological manipulations. Therefore, liberals are called all those who say something about political and personal freedoms, and those who can be made scapegoats in the government.
Well, Republicans in America are just Right-wing. For big business, private property and against all sorts of hippies and Muslims.
There are a lot of answers, and there will be more. I'll try to participate. and alas, short as I like, will not work.
The fact is that the classical concept of liberals dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, when they opposed the ideology of royalist conservatism. There are two forces-the big bourgeoisie on one side, and the representatives of the old aristocracy on the other. In today's world, liberalism is no longer an independent ideology, but in general a part of basic human rights, which are inalienable for most countries, at least on paper.
In Russia, the concept of “liberal “is closely related to the concept of” democrat”, and most people perceive it as synonymous, and this is by no means the case. So, the majority of the Russian so-called “non-system opposition” is democrats, not liberals. I will try to explain the difference using the example of the Great French Revolution. After the events of 1789, two main political groups were formed in the struggle for power – the Girondins and the Montagnards. The Girondins were bourgeois of various stripes, and their program was that we would give the people more freedom, but we would not give them power. The Montagnards were more radical, they demanded the people first of all power, and of course the radical faction of the Montagnards-the Jacobins, showed in practice what this is. Here is the key difference – a liberal for freedom for all, and a democrat for power for all, and these things can be combined or not.
After the evolutionary victory of the Liberals in 19 advanced European countries, a different problem emerged. Liberalism in its pure form is not a strong enough support for maintaining social balance. The liberals, having won and broken the foundations of class society, defended first of all themselves, that is, the bourgeoisie. They gave freedom to everyone, but not everyone could put it into practice. The masses of the people were subjected to severe exploitation, and this provoked the birth of a new political trend – the socialists.
Naturally, nothing is clear yet, so I will try to decompose the spectrum of political trends characteristic of the first half of the 20th century. Liberals-for complete freedom, the strongest must win, if you want something in life, get it for yourself, no one owes you anything, the state is the army, the police and the court. Democrats – the state is obliged to regulate class relations, the state is obliged to provide a decent standard of living for all residents of the country, so that everyone has the opportunity to realize themselves, the state is the people who delegate their representatives to it through elections. Socialists-the state ensures full equality of classes, is the supreme dictate of social justice, which takes over the entire management of society as a whole, in all spheres of life. Anarchists – the state is the main form of exploitation, even if it eliminates the exploitation of man by man, he still remains not free, so society must consist of fragmented communes that solve all the problems of their existence within themselves by direct democratic methods. Very primitive, but generally true.
In their purest form, these ideologies did not exist. Liberalism was different, democrats and socialists too. In each country, based on its current characteristics, these ideas were mixed and transformed. Therefore, a liberal American, a liberal French and a liberal English are slightly different things. Ideologues also formed their own schools. There were liberals, for whom the ideal is almost Darwinian conditions of competition, other liberals argued that the state should still be the arbiter, still others argued that the state should largely control the economy and social life, support antitrust laws, maintain healthy competition in society, and protect it from social explosions, revolutions and crises.
Parties were formed at the intersection of ideologies. The averaged spectrum looked like this. The liberal parties of large industrial and financial capital are the liberals. Parties of medium and small businesses, intellectuals-democrats. Parties of the working masses – Socialists.
Separately, I will say about conservatism. Conservatives began to be considered supporters of evolutionary development, without forced and radical reforms. For example, a liberal in the United States in the mid-20th century, in relation to a socialist, was a conservative. A socialist in the Russian Federation in the early 90's, was a conservative relative to the liberal. Here I hope it became clearer?)
All three branches have pros and cons. Liberalism is the ideal of a person who works for himself, and who depends on himself, it is the position of a strong personality. And here a billionaire tycoon and the driver of his own tractor, who turns the steering wheel himself, can find a common language. They seem to be different layers, but often the programs of liberals, with low tax burdens, are equally close to both of them, and here they are allies. At the same time, the state restricts medical support for the population, educational and scientific programs, and here the teacher and the low-skilled worker can become allies, giving the vote to the Democrats. The socialists in most countries have merged with the democrats, abandoning their radical goals, and each country has its own social Democrats who advocate the development of public institutions and the maintenance of broad social programs, naturally at the expense of taxes. Separately, no party can be effective, some give an economic breakthrough, but the standard of living of the masses falls, while others, on the contrary, pull the standard of living up, due to a decrease in economic indicators. A system of checks and balances is being formed, which is the basis of the political systems of all advanced countries. In other words, no party or ideology can monopolize power in the country and dictate living conditions. Again, I do not give examples, this is a scheme.
Now I will move on from the scheme to the specifics. Republicans in the United States are a party that relies on liberal values. There was no conflict between liberals and conservatives of the 19th century in the United States, they were founded by liberals. Therefore, when the Social Democrats became stronger, the liberals looked like conservatives in relation to them. I hope you're not confused. The new breath of liberalism came during the structural crisis of the 70s. In the post-war world, in the second half of the 20th century, social democrats became stronger, and in the advanced countries there was a process of formation of social states. 8-hour working days, old-age and disability pensions, free medical care and education, and unemployment benefits have emerged and become an integral norm. The state went further, and began to support even unprofitable industries ( a classic example is miners in England ) defending the right to work for all citizens, fearing unemployment. The result was a sharp decline in advanced economies, and a serious crisis occurred. Here the ideology of neoliberalism appears, which breathed new strength into the parties of liberals and conservatives that have faded into the background ( which was almost the same for the 70s ). They have set a course for tough and effective reforms. Margaret Thatcher, by a strong-willed decision in the UK, closes unprofitable mines and throws thousands and thousands of workers into the street, but organizes retraining courses. The state now strictly controlled social spending, created conditions for business development, and the breakthrough of new technologies for the market, which led to a sharp modernization of all spheres of life. In the United States, a similar course was pursued by the icon of all Republicans, R. Reagan, whose policy was even called reagonomics.
Now let's finally turn to Russia. In our country, after the fall of the socialist regime, reforms began according to a similar scheme, that is, neoliberal. However, on our soil, the population was completely unprepared for such changes in life, and the name of the program “shock therapy” fully justified itself. The result was not so favorable, but then all the well-known political changes intervened, which used the increase in energy prices to maintain living standards, and almost replaced the real economy, and almost abandoned further liberal reforms in this economy, the result of which we can already feel in our own skin today.
Now let's sort out who is a liberal-a systemic liberal, for example, Kudrin. Outside the system, this is for example Khodorkovsky. Democrats have the hardest time of all, today's non-system Democrat is of course Navalny, well, Yashin. Liberals, as a rule, are more economists, for them politics is a certain background, for Democrats it plays a greater role, because it does not allow large businesses to break away from the problems of the entire population ( they say you feed on our labor, so do not forget about your obligations). Socialists are more comfortable in the internal confrontation with systemic liberals, they defend their ideal of the dominant state, here Putin is a bright representative, despite the fact that we have the historical experience of the socialist empire, which makes socialists imperial at the same time ( which is a complete game for Europeans ), which is why they have an ideologically somewhat right-wing shade. It is easiest to call Udaltsov an out-of-system socialist, but here we need to make corrections for history, we have other shades, and socialists are most often called communists, which is not entirely correct.
Despite the fact that there is a shortage of liberalism and democracy in Russia, the liberals cannot declare their program without significant democratic changes, and the Democrats-without significant liberal ones. This causes confusion of concepts, and the difference between such a system and the system in the United States ( that is, Republicans stand for democracy, and Democrats have nothing against liberalism, they just put accents in different places).
That is, the liberal who came to power in the Russian Federation will also bring democratic reforms, without which he will not implement the program, but he will take them as much as he needs, no more, no less. The Democrats will also bring liberal reforms to the democratic programs, or their own social-democratic programs, because they need some kind of economy to milk taxes on these programs. In the United States, democracy and liberalism are indisputable dominants, and the conflict of parties concerns a huge mass of details of the social and economic life of the country, the United States does not require radical reforms, so the change of Democrats and Republicans does not have such a noticeable impact on ordinary life in the United States.
Like everything.
Liberal values: personal freedom, private property, and inalienable rights. The danger of the concept of “private property” is that it focuses the attention and life goals of a person on the material and individual. It kills the spiritual and creative in him. He exalts his own, personal, over the general. A person turns into a kind of rodent, whose main task is to carry and carry more grain to his burrow. Compete with other rodents, defend your supplies. And nothing more is required of a person http://newspolitics.ru/liberaly-eto-kto-v-rossii.html
To understand who the real liberals are in Russia, you need to decide who the real liberals are in general. If we use loyalty to the ideals of classical liberalism under the criterion of “authenticity”, then libertarians will be the closest to them. Among them, I can only recall Andrey Illarionov, a former economic adviser to Putin and the man who helped us get a flat income tax. Kasyanov and his party declare their loyalty to similar values. They are just a little different from the ideological core of the moderate Republican party, which is “fiscally conservative, socially liberal”, that is, for moderate taxation, a small role of the state in the economy and for the freedom of an individual to do anything that does not contradict the freedom of others.
I don't quite understand the correctness of our socialists, but there are very few left-wing socialists in the West, that is, those who support a planned or at least a nationalized economy, and if they do exist, they are perceived as outright populists (see, for example, the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn).