Who called it liberalism and not capitalism’s butler? It will give you advice, apparently helpful, and often disregard your commands once in a while because it has earned the right to do so, having served you for years. But the undeniable truth is — it will always have your best interest at heart, it will always rely on your paycheck, and no one has ever denied themselves the feeling of self-adulation and occasional reverie. That’s why a butler should not be your choice of weapon to take down the butler’s master.
Once we have soaked in the metaphor, let us get into the definition of liberalism before we condemn it in the latter half of this opinion. According to Collins, liberalism is a belief in gradual social progress by changing laws, rather than by revolution. Cambridge dictionary defines it as the political belief that there should be free trade, that people should be allowed more personal freedom, and that changes in society should be made gradually.
I will cut a long story short. The chances are that you have been conditioned to become a liberal, and therefore, you are one. And I’d be wrong to blame you. The thing about liberalism is that it is so easy to preach and propagate, so easy to polish and package, that it seems like the right and noble idealogy to practise and live by.
Let’s see — protests should never be violent, eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, trust the government, voting rights, #FreetheNipple, boycott [insert name of a country/coporation], hard work is the key to success, all men are born equal, prisons work, more black superheroes, slow and steady wins the race, banning plastic straws — I have described to you a liberal’s wet dream. Everything mentioned above looks excellent on paper and on television; it can be sold as ideas and products, but it will not change anything on the ground.
No matter how much waste you segregate at home and how much plastic you avoid, you cannot prevent the plastic manufactured by global industries from reaching you. The same plastic, however, is consumed without repercussion by parliaments, the armed forces, office buildings, hotels, and so on, except when you buy a daily-need commodity that comes in a plastic wrapping, you might become the object of scorn or even be fined.
No matter how many turtles you save because you saw a pamphlet that made you feel guilty for not doing enough, you cannot save even a fraction of the percentage of marine life killed due to oil spills by giant corporations. No matter how many women become CEOs and pave the path for other women to climb up the ladder in their workplace, the facts remain that, on average, there are 463,634 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States, and India sees 88 rape cases daily with a conviction rate below 30%. Liberalism does not consider the plight of underprivileged women (it sells it perfectly, though). It does not discuss the dark side of the surrogacy industry or how Pornhub’s site “monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags”. No matter how non-violent your resistance is, your oppressor will always enjoy the freedom of using violence against you and be immune from any backlash. If your resistance is against your government, nothing changes except that the violence unleashed to dismantle your movement is now going to be state-sponsored and paid for by your taxes.
But liberals will not ask the right questions or question the right people. Instead, they will sell you the idea that if you switch off your AC or give a few bucks to the UN, you will save a child’s life in Africa. If you harm state property or call for armed resistance, you are no better than your fascist government. It will tell you to look at the two sides of the coin. Therein lies the problem. The onus of saving the world is put on the citizens while corporations and governments continue to dismember it without remorse or concern. The onus of being obedient and lawful lies with the weak and the helpless. The two sides of the coin are not equal: one owns and controls the capital, the police and mass media in the country; the other is a group of dependent and gullible citizens, affected by religious and political propaganda. Liberalism ignores the power difference between the two sides and paints itself as a neutral fly on the wall. It weakens people’s movements by making them lose the ability to demand their rights. It offers temporary solutions and gives birth to unreliable idols. Liberalism does not study and dissect the problem and its cause; it is too much work for a fast food ideology. If a solution to a problem cannot be prepared and wrapped in 15 minutes, then it may as well be skipped. Liberalism caters only to the upper class of the majority community.
All its policies are made by and for the privileged class. If you don’t belong to it, the most liberalism can do for you is tell your story to the world in the Humans of New York/Bombay format and profit from it. This brings us to performative activism.
Liberalism promotes, knowingly or not, performative or token activism. Performative activism is when you perform an act to support meaningful change, but the performance itself gains traction over the result of the act. Whether or not the change was achieved is thrown out of the window; the performance becomes the highlight of the entire cause/movement. It leads to superficial discourse and meaningless reforms while the actual demands are swept under the rug; the ground activists are displaced, the media is thrown a new bone, and the status quo is maintained.
Liberals are happy that they contributed; they write books and get on magazine covers, host podcasts, publish photo essays on Instagram about how they ended capitalism, and sell their signed biographies on Amazon, available at a 15% discount on applying the promotional code, ‘MYSTRUGGLE’. Capitalists are happy because they sold rainbow t-shirts, black action figures, fairness creams that are all about healthy skin, and coloured dolls where the girl is on top. Normalcy is restored.
If you open your eyes to things that liberalism does not address (because it cannot), you will understand that no one is free until access to housing, food, healthcare, and education is guaranteed. You will realise who profits from wars; how poverty is constructed by capitalism to legitimise the idea that you should be happy with the bare minimum; and how capitalism justifies the suffering of millions who do not have the money to afford life-saving resources. The point is that liberalism is not a terrible idealogy; it is just not good enough to bring about meaningful change. Moreover, because it is powerless but convincing and easily understood, it becomes a puppet in capitalism’s hands. Capitalism uses it to do its dirty job — it makes liberalism seem essential and a threat to capitalism when the reality is that it is just a regular rat living among the oppressed and serving the oppressor. So, what do you do if you are a liberal? Well, you start by asking questions. You read more about liberalism and why it works in some countries and for some people. How liberalism wins its battles but also loses the war for someone else, and how, under public-spirited governments, it may be used to create conditions that eventually lead to tangible changes (one can hope). Being a liberal is not the worst thing in the world, but it is not the best. An ignorant liberal might as well become a school shooter. However, a well-informed, opinionated, intersectional liberal might make the right waves and stir the right pot, and therefore might no longer remain a liberal. The only ask is that you don't hope to become a token role model, but you strive to be an uncompromising ally.