>>> owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com 06/20/02 11:46PM >>>
At the moment this debate about liberalism is being based on the premises of liberalism itself. I hope that some commies on the list will eventually present a critique of liberalism - I don't have time for that right now - but I find it hard to conceive that liberalism can have any meaning outside of capitalism and its particular history. Of course there is an etymological link between words such as 'liberalism' and others such as 'liberty', libertarianism, etc., but surely we do not take political terms at such a shallow level of meaning. If it were so, we would all regard 'liberal' as meaning something hardly different from 'good', but unfortunately, IMO, it means something much more specific than that. More later, perhaps.... Tahir