A very long time ago Andie defined liberalism as elections, 'pluralism', civil rights, neutrality of the state vis a vis private goods?? Basically state should confine itself to protecting individual rights and interests. But then elections are thrown in as if they could not be in contradiction to the state's minimal role. Not sure what Andie is defending. Sorry.
My guess is that Andie is leaning on Stephen Holmes' Anatomy of Anti Liberalism which I have never read but seems to be a critique of non marxist anti liberalism. Holmes admires Madison too.. Don't think Holmes attends to Hegel's critique of liberalism and its importance for Marx. Point is that it seems that Holmes is not defending anything positively but critiquing dominant forms of anti liberalism.
But what to make of Hegel's critique of liberalism in terms of ius necessitas and Norecht, critique of property rights in the name of a right to life? Just a precursor to fascism and the Gulag? In Hegel and The Freedom of the Moderns Dominco Losurdo argues no.
The anti liberal critique of the sacrosanctness of property, things in the name of a right to life strikes me not the same as the anti liberal criminalization of consensual sex.
Yoshie suggests that Marxism and Islamic fundamentalism are both anti liberal. In the most misleading formal sense, perhaps.
But to answer Andie's 'have you stopped beating your wife' question, yes I am opposed to freedom, tolerance and diversity in some ways and at sometimes. The freedom to contract at whatever wage and with child employees, the tolerance of the scab, the right of capital to resist politically uniformity of wage conditions and working hours, formal or legal equality as the highest ideal.
This is so basic I wonder why the Marxist Andie keeps calling himself a liberal without explicit critique of the liberalism on which Marxists have focused. Seems to have the same blinders as Holmes' respectable text.
Now course independent worker organizations have been destroyed in the name of state organicisim too, but they have also been strangled in the name of liberal individualism.
So I am not a liberal as the set of ideas was articulated/developed by Locke, Constant, and Hayek. But now Andie says this is not what he means by liberal. (andby the way thanks to Michael Yates and Eric for their comments on actual class struggle)
Liberalism produces its gulags too as ever since Locke it has been urged that as there is no liberal answer to the social question and that the state must protect property (the most important of private goods) against the rabble, the state must become a police state, incarcerating the unemploymed and yes unemployables (the result of gross the effects of gross inequality on family structure, prenatal and perinatal care, early education and early frusrtation in the labor market). See Ruth Gilmore Golden Gulags on the prison system of California.
And how do political elections in grossly materially unequal society become something other than the fora in which economic elites can manage their internal conflicts ? They may prefer elections to overcome their internal division, settle on a political project, organize hegemonic blocs. What kinds of questions can't be handled democractically as a result of liberalism (ontological and political individualism, sacrosanctness of property)? Questions asked for example by Josh Cohen and Joel Rogerts long ago.
What confidence does Andie give us that election spectacles (the spread of which worldwide is a major rationale for US violation of sovereignty) are not the means by which elite economic control is organized in times of normal economic activity? And let's talk about real liberal democracy--what are the implications of the growth of administrative power as documented for example in Saskia Sassen's Territory-Authority-Rights.
And why get so haughty about elections when the last two elections prove themselves so easy to steal and play increasingly unchecked executive power in the hands of the stealing party. I think a little bit more modesty about our liberal democracy is in order as our leaders claim the right to intervene to install this highest imaginable political form. Cuba?
And if your social democractic party had been elected but now faced a massively internally and externally funded reactionary electoral challenge, should you not call off elections. What sort of unfreedom especially for the plebians could result from these vaunted elections. It was a real question for the Austrian Social Democrats, no? Max Adler made a critique of election fetishism, no? And as much as we deplore his politics, how are we to understand Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism?
Though I am a materialist, I do think it would be a mistake to underestimate the crises of anomie, meaninglessness, social isolation, alienation, and emptiness. They need to be understood and spoken to outside of Andie's friend/foe framework of liberal/anti-liberal.
The friend/foe framework is preventing critical understanding of what is being touted as unsurpassable.
Rakesh