IMO, liberals don't like being identified as such because the right has made the word a synonym for 'weak', just as they have more or less successfully managed the image of conservative as 'strong'--think big bad Rick Perry or Sarah Palin, Moose hunter from the wild. 'Weak' translates into being a pushover for the currently designated bad guys in the world, them and the welfare cheats waiting under the soft, feathery wings of liberalism to get on the dole and destroy 'the economy' from within.
Liberals are really just people who want a kinder and gentler form of wage-slavery. Liberals are for social reforms like unemployment benefits, Medicare and Social Security. Liberals cannot see how an alternative to the rule of Capital (social relation) could ever come about. In essence, liberals want a free market with State intervention (for humanity's sake) via taxation.
Conservatives, want all the surplus value possible to be under the control of the employing class. This is called, 'being realistic'. If a conservative has to bow before a clutch of Tea Party fanatics to get the purist definition of 'conservative', so be it. Real conservatives believe that any interference by the political State with the interests of the capitalists and landlords to make as much money as possible is an encroachment on the free market which in turn is identified as being the base upon which all freedom is grounded.
Liberals want Marxists to love them because, in addition to believing in the equality of classes under the rule of law and freedom of religion, they are for protecting the civil liberties of all, including Marxists (unless they become a threat to the rule of Capital's hire-arky). Liberals say, "See...we are liberal; but if you were in power, you'd tell us to shut up or face jail."
On the other hand, people who read and agree with Marx's class analysis of political-economy, don't hate liberals or conservatives, even though conservatives and liberals hate each other and Marxists too. Marxian communists concentrate their critical reason and organisational power toward abolishing the wage system, the root which all alienation (including the alienation from political power), war and poverty grow. Marxian socialists realise that there are only two sources of wealth in capitalist society and they aren't the capitalist and landlord classes-- they are wage-labour and natural resources. Far from TINA or the equality of classes, marxian socialists strive for a society of equal political power between all men and women.
Well, that's how I see it, anyway.
Hi-ho, Mike B)
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