European Liberal Socialism

So I finally got around to translating the "tentative Manifesto" on Liberal Socialism into English and forming a Facebook group to discuss the possibility for such an endavour - or several variants of it - on European level.

Although it is called "the tentative Manifesto" and does draw on much classical political philosophy, the document and its more concrete programmatic documents that I am going to translate faster than the Manifesto (which admittedly isn't saying much!), the manifesto does not pretend to have all the answers or the one and only interpretation of the concept of liberal socialism.

It is safe to say, however, that liberal socialism draws on the classical, real and rebellious liberalism that in the French and American revolutions was against established (noble and royal) power, privileges and pecuniary piles inherited without merit.

This original liberalism held high such principles as personal liberty, the right to the produce of one's own labour (which is a direct quote from "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith who repeated it at least 50 times), the freedom of speech, equality for all before the law, democracy with equally participating citizens, and many other principles that should never taken for granted - just look at the history of the last Century with Nazism, Fascism and Revolutionary Socialism.

Such a left-liberal or social-liberal approach allied itself with utopian socialist workers and had the sympathy of many of the ordinary peasants and serfs that provided cheap food for the city revolutionaries, sometimes with a few country folk joining them, but mostly keeping a sympathetic neutrality.

Unfortunately, 'liberalistics' have given liberal a bad name!

Liberalistic thoughts are mostly what one may call Market Fundamentalism with an almost exclusive emphasis on the Market, even as better as popular decision-making than (liberal) democracy, and other economic constructs allegedly knowing and planning for the long-term, while forgetting e.g. the almost all the political liberalism that was after all the father of liberal democracy and other hugely important steps forward.

Liberal socialism dows not only reinstall social liberalism as a very important legacy, but aims at drawing it and the European societies several solid notches to the left by uniting true rebellious liberalism with democratic socialism and allowing for the more sensible points of conservatism, viz. that the Earth is not owned by any one generation but should be cared for and passed along in preferably a better shape to the next generation as well learning from conservatism that change, including the fundamental change Liberal Socialism entails, should move at a pace so that ordinary people feel safe and included.

You can read much more on the independent website:
www.liberalsocialism.eu/

The Facebook group trying to create a European debate about Liberal Socialism is here:
European Liberal Socialism