Are Leftists against Capitalism?

My answer on  Quora

In my opinion questions about the Left and Right are not easy to answer unless you are clear about how you are defining these terms. 

Liberalism is a political and economic movement that has its origins in the Age of Reason and draws heavily on Individual sovereignty (John Locke), Necessary Skepticism (David Hume) and an emphasis on empiricism, as opposed to superficial rationalizations, in making sense of the world.

It advocates for the notion of Freedom - as in Freedom of Thought, Worship, action and speech. It was this framework that greatly influenced the framers of the US Constitution.

The philosophy draws as well from the Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith and his understanding of the action of the Market.

At its core though Liberalism sees the state serving the people (as opposed to the reverse). It favours the individual not the collective.

This was the philosophy of the Left and indeed it influenced both the American and French Revolutions (through the Baron de Montesquieu, Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte Mirabeau). It essentially ran in opposition against the authoritarian monarchical order.

In the contemporary US, this is now seen as a Philosophy of the Right.

How then did this change?

Well the French Revolution also ushered in a dangerous pathology that drew heavily from the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and its stress on the People’s Will. This inverted the primacy of the individual and replaced it by a collectivist dynamic that espoused a rationalized utopia. In the French Revolution such thinking manifested itself in the words and actions of the Jacobin and Cordeliers Political Clubs that dominated France in the later parts of the Revolution and was largely responsible for the infamous Reign of Terror. Robespierre, Marat, Hebert and Danton were all to different extents involved in this turmoil.

In forcing through their Utopia these radicals outflanked the liberals on the anti-monarchical left, paradoxically re-instituting their own form of Authoritarianism that was very much illiberal. In doing so they would consume themselves eventually giving rise to a new authoritarian regime centered on the Bonaparte Empire. However the framework of thinking would not die out.

In fact in one form or another through the writings of Henri de Saint-Simeon, Louis Blanc, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (the Father of Far Left Anarchism - who declared in a complete rebuke to Liberal ideas that ‘Property is Theft’) - it survived and indeed influenced other writers such as Georges Sorel and Karl Marx.

A strong anti-capitalist anti-Free Enterprise bias was very much evident here. In all cases the ethos of the People’s Will was paramount. The Extreme Left emerges from this. It is at at its core collectivist.

Which brings up the question…how did this influence the so-called American Left?

In the late 19th century the German Statesman Otto van Bismarck drew heavily from the Social Democrat’s Gotha Program (that in a sense stole the show from Karl Marx) in order to undercut the socialists, provide a uniform platform for administering the nascent German State and weaken the resolve of Germany’s Liberal establishment. His model would serve to inspire Fabianists in the UK and Progressives in the US. It would impact both major American political parties.

There is no doubt that Progressivism often stood in opposition to Laissez-Faire Capitalism however its mainstream was not entirely opposed to Free Enterprise (at least within a strong anti-trust regulatory framework).

Nevertheless like any broad scale movement it had its extreme fringe who bought into a Hegelian view of Linear Progress, that saw capitalism, in all all of its forms, being eclipsed by a so-called March of History (a talking point often bought up by those on the Left who often remark about being on the correct side of history).

Its this version expanded on by Cultural Marxists that continues to survive and indeed thrive in what today is known as the Extreme Left.

One can see their actions in groups such as the Occupy Movement and other fellow traveler platforms that have become common place in academia, parts of the Entertainment Industry and Identitarian culture.

Indeed, How this all impacts the Democratic Party in the established two party arena may be one of the bigger questions to be answered in the foreseeable future.