Dec 15, 2025 07:49 PM
COMMENT: Progressivism has to win back the proles or working class from populism, so forging a bridge with the classic far-left may be necessary. Mamdani is perhaps a presage of that renovation. Ironically, though, Marxism should slot as a populist movement itself, since the bourgeoisie capitalists were the privileged elite that Karl was rousing up antagonism toward.
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Liberalism and socialism: Allies or opponents?
https://blog.apaonline.org/2025/12/02/li...opponents/
EXCERPT: In our recent paper on the relationship of liberalism and socialism, we sought to make progress on these questions by examining the encounter between two canonical representatives of these two traditions: Karl Marx and John Rawls. There is often a strong degree of mutual hostility between the partisans of each thinker.
Marxists often view figures such as Rawls as apologists for the status quo, while many liberals associate Marx with political positions that have too often practiced oppression while preaching emancipation. Nevertheless, the canonical representatives of these two traditions have more in common than commentators generally realize.
Perhaps most significantly, we suggest that Rawls himself, who worked hard to place his own thinking in the history of political philosophy, also misunderstood his relationship to Marx’s views, and came to overestimate the scope of their disagreements... (MORE - details)
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Liberalism and socialism: Allies or opponents?
https://blog.apaonline.org/2025/12/02/li...opponents/
EXCERPT: In our recent paper on the relationship of liberalism and socialism, we sought to make progress on these questions by examining the encounter between two canonical representatives of these two traditions: Karl Marx and John Rawls. There is often a strong degree of mutual hostility between the partisans of each thinker.
Marxists often view figures such as Rawls as apologists for the status quo, while many liberals associate Marx with political positions that have too often practiced oppression while preaching emancipation. Nevertheless, the canonical representatives of these two traditions have more in common than commentators generally realize.
Perhaps most significantly, we suggest that Rawls himself, who worked hard to place his own thinking in the history of political philosophy, also misunderstood his relationship to Marx’s views, and came to overestimate the scope of their disagreements... (MORE - details)