Liberalism is a political philosophy which generally embraces republicanism, constitutionalism, rule of law, political equality, free markets, private property, among other things. Setting aside the outright Fascists, the majority of American Conservatives are in-fact Liberals, though they have exceedingly terrible opinions about social equality. The spectrum of acceptable political discourse in the US is simply so narrow that it runs from Liberal to Liberal but enthusiastically bigoted.

From the Marxist perspective, culture, politics, and ideology are all outgrowths of the underlying material conditions. In the grand durée of history, the emergence of Liberalism coincides with the wave of Bourgeois revolutions which marked the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism as the prevailing mode of production (which didn’t happen everywhere all at the same time). To this day it is the prevailing ideological framework under the conditions of Capitalism (except under conditions of overwhelming crisis where all pretenses of republicanism and rule of law are dropped to defend private property against the threat of social unrest).

The Marxist critique of Liberalism comes from a few angles. Naturally, we take issue with the inviolable right to private property. We believe in the collectivization of the means of production. Likewise, we take issue with the sort of free market absolutism which puts a price tag on everything under the Sun and turns everything into a commodity. We think the rule of law, republicanism, and constitutionalism are all for the birds insofar as these institutions stand as a bulwark against the realization social justice (which they invariably do under a Capitalist oligarchy).

But more fundamentally, we are Materialists. This gets really abstract, but basically there are two overarching schools of philosophical thought: Idealism and Materialism. Idealists believe that ideas are the driving force in nature, which the world is shaped by, while Materialists believe that our ideas are simply a reflection of the material world we find ourselves in. Liberalism is an idealist philosophy. It essentially proposes “This is the way things ought to be. If enough of us share this belief, it shall be so.” Marxism is a materialist philosophy. It begins with an empirical study of the material conditions throughout history, attempts to identify the processes which are unfolding, the forces which transform society, and uses that as a basis for identifying the most fertile points of social struggle.

Thanks to two red scares and a cold war, the meaning of liberalism was lost to Americans, and the word became a floating signifier that anyone could define however they liked for whatever purpose. But socialists have stayed true to its original meaning. A Marxist definition of liberalism makes even clearer the close relationship between liberalism and capitalism.

Bernie Sanders is correct when he says he’s a liberal, but he’s incorrect when he says he’s a socialist, because he has never and will never call for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production.

Looking it up, the definition of liberalism specifies a belief in maximum personal freedom, especially as guaranteed by a government

“Maximizing personal freedom” is just a roundabout way of saying “property rights”. Property is the primary freedom that is defined and enshrined in US law – all other freedoms stem from that. In this country, you are free to do what you like… provided it’s on your own private land. Renting? Need the landlord’s permission. Out and about? You need to follow city or county laws. Homeless? If you don’t have a permanent address, you’re not a real person as far as most of our institutions - both public and private - are concerned.

Our government was founded on liberal principals – if those principals were merely about preserving people’s agency, why were the freedoms of native peoples so completely crushed? A semi-nomadic life, with a concept of stewardship - rather than ownership - of the land, is just a different shape agency can take. And yet our liberal government could not tolerate such a state of existing. The people of this land were corralled, were marched, were slaughtered by thousands and millions. Because it was never about agency. The slogan of the country, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, was originally written to be Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property.

Liberalism is an ideology that exists to justify the power people were already wielding thru private property. It is how capitalist argued in favor of their own position, couched in language tailored to appeal to more than just other capitalists. It’s similar to how the logic of feudalism came after wealthy and well armed families slaughtered their way to the top, to stabilize their comfortable position within society.

I, for example, consider myself a liberal, but I’m most certainly not a capitalist.

What would you say you are instead?

Do y’all really trust your governments to look after your best interests?

I want my government torn down brick by brick. It needs to be entirely rebuilt.

my rights are guaranteed by our constitution.

What rights? Your right to an abortion? Your right to housing? To be fed and educated? To not be exploited by the rich? The constitution does not cover many rights which I find extremely important. The rights it does cover are often ignored when convenient.

Looking it up, the definition of liberalism specifies a belief in maximum personal freedom, especially as guaranteed by a government.

From a certain perspective, this is true, though I do not consider it the most useful framing. What liberalism is oriented around is freedom of a person to own many different things as property and to have personal sovereignty over that property (to an extent). Everything else, the freedom that can be interpreted as extending beyond that, is functionally for the most part freedom to use property as you like. To communists, the most notorious example is freedom of speech as practiced in liberal states, which is the freedom of the owners of media empires to saturate the public sphere with whatever messaging they like. What a private citizen says doesn’t matter in this context, but by couching it in personal expression rather than the publishing ability of capitalists, you can protect the latter with a legal common cause with the former.

Considering that 90% of governments in the world are endlessly corrupt, capitalist or not,

I’m not invested in telling you what you should conclude here, but speaking broadly of “corruption” without investigating the political-economic systems is worse than useless. You can’t get anywhere opposing something when you don’t know how it works.

It’s even more of a weaselword when you look at how “corruption” as a legal distinction obfuscates the legal methods of controlling the government that are nonetheless completely monstrous, like the notorious state of “lobbying” (legalized bribery) in the US.

I’d much prefer one that guarantees its citizens rights as a matter of course rather than begrudgingly grants them privileges that can be taken away without public oversight.

And here we have already run into a practical consequence of the failure of the “corruption” analysis, because these two are not as-given at all different. In a country like the US, you still just have rights until you don’t, see the Patriot Act, Qualified Immunity, Expedited Removal, etc. See how Austria has recently announced that professing to value Palestinian lives is a terrorist act or look up all the people arrested in the UK for protesting the monarchy. Here you can hear about the Minneapolis police having committed documented hate crimes in a systemic fashion and to this day facing no repercussions.

I can keep listing examples, but the high-order point I mean to convey is that you have built your castle of rights on open air and you are as a sinner in the hands of an angry God, where in this metaphor the Capitalists are God and Fascism is the drop into Hell. They need merely choose it and you will have no recourse but to fall.

Do y’all really trust your governments to look after your best interests?

This is “socialism is when the government does stuff” thinking. No, socialists aren’t interested in merely trusting the government more, they want a system of power in which the state is wielded by the people to suppress the capitalists so that actual democracy can run things.

As a U.S. American, I know I wouldn’t trust my government or politicians to do anything but enrich themselves at my expense, but I don’t have to; my rights are guaranteed by our constitution.

As I said, they are guaranteed until they aren’t. I don’t understand how someone can look at the last quarter-century of comically flagrant constitutional violations with no recourse for the people to take and say “It’s not a matter of trust, my rights are guaranteed”. It’s not even a matter of trust, it’s a matter of denial.