A little PSA about the term "Neoliberalism". [View all]

[Odin2005]

This term can cause some confusion here in the US because here the term "liberal" has a different meaning in the US than it does in the rest of the world because of historical reasons, in the rest of the world "liberalism" means what we would call Libertarianism here in the US.

This is the result of different political histories in the US and Europe. Today American Liberalism and European Social Democracy are roughly equivalent, but they have very different ideological origins. European Social Democracy has its origins in "moderate" Marxist tendencies that moved to the center over time and eventually disconnected from it's Marxist roots. American Liberalism has it's origins in various mid-19th century ideological tendencies called "Left-Liberalism" that sought to curb the excesses of Capitalism while retaining an otherwise standard "classical liberal" framework (like support for free trade). The British philosopher John Stuart Mill is probably the most well known early left-liberal thinker.