🎯 Main Idea

Liberalism is not neutral, democratic, or universally beneficial.

It is the ideological and political framework that arose to protect the interests of the emerging capitalist class — the bourgeoisie — as they displaced the feudal aristocracy.

🧱 Marxist Lens: Class First

• Ideas do matter — but all ideas arise from material conditions.
• Marxism analyzes systems through class conflict and economic development, not isolated ideals.
• Example: Marx couldn’t have written Capital in ancient Rome — the material conditions weren’t there.

🧠 How Liberalism Developed

1. Origin in Western Europe, post-feudal society.
2. Emerged from urban centers with growing merchant/craftsmen (burger) classes.
3. These burgers clashed with feudal lords over:
   • Rent
   • Land rights
   • Economic control
4. Eventually, these burgers gained economic, then social, then political power.
5. They supported monarchs or states when convenient, ultimately becoming the bourgeoisie.
6. Their victory over feudal aristocracy produced bourgeois revolutions (e.g., French Revolution), and their ideology: liberalism.

📜 The Core Tenets of Liberalism (Critically Analyzed)

1. Individual Liberty

• Sounds noble, but is contradictory and hollow in practice.
• “Freedom” is allowed only until it threatens capital.