Determinism vs Political Theory
Liberal capitalist society’s fundamental reinforcing philosophy is a dualist idealism, aka “free will”. Wealth inequality is a matter of merit. Crimes, legal or otherwise, are a matter of moral agency, and must be dealt with punitively. Poverty is personal, rather than systemic, failure. Basically, liberalism insists that historic societal change is fundamentally driven at the superstructural level (the realm of “ideas”) rather than at the structural economic level, and that liberal subjects are individual moral agents of free will.
Socialist theory is built off of a philosophy of monist materialism. While not all socialist philosophers outright embrace determinism, it is entirely compatible with the fundamentals of socialist theory (dialectical and historical materialism) in a way that liberalism fundamentally is not. Socialism accepts that human wills exist, but that they are ultimately a part of the dialectical material chain of causality just like everything else.
Please ask any questions or let me know your thoughts!I’ve tried to write this in as thoughtful of a manner as possible. I am not endorsing determinism, free will, liberalism, capitalism, or socialism in this post. I’m just trying to make a case for how compatible determinism is with the two most prominent political ideologies currently governing the human race.