The Two Materialisms: Why I’m a Liberal

A Comprehensive Defense of the Liberal Tradition and a Case for Its Renewal

Photo by Dan Mall on Unsplash

This essay is the culmination of work I’ve been doing in my free time (and now full-time) for years—work that began on my old Medium blog, when I was still in the tech industry. This kind of writing—trying to work out the philosophical foundations for how we think about politics, economics, and what it means to live together—is what I always intended to do when I stepped away from that career.

Notes From The Circus has become a strange mix of real-time political commentary and something more systematic: a philosophical argument for a rejuvenated liberalism capable of addressing the crises we now face. When I started, I thought it would be denser, more purely philosophical. Instead, it has evolved into a form that moves between immediate analysis and deeper theoretical work. This essay is closer to what I originally imagined—the philosophy piece that ties the whole project together.

I know this is a long read. If you want to skip it, I understand. But I needed to write it all down. It took four days—plus a few breaks for shorter, timelier posts—but this one had to be said fully and carefully, for myself and for readers who’ve followed along. It pulls together threads from dozens of essays into a coherent statement about what I think liberalism is, why it’s distinct from both socialism and neoliberalism, and why it’s worth defending.

This is where everything meets: the epistemology, the political theory, the practical policy arguments, and the moral commitments. This is my political ideology. It doesn’t have to be yours. But it’s mine. — Mike.

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The fundamental difference between liberalism and socialism isn’t about economic policy. It’s about whether material conditions or spiritual values are primary.

By “spiritual values” I don’t mean religion—I mean human dignity, democratic participation, meaning-making, solidarity. The things that make life worth living beyond material comfort.

Marxist historical materialism treats the economic base as determining political and cultural superstructure. Change material relations of production, and consciousness follows. Liberation comes through economic transformation.

But there’s another form of materialism most people don’t recognize. This is what happened to liberalism during the Cold War—it became a philosophy that treats economic prosperity as the ultimate good and a political framework as legitimate only insofar as it serves markets.

Classical liberalism—the tradition I’m trying to recover—was never materialist. It insisted spiritual values are primary and economic arrangements are instrumental means serving them. This is what distinguishes me from both socialists and neoliberals.

Let me explain what I mean by that.