Well my question was rhetorical. I don’t concede the word “communism” to MLs, just as I don’t concede the word “democracy” to the liberals. Exactly because there are important “ideas that resonate with people” in those conceptual constellations that I am not willing to let go.
Oh, by all means, don’t let go. But also, don’t cling to them so tightly it gets in the way of implementing the ideas. Because it’s the ideas that will rehabilitate the terms once they understand them.
Communism, capitalism, authoritarianism, libertarianism. They are all fancy $50 words the average person doesn’t know or have time for. Tell them that landlords are useless assholes. The only people you’ll likely have push back at that are the landlords. Tell them that they shouldn’t have to be governed/taxed by hierarchy insulated, unanswerable elites who’ve never lived here. In the US Midwest you will absolutely ironically get pedophilic fascist enabling magats cheering at that. The ideas are popular, even if the terms aren’t.
When did MLs get a monopoly on the word communism?
Generally? Roughly 100 years ago in many places. The perversion of libertarian at least here in the west was largely a product of the last 50 years.
In the end though, the ideas are what resonate with people. Not the nouns you collectively refer to them with.
Well my question was rhetorical. I don’t concede the word “communism” to MLs, just as I don’t concede the word “democracy” to the liberals. Exactly because there are important “ideas that resonate with people” in those conceptual constellations that I am not willing to let go.
Oh, by all means, don’t let go. But also, don’t cling to them so tightly it gets in the way of implementing the ideas. Because it’s the ideas that will rehabilitate the terms once they understand them.
Communism, capitalism, authoritarianism, libertarianism. They are all fancy $50 words the average person doesn’t know or have time for. Tell them that landlords are useless assholes. The only people you’ll likely have push back at that are the landlords. Tell them that they shouldn’t have to be governed/taxed by hierarchy insulated, unanswerable elites who’ve never lived here. In the US Midwest you will absolutely ironically get pedophilic fascist enabling magats cheering at that. The ideas are popular, even if the terms aren’t.