...should political epithets be completely avoided?
Karl Marx once said, "I don't know what I am. But I am surely no Marxist!"
He probably said this, because he wanted everyone to know his views were far more nuanced than people thought they were, because he wouldn't touch most "Marxists" with a ten-foot pole, and because he probably had more in common with his opponents than such supposed allies as Proudhon.
Much the same way, should we all stop using labels completely? As in - eliminate the following as far as possible in serious discussion online?
Note: it's an actual question, not a suggestion
No.
Communist neoconservative detected.
:P
Seriously, don't you find such words childish? In these words, no argument or any matter of substance is contained.
Are you serious with that accusation or are you just trying to emulate the douches who say things like that to try and help the case that words like that shouldn't be used?
It was a jest. Sorry either way.
Woods already called out such douchery in a way I believe will be hard to top.
But I still don't think something that serves a useful purpose should be "avoided completely" just because some people misuse it. Should we all stop using cars/guns/hammers completely?
The label that people use to describe themselves (and others) gives you a lot of information about how they view the world.
I don't see why "we" should stop using labels. Anyone can call themselves whatever it is they want. I don't think I should let labels take over my mind or life. After all, I have a lot of labels. I'm my parent's son, my sister's brother, I'm a university student etc..
Many like to call themselves libertarians , when in reality they are not(Glenn Beck), many people don't like to label themselves but are incredibly libertarian(Thomas Sowell).
I thought debates were about ideas not labels.
I don't know what you are implying Prateek
The word statist is very usefull. fascist just gets in the way, even when used correctly, I replace it with "corparatist". And we can't get rid of "enviromental watermelon", because it's to much fun.
Or rather very little.
Consider that intra-socialist divide is so great, socialists probably have more disagreement among each other than with others. Hence, you have Mao-supporters saying that Trotsky-supporters are at fault for destroying the entire communist movement. And then even Mao-supporters, such as a Naxalbari rebels in India, never had support of Mao himself, who did not like violent dissent against authority and thus also condemned East Pakistan's rebellion.
In the end, the specifics matter more than generalities.
People like to be unidentified because they are insecure, not because a label does not capture the essence of their beliefs. Being ambiguous insulates from criticism. The argument behind it is ye olde continuum fallacy. There is no such thing as a ____ because there is no point at which it begins/ceases to be. Thus, not only is Marx not Marxist, there is no such thing as a Marxist.
Well Caley, supposing that you tell somebody you are a libertarian (if he or she asks), and then that person throws the book at you with refutations of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, it could be a whole five minutes of his or her monologue, before you quietly tell that person you don't agree with Rand and Friedman at all.
Now, do you want people to end up embarassed like that?
Thus, not only is Marx not Marxist, there is no such thing as a Marxist.
Actually, not only is this true for Marx, it is also true for many other major intellectuals.
There is no such thing as Keynesianism. Why? Keynes changed his mind frequently. He comprises a broad range of views in a lifetime that could allow Keynesianism to mean even contradictory things if we took all of them together. If Keynes still lived beyond the 1950s, he may have embraced a Chartalist view or even have rejected the Cambridge University economists who claimed to be his true heirs. Who knows?
Paul Krugman is called a "New Keynesian" by certain British admirers of Keynes, because he supposedly twists some of his other dissenting views back into Keynes' fold. But Keynes, if alive, could have easily endorsed Krugman and, like Krugman, Keynes himself once held certain slightly pro-market views that bring him a little closer to Krugman.