Imagine a World Where People Actually Knew What Political Terms Meant

[Green Arrow]

The Xl, in response to your post in another thread:


The core belief of the democrats and republicans economic ideology is redistribution, which puts them at odds with capitalism. They call what they're doing capitalism, but it really isn't.

"Redistribution" is yet another word that has had its definition revised to make it sound like something bad to suit the arguments of malcontents. All "redistribution" means when applied to wealth is, and I quote Wikipedia's sterling definition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistribution_of_income_and_wealth), "the transfer of income and of wealth (including physical property) from some individuals to others by means of a social mechanism such as taxation, charity, welfare, land reform, monetary policies, confiscation, divorce or tort law." Before anyone questions the source, Wikipedia gets that from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/redistribution/).

None of those things are inconsistent with capitalism, particularly charity. In fact, none of them can be inconsistent with capitalism because capitalism is an economic ideology and all of the methods of redistribution mentioned are part of civil ideologies. These are two different things that sometimes intersect. Capitalism is, simply, an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods and services for profit. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#cite_note-1). That is a summary of pretty much every major thinker in capitalist thought and what they basically defined capitalism as, in a nutshell. Now, we can quibble over what types of capitalism are better than others, but that's beside the point. Probably 90% of the people in this country, in politics, business, and just average Americans, are capitalists. Probably even higher than 90%. Where people differ is in what type of capitalism they support, but as long as their ideas follow the basic definition above, they are capitalists.

[The Xl]

Fair enough, perhaps government redistribution or forcible redistribution would have been a better way to word it.

[Green Arrow]

Fair enough, perhaps government redistribution or forcible redistribution would have been a better way to word it.

Even then, to a point, it's not necessarily inconsistent with capitalism because, again, that's primarily civil policy rather than economic. What you describe would likely end up with state capitalism, which is still capitalism.

The point I'm trying to make here is that these things are much more complicated than we often allow and too often we take the position that our preferred ideological form is the only one that can exist. That is nothing more than intellectual authoritarianism.

[The Xl]

Who's overseeing the execution of the economic policy though? It's the state. If the state decided to take more, would it still be capitalism? How about take nearly everything? Where does that line begin and end?

[Green Arrow]

Who's overseeing the execution of the economic policy though? It's the state. If the state decided to take more, would it still be capitalism? How about take nearly everything? Where does that line begin and end?

As long as the economic system as a whole is one in which there is private ownership of the means of production and goods and services are still produced for a profit, then yes, it's still capitalism. It would be state capitalism, but that is still capitalism.

[midcan5]

It's naive to think if people knew definitions they'd be enlightened. Words mean whatever the person decides they mean. Consider 'freedom' today, a rather meaningless word in America, it may mean something in another country but even there it would be complex. I think this was debated in another thread. Stuff below.

"I say it to you now, knowing full well that you will agree with me (that is, understand) only if you already agree with me." Stanley Fish

How the Right Hijacked the Magic Words, *fish http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/hijacked.htm

Definitions: http://www.amazon.com/Political-Keywords-Students-Activists-Everyone/dp/1405150653/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8

"Capitalism is the ownership and use of the concrete but dynamic elements in a society - what is commonly known as the means of production. A capitalist is someone who produces more capital through the production of the means he owns. This necessitates the periodic reinvestment of part of the capital earned into the repair, modernization and expansion of the means. Capitalism is therefore the ownership of an abstraction called capital, rendered concrete by its ownership of the means of production, which through actual production creates new capital.... However, capitalism as conceived today tends to revolve around something called the profit motive, even though profit is neither a cause of capitalism nor at the heart of the capitalist action. Profit is a useful result of the process, nothing more. As for the ownership of the means of production, this has been superseded by their management. And yet, to manage is to administer, which is a bureaucratic function. Alternately, there is a growing reliance upon the use of capital itself to produce new capital. But that is speculation, not production. Much of the development of the means of production is now rejected as unprofitable and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the modern manager, who would rather leave such labour and factory-intensive "dirty" work to Third World societies. Finally , the contemporary idea of capitalism grandly presents "service" as its new sophisticated manifestation. But the selling of one's own skills is not a capitalist art. And most of the jobs being created by the service industries are with the exception of the high-technology sector descendants of the pre-eighteenth-century commerce in trade and services." p360 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul


'24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep by Jonathan Crary – review
A timely and important polemic that demonstrates how capitalism makes us willing connivers in our own sleeplessness'
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/22/24-7-late-capitalism-ends-sleep-jonathan-crary-review

[Chris]

It's naive to think if people knew definitions they be enlightened. Words mean whatever the person decides they mean. Consider 'freedom' today, a rather meaningless word in America, it may mean something in another country but even there it would be complex. I think this was debated in another thread. Stuff below.

"I say it to you now, knowing full well that you will agree with me (that is, understand) only if you already agree with me." Stanley Fish
How the Right Hijacked the Magic Words, *fish http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/hijacked.htm

Definitions: http://www.amazon.com/Political-Keywords-Students-Activists-Everyone/dp/1405150653/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8

"Capitalism is the ownership and use of the concrete but dynamic elements in a society - what is commonly known as the means of production. A capitalist is someone who produces more capital through the production of the means he owns. This necessitates the periodic reinvestment of part of the capital earned into the repair, modernization and expansion of the means. Capitalism is therefore the ownership of an abstraction called capital, rendered concrete by its ownership of the means of production, which through actual production creates new capital.... However, capitalism as conceived today tends to revolve around something called the profit motive, even though profit is neither a cause of capitalism nor at the heart of the capitalist action. Profit is a useful result of the process, nothing more. As for the ownership of the means of production, this has been superseded by their management. And yet, to manage is to administer, which is a bureaucratic function. Alternately, there is a growing reliance upon the use of capital itself to produce new capital. But that is speculation, not production. Much of the development of the means of production is now rejected as unprofitable and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the modern manager, who would rather leave such labour and factory-intensive "dirty" work to Third World societies. Finally , the contemporary idea of capitalism grandly presents "service" as its new sophisticated manifestation. But the selling of one's own skills is not a capitalist art. And most of the jobs being created by the service industries are with the exception of the high-technology sector descendants of the pre-eighteenth-century commerce in trade and services." p360 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul


'24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep by Jonathan Crary – review
A timely and important polemic that demonstrates how capitalism makes us willing connivers in our own sleeplessness'
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/22/24-7-late-capitalism-ends-sleep-jonathan-crary-review



Agree, you cannot force meaning, then you proceed to give a Marxist definition.

[Green Arrow]

If you're going to post in my threads, midcan5, you might want to not waste your time posting blocks of text from someone else. I'm not interested in what someone else thinks, I'm interested in what YOU think, so anything you post from someone else I will ignore unless you back it up with your own interpretation of another's material.

With that out of the way:


It's naive to think if people knew definitions they'd be enlightened. Words mean whatever the person decides they mean. Consider 'freedom' today, a rather meaningless word in America, it may mean something in another country but even there it would be complex. I think this was debated in another thread.

The problem you bring up is caused by "words mean[ing] whatever the person decides they mean." Language exists for a reason, counter to what you claim it means. We have words with set definitions so we know what everyone is talking about. If you, me, and Chris have three different meanings of every word, we'll never be able to communicate because we'll never be talking in a way that we can all understand.

That's why I constantly fight the reckless revision of language, because it dumbs us down as a society and damages our understanding.

[Chris]

Ah, but if we define our words then we can communicate to anyone but those who insist their meaning is the only correct one.

Take the term 'rent seeking.' When I first encountered that I couldn't understand what the economist mean, people who need apartments seek rents, huh? But when the word was defined, this is what I mean by rent seeking, what the economist was saying made sense.

When I read Hayek and he uses the term 'socialism' it makes sense because he takes the time to define what he means, so I'm not confused knowing its original meaning was something else.

[Green Arrow]

Ah, but if we define our words then we can communicate to anyone but those who insist their meaning is the only correct one.

So, what, we start every discussion with a list of terms and their definitions? That's the whole point of language, so we DON'T have to go through all that nonsense just to communicate.


When I read Hayek and he uses the term 'socialism' it makes sense because he takes the time to define what he means, so I'm not confused knowing its original meaning was something else.

Yep. Then when someone else uses it by a different meaning, you'll either be confused or get a totally wrong conclusion. That's why, again, we have dictionaries and encyclopedias. That's the point of those books, to make it so we can all say, "Oh, this is what this word means. Awesome."

[Chris]

Won't be confused if speaker says what he means. To then argue a different meaning is simply silly intellectually.

[Mister D]

If you're going to post in my threads, @midcan5 (http://thepoliticalforums.com/member.php?u=765), you might want to not waste your time posting blocks of text from someone else. I'm not interested in what someone else thinks, I'm interested in what YOU think, so anything you post from someone else I will ignore unless you back it up with your own interpretation of another's material.

With that out of the way:



The problem you bring up is caused by "words mean[ing] whatever the person decides they mean." Language exists for a reason, counter to what you claim it means. We have words with set definitions so we know what everyone is talking about. If you, me, and Chris have three different meanings of every word, we'll never be able to communicate because we'll never be talking in a way that we can all understand.

That's why I constantly fight the reckless revision of language, because it dumbs us down as a society and damages our understanding.

As I recall, midcan wanted so desperately for the meaning of "corporatism" to conform to his improper usage. That didn't work out so well especially after his own citation supported my contention.

[Green Arrow]

Won't be confused if speaker says what he means. To then argue a different meaning is simply silly intellectually.

So, again, why should we waste time and keystrokes posting a list of terms and our ridiculous redefinitions of them when we can just use the set definitions that exist to simplify communication?