Progressive. Centrist. Socialist. Democrat. Marxist. Liberal. Blue dog. Futurist. Anarchist. Institutionalist.
There are many pros and cons to using a political label when generally describing your political positions. In the aggregate, do you find expressing your positions with a label – be it broad or tight – more helpful or hurtful when communicating to someone how you view and approach politics?
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Progressive. Centrist. Socialist. Democrat. Marxist. Liberal. Blue dog. Futurist. Anarchist. Institutionalist.
There are many pros and cons to using a political label when generally describing your political positions. In the aggregate, do you find expressing your positions with a label – be it broad or tight – more helpful or hurtful when communicating to someone how you view and approach politics?
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I like labels (when chosen for oneself). When accurate, they can get across ideas that can otherwise be difficult to convey. They can also help communities develop and support each other.
I dislike labels. I don’t believe that I fit neatly into anyone’s box. My entire political philosophy is based on the principle of reciprocity, or tit-for-tat.
I treat people how they treat me, regardless of who they are:
And I get along with almost everyone.
They can be useful when they’re narrowly defined and generally understood. Labels like leftist don’t really work except in the vaguest sense, because if you have 10 leftists in a room you’ll have 100 definitions of leftism
What’s more helpful is labeling underlying ideas. Not individual policy stances – there’s a not insubstantial overlap of people who think their non-zero desire for abortion restrictions makes them pro-life and people who think them being looser with the law makes them pro-choice. But the underlying philosophies and metaphysics have useful labels
Hurtful. Normal people just say what they mean to say. You can let the words speak for themselves.
Harmful. At least on this sub, “socialist” comes with so much baggage that people assume things of me that I do not believe. I would very much prefer “leftist”- meaning generally left of liberals.
I mean it’s just part of how humans and language work. “Just don’t use labels” isn’t a realistic idea.
Neither, it’s just inevitable. It’s the nature of language to make words for things.
I think, kind of like with sexuality, labels have gone too far in politics. I’m fine with Democrat and Republican or left and right, and even if you want to say you’re centrist. I can also accept clarifying the extreme, like far-left or far-right. But after that, I think it starts getting hurtful in that the majority of people don’t know what you mean, and on place like Reddit there seems to be assumptions that people do know. As someone who is not big on different labels beyond maybe 5-6, I find all of the different labels in this sub to be annoying and don’t fully know what they mean, and I’m the kind of person who spends at least 50% of my time sitting around consuming politics and/or putting political opinion on Reddit. You don’t turn to MSNBC or read NYT and see people distinguishing between liberals and leftists.
It so many I just don’t care at some point. Also I don’t think everyone agrees.
Irrelevant. It’s like trying to label a band as a certain “genre.” I don’t even know what these genres encompass. Rock, Punk, Post-Punk, Post-Hardcore, Ambient, Big Beat, Emo, Screamo, Soft Rock, Yacht Rock etc. I could go on for ages.
Trying to lock someone down to a label doesn’t seem helpful for me.
I think in general they are helpful, and most people who feel otherwise are either actively being ignorant or pretending that other people are stupid. Those kinds of people are going to misunderstand things or attribute misunderstanding to others regardless of what you do so might as well be considered a null data point.
They’re helpful when they map onto real concepts and less helpful when most people don’t know what they mean. But in the latter case, I try to teach people what they mean rather than abandon labels.
For example, if a person says “I’m a communist” and actually knows what that word means, it’s a good way to say a lot in few words. It immediately tells me that they want a society with few people, simple lifestyles, where people are very community-minded and no person is above another on the social hierarchy.
However, when a person says “I’m a communist” and then follows it up with China apologia, that’s confusing. China is not stateless, classless, or moneyless, and there are immense levels of hierarchy. So what are they even talking about? Calling themself a communist only served to make their position even more confusing, because they’re expressing support for a country that is the antithesis of communism in every way.
In the latter case, I don’t come away from that thinking “the label ‘communist’ should not exist”; I come away thinking “China is not communist, neither is this person, and I’m going to remind them and everyone else of this fact so that the label is still useful.”
Communist is just one example. I could say the same thing about how leftism is not synonymous with socialism even though many socialists incorrectly believe that it is, but that hasn’t made me abandon calling myself a leftist. It’s just made me correct people about what leftism is, because it’s actually a useful label that describes a unique concept that would be annoying to type out every time.
Helpful
I rather they know the real me than the fake me they were told to dislike.