General Semantics of Political Speech, Part 2 (1988)

by esr@locke.ccil.org (Eric S. Raymond) 

>From postnews Wed Apr 20 14:01:45 1988
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Here there be Tygers -- the General Semantics of Political Labelling
Date: 20 Apr 88 19:00:04 GMT

In his classic essay _Politics_And_The_English_Language_, George Orwell argued
that the degradation of language and labels can be used to constrain political
discourse. In his novel _1984_, he provided a fictional but compelling example
of the ways in which totalitarians could use the manipulation of language as a
means of political control. And in _Homage_To_Catalonia_ and other works, he
displayed the process in action in the history of the Communist and Socialist
movements.

One of the most prevalent forms of semantic manipulation in politics depends
on the use of reflexive emotional responses to political labels as things-in-
themselves.

Consider the term 'radical', for example. It is not very well-defined -- there
are thousands of different *kinds* of radicals hanging off various parts of
the political continuum -- but most people have a stronger emotional
response to it than to many more specific descriptions, whether positive
or negative.

This makes the label 'radical' powerful magic, and explains why there are
people who describe themselves as 'radicals' without qualification. It is not
a *program* that is being sold with this label but a *feeling* -- the
excitement of change, or (by those who use the term as a pejorative) the fear
of it. As another example, consider the usage of the opposing term 'moderate'.

Political labels can become magically potent because human beings tend to
forget the difference between language and reality, to confuse the map with
the territory. The level of semantic sanity necessary to completely escape
this kind of trap is unfortunately very rare, attained only by a small handful
of semanticians, surrealists, Discordians, analytic philosophers, and Zen
masters.

Because political labels are powerful, they are abused, fought over and
defended like any other source of power. One particular result of this is the
use of 'good' political labels by groups with no claim in reality on them.

Consider as an example the official name of totalitarian East Germany, which
translates as 'Democratic Republic of Germany'. Though East Germany retains
some republican forms and rituals, there is no sense in which it can be or ever
could have been reasonably be described as a democracy; nor was democracy any
part of the intention of its founders. The use of the 'Democratic' label is
therefore not descriptive but manipulative.

Another result is the tendency of political splinter groups to seek legitimacy
and an advantage over competitors by monopolizing favored labels. The battles
for control of such labels are fought with propaganda and won by successful
manipulation of the language.

Consider, as an example, the history of the term 'socialist'. Originally and
most generally it describes political theories advocating government control
and ownership of the means of production, theories descended through various
levels of mutation from those of Marx and Engels. And this is the meaning it
held from the middle of the nineteenth century through the early twentieth.

During this period, 'socialist' became a preferred label for a number of 
political parties in Western Europe that began as Marxist or Marxist-influenced
but eventually settled within the democratic mainstream, advocating various
sorts of mixed economies.

In the establishment and first decades of the Soviet Government, the world
socialist movement got its first look at a nation run on correct socialist
principles. The natural result of this was a desire on the part of those
segments of the movement not controlled by Soviet agents of influence to
distance themselves from the brutalities of forced collectivization,
genocidal engineered famines, and the Gulags.

One half of the response to this was semantically reasonable; it was to
invent the label 'state socialism' to distinguish the Soviet pattern from
the more democratic Western revisionisms. The other half, however, was
to launch the claim (still heard from socialist intellectuals) that the
Soviets are not 'true' socialists.

This latter claim can only be understood as an attempt to monopolize the
remaining good magic of the 'socialist' label among intellectuals and what
passed for the proletariat in the industrial West. It is certainly not
supported by any reading of Marx, who advocated a command economy and
authoritarian/totalitarian social order very like that of the Soviet state
as one of the major evolutionary stages on the way to the workers' paradise.

One might well ask why this history is of more than academic interest to any
non-socialist.

The very fact that political labels have power means that we should beware of
those who use them dishonestly or irresponsibly. It is dishonest for
totalitarian states to use the level 'democratic'; it is dishonest and
irresponsible for Western socialists to deny that the USSR is a 'true'
socialist nation when what they really mean is that it doesn't conform to
*their* form of socialist revisionism.

Why irresponsible? Because the example of the USSR and other state-socialist
nations raises hard questions about the consequences of socialist ideology.
These questions are ducked, but not answered, by semantic manipulation of the
label 'socialist'.

How, then, should we decide what a political label really means and when it
is being used legitimately?

The observations above on the magical potency of political labelling reinforce
the dictum of semantic analysis that 'extensional definitions' (definitions by
pointing out examples) are more robust (less subject to manipulation) than
'intensional definitions' (definitions in terms of other language constructs).

Democrat is as 'Democrat' does. Socialist is as 'Socialist' does. To understand
what a political label means, look first at the actions of those who hold a
valid historical or formal claim on it. Look at the power they give each other,
the implicit alliance with others of the same label made by the use of it.

This reality test is more trustworthy than the pronouncements of parties, which
often have the type of language manipulation we've described as an implicit
goal. To the extent that shared labels reflect shared premises, it also holds
antagonistic descendents of common political traditions properly responsible
for whatever premises they still share.

Only in this way can general labels like 'radical', 'moderate', 'democrat'
or 'socialist' become meaningful as description rather than manipulation.