Anybody who has participated in a political discussion over the past several decades knows the all-importance of labeling, branding, and marketing one’s views. Certain words often act like triggers in the public mind, shutting down any further discussion. If a label is used effectively, one joins a certain group that has latched onto a particular term, a process termed ‘virtue-signaling’ in recent years. Used as a weapon, a label can effectively exclude certain views from ever being heard on open, neutral terms.

This style of discourse owes much of its power and reach thanks to the parallels growth of marketing, which also expects consumers to reflexively react to certain branding concepts. Yet if marketers are expected to frame their products in a self-interested way, we naively expect political labels to somehow convey a broad political reality.

As a result of this approach, the public now has a large set of vague, impressionistic ideas about who believes what floating around in its collective consciousness. But let’s consider some commonly used political terms and see where they only make sense in a publicist’s promotions.

Conservative — This should be simple- a conservative is someone who seeks to ‘conserve’ and support traditional institutions against the rise of outsiders and radicals. Yet somehow movement conservatives are always portraying themselves as outsiders, and have plans to radically change the scope and nature of the government. They also tend to be confident in radical foreign interventions, believing that ‘our way of life’ should be spread across the world as a quasi-Marxist revolutionary force.

In many respects, positions considered ‘liberal’ today fit a more general, sensible definition of conservatism. Protecting middle-class pensions and funding essential services — this is boring, conservative stuff that today puts you to the left of Alger Hiss on certain networks. A truly conservative personality puts institutions like family and local community at the center of society, but today’s American conservatives don’t see any problem with the idea of a family mortgaging their home to purchase life-saving drugs. The obvious detrimental effects to the conservative goals of social security and stability are never even considered, let alone heeded.

Liberal — This label has changed so many times it should be retired. Originally, as ‘classical liberalism’, it referred to the ideology of the merchant/entrepreneurial class who supported a free market against the old mercantilism of early modern Europe. For this reason, many economic conservatives and libertarians have dreamt of reclaiming it.

In its modern usage, ‘liberal’ does everything from distinguishing democratic societies from authoritarian regimes (‘liberal democracies’) to indicate the remnants of the post-Marxist Left (‘liberal ideologues’). It can apply to personalities as diverse as Anderson Cooper and Noam Chomsky, who have almost nothing in common, but are generally seen by red America as over-educated and not ‘like them’. This vague and general usage of the word has made it an effective weapon for ‘conservatives’, who have tainted it with a strain of elitism.

As ‘liberal’ literally comes from the Latin word for ‘free’, it generally indicates more openness to social difference and experimentation, but not much else. Insofar as a society already has traditions and institutions of freedom, to be a liberal is also to be a conservative.

Socialist — Just as is the case with ‘liberal’, this label gets tagged onto political systems as different as those of Sweden and Venezuela. Those who like socialism point at Sweden, those who don’t point at Venezuela, but both are really missing the point.

If most Americans were told of a system where the government loaned you money and then paid you an interest rate in excess of the loan, they would probably say this happened in a socialist country. Yet this is exactly what the Federal Reserve does for the major banks, paying $30 billion in interest on ‘excess reserves’ in 2017 alone. Ironically, attempts to curtail this practice by nationalizing bank profits would then likely be described as ‘socialism’.

In reality, any country’s brand of ‘socialism’ is just a reflection of how invested or alienated people are in the society as a whole. When a government starts the chain of economic activity by issuing the currency, it can do so in a way either beneficial to society in general (Sweden) or to a cabal of political backers (US/Venezuela). The fundamental question is not “Is this system socialist?”- the existence of a central bank and a massive national budget makes every country essentially socialist. The question is — “To what degree are the citizens invested in this national social corporation as opposed to politically connected actors?”

Socialism may have had a more definite meaning in the Cold War era world, but today’s political climate, in which the state is already managed as a giant corporation, demands a different paradigm. Does our new corporate state promote civic investment or economic alienation for the many?

Nationalist — Nationalism lost all meaning after it was taken up by an international hotel mogul who spent most of his life jetting from Manhattan to West Palm Beach.

It should be remembered that up until World War I, nationalism was considered a left-wing position. When we call Giuseppe Garibaldi a nationalist, it is not because he was a race-baiting xenophobe, but because he unified the state of modern Italy — something quite literally national.

In the old sense, the nation was considered a progressive force, an alternative form of organization to a Europe dominated by petty minor nobles, typically opposed to progress, ready to throw up borders and collect extortionate customs.

In the same way, modern American progressives who advocate for a strong federal state to balance and oppose private corporate power may be considered stronger ‘nationalists’ than Steve Bannon, who aimed to disband the federal government and return the US to a 19th-century collection of self-ruled states.

After the Second World War, nationalism became almost synonymous with the totalitarianism of fascist regimes, but this more limited, almost duplicate use of the word has made it meaningless. Ironically, it paralyzes the state from the kind of meaningful reforms progressives claim to desire. After all, FDR was also a ‘nationalist’ in that historical moment, asserting the authority of the nation in creating his New Deal programs.

Today nationalism also has a more conservative connotation because it stands in contrast to internationalism, which is the more progressive view. Nonetheless, even the most committed internationalist should recognize that the national state has been gutted by corporate interests and that functional nations are the prerequisite for a functional international body.

Political terms are the currency of political discourse, and, as is quite evident, we only need to observe the emptiness of these terms as currently used to see why political discourse has been stagnant for decades.

Using these labels as your primary tool of self-identification in politics isn’t taking a stand, but really avoiding taking one by relying on vague mental impressions over real social goals and political ends. As voters stop buying into party branding, let’s hope these labels, used in this loose and deceptive way, also disappear.

Written by George Saad

Website |Facebook| YouTube