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It's very bizarre to me how people want to organize and improve society, yet think they can skip the ideological education of the masses. This does not have a good track record throughout history and usually leads to fascist/authoritarian co-option of leftist efforts.
As much as it may seem like an exhausting process to deprogram capitalistic ideology and to spend so much time quibbling over terms, it is crucial we do so. Not only because the distinctions matter and have material effects, but because failure to do so separates us from history.
The political words we use in society and the ideological space that they occupy form the horizon of possible ideas and serve to distinguish between different tendencies. These differences are real and root to deep philosophical facts about their foundations.
When the right-wing calls everything left of fascism "socialist," it serves a concrete purpose for them. It distorts the meaning of the word and creates a confused nation who have now lost an accurate descriptor with real historical lineage and gained nothing in return.
Words matter. Ideologies matter. People without philosophical moorings are more easily manipulated, less able to defend their ideas organically, and less able to reason about the real world through a consistent lens. Contradictory and self-serving ideologies fill the vacuum.
