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86 lines
4.2 KiB
86 lines
4.2 KiB
4 years ago
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Title: Labels are language
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Category: Blog
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Date: 2019-09-20 15:38
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Tags: politics
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A phrase that I've heard way too fucking often recently (this edition
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will contain swearing and might not be suitable for children of ages
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below `NaN`) is "I don't care about labels, I want to do politics!"
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As one might expect, this sentiment often comes from centrists. But
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more often than not, it comes from fellow leftists. People who are
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otherwise somewhat radical in their approach of the world, people who
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think capitalism's gotta go and (sometimes) that states and borders
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are bad. And it's a stance that has confused me, and keeps confusing
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me and which is why I'm now writing a blog post about it because
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apparently that's what I do.
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The problem I have with "I don't care about labels" is that it's
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analogous to "I don't care about language".
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Labels are a linguistic tool to talk about `$stuff` without having to
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build up an entire language from first principles in every
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sentence. Labels are very useful for general conversation about
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things, like "what is a table?", "what is a train?", "what is art?",
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etc.
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When we look at the definition of labels, there's usually three
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kinds. There's labels for **natural things, with natural
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definitions**, such as the definition of a prime number. These are
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farely rare. Neither the definition of prime numbers, nor prime
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numbers themselves are going to change due to cultural context.
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Secondly, you have labels that refer to **natural things, with
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cultural definitions**. These are things like planets, mountains or
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rain. Definitions can change and they're also subject to cultural
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differences. What you and I consider "rain" will most likely depend on
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where we grew up, if there was frequent rain at all, etc.
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The last category are **cultural things, with cultural definitions**,
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such as art, sub-categories of it (movies, games, etc), as well as any
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identity label. Calling myself an anarchist doesn't naturally depend
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on anarchy as a concept occuring in nature, nor can I define it just
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by pointing at other properties of natural definitions. Rather, I need
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to pre-define a whole bunch of cultural context, for you to be able to
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understand why I am an anarchist and what that means.
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**And that's the fucking job of labels!** We can't have the same 5
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conversations over and over again and we can't rely on the trust that
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people around us are always gonna be on our side. We should have
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conversations from time to time about what these labels mean to us,
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especially when it becomes clear that there's miscommunication.
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But also, just because we're having a conversation about labels,
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doesn't mean we need to start bikeshedding their definitions and scope
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(whether it be anarchy, libertarian socialist, libertarian
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communists - these are all kind of similar enough to work with). Their
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context is still there to be used.
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That doesn't mean that I am okay with any vaguely leftist label. I
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have, over the last year or so, become more sceptical of communism,
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talking about how you want to guillotine people and similar. Being an
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anarchist means being opposed to state violence, no matter who's state
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it is. But this isn't a conversation that is easy to have if I don't
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already know a bunch of labels and can refer back to them. Furthermore,
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maybe I don't _want_ to have this conversation in certain situations
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so why would I have to engage with tankies when I don't want to?
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Most of the time the people who say "I don't care about labels, I
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wanna do poltics", never do any politics due to lack of a platform or
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language to engage with similarly minded people about strategy.
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That's because political action depends on the people doing it having
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some understanding of the work they're doing, how it relates to others
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and themselves. There's a reason why minority groups rely on labels
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(such as people in the LGBTQ community), and they serve an important
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role in our discourse.
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This is not to say that we should try to make the onboarding easier
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and use less jargon language when dealing with outsiders. Making
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people more sympathetic to the radical left is important, albeit not a
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job everybody might want to do.
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Still...I feel labels are important, especially when we deal with
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internal discourse. For the sake of the conversation, and everybody
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involved in it.
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