Reply To: WPNZ Open Letter

We can continue using this word but by far the majority of the world’s population understand Socialism to mean different to what we know it to mean. Thus, the mere mention of the word creates a barrier to those who are averse to the what they believe Socialism is.

I dont think this is necessarily true – or at least not of everyone.  In America for example the word ‘socialism’ appears to elicit a positive reaction from a growing number of people.  True, what they understand by the term is in almost all cases not what we understand by the term but we are talking here of people’s emotional disposition to the term that allows them to become receptive to what we have to say.   In a sense, far from creating a barrier it removes one – the emotional barrier – more than any other term I can think of (most of which would probably not evoke much if any emotional response and come across as meaningless or bland).

The term socialism at least stirs something in people and, for some , this could work to our advantage.  This links up with a belief of mine that to be more effective we need to adopt a more targeted approach.   The people most likely to respond positively to the term socialism  – even if they dont share our definition of it – are likely to be those most receptive to what we have to say anyway and therefore are most likely to constitute our prime target group.

But even in the case of people who respond negatively to the term socialism, this could work to our advantage as it provides us with a way in to discuss with them what the term really means or should mean in our view.  The point is that the term socialism elicits strong emotion, either way,  and this is the criterion we should use in  selecting a term. An over-rationalistic cum technocratic approach to the matter is based on the false promise that there is some sufficiently neutral term out there that can accurately capture what we have to say and draw in people in their thousands by virtue of its own intrinsic appeal