You can sometimes overdo the business of defining your terms. Often the trick is just to get ahead and use them, and everyone can get your point clearly enough. But sometimes it is necessary to focus in on exact meanings.
Words to look out for especially are those crafted and launched into regular use by Marxists, of the ex-, sub-, gutter- or plain generic brand variety. Often the entire point of these words is to create confusion – typically to bundle together two ideas that ought to be kept separate and then to use the muddle to accuse opponents of thinking what they don’t think, of liking bad stuff and opposing good stuff.
“Exploitation” for example. Does that mean people using you in a way that is to your advantage? Or does it mean people using you nastily, against your will, for a lousy wage you haven’t agreed to? Big difference. You’re using me to spice up you dreary life right now, and you’re paying me nothing, you skinflint. But do I mind? No I do not. Exploit away.
Multiculturalism. Now there’s a word. Does it mean people from different cultures? Or does it mean people remaining in separate cultures? If from, then I’m all for it, in the sense of multicultural people coming to live and work in Britain. If remaining in, then I’m flat against it. I want the British melting pot to melt us all into a new culture – but just the one new culture please – where we can all get along contentedly, which won’t happen if we all stay stuck in ghettoes. So again: big difference.
This difference matters hugely. If you are arguing against “remaining in” multiculturalism, then you are liable, if you just carry on using the word “multiculturalism” uncritically, to come over as opposing “from” multiculturalism, in other words as a racist. But suppose, perhaps because you are determined above all else not to come over as a racist, you support “multiculturalism”. Then you risk supporting, without meaning to, the project of keeping ethnic minorities herded into ghettoes and exploited (in the bad way, nastily) by “multiculturalist” politicians like slaves exploited by plantation owners.
So, before you support or oppose “multiculturalism”, make it entirely clear which version you are talking about.
That’s it. I’ve said my bit. I love blogging. You can say in twenty minutes what it would take hours or even days to say in an “article”.
