I feel like the last thing we need is more obscure terminology. Socialism is just as good.
People are scared of socialism though!
I think that the truth is that people would just as easily become scared on anything that was the same. I mean, as Juliet said, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” If the substance of it is the same, propaganda against the name would just as surely be propagated (not to mention confusion regarding the usage of a different name).
History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) states that “The Marxist Party is a part, a detachment, of the working class. But the working class has many detachments, and hence not every detachment of the working class can be called a party of the working class. The Party differs from other detachments of the working class primarily by the fact that it is not an ordinary detachment, but the vanguard de-tachment, a class-conscious detachment, a Marxist detachment of the working class, armed with a knowledge of the life of society, of the laws of its development and of the laws of the class struggle, and for this reason able to lead the working class and to direct its struggle. The Party must therefore not be confused with the working class, as the part must not be confused with the whole. One cannot demand that every striker be allowed to call himself a member of the Party, for whoever confuses Party and class lowers the level of consciousness of the Party to that of ‘every striker,’ destroys the Party as the class-conscious vanguard of the working class. It is not the task of the Party to lower its level to that of ‘every striker,’ but to elevate the masses of the workers, to elevate ‘every striker’ to the level of the Party.” (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/ch02.htm)
I see this as most likely arguing against the idea that we should change our terminology because people are scared of it. Rather than that, it is preferable to alter the public’s reaction to the concept of socialism in the first place. Deciding to use a term like ergatocracy is much more confusing and would only lead to then that being the term that was feared. A different term used would also make all education and research far far more difficult as most texts would not refer to this term. I, for one, just don’t think another term is the solution to fear regarding socialism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Paul
The author of the book it comes from:
Paul was the younger son of the publisher Charles Kegan Paul,[3] and Margaret Colvile. His mother was one of 12 daughters born to Andrew Wedderburn-Colvile (1779–1856) and the Hon. Mary Louisa Eden, fifth daughter of William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland.
He travelled with the Japanese army as a Times correspondent during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895. Between 1895 and 1912, he practised medicine in Japan, China, Perak, Singapore, Alderney and England. He was the founder and editor of the Nagasaki Press, 1897–99.[11]
By 1903, the family had moved to Alderney, where his wife later established a private nursing home; however, the couple separated about this time.[10] From 1907 to 1919, he was a member of the ILP where he promoted eugenics,[12] and worked for the French Socialist Party from 1912 to 1914. He later joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He remained active in the CPGB at least until 1928.[13]
I don’t trust obscure ideological framing from a eugenicist aristocrat. It’s like they’re recreating socialism for pampered piggies in the same way that Grimes proposed space-based video game communism. We already have words for these things which serve the communities we organise. I just don’t see the need to reinvent the wheel.
So… dictatorship of the proletariat by a different name? I suppose it smells just as sweet.
Might be useful for sneaking stuff past people’s knee-jerk reaction to the word socialism.
