Essays making definitive arguments on such things are a dime-a-dozen because they are ultimately addressing their own responses, and not necessarily what's in order people's responses. All these "isms" conjure up different things in different minds, particularly because they've been vilified or sanctified to abstractions...so that their use triggers a positive or negative consumer response. Like calling something an ill-defined "new and improved"...the meaning is in the heads of the listeners/readers and there's no necessarily common sense of what they mean behind any of it.
Take the words aimed at evoking a positive response. Is "democracy" what's in our heads as a potential? Or is what the authorities impose on us as "democracy" with rigged elections, commercial misdirection, and, ultimately, the force of arms. How about "egalitarianism," "liberty," "progress"? Words like "socialism" or "capitalism" are no more solid. And what system doesn't "work"? By definition, every system has to "work" for somebody. Otherwise nobody'd maintain it and it wouldn't be a "system." For all these reasons, a solid discussion of concrete issues is worth a dozen intended profundities on abstractions. ML
