Marching Toward Genuine Collectivism?

Whenever one is involved in a debate or argument about normative matters – ethics or politics, for instance – certain moves are made by means of using labels. One might characterize another's position as "extreme right or left wing," "fascist," "socialist," "ultra conservative," "radical individualist" and so forth. All such labels contain a charge to the effect that the other's position is misguided and maybe out and out disastrous and vicious in its implications. Which is why the labels are so vigorously rejected, why they are deemed to be a variety of "name calling." 

Yet they are not always off-base. Some people's viewpoint and policy proposals do amount to one of those on the list above. Slightly rephrased, they might even be openly embraced by one's adversary. 

Thus, for example, one might consider someone's position socialist and the person might accept it so long as it is a socialism "with a human face." Even Nazis, national socialists, might fess up to their viewpoint provided it doesn't get linked to Hitler and concentration camps, just as communists might accept being communists so long as Stalin and the gulags are not linked to it.

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