I support the overall strategy advocated in a recent diary, Public Protections & Heirs, Oh My! Two More Re-Framed Terms for Progressives, and the Winning Words Project it brought to my attention, but my specific recommendations are somewhat different for how to best reflect and uphold truth and moral perspective in a competitive power environment. So I would like to offer both general guidelines and some specific terms.
1. Minimum syllables.
If the other side labels something with a punchy one-word term, you will not compete with that term by offering an alternative with two or more multi-syllabic words. Progressives lean toward intellectualism, which is why we find it gratifying to multiply words in search of exactitude - something we often falsely believe strengthens the persuasiveness of our arguments. But political language in a money-driven environment is less about eloquence or even immediate persuasiveness than about volume throughput and the ability of memes to permeate the public consciousness.
An idea can be totally disbelieved every time it's advanced, and yet key assumptions carried by it may be adopted by default - hence the Republican strategy of repeating totally nonsensical, zero-credibility claims ad nauseum. They may not convince anyone of what they're saying, but they can so pervade the debate with their underlying ideology that it becomes a default assumption. This is only possible with high-throughput, low-content propaganda - actual argumentation using substantive, information-heavy terminology would not be practical to achieve such memetic invasiveness.
Have you ever wondered why even conservatives with no identifiable regional accent say "librul" rather than "liberal"? It isn't part of any deliberate strategy, but simply a matter of their instinctive appreciation that investing the concept with their own connotations is much easier with fewer syllables - and the effect accelerates with each step downward. The difference between three syllables and two is even greater than between four and three - the level of intellectual engagement triggered by the term goes down drastically, causing it to circumvent objective perception. This is why we are "lib-ruls" rather than "lib-er-als" whenever conservatives speak. Their predatory animal instincts recognize that it's more effective.
In seeking to counter right-wing propaganda, progressive terminology must likewise acknowledge the principle despite our profound desire to pretend that people in general will respond to being treated as highly intelligent: There is some reason to hope on that front, but such hopes cannot be realized in an environment of total inundation by right-wing propaganda - there must be a reasonably level playing field for ideas to compete on content rather than volume and invasiveness, which means we have to be cognizant of the sub-conscious battlefield and willing to function as society's psychological immune system against corrupt and dishonest memes. Part of that is simply discrediting them as we like to do, but it must also involve fighting them with counter-memes - if you simply pretend a front doesn't exist or whine that it's "not fair" how the other side uses it to attack you, that's the direction your defeat will come from.
We have seen the essentialness of the minimum-syllable principle illustrated many times in failed liberal and Democratic counterattacks. I think specifically of the pointless ongoing reliance among some left-wing bloggers on clumsy terms like "corporatocracy," that simply make the speaker sound strange regardless of the credibility of the concept. Against that abominable cacophany of syllables and historically weak associations, Republicans simply say "soshlism" with all its Cold War baggage. "Plutocracy" is syllabically superior for progressive use, but still obscure and has all sorts of weird phonetic associations that divert from the impact - an orange cartoon dog and a demoted planet, for instance.
In forming an alternative, we should not be hamstrung by exactitude into promoting horribly sub-optimal terms that have less than zero memetic utility - our standard should merely be that a term with an otherwise superior profile is a "good enough" fit for the circumstance, even if it fails to perfectly capture exactly what's going on. Conservatives do not insist on calling us "Keynesians," which we are, rather than "soshlists," which most of us are not, because by their own whackadoo standards "soshlism" (whatever the hell that's supposed to be) is close enough. So here is your term for Republican economic policy: Corrupt. Not "plutocratic," not "corporatocratic," not "supply-side," and definitely not "free-market" or "pro-business." The word you're looking for is CORRUPT.
This term has the benefit of being syllabically punchy and also overwhelmingly true, even if it doesn't 100% reflect the total picture. Obviously there is some level of sincere ideology involved in Republican economic policies, but in reality it's overwhelmingly just corrupt people pursuing destructive policies in order to make more money for themselves at other people's expense. They're corrupt. They do not, by and large, believe the things they say or think that what they do is for the good of the country. They just don't care. Their policies are corrupt, and they are corrupt. If they want to accuse you of making false accusations of actual criminal activity, welcome that line of discussion - you've already won by framing their activities in the context of criminality. Even to the extent it's not criminal, it's still corruption - they're harming the country for their own benefit.
Mitt Romney is corrupt. The Republican Party is corrupt. Attacks on labor unions are corrupt. Attempts to ignore, silence, or falsely cast doubt on climate science are corrupt. Privatizing public functions and property is corrupt. Cutting rich people's taxes is corrupt. Cutting budgets, eviscerating critical public services, and destroying the quality of life in this country to avoid raising rich people's taxes is corrupt. Denying the right to healthcare is corrupt. Subsidizing highly profitable corporations with public money is corrupt. And so on, and so on. If you hammer one word into your mind for use in discussion, this is it: Corrupt. It is the most powerful word in our arsenal if deployed comprehensively.
On the other side of the coin, conservatives refer to programs like Social Security and Medicare as "entitlements," connecting them with the concept of an undeserved presumption of being owed something. The Winning Words Project advocates fighting this with "Earned Benefits," but that's two words representing two distinct concepts rather than one word with a single effective concept. The best term would simply be Rights - Social Security and Medicare are rights, period. Human rights, to be specific, but just call them rights. People have a right to healthcare and a right not to have to work until they die. This is our position, so why not reflect that in our terminology? Rights is also a far more powerful term than "entitlements," both syllabically and in terms of associations. If we routinely and comprehensively start referring to the benefits provided by these programs as rights, and refuse to be cowed by nit-picking, our position is far stronger.
2. No jargon.
To cite two examples of jargon, "plutocracy" and "feudalism" largely fail to persuade outside of intellectual discussion because they are academic terms with little or no sub-conscious weight. Other than people who are already on board with our agenda and highly informed about economic matters and history, no one hears these terms and has an automatic negative reaction - or may even have such a reaction against the person speaking for using words they find exotic, which can be irritating for the non-intellectual. One alternative is simply to provide explanations rather than power-terms, but as noted earlier, it's not practical to fight a torrent of such terms from the other side with detailed argumentative explanations - although our terms must certainly be backed up with such arguments when called upon. But people have a visceral reaction to "corruption."
Unfortunately, "collective bargaining" is also something of a jargon term, although a lot more people have direct experience of it than the previous examples. It's still an abstraction that describes a value-neutral process rather than the rights and values underlying it, and the term "collective" carries some otherwise irrelevant negative connotations (e.g., Communism, the Borg, etc.). This is somewhat difficult to effectively label, but my best recommendation would be Worker Equality - i.e., the right of employees to negotiate on an equal footing with their employers. Virtually nothing prevents a local employer from buying competitors and growing their negotiating power with workers, so it's clearly unfair and unequal that employees are not allowed to band together and expand their own negotiating position. When you fight for unions, you fight for Worker Equality, not collective bargaining - collective bargaining is just the technical term for the process whereby worker equality is implemented, and is not nearly as effective as speaking directly to worker equality.
3. Never, ever accept the other side's terminology.
For some reason, a whole hell of a lot of progressive bloggers just mindlessly accept the other side's labels for their own politics and policies - e.g., "Pro-life," "Right to Work," "Pro-business," "Pro-growth," etc., and count on the association of these propaganda terms with their ugly reality to discredit them. Unfortunately, that's not how things work, or at least not entirely how they work - they are somewhat discredited by their association with the reality they represent, but they also continue to maintain totally irrational and undeserved advantages by being powerful terms largely unchallenged by their opponents.
Never refer to anti-abortion positions, people, or policies as "pro-life." They are by and large the opposite of pro-life - most of them support the death penalty, war for just about any reason, shooting people for trespassing, crazy gun laws that turn communities into shooting galleries, sport hunting, cruel animal testing, and oppose healthcare, environmental protection, and public safety. So pretty much they favor every single means of causing living things to die other than a woman choosing to end a pregnancy. Even "anti-abortion" is a sub-optimal term, since abortion is considered something solemn and dire even by many pro-choice voters. What you want to emphasize is the seizure of a woman's body by the state to force her to give birth, so terms like Forced Birth, Body Snatchers, or Body Thieves should be applied depending on the context - i.e., use Forced Birth for a more formal, civilized debate, and call attempts to limit or outlaw abortion Body Snatching in more informal discussions.
We've already dealt with conservatives who call themselves and their policies "Pro-business" and "Pro-growth" - our term for them is Corrupt - but for some reason a lot of us still refer to anti-union laws and states as "Right to Work" simply because this is how their corrupt proponents refer to them. I've identified the best term for collective bargaining rights as Worker Equality, so in forming the best term for its opposite, we have to take into account the concepts of enforced inequality, intimidation, and domination by employers in employee negotiations. Simply calling it "anti-union" is sub-optimal since a union, like collective bargaining, is just a technical means to worker equality. "Anti-worker" would be more powerful, but still suffers from lacking a moral value statement. And just saying "Anti-worker equality" would be a mere negation of a positive that underplays the sinister and oppressive aspect of the policies involved.
"Feudal" or "manorial" are spot-on as descriptors for these policies, but fail because they're scholarly terms for historical phenomena with no visceral weight behind them and which most people have little familiarity with. The same problem attends "serfdom," and going the full nine and calling it "slavery" would just be instantly and reasonably dismissed as hyperbole. Our term must strive to be as punchy and value-heavy as Right-to-Work, but illustrate the reality that these policies basically create economic dictatorship on the part of employers - no real negotiation takes place, just employers telling their workers what they feel like giving them. Although it's not as syllable-light or impactful as Right-to-Work, I think the best option is Wage Dictatorship. Employers in these states simply dictate wages with no real negotiation taking place. They are dictators. People who support them want them to be dictators. They support dictatorship over your pay, and want you to have no voice in it.
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Summary of recommended terms:
In contrast to: "Free market," "Pro-business"
Instead of: "Corporatocracy," "Corporatist," "Plutocratic," "supply-side," "corporate welfare"
Say: Corrupt
In contrast to: "Entitlements"
Instead of: "Benefits"
Say: Rights
In contrast to: "Pro-life"
Instead of: "Anti-abortion"
Say: Forced Birth, Body Thief, Body Snatcher
Instead of: "Pro-union," "collective bargaining"
Say: Worker Equality
In contrast to: "Right-to-Work"
Instead of: "Anti-worker," "Anti-union"
Say: Wage Dictatorship
10:21 PM PT: Via a conversation in comments, I've also come to think a good term to contrast with "austerity" would be Life Tax: Whenever government programs are cut, the cost of living for everyone else goes up, so austerity just means government is allowing wealthy private-sector entities to levy Life Taxes on everyone else.