Neoliberalism thrives on idiotism—the enclosure of the self, severing people from collective life. Historically, “idiot” meant disengagement, but under capitalism, it became an insult. Leftist language must resist this by rooting itself in real communities of practice, rebuilding speech communities, and reclaiming political meaning from ideological enclosure.

The term idiotism is not widely used in contemporary political discourse, but it should be. As the current series of articles undertakes an exploration of how leftist vocabulary has been enclosed, diluted, and detached from lived communal structures, idiotism provides a crucial conceptual tool to explain how this process occurs—not just in language but in subjectivity itself.

Derived from the Greek idiōtēs, meaning a private person disengaged from public life, idiotism describes a condition in which individuals are severed from collective participation and locked into isolated, self-referential modes of thought and action. Historically, this was understood as a lack of civic engagement, a retreat from the responsibilities of the polis. Today, under neoliberalism, it is a structural condition, cultivated through market ideology, digital enclosures, and the fragmentation of public discourse.

This article explores the etymology and historical transformations of idiotism, its relevance to contemporary hegemonic individualism, and how it manifests in leftist discourse—particularly in the weakening of communal language and action. By reconnecting idiotism to broader discussions of possessive individualism, capitalist enclosure, and schmooze-level social reality, we can begin to chart a way forward.

1. Idiotism and Its Classical Roots

The modern word idiot traces back to the Greek idiōtēs (ἰδιώτης), which referred to someone who was not engaged in public affairs. Unlike the politēs (πολίτης), the active citizen who took part in collective decision-making, the idiōtēs lived in a privatized sphere, disconnected from the deliberative structures of the community. The term was not initially an insult but described a condition of civic disconnection.

This meaning shifted over time. In Latin and later medieval vernaculars, idiota came to mean an uneducated or ignorant person. By the time it entered English, idiot was fully synonymous with stupidity, losing its original political meaning. What was once a critique of disengagement became a medicalized and moralized insult.

This semantic drift was not accidental. As capitalist social orders developed, the political meaning of idiocy was lost precisely because capitalist hegemony required a population more preoccupied with private affairs than with collective governance. The transition from idiōtēs to “idiot” mirrors the rise of possessive individualism, in which self-interest replaces social obligation as the organizing principle of society.

2. Neal Curtis’ Idiotism: The Neoliberal Subject as Enclosed Self

Neal Curtis’ book Idiotism: Capitalism and the Privatisation of Life (n.b.: open access, free download) resurrects the term to describe how neoliberalism systematically cultivates self-enclosure. According to Curtis, capitalism not only dismantles communal infrastructures but actively reshapes subjectivity to make social alienation appear natural. Under neoliberalism, the ideal subject is an idiot—not in the sense of stupidity, but as someone locked into self-referential survival, disengaged from collective transformation.

Curtis argues that idiotism is not just an ideology but a structural condition, reinforced by:

• The destruction of public goods and common spaces.
• The ideological promotion of market competition over cooperation.
• The internalization of economic precarity, leading to a mindset of individualized struggle.
• The collapse of deliberative structures, making civic engagement feel futile or meaningless.

In this sense, idiotism is capitalism’s epistemic enclosure of the self, preventing people from recognizing their embeddedness in communal life. This process mirrors the semantic enclosure of leftist language—turning concepts like mutual aid into acts of charity rather than reciprocal obligation, or solidarity into an abstract virtue rather than an active structure of collective power.

3. Idiotism and the Limits of Leftist Language

Leftist language itself is not immune to idiotism. If neoliberalism produces enclosed selves, it also shapes the way political movements articulate their demands. Some key ways this manifests include:

• The Performance of Engagement Without Engagement – Leftist discourse is often performative, with radical rhetoric substituting for real structures of communal obligation. If language does not connect to real communities of practice, it remains self-referential, a form of idiotism in itself.
• The Fragmentation of Speech Communities – Digital spaces encourage ideological filtering, where leftist language becomes an in-group dialect rather than a tool of broad political engagement. Idiotism thrives where language ceases to be generative and instead reinforces static moral positioning.
• The Weakening of Collective Identity – In a world dominated by neoliberal atomization, even leftist movements struggle to construct enduring communal structures. Language that once mobilized collective agency now often serves as a personal branding tool—politics as aesthetic rather than as practice.

This diagnosis is not meant to be fatalistic. Recognizing idiotism within leftist discourse allows us to counteract it. The solution is not simply more rhetoric but a reconnection of language to lived, reciprocal relationships within real communities of practice.

4. Reclaiming Language, Rebuilding Collective Consciousness

If idiotism describes a condition of enclosure, the counter to it must be a deliberate reinvestment in communal structures of speech and action. Some key ways forward include:

• Embedding Language in Speech Communities – Leftist vocabulary must emerge from and be sustained by active communities, rather than functioning as a floating signifier in online discourse.
• Developing Communal Practices Alongside Communal Language – Political terminology should be grounded in real, material relationships—worker cooperatives, mutual aid networks, neighborhood assemblies—where meaning is not just asserted but enacted.
• Resisting the Enclosure of Radical Terms – Just as mutual aid must be reclaimed from its depoliticization into charity, other terms must be defended from ideological dilution and misappropriation.
• Expanding the Schmooze-Level Social Reality of Politics – A truly collective politics must restore dialogic interaction as a foundation for meaning-making, countering the passive consumption of political content.

Conclusion: Beyond Idiotism

Neoliberalism thrives on idiotism—the enclosure of the self, the collapse of communal meaning, and the severing of language from lived social reality. If leftist discourse is to remain viable, it must resist both semantic drift and social fragmentation, restoring political language to a living practice within interconnected communities.

The question is not merely how we critique idiotism, but how we cultivate its opposite: a world where no one is an idiōtēs because all are engaged in the ongoing, reciprocal construction of communal life. The first step is to ensure that our words, like our actions, move us toward this reality.

#LanguageOfTheLeft

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The Left’s key terms—solidarity, mutual aid, liberation—often fail to mobilize because they have been enclosed, ritualized, and detached from lived practice. While leftist organizations sustain these terms internally, they must help build outward-facing communities that integrate language into real, systemic change. This and future posts will explore how to reclaim a vocabulary of communal power.

This is not merely a problem of rhetoric. It is a symptom of deeper fractures in the Left’s capacity to create and sustain communal life. Our language has been subject to enclosures—sometimes imposed by hegemonic forces, sometimes self-inflicted through hyper-politicized subcultural discourse. The result is a set of terms that often mean less to those who use them than to those excluded from their use. This article is the beginning of a broader inquiry: How has the language of the Left been enclosed, hollowed out, or ritualized in ways that undermine its purpose? And what might it mean to reclaim a political vocabulary that moves us—one that generates real communal structures rather than merely naming them?

The Problem: When Words Cease to Build Worlds

Political language does not simply describe reality; it constructs it. Language is infrastructure—it enables coordination, orientation, and the reproduction of meaning across time and space. For a movement to be effective, its vocabulary must be alive—capable of evolving, spreading, and embedding itself in the daily experiences of those it seeks to mobilize.

Yet, many of the Left’s key terms have undergone a transformation that renders them less actionable, less felt, and less real:

• They have become detached from practice – Terms like solidarity and mutual aid are now more often used as performative declarations than as embedded social relations. Solidarity becomes a gesture rather than a structure of obligation; mutual aid becomes a hashtag rather than a durable system of care.
• They have become hyper-moralized and exclusionary – Instead of inviting participation, certain words now function as boundary markers, distinguishing the ideologically pure from the insufficiently committed. This leads to paralysis rather than expansion—instead of asking, “How can we bring more people into shared struggle?” the emphasis shifts to, “Who is using the right words in the right way?”
• They have been absorbed into bureaucratic and academic discourse – Many of the Left’s most vital concepts have been NGO-ified and academicized, stripped of their disruptive energy. Words like organizing and resistance become grant-friendly, professionalized terms, more suited for white papers than for lived, communal struggle.
• They are overused but underdefined – Some of the most frequently invoked words have lost any clear meaning. What does it mean to “center care”? What does it mean to be “radical” when that word is applied equally to lifestyle choices and revolutionary movements? When everything is called “liberation,” what distinguishes real, substantive transformations from aesthetic rebellion?

The result: a language that no longer moves us because it no longer connects to felt experience. A language that feels more like a moral scaffolding for individual positioning than a set of tools for collective world-building.

The Hegemonic Trap: Outrage, Containment, and Semantic Drift

Hegemonic forces do not simply repress leftist language; they capture, redirect, and exhaust it. This happens in multiple ways:

• The commodification of radical language – Terms like resistance and liberation are now frequently deployed by corporate brands, drained of any structural critique. The language of social change is absorbed into the market, where it can be used to sell sneakers and streaming services.
• The exploitation of moral outrage cycles – The Left is often caught in a reactive posture, responding to right-wing attacks or crises rather than setting its own agenda. This leads to the circulation of language within high-intensity but low-sustainability outrage cycles.
• The dilution of meaning through institutionalization – Once-radical ideas become incorporated into the logic of liberal reformism, where they can exist as terms without consequences. Concepts like diversity and inclusion can be operationalized in ways that leave power structures untouched.
• Algorithmic reinforcement of in-group jargon – Social media accelerates the transformation of political language into coded subcultural currency. Instead of words spreading outward to create shared meaning, they are often reinforced within ideological enclaves, making broad coalition-building harder.

The Limits of Walled Communities and the Fragmentation of Struggle

It is important to recognize that certain leftist organizations, such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), have managed to create communities in which these terms do function with greater coherence. Within their walls, words like solidarity and mutual aid are more susceptible to genuine contestation and more effective at mobilization. However, these organizations often operate as walled communities, which, although open to anyone, exact the fee of ideological commitment—becoming sites of refuge rather than engines of broad democratic world-building.

Leftist organizations like DSA must be in the business of enabling the people they want to help to build their own speech communities and communities of practice. They must be in a position to teach people how to achieve what they, to some degree, have achieved. They must do work that plants the seeds of thousands of new outward-facing cosmopolitan communities, dedicated to certain broadly common principles but each pursuing them in their unique ways and forging distinct communal identities.

Outside of these spaces, leftist efforts tend to be piecemeal rather than integrative, localized rather than systemic. They promise particular improvements rather than articulating a broadly re-conceived way of living. This leaves leftist politics fragmented, unable to present a holistic alternative to the systems it critiques. If political language is to regain its vitality, it must escape these enclosures and serve as the connective tissue of a living, communal structure rather than a subcultural dialect.

Conclusion: Toward a Vocabulary of Communal Power

Future posts will examine key leftist terms through the lens of speech communities and communities of practice, exploring how they can be reclaimed to build a real, living infrastructure of communal meaning-making. Because if the Left is to move again, it must first find words that move us.

#LanguageOfTheLeft

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