It is curious to survey the political tussling over words and where those words are applied. It is not usually the instinct of a political professional to inquire into the meaning of a given word, but to pick up and use what is widely available by convention, and what offers advantage or injury to the other.
The words are forged elsewhere, whether by other professionals, intellectuals, or by the perpetually boiling-over crucible of history itself.
Words like "bribe" and "corruption" have very clear emotional and moral registers, which were imbued at an earlier time when the social relations were hot and active and in an intense dynamic state.
There is a certainty behind those words which still echoes on, a certainty which is picked up currently by actors looking to harness the energy of a previous and kinetic time, and direct that energy towards their opponents.
Because right now, there are all sorts of behaviors which are clearly destructive: the proliferation of shell companies and the hiding away and laundering of money flows away from contemporary tax obligations, which are already weak and insignificant in the first place.
And one only has to look at all the money flows into the various organs of political machinery. And because it is how everything currently works, and because everyone is doing it, then whoever has the rhetorical acumen can slide by, equating spending money to the exercise of free speech say, while isolating "corruption" and "bribery" within neat little packages which can be handled and manipulated. I swear, if I hear someone say "quid pro quo" one more time...
There may have been a time when the handing back and forth of money - as a young convention - was frowned on by certain traditionalists, but here was a relatively new technology, and in a time of boom and growth, who is to say what kind of social relation is really forbidden until we reach the terminus of its regular operation, and judge it by its fruits.
It is those who are scrambling underneath the falling, flaming debris of a collapsing social order, who are desperate enough to make the needed changes and prohibitions en masse, that put the imprints into words that are only toyed with on a case by case basis today.
What collective actions are possible in a given period of time? I guess it depends on what is going on, and what everyone is doing.
