I fear eliminating the descriptions would lead to even more problems, since words like "libertarian", "socialist" or "communist" don't mean the same depending of your cultural background. I would have answered the question differently if the descriptions were not given, and I don't think I'm the only one.

Or maybe, could we just ask for Political Compass score ? Would be a straight-forward question and easy to exploit later on, even if a bit caricatural. And if people don't want to take the full Political Compass test, they can still say roughly where they stand on the two axis.