Talk:Left-wing politics/Archive 4

message: The section "Leftism, Pacifism and 'War on Terror'" seems to be degenerating into a very POV not-quite-rant. I'm busy elsewhere, but someone should take this on with NPOV in mind. -- Jmabel 11:31, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
# Several of us (Pyrop, Lacrimosus, myself, and even lately MathKnight) have suggested that much of this "Leftism, Pacifism and 'War on Terror'" material should be factored out elsewhere. As far as I'm concerned, we can keep it in this article for a while, since it is clearly still being very actively edited, but it's gotten big enough to be a main article of its own; also, some of it can probably be (in Pyrop's words) "refactored into other articles on the anti-'War on Terror' movement". I'd ultimately like to see this end up in a small number of articles elsewhere, with a maybe 3-5 paragraph summary here and some "see also" remarks. Does anyone have other ideas?
# There is still the matter of violence at certain European demonstrations against individuals who were visibly Jewish. This was basically MathKnight's issue. It looks real to me (and I'm coming from roughly the other end of the political spectrum). He'll get his documentation together, make additions to the article, and we'll go from there on exactly what it should say. I've left intact below the bulk of the material on this topic (also covered in full in the archived debate). Sincere apologies if I missed anything, feel free to re-add. 
#* This is now in the article; talk moved to [[Talk:Left-wing politics/Archive3 -- Jmabel 23:14, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)
# There is still the issue (mostly mine, discussed intermittently at archived) of expanding on, and differentiating, leftist attitudes toward Palestinian militant groups such Hamas (or even toward the Palestinian Authority) and attitudes toward al-Qaida.
# One point in particular of MathKnight's bears repeating here:
#:: It might as well be that in manners of registered members - ANSWER is the smallest, but in term of media volume - ANSWER are the biggest. Somehow, ANSWER is the best known anti-war movement, for better and worse. In the orginal "criticism" section that was a quote about that the extreme left becomes more and more prominant on the anti-war movement and media, with opinions that do not represent the support silent majority. However, the silent majority is rarely heard and many sees the anti-war movement in ANSWER's shape. MathKnight 14:28, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Leftism, Pacifism and "War on Terror"

message: The opening "definition" defines the term in terms of modern pigeonholes with modern labels. No wonder you're all screaming at each other! Fix the definition, and set it into its sequence of historical contexts, with a sequence of connotations. Then start pulling each other's hair! Wetman 21:08, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: A label defined by other labels

message: I find the new section Left-wing_politics#Left_and_anti-war_in_Europe something of a mess (although it has considerable worthwhile content). Since I just had a long go-round on POV with MathKnight, who wrote this new section, I'm probably not the person who should take first shot at editing this. Would someone else please have a pass at it, both from a copy-edit and a POV point of view? I'll lay off it for a few days. One comment: I really think this stretches the meaning of "hate speech" past the breaking point. -- Jmabel 21:38, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)
: So far, indeed - there is more representation to criticism over the European left, then of its advocate. More general background and organizations is needed. I'll try to work on it more. MathKnight 10:41, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You think that the party formed from a merger including the Social Democratic Party is centre right?  Among their policy proposals: they support "free education for all" and propose to abolish university tuition fees and set up a system of government grants for university students; they propose a substantial non-means tested increase in pensions; they propose an extra tax band for the highest earners to pay for this, with any surplus revenue being used to cut taxes on the lowest paid; they are in favour of full UK participation in the European Union and an early referendum on joining the euro, which they support; they want to abolish the House of Lords; they opposed participation in the Iraq War.  Does that sound like the centre-right? - Nat Krause 17:17, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Europe 

message: I wouldn't call the US Democratic Partly left-wing. Sure, it's on the left of the Republican Party, but compared to leftist parties in other countries its surely right-wing. I say we should remove it from the list or otherwise add a note to it. --Mixcoatl 20:34, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  US Democratic Party left-wing? 

message: The list for Canada looks a little ridiculous. Knowing (for example) that the New Democratic Party is a leftist party, it does not take the reader a long time to work out that the Alberta New Democratic Party is also leftist, and once that is done we certainly don't need to have the party listed for each province. I know they are technically separate parties, but that discussion can be left to another article. The whole thing gives Canada a party listing ten times as long as any other country.
While we are here, who says the Marijuana Party is leftist? They are a one-issue party, and their allies include libertarians 9arguably very right wing) and their opponents include most of the other left wing parties. DJ Clayworth 01:07, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See Talk:Right-wing_politics#Libertarians_are_right_wing.  01:17, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Canada

message: Just read through every thing on talk page and can't find any accusations of current serious NPOV problems. There are compaints that the page is Anglo-centric (with which I agree) but this dosn't seem to be a nutrality problem as such. So I am removing the ugly NPOV tag. Even if I am wroung I hope that we can clarify what is still disputed.--JK the unwise 14:03, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current NPOV status 

message: I think it might be of interest to comment on the post Soviet incorporation of large elements of former communists in Eastern Europe as well as the West into Green parties. Comments, thoughts, ideas .......... TDC 21:45, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
:Good idea, considering the transformation of a number of former Communist Parties in Eastern Europe, particularly the social democratic parties of Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, etc., their relative electoral success, and the contrast with the unreconstructed Communist Parties further east in the former Soviet Union. 172 22:14, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, this information should definitely be put somewhere . . . I'm just slightly concerned about having the page dominated by discussion about Greens, when they're not categorically and definitively left-wing in all instances. Lacrimosus 22:17, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Watermellons 

message: In what sense is the Marijuana Party of Canada on the left? I thought they were a single-issue party. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:41, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
:Just had a look at the website  and though they define themselves as a single issule party they allso say stuff like this "The Marijuana Party begins with the goal of legalizing marijuana, and has the potential to develop policies to legalize a revolution." . One gets the impresion they are vagely anarchist. They also claim to have no written constatution or democratic structure(?!). Hard to call, the revolution quote could be taken to mean cultural revolution as apose to pollitical revo. My call is they are lefties, though my intuition is that if we asked them they would deny that they can be catergorised in such fasion.--JK the unwise 09:47, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I made the mistake of removing it before reading the Talk page. There is a character, User:Michaelm, who is running around making changes willy-nilly to see if any of them will stick. He doesn't research, and he doesn't provide evidence. In the past, he has tried to describe the Marijuana Party of Canada as being social democratic, even though there is no indication that they are. As far as being leftist, I don't think that the case is strong. Their platform is based almost exclusively around marijuana issues: legalization, hemp, medical marijuana. Their website even says: "For now, the Marijuana Party is effectively a single issue protest party."  Either they are choosing to focus only on those issues in order to avoid alienating potential supporters on the right or left, or their attention spans are too short to think about bigger issues. Either way, I don't think that classifying them as leftist or rightist is useful. They are pro-pot, and other characterizations would divert attention from what the party is really about. Kevintoronto 17:08, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marijuana Party 

message: Someone keeps removing the following entry under UK: "British Labour Party (although many would dispute that the modern Labour party belongs to this category)". This seems to me to be one of several legitimate wordings that could be here; the total removal from the list of what has, for a century or so, been the major UK party of the left just because its leader of the moment is a centrist, seems to me totally wrongheaded. However, so far, I am the only person who has been restoring it, and the anonymous individual deleting it refuses to come to the talk page and engage in dialogue, despite suggestions in my edit summaries to do so. I am about to restore one last time. Adter that, I personally will not restore again for at least five days, but hope that someone else will, to make it clear that I am not alone in this. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:52, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
Sorry about that, I didn't notice it was the same person reediting it.  I know that historicaly the Labour party has been left-wing, however it has recently participated in a practise which is almost exclusively associated with the right, that is "privitisation" (or as they so lovingly call modenisation).  Tony Blair oversaw the constituency primaries so that only "new labour" candidates would win the primary, effectively purging most of the former old labour socialist members from the party cuacus.  So my argument isn't because their leader is a rightist, it is because their leader has turned the organization to the right.  Many of his fiscal policies closely reselmble those of Margaret Thatcher (in some cases there is merely different wording to revitilize similair legislation).  Now there are a few exceptions, a few "old labour" MPs still around, but they are a very weak force in the party, and don't even have enough votes to take down the government with the help of the opposition.--69.212.173.64 03:02, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Now there are a few exceptions, a few "old labour" MPs still around, but they are a very weak force in the party" Err, what? Where have you been the last few days? Labour's newly-slashed majority has just handed the balance of power in Parliament to some avowedly socialist Old Labour MPs, who if they were all to rebel at once could easily defeat the government (and can be expected to use their power to throw out key Blairite legislation, or to remove Blair himself, in the coming months). It's also worth remembering that the vast majority of the party's membership continue to hold, for the most part, some pretty left-wing views, and while the leadership's position may be well to the right of the membership (tolerated as long as it's brought them massive electoral success), it would be wrong to characterise this shift as the permanent departure of the Labour Party from the left. Your statements about privatisation are misleading. There have been privatisations since '97 (notably the air traffic control fiasco), but Labour's attitude towards privatisation has been more about accepting Margaret Thatcher's efforts in this department as a fait accompli (partly because after she'd finished with the country, there wasn't much left to sell off!). This is a rightward lurch to be sure, but not to the extent you make out. Private finance initiative and all the rest of it certainly displays more of a commitment to the market these days, but still, compare the Labour government with, for example, the US Democratic Party who appear to have made it onto this list, and many of their policies can be considered very left-wing in comparison. (Note that I am in no way a fan of New Labour and am not seeking to defend them). Finally, I can't help but notice some of your terminology: "Tony Blair oversaw the constituency primaries so that only "new labour" candidates would win the primary" Primaries? Caucus? Which country are you in? And anyway, the effect of last Thursday's election has been to get rid of dozens of loyal New Labour MPs because of their support for such things as the war in Iraq, leaving a greater concentration of hardcore left-wing rebels in the Parliamentary Labour Party. No, I don't think we should be removing Labour from this list just yet. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:34, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[The Labour Party (UK)]]