Talk:Left-wing politics/Archive 6

message: I've moderately altered the intro to try to reflect that fact the the term "left-wing" is an evolutionary one, has had different meanings and is still used as a very broad description of many different political ideas and positions.  I have also reorganised the order of the intro - it seemed to me counterintuitive to plunge into examples of what might be described as "left wing" before defining our terms a little - hence I have moved the paragrpah on Communism and Marxist philosophy further down.  I've also added an example of how the term has rather different applications in the Communist world, to demonstrate how the West-centric definition is not universal.--Corinthian 17:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good edit, Corinthian. Rick Norwood 18:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Intro Edit

message: I removed the following idealogys Democratic socialism, Left communism,Libertarian socialism and post left anarchism because they are branches of already stated policys —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Konulu (talk • contribs) 11 Feb 2006.
:That made no sense at all. --Revolución hablar ver 23:32, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I removed branches from the list of forms of left wing politics

message: Left-wing politics --> Leftism. --Revolución hablar ver 23:33, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For the average reader this rename would make little sense.  "Leftism" is jargonistic. Please leave the name alone.--Cberlet 23:40, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Concur w/ Cberlet. It also breaks symmetry, because the term "Rightism" barely exists. - Jmabel | Talk 05:11, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed move

message: Good edit, JMabel. Rick Norwood 14:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  leftists and commies 

message: While I am not sure that this discription is a particluarly brilliant one;
Jeffrey Berry (Tufts University) describes liberals as valuing equality over individual freedom, e.g. through welfare, and valuing individual freedom over social order, e.g. supporting abortion rights.
I don't see how it is any less relevant then Peter Singer's definition of the left. Unless, as the lack of Wikipedia entry suggests, Jeffrey Berry is not widly known. 
In general, I think that the the article would benifit from a few different quotes about what it means to be left-wing/leftist as this would help to show the disputes that surround the idea in a NPOV way.--JK the unwise 12:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Different views of "the left" 

message: The Peter Singer quote defines left wing ... "as being those who place minimizing suffering above other moral imperatives, such as tradition or rights." The paragraph above makes a point of the left being involved in civil rights... these two points seem to be contradicting. I think it would be good to note after his quote that some left-wing supporters do believe that rights are very important and other don't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.8.104 (talk • contribs) 9 May 2006 
: Peter Singer, one of whose main causes is animal rights, is hardly a mainstream leftist. This is certainly a left animal rights activist's take on what they draw from the left tradition, and may merit mention as such, but it would not be the view typical of those on the left. - Jmabel | Talk 16:52, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Pete Segar would say that the Civil Rights movement was not important because of some abstract right, but because Blacks suffered under segregation.  This was, in fact, one of the reasons given in the US Supreme Court decission (a blatant case of judicial activism) overturned the Jim Crow laws in the South. Rick Norwood 14:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Who is "Pete Segar". Does this mean to say "Peter Singer"? Or are you talking about someone else? - Jmabel | Talk 00:26, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I'm more than familiar with him, but… I assume that you understand tehat hte Peter Singer we are talking about is someone else entirely? - Jmabel | Talk 15:50, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rights?!? 

message: Left-wing politics should be about the term in its political science context. Left-wing politics is not a political ideology, but why does this article read as if it is? Intangible 23:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've put a disputed template on this article. The reason is given. Intangible 23:11, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Have done a lot of editing of "Left-wing issues" section. I hope the article is now slightly less disputable, although obviously lots more to do. Don't really understand Intangible's point about political science vs ideology though. --BobFromBrockley 11:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that we should avoid talking about "left-wing politics" as if being "left-wing" was a spesfic ideology rather then a famialy of historically linked movements grouped around ideologies with similar goals. However, there are moves with in some political science circles to create more clear definitions of left/right, because these moves remove some of the abiguity of the term they can overturn some of the original historical meanings. I would be against rewriting the article to reflect any new defition of "left-wing politics" rather then to reflect the rather messy historical meaning. I'm for clarity but against reduction.--JK the unwise 12:12, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  politics vs. ideology 

message: As it stands now, the bulk of this article consists of unrelated discussions of the relationship between the Left and various random issues - some of which are important, like war, and some of which are mostly irrelevant, like postmodernism. Certainly "the Left" includes a vast number of political thinkers and philosophers, so you could discuss the relationships between the Left and anything you like. However, I believe this article should concentrate on two specific kinds of issues:
# Things that all Leftists have in common.
# Major lines of disagreement between large ideologies described as Leftist.
That would involve removing a lot of superfluous material that is currently present in this article, so I would like to hear other editors' opinions before I go ahead with the restructuring. -- Nikodemos 16:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I said above I think that the post-modernism section is important, I am generally open however to the idea that the article could do with more focus.--JK the unwise 15:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps it would be best to move that section to the post-modernism article, though? -- Nikodemos 19:07, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree with Nikodemos, but it seems clear that the weight of opnion is to keep these sections, or at least the postmodernism one. --BobFromBrockley 15:38, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "The Left and ... " 

message: Wm has edited this article to replace all uses of big-C 'Communist' with small-c 'communist', on the grounds that it is not a proper noun. I passionately disagree with this. I think there is a clear distinction between small-c communism - a world without property and exploitation, or the belief in that world - and big-C Communism - associated with a party or state called Communist. An exact analogy would be liberal and Liberal (as a liberal helping of ice cream has nothing to do with the Liberal Party; lots of Liberal Parties do illiberal things), conservative and Conservative, labour and Labour, etc. Party names are proper nouns. Ideologies are not. The capital letter enables us to know which one is being used. This is set out, incidentally, in the second paragraph of the criticisms of communism page, altho the difference is not used consistently in many wikipedia articles. 
I propose editing this article to distinguish between instances of the proper noun and the ideology, but don't want to be seen as vandalising Wm's contribution. What do people think? --BobFromBrockley 15:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you.  It is an important distinction. Warofdreams talk 21:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, I'm going to go ahead and regularise the Cs. --BobFromBrockley 15:02, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is Communist a proper noun? 

message: 1. I have added a set of definitions to the Intro. 
2. I think the left-wing parties section is very lame. Needs fleshing out or removing.
3. Am unhappy with the Chinese Communism section. Is neo-left-wing a recognised phrase?
--BobFromBrockley 10:47, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: On this last: in the context of talking about China, neo-left is used. I don't know about "neo-left-wing". - Jmabel | Talk 15:51, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  State of the page 

message: An anon deleted the entire section on communism with the comment "by definition, communism is not totalitarian".  
Communism is an economic system characterized by collective ownership of property.  Totalitarianism is a system of government in which all power is vested in the government.  There are totalitarian communist states: the USSR under Stalin; totalitarian non-communist states: Italy under Mussolini; non-totalitarian communist states: the commune founded by Pythagoras in ancient Greece; and non-totalitarian non-communist states: England under Queen Elizabeth II.  
Rick Norwood 19:20, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, but the introduction of the Communism is section is hopelessly biased. It starts by naively wondering if Communism is part of the left, than goes on about Fascism and wonders if Fascism is to the right, and then includes a little reference to Popper to justify the fact that many or most people on the left reject communism as totalitarian? This is pure unencyclopedic ideology. Tazmaniacs 01:28, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Welcome to the world of political ideology articles on wikipedia.  In terms of the basic comment, I'm confused.  This is an article on left-wing politics.  Why would communism be deleted from this article because it is "by definition" not totalitarian?  I'm deeply confused.  At any rate, I would add that, in fact, Stalinism is, by definition one of the two defining models of totalitarianism, the other being Nazi Germany.  I think the concept of totalitarianism is a deeply flawed one, probably more misleading than useful.  But clearly the concept includes (at least one form of) communism. john k 02:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Hopelessly biased?  It seems very NPOV to me, explaining why and in what way Soviet Communism is considered left-wing and should be included in this page.  What about that is biased or ideological, and how would you change it?  -David Schaich 02:12, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually I left this message because of the NPOV tag I left, not because i support the anon's deletion of the whole part (although it's such non-sense that I wouldn't consider it vandalism, just the wrong way to proceed on Wikipedia). Communism should of course be included here, and several sources should be provided to uphold the marginal view that Communism does not belong to the left wing! If left & right are terms finding their origins in the French Revolution (left: those who accept it; right: counterrevolutionaries; see left-right politics), than doubtlessly the October Revolution marked a new dividing line and a "new deal" concerning left/right repartition. Mainly, it introduced a split in the left-wing, between those whom supported the Bolcheviks and the others, more reformists. That's a split, not an exclusion! And Communists would probably argue that, if somebody had been excluded from the left-wing, then it was the revisionists and not themselves! The debate on totalitarianism is another point, and the claim that several Communist states (if not all) were totalitarian (I agree with John K's remarks) doesn't have any relevance on the inclusion or not of Communism as full-part of the left-wing. Tazmaniacs 13:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nonsense (not to above comment, but to ones above it). Even Stalin did not claim to have reached communism, but socialism as a transitional state. It is disputed by others whether he was even a real socialist, but he certainly did not reach communism (see the communism article, communism is a classless, publicly owned means of production, and stateless society, the term communist state is a oxymoron, see that article). Under totilitarianism, the state, under a dictator, is all powerful, usder communism, it ultimatly ceases to exist. End of story. Communism is not totillitarian (even if some states ruled by Communist parties where). Since the section claims it is, the section is wrong and must be removed (it is incoherent, anyway, so if such a section is to be put back, it is better to start fresh and not from the old version). See it this way, under socalism/communism, the state is under workers control, under totilitarianism, it is under the control of a dictor. Does that help? 72.139.119.165 16:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh no, you are talking about the Marxist idea of "true communism."  I don't think there's any helping people who still believe such things, but I will make the attempt.  When us non-true-believers talk about "communism" we mean "Marxism-Leninism, plus utopian communist movements"  Got it? The idea that we can analyze a "true communism" which has never actually existed is absurd. john k 17:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever your views are, communism is a classless, publicly owned means of production, and stateless society. Marxist-Leninists are not the only ones who think that such a society will eventually form, anarchists and libertarian socialists also want to create such a society, through different means. Also, the Paris Commune and a few other things were moving toward such a socity, but it is true it (so far) did not occur on a large scale for a long time. However, under socalism/communism, the state is under workers control, under totilitarianism, it is under the control of a dictor. This proves communism is not totilitarian. 72.139.119.165 19:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The people above may be refering to planned economies. In that case, it is certianly true that you can have a totilitarian planned economy. For that, the artilce should use "planned economy" or "command economy" instead of "communism." 72.139.119.165 19:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How is communism not totalitarian? Have you ever seen a communist state which has not been totalitarian? See Ta Mok for example. Intangible 20:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, I spoke carelessly, there are other kinds of Communists than Marxist-Leinists.  That being said, pretty much every political party which has called itself "Communist" has been Marxist-Leninist, and it is the politics of such parties when they've gotten into power that is normally meant when one refers to Communist governments.  That Communist (party-led) regimes stated that they were only in the process of creating a socialist society, and that true (i.e. ideal, stateless) communism had not arrived yet is a quirk of Marxist-Leninist dogma, and doesn't change the general usage of "Communist" to mean "Marxist-Leninist" john k 00:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Note that this section is discussing specifically "the Communism of the former USSR (and its satellites) and of the People's Republic of China during and shortly after the time of Mao Zedong", as opposed to the theoretical stateless society.  This, I think, should take care of your objection.  -David Schaich 20:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay. I can accept the use of the word "communism" in the section. I was thinking of the marxist conception of communism, and not the other use, which refers to the soviet union and other related states. Howerver, even if used in this context, the states should not be described as "totilitarian" because that is POV. At any rate, the section is a mess (as Tazmaniacs pointed out) and needs to be rewritten. 72.139.119.165 12:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, just thinking about it, I realized that the non-Marxist-Leninist definition of Communism is "government by people who believe in the Marxist-Leninist definition of Communism..." Anyway, I can agree with your other points.  In particular, we should never use "totalitarian" as though it is an unproblematic concept - most scholars today do not find it to be a useful concept, and trying to apply it to, for instance, Honecker's East Germany or Brezhnev's Soviet Union is almost certainly inappropriate. john k 15:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have tried to work on this section to make it less of a mess. Still needs more work. The issue of defining communism versus Communism (i.e. Marx's conception of communism as a world without exploitation versus Marxist-Leninist idea of Communism as dictatorship of the proleteriat) still needs to be addressed. This is the issue (see earlier in the discussion) of communism without a capital letter versus Communism as a proper noun. --158.223.71.65 08:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  by definition, communism is not totilitarian  

message: In the intro, during the description of left-wing, it mentions 'liberalism.' However, the kind of liberalism to which it links is classical liberalism as it is known through most of the world outside of the US, not the sense in which the word 'liberal' is used in the states. It is not traditionally considered to be left-wing, and much of its positions have been co-opted by the libertarian/corporatist segments of the right-wing. I'm changing the link to American liberalism for now, but it's probably better to just leave it out altogether. JF Mephisto 11:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Liberalism 

message: I've added a small section called left and feminism where the "to be written" women's rights section was in left-wing issues. I've created a longer main article this links to. I'm planning to do something similar with the left and secularism. I'd suggest a similar approach be taken to the controversial postmodernism, Darwinism and maybe Communism sections - i.e. trim drastically but link to longer main articles. What do you all think? --BobFromBrockley 15:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good.  The communists were, of course, strong supporters of the idea that men and women were equal, and should be treated the same in the workplace.  And some American feminists, such as Helen Keller, were communists.  Pete Seager and Woodie Guthrie were leftist folk singers who were also strong feminists.  They tried to make the labor unions accept women's rights, but the rank and file didn't buy it. Rick Norwood 18:33, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Rick. Have added these points to the main article. --BobFromBrockley 12:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Left and feminism 

message: Yesterday, 69.182.196.127 added this sentence to the Spanish Civil War section:
"It is important to note that the in this war Communists loyal to Stalin eventually betrayed their allied anarchists and libertarian socialists, eventually leading to Franco's victory."
Rlitwin sensibly removed it, saying "hoa nellie! this needs discussion, and if it goes in, much more neutral wording"
Personally, I think the comment is true, but is completely POV in the wording. Also, it is not appropriate to the fact that the Civil War section is in a larger section about the left and war. It might, however, be valid to say something about this in the section on the left and Communism, but in a neutral tone, perhaps along the lines of the fact that Communists have worked with other left groups at some times (e.g. in Popular Front governments, such as in Republican Spain, but that etc. --BobFromBrockley 12:21, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spanish Civil War 

message: An anonymous editor (or editors) with similar IP numbers has persistently added links to the Socialist Party USA website and the wikipedia page on the organisation. These links number in the hundreds to any article on a social issue, such as black power, and re-adds the links repeatedly after they've been reverted by other editors. Numerous wikipedians have added warnings to these anon talk pages. I encourage other editors to be mindful of this "serial spammer" and consider whether these links (to a single US-specific organisation) belong in articles about global issues. The anon sometimes justifies additions to pages on subjects as diverse as pacifism, direct action, council communism, marxism, leninism, trotskyism, shachtmanism, sparticism, etc. by claiming that SPUSA contains members or "currents" that follow these traditions. They also add links to any labor issue ("labor caucus of SPUSA"), racism ("people of color caucus of SPUSA"), religious article ("SPUSA faith commission"), queer ("queer commission"), feminist etc etc.
They are usually in the "see also" and "external links section, but sometimes, the same editor removes content critical of the SPUSA, or adds links in the body of the article (e.g. this diff, this diff and this diff). Occasionally these links may be considered legitimate, but the vast majority are things like "the SPUSA cares about this issue too" (e.g. this diff). It's hard to tell if they are honestly trying to promote the group or turn people against it! The editor/s have used the the following IP addresses, among others:
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
*  
* 
* 
* 
ntennis 02:28, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SPUSA spammer 

message: Considering the amount of wrangling it has taken, I think the lead section has turned into a remarkably good taxonomy. I have one issue, and I'm not sure how best to address it. Right now we have:
The left claims to be dedicated to personal liberty, social justice and secularism. The left is often seen to include secularism, as in the United States, India, the Middle East, and in many Catholic countries, although religion and left-wing politics have at times been allied historically, such as in the U.S. civil rights movement, or in the cases of liberation theology and Christian socialism.
While liberation theology and Christian socialism are definitely religiously based movements—indeed, specifically Christian movements—and there was a strong current of religion (especially a Black Baptist and occasionally other Protestant leadership and constituency) in the U.S. civil rights movement, none of these movements, to my knowledge, ever questioned the separation of Church and State. Certainly the U.S. civil rights movement did not. They called on Christians to live up to their understanding of the morality of Jesus, but they had very little concern with piety. While there is a part of the left (especially the Marxist left and much of the anarchist left) that is radically secular, to the point of being anti-religious, most of the left is secularist only in the sense of opposing the imposition of religion. One could read this paragraph and come away with a very different impression. - Jmabel | Talk 18:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Secularism 

message: I see that the article as a whole has a tag saying that its factual accuracy is disputed. I think it is a bit underreferenced, but other than that it strikes me as essentially accurate. So two questions:
#Are there factual disputes outside of the one section (Left-wing politics#Communism and left-wing politics) that is separately tagged for a dispute over accuracy and NPOV? 
#In that one section, I certainly have my doubts about "Neo-left-wing politics is seen as being more appealing to students in mainland China today than liberalism" (which has been tagged for some time as needing citation), but what else exactly is in dispute either factually or on a POV basis?
Jmabel | Talk 18:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll remove the top banner untill some factual debates about sections other than Left-wing politics#Communism and left-wing politics are clearly stated.--JK the unwise 08:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: We now have "Centre-left, left of centre and left liberal refer to the left side of mainstream politics." I don't really know what to do with that request for citation. The sentence may deserve the qualification "in liberal democracies", but within that context it is simply a description of common usage. I'm not sure how you would cite for this: it's one of those things that is so obvious that it seems unlikely someone bothered stating it explicitly. It's like trying to find a citation for maple wood coming only from maple trees. - Jmabel | Talk 21:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added "in liberal democracies" and removed the citation needed marker.  I think it did need that qualification. Rlitwin 21:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factual accuracy? 

message: Does anyone feel able to create a stub on Tribunite (sub-set of the mid-20th century British Left)? The only sources I have are 
http://www.allwords.com/word-Tribunite.html 
(and other pages with identical text)
and this from Guardian
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1530801,00.html
"According to his biographer, Professor Bernard Crick, Orwell saw himself as a Tribunite socialist whose experiences in the Spanish civil war had left him sharply disillusioned with Soviet communism."
-- 201.50.123.251 13:05, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See Tribune (magazine). Ah, I see that in the wake of your comment, someone made Tribunite redirect to that. - Jmabel | Talk 03:54, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Requesting article "[[Tribunite]]"