Talk:Communism
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[edit] Recent Edits
Making some changes in regards to Communism as originally defined by Marx and its relationship to contemporary "Communist States". The heading in regards to Beurocratic Collectivism should be cited to Orwell and the appropriate third camp Trotskyist sources, to whoever can find them.--P3A58NT86 03:38, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Working with the definition of communism
I know I'll probably be attacked as an apologist for this, but I think that the umbrella use of the term "communism" is unwarranted and quite frankly intellectually dishonest. While there were similarities to the ways in which the Chinese and USSR models of "communism" worked, there were key differences as well that made them fundamentally different. The same goes for Castroism and Guevarism. Additionally, as the article admits, these all differ from Marx. I have taken steps to try and differentiate them a bit and hopefully we can get some discussion out of this. Captain Swing (bringer of nachos) 17:39, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
- Agreed. Even if you wanted to use an umbrella term it wouldn't be relevant to communism and if anything we should move large aspects of the talk about Stalin and Lenin's policies into the Socialist section. People seem to fall for the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" fallacy where because it had a Communist Party they are Communist. In fact they called themselves socialist states, plenty of leaders stated they were following socialist ideals and when the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (bolsheviks) changed its name and first added in Communist to the name of the party they specifically stated it was because Communism was their final goal, not because Communism was what they were practising at the time. --Overhead (talk) 10:48, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
[edit] No true Scotsman link
The article briefly mentions Marx's insistence that communism would be unworkable in pre-capitalist societies (this is an absolutely essential plank of historical materialism) and notes that all attempts to establish communism (or to masquerade as doing so) have failed to meet this criteria. Yet, still accuses advocates as using the "No true Scotsman" stance. This is incorrect, as the notion of what it is to be communist is not being redefined in hindsight to exclude the despots, but was already defined well in advance.
An improvement might be to change this: "Advocates of Communism look at the failure of every attempt to implement Communism and claim "but those weren't real Communism!" <link to NTS> "
to this:
Advocates of Communism look at the failure of every attempt to implement Communism and argue that those societies were not really communist - either for immediate, local reasons or for the blanket reason that none of them have taken place in advanced industrial societies, which (for Marx, at least) would doom them to failure. — Unsigned, by: Teflon / talk / contribs
- I agree on the wording of the second one. It's a significant improvement on why people play the NTS card on that.
d hominem 11:44, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
[edit] A space for the BoN to make a case
Just what the header says. 67.239.50.209, please make the case for your edits here. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 22:46, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
Okay, I made an edit, that put in more information, omitted what's irrelevant and put in a neutral point of view. 67.239.50.209 (talk) 02:02, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
- As Brxbrx said on your talk page: we don't do neutral point of view. We are not Wikipedia; we are a community with a specific focus and perspective in favor of positions supported by science, reason and evidence. We support particular positions based on that perspective; we don't care about neutrality.
- Furthermore, what you cut isn't irrelevant. In particular, you removed the portion that read "Moreover during periods of more progressive and left-leaning governments in power, economic inequality decreased. This shattered the argument of communism, and former followers of Marx and Engels, such as Eduard Bernstein abandoned communism and founded social democracy." This is highly relevant as it demonstrates that communism has been superseded by more liberal forms of left-wing government. There is no reason to cut this passage.
- Lastly, you repeatedly duplicated most of the paragraph starting with "In the modern lexicon". Please, proofread your edits before you publish them. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 02:15, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
- And lose the formal, dry writing style. That's fine for Wikipedia but it's not what we do around here. Doctor Dark (talk) 02:17, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
[edit] A radical critique of "Communism"
Hi, as a Marxist leftist communist, I felt it was time for peoples' war. An all-out revolution against bourgeois society, which is started by posting a comment on a website. Popular Internet Front Unite!
Anyway with regard to the RW article I felt it was a very interesting read. The Wikipedia article about communism focuses on a rather dry intellectual history of the tendencies in communist thought, while Conservapedia mainly emphasizes the horrific systemic evil characterizing every entity ever calling itself communist. By contrast, the RationalWiki article seems most interested in discussing the material effects of communist ideology in history. Also it's a lot funnier (on purpose) than those other articles. I think there's a certain historical approach that's implicit in the RW treatment – in evaluating "Is communism a good idea?" we should see if it had good consequences so far. To the credit of RW authors, the article is very honest about what happened historically and does a decent job of mentioning left-wing counter-arguments to the more mainstream arguments that prevail in most of the article. Someone who wasn't previously very informed about communism probably would read this article and end up deciding communism wasn't such a great choice for countries that went that way, but I'm not criticizing that so much, it'd be weird for liberals & libertarians to advocate a fringe revisionist position.
But here's what I think about the article. I think it is a very good idea to catalogue the seriously awful moves done in the name of communism, including many crimes other than mass killings. But the best question to ask about a political philosophy is "Is this a good idea, compared to other philosophies?" To do that, it's valuable to consider the pros and cons of this position and its historical competitors. A comment on a wiki article is not a great place for this, but it'd be nice for the article to make a more serious effort at comparison versus liberal democracy and other positions. There's also the interesting question of whether communist theory necessarily had to lead to the USSR and PRC, the most notorious commie governments (though hardly the worst ones ever!) which committed the most needless killings. The article touches on this a little but it seems pretty important. The most serious issue seems to be that development of Marxist or Communist thought beyond the 1950s is given only lip service. If left-wing radicals are concerned about imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy (per bell hooks) then it seems very, very important for these radicals to be aware that Marxism only addresses capitalism, and Communism only means political and economic solutions to social problems. People who believe Communism will solve these problems (without further evolution on the part of communists) are out of their friggen minds.
In short this article is very good about sticking to real-life facts, but it could be made more useful by presenting an honest analysis of communism and capitalism (perhaps with metrics beyond "body count"), by asking why the bad things attributed to communist regimes happened and what historical alternatives existed, and by showing how contemporary communist thought is actually an increasingly relevant criticism of the current social order. It would be a little presumptuous to go making these changes left and right myself, but I look forward to your thoughts on the matter.
98.239.102.254 (talk) 05:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
- You're basically asking us to speculate, as far as I can tell. That doesn't seem like it would improve the article, but that is just my first impression. Nullahnung (talk) 07:12, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
- I think that may find some difficulty in redirecting the article in the way that you suggest. If I were you I'd do two things. First - sign up for an account. This will give you more privacy by hiding your IP and it will also be a sign that you are serious about being part of the community.
- Second - why not write an essay? Essays are a special part of RW where people whose views are significantly different from the mainstream can express their opinions without interference. You would create it like this - Essay:An honest analysis of communism and capitalism
- Nobody else could edit it but anybody who was interested would comment on the talk page.--Bob"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." 08:30, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
- Hi Bob, thanks for getting back to me. I have created an account and it is this one. The essay suggestion is an interesting idea. Obviously it's easier for me to suggest incremental changes to an existing article than to write a new one, but maybe I will give that a shot in the future. Nairu The Kid (talk) 09:06, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
- Cool Nairu. The thing is that as an avowed "Marxist leftist communist" it is possible some might regard you as being less than partial in terms of this article. (On the other hand - full marks for up-front disclosure!)
- Essays don't need to be long - in fact, people are more likely to read them if they are short. Anyway, other editors may have other ideas/responses. :-) --Bob"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." 09:30, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
- Interesting, thanks. Probably best to just acknowledge my feelings upfront. Started something at Essay:Left Skepticism. Nairu The Kid (talk) 10:02, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
- Hi Bob, thanks for getting back to me. I have created an account and it is this one. The essay suggestion is an interesting idea. Obviously it's easier for me to suggest incremental changes to an existing article than to write a new one, but maybe I will give that a shot in the future. Nairu The Kid (talk) 09:06, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
- Clickbot: those things aren't really mutually contradictory but I was obtusely kidding, in that I don't really identify as a doctrinaire communist or Marxist. I would call myself currently some manner of left radical. Nairu The Kid (talk) 12:41, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
[edit] Metaphors for Communism
I've been doing some thinking, and I've realized that potlucks are basically communism in a nutshell. Hear me out: In both, people donate what they can(food/possessions) to a centralized authority(the host/the government), which then redistributes it equally among the donors. If anybody else has examples of metaphors for communism or examples of mini-communism, then share them here.
[edit] Concerned Russian here
"Russia did go from laughable backwater to global superpower in one generation". Excuse me, but you can't call one of the Great Powers "laughable backwater". I should remind the author that Russian Empire was capable of developing such projects as Transsiberian railroad and the first ever multi-engine aircraft, which is kinda unexpected from 'backwater' countries, innit? Because it wasn't backwater. And if you mean Soviet Russia before Stalin, that doesn't make sense any way, because your point was communists being able to achive something sometimes, no matter the costs. But Russia became 'laughable' during the time of Lenin/Trotsky rule, and merely thanks to it. So even if communism was good with cleaning the mess, it was it's own mess. Deleted this horseshit. — Unsigned, by: 178.71.118.43 / talk / contribs
- Ok, since nobody else cared for 3 days I deleted it for you. Nullahnung (talk) 19:48, 14 September 2014 (UTC)