Talk:Communist glossary

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Editorial notes
  • Could use a cleanup of some of the more loaded language.

Labor union terminology[edit]

I think labor union terminology should generally be excluded from this list. Labor unions are not inherently leftist. Bongolian (talk) 19:55, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Overall labor unions side with leftist political parties in liberal democracies such as the Workers' Social Democratic Party of Sweden, the Labour Parties in the UK and Norway, the Labor Party in Australia, the Brazilian Travalhistas and many other examples. While not inherently leftist, they are broadly part of left-wing politics.–Tuxer (talk) 21:32, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
it reads like a glossary of trade unionism than of the left wing to be honest AMassiveGay (talk) 21:37, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
While it' true that unions mostly lean left. There's this from Wikipedia ("In Britain, the perceived left-leaning nature of trade unions has resulted in the formation of a reactionary right-wing trade union called Solidarity which is supported by the far-right BNP. In Denmark, there are some newer apolitical "discount" unions who offer a very basic level of services, as opposed to the dominating Danish pattern of extensive services and organizing.") (Trade union § Structure and politicsWikipedia) In the US, the Teamsters were major political donors to both Reagan and Shrub, the Greater (International Brotherhood of Teamsters § Political donationsWikipedia). Bongolian (talk) 01:18, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
Labor rights are definitely a leftwing thing. It's only in recent years that the left has been hijacked by racial and sexual bullshit. CoryUsar (talk) 02:23, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
...what the fuck, dude? --Zoe Kirk (talk) 17:36, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Issue[edit]

May I inquire why my writing was removed? The person who removed my writing did not explain their reasoning behind that removal. I am willing to accept this if it was not a good revision, but I would like to understand why it was not good enough for the wiki. 188.63.179.180 (talk) 15:52, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

It was probably the removal of the “tankie” term, it is used by some communists. No excuse for just reverting without explanation though, I’ve restored your revision but kept that in. Christopher (talk) 16:00, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Duplicate of Draft:Tankie Glossary[edit]

This got moved from Draft:Left-wing glossary and appears to be another version of the tankie glossary, and not really about communism. I wanted to make a page specifically for terms used by the progressive left, such as Eat the Rich, 8645, and other terms people might not be familiar with. Not sure if "Left-wing glossary" or "Progressive glossary" would be a better name. Nature's Mockery (talk) 22:05, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Many of the terms in the Tankie glossary have been moved to this glossary. Remaining terms that are there are not well-cited. Bongolian (talk) 19:32, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Suggestions on terms to add to this page[edit]

  • Petty-bourgeois
  • Communist International (Third International, Fourth International, etc.)
  • Trotskyism, and any Trotskyite terms that have not already been included

Bongolian (talk) 19:32, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I concur--Jakester499 (talk) 02:39, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
Other words that are useful are new Soviet man, orgburo, central committee, party congress, mass line, administrative command economy, collective farming and agriculture, the peasantry as a class distinct from the Proletariat, year zero, Thermidorian, the chairman/general secretary/first secretary of the communist party, engineers of the human soul, socialist realism in both art and architecture, Stalinist architecture (as part of socialist realism), propaganda of the deed, communization, workers’ state, Great Leap Forward, Great Break, camera as an eye such as in Man with a Movie Camera versus Camera as a fist in battleship Potemkin, the different types of alienation Marx and Engels describe (there are several), anarchism-communism, synthesis anarchism, insurrectionary anarchism, national communism, red terror, white terror, the eventual abolition of the nuclear family (something Marxism advocates for but almost never puts into to motion), barracks communism, guerrilla warfare, socialism in one country, state capitalism, Mao’s definitions of the first, second and third world, re-education, bourgeois decadence (a.k.a. Homophobia), paramount leader of a communist country, leaderism, bonapartism, permanent revolution, Paris Commune, Marxist-Leninist Anti-Revisionism, Red-Brown-Green-Brown alliance, People’s democracy, People’s multiparty democracy, etc.--Jakester499 (talk) 11:07, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
Forgot agitprop, social imperialism, generalissimus, the secretariat (a synonym for the central committee), hammer and sickle, the plow, red flag (literally), the black flag, the red and black flag, the red or yellow star, bureaucratic collectivism, collective leadership of the party, decentralized economic planning, gift economy, communalism, communilization, New Economic Policy, Reformist Marxism, Centrist Marxism, Orthodox Marxism, Classical Marxism, Libertarian Marxism, Marxist analysis, the French Revolution, the October Revolution, Abolition of religion (other than the state sanctioned secular, civil, and political religion of Marxism), Maoist and Stalinist uniforms, Khrushchev’s ideas on cult of personality and its consequences, Marxist feminism, Freudo -Marxism, Perestroika and Glasnost, Gang of Four, Frankfurt School, Ernst Thälmann, socialist heraldry, rehabilitation of unpeople, Eurocommunism, forced Labour, Zek, Apparatchik, Nomenklatura, Kronstadt revolt, gulags, Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, Makhnovia, Anarchist Catalonia, Kurdish Rojajva, Zapitistas, Mao’s recognition of Pinochet’s government soon aster it was formed,Nixon meeting Mao, red-baiting, tragedy of commons, Brutalism, etc.--Jakester499 (talk) 11:35, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for the suggestions! I actually thought about some of these (especially the internationals) but never got around to adding them due to college recommencing.--April Chat? 22:37, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Words to add: Barracks communism, bonapartism, Thermidorian, ultra-leftism, rehabilitation, People’s democracy,[edit]

I apologize for my lack of sources, I will work on that later. On the other hand, this article is once again RationalWiki giving equal weight to pseudo academic beliefs such as the social pseudoscience of Marxism and Post Keynesianism (whereas mainstream Keynesianism hasn’t died so far, and is scientifically shown to work), pseudo history of believing Jesus was a myth, the dangerous pseudopsychology of Jungian “Analytical Psychology”. I have no problem with RationalWiki being biased in terms of opinion, but while Marxism is legitimate in some of academia it is pseudoscience in economics, plus edits should show what I believe is some of the inherent totalitarianism and for the lack of better term fascism in herent in communism, hence the term “red fascism”. Plus this article does mention its supposed to be unbiased, and anyone with a history book can see the numerous failures of communism with exception of so called “revisionist” communists, who are not historical revisionists but were moderate Marxists who simply want reform without terror.--Jakester499 (talk) 02:39, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Also apologize in advance for disagreeing with anyone on the site, I don’t like conflict but as I question communism more and more I begin to see the inherent evil of communism, as well as my quest to eliminate pseudoscience in all its forms, and Marxism is a pseudoscience in economics but not in historiography or sociology, and anthropology. Also essentially been reading r/neoliberal, and r/badeconomics.--Jakester499 (talk) 02:39, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
On identity politics, I consider myself left wing and heavily support left wing identity politics, but because I believe left wing identity politics can scientifically help the world along with certain elements of Marxism but to throw out capitalism entirely is at best throwing the baby out with bath water.--Jakester499 (talk) 02:39, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
@Jakester499, please add citations that confirm what you say in your additions on this page. I do not necessarily disagree with you, but I spent a good deal of time with AprilIsTrying in getting this page into shape. Thanks. Bongolian (talk) 02:57, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
It’s hard for me to write coherently and most of this stuff I gathered browsing the Internet all day as well just information I picked up in general and can’t always remember the source but do remember people ascertaining to this stuff. — Unsigned, by: Jakester499 / talk / contribs
Still, if you're gathering information on the internet, that's still a source to list, and better than no source. Also, if you're adding new terms, it's best to write what Marxists consider to be the definition first (https://www.marxists.org/ is an excellent source for this), then describe the reality afterwards if different. Bongolian (talk) 15:27, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
I worked with Bongolian for a long time on this page. It is just a glossary, listing communist parlance and theories. Every other page on the wiki is anti-communist. Having one page describing these terms neutrally does not render rationalwiki "pseudo-academic." If you want to criticize the ideology, understand the basics first. This page provides the basics.--April Chat? 16:47, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
I second Bongolian, by the way. The Marxist Internet Archive is a great resource.--April Chat? 16:49, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── I agree. IMO RW is pretty center-left when it comes to economics, even though most articles were written more than a decade ago and are very outdated and innacurate. GeeJayK (talk) 16:54, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Look...I do not want to be mean to you, Jake...but your edits are just..rambling. I do not mind what you think about the term "class traitor" and such... but your edit just goes on and on about how it is tantamount to nazism and part of the... "red-green-fascist" alliance???? You can criticize these concepts on literally any other page pertaining to communism.--April Chat?
.. Like.. "Of course communists don’t actually believe in “rights”, not just the right to private property but the right to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly although claim too, much like closet neo-nazis today, because they both don’t believe in liberalism, where all those concepts come from. In reality, both systems require anywhere from authoritarianism to outright totalitarianism to work, and they believe only in the rights of the working class and nobody else, and since the vanguard party knows the scientific truth of Marxism, what this really means is that the working class only has representation only in what the vanguard party says they want, because the working class hasn’t achieved enough class consciousness only a single Communist vanguard party has any real say, with working class occasionally being given a bone with soviets and the mass line, b--" this is one of the sections of the paragraphs you inserted in the bit about...national liberation....??????? How is that relevant?
I am sorry, but I had to remove most of your edits. You seemed to merely insert a stream of consciousness into the page. You can make criticisms, but at least keep them on topic. Bongolian referenced repression of the intelligentsia in the section about them and that stayed on the page because the critique was relevant to the topic (repression in Cambodia, China, and the USSR against the intelligentsia).--April Chat?
More words to add, engineers of the human soul, German ideology, haute bourgeoisie, grande bourgeoisie, moyenne bourgeoisie, slave society, dictatorship of the aristocracy , asiatic mode of production, propaganda of the deed, and every word right here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Marxist_and_communist_phraseology, bureaucratic collectivism, etc.--Jakester499 (talk) 22:20, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

National liberation[edit]

I cut the examples from the section. First, it specified "principled communists", and I believe that language is a loaded assertion even in the context of communism. Secondly, the amount of colonized peoples is probably too large to list, and having a large number of places listed would draw attention to the places that are not listed. In fact, not mentioning places that are controversial among self-prescribed communists, without mentioning why they are controversial, does make the page look noticeably biased. If you want to add back a couple of examples and explain them a bit more, that's fine, but for now having the definition should suffice. Plutocow (talk) 22:55, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Trotskyist tendencies[edit]

There are a lot of these little Trotskyist tendencies that quibble with one another, it can be pretty confusing to read some of their blogs or newspapers for this reason. They'll take the leader or former leader of some Trotskyist sect, and attach "-ist"/"-ism" to the end of his surname, then rail against them. I'm not sure they're self-identifying terms, although I know some people identify with Posadism (it's not just a meme, it's had a real following in Latin America especially during the Cold War). Anyway, considering the lists present at the feminist glossary, maybe such a thing could exist here explaining each. Although, I don't know whether there are really significant differences between them or not.

Here's a source with a partial list: "From victim to Shylock and oppressor: The new image of the Jew in the Trotskyist movement" (1991). Lists Healyism, Cliffism, Barnesism, Mandelism, and Grantism. Some more I think it is missing: Pabloism, and of course Posadism. The World Socialist Web Site is known for using this sort of terminology, calling people stuff like "Pabloites", but it's one of the largest Trotskyist news sites around which is probably the only reason it's one of the best known for it. Chillpilled (talk) 11:49, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Trots are a meme in wider leftist circles. That said, the Trots I've known tend to be rather well-read and more rational than MLs. Carthage (talk) 14:03, 8 October 2023 (UTC)