Talk:Critique of political economy/Archive 1

Copyedit in progress
Following discussion at talk:Economics and elsewhere, are working to bring this article up to Wikipedia standards. Anyone who can help is very welcome to do so. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:04, 16 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I have given it another round of editing. Not being familiar with the topic, I may have mis-interpreted what was being said so have no concerns if anything I have done needs further work or even reversion. Right now, the biggest issue with the article is the lack of reliably sourced citations: I am particularly worried by the extent that fronesis.nu is cited as (a) it is not in English and (b) the domain .nu suggests wp:self-published. It really needs to be replaced. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:46, 16 September 2021 (UTC)


 * (Just adding that this has been adressed.


 * Regarding this I've previously stated that:

While that link is .nu because I assume you're talking about the magazine Fonesis, is actually not self published, but a relatively well known magazine that has been around for a long time where scholars publish work. They also publish in physical form, which is their primary thing, so I guess that's why the website is rather informal. )


 * Also: I've continued to improve the page as much as I've managed right now. But now I really have to sleep to participate in the labour simulation. I hope anyone who tries to make this page better is successful. Kind regards / Pauloroboto (talk) 22:27, 16 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I've now ordered some additional literature on the subject to be able to improve the page.

Pauloroboto (talk) 07:52, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

To do
Pauloroboto (talk) 08:55, 5 October 2021 (UTC) Pauloroboto (talk) 10:58, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Write ideal types of the most common forms of critique against political economy.
 * Find even more sources.
 * Find someone who is better than me regarding the deutsch.
 * Find time to go over it all again and really, really, make sure everything is 100%.
 * Low priority, but do something about the categories. It might be able to stay in economics, that's fair even though it's anti-economical. Socialism is also fair because of Marx. Politics seems highly questionable, since political should be interpreted as highlighting the fluent nature of this kind of social phenomena.
 * Expand the section on further reading — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pauloroboto (talk • contribs) 10:31, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
 * translate a summary of: Mortensen, Anders - Att göra "penningens genius till sin slaf". Om Carl Jonas Love Almqvists romantiska ekonomikritik
 * https://kontradikce.flu.cas.cz/upload/__issues/kontradikce-2-49.pdf

(Note to self: pst. 1993, 50-59,104,128-129,131,137.) Pauloroboto (talk) 13:22, 20 September 2021 (UTC) Pauloroboto (talk) 09:58, 17 September 2021 (UTC) Updated:Pauloroboto (talk) 15:29, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Excessive number of citations
Normal practice on Wikipedia is to have no more than one or two citations: if more are available, the most relevant is chosen. There are certainly cases of up to five citations but that is only done when the statement is controversial, for example when it is evident from talk page discussion that the consensus of academic sources is disputed or split, which does not arise in this case. At present, this article has far too many cases of excessive citation: choice is required (with preference given to English-language sources). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:00, 19 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you for pointing this out mr. Friedman. I've tried to correct this.


 * Also, someone had written regarding how they couldn't find certain pages in a linked pdf. I've since added a small notation in that source regarding how there is a mention of the page, on the pages, in the the document itself, which is referenced. And then there is one page which is in the .pdf file. E.g Page 3, can be something like page 54 if the .pdf file is a small part of a bigger book for example.


 * I hope this clears this up.


 * Someone also asked where they could find mentions of the sixties and seventies in the same document. This will be a whole lot easier if one takes into account what I've written above. Since the document seems to have faulty OCR.

Pauloroboto (talk) 09:44, 20 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I've made some light exceptions to the rule of two sources right now. I'm not happy about this, but this topic isn't very easy, and I really think the engaged reader should be given as much of a chance as possible to grasp the critique of political economy. The amount of time it takes to dig up sources on this topic isn't really helped by the fact that much of it has been buried in the pile of the "industrial marxian complex". And other critics of political economy is also hard to find due the sheer amount of time which has passed since this kind of critique was commonly understood. I really hope this doesn't cause any major inconvenience. Pauloroboto (talk) 10:38, 20 September 2021 (UTC)


 * There isn't any rule of two sources, what I meant was that it can make the article seem cluttered and editors tend to avoid it unless there are arguments that need to be defended. Or if it is conventional in a particular field. Or... Or... See also wp:break all rules!
 * Yes, that has resolved the page number problem. BTW, I've shortened the explanation a little and also added it to the next one ('page 12').
 * re the 60s/70s, the reason I wrote that was that I was trying to find and add the missing Swedish text to citation 6, the one translated as [His striving to develop a materialist ontology and a unitary theory ...]. I couldn't find the phrase sextiotalet och sjuttiotalet anywhere in the document. Quotes in citations should always give the original language text as well as the translation. If you don't have time to add it yourself, give me the first few words so I can find it and add it.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:48, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

From the bottom to the top of the page, page 12 "which is also" page 5. But yeah that's probably my mistake, I'll get to correcting it. Pauloroboto (talk) 10:53, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

(Note to self: pst. 1993, 50-59,104,128-129,131,137.)

I've made some effort to try to reduce cited claims to merely two sources. I'll continue to aim for this in the future. Pauloroboto (talk) 19:33, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * It is not a big deal, it just looks odd and maybe even a bit defensive. The challenge is to choose the most relevant of the ones you have, it is rarely easy! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:37, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Marxian or Marxist
In a few places, I changed "Marxian" to "Marxist" because it is not a common name in English. However I see that one of the cited books uses the word "Marxian". Is there a difference? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:38, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

You could probably do it the other way around, Marxist is unfortunately rather well established where the British used to rule, but it's increasingly loosing ground since entire states, at least in plural, isn't enforcing interpretations and dominating the discourse regarding Marx critique of political economy. And it's way more correct, since Marx was more of a German, than a French thinker. (See the pattern of Freudian, Jungian, etc.) Authors writing on this specific topic would probably generally opt for using marxian (at least if they were informed about the difference). However authors such as Liedman has even made somewhat of a statement of it, since, well I guess he seems to be one of us who values correctness. (And marx rejected the term marxists himself.) But then again he would probably also have rejected the phrase marxian too, but with slightly less disgust perhaps.

If one wants to go further towards the truth, one has to start somewhere.

Pauloroboto (talk) 21:01, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * As these words have two different meanings, it would be better to work out which word should be used in a given context. I have just started a page for marxology.Leutha (talk) 19:50, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

"positivistically influenced"?
I am not sure what this means? In the days of diamat "Positivist" was term used to denigrate Alexander Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov (the latter at least took his name form the positivist character in Turgenev's Father and Sons). Also, Otto Neurath – who did advocate a form of positivism, albeit at odds with subsequent interpretations of logical positivism should in my view be regarded as an Austromarxist. Perhaps a better term could be used here?Leutha (talk) 13:10, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Comments
"The axioms of the "isolated individual with perfect information and stable preferences", in what is proclaimed to be a social science, has lived on to our days in conventional (Neoclassical) economics."

This is a POV. Present it in terms of who expressed it, not simply what it is.

Also: "Marx pointed out the similarities of the economists and the theologians, in their similair unscientific view of social phenomena."

Should be written as "Marx described the view of economists and theologians on social phenomena as similarly unscientific"

These are individually easily addressed, but I'd caution the article author against this habit of using "x pointed out (opinion of x)" when conveying points of view.

Btw, the longer quotes from marx should really be integrated into the text. VineFynn (talk) 03:09, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with most of the above but not sure I would agree that the quotations from Marx be integrated as text in wikivoice. This is more something we need to do when quoting from a work still in copyright under the fair-use exemption. Perhaps they don't need to be quite so long?
 * Alternative words to the phrase 'pointed out' (which has the subtext 'well, obviously') include 'remarked', 'observed', 'declared' as well as the simple 'said' or 'wrote'. -John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:05, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Contemporary critique of political economy
I question the value of this new section. It begins by stating the opinion of two people who are not WP:notable (they don't have articles) and neither is the journal (Crisis and Critique) from which the citation is drawn. Quite honestly, if I saw this as the first section of any article, I would not bother to read further because I would anticipate that it could only be a WP:POV polemic. Is there any convincing reason to retain it? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:58, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The nature of the topic is polemical in one sense, the critics of political economy claim that economists are, to express myself less eloquently than usual, more or less "Full of shit". It's fine by me if you remove it/edit it beyond recognition or move it. Do whatever you think makes the article better, I don't own it, the people do, until Wikipedia somehow becomes commodified.

I would be very happy if you could find some more relevant examples. The translation issue is rather bad.

Thanks for your contribution. Moved it away for now since you thought that it was bad. Pauloroboto (talk) 22:40, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Pauloroboto (talk) 16:35, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

SPECIFICO
Hi! Could you perhaps try to explain in a bit more detail what you claim is wrong with the edit so that I can look into it? Thanks.

Pauloroboto (talk) 08:42, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I've given you links to the policies and guidelines that apply to the text I removed. Please read those and then review your edits to see why each part was removed. You should not be reinserting your text without explaining why you feel they are justified and policy-complaint here on the talk page. You should not be demanding that other editors, in one instance me, present extensive analysis of the problems with your edits. The WP:ONUS and WP:BURDEN are on the editor seeking to generate consensus for inclusion. Without such consensus the text must remain out of the articles. Please undo your recent re-re-insertion of your text and seek the approval or advice of other editors here on the talk page. You can also use WP:RSN WP:NPOVN and other site-wide pages to solicit comment from other editors. Again, please follow these methods and remove the text that I reverted until you gain consensus. SPECIFICO talk 19:46, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your extensive explanation.

I'll continue working with the article to make sure it gets even better. Thank you for helping me in this process.

Pauloroboto (talk) 15:35, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Not cool to remove the article improvement template. The are designed to solicit help from additional editors who will be notified. SPECIFICO talk 16:17, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi! : )

Did you read my edit summary?

I think that it sounds great that others can take a look at it, that way I don't have to guess what you deem POV. Since no motivation was provided I was under the impression that I was in my right to remove it after I took at look at it and changed what I thought could be improved.

By the way it would be great if you could tell me what it means that the article needs to be updated and how I could fix it.

Thank you for your efforts towards improving this article.

Pauloroboto (talk) 16:30, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

SPECIFICO pt.2
Hi again  SPECIFICO. I note that you have not been keen on responding on the talk page.

If you want to try to communicate, please confirm that I've understood what your issue is here.

This time you object to a series of edit which primarily includes more information regarding contemporary critique of political economy.


 * You claim that "These edits need to be presented for discussion on the talk page.".


 * You also claim that "They (These edits) make the written English less intelligible and take the article farther from NPOV.


 * You've also claimed that "Content needs to reflect the WP:WEIGHT of mainstream reliable sources on the subject of the page"

I claim:


 * That these do in fact not need to be presented for discussion on the talk page as far as I'm aware. See WP:BOLD

Perfectionism is hardly a good reason to revert. Please see WP:DOREVERT, WP:DONTREVERT, WP:BADREVERT as well as WP:PARTR. I'd hate to call into question if you really want to improve the article, but when you opt out of doing simple changes to improve the progress of the article, that kind of makes me wonder. Regarding NPOV: I have a hard time seeing what's not neutral, but I'm very happy to strive towards further objectivity.
 * My English is hardly perfect, but neither is the English of the average ******** citizen who can't seem to distinguish between their and they're.

I'd really agree that these sources would be inadequate if I was writing on the topic of what some person in sports is doing in her private life, but that isn't the case here, I use sources regarding the topic which I am writing about.
 * Regarding sources, It would be great if you could claim what you deem is wrong. I use mostly use academic sources, and sources from specialized magazines dealing with the topic at hand. The context here matters. See for example WP:RSCONTEXT and WP:BIASED.

Pauloroboto (talk) 17:45, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Move the article to Critique of political economy
Hello.

Marxian critique of political economy is a large section of the page, that's for sure. But where Ruskins critique of political economy is to be seen as Marxian, that is something I would like to have explained for me. We can for sure branch the article out if it expands to the degree that a main page is needed and other pages can have summaries on the page, but I hardly think we are there yet. This so called solution wasn't great in my opinion. Please respond and or revert the change.

Pauloroboto (talk) 14:14, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I've now moved the article since SPECIFICO refuses to engage in any discussion.

Sadly this has meant that some edits from another user got lost in the process, hopefully we can work to implement the edits.

Pauloroboto (talk) 14:25, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Please note that this page has been discussed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk#Critique_of_political_economy_-_apparently_needs_to_be_updated

Since I didn't receive any Ping I missed one response.

Pauloroboto (talk) 15:19, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Opinions wanted
There has been a lot of back and forth on this page. It would be great to get some input from some people who is not biased in regards to the topic. Thanks for any assistance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pauloroboto (talk • contribs) 14:33, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * "Critique of political economy" is the most well-known name for this key philosophical concept, and it is not exclusively a Marxist branch of thought, so SPECIFICO was wrong to move the page and certainly wrong to move it without discussion. I've also removed the maintenance tags because I am yet to see a coherent explanation of what the problem is, and without that the tags have no meaning and are not actionable. SPECIFICO's claim There's nothing subjective about the NPOV issue. It's straightforward. is quite the non-explanation, and there is little serious talk page engagement by them.Many of SPECIFICO's reverts are impossible to follow, such as this most recent one where they revert (among several other things) the explanation of why Baudrillard disagreed with Marx's critique of political economy with the edit summary "UNDUE, OR", neither of which seem to apply to the well-sourced quotation that was added. Rather, the restored text "Baudrillard views Marx critique of political economy as a failure" is quite emotionally loaded but has not as much factual content.However, I do take issue with Pauloroboto's addition of a History section here, as it is much more of an essay-like style than Wikipedia should be: we want summary style and don't like making connections that are not made explicit by other authors. This issue can be found too in their creation of a section that should be more succinctly called "Contemporary scholarship" (or similar), removed by SPECIFICO here. The parenthetical "In terms of intellectual history, this type of observation can be traced back to ..." is original research, as this is a comparison by Pauloroboto between Engels and Ankarloo that references only Engels' original text.Large additions or improvements to articles do not need talk page discussion beforehand; rather, SPECIFICO should have given detailed explanation upon removal or contestation of the removal. However, I agree that the major content should stay removed for now (per my explanations above). I would reinstate the Baudrillard quote, and if Pauloroboto is keen to continue their work then I would suggest that they make another attempt at something simple (say, summarising a couple of modern scholars writing explicitly on critique of political economy in a couple of sentences each) that doesn't fall afoul of the previous problems: everything you say has to be directly attributable to a reliable source. — Bilorv ( talk ) 00:03, 17 February 2022 (UTC)


 * In 2022, it is not a key philosophical concept in mainstream thinking nor in mainstream economics. It has more relevance to current academic sociology, but there is no question that it is a Marxist/Marxian viewpoint and our readers need to be informed of its orientation. Most of the links in this page go to pages with the Marxian infobox. The page move mitigates the ridiculously blatant POV Fork created by the title and some of the sloppy conflation of critique with critic in this article. SPECIFICO talk 01:47, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid these evidence-lacking assertions are just repetitions of claims you've made elsewhere, not a genuine engagement with my comments. Ruskin was not a Marxist (he was utopian). Moreover, Marxism is a mainstream branch in academia, covered in most philosophy and economics degrees. Over the course of my undergraduate degree at Oxford, which was in neither subject, I nonetheless knew personally at least three professors who were informed by Marxist economics. As one of the professors explained to me, the key difference between Marxist and classical economics is in whether you start off with the commodity (Marxism) or the individual (classical). And of course, much economics that is neither purely classical nor purely Marxist will borrow from one of these two approaches.I think the lead should mention the role that critique of political economy has in Marxism, as this is the single most influential branch of CoPE in history, but your claim seems to be that hosting an article at the most common name for a topic (which most learned readers should associate with Marxism themselves) is somehow disguising its contents.Additionally, Wikipedia aims to take a roughly time-independent view on topics, so something that was significant in the 18th century is still just as worthy a topic to write about as something significant in the 21st century. Articles on philosophies like Georgism that are long past their peak following do not have to justify their existence with some sort of commentary that they are no longer taken seriously in mainstream academia. Not that this is true of Marxism.It is disappointing that you are continuing to edit war without a serious rationale. — Bilorv ( talk ) 12:58, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Bilorv I will get back to this comment of yours and hope to address it soon enough. Pauloroboto (talk) 13:18, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your contribution Bilorv. I've made changes which I hope will improve the page, there is now a section on contemporary scholarship. Pauloroboto (talk) 11:55, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello Specifico. I am happy that we are engaging on the talk page once again. To keep it brief: I don't see anything strange in that there is links to pages that mentions Karl Marx on a page of a topic which Marx has contributed to.

I also think that this could be relevant to sociology, but it's also relevant to philosophers as well as heterodox economists. So I don't really see where you going with that point. Do you want to clarify it? Also see how I've added the tag sociology previously to cater to this demand of yours.

You claim that it is not a key concept in mainstream economics, which is fair enough because it's antithetical to what those who critique political economy view as narrow economic thinking. So that's no surprise. Regarding that you feel that it isn't a key concept in mainstream thinking, let's say that's the case. Does that mean that it is not noteworthy? No. Multiple philosophers that are widely recognized engage in this topic. In my opinion we can leave this and discuss how we improve the content.

If you think you can provide a clearer formulation so that people doesn't confuse those engaged in critique of political economy with people who e.g critique some income tax bracket I'd think it would be great if you could write that. Since you think it's so sloppy it would probably be really easy for you to do.

Please tell me if you feel that I have not interpreted your position correctly.

Thank you for your contribution. Pauloroboto (talk) 13:08, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * One point,, on your most recent changes: can we have a citation to the book and page number (in any edition) for the Fisher quote? — Bilorv ( talk ) 15:22, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Most certainly Bilorv I'll fix it ASAP. Pauloroboto (talk) 15:50, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

“See Talk page; comment won’t fit here ….” [in the edit-summary field”]
I altered several wordings in the hope of correctly guessing which words were mischosen, bcz of crazy Yank usages that mean something different from what a European’s logical first guess would suggest. Some Europeans, or Yanks, may have better insights than mine, as to what nuance of meaning the colleague *really* had in mind. —173.162.211.85 (talk) 01:06, 14 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Alright. Thank you for your edit. 173.162.211.85 Pauloroboto (talk) 16:13, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

SPECIFICO pt.3
Hi again SPECIFICO!

You've improved the language somewhat, thanks for that. You're now making me aware of this rule regarding that I have to spend time writing summaries. May you point me to where this rule is and how it applies? I don't have any disputes. I'm simply trying to improve articles on Wikipedia. All changes I make have the intention to improve. I think it would be great if what's published on the page is related to the topic and isn't misleading, like the current version. Please clarify what you feel is incomprehensible so that we can make further improvements.

Thank you for your time.

Pauloroboto (talk) 15:29, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi again SPECIFICO!

Due to your lack of response, I have continued working on some improvements to your edit in the meantime. If you feel that this version is outrageous in any way shape or form you may for sure reverse it as usual.

However I hope that this is not the case, since I have tried to improve the text to make it: a) correspond to the sourced material. b) have the language improvements you made as intact as possible.

I hope that you would want to to cooperate with me if you want to improve the language in the page further, something that is hopefully very likely since we both seem to value this topic.

And thank you again for your improvement of the language that you've already made to this page! Pauloroboto (talk) 12:18, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi again SPECIFICO, as you may easily understand, I can't get any consensus on the talk page, if you don't even use the talk page. Pauloroboto (talk) 22:39, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Bad introduction section
The introductions section asserts without any critical sense what the critics of economics believe, for instance that "the economy" is a recent cultural invention. This is a manifestly outrageous claim, since economics simply describes subsistence systems, and humans have always had a subsistence system. I am afraid this page needs to include some criticisms of itself in order to become more relevant.Gandalf 1892 (talk) 19:18, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
 * This page is some sort of neo-Marxist POV, but it is not clearly descibed as such. See the article and talk page histories.