Talk:Socialist state/Archive 2

I think the rhetoric here - especially in the anti-Fred camp needs to be brought down an order of magnitude. Fred often makes controversial edits but he is not a vandal. Let me repeat Fred is not a vandal. Characterizing him as such has resulted in this edit war and IMO is a violation of the covenant of WikiLove; instead of slinging insults it would have been more useful for the group of people who didn't like Fred's paragraphs to explain, in some detail, why each of the paragraphs are not a good fit for this article and why they are POV.


 * If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck ... Tannin 00:15 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)

I've read the above discussion and the only clear message that I got from the anti-Fred crowd was that (I paraphrase) "this is a political science definition and thus the characteristics of a these states are not relevant" and that Fred's additions are (again I paraphrase) "nothing but POV propaganda that only concentrates on the negative aspects of Communist states".

But Wikipedia is not a Political Science publication. If we were then that would mean we had a POV toward the world view of political scientists. We are an encyclopedia which aims to be NPOV -- that means we must factually present all major sides of issues in a neutral mannor. As such we cannot write articles from a certain viewpoint and then exclude other viewpoints just because they come from a different discipline. That is what a textbook in a particular discipline would do; this is not the role of an encyclopedia article.

For example, "abortion" is a medical term and yet our article on abortion explains the world views of people who are both for and against allowing women access to this medical procedure. But a medical textbook would concentrate on the medical procedure itself and maybe devote a few sentences to the debate (and then only in terms of how protesters often prevent access and the potential for harm to doctors). Also "global warming" is a term from the atmospheric sciences and yet our article on global warming explains, again in some detail, points of view from camps outside of the atmospheric sciences. But a textbook on the atmospheric sciences would concentrate on explaining the process and the possible mechanisms by which it operates (note the POV of that sentence) with little text on the debate.

The first time I read Fred's paragraphs I honestly thought that they seemed appropriate for this article (of course they need some NPOVing). But then I re-read the paragraphs after reading the above debate and came to the conclusion that what Fred is writing about is not about "communist states" per se, but about "totalitarian states". I know this is often a confusing distinction because most "communist states" I can think of have been either toltalitarian/very authoritarian for at least a significant part of their existence. But I am not convinced that totalitarianism/authoritarianism is necessarily a defining characteristic of a "communist state". IMO all we can say is that the governmental structure of extant and extinct "communist states" lends itself to becoming totalitarian/authoritarian.

So I think that Fred's paragraphs, with some NPOVing, would be good fits in either totalitarianism or totalitarian state. --mav 20:44 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)


 * The primary issue here, Mav, is not the appropriateness of Fred's edit (yes, it's a POV rant, but that is a secondary issue), it is his persistent violation of intellectual homesty and courtesy to other contributors by marking major edits minor. Simply, this is unacceptable behaviour.


 * With that said, your totalitarianism or totalitarian state suggestion is a good one. However, there would need to be some heavy editing done on Fred's POV rant which, while it (quite correctly) lists a series of human rights violations in the Soviet Union, for example, entirely fails to mention the extraordinary economic development that took place there in the years (roughly) 1920 - 1960: the massive improvements in education, or the (very expensive) provision of basic health care to all. These undoubted achievements must stand beside the equally undoubted failures. To mention either one without the other is highly POV.


 * (I expect Cunc will be along shortly to correct my abuse of the language by using "POV" as an adjective. I plead guilty as charged.) Tannin


 * I am, perhaps, a pushover so when I see a major edit made by a long-time contributor marked as minor I assume that that editor, like me, has "Mark edits minor by default" and simply forgot to uncheck that box. So IMO the "stealth edit" issue is a red herring and is preventing us from a discussion of the relative merits of Fred's text and what should be done with it. --mav


 * Not when it is 12 times in a row, over a period of many hours, and he had been asked several times to desist. Let us not mince words here: it was naked dishonesty. An apology is called for. Tannin

As all of you know, I have problems with the phrase "communist state" as I have problems with the ways people use authoritarian and totalitarian state. I agree with Mav that this is not a political science journal and must acknowledge other views. But I also agree with JTDIRL and others that we must recognize academic views. My problem with JTDIRL and others has not been their committment to scholarship per se, but that they seem to think that these terms are like "calcium" and "hydrogen" that refer to real things in the world, and that all scientists agree about what the terms mean and how they are applied. I think people are divided over these terms -- both within and outside of the academy. My suggestion -- well, what I urge -- is to move away from an article "This is what X means" to "Different people use the term X.  Some people use it to mean A; this is because ...[give the context]).  Others use it to mean B; this is because [give contxt].  Still others use it to mean C; this is because [give context].  The point is to clearly identify whose definition it is, and in what context it was used/meaningful. Slrubenstein

Yes. I agree. Tannin


 * I disagree!
 * I think each article should be about a single concept, not about a single word. If the same word is used to describe dramatically different concepts, then we should disambiguate in some form. For example, this article might say "This article is about communist states as a form of government, as defined by political science - for information on other views of what the word communist means, see communism". Similarly on communism, we would say "The term communist state has a specific meaning withing political science as a form of government where party and state are strongly linked - see communnist state". Martin 23:28 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)


 * That is an extremely good suggestion, Martin and the best solution produced by far. EIREman.


 * Martin, that is not disagreeing! Or, to put it another way, I agree with you. Tannin

I am very glad to hear Mav's guidance, which as usual was cooperative in spirit and consensus-building. I disagree slightly in one way in so far as he misses the central fact about this article; it is definitionary, if you pardon the expression, by definition. Where you have an article on, say the office of Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) one would talk about the office, the method of selection and the role, with mention generally about who had the office, but with the main information on the people who held the office in articles on them. It would be seriously wrong to include in the article a big mention of Terry Keane, the mistress of one former taoiseach, Charles Haughey, the widespread allegations of to put it mildly financial irregularities about him that are currently being investigated by a judicial tribunal of inquiry, of current taoiseach's relationship with non-marital partner, Celia Larkin and his estranged wife, Miriam. They belong in articles on Haughey and Bertie Ahern, with only glancing mention if mention at all in the taoiseach article, simply to highlight how the allegations about Haughey damaged the office and how Ahern's sexual relationship indicates Ireland's attitude towards the sexual conduct of its leaders. But nothing more than that, because that alone would be relevant to the article. If in the face of constant insistance from everyone who looked at it, one person consistently (of minute by minute on occasion) deliberately reverted to a version of the article that focused on such detail when everyone said it should be elsewhere, refused point blank to listen to anyone, but simply reverted reverted reverted, calling major changes as minor, their behaviour would certainly be described in strong terms and in similar occasions in other wiki articles it has been described as POV vandalism.

This article is simply about a governmental system, no more and no less. It is not among communism and a debate on communism as a political system, which by definition belongs in articles on history, political science, or different articles on definitions, specificially something such a totalitarianism. The name of the article is clear. Communist state, ie the state structure in communist states, and in specific terms how the governmental-party relationship in the process of governance, and how that is a product of the concept of leadership within marxism-lenninism. Details of the politics and history of a system belongs in an article on such issues, not in an article that is not specifically on the topic, but or a narrow segment, namely the definition of a particular governmental issue. ÉÍREman 22:08 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)

Re Sirub's comments, if one is writing an article on a bicycle, you don't throw into it a discussion on everything to do with transport. You mention other forms of transport in terms of their relationship to bicycles and transport but don't have a lets mention everything approach. You link the article to related articles on cars, buses, pollution, transportation policy etc etc. But the article would be primarily on bicycles. We don't have a 'lets mention absolutely everything'' approach on a topic. This is a specific topic on a specific political science definition, something taught to billions of students worldwide. Academics do not have a 'Lets discuss everything anyone can think of relating to this topic', they deal with aspects, building blocks which when assembled together provide a broad analysis. We do that through linked articles, not throwing everything into the one pot so that individual elements of information are swamped and lost. ÉÍREman 22:08 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)


 * You making the same mistake again - this article should not only be from the point of view of political scientists (this is not something like a bicycle that is a definite thing and can be narrowly defined. This is a concept used to describe certain types of states. And different camps will have different ways to describe what they see as a "communist state". It is our job to, as SL points out, present what different major groups of people think constitutes a "communist state". Wikipedia is not a political science textbook and therefore articles on political science topics can not be limited to the definions used by political scientists. Per NPOV this is not a point that can really be seriously debated. BTW we should start to discuss the possibly of creating WikiTextbooks because I'm seeing a tendency of some people to write articles as if Wikipedia were a textbook (thus writing articles from an academic point of view so that they would be directly suitable for a certain classroom settings). However, that is just a hypothetical discussion at this point because I clearly stated that what Fred added here is not really about "communist states" but is about "totalitarian states". --mav

Hold on a moment, Mav. This article was created because people didn't know what the term communist state, a standard term taught to 'political science', 'politics', 'political economy', 'history', 'politics of government', 'world states', 'leadership' and other students worldwide. meant. Now you have a problem with. . . defining a term some people did not seem to understand, to enable them to understand it. And your problem is that, in defining the term, it doesn't include things that aren't part of the term. So in other words, because people do not understand a term, you shouldn't include a definition unless it make it so broad and meaningless that it no longer defines the term it was created to define. Tell me, when you are writing about something in biology, do you write about it or about anything sort of linked, in a kinda way, by anyone to it? And do you take exception to someone writing about a biological fact as a biological because, shudder the thought, it might be based on a biological definition? And no, there is NO DISAGREEMENT WHATSOEVER about what the term 'communist state' means. There is a dispute over the meaning of communism in a political sense, there are issues over political, ideological and other nomenclature, but NONE on the specific term used to define a particular system in which a marxist-lenninist communist party operates in a one-party system which blurs the meaning of state and party to produce a hybrid that is unique to such systems. That is ALL this article is about; a political system with a communist party one party system operating a hybrid governmental model. How communist is a communist party, is it pseudo-communist, psuedo-capitalist, self-proclaimed socialist of the French, Scandanavian, Italian, Portuguese, British, US, Indian, Turkish or South African understanding of the term, is not the issue because the model, as students of politics who have studied the issue know, the term 'communist state' is centred on the governmental structure of the 'state', hence its use in the term, NOT on the nature of 'communist' within that state. Already we have rows because wiki seems to have a 'problem' accepting that it should get terms to do with flaura and fauna. Now there is a problem using a term that, shock, horror, is based in political science. Does wiki have a problem with intellectualism? Does it want everything dumbed down to some sort of meaningless third rate mediocrity that offers nothing of any intellectual depth, anything that might enable them to learn? Maybe we should just abandon any attempt at standards altogether and just fill wiki with more stupid lists about nothing of any importance. ÉÍREman 23:02 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)


 * Why are you being so argumentative? I was making a general point that Wikipedia is not a textbook and therefore there is no central POV by which we write articles other than that (and you do seem to be arguing for an academic point of view where the only definition that counts comes from experts in the field from which the term is derived). I agree that Fred's material isn't appropriate here because it isn't really about "communist states" but is about "totalitarian states". What I was taking you to task for was your reason why you thought that material isn't appropriate.


 * It is perfectly fine to state that "political scientists say this term says so and so while others view it to mean this and that" (if there are significant alternative viewpoints). That is informative and that is in-line with NPOV. Oh and evolution is a biological term yet there is a great deal of material on this subject in Wikipedia that is not part of the biological definition and in fact argues against this definition. Oh, and most terms in biology, as in most subjects, really only have one definition that is of encyclopedic interest. All I'm saying is that when there are significant alternate viewpoints outside of the discipline the term is derived from, then we should present those viewpoints fairly and in a neutral mannor.


 * I really don't know if that is the case here, but if there were then we must include those viewpoints no matter how anathema they may be to the political science definition. Have you received my email or should I just paste my email message on your talk page? --mav 03:15 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)

--- Do you know the damn difference between opinion and proper content for an encyclopedia? We don't need Fred's personal theories (especially from a user who created a misspelled link to politbureau) in an article not even pertaining to those theories. 172

Martin, you misunderstand me (although I do think, like Tannin, we agree) -- the issue is not "the word," it is, as you say, "the concept." But everything I wrote still applies. When we present a concept, we need to be clear about who uses that concept and how; if different people use it in different ways, or if there is debate about its use and meaning, the article must discuss that.

As for JTDIRL, I think you may be disagreeing with me, but am not sure because sometimes when you argue against what I write it sounds like you are really arguing against Fred or others. Yes, an article on "The Presidencey" should be about the office, not about Bush; and article on "the communist state" should be about a kind of state, not about particular governments or parties. I also agree with you that we should have linked articles to related concepts or topics, and not include everything in the article. BUT I do disagree with you when you write "there is NO DISAGREEMENT WHATSOEVER about what the term 'communist state' means," -- I'd like you to prove that! As Mav wisely points out, the analogy between "the communist state" and "bicycle" is very weak. Well, let me put it another way -- you may indeed believe that "communist state" has the same material reality as "bicycle" and is as easy to describe or define. But many academics do not. Any debate among politicians and scholars over what a "communist state" is, and over how the term is applied, ought to be in the article. Slrubenstein

Sorry to neglect this article (been busy real life). Regarding marking reverts as a minor edit: That seems to be a good stick to beat me with. The real question is however what are the general characteristics of the communist state as revealed during the 20th century? One may hope future communist states can somehow avoid the various nightmarish qualities previous and existing states exhibit, but that is quite beyond the scope of an encyclopedia. As to the points made about economic development during the 30s and universal health care in the old Soviet Union, good points. Indeed they should be included in the article as should the efforts made regarding the status of women (this was especially admirable in the Muslim sections of the Soviet Union.) As to misspelling politbureau.... Fred Bauder 17:46 Apr 30, 2003 (UTC)

Might correct misspelling of Czechoslovakia next edit. I have made a more or less complete list of the communist states and included them in the article and put a section at the bottom of the page for such valid generalizations as might be be made about the communist state as we have known it. (other than those which are definitional) Fred Bauder 18:18 Apr 30, 2003 (UTC)