Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Social capitalism


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. While sources are presented, there seems to be agreement amongst those participating that they are not reliable secondary sources, or that they do not refer to the same concept as the one described in the article. Lankiveil (speak to me) 12:59, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Social capitalism
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unsourced original thought RadEconomics (talk) 06:25, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I have nominated this article for deletion because Social Capitalism does not appear to be a valid sociopolitical term and does not meet wikipedia's requirements for notability or for credible sources. Blog entries and opinion pieces in financial magazines are not valid sources. Given that "social capitalism" supposedly refers to an economic system, you would expect it to have origins in the social sciences. However, I couldn't find a single scholarly article or valid academic reference on the subject of "social capitalism".

The term "social capitalism" was used in opinion pieces by only a handful of people. In those cases, the term is clearly being used in reference to a capitalist economy that is regulated by the government and augmented by social programs aimed at keeping people out of poverty, with direct comparisons to European countries. The proper name for such a system is a Social Market Economy. A well-written article for Social Market Economies already exists.

So few people have used the term "social capitalism" that I don't think it justifies redirecting this article to the article for Social Market Economy. A few people coining a phrase does not warrant an encyclopedia entry.

Beyond the overlap with the term Social Market Economy, this article is unsourced original thought, which is inappropriate for wikipedia.
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:29, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:29, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. The article seems to be synthesis - as though somebody just googled for mentions of "Social capitalism" even though most results weren't actually treating it as a formal term. bobrayner (talk) 01:28, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. It may be a shitty article, but I didn't have to search hard to find entire books written on the subject. Curly Turkey (gobble) 01:31, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes you didn't look at those books hard at all. Even assuming the present content can be sourced based on those books (which is a BIG if), we'd still have the problem that those two books are wp:primary sources for the theories they advance (they aren't the kind of books that review the work of others) besides that fact that based on their blurbs they don't seem to agree much what "social capitalism" might be about. "The author of this book points the blame on the failure to politicise the significant issues of our time. Party politics is ideologically trapped in the past, and is unable to grasp the realities of the present. Worse still, political systems throughout the democratic world are probably incapable of addressing the real threats which confront us. In this major 3-volume work, Robert Corfe argues that we need to politicise those issues raised by our financial-industrial system, and for this purpose he creates a new political vocabulary, and identifies the actual realities of politico-economic life today." WHEREAS "Peter Flaschel and Sigrid Luchtenberg consider roads to a type of capitalism that could eventually be considered as 'social' in nature. The authors underpin their study with theory, empirical evidence, and policy from a positive as well as a normative perspective. As points of departure for their concept of social capitalism, the theoretical framework provides a synthesis of the work of Marx, Keynes, and Schumpeter on ruthless capitalism, regulated capitalism, and competitive socialism." Articles aren't written by string matching primary sources; that only works for wp:dabs. Someone not using his real name (talk) 23:52, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. Seems to be a poor quality WP:CFORK of social market economy. Bobrayner has deleted much of the WP:OR content after the AfD started, but I'm not convinced that what's left justifies an article. The article is presently based on one source that is a paper written by a law prof who seems to have little economics education, so he coins his own terms; the paper was published in a US law journal. WP:FRINGE applies here. The slightly more clear paper from the Int. J. of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation (wanna bet on the impact factor of this journal?) is making some pretty bold and simmulateneously wierd claims "A new economic paradigm has emerged over the last 30 years, mainly in a few European countries, especially the Nordic countries over the last ten years, some states within the USA and the People's Republic of China: social capitalism." Yeah, the US is like China now and both are like Norway in terms of socioeconomic system. Ok, it's a new theory that got published in some obscure journal, but it would need WP:SECONDARY coverage to consider including in Wikipedia. (Did I mention that this 2004 paper has the astounding number of 3 citations in GS?) Oh, and most of the content still has nothing to do with the sources cited. Someone not using his real name (talk) 22:59, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. Someone not using his real name (talk) 23:35, 1 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete Essentially a little-used academic neologism.  DGG ( talk ) 00:41, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I should add here that Robert Corfe's theories and books might justify a (biographical/bibliographical) article based on etc., but not this kind of sweeping theorizing article. I'm still rather skeptical that he passes WP:AUTHOR; despite the large number of books he wrote, I can't find much independent coverage of him or his works; that piece in The Guardian is two-paragraphs long, but good enough to give you a general idea as to what Corfe's voluminous tomes propose. Someone not using his real name (talk) 14:27, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.