Wikipedia:Leftism Collaboration of the Week

What is LEFTCOTW all about?
Every week a Leftism Collaboration of the Week will be picked using this page. The candidate for weekly collaboration would be a topic which either has no article or a very basic stub page that deals with a left-wing political party or party-like organization. The aim being to have a featured-standard article by the end of the week, from widespread cooperative editing.

The project aims to better Wikipedia content about the history and development of the leftwing movements, to give users a focus, an opportunity to collaboratively edit content and to give us all something to be proud of. Any registered wikipedia user can nominate an article and can vote for the nominated articles. Voting also indicates interest in contributing during the weekly collaboration cycle.

Every Sunday, the votes are tallied, and the winner will be promoted for a week to potential contributors.

Definition
In politics, Left and Right are relative concepts. A phenomenon that might seem revolutionary in one society might be conservative in a different cultural and historical context. In this project, Left is defined in an international contemporary context, thus clearly different from the concept of Center-Left. This stands in sharp contrast to how the term 'Left' is used in large parts of the Anglo-Saxon world.

From that starting point, this project deals with parties and movements to the left of Social Democracy.

Selecting the next Collaboration of the Week
The next winner will be selected on Sunday, October 9 (UTC).


 * Voting
 *  Users are allowed to vote only for those candidates that were nominated after they had registered. The votes of unregistered users will not be taken into consideration. 	 Register at the Create account / log in page in order to be eligible to vote for future candidates.
 * To enter your votes, simply edit the appropriate sections by just inserting a new line with "# ~" . This will add your username and a time stamp in a new numbered list item.
 * A vote will be taken to include a pledge that the voter will contribute to the article if it is selected.
 * Please add only support votes. Opposing votes will not affect the result, as the winner is simply the one with the most support votes (see Approval voting).
 * Tie-breakers
 * In case of a tie, voting will be extended for 24 hours. If there is still a tie, the candidate that was nominated first wins.
 * Nominations
 * New nominations can be made at any time and should be added at the end of this page. Please use the template at the bottom of this page.
 * If the page you are nominating already exists, please add to the top of its talk page. This expands to:
 * Considerations for nominations


 * Please only nominate articles which don't currently exist or are stubs. (Two paragraphs or less of information or fewer than 1,000 characters)
 * For non-stubs, submitting the article to Article improvement drive, pages needing attention, cleanup, peer review, or requests for expansion may be more appropriate.
 * Giving reasons as to why an article should become the COTW may assist others in casting their vote.
 * Can the wider community easily contribute to the article? Or is it something only a small number of people will know about?
 * Pruning
 * The nomination will be moved to /Removed if it has not received 4 votes after 7 days on the list, 8 votes after 14 days, 12 votes after 21 days, and so on. Essentially, an article needs to get 4 nominations a week until the Sunday on which it has the most votes.
 * Selection templates
 * Use at the top of the article selected for that week.
 * Use pagename at voter's talk page.

Freedom Socialist Party
Interesting feminist offshoot of SWP. Linda Averill, their candidate for Seattle City Council recently polled about 18% in an open (non-partisan) city-wide primary. That's a pretty high number for a Trotskyite in a U.S. election. Active in most major West Coast North American cities, as well as Greater New York and (oddly) Australia. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:10, 1 October 2005 (UTC)


 * 1) DJ Silverfish 17:59, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Cadriel 14:22, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Revolución (talk) 05:24, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Jhohenzollern 06:26, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 5) DuncanBCS 21:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC) (I've subscribed to their paper for years and have met some of their leaders, so happy to help)
 * 6) Rokafela 04:55, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 7) SpandX 18:39, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 8) Caponer 17:30, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Socialist church
Also known as the labour church movement, this was an interesting nineteenth century movement based in the UK which aimed to preach socialism through hymns and sermons. Warofdreams talk 09:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Left Refoundation
This is not a group, but a principle, in which fragmented groups agree on a basic program and merge, more-or-less. There are slightly different terms for the concept (ie "realignment") but we can cover that in the intro. Attempts to "refound" the US Left began shortly after the SPA/Left-wing split in 1919. So the page would reference the Farmer-Labor Party, the Progressive Party (United States), the SPA (specifically for the 1937 temporary merger with the Communist League/Workers Party (which would become the Socialist Workers Party (United States), the Cochranite Socialist Union, the NY Socialist campaign of 1956 (needs a page) and the New Communist Movement. Two current US groups currently or ostensibly engaged in the process are Solidarity (US) and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. DJ Silverfish 17:18, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Comments:
 * Question: Any reason for the capitalization of "Refoundation"? When I first saw that I thought of the Italian left party Partito della Rifondazione Comunista. Which also needs an article. - Jmabel | Talk 01:41, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Already has one. — Sesel wa  03:54, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * To wit, Communist Refoundation. Palmiro | Talk 14:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: not sure (on the basis of the examples cited) is this really a concept/phenomenon of a sufficiently defined kind suitable for treatment in an encyclopaedia, or simply part of the natural process of party formation and reformation. Are there citations available for its use as a theoretical tool either by the movements concerned or by academics working in the field? The examples cited seem very far apart chronologically to form part of one movement or development. Palmiro | Talk 15:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Free Workers' Union or Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union
Anarcho-syndicalist federation in Germany; part of tehe IWA.--Carabinieri 14:03, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Break-away group from the US Communist Party; founded in 1991. Group's website is at http://www.cc-ds.org/ --Voyager640 01:05, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) --Revolución (talk) 05:08, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Irish Republican Socialist Party
Breakway from the Official Republican Movement in Ireland, political wing of the Irish National Liberation Army. Formed in 1974, the website is wwww.irsm.org Escobar600ie 15:42, 19 December 2005 (UTC)


 * 1) Afonso Silva 12:27, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) KevinBaker 17:46, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Sesel 17:54, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 4) Jhohenzollern 03:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Portuguese Communist Party
I don't know if this is the right way to propose this thing, but this article is a FA candidate and it needs some copy editing, right now that is the only objection. If that is considered a LPM colaboration it would be great, otherwise ignore this. Thanks.
 * 1) Afonso Silva 13:29, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Jhohenzollern 03:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)