Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 March 20

= March 20 =

Is Palestine really a sovereign state now, on par with Israel?
I have been at odds with editors over at Talk:List of state leaders in 2016 over the sovereignty of Palestine. Originally, the entry for Palestine on the list of country leaders had been included directly underneath the Israel entry—mostly due to the Palestinian Authority being partially under the occupation of Israel. Other users took offense (after 7 years) and Palestine was eventually moved from being indented below the Israel entry to directly above the Pakistan entry (via ABC order) as a sovereign state in its own right. I feel a bit unsure about this. The article acts as if a two-state solution indeed has been ratified. AFAIK, I believe that the State of Palestine being considered a sovereign state on par with Israel is at best misleading and at worst a whitewash. Am I right in thinking that Palestine is not sovereign?--Neve–selbert 01:04, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid this "question" is highly misleading and takes the facts out of context. AusLondonder (talk) 04:35, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Palestine is a partially recognized state. It is not up to you decide what is misleading or whitewashing, you need reliable sources. Talk:List of state leaders in 2016 has many such sources.Spirit Ethanol (talk) 07:59, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * This is just Neve-selbert forum-shopping. After a brief edit war and RfC was started, where every single person who replied disagreed with him. He then tried to make it an AN/I issue, and now he is taking it here. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:24, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Please stop antagonising me. Look, I understand why you are frustrated with me. I did some soul-searching the previous night and I realised that I was too dismissive and arrogant for the most part. I apologise and I regret my behaviour deeply. I felt deeply frustrated and dare I say it angry with and I eventually lost my patience with him and hence his subsequent supporters. I should have been more considerate. Now, I am now slowly but steadily starting to accept the result. It took some time to take it in. You may struggle to believe this now, although I concede that Palestine should indeed be included separately from 2013 (not before, as the State of Palestine was merely artificial before then). Now, I just want some answers from uninvolved editors. I need to be fully enlightened for mental closure—like a five-year-old, if you will.--Neve–selbert 08:35, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I am not antagonizing you, and I'm not assuming bad faith. I'm just saying how it is. I realize that it is your frustrations that drive your behavior, but that does not change what that behavior is, and that it is not helping you or Wikipedia. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:50, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Somewhat technically sovereign, but also blockaded and barricaded. So not practically "on par". An illusion of statehood, you could say. Whether illusions mislead or lead depends wholly on which way you want to go. If most Wikipedians are for humming along, Wikipedia should reflect consensus. If you want to change the consensus, that's fine, just do it properly and before changing the mainspace. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:05, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 – 25 August 1632)
Do you think we can regard him as an early journalist? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jolyon Sykes (talk • contribs) 01:57, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * See Thomas Dekker (writer) for our article. He's listed as a "pamphleteer", which may not be identical with "journalist", although the two trades are similar.  History of British newspapers describes Defoe as "the first English journalist to achieve national importance" (and our article on Defoe describes him as both a journalist and a pamphleteer, maintaining the distinction). Tevildo (talk) 10:25, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

"Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" and "La Marseillaise"
Yesterday I found that the former anthem "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" sounds almost identical to French "La Marseillaise". A coincidence? Brandmeistertalk  14:51, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The guy who wrote the music was French . The Quixotic Potato (talk) 15:59, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * No, he was an Afrikaner. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:12, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I just figured that out too. But his last name is French. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 16:14, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * You beat me to it. Marthinus Lourens de Villiers (1885 - 1977) was born in Paarl in the Western Cape. His father was called Dirk and his mother was called Tina Smith, so not terribly French by any definition. BTW, I think "almost identical" might be overstating the case, although I agree that there's some similarity. Alansplodge (talk) 16:21, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * "De Villiers is a common French and Afrikaans surname". Alansplodge (talk) 16:24, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Looks like Tyla de Villiers can be removed from that list, right? The Quixotic Potato (talk) 16:27, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * "A former South African girl" :-) Now done. I've added Marthinus to the list in the hope that somebody might write an article, or I may end up doing it myself! Alansplodge (talk) 16:35, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

The similarity of the opening motive has been noted before. There isn't really much of a similarity throughout the rest of the melody beyond the first four bars though. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:48, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Curiously, the National anthem of Venezuela is also noted for its similarity to La Marseillaise.  Alansplodge (talk) 22:45, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Emanuel Bronner categories
I was wondering if anyone had ideas for categories to add to the Dr. Bronner article? I couldn't really find a category for fringe philosophers... Blythwood (talk) 14:57, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Has communism ever actually worked?
Has communism ever actually worked in its own principle, where the people are in control and every decision is made collectively, not by a select few? Every single instance of communism I have heard of has degenerated into its exact opposite, where an oligarchy of a select few individuals express absolute control over the masses and suppress all dissent. They even use the rhetoric "of the people" when they really mean "of the oligarchy of the select few", effectively making the people enemies of themselves. Has there ever been a real example of communism? J I P &#124; Talk 20:48, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I think it is safe to say that the withering away of the state has never been accomplished. --Trovatore (talk) 20:58, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * On a small scale, yes. The problem with it is that there is no economic incentive to work, and on a national scale you will get large groups who will take advantage of that, unless some other incentive to work is applied, such as repressive methods.  But, on a small scale, hopefully shame and/or the threat of being thrown out of the commune are enough incentive to get them to pull their own weight. StuRat (talk) 21:02, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * This says: The difference between working towards communism and "communism" itself is like the difference between building a house and living in a house. The Soviet Union, for example, never claimed to have achieved communism. In theory, what was taking place in the Soviet Union was an attempt to do the work needed to construct a communist society. Just as building a house is hard work, that has to be done in order to have a house to live in, the Stalinist system of the Soviet Union was seen as the hard work that was being done by everyone to build a communist system. It was never seen by any of the Communists as "communism" itself, any more than a construction foreman would think that the act of building a home is the same as lounging on the couch inside a home. In truth, most Communists today recognize that the Soviet Union was mostly just a large, corrupt, top down bureaucracy that didn't represent the ideals of Marxism or Communism. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:08, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I would be interesting to know what old Karl would have thought about the ways his words had been used to create totalitarian dictatorships. What's the German word for, "Oops"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:12, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Hoppla ein Gänseblümchen! clpo13(talk) 21:34, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I should think he would be much happier with the Nordic nations, which have gradually moved towards socialism, by raising taxes on the rich and providing more and more benefits to the poor, all without sacrificing democracy or their standard of living. StuRat (talk) 21:24, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The rich are poorer, the poor are richer and the standard of living stayed the same? How does that work? Seiðr? InedibleHulk (talk) 21:48, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The average standard of living actually went up, due to growth in the economy. The rich didn't necessarily get poorer, either, just got richer at a slower rate than they might have under a lower, flatter tax system. StuRat (talk) 21:53, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Basically right, Stu & a decent answer to the OP. But causes and effects are somewhat reversed (as usual in today's "economics"). For instance Sweden was a poor country that became a rich one, had the high growth, because of its "socialist" "communist" "welfare state", which in all likelihood made the rich get richer faster than otherwise. It's not that the wealth of the country & taxing the rich allowed it to "afford" "welfare". In 1932, Swedes decided that they were too poor to not have a welfare state - in particular to poor to not have full employment. Ernst Wigforss's pamphlet Har vi råd att arbeta? (Can we afford to work?) won the 1932 elections for the Social Democrats & Sweden's thriving economy for decades.John Z (talk) 02:57, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, yes, but how is it an answer to OP, it has absolutely nothing to do with communism whatsoever? --OpenFuture (talk) 08:50, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, everything has to do with everything else somehow. :-) In the 19th century Karl Marx, Nassau William Senior, Alexis de Tocqueville & others could agree that full employment, a right to work (provided by the state, who else?) was socialism, was communism. IMHO, the opponents of the right have usually seen & said this more clearly than the proponents on the left. In the 20th, it was a key Marxist transitional demand for instance in Leon Trotsky's 1938 Transitional Program - The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International. Especially before its decay, the Nordic model implemented this demand passably well.John Z (talk) 23:37, 22 March 2016 (UTC)


 * No it didn't. We never had full employment, and we definitely did not have the type of state-provided right to employment that you are talking about here. The Nordic Model is a capitalist welfare state. It is not socialist or communist. --OpenFuture (talk) 22:21, 23 March 2016 (UTC)


 * There's a continuum between capitalism, socialism, and communism. The Nordic model is between the first two. StuRat (talk) 22:26, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Uh, no. The Nordic model is a capitalist welfare state. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:57, 26 March 2016 (UTC)


 * If you burn a crappy goat to be blessed with a spiffier goat, you still gave up the old one. If you happen to find a great goat on the side of the road while walking the lemon, that'd be a pure gain (aside from the extra maintenance). Economic conditions aren't goats, but the same concept applies. Progress is sacrifice, when we're dealing with finity. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:08, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * If you think that's a stupid metaphor, try CNBC's. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:13, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * There's a dark side of socialism. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:53, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * They attribute those higher than average violence against women reports to "the proportion of women working outside the home, the country's alcohol culture, as well as whether women report incidents". I'd add that they tend to be soft on crime.  However, none of that seems directly related to socialism. StuRat (talk) 22:00, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Also, Sweden isn't socialist, and most definitely not communist. The Welfare state is not a socialist monopoly or even idea, and it's application in communist states are patchy at best. --OpenFuture (talk) 22:13, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Many communal gardens and community gardens work as intended, if you're not just talking countries. I'm sure many have been corrupted by the chrysantheum and cucumber cabals, as well, but they seem to do better at keeping it real than huger societies do. ""Spread too thin", maybe? InedibleHulk (talk) 21:19, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Communism works fine, as long as the community has less than two members. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 21:42, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * No, communism has never worked, and can't work, for any reasonable definition of "working". Why are you asking this here, Wikipedia is not a discussion forum...? --OpenFuture (talk) 22:13, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Not a discussion forum in theory. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:16, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. I do have to say that good pedagogical reliable sources on why communism can't work would be nice. I can explain it to people, but it takes time, it would be better to have something in my backpocket. So if somebody has sources like that, this discussion could turn useful. :-) --OpenFuture (talk) 22:24, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I like what the late Frank Zappa said: "The reason communism doesn't work is that people like to own stuff." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:30, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The boring answer (relative to the Mothers of Invention) is Wikipedia has something. Two things, actually, for what has sucked and what would suck. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:39, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * After discussing this with many people over many years, I know exactly how that would be received, starting with just claiming that communism isn't equivalent to Marxism and then simply refusing to discuss anything in that article. ;-) Criticisms of socialism is better though, although it of course tries to be accurate, unbiased and reliably sourced, as opposed to pedagogical. --OpenFuture (talk) 07:50, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Has any government actually worked? What does it take to be considered "working"? HighInBC 22:33, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Monarchies were around a lot longer than democracy has been, so I vote for them being the best so far. Plus no need for election ads! clpo13(talk) 22:35, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Dinosaurs ruled the world for hundreds of millions of years, before royalty or ermines, and they cannot be bought. I could see myself having a beer with this guy. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:58, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Some communists still think there was a Primitive communism that worked and can work again, maybe without making everyone "primitive" again. Jim.henderson (talk) 22:51, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I imagine it happens all the time in groups under 5 people. HighInBC 22:55, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The Kibbutz movement in Israel at its peak encompassed nearly 300 communities, the great majority each having hundreds of members plus their dependents (i.e. some communities with populations over 1,000). Before the privatization that became widespread in the late 1990s, some kibbutzim were in their fifth generation. A few are still entirely communalized, many converted communalized aspects to a "basket of services" e.g. health, education and welfare, for which members pay a flat fee. -- Deborahjay (talk) 08:17, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Communes and communism should be distinguished. That communes can work should not be confused with that communism can work. Communism is, per definition, something which must apply at least on a state level. If it isn't something that has a monopoly of violence, ie a state, it can't be called communism. "Sharing" is not enough to call it communism. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:47, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I think you are illustrating in what way, and why, these kinds of statements can be divisive. And only add to that still an other one: remove, disguise, cover the definition, and there's nothing anymore to forbid putting the thing into practice. --Askedonty (talk) 09:43, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * So you're saying something who's ultimate goal is the elimination of a state has to be at state level? Nil Einne (talk) 13:58, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * In communism, man exploits man. In capitalism, it's the other way round.  Widneymanor (talk) 10:00, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * To (try to) keep this fact based, the Indian state of Kerala is interesting. Kerala has the highest Human Development Index, literacy rate and life expectancy in India. The reasons for this are very debated, and there seem to be a number of factors (including remittances from Keralan expats), but the political situation in the state seems to have played a role. The Left Democratic Front (Kerala) (an alliance of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India, plus some minor parties) is one of the two main forces in the state, and has ruled it for the much of the independent era. Kerala is a parliamentary democracy rather than a true dictatorship of the proletariat or direct democracy however, and the state has sometimes been governed by the centre right United Democratic Front. Smurrayinchester 12:51, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Alternatively, if it's the direct democracy side that interests you, check out Switzerland. Although most Swiss would be pretty aggrieved to be called communist, the Landsgemeinde fits the idea of rule by the masses. Smurrayinchester 13:00, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * That a party has "communist" in its name is as relevant as a peoples democratic republic is democratic. ;-) Has the leadership of Kerala tried to implement communism? That's what is relevant. (The answer is "no"). --OpenFuture (talk) 13:03, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The stark difference between communism and communalism is that communalism is chosen, while communism is imposed. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Commune babies didn't ask to be raised by a village. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * No one asks to be born. But when they grow up, they can leave if they want to. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:22, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * So can ex-communists. Birth defectors doesn't have a nice ring to it, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:23, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * In the USSR they were free to go to the Gulag. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:30, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * And runaway kids are free to be taken behind the communal woodshed, once the cops bring them home and their father finds out. But if they want it enough, they'll all escape. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:34, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Runaway kids are not adults. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:12, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Not in the eyes of the state. But old enough to choose (and sometimes gain) independence. Teenagers particularly don't recognize your authority, man! Even toddlers are stubborn. I know one who insists she's legally married to a cat (and getting more convincing by the month). Only time will tell. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:57, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * American teenagers under 18 are not adults. And 18 or over, they can leave home if they want to. There's no communist government here telling them they can't. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:10, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I'd thought it was 16. If not, that's another two years of some sort of overlord limiting their freedom to make a living for themselves to mandatory farm work. Your government is certainly cool with that. Just like Communist governments are fine with making adults do their chores. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:07, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Now of course it's not the West's moral responsibility when the Chinese tap the resource which they happen to have as the most abundant, their people, in a way their rulers see fit. But keep this in mind when discussing the economic ineffectualness of the USSR. The Kerala thing is no surprise at all. More than anything, Marxism has been a program of social modernization and economic independence for 3rd World nations. That's why America squashed left-wing movements in nations she didn't want socially modernized and economically independent (Nasser, Fatah, etc) by always supporting those movements' traditionalist (right-wing) rivals. The USSR offered the world an alternative to globalization, a system where man does not exploit man, where added value attaches to making actual things rather than to branding and marketing them, a system that doesn't involve multinational (=American) corporations and international banks and mass movements of people, a modernization that doesn't demand assimilation to the global (((American))) monoculture, a globalization on workers' terms - which is why it was squashed. Asmrulz (talk) 16:43, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The USSR would live if it had her own China to make the chotchkes, her own Eastern Europe for cheap labor, her Arabia for oil etc. The USSR did pretty well for a country that was almost completely self-dependent and was involved, against its will, in an ideological war with America and her allies. Swedes, Germans, Americans, you do understand that what you have would not be sustainable without China, don't you? Especially your subsidies to the less productive members of your societies. That money is generated in the 3rd World.


 * The Soviet Union and China certainly did not support independence of 3rd world nations. The Soviet Union set up puppet states through Eastern Europe, and in other places, like Afghanistan, while China invaded and conquered Tibet.  Wherever challenged by the locals, both replied with violence. StuRat (talk) 17:18, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Cherrypicking can make anyone look bad. China supported Namibia, and supports Palestine. The USSR supported Angola and regular Russia supports Palestine. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:34, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I mean independence from the global capitalist system. Whether something is a "puppet state" is matter of attitude. I think most EU states are puppets of a vast globalist cabal. In any case, what they can and can't do politically seems to be severely constrained. And there is a huge pressure on Eastern European countries (mostly from Germany - again) which have not yet completely submitted to said cabal. As to Tibet, Tibet was a Lamaist feudal theocracy firmly stuck in pre-modernity, in which 1% lorded it over 99%, good riddance to Tibet (even though China's policy of messing with their demographics by deliberately settling Han Chinese there is kind of nasty) Asmrulz (talk) 18:07, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * You're the one doing the cherry picking, when confronted with the overwhelming majority of cases where the Soviet Union oppressed the natives. Of course, they did have to "play nice" in places they couldn't outright invade, as did China. StuRat (talk) 18:16, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't recall being confronted with any cases. What didn't work in the ones you were thinking of? InedibleHulk (talk) 19:02, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * All of Eastern Europe post WW2 (with the possible exception of Romania, which while a communist dictatorship, was somewhat independent of the Soviet Union) plus Tibet. That's a lot of cases.  There they had the lack of economic incentive of communism, combined with resentment of foreign control and local oppression. StuRat (talk)


 * At least you linked the Romania article. Anything on the last three being problems for the Soviets proper? InedibleHulk (talk) 19:20, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * This is drifting farther and farther from the Q, but look at Prague Spring and Soviet-Afghan War for some cases where the Soviet Union had some difficulty enforcing their will on their puppet states. StuRat (talk) 22:03, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I think we just have no idea what the other thinks "work" means. We're probably both wrong. Cheers! InedibleHulk (talk) 22:08, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The USSR had Eastern Europe for cheap labor, and Russia (and hence USSR) has vast amounts of oil and gas all by itself so it doesn't need the Middle East. And Marxism certainly does *not* have a program of social modernization and economic independence, in fact, Marxist theory depends on ultra-capitalism making workers poorer and more oppressed until they finally revolt, so pretty much everything that has happened in Kerala is teh direct opposition of communism. See Accelerationism for Marxists that actually read Marx. But please, don't let reality interfere with your ideology. --OpenFuture (talk) 17:55, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * "Some contemporary accelerationist philosophy takes as its starting point the Deleuzo-Guattarian theory of deterritorialisation..." Ah, but that's not Marxism. That's mental PoMo BS. Citation needed on the USSR actually profitting from Eastern Europe, other than material reparations from East Germany Asmrulz (talk) 18:14, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, very good, take one sentence mentioning something you disagree with and use that as an excuse not to understand. I'll turn you to the dark side yet. --OpenFuture (talk) 18:47, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * dafuqq? Asmrulz (talk) 19:36, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but I just find it hard to take this discussion seriously, as it's always a waste of time. --OpenFuture (talk) 21:17, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * There's a certain irony to asking whether collectivism works, on a project almost totally bent to the usage and design of the individual. Which, I should hastilly point out, does not make me opposed to the project; merely its ability to assess the merits of collectivism. At least we have can have our own showtrials though Fortuna  Imperatrix Mundi  20:43, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
 * What a strange thing to say. "Almost totally bent to the usage and design of the individual", how absurd. And why would not reality and reliable sources work to show the merits or problems of communism or collectivism (which although related are different things)? It works for most other things. The problem has always been, and will always be, to make people actually listen to the facts. But that goes for all kinds of dogma, nothing unique with communism there. Dogma is simply more attractive than truth. --OpenFuture (talk) 20:57, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thinking WP = a collective project, when it is driven by the vanity of of the individual = absurd :) Fortuna  Imperatrix Mundi  09:27, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Everything is driven by self-interest. With that definition there is no such thing as collective. Perhaps that's your point. It is certainly a valid standpoint. So is the standpoint that the individual doesn't exist. :-) --OpenFuture (talk) 09:44, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, duh. Ignorance is strength! Truth is scary! Three words long! InedibleHulk (talk) 01:33, 25 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The problem with answering the question is that one cannot answer it unless one defines the terms. "Communism" and "worked" can mean many things, and unless one defines precisely what particular meaning of "communism" (rather than that nebulous bugbear that Americans were taught to "hate" so xenophobic politicians could get elected in the middle 20th century) and what the criteria for "worked" are, it is rather impossible to answer the question.  There have been several states which self-identify as communist, such as the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and North Korea, which continue to exist and thrive even.  Unless one gets into the No true Scotsman problem, one could clearly define any state which maintains itself over a reasonably long period of time as "working".  But unless the OP states what their criteria are for what makes something "communist" and what parameters need to be met to be "working" it's a meaningless question.  -- Jayron 32 02:19, 25 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, although communism can have many definitions they all include a society with common ownership of the means of production, or the ideology of wanting to implement such a society. And there is no reasonable definition of "works" that can be applied to that definition.
 * What you are now claiming is that you could apply the definition "a government who claims to be communist" and "does not collapse" as definitions of these words. I don't think any communist would agree with the first, and no non-communist would agree with the second, especially considering that it would mean that Democratic Kampuchea "worked" for four years, while a quarter of it's population starved to death.
 * We might as well redefine "earth" and "flat" until the earth is flat. It would be pointless and intellectually dishonest exercise. --OpenFuture (talk) 05:04, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I never asserted or stated anything you have ascribed to me. I have said that the question cannot be meaningfully answered unless the terms are carefully defined.  I then gave examples where the lack of a careful definitions may lead the discussion astray.  You merely reinforced my point, which seems strange given the tone of your writing would indicate that you wished to disagree with me.  -- Jayron 32 05:16, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I didn't intend to say you yourself ascribed to those definitions. I'm just saying that the example of definitions you gave is nonsense. Definitions do not in this case need to be careful, just reasonable. Communism really is pretty well defined, and it is also so well-tested and well-studied that there really is no problem to answer the question, with a big and most definite "no, communism has never, will never and can never work". --OpenFuture (talk) 07:26, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
 * ..."I'm just saying that the example of definitions you gave is nonsense...." That's why I gave them as examples. To illustrate the point of problems of defining.  It's called the No True Scotsman problem, and if you read that article, which I already linked, you'd understand the core of the problem I was pointing out.  If we say "China has been a communist state for three quarters of a century and seems to be working out fine."  Then you get the response "Well, China is not a True Scotsman isn't a real communist state because..."  If we say "Cuba has been a communist state for 50 years and seems to be working out fine..." you get the response "Well, Cuba is not a True Scotsman is not really working because to be a successful state..."  The argument is predicated on moving the goalposts.  If they succeed as a state, well, it's not really communism, and if it's really communism, the results it produces can't be success.  That's because the argument starts axiomatically with "Communism is a failure" and then seeks to support the axiom by defining communism and/or success in such a way as to be self-servingly true.  -- Jayron 32 15:17, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I understand what you are saying. And I'm telling you that the definition of communism is well defined. We know what "communism" means. Obviously people can use the "No true Scotsman" fallacy anyway, but then they are wrong. You can also claim that the moon is made of cheese, but that is NOT a problem of defining "cheese". For any reasonable definition of "cheese" the moon is not made of cheese. If you claim that the moon is made of cheese, you are wrong.
 * For any reasonable definition of "communism" and "work", communism does not work. Of course you can request people to define their terms to make sure that you are on the same page, but that doesn't mean that the meaning of "communism" is purely a matter of opinion. There are dictionary definitions of the word, and they are strict enough to be meaningful.
 * Words have meanings. That's why there are dictionaries and encyclopedias. ;-) --OpenFuture (talk) 16:01, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
 * "Communism does not work" suggests it's inherently impossible for it to work. Many people would disagree with that.  But what can be safely said is "Communism has never yet been shown to work".  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:29, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, many people would disagree with that. And they would be incorrect. --OpenFuture (talk) 07:57, 26 March 2016 (UTC)