Talk:Marxism/Archive 4

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4

Wikipedia is not the Fourth International under Leon Trotsky


Bloody legacy

During the International Conference “Legal Settlement of Communist Crimes”, which took place in the European Parliament on the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, was made the comparison of Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky with Hermann Göring. According to The Black Book of Communism, communists have killed nearly 100 millions people in different countries.

To be part of the article. >><< Jaccy Jaydy (talk) 00:35, 10 January 2016 (UTC).

It's not clear to me how this is sufficiently notable, in the context of an ideology that had such an enormous influence on 20th century politics. While you are at it, perhaps you could produce figures for how many people Capitalism killed in the same period. William Avery (talk) 14:45, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I can explain. Article tells about Marxism (not about capitalism). Iron fact: if Marxism does not exist in the nature, does not exist this number of these victims.

Influence ..(the most terrible influence in the world history). See above. If Lenin was stupid, even in this case - see above. Marxism - core for the implementation (even if interpritation by stupid communists). We can place this topic in the biography of Marx. But I think that Marxists not will be happy of such option. I try use "soft version", nobody uses the word "nazism". Nobody compares number of victims (by the way). Only facts: was comparison (related to Marxism), mentioned terrible number (related to Marxism). Marxism is not only Marx (Engels also). They together = Marxism. Lenin and Trotsky never were stupid people (any researcher knows better than I). They could understand Marx on highest level. But nobody displays this causal relationship. Jaccy Jaydy (talk) 19:31, 10 January 2016 (UTC).

There's not much else to see other than someone's bourgeois agenda being wrong on the internet. It should be no surprise that material that looks and sounds like bad propaganda has no place in an encyclopedia. →Σσς. (Sigma) 22:51, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  • You write something very strange (wrong). Gorin1245 (talk) 01:53, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Users Gorin1245 and Jaccy_Jaydy have been blocked. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Jaccy_Jaydy William Avery (talk) 13:55, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Communism and death toll

Since around 100 million people died around the world because of communism, we should write about it. It's important to respect the people who died and never forget them. When an ideology kills so many souls, more than any other man made or natural catastrophe, we can't just brush it under to rug. It would be unfeeling and dishonest. The marxists and communists here should really go into themselves and be ashamed. 80.212.44.121 (talk) 02:37, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

This issue has already been discussed in the Talk page section above. There's an extensive article on subject you describe at Mass killings under Communist regimes. At the start of this article it says "For the political ideology commonly associated with states governed by Communist parties, see Marxism–Leninism." I think you are probably on the wrong page. Polly Tunnel (talk) 15:39, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

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Section 'Relation with industrial revolution' is subpar

I don't understand the purpose of the section named above. It also has several grammar problems. I started trying to correct them but after a while I switched to thinking that the whole section should be removed, as it does not really help understand anything, and it does not bring any new thought or knowledge to the article. How does one propose removing it? Cristianbravolillo (talk) 21:14, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Hilarious date allergy

The first paragraph of the lead ends with the following sentence:

It originates from the mid-to-late 19th century works of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Fasten your seat-belts, that's about it for pertinent dates until midway through this long article.

No dates in remainder of lead or sidebar. The very long section "Concepts" contains a date in the leading epigram (quote from Marx dated 1858) and a date in a sidebar (Lenin 1913). No dates in text.

Small section "Relation with industrial revolution" contains no dates in text. Sidebar quotes Castro, 2009.

Small section "Revolution, socialism, and communism" contains two dates, all related to the Russian revolution, none particular to Marxism.

Finally, in a medium section on "Classical Marxism" we reach this fabulous sentence:

As such, Classical Marxism distinguishes between "Marxism" as broadly perceived, and "what Marx believed;" thus, in 1883, Marx wrote to the French labour leader Jules Guesde and to Paul Lafargue (Marx's son-in-law) – both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles – accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of denying the value of reformist struggle; from Marx's letter derives the paraphrase: "If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist."

Wow! A folded semicolon (most usage guides are against this), followed by an abstract elaboration (complete with parenthetical) — plus an appositive phrase — the elaboration now descending into Orwellian, ideological code language, but let's not stop at "reformist struggle"; let's instead have another semicolon to permit some Talmudic Yoda to enter the conversion ("paraphrase derived from Marx's letter is"): if all that is below a Fog index of 1000, I'll eat my hat. But at least we can take home '1883'.

This puts me in mind of David Byrne's book How Music Works.

From How does the art of spaces influence musical composition?:

As he points out, certain types of music seem to work better for specific places. Rap and hip-hop have their best moments in car sound systems; punk was at its best in asymmetrical and small places like the CBGB, and arias inside gothic cathedrals —places where a jazz concert, for instance, with its intricate melodies and sharp pitch changes, would not sound to its full potential. Today we can listen to each layer of sound through our iPod's headphones, and Byrne deduces that this influences the type of music we make.

Is it not possible to explain Marxism without introducing so many subtly balanced plates and so few actual dates? — MaxEnt 19:11, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Method or worldview?

Is Marxism a method or a worldview qua a perspective? It can't be both simulatenously (in the exact same term and article) It seems to me that the article is incoherent in this aspect. 78.69.217.113 (talk) 15:28, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Search image

When this article appears in Bing search it's a pornographic image of a penis and vagina. Not really sure where it's coming from or how to fix that.174.125.71.105 (talk) 19:45, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Isn't this intro term wrong?!?

In the intro, one sentence states (emphasis & double emphasis added):

According to Marxist perspective, class conflict within capitalism arises due to intensifying contradictions between the highly productive mechanized and socialized production performed by the proletariat, and the private ownership and appropriation of the surplus product (profit) by a small minority of the population who are private owners called the bourgeoisie.

So, wouldn't the use of "socialized production" here mean that the production (that is done by the proletariat but owned by the bourgeoisie) is socialized and therefore there would be no conflict? I thought socialized production was the solution to the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie over the surplus of (capitalist?) production, but I guess I could qualify as coming from bourgeoisie, so maybe I'm missing something.

However, if I'm right that this term is incorrect, then I caught this error by idly skimming the intro and THAT makes me nervous about the state of the rest of the article.

Sorry all I can do is point this out, but my real-life limitations won't let me do anything more. Thanks in advance, Geekdiva (talk) 18:18, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

No section on Dialectical Materialism?

How come there is no section on Dialectical Materialism, the philosophical basis of Marxism !?

[Undated, malformed new section saved without signature. Original: 116:25, May 30, 2016‎ User:94.156.18.174 (talk). Reformatted & wikilink added to allow discussion and eventual archiving by Geekdiva (talk) 20:09, 16 August 2017 (UTC).]

No mention of Dictatorship of the proletariat

Why is there no mention of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat in the whole article? Griii2 (talk) 10:30, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Academic Marxism ?

The section says about archeology only, so the name should be Marxist archelogy.Xx236 (talk) 07:02, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

I just fixed that adding marxist sociology and economics.--Eduen (talk) 07:55, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

History section need more content on the theorectical evolution of marxism

It is a good thing that it has a lot of content on marxism and general world politics but marxism is also a theory behind that present both in political and academic debates. --Eduen (talk) 07:57, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

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Frames?

"analysis that frames capitalism through a paradigm of exploitation" is not NPOV, "frames" is derogative. (1) analysis of capitalisme isn't marxism in general as it leaves out "historic materialism" as its epimistological foundation. (2) It is an ecomic analysis, a still valuable though not perfect one. It is no more a "frame" then any other serious study of (capitalist)economics. Victor50 (talk) 13:29, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Khmer Rouge

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-06-27/news/9706270087_1_pol-pot-khmer-rouge-cambodian-leader French Marxism And Young Cambodians Were A Deadly Mix Xx236 (talk) 10:49, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

History and Leninism Specifically

The History section of this article is essentially a footnotes version of leninist states, but it doesn't give any indication that no serious marxist thinker would consider these to be an "example of marxism", especially when leninism dictates policies that are flagantly to counter to Marx's writings such as property, privatisation and commodity production, and doesn't cover the many ways they were criticised theoretically by people like bordiga and luxembourg.

A better history section would be more focused on the currents of marxism and how they were influenced by events across the iron curtain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.136.41.240 (talk) 22:16, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Marxism#General_criticisms

The second part is about economy, isn't it?Xx236 (talk) 10:52, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Partially, why what changes would you make? Pokerplayer513 (talk) 01:47, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

I would propbably move the second and third paragraph to Economic critiques, but I don't know the quoted sources.Xx236 (talk) 08:47, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Late 20th century and 21st century are poorly sourced

What is the source of to ameliorate capitalist elements of Chinese society and achieve socialism.? The official Communist opinion is the Cultural Revolution "brought serious disaster and turmoil to the Communist Party and the Chinese people."
Khmer Rouge aren't mentioned.

Xx236 (talk) 08:52, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Eduard Bernstein ?

Eduard Bernstein is linked in Etymology only. Doesn't he deserve more attention? He is quoted in Orthodox Marxism.Xx236 (talk) 09:15, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Meaningless addition

A new editor has twice added in the opening paragraph the sentence "The theory can be used as a reference regarding the struggles of the proletariat and their reprimand of the bourgeoisie". The first time, they used the misleading edit summary "A key work of Marx left out". I struggle to make any sense of this addition; it is unsourced, poorly written, and does not add to the meaning of the lead. Nor does it appear to summarise content elsewhere in the article. If any other editor can understand this sentence, and turn it into a meaningful and useful addition, please do so. But the original sentence should not be included in the article. RolandR (talk) 19:02, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree with you about that sentence. That original sentence does not belong in this article.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 02:29, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Unverified, ambiguous, and superfluous line should be removed on 2 October 2019

Change "Marxism has been adopted by a large number of academics and other scholars working in various disciplines." to be removed.

This line is unverified, ambiguous, and superfluous because the line "According to a 2007 survey of American professors by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, 17.6% of social science professors and 5.0% of humanities professors identify as Marxists, while between 0 and 2% of professors in all other disciplines identify as Marxists.[43]" already gives insight on how widespread Marxism is in Academia. Cody.TV.Weber (talk) 14:10, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

 Done Sceptre (talk) 15:18, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Article is mainly about traditional marxism?

I get the feeling both the intro and many parts of the article treat "traditional marxism" as "marxism in general". I do not find any previous discussions about this in the archive, but if there is one please link. In short, what I propose is to edit the wording of the intro and other parts so that traditional marxism is not presented as "marxism" (which implies traditional marxism is the "true" marxism), and untraditional marxism is presented as some "deviation" from "true marxism". Sigvid (talk) 12:16, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Sigvid: The article is about Marxism in general. While it can be improved, it mentions and has links to Classical Marxism, Orthodox Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, etc. What would you want to change, and what sources would you use to support such change? --MarioGom (talk) 16:15, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
MarioGom Yes, I am aware - and I do recognize the difficulty in writing about "marxism in general" considering it's many "branches". I am mostly interested in post-marxism, and from what I have read (a book by Richard D. Wolff and Stephen Resnick, an article in Rethinking Marxism also by Wolff and Resnick, and ~10-20% of Post-Marxism: An Intellectual History by Stuart Sim) post-marxists question many of the tenents of "traditional marxism". For example, the marxism that Wolff and Resnick defends (in their book Contending economic theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian and Marxian; should be noted, however, that they do not call their form of marxism "post-marxism"), is overdeterminist (but with no "last instance determinism" like with Althusser) and as such they deny historical materialism and the mode of production as the only determinant of everything else in society. Also, their definition of socialism/communism doesn't imply planned economy - rather so do they see "communism" as a type of fundamental class process that is not achieved by the state/bureaucrats replacing the state (and as far as I understand them their form of "communism" is compatible with a "free market"). I have yet to delve deeper into other post-marxists, but from what I've gathered from Stuart Sims book, it's a very diverse group of theorists. What I propose is to reword / reorganize the article so that traditional marxism isn't presented as "the" marxism. For example, the segment "Overview" describes a traditional marxist view on marxism. Historical materialism is it's own segment - I'd suggest this be a subsegment to "traditional marxism", or at least re-worded so that it does not imply that all forms of marxism defends historical materialism. The "criticism" segment also seems to mainly deal with traditional marxism, and as such should either be a subsegment to "traditional marxism" or reworded. Sigvid (talk) 20:25, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
Sigvid: I would suggest improving the Post-Marxism article and then adding a summary section of it to Marxism. --MarioGom (talk) 17:55, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
MarioGom I'm on it (it's going to take some time), but I still think parts of this article need to be reworded. Classical marxism is still not the only type of marxism, and since this is a article about the broad term "marxism", neither classical marxism nor any other type of marxism should be given interpretative prerogative. Sigvid (talk) 12:52, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
Can you point to an example of a part of the article that favors the interpretive framework of Classical Marxism that you are talking about needing attention? Also, to the extent that there is a majority consensus among self described marxists, is it possible to avoid representing that consensus in a general argument in a way that will not be able to, and probably should attempt, to give equal time and weight to every minority viewpoint?

Elborgnine (talk) 22:51, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Fails to Mention

The page fails to mention the origins of anti-capitalist theorists. Starting with Rousseau but especially Adam Fergusons "Essay on the History of Civil Society". This book was among if not Hegels biggest inspirations and Hegel of course inspired Marx and Engels. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.97.104.30 (talk) 22:46, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

This page fails to mention Marxism's relationship to mass killings and terrorism. How is that possible?Glewis104 (talk) 21:47, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
@Glewis104: What relationship? You might be confusing Marxism with something else. BeŻet (talk) 12:09, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Post-Marxism in the lead section

“It has been argued that there is a movement toward the recognition of historical and dialectical materialism as the fundamental conceptions of all Marxist schools of thought. This view is rejected by some post-Marxists such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, who claim that history is not only determined by the mode of production, but also by consciousness and will.“ This sounds awfully much like the stuff Bernstein wrote in “Evolutionary Socialism” and Trotsky wrote every time when touching on Historical Materialism. As such I can’t believe that is the distinguishing factor Post-Marxism, as that would still be inside the bounds of Historical Materialism. NatriumGedrogt (talk) 22:38, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I just came to this talk page to criticize that sentence. It implies Marx didn't think consciousness and will also act upon society. But that's the whole point of the third Theses on Feuerbach. People also consciously change society. That absolutely should be made clear in the lead. --108.169.173.242 (talk) 15:24, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
I agree with the above. --2600:1700:94C0:8460:14FE:BBB2:95A5:F35 (talk) 21:21, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Further reading

This article contains a "Further reading" section. I would recommend that this be removed. There are thousands of books published on the topic of Marxism; the "Further reading" section can only serve to become a place for individual authors to promote their own works, or for other editors to add their own favorite work, with little evidence that the suggested works are significant works in the field. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 14:10, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't like those sections in general, because there doesn't seem to be a way to establish a "correct" list. I'd also be for removing it. BeŻet (talk) 20:53, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
I think a "where to go next" section might be useful for the interested reader. How about referring them to e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_schools_of_thought and/or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_philosophy? If you can't find a marxism author of your favourite flavour there, you're not really trying. There is of course also the extensive library section found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/index.htm , but that is perhaps too much of an endorsement to be uncontroversial? T 84.208.86.134 (talk) 02:36, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

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Age-old confusions & The purpose of this article

There has been a request by User:Beyond My Ken to bring this to discussion prior-to edit thus I will do so here. It appears an unresolved discussion occurred above at a previous time, with acknowledgment of the inappropriateness of the terminology.

The adjectives 'a left or far-left methodology' used in the first line of the article, characterising the Marxism as a mode of academic analysis with political bias is confused and misplaced. Critically, the editor who included these adjectives is confusing (as is often the case) Marxism as socioeconomic analysis (i.e. historical materialism) with Marxism as the collection of various opinionated political perspectives arising from the interpretation of the socioeconomic analysis with the same name (i.e. school of thought). This is an exceptionally common confusion, but not one that should be made on Wikipedia of all sites.

It is my understanding that this article exists dedicated to Marxism as the mode of socioeconomic analysis (i.e. historical materialism); since a separate page exists dedicated to Marxism as a collection of schools of thought); with links redirecting to schools of thought within the article itself. Should this article be intended to be an overview of Marxism as a whole (i.e. anything that might be referred to as such), encompassing both analysis and schools of thoughts then this should be stated; and moreover the adjectives used in the first line would still remain misinformed and fundamentally incorrect since are currently listed as adjectives for Historical Materialism - not the schools of thoughts. One might argue that Marxism (as a socioeconomic analysis and theory of historical materialism) should have its own dedicated page, given its influence on history, but I won't make that argument here.

To summarise, whatever the case these adjectives (while ‘correct’ for Marxism as a collection of schools of thought) are misplaced on this article, thus should be removed. Moreover, there should be a discussion on what this article is (see latter paragraph) to decide if there is any place for such adjectives in the article at all.

DocHeuh (talk) 06:20, 5 October 2022 (UTC) I'll give this another week, and take an absence of response as no objections to a change. DocHeuh (talk) 15:07, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

–––Deleted. DocHeuh (talk) 17:14, 1 January 2023 (UTC)


Continuation of DRN discussion concerning violation of WP: NPOV

User: Czello One simply needs to review the edit history to recognise the consensus, with multiple users (including but not limited to) User:DrLeonardHMcCoy, User: MaxWM7096, User: Enigma91, User: Granger Barnett, User: WilliamThomas22 over the last few months alone flagging violation of WP:NPOV. You yourself have repeatedly reverted many of these edits. The consensus is clear. Despite this (and the border-line vandalism of assigning political bias to an historical approach to analysis), I still opened a discussion (above) in the pursuit of proper discourse; despite your revision often being made with 24hrs of an edit, the discussion I opened went 3 months without a reply. I thus logically judged the discussion closed and made the edit. Re-opening the matter as you wish to requires discussion on this talk page - and should not be handled by making immediate reversal of edits which when proposed went unchallenged for over 3 months, nor edit-warring in the face of corrective action. DocHeuh (talk) 17:02, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

The consensus evidently is not clear given that several editors have reverted the description, and several more below favour its inclusion. There is now a formal discussion open to settle this, let's leave it there. — Czello 19:57, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
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