[WikiEN-l] Re: Sheldon, LittleDan and communism

[Sheldon Rampton]

Ed Poor wrote:

>Instead of trying to run verbal rings around LittleDan,
>why not take a moment to consider what he *meant*?

I did.

>Which was, apparently:
>
>* putting communist ideas into effect by creating what
>   pro-Marxists might call "building socialism" in a country.

I don't think it was at all clear that this was what he meant. 
*You're* the person who is rewriting Dan's comments to make them mean 
something different from what he actually wrote. Many people, for 
example, would argue that the introduction of socialized medicine in 
Europe and other countries was a communist measure, and it was 
certainly supported at the time by "pro-Marxists." Dan's statement 
that "communism never works in practice" is the sort of ideological 
argument that one hears even today in the United States as a reason 
to oppose socialized medicine here. However, socialized medicine is 
quite different from "building socialism" in a country.

>The fact that these "socialist" experiments collapsed
>in the former Soviet bloc would seem to support the POV
>that communism never works in practice.

Here, Ed manages to ignore the example I provided of China, which 
*hasn't* collapsed. He must be using some strange definition of the 
word "never" that isn't in my dictionary. ;)

>Anyway, the question is still whether:
>
>* the Wikipedia ought to assert the fact that communism
>   doesn't work, or
>* the Wikipedia ought to REPORT that various observers
>   have concluded that communism doesn't work
>
>My understanding of Jimbo's NPOV policy is that we should
>not assert communism's unworkableness as fact but rather
>report that observers say it doesn't work.

Agreed, for the most part.
-- 
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
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