My first post to the mailing list...
Reading all the discussions back and forth over "Communist state" and "Communist government" (but not participating in them), I'd note that the current mailing list understanding of what was supposed to be accomplished by the former article is in error.
The idea of the Communist state page, as I understand it, is that there is a particular type of governmental system called a "Communist state", practiced in the USSR, its satellites, the PRC, etc. etc. This governmental system is characterized by certain things, such as the entwining of the state with the Communist party, and the embrace of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Political scientists use the term "Communist state" to refer to this type of governmental system. I believe this is the argument that was put forth by jtd, 172, and others (although they should correct me if I'm mischaracterizing them).
They felt, further, that this article was an inappropriate place to discuss other aspects of communism in practice, seeing as those could go in articles about Communism, or something else (Communist government was a makeshift solution, from what I recall), while the state definition could *only* go in Communist state. As such, the type-of-government discussion would get cluttered by being filled with lots of discussion of all the bad things communists have done, which could be discussed at numerous other articles.
I'm not sure that I agree with this fully - the term "Communist state" is susceptible to more gradations of meaning than "Constitutional monarchy", or what not. But it's a fairly reasonable opinion, in my view. Furthermore, what it is not is a distinction between the communist state in theory and the communist state in practice. Both "Communist state" and "Communist government" deal with communism in practice, just in different ways. In particular, Communist state would deal with the practice of Communism in regards to the structure of the form of government. (The theory of how a communist state should function would be rather different, at least for Marxist-Leninists, who viewed what political scientists call a "Communist state" as a stop-gap on the way to true communism)
That's all for now
John Kenney
jlk7e@juno.com wrote:
The idea of the Communist state page, as I understand it, is that there is a particular type of governmental system called a "Communist state", practiced in the USSR, its satellites, the PRC, etc. etc. This governmental system is characterized by certain things, such as the entwining of the state with the Communist party, and the embrace of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Political scientists use the term "Communist state" to refer to this type of governmental system. I believe this is the argument that was put forth by jtd, 172, and others (although they should correct me if I'm mischaracterizing them).
It sounds like the title should be "Definining characteristics of a communist state" or some such, then, to alleviate the ambiguity. These are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a state to be called a communist state.
Things like 'suppression of dissent' happen in some kinds of non-Communist states, so even thought it's true that communist states have a track record in this area, it is not a defining characteristic.
Calling the articles "Communist state" versus "Communist government" is probably not helpful in preventing the kinds of controversies we have seen.
--Jimbo
Part of the negative material which I and Cuntator struggled to include in the article, "Communist State" did concern the practical political science aspects of the governmental system, specifically, rule and control of information by the politbureau. This was found just as objectionable as any other negative material regarding the Communist state. In fact, there was such a hypercritical attitude that they actually took issue with the spelling of "politbureau", preferring the transliterated cyrillic version, "politboro". (Both are correct in English).
I don't think they liked the notion that members of the party were the ruling class either.
Hard to say what they were thinking in detail, they simply deleted it all.
Fred
From: jlk7e@juno.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 18:03:38 GMT To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks
My first post to the mailing list...
Reading all the discussions back and forth over "Communist state" and "Communist government" (but not participating in them), I'd note that the current mailing list understanding of what was supposed to be accomplished by the former article is in error.
The idea of the Communist state page, as I understand it, is that there is a particular type of governmental system called a "Communist state", practiced in the USSR, its satellites, the PRC, etc. etc. This governmental system is characterized by certain things, such as the entwining of the state with the Communist party, and the embrace of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Political scientists use the term "Communist state" to refer to this type of governmental system. I believe this is the argument that was put forth by jtd, 172, and others (although they should correct me if I'm mischaracterizing them).
They felt, further, that this article was an inappropriate place to discuss other aspects of communism in practice, seeing as those could go in articles about Communism, or something else (Communist government was a makeshift solution, from what I recall), while the state definition could *only* go in Communist state. As such, the type-of-government discussion would get cluttered by being filled with lots of discussion of all the bad things communists have done, which could be discussed at numerous other articles.
I'm not sure that I agree with this fully - the term "Communist state" is susceptible to more gradations of meaning than "Constitutional monarchy", or what not. But it's a fairly reasonable opinion, in my view. Furthermore, what it is not is a distinction between the communist state in theory and the communist state in practice. Both "Communist state" and "Communist government" deal with communism in practice, just in different ways. In particular, Communist state would deal with the practice of Communism in regards to the structure of the form of government. (The theory of how a communist state should function would be rather different, at least for Marxist-Leninists, who viewed what political scientists call a "Communist state" as a stop-gap on the way to true communism)
That's all for now
John Kenney _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
My understanding is that there were two debates going on (which I think got confused, too easily). One was a debate between whether the term was a generalized of (and thus with examples from) real identifiable "communist states," versus an ideal term which could be used in comparative politics, but which itself is an abstract concept. The second debate was whether the term should be defined and described as it is used by political scientists (or even more narrowly, by political scientists specializing in comparative politics), or whether the article should accommodate a variety of definitions or usages by a variety of people.
Personally, with regards to debate #1 I appreciate the value of both approaches and would favor an article that has both. I think many others are intensely divided over this, though.
With regards to debate #2 I strongly favor the second approach; I believe that the second approach would also accommodate both sides in the first debate. It is my sense, however, that some participants, especially JTDIRL and 172, favor the first approach. Although I adisagree with them I have no fundamental objection as long as the article itself makes that approach clear (which it does).
Steve
At 01:08 PM 5/23/2003 -0600, you wrote:
Part of the negative material which I and Cuntator struggled to include in the article, "Communist State" did concern the practical political science aspects of the governmental system, specifically, rule and control of information by the politbureau. This was found just as objectionable as any other negative material regarding the Communist state. In fact, there was such a hypercritical attitude that they actually took issue with the spelling of "politbureau", preferring the transliterated cyrillic version, "politboro". (Both are correct in English).
I don't think they liked the notion that members of the party were the ruling class either.
Hard to say what they were thinking in detail, they simply deleted it all.
Fred
From: jlk7e@juno.com Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 18:03:38 GMT To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please, no more personal attacks
My first post to the mailing list...
Reading all the discussions back and forth over "Communist state" and "Communist government" (but not participating in them), I'd note that the current mailing list understanding of what was supposed to be
accomplished by
the former article is in error.
The idea of the Communist state page, as I understand it, is that there
is a
particular type of governmental system called a "Communist state",
practiced
in the USSR, its satellites, the PRC, etc. etc. This governmental
system is
characterized by certain things, such as the entwining of the state
with the
Communist party, and the embrace of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Political scientists use the term "Communist state" to refer to this type of governmental system. I believe this is the argument that was put forth by jtd, 172, and others (although they should correct me if I'm
mischaracterizing
them).
They felt, further, that this article was an inappropriate place to discuss other aspects of communism in practice, seeing as those could go in
articles
about Communism, or something else (Communist government was a makeshift solution, from what I recall), while the state definition could *only*
go in
Communist state. As such, the type-of-government discussion would get cluttered by being filled with lots of discussion of all the bad things communists have done, which could be discussed at numerous other articles.
I'm not sure that I agree with this fully - the term "Communist state" is susceptible to more gradations of meaning than "Constitutional
monarchy", or
what not. But it's a fairly reasonable opinion, in my view. Furthermore, what it is not is a distinction between the communist state in theory
and the
communist state in practice. Both "Communist state" and "Communist government" deal with communism in practice, just in different ways. In particular, Communist state would deal with the practice of Communism in regards to the structure of the form of government. (The theory of how a communist state should function would be rather different, at least for Marxist-Leninists, who viewed what political scientists call a "Communist state" as a stop-gap on the way to true communism)
That's all for now
John Kenney _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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