I have done a good deal more reading on their site, and I find that virtually none of their material even comes close to NPOV. It's filled throughout with standard Marxist jargon -- which is very out of the mainstream and treated (properly!) by most economists in the same way that astrology is treated by psychiatrists.
Take this section for example, from "Market Socialism":
Should the working class succeed in taking political power, capital would be abolished but there could be no question of simply 'abolishing' the market. This would take time. However, the market inevitably generates inequality and the accumulation of capital, and even more seriously, commodity production and the day-to-day activity entailed in buying and selling oneself on the market is the very ground on which bourgeois ideology grows.
There are several unstated assumptions here that are central to Marxist dogma but which have no place in an NPOV presentation. For example, it assumes that "should the working class succeed in taking political power" the market *could* be abolished, but not "simply" -- it "would take time". That's dogma on the same scientific level as phrenology.
I suppose we could try to work with this stuff by prefacing everything with "Marxists claim..." and ending it with "but virtually all economists regard these Marxists as cranks." But that doesn't make for a very useful article about "market socialism".
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com writes:
There are several unstated assumptions here that are central to Marxist dogma
Quite true. The article you quoted was utterly bollocks. I'm would not raise an objection to its immediate deletion, were it included in wikipedia. But (and one should not take this too seriously either, I don't actually care), I'd be keen to know why you differentiate between:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marxists say the market inevitably generates inequality and the accumulation of capital, and even more seriously, commodity production and the day-to-day activity entailed in buying and selling oneself on the market is the very ground on which bourgeois ideology grows.[1] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- and ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Followers of the Unification Church[2] believe Reverend Moon is the messiah, and that all the historical founders of all other religions have recently, in Heaven, proclaimed Moon's messiahship. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Both camps sincerely hold those beliefs, and I don't know (or care) enough to naysay either of them, but, as I understand it, few outside their movements would give them much creedence. I wouldn't dream of removing the latter, so I couldn't bring myself to remove the former, either.
Setting aside the horrible writing from marxists.org, what worries me is that the rejection of the former and acceptance of the latter as a valid encyclopedia article is predicated on the politico-religious views of our contributors, which is an intrinsically non-NPOV state of affairs.
[1] I don't even understand this sentence. I guess I'm not up with jargon. I must return home and reread James Thurber's hilarious "What the leftists are saying"
[2] And I don't mean to single out the UC here, it is merely that their beliefs are more readily available than other minority religions.
Gareth Owen wrote:
Marxists say the market inevitably generates inequality and the accumulation of capital, and even more seriously, commodity production and the day-to-day activity entailed in buying and selling oneself on the market is the very ground on which bourgeois ideology grows.[1]
and
Followers of the Unification Church[2] believe Reverend Moon is the messiah, and that all the historical founders of all other religions have recently, in Heaven, proclaimed Moon's messiahship.
If the subject of the article was "Marxism" it would be just fine. Even if the subject of the article was "Marxist views on market socialism" it would be just fine. But if the subject of the article was "Market Socialism", it would be difficult to sort it out, and probably not worth the trouble.
Both camps sincerely hold those beliefs, and I don't know (or care) enough to naysay either of them, but, as I understand it, few outside their movements would give them much creedence. I wouldn't dream of removing the latter, so I couldn't bring myself to remove the former, either.
Well, let's say that the UC sentence you quoted above was in an article called "Beliefs about Messiahs" or "Messianic Ideas". Then it could be fit in with other things.
But if it was in an article about Christianity, for example, it would be inappropriate.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com writes:
If the subject of the article was "Marxism" it would be just fine. Even if the subject of the article was "Marxist views on market socialism"
Aah. I misunderstood. We are in agreement.
Jimbo wrote:
I have done a good deal more reading on their site, and I find that virtually none of their material even comes close to NPOV. It's filled throughout with standard Marxist jargon -- which is very out of the mainstream and treated (properly!) by most economists in the same way that astrology is treated by psychiatrists
It isn't even standard Marxist jargon, it's Trotskyist jargon. That said though it's no worse than Ayn Rand stuff.
However, having observed people, in all innocence, reinvent Stalinism from time to time, knowledge of Marxist theory belongs somewhere even if not as the main theme of an article of economics.
Fred
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I have done a good deal more reading on their site, and I find that virtually none of their material even comes close to NPOV. It's filled throughout with standard Marxist jargon -- which is very out of the mainstream and treated (properly!) by most economists in the same way that astrology is treated by psychiatrists.
Jimbo, you beg the question by ignoring that most economists treat each others views and models (properly in my view) the way most scientists treat astrology. Why should Marxist economics dogma be held to a higher standard than Keynesian derived models and predictions that do not work well, if at all, prior to NPOV'ing for inclusion in Wikipedia? 8)
Remember trickle down Reagonomics? That debate will be interesting when, or if, sufficient people interested show up.
Now that data is available for arithmetic evaluation of claims will any partisans abandon their dogma?
Now that no political gain is impending will any partisans come forward to defend or attempt to assist with presenting the dogma in a NPOV fashion?
Take this section for example, from "Market Socialism":
Should the working class succeed in taking political power, capital would be abolished but there could be no question of simply 'abolishing' the market. This would take time. However, the market inevitably generates inequality and the accumulation of capital, and even more seriously, commodity production and the day-to-day activity entailed in buying and selling oneself on the market is the very ground on which bourgeois ideology grows.
There are several unstated assumptions here that are central to Marxist dogma but which have no place in an NPOV presentation. For example, it assumes that "should the working class succeed in taking political power" the market *could* be abolished, but not "simply" -- it "would take time". That's dogma on the same scientific level as phrenology.
Not quite that bad. The debate to attempt to NPOV the information by identifying who has used what assumptions and what assertions have working analogues in the real world should be quite interesting and informative. The results, if integrated well, could turn into a highly informative article.
For example: Military logistics as practiced by the U.S. might have some bearing on whether moneyless information can efficiently drive distribution.
I have been told that Arrow did some extremely interesting Nobel Award level work on information augmenting money in market distribution. This could be just the opportunity to engage in a critical reading and dialogue with people carrying different implicit assumptions in their world view. Assuming of course that they are as reasonable as most hard core Capitalists.
I suppose we could try to work with this stuff by prefacing everything with "Marxists claim..." and ending it with "but virtually all economists regard these Marxists as cranks." But that doesn't make for a very useful article about "market socialism".
I think we can do better than this but it will take some time and serious interest. Perhaps, as the Marxists trickle in, we could send an engraved invitation to the John Birch society that their participation would be welcome? They should have a few Trickle Down and anti Trickle Down adherents hanging around somewhere, both camps confident that their assumptions and models are better than Marxist equivalents.
The Marxists can help us sort out the Trickle Down jargon while the capitalists help identify implicit Marxist assumptions.
We could also request participation from unaffiliated critics and adherents to new big ideas unproven in the wild.
If all else fails, perhaps we could interest some grade school math and science students in helping us with the actual arithmetic based upon actual economic data.
regards, Mike Irwin
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Jimbo, you beg the question by ignoring that most economists treat each others views and models (properly in my view) the way most scientists treat astrology.
I don't think so. There are academic journals and scholarly jousting back and forth, to be sure. But serious economists don't treat each other that badly.
Why should Marxist economics dogma be held to a higher standard than Keynesian derived models and predictions that do not work well, if at all, prior to NPOV'ing for inclusion in Wikipedia? 8)
Well, as you may have seen, I have no objection to including information about Marxism in the wikipedia. None at all. Or information about Keynesian models, rational expectations, game theory, and so on.
What I would object to is a generic article called "freedom" which says "Freedom for the vast majority necessarily means restriction of the freedom of a small minority to exploit the labour of others".
And "Positive freedom has been built up almost exclusively as a result of the struggle of the working class: initially the legislation limiting hours of work, child labour and so on, later the creation of free compulsory education, public health systems, right to form trade unions, and so forth, freedoms which explicitly limit the freedom of the capitalists to exploit workers, but give worker the opportunity to develop as human beings."
See the entire entry here: http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/r.htm#freedom
Now, my objection is not just that these things are wrong, nor that they are the noble foundation of the great riproaring genocides of the past century.
My objection is that these articles are extremely and irreparably NPOV.
For example: Military logistics as practiced by the U.S. might have some bearing on whether moneyless information can efficiently drive distribution.
No, I don't think so. But my views on economics, and yours, are not really the issue here.
I have been told that Arrow did some extremely interesting Nobel Award level work on information augmenting money in market distribution. This could be just the opportunity to engage in a critical reading and dialogue with people carrying different implicit assumptions in their world view. Assuming of course that they are as reasonable as most hard core Capitalists.
The role of information in the price system is a hot topic in contemporary economics, but I don't think the wikipedia is an appropriate forum for hashing out such a debate.
I think we can do better than this but it will take some time and serious interest. Perhaps, as the Marxists trickle in, we could send an engraved invitation to the John Birch society that their participation would be welcome?
John Birch society?
This objection suggests to me that you don't really get the point I'm trying to make here.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
This objection suggests to me that you don't really get the point I'm trying to make here.
Perhaps I have been playing Devil's Advocate too much. 8)
I agree that the material will have to be thoroughly worked over and augmented before it is stable NPOV.
regards, Mike Irwin
First cutting to the chase here:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
This objection suggests to me that you don't really get the point I'm trying to make here.
If this article is representative, then yes, I also think our current process of collaboratively editing (or edit warring) the current pages could be overwhelmed for a while, even with a trickle of articles.
This could result in a quantity of non NPOV (Marxist bias) material being served as current pages until our existing rate of contribution can process it.
Personally I do not see this as a new issue. Our current process routinely serves biased or non NPOV material on the current page until editors get around to editing it. We short circuit this a bit with dedicated regulars tracking the recent changes page alert for obviously unsuitable or NPOV material.
This will be true until we implement some sort of revision control process and serve only material NPOV'ed to some threshold as the current page. Elsewhere I proposed a mechanism for this that I hoped would also reduce edit wars by placing a focus on creating suitable material for pages worth promotion to current page status instead of deleting unsuitable material from the current page. I think LDC also proposed a mechanism which was slightly different.
I think our current process works overall in the long run in that the bias is steadily eroded as diverse new contributors discuss and improve it. I think it is probable that much bias still exists in many areas through lack of diverse participation in the community or in specific areas.
Perhaps if a few Marxists join us to hand trickle their material in we can request that they help us identify our own biases in other material as we assist them in NPOV'ing the new Marxist material. In other words, that they participate fully in the community project with the goal of a complete NPOV enclyclopedia. This could be a quantum leap in overall quality from some perspectives.
.... and now on to the verbose yet highly interesting Devil's Advocacy and philosophical nitpicking. Non interested readers are advised to stop here.
regards, Mike Irwin
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
<snip>
Jimmy Wales wrote:
What I would object to is a generic article called "freedom" which says "Freedom for the vast majority necessarily means restriction of the freedom of a small minority to exploit the labour of others".
This I understand. I also would object if other views were to be excluded. My personal definition of freedom as a U.S. citizen is probably somewhat similar to yours.
However, I can see some validity to this particular theoretical viewpoint.
In order to reattain "freedom" to drink non carcinogenic water in the U.S. it has proven necessary to regulate the entire economy with regard to pesticides, toxic industrial waste, etc. Now I believe that most Americans would not intentionally and willfilly poisen their neighbors downstream, but apparently a substantial minority will not refrain voluntarily. If a free market economy with no environmental regulations tends to raise the unscrupulous or willfully ignorant to top decision making positions because it is cheaper to dump industrial waste products than process them safely into other products or store them safely; then it will be necessary to either distill your own water, avoid swimming holes, avoid fishing, and etc. or else regulate chemical dumping.
Incidentally, it is interesting to note that it has been in the news for years that U.S. Corporations seem to be happily poisening Mexicans and a few Texans who share their groundwater, via chemical dumping just across the U.S. Mexican border. Apparently Mexico has refused to follow Marx's advice and regulate the few, even if they are gringo owned foreign corporations, for the benefit of the many. This dedication to freedom is killing and maiming many people each year for the bottom line of chemical companies run by heroic absentee CEOs.
Enron, Worldcom, etc. have certainly demonstrated some regulation and prosecution is necessary in capital markets (not to mention energy markets) if small investors or consumers are to have equal opportunity to profit from investing decisions or natural market prices of energy.
As I understand this article on the Marxist view of "freedom" Marx was fairly accurate in projecting what was required for a highly successful capitalist society to protect itself from its capitalists and executives. Their freedom to dump industrial wastes for increased profit margins has been restricted (So has mine, so perhaps he was wrong here. Everybody regulated instead of just a "minority".) so that I (and all others) can enjoy clean water and a better overall environment.
His mistakes were apparently in assuming that we must regulate the capitalist out of existence entirely, if he did, and that only the greedy, wealthy, minority must be regulated.
The article mentioned restriction not obliteration. It turns out that partial implementation of his theories in the U.S. in ways compatible with the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, have had solid merit; while eliminating the capitalists entirely did not work well for the Soviets.
I agree though, the title must be augmented as this is not the only form of freedom available in a modern "free" society.
And "Positive freedom has been built up almost exclusively as a result of the struggle of the working class: initially the legislation limiting hours of work, child labour and so on, later the creation of free compulsory education, public health systems, right to form trade unions, and so forth, freedoms which explicitly limit the freedom of the capitalists to exploit workers, but give worker the opportunity to develop as human beings."
See the entire entry here: http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/r.htm#freedom
Now, my objection is not just that these things are wrong, nor that they are the noble foundation of the great riproaring genocides of the past century.
Are they? It looked to me like the now failed totalitarian empires pretty consistently ignored the theory.
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
If this article is representative, then yes, I also think our current process of collaboratively editing (or edit warring) the current pages could be overwhelmed for a while, even with a trickle of articles.
It wasn't representative, it was a particularly bad example. Others have wisely pointed out that some of what they have is not so biased.
The biographies aren't bad at all. Pretty much we just have to watch for things like calling Milton Friedman "conservative" and calling mainstream economics "bourgois economcis". Those are easy terminology fixes, though.
Personally I do not see this as a new issue. Our current process routinely serves biased or non NPOV material on the current page until editors get around to editing it.
That's right. If they were to dump things in too fast, though, it would be hard to digest and some of it would end up getting neglected. Usually, things that manage to scroll off the recent changes pages end up pretty stable.
--Jimbo
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
I think our current process works overall in the long run in that the bias is steadily eroded as diverse new contributors discuss and improve it. I think it is probable that much bias still exists in many areas through lack of diverse participation in the community or in specific areas.
I think that Lee's woek on the Recent Changes page will help here. As long as recent changes was at 2000 article per day, they would understandably fall off the table more quickly, often before anyone had a chance to review them at all.
Perhaps if a few Marxists join us to hand trickle their material in we can request that they help us identify our own biases in other material as we assist them in NPOV'ing the new Marxist material. In other words, that they participate fully in the community project with the goal of a complete NPOV enclyclopedia. This could be a quantum leap in overall quality from some perspectives.
The very first thing that I look forward to here is for at least one of the people from marxist.org to visibly participate in these debates. Thus far they've only had the opportunity to sit back to see how the wind is blowing in the Wikipedia debates.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
What I would object to is a generic article called "freedom" which says "Freedom for the vast majority necessarily means restriction of the freedom of a small minority to exploit the labour of others".
However, I can see some validity to this particular theoretical viewpoint.
His mistakes were apparently in assuming that we must regulate the capitalist out of existence entirely, if he did, and that only the greedy, wealthy, minority must be regulated.
Any judgement of Marx must take into account the simple fact that he died in 1883, and he was limited in his opinions by events that preceded him.
The article mentioned restriction not obliteration. It turns out that partial implementation of his theories in the U.S. in ways compatible with the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, have had solid merit; while eliminating the capitalists entirely did not work well for the Soviets.
The equal protection clause is one of the more marxist elements of the U. S. Constitution despite the fact that it was written before 1818. There are many crypto-marxists in the United States, as long as you don't point out that their views correspond with Marxist ones. Like the gays of 50 years ago, they're afraid to come out of the closet.
And "Positive freedom has been built up almost exclusively as a result of the struggle of the working class: initially the legislation limiting hours of work, child labour and so on, later the creation of free compulsory education, public health systems, right to form trade unions, and so forth, freedoms which explicitly limit the freedom of the capitalists to exploit workers, but give worker the opportunity to develop as human beings."
Except for the words "almost exclusively" I have no problem with this. This was the great contribution of the 2nd International. Their accomplishments stalled with WWI, and it is only recently that France has seen the wisdom of further reducing the mandated weekly hours of work. With President George III the US has shown signs of going backwards on this.
Now, my objection is not just that these things are wrong, nor that they are the noble foundation of the great riproaring genocides of the past century.
Marx never mandated genocide.
China is a bit more perplexing. Are the Chinese people gaining more "negative freedoms" relative to where they started when the Communist Party took over?
China has never abandoned the superiority complex that goes with being the middle kingdom. Even its own brand of marxism had to be subservient to that principle. The continuing occupation of Tibet and the claims to Taiwan have more to do with nationalism than with marxism.
Eclecticology
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com writes:
My objection is that these articles are extremely and irreparably NPOV.
But only if you maintain the original title, and I don't think anyone (except yourself) has suggested it.
Is an article on marxists.org entitled "Freedom" not implicitly called "Marxist views on freedom" So include it in wikipedia under *that* title, or as part of an article on "Marxist Economic Theory" and move on.
This objection suggests to me that you don't really get the point I'm trying to make here.
Am I right that your objection is "The articles on marxists.org are wholly unsuitable for inclusion in wikipedia under the titles they have on that site."
I'm yet to see anyone disagree with you on this.
On Fri, 16 Aug 2002, Michael R. Irwin wrote:
I have done a good deal more reading on their site, and I find that virtually none of their material even comes close to NPOV. It's filled throughout with standard Marxist jargon -- which is very out of the mainstream and treated (properly!) by most economists in the same way that astrology is treated by psychiatrists.
Jimbo, you beg the question by ignoring that most economists treat each others views and models (properly in my view) the way most scientists treat astrology. Why should Marxist economics dogma be held to a higher standard than Keynesian derived models and predictions that do not work well, if at all, prior to NPOV'ing for inclusion in Wikipedia? 8)
I agree. Economics is much less a hard science than astrophysics or astronomy. There are quite a number of serious marxist inclined economists out there. Include the ones in China, where doctrine is probably fairly strict (whereas in the west, each one is free to have his own pet theory), and marxist economists might come out in the marjority! :)
Wikipedia right now is heavily balanced towards christian conservative, capitalist american views. Bringing in a load of marxist crap would be refreshing.
-- Daniel
On Fri, 16 Aug 2002, Michael R. Irwin wrote:
I have done a good deal more reading on their site, and I find that virtually none of their material even comes close to NPOV. It's filled throughout with standard Marxist jargon -- which is very out of the mainstream and treated (properly!) by most economists in the same way that astrology is treated by psychiatrists.
Jimbo, you beg the question by ignoring that most economists treat each others views and models (properly in my view) the way most scientists treat astrology. Why should Marxist economics dogma be held to a higher standard than Keynesian derived models and predictions that do not work well, if at all, prior to NPOV'ing for inclusion in Wikipedia? 8)
I agree. Economics is much less a hard science than astrophysics or astronomy. There are quite a number of serious marxist inclined economists out there. Include the ones in China, where doctrine is probably fairly strict (whereas in the west, each one is free to have his own pet theory), and marxist economists might come out in the marjority! :)
Wikipedia right now is heavily balanced towards christian conservative, capitalist american views. Bringing in a load of marxist crap would be refreshing.
The opinion of someone who stands to get shot if they say the wrong thing is not worth much.
Fred
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
Wikipedia right now is heavily balanced towards christian conservative, capitalist american views.
I like the phrase "balanced towards". Is that newspeak for "slanted"? I agree with your analysis.
I think one big (happy) surprise effect of building a free encyclopedia is these discussions about differing views and how to negotiate a consensus or neutral view. Wikipedia is a great school and we should all pay tuition to Jimmy.
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