[WikiEN-l] Sheldon, LittleDan and communism

[Toby Bartels]

Ed Poor wrote:

>The argument that "no communist regime has ever claimed
>to actually *be* communist" is already discussed in the
>Wikipedia article, and is IMHO opinion an example of
>exactly the sort of "disinformation" your other wiki
>is supposedly dedicated to exposing.

Which Wikipedia article -- [[Communism]]?
Not very coherent on this point -- or many others -- right now
(although I'm not sure how well I could improve it).
[[Socialism]] explains it better and agrees with Sheldon;
according to Marxist theory, communism has never existed.
(That leaves open the possibility of a Communist regime
disavowing Marxist theory in this respect.)

>Instead of trying to run verbal rings around LittleDan,
>why not take a moment to consider what he *meant*?
>Which was, apparently:
>* putting communist ideas into effect by creating what
>  pro-Marxists might call "building socialism" in a country.

I'm not sure that it's fair to Sheldon
to expect him to know that this is what LittleDan meant.
Part of Sheldon's point is that the meaning is unclear.

Unless LittleDan's post is coming from a specific article somewhere
that Sheldon knows about.  Is this what's going on?
Have we brought a dispute from an article talk page to the mailing list?

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

But not very well.
This is the problem with supporting a universal negative.
That China has *not* collapsed, and is doing relatively well,
is far more opposition to this universal negative
than the collapse of any number of Soviet republics.

>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.

This is the important point, and you are right.


-- Toby