[Wikipedia-l] Re: More on marxists.org

[Tim Marklew]

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.

I disagree.  There are a significant number of articles at the site which 
are close to NPOV.  Good examples are the biographies (for example, the 
biography of Karl Marx himself is perfectly OK) and some historical articles 
(eg. Great Leap Forward, which I have already put into Wikipedia with a few 
changes and deletions).

It is of course correct that many, if not most of the articles in the 
Encyclopedia of Marxism are not NPOV and are overtly Marxist.  It is after 
all their openly stated aim to create a reference work written from a 
Marxist viewpoint.  But we should not overlook the fact that among the 
overtly political texts, unsuitable for Wikipedia, there are parts - 
sometimes just paragraphs, sometimes whole articles - that are suitable for 
Wikipedia with appropriate modification.

>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....

Again, I disagree.  Marxism is certainly a minority view. However, there do 
exist distinguished economists today who draw on Marxist ideas.  Mainstream 
sociology is also strongly influenced by Marxist though.

>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."

Most modern economists would strongly disagree with Marxism, but I think it 
would be unrepresentative and unnecessary to say that they would call them 
cranks.  Much more NPOV is just to say that marxist economics is a minority 
point of view.

>But that doesn't make
>for a very useful article about "market socialism".

Why not?  "Market socialism" is a term often (if not mostly) used by 
Marxists, so Marxist views are relevant here. An article on market socialism 
could certainly have some  material like this, perhaps toned down and 
condensed, under a heading of "Marxist views on market socialism".

Part of the usefulness of the Encyclopedia of Marxism is that it aims to 
give an overview of Marxist thought without giving undue precedence to 
particular schools of Marxist thought.  So it's a useful source where we 
want to say "this is what Marxists think" without quoting from one 
individual's ideosyncratic opinion.

For the record, I personally strongly disagree with Marxism.

Tim (the Enchanter)


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