Leftypedia lived - Leftypedia lives - Leftypedia will live!Greetings, comrades. Leftypedia, the radical encyclopedia, should be back in a usable state. We have more moderators, which will help with spam from now on, and images are slowly being repopulated for your viewing pleasure. The new domain has been up and running for a while at
https://wiki.leftypol.org, and we've imported the vast majority of content that was on the old site while adding a lot of new stuff. I hope that Anons can come back and fill in any content that was lost.
For those unaware, Leftypedia is an original /leftypol/ project dedicated to combating the disinformation of mainstream media and academic sources, as well as discussing leftist history, theory, and practice from a multi-sectarian viewpoint. We welcome additions from different leftist perspectives provided that they are properly sourced and well argued. In addition, we maintain a separate space, tentatively titled "Essays", for more subjective or polemic work.
The original thread is here:
>>>/edu/3780You can find Leftypedia at:
https://wiki.leftypol.orgHelp for new editors:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Leftypedia:Community_portal >>1574882You mean the "quantity over quality" thing? I don't know who wrote that or why, but I had enough trouble restoring those old pages that I didn't bother revising them. My take is: quantity > quality in terms of information; quality > quantity in terms of actual page count, editing, and writing. One good article is better than 20 "stubs".
You could also basically just put sources, like good articles or books, in the Suggestion box or even in this thread (or both). And preferably people who like to edit Wikis will come around and synthesize the info.
What kind of pages were you thinking about copy-pasting?
>>1575208Does this link work?
https://wiki.leftypol.org/index.php?title=PAGE_TITLE&veaction=editI don't use the Visual Editor myself, so I wouldn't know where to find the button, but others use it just fine.
>>1574396Leftypedia is a bit shit, it is not an open wiki project, meaning that all your edits are subject to review before they are accepted, which takes a very long time, this breaks up the editing process to the point it makes it pretty unisable.
If i was you anons i would not waste your time, nothing personal to the project but it will never last or gain a critical mass of editors how it is set up.
>>1580811If you are a vetted (not banned) user, you can write an essay.
I need to study Wiki policy more before I try to formulate strict rules. Wikipedia wrote their policies over years and years, and I think it would be better to start editing rather than worry about policy right now. But any policy suggestions are appreciated.
>>1578239>>1579716Yes, I have asked devs about it and am waiting on a response. Sorry for the inconvenience.
>>1579796https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall >>1580877I see . IMO the project has value as a compendium for these kinds of perspectives . There actually are some pretty smart users on this board , with points of view that you really can’t find anywhere else on the internet due to algorithmic suppression of leftist ideas, distraction , or the general intellectual banality of the user base .
I’d invite those maintaining the project to view it more as a compendium to capture that content which is unique to this platform , rather than just another wiki . Which might be the idea all along. This is why I like the Essays feature .
>>1598395>>1598893Trots bought a lot of domains with "marx" in the 90s. marxists.org is one of them.
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/s/t.htm#stalinHowever they have still archived the writings of "Stalinists" anyway despite their opposition to it.
>>1602188That’s the thing about Trotskyists. They actually organize on a street level. They actually organize on an internet level. They actually meet and run advocacy groups. They actually send each other pamphlets. They actually organize on an international level despite their differences.
The only organized behavior I usually see from Stalinists is their whining about Trotskyists on social media and image boards. Usually when I talk to a Stalinist they read a few good articles from Stalin when he was under Lenin, and haven’t read anything by Trotsky.
>>1602497Literally all I've ever seen Trotskyists do "on a street level" is whine about getting kicked out of a Pro-Palestine action for preaching two-state solution shit and interrupting a UPS Teamsters practice picket to pass out flyers while actively avoiding conversation with the workers.
I'm not gonna pretend that Trotskyists can't possibly do good work (marxists.org is objectively good work done in tandem with Marxists of other tendencies), or align with the revolutionary struggle when it comes down to the critical moment, but Trotskyism has ultimately failed to produce a vital revolutionary movement capable of advancing past the limitations of Marxism-Leninism, and has instead produced an orthodox Leninism which struggles to find a home outside of the intelligentsia.
>>1602541Oh really. That’s funny, because I’ve seen Trotskyists work help organize rank-and-file committees on unions, work with university faculty to organize collective action against cuts, organize anti-war demonstrations, setup online Marxist libraries, setup online Marxist classes, and fly overseas to meet for larger international meetings.
You must not get out of your echo chamber very frequently.
>>1602589Hell my good friend’s Trotskyist organization sends me a load of newspapers and pamphlets to pass out twice a month. They’ve connected me with a lot of different people who are doing stuff on a street level. Like I know Trotsky looks weird, and he’s definitely kind of a beta the way Stalin was able to ice pick him like that, but Trotskyists organizations are very active.
>>1602541>but Trotskyism has ultimately failed to produce a vital revolutionary movement capable of advancing past the limitations of Marxism-Leninism, and has instead produced an orthodox Leninism which struggles to find a home outside of the intelligentsia.Why haven’t Stalinists or Maoists started the one true bloody Marxist revolution yet? For that matter why haven’t you? Hmmm?
>>1602598If capitalists are vampires, then trotskyites are just fucking mosquitoes.
All trotskyites start as mosquitoe larvae: an infantile bastardization of marxism; eventually, they're fucking everywhere and they're always buzzing around spreading their noise - preaching their gospel. They suck the life from the people, tricking them into paying their dues, then they leave the people with nothing but fever dreams and malaria. Once a trotskyite has sucked enough and grown to a point they're indistinguishable, fundamentally, from any capitalist. Once they have power, they enthrall their filthy lumpens, those who have the free time, into doing their bidding. Once the host - whatever org they're wrecking - has died, they move onto the next.
>>1598395>>1600648As someone who actively volunteers for Marxists.org I can fill you in on the whole Trot / Anti-Stalinist thing:
So the whole project started as far back as 1990 when various Marxists on Usenet started sharing Marxist texts in plaintext (most of which, by the way, were typed out by hand instead of OCR scanning, and which are still hosted to this day - albeit with several hard-to-spot errors and tiny editorial changes as a result). The Marx Engels Online Library was founded as a Gopher site in 1993 by a guy called Zodiac who hosted it on a university web server (for another fun fact, the whole project was almost wiped out in 1995 after a Wall Street Journal article mentioned that "even communists have found a home on the world wide web" and enraged porkies had the site deleted). Anyway, the project started to gain many volunteers who wanted to expand into authors other than Marx and Engels - Zodiac acquiesced at first, but later in 1998 claimed that expanding with a Trotsky archive and other authors would lead the site into "sectarianism" and deleted all authors but Marx and Engels.
After this coup, the rest of the volunteers split from Zodiac and founded Marxists.org, which would "always be based on democratic decision-making" (read: a big mailing list where very few votes are taken and volunteers mostly do their own thing). Even though the group remained committed to anti-sectarianism and political independence - however, this didn't apply to Stalinism, and a lot of editorial content was eager to tell readers that true Marxism was anti-Stalinist (fun fact #3: the site was very nearly called MELT.org, for Marx Engels Lenin Trotsky). One vestigial sign of this attitude is that Stalin's archive is located in the "reference" folder - meaning he is sorted with pre-Marxists and anti-Marxists like Bakunin and even Milton Friedman: trotsky.org/reference/archive/stalin The MIA stopped sorting authors into Marxists and non-Marxists in 2007 but the directory structure remains; however, to this day it's in the MIA charter that the Selected Marxists page "will not include Stalin or Mao".
Probably the vast majority of editorial content is 20+ years old now though, and plenty of hardline ML stuff is on Marxists.org today. As for the current political stance of volunteers, I'd say there's a slant towards Trotskyism or especially post-Trotskyism, but very little editorial content is still being written today vs pure archival work. The Trot slant is mostly thanks to the old guard who built the site in the late 90s and are still active today (in particular, it seems there are many ex-Healyites - a "big three" Trot group that collapsed in the late 80s and therefore had a lot of ex-members with a lot of time on their hands).
So after that rambling wall of text, here's the TL;DR: the editorial consensus back when the site was built in the late 90s and early 2000s was anti-Stalinist, but nowadays there are many ML volunteers and the tendency is tolerated, in keeping with the non-sectarian educational mission of the site. If you guys want me to try and get the worst anti-Stalinist lines toned down or rewritten, I can raise them with the Steering Committee. At this juncture I'm guessing they would accept it.
>>1602589Oh trust me, I'm plenty out of any "echo chamber". Working in the tenant struggle makes sure you never have the opportunity. I feel like I should reiterate, though: I'm not gonna pretend that Trotskyists can't possibly do good work. This isn't personal or anything, I've read plenty of Trotsky and have essentially the same opinion as what revolutionaries like Walter Rodney have laid out: man lost the plot after Lenin died, and it became more about him than the actual movement, and Trotskyist organizations are by and large alienated from the genuine revolutionary movement. Trotskyists aren't fighting in the streets or in the countryside, Trotskyists aren't seizing state power, Trotskyists aren't generating new formations and strategies for making revolution, and instead fell to the same economism and chauvinism that the 3rd International parties would mostly find themselves mired in after Stalin's death. Say what you will about Marxism-Leninism, these parties and revolutionary movements have had the vitality to creatively produce solutions to the particularities of their conditions (Focoism, Protracted People's War, Urban Guerilla War, etc.) and seize state power, while Trotskyism dogmatically attaches itself to the insurrectionary model which so far has only seen success in the Russian Revolution.
I also think it needs to be said that while all of what you listed
can be great work, rank-and-file union committees are simply not the same as organizing alongside the labor movement towards revolution. The labor movement in the west, and especially in the United States and UK, is completely reformist and the communists involved economistic. Trotskyism has done nothing to resolve this beyond entryism. University and education union organizing likewise (and I'm saying this as a teacher) only has a thin veneer of greater radicalism.
The most advanced anti-war and anti-imperialist action that Trotskyism has produced is that outlined by Sam Marcy, and his practice led to a break with the SWP and resulted in parties which have all seen success
distancing themselves from Trotskyism, rather than embracing it. Even then, the militancy of these demonstrations is entirely rhetorical. They might even call back to the phrase "by any means necessary", but frankly I haven't met a single Trotskyist in my organizing that would go beyond saying those words. There's no room in their revolution for the insurrection and violence they speak of.
As I previously stated, marxists.org is objectively great work. That being said, though the website's originators are Trotskyist, that team of people haven't done everything on that site. For example, the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line was a collaborative project that wouldn't have been possible without the active involvement of people who were entrenched in the history covered by that archive. It's also notable that outside of the impressive example of marxists.org, there aren't any projects of even close to comparable effort or notoriety. To talk of "libraries" as a plural is a bit of an exaggeration then, no?
Literally everyone does online marxist classes. I've done online marxist classes. These are possibly the simplest, easiest form of political education you can engage with, and unfortunately the one with the least impact on real organizing. Where I'm at, we've had far greater success with communist political education as part of leadership development between tenant union and party work.
International meetings are all well and good so long as they have a point. Trotskyists have a reputation for endlessly founding new "Fourth Internationals" for a reason. International meetings like the IMCWP, ICOR, ILPS, etc. all involve parties far more involved in active revolutionary struggle which tackle active points of disunity among Marxist-Leninists and Maoists with the hopes of achieving unity through struggle, rather than declaring new internationals to rally toward before unity is achieved (as an aside, the "Principally Maoist" ICL has made this identical error)
>>1602595>Why haven’t Stalinists or Maoists started the one true bloody Marxist revolution yet? For that matter why haven’t you? Hmmm?Laziest criticism possible. This can be equally levied at any Marxist tendency. There will never be ONE TRUE socialist revolution just as that has never happened with any previous mode of production. There will also never be just one true prophet of the revolution, regardless of how Trotskyists demand we dogmatically view Lenin and Trotsky. Continuity-rupture of one stage of a science into a new one is a collective effort, one which Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. alone couldn't possibly hope to accomplish alone. If you disagree with what I've stated, fine. Actually engage with it like an adult and defend or adjust your position. This engagement is part of that collective effort, and I'm happy to take part.
>>1602939>not all trots are entryistSure, but Trotskyism as a tendency has repeatedly led to entryist practice in Trotskyist parties worldwide, something which you may not have observed firsthand, but I have. That Trotskyism has a reputation for this within the Communist movement independent of you or I, and an issue discussed even
by Trotskyists, is further evidence to me of this consistent trend.
>many urban guerilla groups were trotskyistAnd yet when conversations of urban guerilla groups arises they aren't the ones to come up, are they? No. In those conversations we talk about the Black Liberation Army, the Red Army Faction, the New People's Army, the People's Liberation Guerilla Army, the American Indian Movement, Weather Underground, etc. I don't dispute the existence of Trotskyist guerilla projects, I dispute their significance and effectiveness.
Going to ignore the shitflinging in this thread.
>>1602147I saw this but didn't know how best to fix it as I am not an anarchist. Regardless I have made an attempt to organize it better.
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/AnarchismA similar problem exists at the following page, where my ignorance of Maoism makes it hard for me to organize the different Maoism-s:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Maoism_(disambiguation)My understanding is that "Maoism" as a term refers to several contradictory tendencies that are all derived from MZT, and that the word itself, when used in English, most often refers to pre-Sendero formulations such as that of the Panthers, Naxalites etc. But I have no sources to cite in this regard. I do not believe that Maoism most often refers to MLM and I support making "Maoism" back into a disambig page.
The main source of the weaknesses of this site is that very few editors use it at present, mainly myself. I am neither a Maoist nor an anarchist and therefore these pages have not been improved since they were slapped together on the old Leftypedia. I invite more knowledgeable users to contribute to the relevant pages if they feel that pages are biased.
>>1602785This post would make a good addition to the MIA page.
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Marxists_Internet_Archive
>the whole project was almost wiped out in 1995 after a Wall Street Journal article mentioned that "even communists have found a home on the world wide web" and enraged porkies had the site deleted)Do you happen to have an archive of this piece? The archives only go back to '97:
https://www.wsj.com/news/archive/years >>1603189>As a MaoistGlad to have you. Don't worry about bias too much, if something is biased the role of other users is to try and work it out. My hope is that the adversarial method will help us arrive at something approximating the consensus of this website, and that an impasse will result in some nice Essay arguments.
Would you mind weighing in on the Maoism discussion? It was started by a Hoxhaist of all people:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Talk:Maoism"Your post was probably submitted" bruh I don't see no fucking post >>1603211Comrade can you also point out that there are today different lines within MLM, as a results of the decades of praxis it has already had? I saw you are aware of the ICL debacle by your comment up here
>>1602798It would be great if this gets broader understanding among new Marxists, young communists.
As far as I can tell there are three. Gonzaloists, CPP+CPI(Maoist)s and Maoists who operate in the imperial core and have to adapt their praxis more to classical Leninist methods (for lack of better terms).
Also could be worth pointing out the many clear connections between Mao Zedong Thought, Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on the theory of the (here) influential creative Marxist economist/computer scientist Paul Cockshott (from what I can tell he's not a strict MLM today, but, if one were to place his theories on a spectrum it would definitely be closer to Maoist concepts than those of a lot of other theorists today outside MLM, but there are also clear council communist leanings too for sure).
>>1603227Personally I see two real lines within Maoism, "Gonzaloism" (a term I would strongly urge we not use on Leftypedia as, like "Shining Path", it's largely a pejorative) representing the left tendency of the movement and a more centrist line expressed by the non-ICL parties engaged in people's war and those who have expressed similar statements that the ICL is premature (unity isn't yet achieved). There is a rightist tendency as well, which I would vaguely place people like Cockshott into, but they're extremely marginal within the wider Maoist terrain and hold more influence within the rightist "anti-revisionist" ML parties like the CPGB-ML and PCUSA.
This all being said, this can all go into the actual MLM page, rather than the disambiguation. Additionally, as a critique of the project so far, on these pages I see a lot of editorializing and few, if any, sources. Though for pages like for the Communist Party of Peru we'll have the issue of few english-language sources and fewer primary sources from the party, that's no excuse for it to be in the state that it's in. It's not difficult to find well-sourced critiques of the PCP
from Maoists such as
https://maoistcommunistunion.com/red-pages/issue-3/a-critical-evaluation-of-gonzaloism/, so if editors want to take a critical tone, at least be well researched about it.
>>1603168My bad, it was actually Fortune magazine, not WSJ, and the quote wasn't a direct quote. I don't know the exact article but it was "recent" as of June 16th 1995, see the original source;
https://www.marxists.org/admin/intro/history/newsgroups/1995-06-16.htmMy original post, by the way, came mostly from my recollections of the MIA's own site history section, which is linked here:
https://www.marxists.org/admin/intro/history/index.htm >>1603243>Personally I see two real lines within Maoism, "Gonzaloism" (a term I would strongly urge we not use on Leftypedia as, like "Shining Path", it's largely a pejorative) representing the left tendency of the movement and a more centrist line expressed by the non-ICL parties engaged in people's war and those who have expressed similar statements that the ICL is premature (unity isn't yet achieved). There is a rightist tendency as well, which I would vaguely place people like Cockshott into, but they're extremely marginal within the wider Maoist terrain and hold more influence within the rightist "anti-revisionist" ML parties like the CPGB-ML and PCUSA.Of what use is the "left", "center", "right" designation among these groups other than for Gonzalo Thought:ists to self-congratulate (saying that they are the "left" line, against more "right-wing" lines)?
I conceptualize [given tendency's] correctness based on the effectiveness of their praxis. The GT tendency is theoretically weak and its peoples struggle has been crushed. The Indian and Philippine experiments are clearly more successful in both practice and theory, they do not contradict but rather cite Mao, they do not lag behind with dogma, but apply materialist dialectics creatively to new obstacles. What warrants them the label "to the right of the [failed] PCP", which was itself mired in numerous petty-bourgeois errors? I think it's clear that the narrative is merely GT rhetoric, resting on very shaky grounding.
>>1603348>Of what use is the "left", "center", "right" designation among these groups other than for Gonzalo Thought:ists to self-congratulateBecause that's their position in relation to each other's politics, regardless of correctness. Keep in mind I don't align with the "principally Maoist" line, so my designation of them as the left of Maoism isn't meant to be "congratulatory". To have the most left line isn't a sign of correctness, at times it can be another form of opportunism. In the process of history what was once the correct left line can also become an incorrect line if its internal contradictions aren't resolved (negation of the negation). This is what happened with the PCP. Their initial correctness and strengths in their people's war were eventually liquidated (after the capture of its Central Committee, not just Gonzalo) into an ultra-left commandist line marked by an incapability to face those same internal contradictions.
>I conceptualize [given tendency's] correctness based on the effectiveness of their praxis.I wouldn't disagree with this, though I'd add the caveat that the most effective praxis can only come from the most correct line (noting that perfection of either is impossible, just "most" relative to others). This leaves room to recognize the historical PCP as a genuine revolutionary force as part of RIM which the center-Maoist parties are in direct sequence with. The CPI (Maoist) likely wouldn't exist at all without the lessons of Peru and Nepal. That the CPI (Maoist) and CPP are to the right of the ICL and current PCP isn't an insult, it's a sign that they're carrying the torch RIM and the PCP lit and are correctly navigating the space between ultra-left commandism and ultra-right opportunism.
Discussion about the title of the "Shining Path" article is still ongoing:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Talk:Shining_PathI invite Maoists, Latin Americans and others to weigh in. I have stated my position there: we should, if possible, use whatever name Peruvian leftists from other groups use, regardless of whether some consider it to be a pejorative. The party's self-descriptor "Communist Party of Peru" is, I would say, unhelpful, but if the (several) other parties of similar name truly are completely defunct and irrelevant, then I assume the Peruvian left must refer to the group as the one and only Communist Party, resolving the issue. If not, then there needs to be some discriminator.
>>1603331Thank you for the link. I will use it to expand the MIA page.
Same posting error as before >_>>>1606134I see you've updated the MIA wikipedia page. Here are some comments:
* I think rather than claiming a "Trotskyist" bias it's better to state an anti-Stalinist slant. While Trotsky was a major influence for the "old guard" that wrote most of the editorial content (coming out of the 1970s-80s New Left Trotskyist milieu for the most part), you can't really declare them as Trotskyist today; most had left organized Trot activism by the 90s to my knowledge, and some of the people I know wrote a lot of the Encyclopedia entries, like Andy Blunden, are openly skeptical of some Trot hallmarks have a more humanist perspective. Out of the newer writers of editorial content one is a leftcom and another (to my knowledge) is an ML. There's no formal editorial policy but the general rule is to avoid sectarian judgement without rigidly adhering to a false"neutrality".
* Regarding the whole MECW copyright strike situation - mirrors like
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/date/index.htm did not submit to the strike, so you should link readers who want to read a non-broken Marx Engels archive there.
>>1606202You caught my first edit before I was done with the page, lol. I have made an attempt to summarize the MIA History page that you linked, but without yet incorporating the details from
>>1602785 this post. (For example, I am obviously a zoomer who does not understand what BBS and Gopher are.) I also managed to dig up that Fortune article.
As for the "Trotskyist bias" section, that language could definitely use some improvement and I will try and work on it, but keep in mind that I am trying to represent to readers what the site actually looks like in its current form, regardless of intent from different editors over its 20-30 year lifespan. A note about the newer editorial content you mentioned would be great if you could provide me some examples of it.
Oh– I have some questions while you're at it. For one: the email from '95 about the site going down says Zodiac *intends* to get mirrors up and running, but the History page implies it was already well mirrored by that time. So which is it?
>>1606134 [Me]
Assuming no further input I have been effectively swayed on the issue of Shining Path. Main points that have convinced me so far are:
* Very few parties in Peru actually have the exact same name. "Not to be confused with 'Peruvian Communist Party'" seems fine as solution.
* Leftypedia currently has only this one article for a communist party from Peru, meaning it is the most notable and useful in practical terms
* The name of the article doesn't really matter to me in the long run, this argument has gone on long enough
For a site where we are probably gonna redirect Albania to "People's Socialist Republic of Albania", this shit seems pretty minor to me.
You can weigh in here:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Talk:Shining_Path >Countless Israeli officers have admitted that the attack took them completely by surprise and was only possible due to a number of errors on the part of the Israelis. Analysts have cited a number of factors in the failure of Israel to prevent the incursion, including a successful military and political deception by Hamas, the present division of Israeli society due to the ongoing political crisis, tensions surrounding the status of the Jerusalem al-Aqsa Mosque, and a form of complacency or even "hubris" towards the Gaza conflict and the capabilities of Hamas.>Several analysts have argued that the ongoing annexation and settling of the West Bank was a major factor in the Hamas operation's success. They stated that the Israeli government and military had been too focused on the annexation of the West Bank and had moved too many troops there to properly defend the Gaza frontier, a factor which Hamas was evidently aware of and successfully exploited.>Israeli and international analysts agree that Hamas succeeded overwhelmingly in misleading Israel about its intentions, its readiness and level of military training, and its operational security. Hamas openly trained for the operation and even constructed a "mock Israeli settlement" for training purposes, even filming their own exercises. Speaking to Reuters, one anonymous source said that "Israel surely saw them but they were convinced that Hamas wasn't keen on getting into a confrontation." In addition, years of rocket attacks left Israel unprepared for a ground assault. It remains unknown how Hamas was able to train for the use of motorized paragliders and other complex elements of the operation.From a new short article on the events in Israel/Gaza. Read or expand it here:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/2023_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_war >>1626861write your edits in a desktop application that autosaves and has recovery
>>1627836>JackbarnThis guy seems like bad news. I was looking at recent changes today and read his bio. His contributions also seem sus. A lot of contributing antisemitic quotes form marx. Is he a bourgeois wrecker and concern troll? He seems like he has too much free time. Granted I've been contributing a lot too, but mostly after work…
>>1631107>>1631363>>1634240>>1634245My response is up. I was busy yesterday.
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Talk:On_the_Jewish_QuestionIn short, I explained why his edits were lazy and uninteresting. I was more restrained about it than I wanted to be. This guy is weird because I found his contribs at the Donald Trump article to be useful, and he also apparently
>>1631107 has some sort of history with /leftypol/??
The heart of the issue, as you can tell by his bizarre RatWiki addition, is that his (publicly linked on his page) RationalWiki account shows at least a dozen edits to the Marx page about the antisemitism thing. He hadn't touched the page until I made a couple edits to it. And unsurprisingly, he's not even a Marxist:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Karl_Marx/Archive1>>1634240I want to be clear that these kind of edits are not accepted at Leftypedia and will be reverted or deleted. However, I honestly think we need a page about the antisemitism thing, and I am going to start that page separately.
>>1634245He's on thin ice. His use of "leftist politically incorrect" in particular is so disingenuous.
This is a good time to remind everyone that the old leftypedia.org never had a set of rules to aid moderation and we still need one. I will post a draft version here if anons would be interested in discussing it.
Interesting new and WIP article: Reserve army of labour, an exhaustive page being worked on by Sankara's Strongest Soldier (good username):
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour >>1634270Not completely retarded approach, congrats.
Any word on when onions will be able to at least view the page?
>>1634325I am still talking to the devs about it. They're not sure what the issue is. Can you tell me when you last were able to get it to work?
Has anyone been able to get Onion to work at all since the domain name changed to wiki.leftypol.org?
What's new:
I overhauled the article on "Liberalism":
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/LiberalismShort stub about the 2014 Ukraine coup I hope to help expand:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tatI have been trying to keep "Israel-Gaza war" up to date but it's hopeless given how fast news is moving. In any case, my hope is that the Wiki format will enable us to create a serious alternative to Wikipedia and other disinfo.
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/2023_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_warAnd several other contribs by a new user. Hope to see the new pages grow.
>>1646140TL;DR For now, policy is to have a third party judge and reconcile, and try to focus on facts and sources.
As a rule of thumb, I try to reconcile two versions into one text, usually allowing each viewpoint their own section or paragraph. Relying on quality sources, typically written by leftists, also helps to eliminate liberal viewpoints which are not encouraged on the site. While this has not actually been tested in the most extreme cases (Kronstadt, IWMA, Trotsky, Great Purge, you name it) it seems to have worked well for disputes over issues like Dengism, COVID policy and the like. Wisconcom quit the site recently after a sectarian dispute, but he was clearly in the wrong and I think the case is actually a good example of the site's fair but strict policy.
When facts are disputed, either a third party should help evaluate the sources, or the two different sources should be cited with a precise page number or website so that a casual reader can check both and draw their own conclusions. It is clearly naïve to say that all disputes of fact can be resolved in this way; this is where discussion should go to the Talk page and a compromise worked out. If both users are unhappy with the compromise, I have no issue with creating separate pages to write out disagreements, as I did in the case of Marx and his "antisemitism". Theoretical examples include "Trotskyist critiques of Stalin", "Nature of Chinese capitalism", "Confirmed Stalinist atrocities", "Personal character of Leon Trotsky" (MLs would go nuts for this one). The point is that the reader should know they are getting into something spicy.
The only users who have taken issue with this policy have been cranks. But I am open to discuss it. Do you see any potential flaws?
>>1646415Thank you for your explanation and clarification, anon. I just thought it was important information for potentially people being involved in the project.
I have no big potential flaws i can see, i think a willingness to [ut energy, thought and process in this is a very good thing.
>>1675672I'm not sure what you're talking about. The best way I know of to make citations is listed at
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Help:Editing_Leftypedia under "Citing sources". The "Citer" tool makes citing sources ten times faster and is probably what many Wiki editors use. I am not aware of a better tool used somewhere on Wikipedia.
>>1676121In the wikipedia editor citations are auto generated and in a different format to these crappy 'basic' citations that you are using.
it's hard to explain better, for an example just go to any wikipedia article, edit it and go to make an citation.
>>1676184I see, you want the citation template generator to be part of the Visual Editor itself. I never edit Wikipedia so I had no idea. I'll look into getting the devs to do that, but there is a backlog of things they haven't fixed yet. To be honest, I've used the web tool with the VEditor myself and I find it probably takes less than two extra seconds to tab out, paste the link, and copy-paste the new citation. I tested a couple links with both, and the output that Wikipedia generated was almost identical to the output generated by the tool. Wikipedia also has its own page with links to various citation tools:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Citation_toolsI understand this is just one more issue that gets in the way of people's editing workflow. And I do get that those add up. So, although I don't expect a response from the devs, I'll bring it up with someone anyway. In the meantime, I hope you can still edit comfortably with the fixes I suggested.
>>1676225Thanks, pretty sure I have this feature on my personal install of mediawiki, so it should just be a case of downloading a extension into the folder, but i could be wrong, i'll have a look later. :)
>I hope you can still edit comfortably with the fixes I suggested.I can, i just hope nobody gets to anal about not doing citations very detailed like i normally would on WP. :)
What's new:
Modern Monetary Theory getting more updates:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_TheorySomeone created a Russian Empire page in Russian… I'm not sure how to deal with it, especially because there is no such page in English. The site is not intended to have multiple languages like ProleWiki, but if people are willing to contribute I don't see why not to move it to its own RU-language section.
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Russian_EmpireArticle on the events in Gaza still getting slowly expanded and updated, but missing a lot of key pieces to this huge event:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/2023_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_warStarted article on Zionism, with intended section on Zionism and its anti-Semitic history:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/ZionismContinuing with the same topic, "public relations of Israel" includes racist rhetoric, manipulation of anti-Semitism and Jewish history, and use of international organizations like the ADL, WJC, and AIPAC:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Public_relations_of_Israel"In 2023, a student at MIT published a statistical language analysis of years of New York Times articles that showed a pervasive use of the passive voice going back to the First and Second Intifadas."
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Public_relations_of_Israel"'Fifteen years ago, as Head of the Southern Command [during the brutal Operation Cast Lead], I came close to breaking the neck of Hamas. I was stopped by the political echelon. This phenomenon will not continue. We will change reality on the ground in Gaza for the next 50 years.'"
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Yoav_Gallant"Kalashnikov was a self-taught engineer with little formal education who never profited from the rights to his weapons even after the capitalist counter-revolution, instead living on a modest state pension which allowed him to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. He never supported the dissolution of the Soviet Union and was a harsh critic of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Kalashnikov remained until a supporter of the legacy of the USSR, socialism, and Vladimir Lenin until his death, and expressed regret that he had never gotten to meet Stalin while had been alive. He never regretted his invention and was proud of its popularity until his death."
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalashnikov>>1700598It would be a good idea to do such summaries like this of related pages on the Zionazi-Palestine thread, and i guess similar in other threads.
Hopefully It will drive some engagement towrards the wiki.
You've probably noticed but i've tried to edit the war page where I can, mostly only posting things I can easily source with webpages, apolagies also for the sections I added and didn't do much with.
I'm pretty busy this week but will try to do more where I can. :)
I want to make a page called "Relationship between Marx and Engels" (or along those lines) that quotes the famous anecdote about the two arguing for hours about obscure points of English (German?) medieval history before coming to an agreement and being in lockstep again. Anyone got the source?
>>1701478It's a good idea, but I am worried whether the article has enough up-to-date content that people haven't heard of on such a fast-moving topic. Let me know what parts you think I should quote and I will make the post.
>>1730862Don't use bots. They get details wrong constantly.
Just in general, don't trust algorithms (written by flawed humans) to accurately reproduce texts (also written by flawed humans). Just read with your own eyeballs.
Don't care if this specific post is bait. There are people who actually believe this shit.
I've been away for a while, but here's some new stuff:
"The term Dark Ages in its modern usage properly refers to the relative paucity of written records and histories during the Early Middle Ages. In English history, for example, the era of Germanic colonization is a mostly unknown, or "dark", period in history; such gaps in history also occur in Byzantine records and elsewhere. This darkness is even more evident when studying the histories of Southern and Eastern European languages such as Albanian, not found in writing until 1462, and Romanian, not attested until 1521."
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/European_Middle_Ages"Classical society reached its zenith with the Roman Empire, which brought vast expanses of modern Europe, Africa, and Asia into one polity, taking its cultural, technological, and economic forms with it. The empire spanned 5 million km2 (1.9 million mi2) at its height in 117 AD. During the third century AD, the empire entered a period of sharp economic and political crisis which ended only with the centralizing reforms of emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305). The contradictions and struggles of maintaining such a large area, compounded by the threat of tribal groups from the North and East, forced Diocletian to significantly transform the Roman imperial system, including by revolutionary new forms of military organization, a revised taxation system, and eventually, an administrative division of the Empire into East and West. In the 5th century, the Western half faced renewed crisis and eventual collapse into regional states, while the Eastern Empire continued to exist for centuries."
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Classical_antiquity"'And while professors thus disagree, the ideas that there is a necessary conflict between capital and labor, that machinery is an evil, that competition must be restrained and interest abolished, that wealth may be created by the issue of money, that it is the duty of government to furnish capital or to furnish work, are rapidly making way among the great body of the people, who keenly feel a hurt and are sharply conscious of a wrong. Such ideas, which bring great masses of men, the repositories of ultimate political power, under the leadership of charlatans and demagogues, are fraught with danger….'"
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/GeorgismI'm aware of the glaring lack of current events. History is happening so fast right now WRT the Middle East that I haven't even been tried to keep up with it. I'm not sure what to prioritize but in any case the site is always open to people who want to add little sources, facts, arguments that need more coverage.
Also: we have a real spam filter now. Upside is that we won't get raided; downside is that new edits will not show up immediately. Hit me up with any questions or concerns.
I need input on where to take "Views of Karl Marx on Jews". I only created it as somewhere for Jack Barn (no longer very active) to put his whining (see
>>1634270), but he never took me up on it. I had hoped it could become a page for acknowledging the attacks on Marx with a balanced discussion - an inoculation, if you like.
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Views_of_Karl_Marx_on_JewsShould it be (a) turned into a large quote mine, (b) written as a discussion in paragraph form with citations (i.e. "he also made some statements about Lassalle[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]")… or simply deleted?
>>1776148I'm open to alternative explanations tho. Let's keep working through the rationalizations.
So we've already determined that:
A. It was not a letter but a news article
B. His daughter has ascribed it to him
What is our next rationalization? She was just mistaken?
>>1775708>your articleI wrote the entire article, not that anon.
>the only way you could do that would be to get the specific quotes people consider antissemtic and then refute those specificallyExactly, that was one of the options I offered here
>>1765859 namely:
<(a) turned into a large quote mineYour description could also apply to (b), where it would be basically the same but boiled down (and with all quotes exhaustively cited, but in the footnotes only). The choice I am offering is between a long tedious article, a short paraphrasing article, or no article.
I do not care if you decide to portray him as based or cringe but I at least want a space for people to argue against the unoriginal right-wing spam, as
>>1771973 says
>>>/leftypol/1788633Leftypol-LLM-GPT, give me a leftypedia article about this person and all their spooky connections, drawing from the every known text, audio and video source.
Leftypol-dumbGPT/algorithm, check the veracity of the article your sibling just wrote.
Is that how this shit works?
>>1789408This is a weird post but anyway I made some starter pages for you:
"A member of the notorious Kagan family, Nuland has played a role in neoconservative imperialist US foreign policy since at least the 1990s."
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland"Members of the family have had a tremendous influence on neoconservative thought and US foreign policy since the turn of the century, including through the Project for the New American Century, an instrumental group influencing the imperialist program of the George W. Bush administration; advocating for the Iraq War troop surge of 2007; sustaining US involvement in Afghanistan; supporting US intervention in Syria and Ukraine under Obama, as well as the successful government overthrow of the latter; and continued weapons shipments to Ukraine."
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Kagan_familygood luck getting a GPT to write anything but glowie shit >>1789873>I made some starter pages for you:You're a gem anon, appreciate the reply.
>This is a weird postI was kind of talking about the idea of having several different discrete GPT/AI/LLM/Algorithms/whatever checking each others work when completing a task like writing wiki entries. Instead of having one entity like chatGPT in the cloud doing all the work, separate and discrete local and cloud programs would search, sort, assign weight, check veracity, and then a separate language model would write the wiki article. It seems safer than allowing one glowing cloud black box to do all the tasks. Someone in the other thread mentioned the leftypedia so I posted here, kind of realizing later that its off topic for you.
>good luck getting a GPT to write anything but glowie shitFor sure. It seems like the only trustworthy AI is something local that you've trained yourself.
>>1791631Yep, should work! OGG, MP3, probably others too. See if it works for ya:
https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Special:UploadI will add that YouTube embeds are also a newly restored feature that, I'm told, should be easy to use.
>>1887366The old pages on the goals of Leftypedia were found wanting and some users in the fbi.gov supported changing some – namely, the points dealing with the ideas "politically correct" and "politically incorrect".
These are the principles which were submitted for review in May of this year:
Principles-
Leftist and Marxist: Ultimate objective is to further these studies, and add science and philosophy in accordance with Marxist and anarchist objectives.
-
Non-sectarian: Strive to balance different tendencies or leftist "sects", and allow their positions as long as they are fairly stated. Strive to treat their citations and sources by an equal and fair standard.
-
Anti-capitalist: This includes anti-imperialism.
-
Skeptical: Combine a healthy doubt of hegemonic sources with support from verifiable, credible alternatives.
-
Ease of access and editing: Make site easy to edit, discuss, and also easy to understand and apply the rules and procedures. Easy to approach the mods. Also include accessible pages with links to tools for editing.
-
Not politically correct: Oppose superficial liberal analyses of social problems and aim to document all leftist viewpoints. To exclude these positions is to erase them, and thereby to fail to scrutinize and improve our own views.
-
Not politically incorrect: Uphold basic etiquette and respect for others while allowing criticism. Contributors who take issue with "politically correct" content are allowed to voice their objections, and those who have objections to politically incorrect content must always voice theirs respectfully. Personal accusations of bigotry should be avoided.
These principles do not define what each article must lean towards, or a bias every page must hold. Leftism is a
real movement and not a set of doctrines to uphold. Leftypedia is intended for critical debate and discussion of historical facts for the improvement of the science of revolution, and input from even our enemies is allowed to some extent.
AimsOur aims can be summarized in seven main points. We want Leftypedia to be:
1. An
easily accessible resource for socialists of all stripes to
locate well-researched arguments and information on politics, history, and modern issues.
2. A
platform for interested leftists to collaborate and develop
original discourse on issues relevant to fellow proletarians and socialists alike.
3. A reliable and balanced
source of news and information to help leftists better comprehend and refute the propaganda and fabrications of bourgeois media, including about working class struggles or foreign "enemies" of imperialist states.
4. A platform for leftists to
synthesize, exposit, and critique the writings of notable socialists, using detailed sources and quotations, to innovate on past experience and to advance the science of socialism.
5. A space for leftists to
elaborate on their contentions with other socialist tendencies in order to better inform and expand the worldview of others.
6. A space for socialists to take advantage of the collaborative nature of the MediaWiki format to compile
detailed, informative articles on praxis and other topics relevant to leftist activism, all in one place and continuously expanding.
7. A space for leftists to easily
create and share detailed polemics and essays for others to engage with their views.
>>1887378As I just mentioned, discussion in the server took issue with Principles 6 and 7, and unanimously voted to replace them with:
-
Anti-discrimination: A space where leftists from various identities can contribute and discuss topics without fear of bigotry which plagues many parts of the left.
New Matrix link:
https://matrix.to/#/#Leftypedia:matrix.orgHope it works properly.
>>1896940The dude you are talking about is literally autistic and he spends all his time shitposting instead of actually doing anything with his life. He's a perfect example of the type of people who think that posting makes them some kind of Lenin. (See e.g. the Leftychan BS from a few years ago)
>>1899687>The dude you are talking about is Literally irrelevant to the issue. This is only relevant to shame him, which I don't have a problem with.
See it as a penetration test.
The actual problem will always be one of coordination and processes. Opsec is not just another theory to read and forget.
>>1574396FYI the mods of this wiki, including Harry, have said this is not a leftypol wiki and therefore not a leftypol project, so they are lying in the OP
go ahead and be the 5th editor for this garbagecan wiki before they ban you for no reason, the last 3 ragequit
“The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding,” Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor wrote. “When the president uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune."
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/07/02/wfvt-j02.htmlI mean, this is pretty much the definitional opposite of "left wing". This is a mostly right-wing country by law now.
>>1902913Who cares? Literally, who cares? This SODOMayor "justice" is so frightened about coups and political assassination now being basically legal domestically? Well, for fuck's sake, they have been effectively legal if carried out abroad since time immemorial… And btw, plenty of political assassination have been ordered and carried out by presidential order domestically anyway… Just another veil of fiction being ripped off, and that's all fine and dandy.
>>1902937I would have expected something interesting happening, but no. Disappointed.
>>1902913They're getting rid of the country.
This isn't for Trump. It's for now.
>>1574396Is the wiki completely gone or was the moderator keeping a backup?
I think for the wiki we should have open access to download database which are uploaded monthly or bimonthly.
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