Talk:Marxism

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Marxism was nominated as a good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (December 5, 2006). There are suggestions below for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

/Archive 1

Total rewrite of Marxism complete - proposing to replace current article

I have taken all of the content that is currently on this page and transformed it into an article that deals with all of the various parts of Marxism in an orderly and strucutred way. I think the new article definitely still needs work, but it is a good step forward. The new article is currently lcoated at User:JenLouise/Marxism proposed.

I have also kept a record of all the information from this current article that has not been included in my version, so that other people can attempt to include the information where appropriate if they feel that it should be included. All information not currently in the new verison is contained at User:JenLouise/Marxism old.

I can't think of any reason why the new article cannot replace the existing article now, but I obviously will not make such a huge change without people having the chance to discuss it first.

Please view the proposed article and record your thoughts here.

I propose to replace this article with the new version in the week beginning Monday 25th of September unless anyone comes up with a good reason why this should not happen. JenLouise 03:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DONE JenLouise 07:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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From what i've read this is a pretty thorough and well written article, i would consider paring done some the length though, i.e. some of the more indirect variations on Marxism or less relevant Marxists. --Awenty 19:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Total rewrite of Marxism complete - areas needing more work

If somebody did not know what Marixsm was, they would not easily learn it from this current article, but they would definitely have a pretty good idea by the time they finished reading the new one. I'm not saying the new article is perfect - very far from it - but it is a good start, and once it became the real article, then lots of people working on it would help to fix any current problems with it. JenLouise

My initial sense is, "brava!" but I need to look at it more closely! Slrubenstein | Talk 04:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On my quick first glance, I'd say it's definitely an improvement over the current article, which is certainly a bit messy. My only real concern is that it spends a lot of time and detail on Marx and Engels before it says anything about later developments, and the material on later Marxism is also a bit sketchier -- which in an article about Marxism (as opposed to the article on Marx himself) seems like a slight misplacement of emphasis. The lead section will also need some tweaking for clarity, and the lead sentence itself is not ideal. But all in all I'd say the new version provides a much better base to work from than the current one. Good work, and let's go from there. -- Rbellin|Talk 04:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to deal with the different versions of marxism in chronological order, hence wy Marx/ENgels comes first without reference to the rest. However the table of contents clearly sets out what follows. I would say that considering all other forms of Marxism are based on Marx's work, that it is logical that more space would be dedicated to explaining the tenets of his work. The reason most of the other areas are much shorter, is simply becuase I don't know alot about them and just pulled what I thought important off their articles. If you think too much space is given to Marx/Engels, then perhaps a Classical Marxism page can be created with all of this content, and then just a briefer summary be included in this article. The influences section is probably too long, and can be summarised even more if someone wants to try. JenLouise 12:36, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New version is improvement, but it doesn't deal with the greatest problem of current article – complete lack of references. Also, criticisms section is weak. -- Vision Thing -- 08:46, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty much all of the content that didn't come from this article, comes from the main article pages, and its true I didn't bring the references across with the content. However if the other pages are well referenced, it shouldn't be too difficult to bring those references into this article. I'll have a look next time I get a chance. (At least the criticisms section is more than just a heading...it was all I could manage at the time - the criticisms article was way too long and all over the place for me to be able to summarise it easily. I'll leave that to someone else!) JenLouise 12:36, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is excellent work. While we could perfect it, especially with references, it is already stronger than the existing argument. I have three comments from a Trotskyist perspective.

The order of Marx/Engels, then Western Marxism, then Post-Marxism, suggest that Marxism after Marx and Engels is Western Marxism. However, in so far as Western Marxism develops or reworks Marx, perhaps a majority of non-academic Marxists are not Western Marxists but orthodox Marxists (for example, Marxist-Leninist or Trotskyist).
It could be POV to say that Marxism Leninism is Marxism as developed by Lenin. This is discussed on Marxism Leninism; The term ML was coined by Stalin and include post-Leninist ideas, such as the theory of socialism in one country, which were not developed by Lenin.
The term 'socialist states' is tricky, since the notion that these states reached socialism is disputed. Perhaps 'workers' states' or 'transitional states' or 'revolutionary dictatorships' would be better? --Duncan 07:45, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All the material that I got on Marxism-Leninism, socialism, socialist states, etc, all came from the various articles already existing on wikipedia - all I did was provide a summary of what I could find, I didn't do any additional research at all, mainly because I know nothing about this side of Marxism. But you seem to so perhaps it would be best for you to make the changes you think necessary? JenLouise 07:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone also clean upp Antihumanism? Car54 00:04, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New content of page

As no-one had any reason not to replace the current article I have replaced the old article with the content as proposed above. I will also try to address some of the concerns raised above. JenLouise 06:49, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With regard to referencing, I know that this new article still hardly has any references, and I was originally going to go through and pick up references from the main articles as that is where all the content came from, but according to Summary Style this is not actually necessary. This doesn't mean that it doens't need references - it does, but the references should be ones that apply to the article as a whole, and so will require a bit of digging up.
I have reduced the size of Classical Marxism to try and balance the page. I now note that Marxism as a political practice now takes up half the article length, which I believe is also an imbalance.
I believe it would be a good idea to create an article such as Marxism (political practice) (someone else probably has a better name) which could house the current content from this section and then it could be summarised to bring this section into line with the style of the rest of the article. JenLouise 06:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also the following branches of Marxism exist on wikipedia, but did not make it into the new article:

Academic Marxism
Freudo-Marxism (this may link to post-marxism perhaps?)
Libertarian Marxism
Unreconstructed Marxism

These are all stub articles, and fairly vague as to what they represent, but if an article exists on them, I think they should at least rate a mention in this article. Anyone have any idea where they might fit? JenLouise 03:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Archive of discussion needed!

Now that most of the content on this article has been updated/replaced, I think that most of this disucssion needs to be archived. Can someone who has more knowledge of wikipedia than I do, please archive most of the discussion on this page? I would leave the sections Total rewrite of Marxism complete - proposing to replace current article and below on this page as they relates to the article in its current format, but everything before that has very little relevance now. JenLouise 03:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done JenLouise 02:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

GA Candidacy

The expanded use of inline citations will be necessary for this article to pass and become a Good Article. Please continue the process as quickly as possible, for a reviewer might fail it for the current state of referencing. -Fsotrain⁰⁹ 05:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

GA review

The key reason this article doesn't yet (as of 12/5/06) pass as a good article is the lack of citation, inline or otherwise. A well-cited article on Marxism should cite biographies of the philosophers, works representative of the branches of Marxism, histories of the various countries discussed, etc.

Some other issues I noticed (minor enough that they probably wouldn't make me fail the article):

"Classical Marxism" is awfully list-oriented. Is there a way to synthesize Marx's basic points into more readable paragraphs?
There are some weird assertions about China in the article. For instance, "Maoism" is always pejorative? This sort of thing really has to be sourced, and would probably remain controversial anyway.

Please renominate the article when it's cited. For now, I've put it on the Unreferenced GA list. Twinxor t 14:14, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, this is a summary article of the related Marxism articles. According to Wikipedia guidelines summary articles do not need to repeat references that are included in the linked articles. They only need to cite references which relate to the main article as a whole which it does. JenLouise 22:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of error in article

I believe there is a mistake in the text of this article. Look for the following sentence:

" Karl Marx is currently lives in America and is the first, one-hundred and first senator in the United States. " —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.54.2.252 (talk) 08:45, 17 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]

This article seems to be heavily subject to vandalism. Can more experienced wikipedians start the process of protecting it, e.g. not allowing edits by non-signed in editors? BobFromBrockley 12:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't marxism the same as communism?? What is the difference