Talk:Freedom Road Socialist Organization

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Clearly supporters of the two different Freedom Road groups (see the two groups' websites at www.frso.org and www.freedomroad.org) are dueling here over who gets to define the names of the groups (i.e. who is the "real" Freedom Road and who isn't), as well as over the terms of the 1999 split and the politics of the two groups.

Wikipedia is supposed to be NPOV. So in the interest of trying to provide objective and intelligible information to the world, lets try to come up with an objective way to talk about these two organizations that use the same name.

The starting point should be what the two groups call themselves, as that would be most objective. Unfortunately when the groups split in 1999, both continued to use the same name, Freedom Road Socialist Organization. So how to differentiate the groups while writing a wikipedia entry that talks about both of them?

The definitions that I've seen used to date (here and elsewhere) include:

for the group with the website www.frso.org:

FRSO -- self-definition

FRSO[Fight Back!] -- publication name

FRSO[Marxist-Leninist] -- ideological self-definition

for the group with the website www.freedomroad.org:

FRSO -- self-definition

FRSO/OSCL -- English / Spanish initials

FRSO(Freedom Road) -- former publication name (publication is now defunct)

FRSO(Left Refoundationist) -- ideological self-definition

Here on wikipedia supporters of the Left Refoundationists continue to try to use organizational names that make it look like they are the "real" FRSO and that the Marxist-Leninist FRSO is defined as not really being FRSO. So they started out using "FRSO" for themselves and simply "Fight Back!" for the other group, not even using "FRSO(Fight Back!)" for the group they don't like. Then that was changed by FRSO(M-L) supporters to be more objective so that the groups were defined in a parallel way by using FRSO(Left Refoundationist) and FRSO(Marxist-Leninist). Then supporters of the Left Refoundationists changed it again and used FRSO/OSCL for themselves and switched it back to FRSO(Fight Back!) for the other group. This ongoing attempt by the Left Refoundationist supporters to define the groups in a non-parallel way is not neutral. You can define your rival group however you want in other places, but you shouldn't do that on wikipedia.

In other places, supporters of each group have also used names to define the other group that are purposely antagonistic and are by design not accepted by the other group, so these should not be used on wikipedia either. For example FRSO(www.frso.org) on their website refers to the Left Refoundationist group as "Right Opportunists". So we could use FRSO(Right Opportunist) here but that obviously would not be accepted by the Left Refoundationists so it shouldn't be used on wikipedia. Likewise, the Left Refoundationists on their website (www.freedomroad.org) refer to the other group as "Fight Back!", not even acknowledging the reality that the other group also claims the name FRSO. They also have referred to the M-L FRSO group as "Stalinist" or "orthodox". These definitions are not accepted by the other group, so they should not be used here.

Perhaps the least biased way to identify the two FRSOs on wikipedia would be to put each group's website in parentheses after the group name. So for example it would be FRSO(frso.org) and FRSO(freedomroad.org). I am tempted to propose this as it is the most objective. And I think ultimately we should go with this if nothing else can be agreed on.

The problem is that using the websites to differentiate the groups doesn't help people quickly differentiate between which is the Left Refoundationist group and which is the Marxist-Leninist group. I find it unfortunate that the Left Refoundationist supporters here are objecting to using these ideological definitions of the two groups, as I think most readers would find those definitions the most useful to quickly and succinctly understand which group is which.

Also recently the Left Refoundationist group supporters have started referring to themselves as "FRSO/OSCL" (English-Spanish initials), rather than just "FRSO". So maybe the quandry has solved itself -- The Left Refoundationists have essentially renamed themselves "FRSO/OSCL" while the Marxist-Leninists continue to be "FRSO". The only problem with this is that both groups have the initials "OSCL" in Spanish, so in a sense this doesn't differentiate the groups either. It also has the implication that the Left Refoundationists are bilingual while the Marxist-Leninists are monolingual, which is not true. On the contrary, the M-L FRSO publishes a bilingual newspaper (Fight Back!).

So I'll leave it at that for now, and see if anyone else has any thoughts before I rework this entry again to remove the biased changes that were recently made to the organizational names. I'll change it to FRSO(frso.org) and FRSO(freedomroad.org) unless someone makes a compelling case for another alternative.

--Takealeft 14:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

1) FRSO/OSCL has never referred to itself as "the Left Refoundationists". This has only been the reference of choice for the Freedom Road/(Fight Back) crew, who IMHO are only motivated by an infantile return to 70s-style pissing matches over who the "real" Marxist-Leninists (e.g., supposed descendents of Marx and Lenin). FRSO/OSCL has made no opposition between Left Refoundation as a strategy and Marxist-Leninism as an ideological orientation -- nowhere in the LR paper, nor in subsequent decisions. Only the FRSO/(Fight Back) crew have, and that's why they split to begin with.

2) All recent pamphlets, as well as the website, of the former publishers of FR Magazine have referred to the group itself as "Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad" or "Freedom Road / El Camino" or "FRSO/OSCL". One would think the person above would get the hint that the group takes use of the bilingual name seriously as the sole form of the name. FRSO / (Fight Back) has to my knowledge made no such decision; it has and continues to refer to itself as simply "FRSO" in both its English and Spanish editions of its newspaper. Talk of "bias" is nonsense; this is obvious and plain to see for anyone who's viewed both sites. --64.61.110.254 17:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I won't respond directly to your name calling in your two points for now, as I'd like to focus here on the immediate question of how to identify the two groups on this page on wikipedia. So what do you propose that we use for that, 64.61.110.254? "FRSO" and "FRSO/OSCL"? Or do you think it makes more sense to use "FRSO(frso.org)" and "FRSO(freedomroad.org)"? Or do you propose something else? I would lean toward the using websites to differentiate the two groups.

Do you think that the groups should be identified using "FRSO/OSCL" and "FRSO(Fight Back)"? I would disagree, as I stated above, since those are not parallel constructions, and only one group has something tagged on to it (Fight Back) while the other does not. Therefore it's biased toward implying that "FRSO/OSCL" is the "real" FRSO and "FRSO(Fight Back)" is not. Therefore I think we should choose between "FRSO(frso.org)" and "FRSO(freedomroad.org)", or "FRSO" and "FRSO/OSCL". Unless someone has a better idea...

--Takealeft 19:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Take: I agree with you. The websites are good delineators under the circumstances. --Midnite Critic 00:15, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Its been ten days since you first raised this and there hasn't been any real debate. I would say that if nobody comes up with a reasonable counter-proposal in the next couple of days, go ahead and make the changes. Comzero 15:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)