Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-Stalinist left

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. John254 03:38, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-Stalinist left

Anti-Stalinist left (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Neologism. An arbitrary collection of diverse political tendencies, with no encyclopediatic value of its own. Soman 09:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[1]

--Inbloom2 10:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Many terms give google hits, but without deserving separate articles. I'll go through the article on New York, and present my views on it later today. --Soman 10:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete - nn neologism, 813 non-wiki ghits. MER-C 11:27, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. Neologism? I have seen the term used in books and magazines decades old. For example, A Margin of Hope by Irving Howe was reviewed in the Winter 1982/83 issue of Foreign Affairs as "A compelling account of the author's youth, education, and decades of warfare in the anti-Stalinist Left." So the term was clearly well-understood by then. The term is also used in the May 24, 1982 issue of the New York Times, on a separate subject from Howe and Wald's books: "Nowhere were these issues more vigorously debated than in the offices of Partisan Review - the leading magazine of the anti-Stalinist left and for many years a kind of highly tuned seismograph of the intellectual climate." This was a major intellectual current within the Left in its time. Andrew Levine 11:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • And in another context (still relevant to the article, though), here's Time Magazine way back in 1946 talking about "Anti-Stalinist leftists": [2] And Hanna Rosin in Slate freely talking about the "anti-Stalinist leftists of the 1930s and '40s": [3]" Andrew Levine 11:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep. I created this page, so I've got a vested interest. I'm not sure what you mean by "neologism" - yes, it was coined at some point in the 1930s as a neologism, but has become part of the vocabulary of the left. The collections of political tendencies are diverse, but they are not arbitrary: as the article says, "The term anti-Stalinist left tends to be used in relation to those currents of the left that define themselves centrally in opposition to Stalinism, rather than anyone on the left who is critical of Stalinism." BobFromBrockley 11:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment, the problem is exactly in the formulation "tends to be used". The term is a POV usage by certain groups for their own self-identification, rather than an encyclopediatic criteria. There are many other contextual identifications, like 'Revolutionary Left', 'Progressive Left', which have no encyclopediatic article value of their own. --Soman 12:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment: What you're essentially saying here, Soman, is that only proper nouns deserve encyclopedia pages, as pretty much everything else falls into the "tends to be used" category, from revisionism to progressivism to, for that matter, socialist, which are all context-bound, but surely deserve pages? BobFromBrockley 13:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment: No, that's not what I'm saying. Ideologies like Socialism, Conservatism, Trotskyism are ideologies that can be quite clearly defined, an should thus have separate articles. 'Anti-Stalinist left' concernes various ideological tendencies, grouped together. This is where the contextuality becomes problematic. Who defines that it is these tendencies comprise one single movement, in spite that their formulations of policy and political action are separate? --Soman 13:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
        • Comment: "'Anti-Stalinist left' concernes various ideological tendencies, grouped together." The exact same can be said of Liberalism and Conservatism. Why not delete those, as well? Andrew Levine 19:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
          • Comment': ? Liberalism and Conservatism are rather clearly demarcated ideologies. There is for example, a Liberal International. This doesn't mean that they are homogenous ideologies. Is there any Anti-Stalinist left movement? No. However there are left movements which oppose Stalinism. But these various tendencies have no other common denominator than their opposition to Stalin. We cannot have categorizing article on every issue that 2 or more groupings take a common standpoint. --Soman 19:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep JSTORE gives 339 hits, Google Scholar gives 985, one substntial academic book uses it in the title: The New York intellectuals : the rise and decline of the anti-Stalinist left from the 1930s to the 1980s / by Alan M. Wald ISBN 0807841692 - I think thats enough to rebut neologism (which I understand as not making terms up to use on WP, rather than them having small currency IRL). Not a brilliant article, but this request for deletion doesn't stand up, IMNSHO.--Red Deathy 13:37, 20 December 2006 (UTC) (Sorry, 195 hits on Google scholar for the exact phrase...my bad), still, enough for me...--Red Deathy 13:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: "Revolutionary left" gives 147 000 hits, but that by itself doesn't motivate an article that simply states "The term revolutionary left tends to be used in relation to those currents of the left that define themselves centrally in opposition to reformism". Likewise with "democratic left", etc. Just cause a wording is used in a book title doesn't mean it should have an article of its own. (For example, "Revolutionary Idealism and Parliamentary Politics: A Study of Trotskyism in Sri Lanka" by M. Somasundram alone does not motivate a separate article for Revolutionary idealism). --Soman 13:46, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment The reason for AfD given is neologism, if you want to renominate under notability then we can investigate that.--Red Deathy 14:07, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep Well known term, and one that's also useful as many leftist grops defined themselves by their opposition to Stalinism, as pointed out above. 'Neologism' as a reason to tag for deletion is clearly ridiculous-the term has been around for years and is widely used, to refer to this specific movement. Why wasn't this raised on the discussion page before it got to this extreme stage?Felix-felix 14:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy Keep and Felix-felix's question should be addressed: Why is this on AfD before other discussion on the page itself? Wikipedia is institutionally a tertiary source reflecting existing peer reviewed secondary sources. The fact that the term is specifically referenced in a Univ. of NC Press book title is ON ITS OWN evidence that this article reflects scholarly work, and the numerous citations of the term given in this discussion only reinforce that. Whether the original nom or anyone else has issues with the term is irrelevant from wikipedia standards as the term passes WP:V. I'd like to see more direct footnoting in the article to ensure there's no OR taking place, but as there are references, any OR issues (as is standard) can be addressed by article editors, not AfD. -Markeer 15:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, and suggest speedy keep per WP:SNOW if nothing else. This is historically quite important. Given the twentieth century equation of the Left with various Marxist tendencies, it became quite important for non-Stalinist leftists to distance themselves from Stalinism. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy keep Essential part of 20th century political history. Vast literature, so the article can be expanded and improved through editing, but it is already referenced and encyclopedic. Edison 15:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep - Neologism != "Something I never heard of".Bakaman 18:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment, a retaliatory move for Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 December 20. To clarify, I used the term neologism in the sense that the definitions set here constitute an invented usage of a term for POV purposes. Perhaps the word 'neologism' is not the best way to describe the phenomenon, but that's more of splitting hairs. --Soman 19:01, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per Andrew Levine. Just H 23:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I remember this term too. It's an important concept in American history. I would look up the sources for this, but I can see that others already have. JChap2007 03:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Andrew Levine certainly makes a strong case for multiple, non-trivial mentions in independent, reliable sources. If there are POV problems, they can be addressed without deletion. delldot | talk 05:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep the definition of a neologism is not "a word that I personally haven't heard before" DGG 02:03, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.