Talk:Det Radikale Venstre

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The name of this party is the Radical Left not the Radical Centre. I tried to change it but I can't. Can someone please change it? Thanks User:Pimpalicious May 1, 2004 7:32 (ET)

No, the name of the party is neither Radical Left or Radical Centre. It's either "Det Radikale Venstre" (Danish) or "The Danish Social-Liberal Party" (English). Literal translations are not always correct translations. /TroelsArvin

[edit] Naming convention

I'm considering changing the name of this article, as per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). aliceinlampyland 14:16, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, please. This article has been through endless name changes. Sigh. What would you change it to? TroelsArvin 19:19, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

We agreed in the past that the Naming convention does not necesary allways mean that a the name should be in English. FOr this party the Danish name is usually used also in Englisg. Electionworld 22:18, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I support moving the article to Danish Social Liberal Party. The Economist, has the following list of parties in the Danish Parliament: Liberal Party (V; 52 seats); Social Democratic Party (SDP; 47 seats); Danish People's Party (DF; 24 seats); Conservative People's Party (KF; 18 seats); Social Liberal Party (R; 17 seats) Socialist People's Party (SF; 11 seats); Unity List (UL; 6 seats). --Bagande 18:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-up

I just rewrote some of the sections in this article, they seem to have been written or edited by someone with a grudge against the party. I haven't checked who is been quitely vandalising the page, but I am going to monitor it from now on.

The three sections 'Internal conflict' '2007 election' and 'relationship to other parties' needs to be merged and rewritten to form coherent story, since they discuss many of the same events.

I would prefer to remove the section 'international comparison' completely. It is not accurate, and it is hard to write a comparison that isn't biased one way or another. The party is best described as centrist (as by danish scale), or by its exact policies. Carewolf (talk) 17:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with removing the international comparison. As you say, it would be difficult to do that section properly, and describing the exact policies of the party would be a much better of handling this. Hemmingsen 18:28, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The word "left"

The statement "The use of the word for "left" in the name of the former mother party Venstre and the Norwegian party Venstre is meant to refer to Liberalism and not Socialism." is incorrect. The Danish word for "left" refers to socialism/communism. My understanding is that the name of the party comes from the side of the Danish parliament the conservative/liberal "right wing" parties sat on - and has nothing to do with political ideology. I have only heard this from Danes and can not verify this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.249.106.205 (talk) 22:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The Danish word "venstre" (or "left") does indeed refer to socialism/communism nowadays, but it hasn't always done so. The terms left wing and right wing as used to describe political ideologies are older than both socialism and the Danish parliament, and have their origin in the French revolution and seating arrangements in various French assemblies of that era, so they date back to around 1790, but Karl Marx did not publish Das Kapital until 1867 or so. See for example Left-right politics and Glossary of the French Revolution. Their use in Danish party names seems to stem from nicknames for the political groupings that dominated the Danish parliament from 1840s to the 1860s. Bondevennernes Selskab, the liberal ancestor-party of Venstre and Radikale Venstre, was called "Venstre", the National Liberals were called "Centrum" and the conservatives were called "Højre", so even in a Danish parliamentary context the terms seem to predate socialism.
I am not sure when the tradition to sit left/right according to ideology was adopted in the Danish parliament, but I don't think it was used in the first Folketing hall (the one in the Christiansborg that burned in 1884). Here the seats were arranged in a "U"-shape so that only the speaker was sitting at center, and as far as I know the tradition was for the ministers to sit by the window, and since this would have been to the left as seen from the speaker, as best as I can tell from the few low-quality pictures I have lying around, and since the ministers of that period more often than not were conservative or right wing they couldn't have been sitting left/right according to ideology. The current seating arrangement of concentric semicircles (or approximately semicircles, anyway) with the speaker at center was used in the temporary parliament in Fredericiagade (from 1884 to around 1918), so that is probably when Danish politicians began sitting left/right according to ideology.
That's my 2 cents worth, anyway, and I apologize for failing to keep it short. Hemmingsen 16:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)