Talk:Ultra-leftism

(untitled section)

I have done a fairly big edit of the page. Looking over the history of the article, it seems that it has been troubled by two essentially different, if overlapping, usages of the term, which meant that the aricle became confused. I have edited it to reflect these two different usages. What do people think? --BobFromBrockley 09:51, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me, although it would benefit from a clearer explanation of the ultra left's relationship with left communism. Warofdreams talk 23:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Nice work Bob. Thanks for taking the time to do it! --Duncan 15:16, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Bob, you're not quite right actually. Barrot/Dauvé never says that fascism and liberal democracy are equally bad, only that you can't choose which one of the forms capitalism will take in the course of history. See this quote:

The point made by communists, from 1918 onwards, is not that dropping a ballot paper in the box (an act which is indeed a dispossession of oneself) would be the same as being sent to Dachau. The point made by Bordiga and Pannekoek alike is that the most open election system, with lots of debates, meetings, street demos, etc., has never prevented and will never prevent the creation of concentration camps. Every democratic country has had and can have its Dachaus in one form or other. Supporting democracy in order to avoid dictatorship just doesn’t work. It never has and never will. Here lies the essential. To prove this essential, there is no need to relativise, minimise or deny the all too real horrors of fascism. (What’s it all about)

"or Jean Barrot's critique of anti-fascism which argues that all bourgeois regimes should be opposed, and that revolutionaries should not defend liberal democracy against fascism."

This is the view of anti-revisionist Bolsheviks and true Marxist-Leninist proletarian parties. Including it makes it appear that is specific to left communism. This is why Wiki fails with me — Preceding unsigned comment added by 8.225.200.133 (talk) 19:49, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Thus, the article should be changed -- by me or by someone else. --Felix, 10 December 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.66.171.118 (talk) 22:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we have a list of such parties? Over here we've had/have the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the [{Socialist Party of Serbia]]. --PaxEquilibrium 21:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Few people would describe the Communist Party of Yugoslavia as ultra-left. --Duncan 15:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

PaxEquilibrium may not have read the article before making that suggestion! I wouldn't support that idea. BobFromBrockley 12:29, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

merge?

• Consolidated discussion at Talk:Radical left.

I am honestly unsure why we have multiple separate pages for the terms Ultra leftism, Far left, Radical left. Each of the articless explains somewhat redundant history and the fact that the terms are vague (used by different groups to mean somewhat different things). In other words, the terms are vague and to the extent they have substance it's largely non-evident from the name ("ultra"--what does ultra mean? it's a meaningless intensifier) or non-evident to people who don't use that particular term, and the groups intended to be covered by the term are similar in each set anyway (whether or not they really belong together). "Ultra left" is just never going to grow -- it's basically a meaningless phrase used simply as a pejorative; "radical left" just says it's lumping together anarchists, communists & socialists; and while there's a lot of content in "far left", it's largely redundant with left-wing politics. I propose that we just merge them all into a single page, redirect the other two terms to the single page, and have one page that defines each separate term. (I'm choosing "radical left" simply because it actually has a specific meaning and "radical" has a specific meaning, unlike "far" or "ultra".) That way we can be much more consistent within discussing each term and its discussions of other terms, and we can take a clear eye at figuring out whether the content currently on far left should be kept on the combined article, or moved into left-wing politics. --lquilter 13:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I second that it is completely looney and absurd that there are separate pages devoted to terms like "ultra-left", "far-left" and "hard-left". Sheer tautology. Amateur. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.208.60.225 (talk) 10:19, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I disagree, there's a clear historical milieu surrounding it, which has been noted, although mostly by French authors. This is why I think we should port over the page from French Wikipedia since it's a lot less vague and more thoroughly sourced. TomatDividedBy0 (talk) 03:03, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Reverted deletion

User:R-41 deleted the article and redirected its title to far-left politics with the comment "This page had no references despite a request demanding that such references be provided was issued in 2010. This article was original research and a POV fork and I am merging it into the "Far-left politics" article." I've reverted that, as the comments are nonsense. The article has a couple of references, though not nearly enough, and poor quality ones at that. I have no idea why it might be considered a "POV fork", given that it's not a fork from anything, and discusses a defined current of communism. If the editor wishes to see the page deleted, they should take it to WP:AFD for discussion - there's a clear procedure. Warofdreams talk 08:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

"Leftist errors" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Leftist errors. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 12:16, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Porting over the Ultra-gauche page

French wikipedia has a much better version of this page, by bringing it over it will make the page a lot more clear and distinct since there is a historical usage which the French page discusses extensively.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultragauche — Preceding unsigned comment added by TomatDividedBy0 (talk • contribs) 13:16, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Use of "Marxism"

This article uses the term "Marxist" in a way that I think is confusing. To begin with "Marxist" and "Marxism" mean very different things depending on whom you ask. As an example let us look at the sentence that describes the use of the term:

Pejoratively, ultra-left is often used by Marxists against other socialists, communists, and anarchists within far-left parties who advocate strategies which some Marxists may consider to be without regard of the current political consciousness or of the long-term consequences that would result from following a proposed course.

(emphasis mine)

Here it is not clear who is meant by "Marxists", in part because the people for whom the pejorative is most often used, left-communists and Trotskyists, consider themselves to be Marxists. So it is pretty clear that the intended meaning of Marxist here likely doesn't encompass Marxists of all ideation, but it is not clear in the text which. Furthermore it also implies that the people who are called ultra-left are not Marxists even those who might consider themselves such. This is a bit of a POV issue in my opinion.

I would like to correct this mistake but I don't really know what term to substitute in place of "Marxists". The "citation" for this claim is the "Danger of Ultra-Leftism", a primary source released by International Socialist Alternative, a Trotskyist group. This provides evidence that at least Trotskyists use this term, but it is clear to me that Trotskyists are not the only Marxists who use this term since the article later references Leninists using the term (labeling amoung others the Trotskyists). So I don't really know what a good replacement for this term would be, perhaps "some Marxists", but it would nice to use a term that is more informative. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 04:52, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Invariant Marxism. I saw that you just made an edit pertaining to this topic. Specifically you changed the phrasing the user of the term ultra-left to "Marxist-Leninists and Trotskyists" (it seems someone else changed it to Leninists, but I missed that) and the targets of the term to simply "communists". While it is my personal belief that what you have written is very probably accurate, I've been trying to track down a decent citation for this claim so we can avoid the repeated edits that it undergoes. Do you have any sort of citation you might be able provide here? If not I think it is better to move this back to a vaguer version of the sentence that is supported by the citation we do have. Thanks AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 00:16, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Should we remove the "Ego-Communism" section?

It has no sources, and while it certainly does exist I have never seen anyone call it Ultra-Left (admittedly, I've never seen it used for the situationists either, but that's a different can of worms). I feel like we should remove it.

APenInSpace (talk) 02:57, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I think so. No sources and very vague. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:48, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Informally I have seen Egoist-Communism referred to as Ultra-Left, and to be honest this just makes sense given the nature of Egoist-Communism. This section makes few claims which seem evidently probable. It should probably be possible to source them. I think this section needs some rewriting and sourcing, but I really don't see any reason to delete it. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 18:17, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Confusing symbol used to illustrate article

The symbol itself is very hard to read, furthermore the text explaining it is incomprehensible gibberish; in what way does it represent "Situationist-inspired doctrine" and what is the doctrine its supposed to represent? It thats that it is based on "Situationist artwork called Situationist Détournement, an art piece about "the spectacle"" but such as statement is flawed; does it mean to suggest that there is an artwork entitled "Situationist Détournement", if so then it would be incorrect, Détournement is a technique of "highjacking" pre-existing cultural artifact to propagandise against the culture sphere that produced it. The SI themselves made it pretty clear that there can exist no such thing as a situationist painting or music, but only a situationist use of those means. The spectacle itself is merely an application of Marx's Commodity Fetishism particular to the SI. I recommend deleting the whole thing as it is detrimental to understanding the historical Ultra Left. FSAB (talk) 10:35, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

I think all of these are good points. I went ahead and removed it myself. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 12:24, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Removing POV and Jargon notice

This article has had the notices Template:POV and Template:Buzzword since 2018, with no explanation on the talk page. I am going to remove them. I don't see anything POV about the article currently, nor do I see any buzzwords. I can't know the original issue was addressed (or even a reasonable issue) since no explanation was given. If someone does think it is POV or contains buzzwords, then leaving something in the talk section to explain the issue is going to be necessary to have it fixed. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 05:58, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

FR-wiki translation

I see the lead of this article has been edited recently. Here is my translation of the lead of the French Wikipedia version of this article (which I also believe to be lacking, but may be useful regardless).

The concept of “ultraleftism” (or “ultra-leftism”) encompasses, in the broadest sense of the term, revolutionary communist currents that are both Marxist and anti-Leninist, stemming from Spartacism and Luxemburgism or Bordigism.

Some currents, including Italian communists, prefer to use the term “left communism” that historically characterizes currents that broke with the Third International. The term “ultra-leftism” has been used since the 1920s in a sense close to that of council communism. Aside from its anti-Leninism, ultra-leftism is distinguished from the rest of the far-left by its rejection of electoralism, syndicalism, anti-fascism, and national liberation struggles. It does not see itself in political parties or in forms of individual action. The ultra-left does not see itself in the armed struggle of guerrilla groups. Neither does it see itself in anarchism. Ultra-leftism criticizes all dogmatic and official Marxism using Marx’s critiques of ideology. For ultra-leftists, it is a general strike that should allow the proletariat to seize the means of production. The council communist current looks to the experience of direct democracy in workers’ councils that appeared in Germany in 1918. For council communists, these workers’ assemblies are the first stage of a worker-led revolution.

The term is however the subject of contradictory definitions, particularly in France.

Forgive me, I’m new and not 100% sure how all the formatting works, but I tried my best. I have tried to translate faithfully, but it was a bit wacky at times and I have done some light messing around. Hope this helps :-) Cheers, postleft ✍ (Arugula) ☞ say hello! 20:32, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Oops, here is a link to the exact version of the page I used. postleft ✍ (Arugula) ☞ say hello! 20:33, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

References

Positioning on the spectrum & title change.

I made an argument that certain parties such as the W.P.K of the D.P.R.K, should be labeled “ultra-right” under position. Other political spectrum pages on centre, right/left wing, far right/left, use titles such as “right/left wing politics, not simply an “ism” that describes a pejorative. I would argue that it is a position on the spectrum that can be used to label certain jucheist parties, and therefore should be titled & described accordingly. Also, why don’t we have a page for Ultra-right politics? The term still appears on a list for Right wing political parties but is not linked as there is no existing page for it. JSPolitic (talk) 19:56, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

It is an error to think that Ultra-leftism is a term on some sort of specific spectrum. It is a term with usage. The reason there isn't an "Ultra-right" page is because the term Ultra-right is not used distinctly from far-right. To assume symmetry is incorrect. What you might argue about a term is rather irrelevant. We should rely on what sources claim about the term rather than how you think about it. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 20:16, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

It's like having an article on very tall people. Sure we can find lots of usage of the phrase in reliable sources, but no clear cut-off. TFD (talk) 20:50, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Actually, Ultra-right is used synonymously with far-right, multiple sources explain this. In fact your own sources on Wikipedia use it distinctively from far-right on multiple pages. And the term ultra-left, is meant to be used as a detachment from far-left in the purpose of pejoratively separating far-left individuals from others labeled “ultra-left”. QIL9800 (talk) 20:55, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

So where are the sources then? Bring them to this discussion so everyone else can evaluate whether or not they are reliable. Not sure why you (whoever this is) made a new account just to repeat the same non-policy based argument another user has already made. CentreLeftRight ✉ 21:53, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

The relevancy of my argument comes form many other arguments on far-left and far-right. The positioning on the W.P.K is disputed because some argue that it is far-right due to its ultranationalist and totalitarian nature. From this page, that party is a perfect example of what some critiques could label as “ultra-left”. JSPolitic (talk) 21:03, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Your argument or your beliefs are still irrelevant. If it's true find a source to support it. Wikipedia requires reliable sourcing not what some editor thinks. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 21:05, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

@JSPolitic: You have to justify your edits with solid appeals to Wikipedia policy. Arguments based on personal opinions mean nothing on Wikipedia, but even if they did, you have not sufficiently made your case with your comments so far. You still have yet to prove how the WPK being criticised as far-right means "ultra-left" is an appropriate label. Even if you did make this argument soundly, it would not matter, because again, you need to bring reliable sources to show that such an argument is made prominently and that it is not your personal assumptions. CentreLeftRight ✉ 21:49, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

My argument is not irrelevant whatsoever. This is not based on my bias or opinion this is off sources across the web, thank you I will. JSPolitic (talk) 22:14, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Then bring the sources. Your arguments have to be based on Wikipedia's policies, and the most obvious one you can use to make your case is WP:RS: "I have reliable sources that back up my argument", so where are those sources? CentreLeftRight ✉ 22:16, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Add political parties list

The page should have a list of current and former parties and political organizations that are characterized by ultra-leftism. Such as Category:Far-left political parties . -Artanisen (talk) 00:52, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Such a list would not be neutral, nor would it have clear parameters, given that "ultra-left" is (and has been) commonly used as a political pejorative. CentreLeftRight ✉ 02:00, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

In that case the list of parties on the Ultranationalism article is also not neutral. So there should be both or neither or there is a double standard. -Artanisen (talk) 10:05, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

That might be true, but you would have to discuss it on the other page. TFD (talk) 12:20, 5 July 2022 (UTC)