Talk:Workers World Party

Someone logged in should correct the following: "...the positive view they held of the Chinese Revolution led by Mao Zedong, and their endorsement of the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary, all of which the SWP opposed". Note that the SWP did not opposed the Chinese revolution, but supported the revolution and opposed the Chinese CP led by Mao. -- D. Keil, 8/07

Perhaps I am being dense, but how can Trotsky have said anything about pre-1991 Russia when he's been dead for 66 years?

>> Politically, the WWP agrees with Trotsky's description of pre-1991 Russia as being a "degenerated workers' state,"

No, that is an incorrect charecterization of Workers World Party's views Tom Cod 06:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

A link I added was removed saying that the WWP was "not really supporting Milosevic" but if you read the article it does say that "he represents the masses of people of all nationalities in Yugoslavia, including the workers and peasants" which clearly does support him. SonofRage 05:47, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Is it possible for someone to post links to a platform or something that would relatively - reliably state this parties views? Perhaps their historical support of Mao (note, even the Wiki only states his initial revolution - which any moron with a history text book knows was about as legit as a revolution can be - and not his later reign, political failures or that Cultural Revolution thing. We all know what Cheng was interested in. Guns 'n' Money, right?) and Stalin could be cited as well, and if they ever acknowledged the purges etc. They wouldn't be the first to be duped by Stalin's propaganda.

I reverted to an earlier revision because the recent revisions first started taking a non NPOV and the whole flow of the article just started getting lousy. If you are going to make such major changes, at least post to the Talk page explaining why.

SonofRage

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Can anyone here evidence WWP support of Saddam Hussein (as opposed to the Iraqi people in general)? If not, it should be removed. Ramsey Clark has supported Saddam personally, but he's hardly the WWP. Rei

links

• What you should know about the WWP, an anarchist perspective on ANSWER and Workers World.

Someone keeps removing this link. Any reason? It appears to be relevant and substantive. -Willmcw July 7, 2005 21:39 (UTC)

POV

"The WWP has defended political leaders such as Slobodan Miloševic and Saddam Hussein, holding the opinion that Serbia and Iraq enjoy a right to national self-determination, and that this right overrides perceived U.S. interests."

Support for the government that runs a country and support for the right of a country to self-determination are not the same thing. Many people who oppose American militarism and support the right of self-determination for Iraq and Serbia do not support Milosevic and Hussein. Similarly, many people on the radical left (probably including the WWP) are critical of the president of Columbia, without in any way challenging the right of the people of Columbia to self-determination.

Furthermore, it could be argued that both Hussein and Milosevic came to power more because of the support that they got from foreign governments (including the US) than people in Iraq or Serbia. If one accepts this, then support for Milosevic and Hussien (especially by an American group) would seem to be the opposite of support for the self determination of Iraq and Serbia. Regardless, it should be obvious that just because “Serbia and Iraq enjoy a right to national self-determination, and that this right overrides perceived U.S. interests,” it does not logically follow that people outside of these countries should actively support the dictatorships that exist in Iraq and Serbia.

POV...continued

It should also be pointed out that the WWP's support for Soviet imperialism (e.g. Hungary, '56)belies their alleged commitment to self-determination...

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These parties, as with all shadow political parties, should be called "extremist." This is quite neutral when you see their party platforms. JHerdez

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"Chinese Revolution"

SUGGEST YOU CHANGE 'CHINESE' to 'CULTURAL' —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pitnos (talk • contribs) 11:30, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems that AntiWWP is vandalizing this article on a daily basis. Anyone for banning him/her? 02:25, 4 November 2006 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dolaro (talk • contribs)

So far there've only been two incidents, over three days. If vandalism continues the account will be blocked (especially since AntiWWP (talk · contribs) hasn't yet made any constructive edits to any articles), but I don't think it's an urgent issue at this point.

That said, I would be interested to see if AntiWWP is the same person as 209.211.143.1 (talk · contribs), who also vandalized the article recently, but stopped when AntiWWP showed up. I think administrators have the ability to check this. -David Schaich ^Talk/_Cont 02:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

"Controversy" section

I tagged this section as "unreferenced" due to its numerous claims that are unsubstantiated. Unreferenced statements are marked: . --Horse Badorties

I did some basically minor revisions to the Controversy section, but the more I read it, the more I doubted that it needs to be there at all. Maybe, rather than say the WWP has some controversial positions, it would be better to lay out what those positions are -- e.g., describe the issues involved in Hungary in 1956, and the WWP's position, in a section called Hungary.

Maybe I can start to work on that next week.--Horse Badorties

That is a good idea. The old article that I began to revise completely, appeared to have been made almost totally as a criticism of the WWP by its detractors, and was not a neutral overview of what the party stands for and its history. Needless to say, I don't think that such a biased/negative POV article would have been on here for long had it been about the Democrats or Republicans. Cmrdm 03:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

2004 split

I added a brief section on the 2004 split. Hopefully, as we approach the third anniversary of the split, someone will come forward to fill in some of the details! --Horse Badorties 03:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I added a citation request for the claim that the WWP and PSL have "few if any ideological differences between them," and that the split was due to "other internal disagreements between party members." While it is my understanding that this is true, and that the split had a lot to do with divergent approaches to their anti-war activities, we need to provide a source, or just phrase it in a way that indicates that it's all speculation as to why the split occurred. --Horse Badorties 02:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that a link would be nice for that. However I do not have one with me. There was never much information about the split posted publicly when it happened (by either side). In regards to tactical disagreements, I do vaguely remember something about Haiti, but not much else. I had a friend in the party at the time whom told me what happened, but that doesn't count as a source... Cmrdm 02:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought the split was caused over whether or not the Party should run its own presidential candidate or go for the Anybody But Bush strategy and endorse Kerry? Even though its not a source, what did your friend say?ChipMD 22:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Reverting page to pre-vandalism copy

The edit summary incorrectly reads "rv vandalism by 219.148.86.36 to last version by David Shear". I copied the line out of the Help:Reverting page and accidently hit the Return key before changing the necessary fields. It should have read "rv vandalism by 66.137.92.223 to last version by Grenavitar". --Horse Badorties 15:12, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

That same vandal is continuing to vandalize this page with the following IP addresses: 66.137.92.71 and 66.137.92.41. --Cmrdm 00:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Why was the information on the 2004 Split Removed?

They used to be information on the 2004 split that caused the formation of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (which then caused the International Action Center from being removed from the ANSWER steering committee and the formation of Troops Out Now). This seems significant,why was it removed?

ChipMD 22:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

deletions on internal splits make it useless

This article and the article on the PSL seem useless as encyclopedia entries; in no small part because neither entry discusses the reasons behind the split (or even mentioning the that the information is not publicly avb, or something.

If the various parties are allowed to edit their own pages, or sabotage each others pages, the wiki system breaks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by You Big Weirdo (talk • contribs) 00:43, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

Glaring Omitions

• Very little discussion of why the Party was called Stalinist (a characterization I happen to disagree with). Whether or not their stance towards the socialist countries was uncritical, that's only part of it. They dropped any mention of Trotsky anywhere and completely broke themselves off from the Trotskyist movement. No one is even supposed to know that they're Trotskyist. Their uncritical support and glowing praise, today, of North Korea doesn't help either. Nor does their support for openly Stalinist parties in Russia. I could go on.

• No mention at all of the PSL split. WTF? Therefor also not mentioned is the fact that the PSL took ANSWER with them, and there's no mention at all of the Party's new Troops Out Now coalition.

• A third one I can't remember.

--MQDuck 08:20, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

There. I believe I did a pretty good job, if I may say so myself. But by all means, critique. --MQDuck 09:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe there is a problem with the wording and a few details given in the 'split' section. You say, "the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington, D.C. branches of WWP left almost in their entirety to form the Party for Socialism and Liberation." I also read such things about the extent of the split on e-mail lists back in 2004. However, I do not think that we have a legitimate source to make that statement on Wikipedia. I believe we should remove this sentence, unless PSL or WWP actually says this in a statement. Then we could word the sentence as "according to PSL" or "according to WWP". See what I mean? Cmrdm (talk) 17:06, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I stole that information directly from the PSL article. Perhaps a better place to take this up would be there? --MQDuck 00:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

McKinney

Will she have a WWP ballot line in any states? Or does the WWP not have any ballot access? Шизомби (talk) 01:31, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

They do not. They were only on the ballot in three states in 2004, two by petition, the third through the Liberty Union Party, which has nominated the Socialist Party USA ticket this year. -David Schaich ^Talk/_Cont 00:54, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Should she appear in the succession box at John Parker (activist)? 05:03, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I would say not. I don't think she had much of anything to do with the WWP at all. -David Schaich ^Talk/_Cont 02:12, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I know of no involvement on her part with WWP, but I was wondering if their endorsement of her warrants putting her as the successor to Parker. Шизомби (talk) 03:14, 7 November 2008 (UTC)