Talk:Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia

Untitled

Without knowing very much about the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia i do know i great deal about communist, socialist and marxist thought. Based on that I'm sceptical to some of the description given in the article why I'm going to change some things. Mainly because I want members of the party to recognise their own organisation.

First there is talk about some "fundamentals of communist ideology" that isn't included in the partys program. I will remove that from the article because there is no source and because I don't belive it's true. If anyone wants to include it they should fist define which the "fundamentals om communist ideology" are and quote a source that support abcence from KSCMs program. As I see it the fundamental thoughts of broad communist thought is, as the wiki-article says, a struggle for "a to establish a future classless, stateless social organization, based upon common ownership of the means of production". From a marxist point of view there is also the importance of the working class as a potentially revolutionary class. I simply don't belive that KSCM has dropped that and still calls itself communist.

I also don't belive that the KSCM ever has described the now existent Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as "hardline" as it doesn't fit the marxist view of politics at all. It would be rather strange if they still call themselves communists but says that some other party is more communists then they are. It would rather be like a christian who says that a fellow christian is more christian then her. I would rather belive that KSCM considers Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as conservative splitters without grasp of the real world but as I have no sources of that I won't post it, I will only remove the part that seems wrong.

Only former ruling Communist Party in Central Eastern Europe to not drop "Communist" from name?

What is Central Eastern Europe exactly? If the author means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central-East_Europe then this is patently false as I can think of at least one other-- Party of Communists of Moldova. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.202.158.98 (talk) 01:30, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

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Disputed ideology: present communist party is not the same as before 1989, their politicial program tell their ideology is "Socialism of 21 century", their biggest allies in czech politics are people in political movements, which want to unite whole czech left (so communists, social democrats, democratic socialist, trotskists, enviromental left/green left and other), but their ideology is not Marxism-Leninism, there are more groups in the party and one of them is Marxism-Leninism/Stalinism, but also another group is Social democratics. The official document say their ideology as "Socialism of 21th century", so i think it should be there (the communism could stay, that is their name of course, but no Marxsm-Leninism) --78.45.51.218 (talk) 09:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

National communism

Apart from the fact that Bozóki & Ishiyama uses the term 'national communism' in a very different fashion that the more commonly accepted notion of national communism, p. 151 of that book makes no mention of 'national communism' at all. --Soman (talk) 23:38, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

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Unreferenced election results

Is any reference available for the numerical election results given in this article? Without a source, they are not verifiable and should be removed. -- Mikeblas (talk) 04:33, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

You can find official statements of the election results here. Jdcooper (talk) 10:58, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Political positions

Most communist parties, like this one, are considered far-left. While the links cited for "left-wing" do indicate it as "left-wing," I feel there is room to debate that as they are using it in the general term of the left-right divide and not actually specifying a far-left/left/center-left position. For example, link two cites both the CSSD and KSCM as being "left-wing" when there are substantial differences and the CSSD is cited as being center-left.23.240.160.134 (talk) 21:41, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

The notion that most communist party "are considered far-left" is a faulty one. In many countries the communist function as the mainstream leftwing tendency. In some countries (like Nepal, Moldova) communist parties could even be considered as center-left. --Soman (talk) 22:11, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

The fact is that the vast majority of communist parties are far-left. This is indisputable. Note that neither of the two parties you mentioned openly advocate for "anti-capitalism" like the KSCM does, which is generally the indicator of how far left it is. And besides, that still does not account for the fact that the link provided clearly refers to the KSCM as "left-wing" in terms of general orientation, not specific position. I think we can all agree that the KSCM and CSSD have markedly different orientations, but the article does not indicate as such.--23.240.160.134 (talk) 07:17, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Soman is correct. Unlike the far right, for which we have a literature and much clearer definitions on what constitute it (like any field, there are of course disagreements but there is a general agreement thaat it is not found of the far left; is it anything left of social democracy? And then what social democracy? That of Atlee and of Left parties who were born because of the Third Way as anti-social democratic in practice? Or that of Blair and the likes?), there is no handbook of the far left. It is very common in news media and among the populace todescribe communism or Marxism as far left but that is not good academic practice and reflects the more right-leaning spectrum since the 1980s, e.g. some academics define the far left as those to the left of the mainstream communist parties. As I wrote here, it makes no sense to describe some nominally left-wing authoritarian countries as far-left when they are in many ways conservative; that does not mean they are not left-wing, it just mean that far-left is not a good definition for them (putting them together with libertarian leftists and anarchism is not exactly good science, and only focusing on their similarities rather than their many differences is not good either, while this is either not the case for far-right politics or is much less pronounced) and simply left-wing would fit better, placing them in an authoritarian axis like the Political Compass. In the case of this party, I do not see how far left is of any use, other than being to the left of the ČSSD, which is centre-left, and the left of the centre-left is the left, with far left being those furtherst left than the common left. Davide King (talk) 05:22, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Helper201, it would be better if you could present some academic sources that regard the party as far-left (it is not enough to find some news sources that do so, especially when just as many other simply use left-wing, which is accurate either way, as both centre-left and far-left are left wing) which may be accurate for some factions but not the party as a whole, e.g. For most of the first two decades after the Velvet Revolution, the party was politically isolated and accused of extremism, but it has moved closer to the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD). I would be saying the same thing if the party was right-wing but I have seen this happen more frequently with the left, which reflect a lack of understanding and consensus among scholars on what constitite the far left (contrary to common thought among us).

In addition, we need to follow the academic definitions, and Soman is right about what they wrote; some news outlets may regard anything to the left of social democracy (not just Attlee social democracy but Blairite social democracy) as far left (some news outlets use far left and far right for the farthest parties in parliament, which may not fit the academic definition, e.g. The Left and AfD, even though the former is a common left-wing party, while for AfD it is more accurate, as radical right is a subset of the far right, which has some generally clear criteria and definition in their categorization, while for the left it is not the same and there is no conspiracy about it), but the truth is there is no clear consensus among scholars. Some define the far left as those to the left of the mainstream communist party. It is the same thing for right-wing parties; some are not actually far right, some are far right but the correct definition is radical right, and some are correctly far-right proper. Davide King (talk) 03:00, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Agree with the above, we need to go off academic sources which thoroughly examine the Czech political spectrum, not throwaway adjectives in journalism. Bearing that in mind, only one of the three sources cited for this is really reliable (Pink 2012) and it doesn't really talk much about the differences between how left wing parties are placed on the spectrum (not to mention it's from the pre-Babis era, thus a bit out of date now). – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 08:25, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U, filelakeshoe. Exactly, most political party articles would be much better if we actually relied on academic sources, and if they are not available, we at least do not cherry pick news sources and bloat the infobox with redundant stuff like Centre- to -wing or -wing to far-. Davide King (talk) 11:10, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Here are sources for far-left:

• https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_History_of_the_Czech_Republic_and_Sl/sPbqDSWXK7QC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Far-left+Communist+Party+of+Bohemia+and+Moravia%22&pg=PA8&printsec=frontcover
• https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Origin_Ideology_and_Transformation_of_Po/zMsoDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Far-left+Communist+Party+of+Bohemia+and+Moravia%22&pg=PA224&printsec=frontcover
• https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Pathways/WMlZDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Far-left+Communist+Party+of+Bohemia+and+Moravia&pg=PA123&printsec=frontcover
• https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Forging_Ahead_Falling_Behind/8QzDH4g2tOcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Far-left+Communist+Party+of+Bohemia+and+Moravia&pg=PA19&printsec=frontcover
• https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/303763959.pdf
• https://aw-journal.com/andrej-babis-believes-he-has-a-secret-weapon-in-the-czech-elections-viktor-orban/

The problem is there is a lot of editorialising you are doing using your own original research and point of view to determine which sources to keep and which to discard. You should also really stop just reverting every time people disagree with your changes - see WP:BRD. Academic sources are preferable but it doesn't mean reliable news sources can be discarded based on the editor’s point of view. Helper201 (talk) 21:27, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

See also: WP:BESTSOURCES.

Helper201, the problem is that you treat them as if they are separate, mutually exclusive things, when both centre-left and far-left are left-wing.

(1) I would prefer we just have Left-wing in the infobox and rather than have an awkward wording that suggest sources disagree, when they agree the party is left-wing but disagree to what extent, and have the farthest left qualifier. It is has if rather than describe the party's position, the infobox is saying that there are left-wing and far-left factions, which may be accurate, but that parameter is about the political position on the spectrum, and in this case it is one — left-wing; sources only disagree how far left, and that can be explained and clarified in the lead. Again, it is not enough that some sources say far-left in passing mention, if they do not explain what they mean by that, and there is a problem among researchers in what constitute exactly the far-left other than being to the left of something, in this case ČSSD.

(2) Finally, as your own keywords show, you went to search for sources using far-left rather than make a broad analysis of sources about the party, or they are just a passing mention and used as a horseshoe theory to compare it with the far-right as in here — "the country's two main illiberal parties, the far-right ... SPD ... – tipped to come fourth with between 10-11% of the vote – and the far-left ... KSCM ...", which is something you have removed from the lead. Far-left may have been a more accurate description for its beginnings but since the 2010s the party has positioned closer to ČSSD. I just do not see why we need to have to in the infobox, which can be confusing and tautological.

(3) As for sources, news ones are fine if there are no academic sources and if they actually explain it and do not use it as a passing mention. I am not pushing any view or doing any editorializing, other than saying we need to look at the whole literature (WP:CHERRYPICK) — "Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." (WP:WEIGHT)

To summarize — When sources use different words, the solution is to put what they actually agree with each other, i.e. left-wing, while explaining and clarifying differences in the lead, e.g. the farthest left represented in parliament. For the right, on which there are far more clear definitions and categorizations, this problem does not present as much, and can be done much better, as here, rather than the awkward to wording, which better reflects the position of the party's factions rather than the party's position on the political spectrum, which in this case is still left-wing, whether far-left (no clear meaning) or plain left-wing (easy to understand). Davide King (talk) 02:21, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Either we include both terms that can be reliably cited (left-wing and far-left) in the infobox or neither, there is a choice/compromise there. If we include both in the lead it accurately represents what various sources state. To have only one weights it unfairly. Yes, these positions are part of the left but the far-left is more extreme and shouldn't be left out nor be assumed to be the same as left-wing. I don't see the issue with saying some sources describe it as left-wing and some as far-left, this is just simply stating the facts of what the sources say, its not saying they are right or wrong. People can make up their own minds beyond that and it can further be detailed regarding the party's positions in the ideology section. The far-left is fundamentally different from simply being left-wing. We don't call far-left parties left-wing despite the far-left being on the left and nor should we call parties who are simply on the left far-left is they are not. We don't need sources to explain how they came to the conclusion of where they placed the party on the spectrum because they rarely will regardless of where they put it, and even if they do there will never be one unified or agreed criteria and each source/author will use their own judgement. As long as that comes from a reliable source then there is no problem in us citing it. Helper201 (talk) 12:57, 8 November 2021 (UTC)