Leftypedia:Principles

"It is difficult for me to imagine what 'personal liberty' is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread."[1]

Every investigation must decide for itself how to sift the relevant information from the irrelevant. In the sciences, data which is peer-reviewed and follows the proper principles for its field is usually held to be the most reliable. However, in the "soft sciences" or "humanities", these frameworks often must be developed and applied by the authors themselves, creating tools that vary from functionalism and postmodernism to source criticism and paleography. Historians and political authors vary in their rules for determining how trustworthy a given source is, how much weight to assign to different types of data, and which source to trust in the event of a disagreement.

However, academics are not created in a vacuum. They are produced by society itself, and their entire lives from preschool to post-grad have prepared them for their real task: defending the current state of affairs. After these academic filters come even more filters: media, government, and culture all play a role in how this information makes its way into the average person's brain. These "filters" produce what Marxists call ideology, an ambient set of beliefs that permeates everything you say and do. Indeed, the most egregious form of bias is the bias of the "unbiased" – those who consume and reproduce this ideology without the faintest idea they are doing so.

We hold that media outlets in capitalist countries, both private and state-owned, have an inherent bias created by their objective interests. Be it the advertising and profit considerations of private media or the direct role of the government in the research and funding of state-owned news, every source is affected. Even institutions which are considered highly neutral or unbiased.

Definitions

This site welcomes users of all stripes who are interested in contributing to the study of leftism. However, in order to maintain some cohesion, users who disagree with certain principles are considered guests first and foremost. Before we begin, some definitions are in order.

I. Social change and revolution

• Social change is an innovation in the way that people carry out their lives with respect to other people. Status, culture, and rights are often radically changed as a given society transforms itself through the centuries.
• Revolution is an abrupt form of social change which typically involves force, suspension of the existing laws, and a chaotic period of social experimentation which results in a new "society", or set of social relationships. It is important to note that the concept of revolution has remained ill-defined since the "type species", the 1789 French Revolution, made the term ubiquitous. Defining and explaining the phenomenon of revolution is one of the tasks of Marxism.

II. Marxism

• Marxism, in the most common sense of the word, is a holistic political, economic, historical, and philosophical worldview which holds, very broadly:

1. That the turmoil of human history is the result of material forces, from geography and minerals to machinery and population density, interacting with and shaping human endeavors;
2. That this collision manifests itself most sharply in the form of seismic social revolutions, which usher in new relationships between the material and the human;
3. That the current form of our society, in which massive private production for sale and profit is by far the most common source of the things we make, use, and eat, is inherently unstable, destructive, and detrimental to human life and indeed all life; and
4. That this society, even as it destroys itself, continues to develop the technological and material groundwork for its own end by a social revolution which should and must lead to the abolition of private property and money in favor of a collective, classless, and moneyless social and economic form of organization known as communism.

III. Imperialism and war

Imperialism is not just a political or social ideology, or simply a form of chauvinism. In broad terms, imperialism is a system which maintains and exploits a developmental disparity between two countries through peaceable or violent means. The British Empire violently smashed the well-developed textile industry of India to force it into dependency; the United States supported reactionary governments for decades which left Central America a backward region overflowing with migrants; Belgian and American interference in the Congo Crisis paved the way for the bloodletting and mass destabilization of the "African World War". Leftists hotly debate the economic nature of imperialism, as well as its implications for the way forward. This plurality of viewpoints, including discussion of unequal exchange and the question of whether Soviet, Russian, or Chinese foreign policy has ever constituted a form of imperialism or social imperialism, is welcome on Leftypedia in order to promote knowledge and healthy critique. What is not allowed, however, is denial of the real force that United States and western Europe, through organizations like NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, and the CIA, have constituted in promoting global underdevelopment, discord, and poverty for the past eighty years. This ignorance of real imperialism is the essence of deviations such as radical liberalism. These positions are based on ideal considerations rather than a material analysis of the real forces which bring about progress for humanity.

Principles of Leftypedia

1. Leftist and Marxist

Ultimate objective is to further these studies, and add science and philosophy in accordance with Marxist and anarchist objectives.

2. Non-sectarian

Strive to balance different tendencies or leftist "sects", and allow their positions as long as they are fairly stated. Strive to treat their citations and sources by an equal and fair standard.

3. Anti-capitalist

We are universally opposed to the system of capitalism and everything it represents. This includes anti-imperialism.

4. Skeptical

Combine a healthy doubt of hegemonic sources with support from verifiable, credible alternatives.

5. Easy to access and edit

Make site easy to edit, discuss, and also easy to understand and apply the rules and procedures. Easy to approach the mods. Also include accessible pages with links to tools for editing.

6. Anti-discrimination

A space where leftists from various identities can contribute and discuss topics without fear of bigotry which plagues many parts of the left.