Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of socialist countries

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep —αlεx•mullεr 12:17, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of socialist countries

This article has no sources and appears to be original research/synthesis. The contents seem to be tendentious. While the article makes some show of being objective, the selection of countries is, in fact, subjective as cases like Democratic People's Republic of Korea show. Google returns this article as the primary result when searching on socialist countries and one might imagine Kim Jong-il boasting of this to his subjects. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:54, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh come on, keep. This list may not be neutral but it is WELL within the scope of Wikipedia. Instead of nominating it for deletion, you should have attempted to fix what you felt was POV issues. Your comment on Kim Jong-il is pretty irrelevant to the discussion. Wikipedia doesn't care what petty world dictators think. Hazillow (talk) 23:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did make some attempt and am quite good at finding sources but consider this case to be hopeless. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Sources likely exist in the articles about the various countries discussing where on the socialism spectrum these countries exist, and the political orientation of nations is obviously notable in terms of world politics. If there is disagreement about whether North Korea is socialist, sources can be presented on each side, such as the refs in the North Korea article from the Times, the Telegraph, and the New York Times describing North Korea as a Stalinist dictatorship, and perhaps Warden can find equal refs saying it isn't, rather than just deleting the article because of an editing disagreement. Edison (talk) 23:5 4, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

You'll find that there is significant disagreement as to whether Stalinist dictatorships are socialist or not. That's the trouble - it's too much a matter of political opinion. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:11, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. In particular, the list of countries which had a Marxist-Leninist government is something that should be in Wikipedia. The second section, I'm not sure of how applicable calling them socialist countries is, as they are countries I don't know too much about, and there are no defined criteria for inclusion. The first section, though, is indisputable - nearly all those countries are ones I know have or had a specifically Communist government. Stalinist dictatorships definitely fall within the spectrum of communist ideology, even if they only pay lip service to socialist or communist ideals. Supersheep (talk) 00:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The list is quite informative and the descriptions of the different categories are clearly defined. Cmrdm (talk) 00:27, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep since no other related article has the same information pertaining to the subject at hand. Not all things/sources are always online at websites, but as long as it can be proven by some other means or from other already sourced articles on Wikipedia, then this can stay (until corrected otherwise). That-Vela-Fella (talk) 01:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
keep for all the above good reasons and improve the article as time goes on. WP has lots of time; we don't have to have perfect articles right now and, if not perfect, delete them. That is almost a spite argument. Hmains (talk) 03:41, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not clear how the article can be improved. For example, consider the EU. Is it a country? Does it have a constitution? Is its formal aim of social justice an interpretation of socialism? You could argue each of these points either way and probably find some source to support it. Deciding whether or not to include it then becomes a matter of politics rather than NPOV information. This encyclopedia doesn't have List of democratic countries or List of Christian countries because these would have similar problems of definition. You see the difficulty? Colonel Warden (talk) 12:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Irrelevant argument. The stated inclusion criteria for this article is "This is a list of countries, past and present, that declared themselves socialist either in their names or their constitutions". This could not be more clear. Hmains (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete without malice I think that this topic could produce a very informative and useful article, but I completely agree that the current article does not satisfy WP:V as it contains no reliable sources (no sources at all). As it is, the article is 100% WP:OR. Reliable sources don't always have to be online (actually, most of the mare not). But we do need some here, online or not, otherwise the article violates the OR guideline and fails WP:V. Nobody of Consequence (talk) 05:22, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- All we need to do is add the sources. They are out there. Just because it currently contains unsourced claims does not mean that the article should be deleted. That is not what the deletion nomination process is for. Seriously. Hazillow (talk) 17:29, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Please provide an example. The Socialist International might be a good unambiguous source but the list has currently been rigged to exclude such democratic socialists (because they are "mealy-mouthed"!) and so I suppose one would have to fight an edit war with Marxist hard-liners to get them in. I've looked at the CIA World Factbook and the UN but not found anything useful. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - How about one of the 220,000 hits on Google Scholar? If your only argument is that the list may prove to be controversial to some then I say, with no malice, that I feel your argument is weak. Look at the list of socialists. The editors of that article placed a disclaimer that said "This is a list of self-identified socialists" on the top of the article. Can't we do the same? If you think it would still be a problem, we can just change the name of the article to "List of self-identified socialist countries" and redirect "List of socialist countries" to it. Even a "Marxist hard-liner" (a label I apply to myself) can agree to that.

P.S. I don't mean to come off as abrasive. I really don't mean any ill will. Hazillow (talk) 18:56, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Update. I see that there is a disclaimer that says something like that on the page. The scope then is already limited - governments that proclaim themselves to be socialist in name or constitution. Surely we can find the constitutions of governments (present and historical) and include only the ones that we can find to contain the word "socialist." How's that? Hazillow (talk) 19:11, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The current nominal approach leads to the conclusion that the National Socialist Germany should be included and that Social Democratic Sweden should be excluded which seems unsatisfactory. Looking at the Google Scholar search you provided, the most common usage seems to be post-socialist or former socialist and they seem to mean the Soviet Union and its satellites - the Comecon members. Another common usage is the juxtaposition of capitalist with socialist implying that these are the only two alternatives. Perhaps this just means that the author is a Marxist or perhaps it is contrasting centrally-planned economies with market/mixed economies. Anyway, notice that we don't have a List of capitalist countries even though the term is widely used. Colonel Warden (talk) 10:14, 28 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The reason there isn't a list of capitalist countries is because it is the default organisation of economic matters in modern society. To be perfectly honest, the list of current socialist countries that are not Marxist-Leninist-ish is, with the possible exception of Libya, pretty much a list of capitalist countries - anyone who thinks that Portugal is not capitalist needs to look at the actual system in Portugal. Democratic socialists are not socialists in the sense that I assume is used here - namely those believing in the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of some form of a workers' state - they are slightly fluffier capitalists. As for national socialism, it should be obvious that it is entirely different concept to socialism - it means a certain thing that is fairly rigidly defined. Socialism, democratic socialism, and national socialism are all entirely different political concepts - they have nothing in common apart from the word socialism in their name. Supersheep (talk) 02:18, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

~~Comment~~ - ~~Could this better be covered as a category instead of an article? Even better, several categories (Category:Socialist Countries; Cat:Former Socialist Countries)?~~ Weak delete - After doing about 2 minutes of research, I see that there already are categories for this, including Category:Communist states and Category:Former socialist republics. I'm not sure if I see the need to have a separate wiki entry for this if it is already covered by the categories.BWH76 (talk) 09:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and improve. A great deal of accompanying explanatory text is needed; existing and new categories can't provide this. Virago (talk) 19:24, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.