22:1222:12, 2 March 2020diffhist+74
International sanctions against Iraq
It is by definition a weasel word to say "research has shown" when there is active debate over the research. There is by no means a consensus that the sanctions did not cause death; if anything, the consensus points in the opposite direction. It is purposefully dishonest to edit the article in this way, and it is known that US state security forces edit this page (https://reut.rs/3aekU78), which likely accounts for the extreme use of misleading language here.
23:1123:11, 26 January 2020diffhist+8
Gaetano Mosca
Liberalism and democracy have historically been in tension; there is no need to flatter liberalism by acting like a deep suspicion of democracy is incosistent with it.
16:5416:54, 16 January 2020diffhist+216
International sanctions against Iraq
Undid the revision. The links are obviously relevant; the burden of proof is on the person who says that they aren't. The article as written is wildly unbalanced and unbefitting of Wikipedia. The far-right, neo-nazi orientation of the existing content doesn't make it acceptable on Wikipedia.Tag: Undo
09:0509:05, 16 January 2020diffhist+185
International sanctions against Iraq
This is an incorrect summary of the data. It is still widely believed that sanctions had a major impact; it is not honest to cite one study that disagrees and summarize that as "research has shown". Be honest: one study has claimed. Also, there's some "original research" in here that doesn't belong -- the links that purport to document the decline in public health spending (which was ultimately the US' fault anyways as it stoked the war with Iran) don't actually show that they caused deaths
00:2700:27, 19 December 2019diffhist+8
Vyacheslav Molotov
This sentence not only isn't supported with a citation but is also impossible to support: "Molotov, like Stalin, was pathologically mistrustful of others, and because of it, much crucial information disappeared". There is no psychological evaluation cited, and this would simply be abuse anyways since plenty of people have had unfavorable psychological diagnoses that probably aren't in their article.
27 October 2019
17:5617:56, 27 October 2019diffhist+6
m
British Banking School
It doesn't make sense to say, of a school of thought, "they were created in order to" -- shouldn't be plural, and the purpose was to get to the truth of the matter, not specifically to oppose another school. A minor edit, but bad writing like this irks me, so I fixed it.
8 October 2019
14:4814:48, 8 October 2019diffhist+29
Socialist Reich Party
Lee's views have not found wide acceptance; barring direct citation of his primary sources, the article needs to be much more equivocal about the veracity of his claims
22:4822:48, 28 July 2019diffhist+642
Labor theory of value
I found a source I had offhand which made the exact point I made earlier but which directly replies to Nitzan and Bichler (BR Hansen)
17:1517:15, 28 July 2019diffhist−100
Pao-yu Ching
Deleted the meaningless phrase "left" (it is sufficient to say that she is a Maoist) and cleaned up a lot of very basic grammar/spelling mistakes. De-italicized article names, which just receive quotation marks in English-language scholarly references. Finally, I deleted "she is notable for saying that socialism was defeated rather than failed" since that is not a very unique perspective among MLMs. I made it clearer that her original contribution is a close analysis of revisionism
17:0717:07, 28 July 2019diffhist0
Pao-yu Ching
moved footnotes outside of periods, as this is generally more common on Wikipedia and in scholarly work, even if some journals put them inside periods
04:1604:16, 28 July 2019diffhist−2,028
Labor theory of value
I removed contentious language suggesting that the theory is "wrong", rather than, like all science, disputed/debated. I also don't know that this very lengthy section citing fairly obscure authors (I have written a thesis on this topic and read very widely and never encountered these authors) should be in here. I would press for full deletion, but for now, I simply removed the massive blockquote and the very informal/personalistic conclusion.
04:1104:11, 28 July 2019diffhist+189
Labor theory of value
Added relevant counter-arguments to Keen which were missing and deleted some unsourced claims. Fixed some awful grammar, too. Notably, I deleted this "However Keen argues that the usefulness (use-value) of the machine does not necessarily depreciate at the same rate - why a machine wearing out should mean it isn't useful is unclear". It's by definition true that if a machine wears out, it is no longer usable. That's just what the words mean. This argument is too nonsensical to have been rebutted
03:5603:56, 28 July 2019diffhist+1,067
Labor theory of value
"Some studies" is too vague. I tagged this with citations needed and fixed a number of grammatical mistakes. I also added material clarifying that Bichler and Nitzan accidentally stumble onto precisely Marx's point, that prices reflect cost prices plus the average rate of profit, not values.
20 July 2019
21:2321:23, 20 July 2019diffhist−28
Ágnes Heller
Fixed the mistaken capitalization of the "d" in "democratic centralism", fixed a category error (the party "adhered to democratic centralism"; it did not "believe in it", which is a personal relationship to ideas), and removed the parenthetical explanation "total allegiance to the party" since that is not a reasonable restatement of the meaning of that idea
17:2817:28, 15 July 2019diffhist+753
Labor theory of value
OK, fine, I will now add sources showing that criticisms above are tendentious and unscientific and should not appear in Wikipedia; it's bad practice for the burden of proof to be on a dead man. Pilkington own work fails to establish that Marx needs use-values to be individually determined--it's his responsibility to adduce evidence. Again, why not just fill the page on "God" with creationist nonsense and then demand it remain in the article and that someone footnote every single reply?Tag: Undo
07:0507:05, 15 July 2019diffhist+1
Labor theory of value
In my last set of edits, I made clearer that certain arguments on here are non-sequiturs; they really should be deleted, but I accept that the existing discourse is so poor that this is what the discourse says. It's as if we had a page on "god" that said "but god must exist because scientists still don't know how to cure cancer" -- it might bamboozle the uninformed (which is precisely whom Wikipedia should speak to) because it simply sounds "scientific"
18:0618:06, 15 June 2019diffhist−481
Criticisms of the labour theory of value
I deleted the second paragraph because it sets up a "critique" from which the conclusion does not follow. It introduces intimidating-sounding jargon but fails to directly show the relevance to the point.
22:1222:12, 2 March 2020diffhist+74
International sanctions against Iraq
It is by definition a weasel word to say "research has shown" when there is active debate over the research. There is by no means a consensus that the sanctions did not cause death; if anything, the consensus points in the opposite direction. It is purposefully dishonest to edit the article in this way, and it is known that US state security forces edit this page (https://reut.rs/3aekU78), which likely accounts for the extreme use of misleading language here.
23:1123:11, 26 January 2020diffhist+8
Gaetano Mosca
Liberalism and democracy have historically been in tension; there is no need to flatter liberalism by acting like a deep suspicion of democracy is incosistent with it.
16:5416:54, 16 January 2020diffhist+216
International sanctions against Iraq
Undid the revision. The links are obviously relevant; the burden of proof is on the person who says that they aren't. The article as written is wildly unbalanced and unbefitting of Wikipedia. The far-right, neo-nazi orientation of the existing content doesn't make it acceptable on Wikipedia.Tag: Undo
09:0509:05, 16 January 2020diffhist+185
International sanctions against Iraq
This is an incorrect summary of the data. It is still widely believed that sanctions had a major impact; it is not honest to cite one study that disagrees and summarize that as "research has shown". Be honest: one study has claimed. Also, there's some "original research" in here that doesn't belong -- the links that purport to document the decline in public health spending (which was ultimately the US' fault anyways as it stoked the war with Iran) don't actually show that they caused deaths
00:2700:27, 19 December 2019diffhist+8
Vyacheslav Molotov
This sentence not only isn't supported with a citation but is also impossible to support: "Molotov, like Stalin, was pathologically mistrustful of others, and because of it, much crucial information disappeared". There is no psychological evaluation cited, and this would simply be abuse anyways since plenty of people have had unfavorable psychological diagnoses that probably aren't in their article.
27 October 2019
17:5617:56, 27 October 2019diffhist+6
m
British Banking School
It doesn't make sense to say, of a school of thought, "they were created in order to" -- shouldn't be plural, and the purpose was to get to the truth of the matter, not specifically to oppose another school. A minor edit, but bad writing like this irks me, so I fixed it.
8 October 2019
14:4814:48, 8 October 2019diffhist+29
Socialist Reich Party
Lee's views have not found wide acceptance; barring direct citation of his primary sources, the article needs to be much more equivocal about the veracity of his claims
22:4822:48, 28 July 2019diffhist+642
Labor theory of value
I found a source I had offhand which made the exact point I made earlier but which directly replies to Nitzan and Bichler (BR Hansen)
17:1517:15, 28 July 2019diffhist−100
Pao-yu Ching
Deleted the meaningless phrase "left" (it is sufficient to say that she is a Maoist) and cleaned up a lot of very basic grammar/spelling mistakes. De-italicized article names, which just receive quotation marks in English-language scholarly references. Finally, I deleted "she is notable for saying that socialism was defeated rather than failed" since that is not a very unique perspective among MLMs. I made it clearer that her original contribution is a close analysis of revisionism
17:0717:07, 28 July 2019diffhist0
Pao-yu Ching
moved footnotes outside of periods, as this is generally more common on Wikipedia and in scholarly work, even if some journals put them inside periods
04:1604:16, 28 July 2019diffhist−2,028
Labor theory of value
I removed contentious language suggesting that the theory is "wrong", rather than, like all science, disputed/debated. I also don't know that this very lengthy section citing fairly obscure authors (I have written a thesis on this topic and read very widely and never encountered these authors) should be in here. I would press for full deletion, but for now, I simply removed the massive blockquote and the very informal/personalistic conclusion.
04:1104:11, 28 July 2019diffhist+189
Labor theory of value
Added relevant counter-arguments to Keen which were missing and deleted some unsourced claims. Fixed some awful grammar, too. Notably, I deleted this "However Keen argues that the usefulness (use-value) of the machine does not necessarily depreciate at the same rate - why a machine wearing out should mean it isn't useful is unclear". It's by definition true that if a machine wears out, it is no longer usable. That's just what the words mean. This argument is too nonsensical to have been rebutted
03:5603:56, 28 July 2019diffhist+1,067
Labor theory of value
"Some studies" is too vague. I tagged this with citations needed and fixed a number of grammatical mistakes. I also added material clarifying that Bichler and Nitzan accidentally stumble onto precisely Marx's point, that prices reflect cost prices plus the average rate of profit, not values.
20 July 2019
21:2321:23, 20 July 2019diffhist−28
Ágnes Heller
Fixed the mistaken capitalization of the "d" in "democratic centralism", fixed a category error (the party "adhered to democratic centralism"; it did not "believe in it", which is a personal relationship to ideas), and removed the parenthetical explanation "total allegiance to the party" since that is not a reasonable restatement of the meaning of that idea
17:2817:28, 15 July 2019diffhist+753
Labor theory of value
OK, fine, I will now add sources showing that criticisms above are tendentious and unscientific and should not appear in Wikipedia; it's bad practice for the burden of proof to be on a dead man. Pilkington own work fails to establish that Marx needs use-values to be individually determined--it's his responsibility to adduce evidence. Again, why not just fill the page on "God" with creationist nonsense and then demand it remain in the article and that someone footnote every single reply?Tag: Undo
07:0507:05, 15 July 2019diffhist+1
Labor theory of value
In my last set of edits, I made clearer that certain arguments on here are non-sequiturs; they really should be deleted, but I accept that the existing discourse is so poor that this is what the discourse says. It's as if we had a page on "god" that said "but god must exist because scientists still don't know how to cure cancer" -- it might bamboozle the uninformed (which is precisely whom Wikipedia should speak to) because it simply sounds "scientific"
18:0618:06, 15 June 2019diffhist−481
Criticisms of the labour theory of value
I deleted the second paragraph because it sets up a "critique" from which the conclusion does not follow. It introduces intimidating-sounding jargon but fails to directly show the relevance to the point.