ProleWiki is strictly Marxist-Leninist and takes its Principles seriously
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← Back to all essays | Author's essays ProleWiki is strictly Marxist-Leninist and takes its Principles seriously
by CriticalResist
Published: 2024-02-21 (last update: 2024-02-21)
5-15 minutes
At some points in ProleWiki's life, we have been accused of being sectarian for refusing non-Marxist-Leninists into our project. This essay aims, through my own interpretation and analysis, to explain why the project has naturally grown towards an explicit ML position.
To situate new readers, we should quickly explain how one can join ProleWiki. Anyone is free to request an account, which requires them to answer several questions. On the basis of these answers, the 'trusted' editorship (editors who have been active on the wiki for a few months) votes on the application to either accept or reject it.
The early days of ProleWiki in late 2020 were not marked by any dominant ideological tendencies. Accounts were open to anyone, and did not require a vetting process. Our founder purposely reached out to invite non-MLs to the project -- despite being a Marxist-Leninist himself.
Very quickly, we found ourselves bickering over irreconcilable differences: Is China socialist? Why is there no article about Hoxha? Why is the Sino-Soviet split article leaning this way instead of that way?
What was supposed to bring people together ended up further driving the wedge between them. We spent more time discussing what pages on sensitive topics should look like rather than write them. There existed even at the time plenty of online spaces were marxists could, if they so wished, have endless debates about the same ten questions. ProleWiki could be, and wanted to be, so much more than just another debate space.
This never panned out however as, soon enough, the hype for the newly established encyclopedia went back down and ProleWiki entered the 'lull years', the period from 2021 to mid-2022 where not much of note happened. Our non-ML editors left and only the ML editors remained, albeit few of them.
It was during that process that we naturally refined ourselves into an ML encyclopedia. The process happened naturally as the administrators that remained, three of them, were active in the same ML circles online and thus recruited from there. As they kept writing articles, they naturally presented the ML version of an issue in it and further attracted more Marxist-Leninists.
It is certainly not my intent to disparage our early non-ML editors for leaving the encyclopedia before they could do something with it, but this was the situation. I also have to point out, for fairness, that non-ML editors have always been a minority of the editorship.
The case against Marxist unity?
ProleWiki does not aim to extrapolate broader conclusions from its policies. We are not a party and have no desire to be one, even if in many ways we operate like one. We do what works for us considering our conditions (that of being an asynchronous online encyclopedia). Our vetting process, for example, is lengthy because we depend on the limited answers to the questions to make a decision about whether to let someone have an account. They need to properly assess a prospective editor's personality and knowledge.
Listening to our detractors, it seems ProleWiki anything but ML. We have been called Dengists, ultras, revisionists, and many other words that we have frankly stopped counting.
Yet we have always been consistent with our leaning and have never tried to misrepresent who we are or what we do.
It is precisely other users, prospective and established editors, who have misrepresented and played down their ideological leanings for a chance to get into ProleWiki.
Every time we have extended our hands to non-ML tendencies, we have been taken advantage of.
From 2020 to 2022 for example, ProleWiki had a patsoc administrator in its triumvirate. Owing to the easy signup method of the early days, this user created an account before any vetting system was in place. One thing I didn't mention yet is that a few months after the start of ProleWiki, many editors were invited to become administrators. When we entered the lull years, only a few editors and three administrators, including the patriotic socialist user, remained active within the project. Their tendency would only become transparent as time went on, with them trying to keep a lid on it, but not fooling anyone. The problem is: when you have an admin who has access to passwords and accounts, how do you remove them? We hoped at first we could pull them out of this hole, but that didn't happen. When the admin was found to have gone against our back by trying to get other patsocs to join the wiki under false pretenses so they could come to control it, we pulled a stop and purged his account and accesses in a swift operation.
Shortly after our patsoc admin was purged from the project, we had to ban an anti-revisionist user for being belligerent about China. He later made it clear his interest in ProleWiki was careerist (at least, as much as it could be inside a nascent online encyclopedia) -- he wanted to replace our administration with himself at the top, and turn ProleWiki into his own Hoxhaist pet project.
We removed a user who never explicitly called themselves a Marxist and started getting into edit wars, even after remediation was attempted. When blocked, they said we were a 'liberal' encyclopedia (and had very racist comments to say to our founder), despite them adding very banal facts to country pages (such as flora and fauna, which anyone could already learn on Wikipedia). We have refused an editor who had sufficient answers on their vetting process, but ultimately repeated Zionist arguments. Commenting on this rejection, they said they didn't understand why they would be rejected (even though we explained what the comment was), or as if we should have overlooked their Zionist stance. We recently banned an 'anti-revisionist' editor after they admitted to writing a completely sourceless page to troll us. Up until today, two users have told us their opinions drifted away from our principles and they would retire from the project of their own will. We have thus blocked them from editing the wiki as a security measure (much like any company would change your passwords when you quit your job), leaving them a communication line in case they wished to discuss their divergences or come back to the project. In one case, despite the user agreeing to their block and understanding what it meant (that it was not a reflection on them but a security measure), they still later pretended they did not see it coming or understand why we blocked them.
We have outright refused anti-LGBT requests because we do have LGBT editors, and have a duty to protect them. When confronted with this fact, they seemingly did not understand why they would be refused and why these opinions of theirs would be important to get an account.
All the users we purge are understandably upset when it happens. But I think it should not upset them; it should make them proud to have been rejected by such a coherent and ideologically-strong project. We make no exceptions, and we encourage people to request an account again if they correct their shaky stances.
Or, should we let in people who do not believe in a word of our principles but say they do just to get in?
Well, let me answer with another question: Do you expect a party to let you in if you disagree and don't believe in their statutes? Would you agree to let in anyone who wants to get into your party just to sabotage it?
There are so many communist parties who protect abusers and ideologically-unsound members, even putting them into roles with responsibilities and authority. ProleWiki does not do that. At times, we've blocked users from editing after finding out they diverged from our principles in an irrevocable way, despite them never alerting us about it. We do our homework.
What's in a name
A criticism that has sometimes been raised is that an encyclopedia named 'ProleWiki' should be open to all tendencies, and the name is a misnomer.
Why?
The Communist Party of Peru is Maoist. The Communist Party of Britain is revisionist and reformist. The Communist Party of the USA is historically chauvinist. The Communist Party of China, if you ask non-MLs, is not even Marxist.
Have Communist parties in Europe not turned to Eurocommunism following the illegal dissolution of the USSR?
Why does this specific rule apply to an online encyclopedia and not the multitude of revisionist and reformist parties currently existing in the world and taking on the Communist name?
A name means nothing, only actions do. Clearly, we see our detractors have nothing more to go on with than a general sense of uneasiness around such a project existing. If they feel it threatens their Marxist tendency, then it says more about them than us.
ProleWiki has no problem with other tendencies existing and has even encouraged other (non-MLs) wikis to open. We are happy to take care of our project in peace, on our side of the web. If your ideology is coherent, it will attract people. This is what we believe in for ProleWiki, and as such don't feel threatened by other projects existing. If we did not believe in Marxism-Leninism, we would not have started ProleWiki. This is self-evident.
ProleWiki is Marxist-Leninist because it couldn't be anything else
While tautological, this statement is ultimately true.
We are what we are and have no obligation to compromise our integrity to let in people who can very well start their own project, which we encourage.
However, we are not saying Marxist unity is impossible in other projects, whether they are organized in real life or on the Internet. We don't claim that our model is the only one that exists or that should exist.
Principles are more than words on paper
I've mentioned our Principles briefly. They are to us what statutes are to a party.
Our principles in their current and latest incarnation have been established by our trusted editors following lengthy discussions and votes. Again, any ProleWiki editor will become trusted and join this 'central committee' (if we continue with the Party parallels) provided they stay active on ProleWiki. Once they do, they will have a right to vote.
They reflect the collective positions of the editorship as a whole.
We somewhat often receive account requests who, when asked Have you read our principles? Comment your agreements or objections to their points explain they have no objections. However, when asked for example if they think China is socialist a few questions later, they go into a tirade about 'social-imperialism'. Our Principles spell black on white that we consider China to be socialist and AES. Two conclusions result: either the user did not actually read our principles, in which case we are not compelled to give them an account; or, they did read our principles and lied in one of these two questions, in which case we are not compelled to give them an account either.