Talk:Progressive Party of Working People

Untitled

I made the following edit, which I trust is NPOV.

"During the late fifties, AKEL was opposed to the violent tactics followed by the anti-British resistance movement of EOKA. AKEL divulged to the authorities that George Grivas was leader of EOKA, and EOKA accused AKEL as collaborators of the British. The animosity between the two sides became violent. Several AKEL and EOKA members were assasinated at the time, including AKEL-supporter Savas Menikou who was stoned to death."

Rastapopoulos 11:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

See my edit at EOKA

The british probably knew anyway that Grivas was the leader, but it was the Communist Party of Greece through its radio station beaming from Eastern Europe that named him as the leader of EOKA, not AKEL. Also your edit implies that AKEL was killing EOKA members, which is rather far away from the truth. Mavros 13:25, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Reword

is a communist party in Cyprus, taking into account current international political and economic developments. - somebody with more knowledge should reword that Sherurcij ^{(talk) (bounties)} 20:10, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

"It supports entry into the European Union with certain reservations." which are...anyone knows???--Morrisphillip 23:17, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

killings

AKEL supported Papadopoulos in 2003 despite the fact that he was an active EOKA member who publicly approved AKEL supporters killings. His flyers, signed by his hand under the nickname "Defkalion" can be found at http://www.makarios.ws/

--Morrisphillip 00:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Is it really communist?

I hear (from Cypriots) they own quite a lot of capital and they are pro-free market. Are they only in name? --Leladax (talk) 22:25, 25 February 2008 (UTC) -- Neither in name. It's not Communist Party of Cyprus (CPC) anymore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.228.251.9 (talk) 12:01, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

This party is no longer a Marxist party. Its constitution may call It a Marxist Leninist party, but like the Chinese Communist Party and the Vietnamese Communist Party, this party has turend right wing. It adopted the ideology of social democracy.

The party came out of the old stalinist Communist Party of Cyprus, but lost its Marxist ideals after 1990 and the fall of the USSR. Today they work with the right wing parties of Cyprus to form a government. Because of their collaboration with the right wing, they cannot enforce socialist ideals. The party is social democratic and no longer marxist or communist. --UDSS (talk) 22:41, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Calling them market socialist has nothing to do with their official ideology, and is in fact a subjective political bias (probably from opposing left-wingers, since the term "stalinism" is also a politically motivated concept, not an ideology). "Market Socialism" is not part of their ideology, nor is it part of the ideology of the communist party of Vietnam (and its not part of their ideology in their wiki article either). The Communist Party of China specifically notes market socialism in their ideology according to "Deng Xiao Ping theory" and all the following adjectives. The AKEL however doesnt have full of political power and control over the means of production and tolerates free market out of temporary pragmatic concession, their main goal at the moment is the reunification of Cyprus. If you want to objectively talk about their tolerance of the market, place it in the wiki, not in their ideology box. Therefore i'm removing it from the box. --ddxt301 (talk) 17:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

This is debatable. Golden Dawn (political party) does not call itself neo-Nazi, but it is labelled so on Wikipedia based on support from sources from researchers, professors and political analysts. The above reviewer is perfectly right, AKEL is not a communist party, the point however is that to change the label on Wikipedia you need the appropriate sources to support it. No sources, no change, we are left with the old label for now. --Tco03displays (talk) 20:07, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Position in infobox

A minor edit war has erupted over how to "position" AKEL on a left-right axis. User:Bastin wants to label the party as "far-left", myself and others prefer to label "left". The problem with left/right labels is that it is always subjective, where someone gets situated on the axis entirely depends on one's own perspective. Most of Bastin's cites are either from UK/American sources. Rightly said, in British or American politics AKEL would situate itself on the far left of the political spectrum. EUobserver, another of the five cited sources, can also be seen be seen as a rightist medium, founded by a former VVD parliamentarian. Finally, the FES article uses a definition of "far left" in a rather odd way, namely that the "far left" would consist of anyone to the left of the Social Democracy. That might be partly out of necessity, to be able to brand a rather diverse heterogenous grouping of parties under a single name, but I think more importantly it enables to author to claim that the "left" is the same as the Social Democracy (rather than describing Social Democracy as "center-left", which is commonplace in European politics).

The solution here is not to trumph out five cites with six cites that labels AKEL as "left". That would be a rather futile exercise. This is not a game in which the one who gathers the highest numbers of cites win. Rather we have to ask two questions: 1) is "position" really useful in infoboxes at all? There have been numerous other conflicts like this in the past. "Position" is extremly arbitrary, and the arbitraryness is not solved (as we can see in this example) by citing sources, 2) some common sense needs to be applied in regards to AKEL. AKEL is but no means a fringe group in Cypriot society, and to label it as "far left" is directly misleading. The FES article, that Bastin cites, places it in the "Reform communist" category. --Soman (talk) 15:46, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

As I said in one of the edit summaries, it's trivial to find a bunch of references that call AKEL "left" but not "far-left". Since they themselves would say they're left, not far-left, and since they're not a fringe group, but rather a mainstream political party in a functioning democracy, calling them "far-left" in the infobox is indeed grossly misleading.

I have no objection to removing it completely from the infobox, but won't then the issue be simply transferred to the text of the article? Zocky | picture popups 16:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

The Wikipedia community has agreed that using 'position' is a useful way of indicating where parties lie on the political spectrum. That is a settled issue community-wide, reflecting very common usage in the English language. Therefore, that is not up for debate. The fact that you object to the concept of a political spectrum (as do I) is irrelevant.

Furthermore, the point is not to find references that say 'left-wing', because 'left-wing' does not exclude the far-left. It's like citing an article that calls it a political party to prove it's not a communist party: one is a subset of the other. To disprove - if that's your intention - that reliable sources do not consider it to be 'far-left', you will have to provide sources that say it is 'not far-left', 'centre-left', 'moderate left', or similar. I don't see that happening. After all, they are a communist party.

It is nothing to do with them being a fringe group or whatever in Cypriot society. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is denoted as 'far-left'. Obviously, it was, despite being the largest party in the Soviet Union. The communist parties in Russia, the Czech Republic, and Portugal are all permanent fixtures in their national legislatures. Yet they are still considered far-left by reliable sources. So, too, is AKEL.

And, yes, I do nothing to apologise for the fact that I cited sources from English-speaking countries. This is English Wikipedia - that's what we do. EUObserver is a reliable source, as are CNN and Voice of America. The Guardian is a left-wing source, as is the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The FES article expressly says that the party is far-left; thus, that it also calls them 'reform communist' does not mean they're not far-left!

In fact, they are, as proven repeatedly by reliable sources. If you can provide any that say that they're not far-left, be my guest. That's what you need to provide to be able to continue to remove well-referenced material. Bastin 11:55, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Bastin, you're being disingenuous. You have been told several times that finding a large number of references that contradict your theory is trivial. Google news has several stories every day that call mainstream communist parties left-wing, but not far-left. There are 2 at the moment for AKEL ([1],[2]). But since we're trying to write a useful encyclopedia, as opposed to scoring silly points over each other, nobody (but you it seems) thinks that finding individual references that agree with your POV is a useful tool for this discussion. Zocky | picture popups 20:04, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and BTW, plenty of those stories call the Cypriot socialist party "centre-left" and AKEL "left-wing", often in the same sentence. So if "far-left" is just a kind of left-wing, why are they mentioning "centre-left" specifically? Shouldn't they subsume it to "left-wing", just like they're doing for AKEL, according to you? Zocky | picture popups 20:43, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

1. Neither the Sofia Echo nor the People's Daily are particularly reliable (the latter is published by, umm... the Chinese Communist Party). However, if you do insist on citing them, the Sofia Echo calls AKEL 'far-left' as a matter of course.
2. The Sofia Echo article does not call AKEL 'left-wing'. It calls the President left-wing, which is completely different (he's in the more centrist faction of the party). Bastin 15:40, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

And "The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is denoted as 'far-left'" is a tautology extraordinaire, it just points to the exact same problem in that article. My suggestion is that "position" is removed altogether from infoboxes, since there is no reasonable scholarly definition on what's left and what's right. --Soman (talk) 13:32, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

If you have a problem with prevailing usage in reliable sources, please debate it in an academic journal. However, because the usage of the left-right spectrum is prevalent - and despite its flaws, usually uniform amongst reliable source - Wikipedia has decided to adopt it as a community. So you will gain no traction trying to argue here that it should be excluded when it's been decided elsewhere that the field should exist. Bastin 15:40, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying that left/right axis doesn't exist. I'm just saying that since left/right distinctions are extremly arbitrary and contextual, they are not suitable for a) infoboxes and b) categories. Left/right distinctions can only be used in a meaningful in comparison of something else, for example the national political scene. It is well reasonable to say that AKEL is a left party in Cypriot politics, in the sense that it occupies a leftist position in comparison with DISY, DIKO, etc.. Such a description would not be particularily controversial. But is AKEL, in a more general sense, a leftist, left-of-centre, centre-lefist, far left, hard left, soft left or slight-harder-than-softish left party? Such a question is far more difficult, because it depends on what you mean by left and right.

Bastin seems to beleive that there could be objective definitions as simple as saying "communism = far left", "socialism = left", "liberalism = centre", etc.. But those politicians in the U.S. who are labelled 'the far left' by Fox News are by no means communists or socialists. Evidentely, definitions shift based on perspective. Likewise, in Soviet politics the labels 'left' and 'right' were used to describe factions inside the Communist Party (Left Opposition and Right Opposition). But the advocates of the Soviet Right Opposition was by no means rightists compared to the Tea Party. Etc., etc..

And moreover, if we reduce left/right distinctions to analogies like "communism = far left", then what is the point of having both "Ideology" and "position" in the infobox? That would be quite superflous in such a case.

--Soman (talk) 18:45, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I understand your point that the left-right spectrum is "arbitrary and contextual", but there is nothing wrong with it being contextual. In this case, the political alignment of AKEL should be understood in the context of both Cypriot and EU politics.henry42 (talk) 21:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Ideology

In the light of recent editing, the following should be stated.

• Using the label 'social democratic' is akin to political slander. Moreover, it is clearly misleading.
• Uwe Backes; Patrick Moreau (2008). Communist and Post-communist Parties in Europe. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp. 259, 268, 272–274. ISBN 978-3-525-36912-8. clearly reaffirms that AKEL is a communist party.
• p. 259, "AKEL, as the the Cypriot Communist Party is widely known"
• p. 265, "The outcome of the February 2003 Cyprus presidential election confirmed the influence of the communists."
• pp. 268-269, "Like every communist party, AKEL also expects every single cadre to show active political commitment. [...] AKEL is reputed to be a tightly controlled apparatus, structured around the principle of democratic centralism" (Comment: Herein lies one of the key differences between communists and social democrats, stemming back from the Bolshevik-Menshevik split. Communist parties are cadre parties built on democratic centralism. Social democratic parties are mass parties often with collective membership structures)
• p. 273 "Marxism and Leninism are still the theoretical foundation of party identity" (Comment: The AKEL website says Marxism-Leninism, not "Marxism and Leninism")
• Now, on p. 274 the authors make an argument on comparisons with social democracy. To some extent they redefine some concepts here, but at same time it is important to pay attention to detail. When saying that AKEL "shaped the profile of a modern social democratic party", the comment refers to the preceding passage on its moderate approach to the national question and involvement in pragmatic politics. The sentence used to justify the soc dem label says "it can be concluded that that today AKEL corresponds more to a social-democratic party" (my emphasis), it says that the role of the party corresponds to the role played by Social Democratic parties in other countries, but this is also due to the absence of a strong Cypriot social democracy. Anyhow, this relates to the political role, not the ideology as such. Later on the same page it is reaffirmed that AKEL is indeed a communist party, "...the AKEL follows the classic perception of the other existing communist parties towards the Post Cold War order."
• I think the notion that only 1928 Third Period parties can be classified as communist would be highly unhelpful to Wikipedia. European communist parties have adopted pragmatic policies since the 1935 Popular Front line, and in the post-war era they have worked within the parliamentary framework. Compared to other contemporary parties, AKEL is more ideologically rigid than say the CPs of Spain and France. --Soman (talk) 17:09, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Political position

Vif12vif seems absolutely deadset on including a link that calls AKEL "leftist" to prove that it is "left-wing." The two words do not and never have meant the same thing, no matter which context they are used in. There's three other citations calling it left-wing that will soothe Vif's insecurities, but this specific citation is simply incorrect and I am removing it.50.227.112.186 (talk) 21:39, 17 January 2023 (UTC)