"I am not a marxist. I am a freemason. Just type ""Karl Marx hidden hand" into a search engine and look at the images if you don't believe me. Thank you all for buying into my bullshit worls which were bought and paid for by my freemasonic superiors" - Karl Marx
the fundamental problem with lenninism is, in fact, it's firm adherence to marxist (or possibly even hegelian) historicism. it's thought out to prepare for the glorious end of history and, as such, is aiming fora value that doesn't exist yet. so everything is put on hold.
What Chomsky is saying is a very powerful defense of his ideals. Now me, you, the next guy or the guy next to us might try and sit down and come up with a in-depth critique or possible presentation of a possibly better mechanism of production or a better societal fabric, but that's for another debate altogether. The idiotic woman who felt violated because of Chomsky's bright-as-daylight analysis of the Soviets, seriously got hammered in this response.
Chomsky's claim that Lenin was a right wing deviation of socialism is an understatement. Lenin and Trotsky were Wall Street Puppets. Trotsky was literally owned by Jacob Schiff and Lenin of the Rockefeller family. The October Revolution was engineered by Wall Street. The Soviet Union was built up and maintained as an investment vehicle for western corporations and banks.
No it's just I'm pissed off that we live in a society that bashes and despise people like Chomsky and keeps praising people like Lenin and Obama who I believe have done nothing but manipulate people
People hate ideas and even sometimes people with which/whom they disagree and the irony lies in the fact that they rather agree with them, but can't tell because they don't understand.
Socialism is more easily sustained once you tell people how it's about freedom, how free people in the pursuit of their individual interest do yield public benefits, if only they are truly free... it's not a bad argument that they have: it's just misdirected.
haha "LearnLiberty" has some corporate hack/Cato Institute professor promoted on this video with several times the viewers. Humanity is sooooo fucked. It was fun while it lasted...
I think Noam is getting opportunism confused with necessity. Marx was right in thinking that there couldn't be an immediate shift to socialism in Russia. Lenin combated this view in 1917, but soon came to its truthful realisation in the early 20's.
The institutional and organisational changes he made, particuarly to the citizens 'police' force, where totally necessary in maintaining order, after the civil war, which greatly damaged much of the planning that was made in 1917.
@RedShadow238 But saying that 'changes' to the police force (why are the police in quotations?) were necessary for 'maintaining order' is same excuse that every government, including the US and UK governments during the GWOT, throughout history has used to justify the use of violence/terror/oppression.
"INDIA had in terms of morbidity mortality and longevity suffered an excess in mortality over china of close to 4 MILLION deaths a year during the SAME time period... Thus in? this one geographical area alone more deaths resulted from this failed capitalist experiment (more than 100 million by 1980) than can be attributed to the 'failed communist experiment' all over the world since 1917"!!!
I undestand very well, He see what he wants to see and yes he is brillant as he review fact and never consider the bodies, but the ideas, he is so above tat mundane matter.
@momytu1 There is no communism, that's the point to this video. What you think is causing these bodies to pile up is capitalism and totalitarianism. You've been brainwashed into thinking it is communism by media/educational systems/governments/capitalists/dictators. Of course a certain lazyness on your own part is to blame since you (obviously) define communsim on someone elses terms.
The woman who asked the question is getting a lot of flack - some of it substantive (she's ignorant) and some of it pure ad hominim (whiny bitch). I was unfamiliar with many of the details Chomsky has provided and I know that a lot of historians have praised Lenin for having 'good intentions' and overthrowing the oppressive totalitarian Tsarist Russian Orthodox regime etc.
@stoprainingonme I think you're the ignorant one. Every Tsar after Peter the Great was german. Russians were oppressed by germans (a tiny minority), and then oppressed by communist jews. The whole reason the revolution was able to exist was because of support and financing from abroad. Jews like Jacob Schiff hated Russia and financed japans war against it, along with communism later. Only, it was the 100% german blood Catherine II that invented anti semitism in russia.
@stoprainingonme Also, in 1915 Stolypin's reforms made it so 50% of farmers owned their land (still in Tsarist Russia),the rest would get it soon,anyone who wanted unlimited land in southern siberia was free to claim it, 50,000 primary schools were to be built(the basis of soviet education),and the "Peasants Bank" provided guaranteed credit to aquire or improve your farm. National worker's insurance was also instituted. So,get your "oppression" garbage out of here. Lenin and his jews were frauds
@roymondlafonte i agree with you that he does authoritatively define something that could be defined a myriad of different ways but i don't think that worker control of production is a bad definition. I think what is seriously lacking from his analysis was the historical and political circumstances that the soviets faced in 1917 having to fight off the whites and engaging in other military campaigns. Not exactly a climate where things would have been likely to flourish.
Capitalism is the historic evolution of private property relationship of alienation,exploitation and suffering of humanity in a modality of commodity production for abstract process of capital accumulation and concentration . A system of wage slavery in a MARKET system of suppression and dehumanistion. We need to transcend this false limits to our creative cooperative energies for a moneyless,classless,stateless communities of humanity expressing our energies in freedom of being.
I agree with him, in that leninism, is not socialism and is far from it. it is more like state capitalism, but at least the state is taking the peoples' interests at heart.
@Neondub It seems to me that Beck and O'Reilly--and most conservatives--would agree with Chomsky here, where the worker control of production they would probably understand as just anarchism, which is Chomsky's philosophy. Conservatives of the more libertarian type--Beck in fact moving toward that now--fear the revolutionizing, bureaucratic 'despotism' of the Leninist type. They would disagree that it's 'rightist,' though. American conservatism is mostly old liberalism, not really 'right.'
@CincinnatusUSA I think american conservatism can not be equated with libertarianism outright due to the religious and moral social policies which they seek to enact. Libertarians who abide by value of postive liberty would not care if your gay or smoke pot but american conservatism spend much of their time on the moral stuff. especially Beck and O'reilly.
@Brewed54 Workers' democracy only works if the working class actually exists. It doesn't exist in a vacuum, despite what Chomsky says or thinks. I'd like to see his policy alternatives to what the Bolsheviks were forced to do by incredibly difficult economic and political circumstances.
@Brewed54 I'm familiar with the concept of one-man management. It's something Lenin and the Bolsheviks embraced out of necessity. The working class was almost completely obliterated by the Civil War. The number of workers in Russia shrank from roughly 10 million to 5 million or less as a result of economic blockade, famine, and disease. Industrial production fell 85%! You can't have workers' councils running things when the few workers left are starving at their machines can you?
Before Vladimir Lenin, idea of social justice produced observation by A. Herzen a Russian. "Could you please explain to me why belief in God is ridiculous and belief in humanity is not; why belief in the kingdom of heaven is silly, but belief in all utopias on earth is clever? Having discarded positive religion, we have retained all the habits of religion, and having lost paradise in heaven we believe in the coming paradise on earth, and boast about it." --Alexander Herzen 1860's
Well, that's not what the Bolsheviks did. The Russian civil war emptied the factories and destroyed the Soviets as lively, mass workers' organizations, not some decree by Lenin.
If the 1917 revolution was popular and vibrant, why didn't the Soviets overthrow the Bolsheviks if it's true the Bolshies issued orders to shut 'em down?
So in part 1 Chomsky claims Lenin was a right-wing deviation of Marxism, and here he says Lenin was an orthodox Marxist. He's typing himself into political knots, disregarding many, many facts about the revolution, the Civil War, the Communist International, and the rise of Stalin, all to justify his own hostility to Lenin and Bolshevism.
It's sad really to see someone so intelligent and lucid stoop to the level of Richard Pipes.
No no, you missed it: in part 1 he's saying that Lenin - in action - was a right-wing deviation of Marxism, whereas in part 2 he's saying that Lenin - in rhetoric - CONSIDERED HIMSELF an orthodox Marxist, but didn't even himself believe that "real" socialism (i.e., workers' control, democracy in workplace & govt, etc.) could exist in the SU for whatever reasons Lenin gave... (and so he took part in all the right-wing, undemocratic, and antisocialist actions that Chomsky described).
@radioactive1415 You're inserting words and distinctions into what Chomsky said in an attempt to make him right. He very clearly labelled Lenin a right-wing deviation of Marxism and in part two labelled him an "orthodox Marxist." He also claimed that Lenin from April-October 1917 embraced a "libertarian" bent. I don't know about you, but I don't think it's possible to be a right-wing deviationist orthodox libertarian Marxist. lol
No I'm not inserting distinctions anywhere; these are distinctions Chomsky just made. LISTEN to the two parts again instead of selectively hearing what you wish. Again, Chomsky said clearly that Lenin was a more right-wing deviation from the hard Marxist and libertarian movements that had been springing forth in Russia. AGAINST the mainstream Russian socialist movements, but under the rhetorical GUISE of being orthodox, Lenin decided to disband institutions of true socialist collectivism.
@radioactive1415 I watched both videos very carefully. Chomsky never made those distinctions, you did. Chomsky labels Pannakoek a "mainstream Marxist" but she was nothing of the sort. The "mainstream" Marxists were the mass socialist parties organized in the Second International that had hundreds of thousands of members. This is just one example of Chomsky's sloppy handling of facts and evidence.
Lenin didn't disband the soviets, by the way. Yet another factual inaccuracy.
Yeah, my bad...he didnt disband the soviets nor the factory councils. However, let me just say that I do see where Chomsky is coming from - even if his analysis isn't always quite clear: when Lenin took power, he made the soviets and councils directly responsible to the government, making it mandatory for them to take top-down orders. "We passed from workers' control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy," to "replace, absorb and supersede the machinery of workers' control."
The Civil War, capitalist sabotage, and famine closed the factories and fatally undermined the working class upon which the workers' councils (Soviets) were based. It's tough to have workers' control of production when there are not many workers and almost no production. Industrial production fell 85% (!!) during the Civil War. The party/state bureaucracy sprang up to substitute for a devastated working class in a desperate attempt to keep the shattered country together and defeat the Whites.
No wait, I think youre missing what Im saying. Yes, what you're saying is true, and in fact in many ways the USSR, in order to stay alive, HAD to do what it did, lest it be utterly destroyed by the White Armies, political opponents, and other outside threats (like Germany & the US, etc.). Not to mention the difficulty in going from a backward near-feudal tzarist society to an industrial semi-capitalist-communist one! And Rosa Luxembourg may have entirely agreed with Lenin considering that time!
Im saying that I see where Chomskys criticism might come from - even while shortsighted! Her original philosophy, regardless of what she said/did in the long-run, along with Marx himself if you read, demanded a workers revolution that would begin with highly democratic control of the workplace and government (the term dictatorship of the proletariat is actually perverted; dictator meant something more like state of siege then, and Marx had something more like the Paris Commune in mind).
Lenin appeared to be doing the opposite by making these worker-instruments directly accountable to the state top-down authority. Even while they made considerable gains for the proletariat, in essence what he did was contrary to the original type of idealized socialism. In The Soviet Union vs. Socialism, Chomsky basically says that he doesnt think that Leninism in itself is a good model for broad social-democratic movements because he despised the despot of what he called the State Priests.
Most who buy into the Lenin->Stalin argument, including Chomsky, almost never mention the material conditions facing the Bolsheviks: encirclement, industrial collapse, political betrayal (Mensheviks and SRs joined many White governments), assassination campaigns (Lenin and others were shot), famine, and disease, the latter two of which killed millions.
The point I'm making in bringing those up is that there were very, very severe constraints imposed on the Bolsheviks.
Critics of the Red Terror and War Communism talk about democracy, freedom, libertarian values, etc. but they never offer alternative policies to what the Bolsheviks did. I would like to hear how anarchists or libertarians would deal with the problem of famine in the cities, being surrounded militarily, and being betrayed by fellow progressives. What would Chomsky do in the face of vicious counter-revolution? Put his gun down? Dismantle the workers' state? Abandon Soviet power?
Yes! Thats an extremely good point, and its lacking in the lefts argument against Soviet communism. Nonetheless, if there were a popular leftist movement today, it wouldnt need to be based on a strict Leninist model. I dont see the same authoritarian structures as relevant in these circumstances. In general Im opposed to strict authoritarian Leninist & Stalinist ideologies; they give too much chance for abuses of power in the name of socialism and elite rule distant from democratic constraints.
@radioactive1415 How was Lenin an "authoritarian"? He was elected as a leader in the party by the highest decision-making body within the party, the Party Congress.
Also, isn't a revolution "authoritarian"? You're taking the means of production and state power away from the ruling class at gunpoint - they aren't giving it up of their own free will...
If the left had a broad democratic movement with frequent and open debates and activism, and could actually win big segments of the electorate, or at least gain enough momentum as to change traditional American political-economic thought, this type of revolution could be "won" democratically, and perhaps even easily - even within the inefficient constraints of the American congressional system. Though I hear plenty of leftist bickering in school and on paper, I never see actions in the streets.
@radioactive1415 Well, I'm all for open debate, which is what I hoped to spark with my comments on this Chomsky vid. My videos are all made in the same spirit as well.
The American political system was designed to inhibit change as much as possible, and it has worked beautifully for 200+ years now.
You don't see actions in the streets because the left and the unions still look to the Democratic party for change. Big, big mistake!
@binhthanhvo Anarchists in free ukraine (under Nestor Makhno) at the time of War Communism and the Red Terror did actually have alternative policies to the Bolsheviks that worked.
for instance they dealt with the problem of famine by democratically working with the peasants rather than disregarding them as a counter-revolutionary force and that way were able to secure ample food.
@TheLemsipClub i forgot to also say the anarchist society was under the same constraints as the bolsheviks, but still survived until Lenin and Trotsky brutally crushed it with the far superior might of the Red Army.
@TheLemsipClub The Bolsheviks didn't regard the peasantry as a counter-revolutionary force. Only a few thousand peasants ever joined the communes he set up (the population in the areas under his control was several million), forced peasants to quarter his troops, created 2 secret police forces, banned political parties other than his own, regulated the press, stole property from peasants, etc. Makhno aped the policies that anarchists criticize the Bolsheviks for.
@binhthanhvo Check your facts! Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution calls for the domination of the proletariat over the peasantry, as did Lenin.
Makhno never had a political party as they rejectedvanguardism and bourgeois parliaments. Those accusations against Makhno were that of the bolshevik press, and are unsubstantiated propaganda designed to discredit anarchism.
Its generally a poor argument to use necessity as a justification for the fascistic bolshevik party dictatorship.
@TheLemsipClub Please provide the quotes to back up your assertion that Trotsky called for the "domination" of the peasantry by the proletariat. Political leadership in struggle is not domination. Makhno never had a party, but he had no problem suppressing other people's freedom to form political parties. Everything I brought up is a substantiated, sourced fact. See: "The Makhno Myth" by Jason Yanowitz. The article contains 100+ footnotes and most of the facts come from pro-Makhno scholars.
Lenin didn't just regard peasntry as counter-revolutionary, he regarded them as an inferior type of a human being compared to a worker, "sobstveniky," those who had property. I can't provide any quotes from Lenin & Trotsky as they are all in Russian.
The kind of "socialism" that Chomsky, I, and others like Antonie Pannakoek and Rosa Luxembourg and Helen Keller subscribe to is workers' control over the means of production and a sort of "bottom-up" libertarian (in the European sense of the word) regulation and much more openly democratic debate and discussion over policy. You may disagree with me, and I apologize for that misrepresentation, but do you at least see where I'm coming from?
Rosa Luxemburg agreed with Lenin. Why else would she help found the KPD, the German section of the Communist International? Why else did she speak out in defense of the Bolsheviks?
Lenin and Luxemburg did not disagree with one another on issues of "centralism" and workers' democracy. The difficulty Lenin faced was that he headed a workers' government in an economically devastated country, surrounded on all sides by Whites, and betrayed by "socialists" who joined the Whites.
Ok I cant read what Im writing again, so this is going to be difficult. Lenin received massive popular support, granted, but he was authoritarian in the sense that he made workers directly accountable to no other policy but that of the state - thats not democracy OR socialism. I dont see this style necessary today. Of course any movement, including Paris in 1871, even back to the Magna Carta in 1215, is "authoritarian" in the sense that its goal is to force one group to expand power to the next.
@radioactive1415 I think you are confusing Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky was in favor of the militarization of labor and opposed workers' rights to strike against the "workers' state" (this is in the early 20s). Lenin fought Trotsky on both of those questions vehemently. He knew very well that Russia was NOT a workers' state and supported their right to strike. Maybe you have some quotes from Lenin that you are referring to? I have read a lot of his work and would be happy to explain/clarify.
He lauded Mao. That is it. If you have anything to say of Mao that isn't-he was one of the worst disasters to befall humanity-then in my eyes you are an evil shill, who warps the minds of the vulnerable like you who buy that authoritarian bullshit about free market capitalism and classical liberalism somehow making an elite to rule the people: when in fact mercantilism, state capitalism and consequently all non-utopian, non-Marxist socialism, is the policy of Collectivism and submission.
Either Chomsky is corrupt and is bought by corporate elites, or he is a dogmatic rationalist who is too perfectionist, the world of politics out there is not a book, i think that he is too idealist. The real world is more hand in hand with Machiavellian Politics than with his Libertarian-Socialist ideology which is oxymoron. You cant apply socialism in a libertarian environment without a strong police force to crush capitalists and to expropiate businesses
First of all, well done for not calling me a fascist, you aren't a typical Chomskyite.
Chomsky supports tyranny in that he lauded Mao. That good enough?
I stand by what I say: socialism=statism. This is because it cannot allow free exchange of goods and services directed mostly by profit-motive: socialist advocates do not understand the utility of profit in directing action of marginal utility to others in the division of labour though Chomsky does really since he invests in bluechips.
No, because that's just throwing more bullshit at bullshit. Except that O'Reilly et al, at least don't openly support tyranny unlike Chomsky.
I would suggest that both those blindly accepting the opinions of O'Reilly and those blindly accepting the drivel of Chomksy, would do well to read the works of REAL historians and actual economics, rather than the babbling of those with literally no education in economics like Chomsky.
If you understood socialism you'd know it IS statism.
All this is very well, but who funded Lenin, and to what end? One can talk about variations of socialism and communism 'til the cows come home, but it's all about the money. NewTet alluded to the capitalist world having to invent the USSR; who says they didn't?
I don't know if he would bring much to the discussion... Beyond the Niels Bohr anecdote and his view of ideology, his insight does not seem very deep to me, and Zizek's way of qualifying himself as Communist is just your typical post-modernist punchline.
I wish Mark Steel has, as Marx Steel said the fact that Stalin had all the Bolsheviks shot suggests there was a difference of opinion of some significance thus blaming Bolshevism for Stalinism is blaming the first victim of Stalinism.
I once heard someone say that if the USSR had not existed the capitalist would have had to invent it. Years later, as I became a socialist, studied Leninism, etc., I understood the reasoning behind that seemingly bitter remark.
If the obtainment of socialism ever manages to get on the "national" agenda I expect that one internal adversary to overcome will be political sectors infatuated with Leninist dogma.
I already figured most of this out on my own, but I think it's a good video for pointing out the differences between socialism, and the USSR's version of it.
It's hard trying to correct all the people who grew up in the height of the cold war, because they're so content with accepting the propaganda from the state as true.
@IamMrAwesome I'm from the north east of England which due to its poverty and how cut off it is with the rest of England much of the hatred, fear and paranoia of the cold war still remains. They are still in the mentallity of communism/socialism = Stalinism and the main policies are everyone is paid the same low wage regardless of what work they do and how long for and is at mercy of the state. The rest of England, especially the south, seems to be a bit more awake.
@IamMrAwesome: "it's a good video for pointing out the differences between socialism, and the USSR's version of it."
that's one version. Don't you think it's possible that socialism was never meant to be a working system at all, but instead provides a positive catalyst to facilitate political change? Don't you think that placing state over individual rights will yield similar results in ANY society, including those of the West? Maybe what happened in USSR is EXACTLY what socialism is all about?
@prikhod all political doctrines are corrupt comrade, and Marxism is no exception. As a means of understanding the conflict that class has created throughout history it's a valuable philosophical tool, but as a vanguard institution it goes to shit, that's pretty much what Chomsky is saying. And please, don't act like admission of this is any sort of victory for capitalist ideals. Read some Bakunin and smash the state.
I would rather oppose that partly on the ground that ideas aren't necessarily all wrong given the boundaries within which they ought to operate. As I suppose, this remains true in spite of their very use to have been brought about by historical means of change; as Hobsbawm said, before Smith, there was no such idea as work being a qualitatively different activity from others and it is yet what allowed Marx to comprehend human societies.
It would reductive to hold that all ideas are the result of social distortion as much as saying that all history constitute a national myth. Consciousness is certainly consciousness of class, but the very fact we can note this arise from an observable change or else dissent would be impossible: it is hard, potentially limited, yet possible.
Hence, I would say that some political insights are sustainable and useful, whereas others aren't.
@HolyFerdinand No he's not. He's saying bolshevics used a basterdization of menshevic socialism for propaganda purposes. The Menshevics were popularist Marxists and Lenin called them infantile liberals. That anarcho-socialism within a market system couldn't work and was a juvenile fantasy. Therefore a central government had to run industry not the workers themselves. Class is created by government. Capitalism being a form of government and a perversion of free markets in a post-industrial world.
@IamMrAwesome agreed, and its no different than todays generation who believe that bush bush2 and reagon were all conservatives and clinton and obama are liberals. using proper definitions found in dictionaries and texts, all these presidents would be considered liberal (due to their spending habits and foreign policy). this is one of my pet peeves.
If you use the classical definition of liberalism, they're not liberal... It might be said that Clinton was frivolous and of liberal custom or as we say in French "moeurs libertaire" which basically is being liberal toward ethical and social customs -- or, more simply, not caring for social conventions. As for conservatives, if there's any meaning left in that, none of them are because they didn't really believe in traditional values.
@KrugmanTheKing yet when not referring topolitics it can stil be said that their spending habits were all very liberal, and that is the classical definition of the word. I'm not referring to "their" politics because they had no politics, all of that is controlled by medias banks and wall street. Presidents are merely puppets, but they do have an ink pen which allow each of them to sign away trillions of dollars for "nothing". i am referring to their spending, not politics
It's not the classical definition of the term... I gave you the classical definition of the term. And, of course, they sustained a political doctrine as any person to legitimize their platform.
What is truly a result of medias is for you to consider them liberal altogether: that's pretty far from using the word properly. There's nothing even in his discourse which echoes the idea of the primacy of freedom: hence, he's not a liberal.
@KrugmanTheKing i already wrapped it up and bagged this one, you are silly for responding then arent you? ill try to explain it again but this time ill pretend i am speaking to a 5 year old:
I m referring to one's spending habits. for example, if a person spends a lot of money on houses and clothes and goes way beyond their means, than it can be said, and could have always been said that that person has liberal spending habits. I already said I am not talking about politics.
I ignore why I didn't catch the formulation last time... but yeah, the word liberal can means an attitude toward customs and norms. Now that I go through it, it's obvious. But, what was the point of the intervention; I lost sight of the discussion.
@KrugmanTheKing so i read my original post to IamMrAwesome from 5 months ago; yours & my discussion resulted from that. I stated all recent US presidents can be considered liberal b/c spending habits &foreign policy. On your behalf however, I shouldve replaced my words "due to" with the words "in regards to" & also should've not said "foreign policy" since I wasnt referring to politics. I should've also been more clear that I wasnt referring to politics but rather spending habits
What Americans call liberal has virtually nothing to do with liberalism; what they call conservative has also nothing to do with conservatism; what they call libertarian means the opposite of what it always meant...
You can't use those words the way they use it as they are emptied of their meaning when you do so; they become ideological excuses for undertaking actions favorable to few and damageable to many.
"I am not a marxist. I am a freemason. Just type ""Karl Marx hidden hand" into a search engine and look at the images if you don't believe me. Thank you all for buying into my bullshit worls which were bought and paid for by my freemasonic superiors" - Karl Marx
PBSmithy 3 days ago
Chomsky cuts through other's arguments like a surgeon.
MrClipper23 3 days ago
Pwnage.
selfatrophy 5 days ago
the fundamental problem with lenninism is, in fact, it's firm adherence to marxist (or possibly even hegelian) historicism. it's thought out to prepare for the glorious end of history and, as such, is aiming fora value that doesn't exist yet. so everything is put on hold.
fede2 1 week ago
Wow.
sharonmyk 1 month ago
What Chomsky is saying is a very powerful defense of his ideals. Now me, you, the next guy or the guy next to us might try and sit down and come up with a in-depth critique or possible presentation of a possibly better mechanism of production or a better societal fabric, but that's for another debate altogether. The idiotic woman who felt violated because of Chomsky's bright-as-daylight analysis of the Soviets, seriously got hammered in this response.
interestingperson121 1 month ago
Chomsky's claim that Lenin was a right wing deviation of socialism is an understatement. Lenin and Trotsky were Wall Street Puppets. Trotsky was literally owned by Jacob Schiff and Lenin of the Rockefeller family. The October Revolution was engineered by Wall Street. The Soviet Union was built up and maintained as an investment vehicle for western corporations and banks.
ACDC7369 1 month ago
my worldview is constantly being shifted due to this man, absolutely brilliant.
fLcGambit 1 month ago 2
No it's just I'm pissed off that we live in a society that bashes and despise people like Chomsky and keeps praising people like Lenin and Obama who I believe have done nothing but manipulate people
LucBertolotti 5 months ago
@WhyMeMoFo Perhaps people should go around with his face on shirts and posters instead of Che Guevara, Lenin and Stalin
LucBertolotti 5 months ago 3
He's so right and it's so frustrating that nowadays you can't even talk about socialism anymore because people simply don't understand the word.
Ichtiostega 5 months ago
@Ichtiostega
People hate ideas and even sometimes people with which/whom they disagree and the irony lies in the fact that they rather agree with them, but can't tell because they don't understand.
Socialism is more easily sustained once you tell people how it's about freedom, how free people in the pursuit of their individual interest do yield public benefits, if only they are truly free... it's not a bad argument that they have: it's just misdirected.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
haha "LearnLiberty" has some corporate hack/Cato Institute professor promoted on this video with several times the viewers. Humanity is sooooo fucked. It was fun while it lasted...
defstoner18 6 months ago 2
Both Anders Breivik, Lenin, and Trotsky thought mass murder, however brutal, was a necessity.
RSFO 6 months ago
I think Noam is getting opportunism confused with necessity. Marx was right in thinking that there couldn't be an immediate shift to socialism in Russia. Lenin combated this view in 1917, but soon came to its truthful realisation in the early 20's.
The institutional and organisational changes he made, particuarly to the citizens 'police' force, where totally necessary in maintaining order, after the civil war, which greatly damaged much of the planning that was made in 1917.
RedShadow238 7 months ago
@RedShadow238 But saying that 'changes' to the police force (why are the police in quotations?) were necessary for 'maintaining order' is same excuse that every government, including the US and UK governments during the GWOT, throughout history has used to justify the use of violence/terror/oppression.
historypoliticsbb 3 months ago
Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya? Sen:
"INDIA had in terms of morbidity mortality and longevity suffered an excess in mortality over china of close to 4 MILLION deaths a year during the SAME time period... Thus in? this one geographical area alone more deaths resulted from this failed capitalist experiment (more than 100 million by 1980) than can be attributed to the 'failed communist experiment' all over the world since 1917"!!!
8Marx8 8 months ago
Evil man that speaxks soft words and never stops to talk about the lost of live that comumuism cause.
momytu1 8 months ago
@momytu1 You really didn't understand the point of this video, did you?
DaKrazyKatt 8 months ago
@DaKrazyKatt
I undestand very well, He see what he wants to see and yes he is brillant as he review fact and never consider the bodies, but the ideas, he is so above tat mundane matter.
momytu1 8 months ago
@momytu1 There is no communism, that's the point to this video. What you think is causing these bodies to pile up is capitalism and totalitarianism. You've been brainwashed into thinking it is communism by media/educational systems/governments/capitalists/dictators. Of course a certain lazyness on your own part is to blame since you (obviously) define communsim on someone elses terms.
DaKrazyKatt 8 months ago
He's so brilliant I wanna pick him up and take him to the chopper. :)
TailsFails 8 months ago
The woman who asked the question is getting a lot of flack - some of it substantive (she's ignorant) and some of it pure ad hominim (whiny bitch). I was unfamiliar with many of the details Chomsky has provided and I know that a lot of historians have praised Lenin for having 'good intentions' and overthrowing the oppressive totalitarian Tsarist Russian Orthodox regime etc.
stoprainingonme 10 months ago
@stoprainingonme I think you're the ignorant one. Every Tsar after Peter the Great was german. Russians were oppressed by germans (a tiny minority), and then oppressed by communist jews. The whole reason the revolution was able to exist was because of support and financing from abroad. Jews like Jacob Schiff hated Russia and financed japans war against it, along with communism later. Only, it was the 100% german blood Catherine II that invented anti semitism in russia.
martydrooo 9 months ago
@stoprainingonme Also, in 1915 Stolypin's reforms made it so 50% of farmers owned their land (still in Tsarist Russia),the rest would get it soon,anyone who wanted unlimited land in southern siberia was free to claim it, 50,000 primary schools were to be built(the basis of soviet education),and the "Peasants Bank" provided guaranteed credit to aquire or improve your farm. National worker's insurance was also instituted. So,get your "oppression" garbage out of here. Lenin and his jews were frauds
martydrooo 9 months ago
WOW!
colin0630 1 year ago
ddssd
jackbug43 1 year ago
@roymondlafonte i agree with you that he does authoritatively define something that could be defined a myriad of different ways but i don't think that worker control of production is a bad definition. I think what is seriously lacking from his analysis was the historical and political circumstances that the soviets faced in 1917 having to fight off the whites and engaging in other military campaigns. Not exactly a climate where things would have been likely to flourish.
jackbug43 1 year ago
@Neondub Whilst i agree, do you think it would achieve anything? Doubtful.
d245470k 1 year ago
Gee he sure gave that blind idealogue a lesson in history.
amul83 1 year ago
Capitalism is the historic evolution of private property relationship of alienation,exploitation and suffering of humanity in a modality of commodity production for abstract process of capital accumulation and concentration . A system of wage slavery in a MARKET system of suppression and dehumanistion. We need to transcend this false limits to our creative cooperative energies for a moneyless,classless,stateless communities of humanity expressing our energies in freedom of being.
arzoyan 1 year ago 2
I agree with him, in that leninism, is not socialism and is far from it. it is more like state capitalism, but at least the state is taking the peoples' interests at heart.
YoMommaWasAFreebie 1 year ago
Socialism is a marvelous thing tha can only exist in the future and in the revolutionary minds of people like Chomsky.
MMDC2001 1 year ago
Brilliant.
vriend1 1 year ago
@Neondub It seems to me that Beck and O'Reilly--and most conservatives--would agree with Chomsky here, where the worker control of production they would probably understand as just anarchism, which is Chomsky's philosophy. Conservatives of the more libertarian type--Beck in fact moving toward that now--fear the revolutionizing, bureaucratic 'despotism' of the Leninist type. They would disagree that it's 'rightist,' though. American conservatism is mostly old liberalism, not really 'right.'
CincinnatusUSA 1 year ago
@CincinnatusUSA I think american conservatism can not be equated with libertarianism outright due to the religious and moral social policies which they seek to enact. Libertarians who abide by value of postive liberty would not care if your gay or smoke pot but american conservatism spend much of their time on the moral stuff. especially Beck and O'reilly.
jackbug43 1 year ago
@Brewed54 Workers' democracy only works if the working class actually exists. It doesn't exist in a vacuum, despite what Chomsky says or thinks. I'd like to see his policy alternatives to what the Bolsheviks were forced to do by incredibly difficult economic and political circumstances.
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
@Brewed54 I'm familiar with the concept of one-man management. It's something Lenin and the Bolsheviks embraced out of necessity. The working class was almost completely obliterated by the Civil War. The number of workers in Russia shrank from roughly 10 million to 5 million or less as a result of economic blockade, famine, and disease. Industrial production fell 85%! You can't have workers' councils running things when the few workers left are starving at their machines can you?
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
Before Vladimir Lenin, idea of social justice produced observation by A. Herzen a Russian. "Could you please explain to me why belief in God is ridiculous and belief in humanity is not; why belief in the kingdom of heaven is silly, but belief in all utopias on earth is clever? Having discarded positive religion, we have retained all the habits of religion, and having lost paradise in heaven we believe in the coming paradise on earth, and boast about it." --Alexander Herzen 1860's
AtlasandLiberty 1 year ago
Well, that's not what the Bolsheviks did. The Russian civil war emptied the factories and destroyed the Soviets as lively, mass workers' organizations, not some decree by Lenin.
If the 1917 revolution was popular and vibrant, why didn't the Soviets overthrow the Bolsheviks if it's true the Bolshies issued orders to shut 'em down?
binhthanhvo 2 years ago
So in part 1 Chomsky claims Lenin was a right-wing deviation of Marxism, and here he says Lenin was an orthodox Marxist. He's typing himself into political knots, disregarding many, many facts about the revolution, the Civil War, the Communist International, and the rise of Stalin, all to justify his own hostility to Lenin and Bolshevism.
It's sad really to see someone so intelligent and lucid stoop to the level of Richard Pipes.
binhthanhvo 2 years ago
@binhthanhvo *tying
whoops
binhthanhvo 2 years ago
No no, you missed it: in part 1 he's saying that Lenin - in action - was a right-wing deviation of Marxism, whereas in part 2 he's saying that Lenin - in rhetoric - CONSIDERED HIMSELF an orthodox Marxist, but didn't even himself believe that "real" socialism (i.e., workers' control, democracy in workplace & govt, etc.) could exist in the SU for whatever reasons Lenin gave... (and so he took part in all the right-wing, undemocratic, and antisocialist actions that Chomsky described).
radioactive1415 1 year ago
@radioactive1415 You're inserting words and distinctions into what Chomsky said in an attempt to make him right. He very clearly labelled Lenin a right-wing deviation of Marxism and in part two labelled him an "orthodox Marxist." He also claimed that Lenin from April-October 1917 embraced a "libertarian" bent. I don't know about you, but I don't think it's possible to be a right-wing deviationist orthodox libertarian Marxist. lol
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
No I'm not inserting distinctions anywhere; these are distinctions Chomsky just made. LISTEN to the two parts again instead of selectively hearing what you wish. Again, Chomsky said clearly that Lenin was a more right-wing deviation from the hard Marxist and libertarian movements that had been springing forth in Russia. AGAINST the mainstream Russian socialist movements, but under the rhetorical GUISE of being orthodox, Lenin decided to disband institutions of true socialist collectivism.
radioactive1415 1 year ago
@radioactive1415 I watched both videos very carefully. Chomsky never made those distinctions, you did. Chomsky labels Pannakoek a "mainstream Marxist" but she was nothing of the sort. The "mainstream" Marxists were the mass socialist parties organized in the Second International that had hundreds of thousands of members. This is just one example of Chomsky's sloppy handling of facts and evidence.
Lenin didn't disband the soviets, by the way. Yet another factual inaccuracy.
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
Yeah, my bad...he didnt disband the soviets nor the factory councils. However, let me just say that I do see where Chomsky is coming from - even if his analysis isn't always quite clear: when Lenin took power, he made the soviets and councils directly responsible to the government, making it mandatory for them to take top-down orders. "We passed from workers' control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy," to "replace, absorb and supersede the machinery of workers' control."
radioactive1415 1 year ago
The Civil War, capitalist sabotage, and famine closed the factories and fatally undermined the working class upon which the workers' councils (Soviets) were based. It's tough to have workers' control of production when there are not many workers and almost no production. Industrial production fell 85% (!!) during the Civil War. The party/state bureaucracy sprang up to substitute for a devastated working class in a desperate attempt to keep the shattered country together and defeat the Whites.
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
No wait, I think youre missing what Im saying. Yes, what you're saying is true, and in fact in many ways the USSR, in order to stay alive, HAD to do what it did, lest it be utterly destroyed by the White Armies, political opponents, and other outside threats (like Germany & the US, etc.). Not to mention the difficulty in going from a backward near-feudal tzarist society to an industrial semi-capitalist-communist one! And Rosa Luxembourg may have entirely agreed with Lenin considering that time!
radioactive1415 1 year ago
Im saying that I see where Chomskys criticism might come from - even while shortsighted! Her original philosophy, regardless of what she said/did in the long-run, along with Marx himself if you read, demanded a workers revolution that would begin with highly democratic control of the workplace and government (the term dictatorship of the proletariat is actually perverted; dictator meant something more like state of siege then, and Marx had something more like the Paris Commune in mind).
radioactive1415 1 year ago
Comment removed
radioactive1415 1 year ago
Lenin appeared to be doing the opposite by making these worker-instruments directly accountable to the state top-down authority. Even while they made considerable gains for the proletariat, in essence what he did was contrary to the original type of idealized socialism. In The Soviet Union vs. Socialism, Chomsky basically says that he doesnt think that Leninism in itself is a good model for broad social-democratic movements because he despised the despot of what he called the State Priests.
radioactive1415 1 year ago
Most who buy into the Lenin->Stalin argument, including Chomsky, almost never mention the material conditions facing the Bolsheviks: encirclement, industrial collapse, political betrayal (Mensheviks and SRs joined many White governments), assassination campaigns (Lenin and others were shot), famine, and disease, the latter two of which killed millions.
The point I'm making in bringing those up is that there were very, very severe constraints imposed on the Bolsheviks.
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
Critics of the Red Terror and War Communism talk about democracy, freedom, libertarian values, etc. but they never offer alternative policies to what the Bolsheviks did. I would like to hear how anarchists or libertarians would deal with the problem of famine in the cities, being surrounded militarily, and being betrayed by fellow progressives. What would Chomsky do in the face of vicious counter-revolution? Put his gun down? Dismantle the workers' state? Abandon Soviet power?
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
Yes! Thats an extremely good point, and its lacking in the lefts argument against Soviet communism. Nonetheless, if there were a popular leftist movement today, it wouldnt need to be based on a strict Leninist model. I dont see the same authoritarian structures as relevant in these circumstances. In general Im opposed to strict authoritarian Leninist & Stalinist ideologies; they give too much chance for abuses of power in the name of socialism and elite rule distant from democratic constraints.
radioactive1415 1 year ago
@radioactive1415 How was Lenin an "authoritarian"? He was elected as a leader in the party by the highest decision-making body within the party, the Party Congress.
Also, isn't a revolution "authoritarian"? You're taking the means of production and state power away from the ruling class at gunpoint - they aren't giving it up of their own free will...
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
If the left had a broad democratic movement with frequent and open debates and activism, and could actually win big segments of the electorate, or at least gain enough momentum as to change traditional American political-economic thought, this type of revolution could be "won" democratically, and perhaps even easily - even within the inefficient constraints of the American congressional system. Though I hear plenty of leftist bickering in school and on paper, I never see actions in the streets.
radioactive1415 1 year ago
@radioactive1415 Well, I'm all for open debate, which is what I hoped to spark with my comments on this Chomsky vid. My videos are all made in the same spirit as well.
The American political system was designed to inhibit change as much as possible, and it has worked beautifully for 200+ years now.
You don't see actions in the streets because the left and the unions still look to the Democratic party for change. Big, big mistake!
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
@binhthanhvo Anarchists in free ukraine (under Nestor Makhno) at the time of War Communism and the Red Terror did actually have alternative policies to the Bolsheviks that worked.
for instance they dealt with the problem of famine by democratically working with the peasants rather than disregarding them as a counter-revolutionary force and that way were able to secure ample food.
its worth reading the wikipedia entry for the:
Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine
TheLemsipClub 1 year ago
@TheLemsipClub i forgot to also say the anarchist society was under the same constraints as the bolsheviks, but still survived until Lenin and Trotsky brutally crushed it with the far superior might of the Red Army.
TheLemsipClub 1 year ago
@TheLemsipClub The Bolsheviks didn't regard the peasantry as a counter-revolutionary force. Only a few thousand peasants ever joined the communes he set up (the population in the areas under his control was several million), forced peasants to quarter his troops, created 2 secret police forces, banned political parties other than his own, regulated the press, stole property from peasants, etc. Makhno aped the policies that anarchists criticize the Bolsheviks for.
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
@binhthanhvo Check your facts! Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution calls for the domination of the proletariat over the peasantry, as did Lenin.
Makhno never had a political party as they rejectedvanguardism and bourgeois parliaments. Those accusations against Makhno were that of the bolshevik press, and are unsubstantiated propaganda designed to discredit anarchism.
Its generally a poor argument to use necessity as a justification for the fascistic bolshevik party dictatorship.
TheLemsipClub 1 year ago
@TheLemsipClub Please provide the quotes to back up your assertion that Trotsky called for the "domination" of the peasantry by the proletariat. Political leadership in struggle is not domination. Makhno never had a party, but he had no problem suppressing other people's freedom to form political parties. Everything I brought up is a substantiated, sourced fact. See: "The Makhno Myth" by Jason Yanowitz. The article contains 100+ footnotes and most of the facts come from pro-Makhno scholars.
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
@binhthanhvo
Lenin didn't just regard peasntry as counter-revolutionary, he regarded them as an inferior type of a human being compared to a worker, "sobstveniky," those who had property. I can't provide any quotes from Lenin & Trotsky as they are all in Russian.
Lollipoppization 1 year ago
@Lollipoppization All of their works have been translated into English. When you can find the evidence for your claim, let me know.
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
@binhthanhvo
Lollipoppization 1 year ago
Comment removed
kokorodokoro 11 months ago
The kind of "socialism" that Chomsky, I, and others like Antonie Pannakoek and Rosa Luxembourg and Helen Keller subscribe to is workers' control over the means of production and a sort of "bottom-up" libertarian (in the European sense of the word) regulation and much more openly democratic debate and discussion over policy. You may disagree with me, and I apologize for that misrepresentation, but do you at least see where I'm coming from?
radioactive1415 1 year ago
Rosa Luxemburg agreed with Lenin. Why else would she help found the KPD, the German section of the Communist International? Why else did she speak out in defense of the Bolsheviks?
Lenin and Luxemburg did not disagree with one another on issues of "centralism" and workers' democracy. The difficulty Lenin faced was that he headed a workers' government in an economically devastated country, surrounded on all sides by Whites, and betrayed by "socialists" who joined the Whites.
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
Ok I cant read what Im writing again, so this is going to be difficult. Lenin received massive popular support, granted, but he was authoritarian in the sense that he made workers directly accountable to no other policy but that of the state - thats not democracy OR socialism. I dont see this style necessary today. Of course any movement, including Paris in 1871, even back to the Magna Carta in 1215, is "authoritarian" in the sense that its goal is to force one group to expand power to the next.
radioactive1415 1 year ago
@radioactive1415 I think you are confusing Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky was in favor of the militarization of labor and opposed workers' rights to strike against the "workers' state" (this is in the early 20s). Lenin fought Trotsky on both of those questions vehemently. He knew very well that Russia was NOT a workers' state and supported their right to strike. Maybe you have some quotes from Lenin that you are referring to? I have read a lot of his work and would be happy to explain/clarify.
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
and why can't i read what i'm writing???
radioactive1415 1 year ago
@radioactive1415 The comments system is pure garbage. On that we can all agree. :)
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
He lauded Mao. That is it. If you have anything to say of Mao that isn't-he was one of the worst disasters to befall humanity-then in my eyes you are an evil shill, who warps the minds of the vulnerable like you who buy that authoritarian bullshit about free market capitalism and classical liberalism somehow making an elite to rule the people: when in fact mercantilism, state capitalism and consequently all non-utopian, non-Marxist socialism, is the policy of Collectivism and submission.
Nintendomanwill 2 years ago
Either Chomsky is corrupt and is bought by corporate elites, or he is a dogmatic rationalist who is too perfectionist, the world of politics out there is not a book, i think that he is too idealist. The real world is more hand in hand with Machiavellian Politics than with his Libertarian-Socialist ideology which is oxymoron. You cant apply socialism in a libertarian environment without a strong police force to crush capitalists and to expropiate businesses
maxistsocialist 2 years ago
Gee we wouldn't want to do that! That'd be so evil and authoritarian! I guess the bankers get to keep their money after all...
binhthanhvo 2 years ago
First of all, well done for not calling me a fascist, you aren't a typical Chomskyite.
Chomsky supports tyranny in that he lauded Mao. That good enough?
I stand by what I say: socialism=statism. This is because it cannot allow free exchange of goods and services directed mostly by profit-motive: socialist advocates do not understand the utility of profit in directing action of marginal utility to others in the division of labour though Chomsky does really since he invests in bluechips.
Nintendomanwill 2 years ago
@Neondub
No, because that's just throwing more bullshit at bullshit. Except that O'Reilly et al, at least don't openly support tyranny unlike Chomsky.
I would suggest that both those blindly accepting the opinions of O'Reilly and those blindly accepting the drivel of Chomksy, would do well to read the works of REAL historians and actual economics, rather than the babbling of those with literally no education in economics like Chomsky.
If you understood socialism you'd know it IS statism.
Nintendomanwill 2 years ago
they wouldn't understand it. that's the beauty of a population with a 30 second attention span.
bobomber 2 years ago 3
hey, this video was made 6 years to the day before I was born. Great speech too.
ramberghini 2 years ago
there is something special about chomskys memory, i forgot how it is called and would like to do further research on it.
so, how is it called when people have a memory like chomsky? there are a few other journalists and historians with that ability.
anyway, its clear that chomsky is one of these chosen few. the precision and ease with which he remembers things is far beyond average.
kurtilein3 2 years ago
the king at his throne
davef89 2 years ago 4
All this is very well, but who funded Lenin, and to what end? One can talk about variations of socialism and communism 'til the cows come home, but it's all about the money. NewTet alluded to the capitalist world having to invent the USSR; who says they didn't?
flyhead2 2 years ago
I wish we could get Zizek to respond to this.
beholdmyswarthyface0 2 years ago 5
I don't know if he would bring much to the discussion... Beyond the Niels Bohr anecdote and his view of ideology, his insight does not seem very deep to me, and Zizek's way of qualifying himself as Communist is just your typical post-modernist punchline.
DonVoghano 2 years ago
I wish Mark Steel has, as Marx Steel said the fact that Stalin had all the Bolsheviks shot suggests there was a difference of opinion of some significance thus blaming Bolshevism for Stalinism is blaming the first victim of Stalinism.
Just Google "Mark Steel +russian revolution"
Psy500 2 years ago
@Psy500 Agreed. But why let facts get in the way of a good argument? Especially when you can bash those evil power-hungry Bolshies?
binhthanhvo 1 year ago
Funny I just watched this video yesterday.
coffeebeaner 2 years ago
I once heard someone say that if the USSR had not existed the capitalist would have had to invent it. Years later, as I became a socialist, studied Leninism, etc., I understood the reasoning behind that seemingly bitter remark.
If the obtainment of socialism ever manages to get on the "national" agenda I expect that one internal adversary to overcome will be political sectors infatuated with Leninist dogma.
NewTet 2 years ago
I already figured most of this out on my own, but I think it's a good video for pointing out the differences between socialism, and the USSR's version of it.
It's hard trying to correct all the people who grew up in the height of the cold war, because they're so content with accepting the propaganda from the state as true.
IamMrAwesome 2 years ago 52
@IamMrAwesome I'm from the north east of England which due to its poverty and how cut off it is with the rest of England much of the hatred, fear and paranoia of the cold war still remains. They are still in the mentallity of communism/socialism = Stalinism and the main policies are everyone is paid the same low wage regardless of what work they do and how long for and is at mercy of the state. The rest of England, especially the south, seems to be a bit more awake.
Frasssaanarchy 1 year ago
@IamMrAwesome: "it's a good video for pointing out the differences between socialism, and the USSR's version of it."
that's one version. Don't you think it's possible that socialism was never meant to be a working system at all, but instead provides a positive catalyst to facilitate political change? Don't you think that placing state over individual rights will yield similar results in ANY society, including those of the West? Maybe what happened in USSR is EXACTLY what socialism is all about?
prikhod 1 year ago
@prikhod all political doctrines are corrupt comrade, and Marxism is no exception. As a means of understanding the conflict that class has created throughout history it's a valuable philosophical tool, but as a vanguard institution it goes to shit, that's pretty much what Chomsky is saying. And please, don't act like admission of this is any sort of victory for capitalist ideals. Read some Bakunin and smash the state.
HolyFerdinand 11 months ago 14
@HolyFerdinand
"I am not a Marxist" - Karl Marx
khoroshoorange 4 months ago 7
@HolyFerdinand
I would rather oppose that partly on the ground that ideas aren't necessarily all wrong given the boundaries within which they ought to operate. As I suppose, this remains true in spite of their very use to have been brought about by historical means of change; as Hobsbawm said, before Smith, there was no such idea as work being a qualitatively different activity from others and it is yet what allowed Marx to comprehend human societies.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@HolyFerdinand
It would reductive to hold that all ideas are the result of social distortion as much as saying that all history constitute a national myth. Consciousness is certainly consciousness of class, but the very fact we can note this arise from an observable change or else dissent would be impossible: it is hard, potentially limited, yet possible.
Hence, I would say that some political insights are sustainable and useful, whereas others aren't.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@HolyFerdinand No he's not. He's saying bolshevics used a basterdization of menshevic socialism for propaganda purposes. The Menshevics were popularist Marxists and Lenin called them infantile liberals. That anarcho-socialism within a market system couldn't work and was a juvenile fantasy. Therefore a central government had to run industry not the workers themselves. Class is created by government. Capitalism being a form of government and a perversion of free markets in a post-industrial world.
ped200014 1 month ago
@IamMrAwesome agreed, and its no different than todays generation who believe that bush bush2 and reagon were all conservatives and clinton and obama are liberals. using proper definitions found in dictionaries and texts, all these presidents would be considered liberal (due to their spending habits and foreign policy). this is one of my pet peeves.
slovakmath 5 months ago
@slovakmath
If you use the classical definition of liberalism, they're not liberal... It might be said that Clinton was frivolous and of liberal custom or as we say in French "moeurs libertaire" which basically is being liberal toward ethical and social customs -- or, more simply, not caring for social conventions. As for conservatives, if there's any meaning left in that, none of them are because they didn't really believe in traditional values.
KrugmanTheKing 1 month ago
@KrugmanTheKing yet when not referring topolitics it can stil be said that their spending habits were all very liberal, and that is the classical definition of the word. I'm not referring to "their" politics because they had no politics, all of that is controlled by medias banks and wall street. Presidents are merely puppets, but they do have an ink pen which allow each of them to sign away trillions of dollars for "nothing". i am referring to their spending, not politics
slovakmath 3 weeks ago
@slovakmath
It's not the classical definition of the term... I gave you the classical definition of the term. And, of course, they sustained a political doctrine as any person to legitimize their platform.
What is truly a result of medias is for you to consider them liberal altogether: that's pretty far from using the word properly. There's nothing even in his discourse which echoes the idea of the primacy of freedom: hence, he's not a liberal.
KrugmanTheKing 3 weeks ago
@KrugmanTheKing i already wrapped it up and bagged this one, you are silly for responding then arent you? ill try to explain it again but this time ill pretend i am speaking to a 5 year old:
I m referring to one's spending habits. for example, if a person spends a lot of money on houses and clothes and goes way beyond their means, than it can be said, and could have always been said that that person has liberal spending habits. I already said I am not talking about politics.
slovakmath 2 weeks ago
@slovakmath
I ignore why I didn't catch the formulation last time... but yeah, the word liberal can means an attitude toward customs and norms. Now that I go through it, it's obvious. But, what was the point of the intervention; I lost sight of the discussion.
KrugmanTheKing 2 weeks ago
@KrugmanTheKing haha, now that you mention it, i did too, ill go back and watch the video again and see what my original point was
slovakmath 2 weeks ago
@KrugmanTheKing so i read my original post to IamMrAwesome from 5 months ago; yours & my discussion resulted from that. I stated all recent US presidents can be considered liberal b/c spending habits &foreign policy. On your behalf however, I shouldve replaced my words "due to" with the words "in regards to" & also should've not said "foreign policy" since I wasnt referring to politics. I should've also been more clear that I wasnt referring to politics but rather spending habits
slovakmath 2 weeks ago
@slovakmath
What Americans call liberal has virtually nothing to do with liberalism; what they call conservative has also nothing to do with conservatism; what they call libertarian means the opposite of what it always meant...
You can't use those words the way they use it as they are emptied of their meaning when you do so; they become ideological excuses for undertaking actions favorable to few and damageable to many.
KrugmanTheKing 3 weeks ago
first !!
great video !!
Cran1988 2 years ago