Chomsky on Leninism 1 of 2

Answering someone from the ISO

Category:

Education

Tags:

• chomsky
• socialism
• lenin
• iso

[YCDPKLD]

Capitalism is good but ITS NOT PERFECT - So let's take the good and throw out the bad instead of enslaving us to these ideals that are false. Like democracy. It doesn't automatically guarantee freedoms but it does help. Hell democracy was only for white men during the foundation of the USA.

[ZzzparkzzZ]

@moonwolf711

The people in general, outside Petrograd, were not part of the revolution, little support came from there, thus it can rightfully be called a coup. Not?

[moonwolf711]

Chomsky should be ashamed for parroting Cold War propaganda about the October Revolution supposedly being a "coup." Even non-Leninist historians acknowledge that when the Bolsheviks led the overthrow of the provisional government, they enjoyed the support of the masses of workers. Consult Alexander Rabinowich's "The Bolsheviks Come to Power: the Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd," published at least a decade before this speech.

[mose3]

Facts are facts and ideologies are mythology. Capitalism and Communism are specially corrupt myths. If we don't give the search for REAL Democracy a chance the human species is doomed.

[agapeiron]

(cont) Trotsky himself admitted this: "We have been more than once accused of having substituted for the dictatorship of the soviets the dictatorship of our own Party [...] In this substitution of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class [...]" Trotsky, Chap. 7 of Terrorism and Communism.

[agapeiron]

When Leninists speak of democracy, workers' control, soviet power, etc., one should immediately ask: how is this power being implemented institutionally? Never by workers, always by the Party. To a Leninist, the fundamental interests of the working class are represented by the Party, so you don't even need working people democratically making their own decisions. (cont)

[agapeiron]

@stephenfs03 (cont) And after Lenin did this, he shifted back to the right wing of the socialist movement again, having no interest in workers control over the means of production (i.e. socialism). Thus, as Chomsky correctly points out (though it has been pointed out before), Lenin had no interest in socialism or democracy. He was more into Party control over production (by imitating German capitalism, in particular, as I pointed out), which he subsequently implemented.

[agapeiron]

@stephenfs03 "Chomsky is incorrect, Lenin didn't whip up vanguardism merely to get popular support..."

Chomsky did not claim Lenin whipped up vanguardism to get popular support (seriously, what workers would be attracted to having their lives run by an elite cadre?). Chomsky claims that Lenin changed his rhetoric to undermine the Provisional Government, viz. by supporting soviets and factory councils. Which he did (cont.)

[agapeiron]

@stephenfs03 Leninists have never had any serious interest in workers democratically running their own societies-- Outside of, perhaps, Bordiga. Otherwise, they have generally been in favor of one-man management of factories, iron discipline, one party rule, and the like. These strategies owe more to the bourgeois consciousness of a self-declared intelligentsia than the revolutionary consciousness of the working classes.

[agapeiron]

@stephenfs03 Whether you are unfamiliar with the quotes does not mean they were not said. Not caring to look into them only makes your own fervent belief in the rightness of the Bolshevik position more conspicuous.