"The Soviet Union versus Socialism" Noam Chomsky

[robbo203]

"When the world's two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it
requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is
that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and molded further by Stalin and
his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically
accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the
relation of contradiction.
It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy.
Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its
own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took
advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One
major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State
managers are leading their own society and the world towards the socialist
ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist -- surely any serious Marxist --
should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as
history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The
taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura
of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal
their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism.

As for the world's second major propaganda system, association of socialism with
the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to
enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure
that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these
institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative
to the 'socialist' dungeon.

The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to
wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to
forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on
socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period.

One may take note of another device used effectively by State capitalist
ideologists in their service to existing power and privilege. The ritual
denunciation of the so-called 'socialist' States is replete with distortions and
often outright lies. Nothing is easier than to denounce the official enemy and
to attribute to it any crime: there is no need to be burdened by the demands of
evidence or logic as one marches in the parade. Critics of Western violence and
atrocities often try to set the record straight, recognizing the criminal
atrocities and repression that exist while exposing the tales that are concocted
in the service of Western violence. With predictable regularity, these steps are
at once interpreted as apologetics for the empire of evil and its minions. Thus
the crucial Right to Lie in the Service of the State is preserved, and the
critique of State violence and atrocities is undermined.

It is also worth noting the great appeal of Leninist doctrine to the modern
intelligentsia in periods of conflict and upheaval. This doctrine affords the
'radical intellectuals' the right to hold State power and to impose the harsh
rule of the 'Red Bureaucracy,' the 'new class,' in the terms of Bakunin's
prescient analysis a century ago. As in the Bonapartist State denounced by Marx,
they become the 'State priests,' and "parasitical excrescence upon civil
society" that rules it with an iron hand.

In periods when there is little challenge to State capitalist institutions, the
same fundamental commitments lead the 'new class' to serve as State managers and
ideologists, "beating the people with the people's stick," in Bakunin's words.
It is small wonder that intellectuals find the transition from 'revolutionary
Communism' to 'celebration of the West' such an easy one, replaying a script
that has evolved from tragedy to farce over the past half century. In essence,
all that has changed is the assessment of where power lies. Lenin¹s dictum that
"socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole
people," who must of course trust the benevolence of their leaders, expresses
the perversion of 'socialism' to the needs of the State priests, and allows us
to comprehend the rapid transition between positions that superficially seem
diametric opposites, but in fact are quite close."


Read the whole thing here:

http://freetimes3x.blogspot.com/ (http://freetimes3x.blogspot.com/)

[gorillafuck]

Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power.
That's ridiculous. Lenin was a Marxist since his youth, he didn't become a Marxist because he wanted to trick people into being controlled by him. There's no way to back up that claim.

Regardless of whether the Bolsheviks methods were good or not, to say that it was a conspiracy of some sort to take power isn't true.

[x359594]

...Lenin was a Marxist since his youth, he didn't become a Marxist because he wanted to trick people into being controlled by him...

Indeed, Lenin did not intend to trick people into being controlled by him. And he was a Marxist, but he modified Marx's theories to suit his particular understanding of historical conditions of the world and especially the Russia of the early 20th century.

In fact, many Marxists do not accept Lenin’s modifications of Marx’s original ideas, and his contemporary Rosa Luxemborg drew attention to the short comings of Lenin’s theories. There’s really no place in anything that Marx wrote for the notion of the party of the proletariat exercising political power after a successfu1ly accomplished revolution. Indeed, such a conception is inconsistent with his entire philosophy of society and revolution. Marx saw the revolution as the culminating point in the development of' the struggle, and therefore of the consciousness of the working class: the revolution puts an end to the division which exists between society and the state, and thereby brings about the transcendence (Aufhebung) of classes and of the state itself. Conversely, a seizure of power effected by a party in the name of an abstraction called socialism, before the social conditions for it exist can only result in a change from one form of oppression to another, a charge repeatedly made by Marx against the Jacobins of the French Revolution.

Lenin came up with the idea of an elitist party acting in the name of the proletariat and played havoc with Marx's original paradigm. Even so, in "State and Revolution,"written on the eve of' the seizure of power, he could still speak of the state beginning to "wither away" (Engels' phrase, never used by Marx) on the day after the revolution, and of harmonious and easy fellowship and co-operation over the administrative chores taking the place, before very long, of all coercion.

As time went on, the realities of power left little room for easy optimism about withering away, and faith in the ever-receding transition to socialism had to be sustained by increasing devotion to the myth that party and proletariat were indissolubly one and the same. Since the state had not been transcended and the proletariat had not achieved the social consciousness which in theory should have preceded the revolution, ever new duties had to be thrust upon the party: it hunted out enemies in increasing numbers, harried political opponents, waged war on the bourgeois peasants, stiffened the new Red Army, dominated the Soviets and the trade unions, tried to shore up and expand ruined industry. By 1921 Lenin had created a one-party state, in which a monopolistic party claimed in theory the right to run every aspect of public life.

Lenin's last political writings show that he contemplated a long period, lasting generations, perhaps, in which backward Russia would grow into socialism. This protracted period of socialist construction required, above all, peace between the peasants and the towns (this was the function of the NEP.) It would also call for the moral regeneration of party members which Lenin seems to have believed possible right to the end of his days. Lenin recognized that it was reversing the order of Marx to try to achieve social consciousness after the revolution and not before, and he justified this by the claim that the necessity of seizing power in October 1917 had been forced upon the Bolsheviks.

If, as some have suggested, the regime established at the Tenth Party Congress was only intended as a temporary, emergency measure - though Lenin did not say so - it was certainly true that the emergency did not abate during Lenin's lifetime; and there was therefore at no time an opportunity open to Lenin for modifying the regime. In fact many have argued that the foundations for the machine erected by Stalin for his tyranny were already laid by Lenin. There is much force in this argument, and much evidence to support it. But it may also be true that Lenin was struck down at a time when his work was still unfinished.

The economic system established under Lenin in the Soviet Union and according to his formula has been emulated in virtually all Marxist-Leninist states. Both its adherents and its enemies refer to this system as "socialism." Labor is regimented, capital is accumulated by means of surplus value and is mulcted and reinvested, and prerogatives are set by management. In short, the system is one of state capitalism.

When he proclaimed the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, Lenin said that "Socialism is nothing more than state capitalism." It was the template for all economic systems developed in the Soviet Union (from 1921 until Gorbachev’s perestroika.) Other communist states, from Cuba to the Peoples’ Republic of China have followed this paradigm (in the PRC the state is a partner in all major commercial enterprises, including multi-nationals like Nike.)

[Pogue]

I think to claim Lenin wasn't a committed socialist is insane. Even I can see this and I'm hardly a supproter of Leninism. I still disagree with his ideology and interpretation of Marxism, but I don't doubt he genuinely wanted to see a socialsit revolution. This is like when people criticise Anarchism on silly lines - just as how there are much better critiques of Anarchism than 'its idealistic shit for middle class kids' there are betetrs ways to crticise Lenin/Leninism than saying he was merely an opputunistic despot. In fact I'd argue a more mature analysis is neccesary in order to advance socialist theory/strategy.