robbo203

And that's a lie. Lenin did not say "socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people", no, he said: "For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly."

You're taking the quote completely out of context and are omitting it's beginning and end. If put together, it's quite clear that he says, socialism is the next step from state-monopoly capitalism, and has ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

I do not miss, you do.

Lenin did not invent that convention, he was following the Second International Marxism convention where lower-phase/first-stage communism was called "socialism" and pure communism/higher-stage communism was called just "communism". The usual criticism was Lenin receives for this is that he 1) did not realize that Marx did not follow this convention and 2) Lenin invented it, and both points are proven wrong if you read the State and Revolution.

Of course the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear, Marx did not believe otherwise(the fact that Lenin sometimes used different words for Marx's concepts is completely irrelevant, they're still talking about the same things). Marx did not believe that a state would not exist in lower-phase, he believed that a bourgeois state would not exist. In lower-stage communism/socialism, the state loses it's political functions and becomes an economic coordination mechanism.

So in no way is Lenin implying that state-monopoly capitalism run the interests of the whole people is socialism. He says "for socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly." So he's clearly saying that socialism comes after state-capitalist monopoly, so how can it be inferred that he's saying that socialism is state-monopoly capitalism run in the interests of the whole people? "...ceased to be capitalist monopoly". If state-capitalist monopoly ceased to be capitalist, it's obviously not state-capitalist monopoly anymore.

What Lenin means is crystal clear. He means: State-monopoly capitalism is the last stage of capitalism, it's the most advanced form of capitalism so far, it's the last form of capitalism before socialism, the only place to go from here is socialism. Advancing FROM monopolies is advancing TOWARDS socialism. "state-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism".

That's simply ridiculous. Lenin didn't describe socialism as the lower phase("first-stage) of communism, he said that what Marx called lower-stage communism is "usually" called "socialism"(usually called that during his times, not Marx's), yet in the State and Revolution, where he allegedly "redefines" socialism, he still calls his socialism(lower phase communism) "communist society".

And no, Lenin never defined socialism as "state capitalist monopoly run in the interests of the whole people". That's another fabrication abused by Anarchists and Ultra-Lefts. The original quote is from here http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni.../ichtci/11.htm

Regarding "vanguard-ism", it's not central to Leninism(let's pretend there's such a thing as Leninism). It's not anything to Leninism, "vanguard-ism" is a later Stalinist invention. The vanguard party is an entirely different thing, and good examples would be the pre-war SPD, the RKP(b), and the CNT-FAI. The point of one is to raise the entire class-conscious proletariat to the level of revolutionaries, and to distill class-consciousness to those workers who are still under the spell of false consciousness. The vanguard Party has nothing to do with conspiracies, small circles of revolutionaries, elitism, Blanqusim, and all that nonsense. The SPD in it's revolutionary period, for example, had a million worker-members(and 2.5 million workers in it's trade unions), and it was in Lenin's eyes, until 1914, the model vanguard party.

And yeah, sorry for 3 posts, but it didn't all fit into 1.