Quote:
[FONT=Calibri]A state-capitalist society is just as much a class society as a private-capitalist one, but even more dramatically hierarchial. The hierarchy has been simplified to the point that one class has complete unfettered control over the state, means of economic production, and consequently the people. State-capitalism is despotism. It’s called what it is because the lenninist state replaces the private capitalist as the exploitive element in society.[/FONT]
Okay, well it looks like you guys have answered my question.
You guys refuse to accept the Soviet Union as socialist, basically because of Cold War myths promoted by the Western media that it wasn't as "free" as the more private capitalist countries. How to you measure "freedom?" What country was more "free" than the USSR? Why did the U.S. government assasinate so many communists, if private capitalist countries were so much more free?
You guys prefer the private capitalist countries, but yet you expect people to call you a "leftist" because you don't support the original interpretations of Marx created by Lenin, which was to have "dictatorship of the proletariat."
Karl Marx does not purport to support any kind of one "system." Lenin has created things such as the vanguard party, to help organize peasants being exploited in rural areas for a revolution against the tsarist regime. It wasn't against capitalism, it may not have gone the way how Marx wanted it to, but it Lenin was the first one to try to implement Marx's ideas, and I think you need to give him credit and not try to revise the idea of a vanguard party.
I'm sure it would be way more organized and successful if it was revolution against a more developed, capitalist society.
And I'm, sorry, but I refuse to embrace the private capitalist systems over the one that was implemented in the USSR. I think that as a communist, that is like shooting yourself in the foot. Have a nice day.