georgephillip
Diamond Member
- Thread starter
- #4,461
Lenin sold out his revolution to Wall Street in exchange for food."Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation.Not at all.. But you prove conclusively you are not a legend in anyone's mind by quoting people who lean socialist to justify your personal attraction to socialism. My only call to fame is, I don't address areas about which I am not personally aware. Economics and economic systems are my forte. It appears you don't have any forte at all but making stupid statements and calling on people to support you who are no more an expert in the field than you are. You are totally economics challenged. Chomsky LIKES socialism, he doesn't understand the ramifications of the system.
In fact the conversation was about Chomsky NOT KNOWING MUCH ABOUT SOCIALISM. What is it that Chomsky used as his primary assertion that the USSR did not have socialism?
But why not answer a couple of questions:
Who owned the principle production and distribution systems in the USSR?
What is it that Chomsky used as his primary assertion that the USSR did not have socialism?
Who received most of what prosperity there was in the USSR?
"As the Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, 'this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie,' but can only be 'realized by the workers themselves being master over production.'
"Mastery over production by the producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have regularly been devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional ruling classes and the 'revolutionary intellectuals' guided by the common principles of Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances.
"But the essential element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.
"The Leninist intelligentsia have a different agenda.
"They fit Marx's description of the 'conspirators' who 'pre-empt the developing revolutionary process' and distort it to their ends of domination; 'Hence their deepest disdain for the more theoretical enlightenment of the workers about their class interests,' which include the overthrow of the Red Bureaucracy and the creation of mechanisms of democratic control over production and social life.
"For the Leninist, the masses must be strictly disciplined, while the socialist will struggle to achieve a social order in which discipline 'will become superfluous' as the freely associated producers 'work for their own accord' (Marx).
"Libertarian socialism, furthermore, does not limit its aims to democratic control by producers over production, but seeks to abolish all forms of domination and hierarchy in every aspect of social and personal life, an unending struggle, since progress in achieving a more just society will lead to new insight and understanding of forms of oppression that may be concealed in traditional practice and consciousness.
"The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the very start.
"In revolutionary Russia, Soviets and factory committees developed as instruments of struggle and liberation, with many flaws, but with a rich potential.
"Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of these instruments, establishing the rule of the Party, in practice its Central Committee and its Maximal Leaders -- exactly as Trotsky had predicted years earlier, as Rosa Luxembourg and other left Marxists warned at the time, and as the anarchists had always understood.
"Not only the masses, but even the Party must be subject to 'vigilant control from above,' so Trotsky held as he made the transition from revolutionary intellectual to State priest."
The Soviet Union Versus Socialism, by Noam Chomsky
That's propaganda. Chomsky is just making excuses for the failure of socialism by claiming it wasn't real socialism. There isn't a single fact in that diatribe. so what is it that Chomsky "knows" about socialism that's actually true?
Western capitalists received lucrative asbestos concessions and half-a-million acres of prime Siberian timber. Chomsky knows how Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin did away with the democratic control by producers over production by doing away with the revolutionary Soviets and factory committees. Can you provide any intelligent evidence to the contrary?