The big difference was in their application of Socialism. Marx believed that the working class would eventually gain "class consciousness," in other words, that gradually the proletariat would begin to understand the tyranny of the means of ownership and overthrow the Bourgeoisie. The Socialist party would comprise mainly of the workers, and they must be the majority. Lenin, on the other hand, saw this view as impractical. The working class focused mainly on creating trade unions, but this would lead to a middle way position that couldn't ensure a socialist government. Lenin didn't want to wait for the working class to become "enlightened" of the truths of socialism and decided that revolution must be orchestrated by an elite group of individuals, none other than the Bourgeoisie intellectuals that created Marxist political philosophy. In short, his 1917 coup reflects this, as his Communist party was not even the majority, and had to bribe the populace with promises of bread and water during the food shortages after World War I...which of course was only accomplished by massive industrialization and the 5 year plan. Kinda the antithesis of what Marx wanted. D=
Dude ... How many people back then actually followed Marx's publications and opinion pieces in his journalism? It was only when the communist manifesto was released did his rise to absolute fame come. And it called for revolution and radical change. Who actually read into Marx and could view his opinion pieces knew what he was talking about the whole time? It's even speculated that Abraham Lincoln was reading some of his work before the America civil war, even citing hints of labor theory. Deep down if everyone read into what Marx was trying to get across to us all and got past this fantasy world of communism he really did make sense. Lenin obviously had been following Marx's work for sometime, and took his words literally, when the manifesto surfaced, all gloves were off.
Marx didn’t see class consciousness as something that would just magically be acquired. Leftist proletariats have to work to promote said class consciousness
@@zachrisser6789 That's not true at all, class consciousness is supposed to arise out of a shared set of material conditions. The emergence of class consciousness is one of the contradictions of capitalism, it can hardly be a contradiction if it has to be constructed.
It's amazing how the USSR was linked to Marxism in the Western zeitgeist, especially when you consider some of the biggest critics of the Soviet Union were Marxist/socialist. Rosa Luxemburg and George Orwell are just two of the more prominent figures I can think of. There's definitely been heavy criticism by libertarian Marxists who are influenced by Marx's later writings.
+Peter Thrupp Just because they were prominent figures, doesn't mean their scientific analysis of the material reality was right. Rosa, for example, was blinded by its petite-bourgeois mentality and didn't support Poland's right to self-determination, between other mistakes.
***** I hate to break it to Marxist-Leninists and Orthordox Marxists everywhere, but Marxism isn't a hard science. There's undoubtedly material truth involved in there and some economic science, but overall it is a political philosophy. Dismissing any interpretation of that political philosophy as not being in line with the "science" of Marxism is not a valid criticism. Also, accusing Luxemburg of being blinded by petite-bourgeois mentality is exactly the same type of argument you could make against Engels. Also, because I view Marxism as a philosophy and not a science, I don't have to discredit the entire outlook of people like Luxemburg simply because there's one or two points I disagree with them on.
Marxism practically gave birth to sociology and social science. I wouldn't say that. We make an emphasis on class relations on our analysis of reality. I say that of Luxemburg because her positions weren't too much of a correct revolutionary. i can't understand why she would be, as a marxist, against the self-determination of nations. That's a hard leftist deviation, and an error. Workers of those nations will want to be free from imperialism and any kind of subjugation as it's inside their respective nations where the worker's movement must take place and take power.
I don't think its very amazing. After all it was the mixture of these powers with these ideas of marxism that lead to the abominations that we called communism. I think that, looking at the historical evidence, it should be quite hard to argue that trying to create a marxist society will actually turn out well.
I'm not so sure Chomsky is right. Marx was an observer, not of what an ideal working class would do, but of the real developments and changes within the class structure of capitalism. There is this tendency to confuse Marx the academic with Marx the activist, participating in the issues of his day through the first international and in debate with his fellow socialists, communists and anarchists. He would have had plenty to criticize, because that's what he did, but the idea that he would have outright condemned the Bolsheviks and Maoists in the context of all the efforts the capitalist world made to destroy the workers' states is a bit far fetched to mind.
" but the idea that he would have outright condemned the Bolsheviks and Maoists in the context of all the efforts the capitalist world made to destroy the workers' states is a bit far fetched to mind." why?
The mere idea of the workers' state needs to be challenged. I'm going to paste some parts of a book "What is to be Done?" that is a book from 2004 on anti-Leninism. The society of the free and equal, then, can neither be decreed by the revolutionary party nor can it be realized through the good offices of the state. Marx’s critique of political economy does therefore not rest in its macro-economic interpretation by the party leadership ostensibly endowed with scientific insights into economic laws and their application through the good offices of the state. Rather, it is realised in its negation (Marcuse, 1979, p.242). In sum, ‘all emancipation is the restoration of the human world and of human relationships to Man himself’ (Marx). The idea of the revolutionary party as the organizational form of revolution has to be abandoned. The form of the party contradicts the content of revolution, and that is, human emancipation - the emancipation of the dependent masses can only be achieved by the dependent masses themselves. The notion of the form of the state as an instrument of revolution has to go. The idea of the seizure of power on behalf of the dependent masses has to be exposed for what it is: the denial of the society of the free and equal. Moaning about the ‘excesses’ of capital has to stop. A lamenting critique merely seeks to create a fairer capitalism, conferring on capital the capacity to adopt a benevolent developmental logic. Capital is with necessity ‘excessive’ in its exploitation of labour. To lament this is to misunderstand its social constitution. This isn't a complete picture by any means but the book is hosted as a PDF on a site called libcom - just Google it. Good stuff.
@@brmbkl He had some strong criticisms of the philosophy and application of the Paris Commune - but when shit hit the fan and the workers took control, even if he didn't think it was perfect or ideal, he hailed it as the first attempt at the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and supported it long after the workers were defeated and suppressed by the French state. Marxism isn't about being perfect or utopian, it's about trying things out. The Soviet Union had a huge laundry list of problems, but that doesn't mean we should dismiss the attempt or just uncritically believe what their cold war rivals say about them.
Prof. Chomsky with due respect must read Marx to the fullest. Ethnological Notes by Marx. Asiatic Mode of Production (AMoP). Chomsky is half read. Half baked. Has no proper answer. Sorry for him!
@Tim Romanal Paradox. Would Russia under Czar come out of Medieval backwardness in 500 years? Would she b able to stand up to USA or the West or beat recalcitrant Ukrsine? At thd same time killing Czar family was an act of cowardice, fear, lackmof vision. Czar would in deed have been content with farming job and decent future as he desired to be let alive. Lenin & comrades said, no. Why? Let him live. It's your competence whether you can manage poor Czar alive!
Something we must remember is that the meaning of socialism was twarted by both the United States and the URSS. Not to say that economic systems that focus on wealth redistribution are not desirable, but it we are strict with our definitions, we got to uderstand that there is an abysmal difference between a government controlling the means of production and *workers owning the means of production*. One entails trusting the good will of those in charge, and the other entails the highest form of democracy.
There is no difference IF the government is OF the working people. It sounds like you have difficulty even imagining a working *people's party* assuming the power to govern themselves.
@@TheCommun3*i* don't- i can't, by myself- *the working people, collectively,* have to do that ourselves. By fuckin' taking part in the process of building it and operating it and maintaining it- by fuckin' participating in the construction of a democracy, not just capitulating to one of two, or three, or four capitalist-serving parties that dictate themselves as the only options in some voting booth every 4 or 5 or however many years.
It's so easy to say that every country that ever attempted socialism wasn't real socialism when you've never lived in a country that actually attempted and succeeded in building socialism. Building a new society isn't easy it's very difficult it is so easy to live in a first world country and criticize what third world countries managed to accomplish under difficult circumstances this is Western chauvinism to the highest degree.
"Western chauvinism" is precisely the phrase I use. Note that when it comes down to it, Chomsky endorses people like Joe Biden. When you are secure and affluent, you can afford to engage in idle fantasies. Meanwhile real-world socialism continues to raise living standards for billions and represents the best hope for humanity's survival.
@@rsavage-r2vexactly. Ofc a Vaushian socialist in a Beverly hills suburbs drinking mochas from Starbucks will say that was not real socialism and the only real socialism is muy socialism. Marxism-Leninism and State socialism are actual, pragmatic socialism that can help and improve living standards
Lenin was aware enough to know that the Russian Revolution could not lead to a socialist or communist society and as a result completely perverted the view held by Marx. Lenin claimed, “…the organisation of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession” and “must perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret as possible” (‘What is to be done?’ 1902) This is contrary to Marx’s view, “All previous historical movements were the movements of minorities, in the interest of minorities. The proletarian revolution is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.” (Communist Manifesto 1848) This basic principle was defended by Marx throughout his forty years of socialist activity and was repeated in the clause of the General Rules of the First International that, “…the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working classes themselves”. This is an unequivocal rejection of the view that socialism can be introduced for the working class or that the working class can be led to socialism by some enlightened minority. Later in Capital (1867) Marx explains:“…previously it was a matter of the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers: but in this case, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people”. Lenin still insists that the proletariat: “[were] capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited masses” [but it is the vanguard of the proletariat, rather than the proletariat itself,] “which is capable of taking power and leading the whole people to socialism”. (‘Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder’ (1920) It is interesting to note that what Lenin is really proposing is a progressive narrowing of the decision making vanguard, which might logically even be narrowed down to a single individual, a proposition which is precisely what was suggested when he claimed: that the vanguard need not even concern itself with establishing majority support prior to the seizure of power. “It is clear, therefore, that it is the vanguard and not the class which is to rule - which plainly cannot be described as anything resembling democracy. A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses.” (Lenin, Speech On The Agrarian Question, November 14 1917) But he went even further: “…the will of a class may sometimes be carried out by a dictator, who sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary”, and, “absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline”, are to be regarded as, “an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie”. (Ninth Congress of Russian Communist Party, March 1920) This, together with lack of other essential pre-requisites for revolution, provides the reason why Russian after 1917 could never have become socialist but instead inevitably became a capitalist dictatorship orchestrated by the State under Lenin and later Stalin. This was formally recognised with the emergence of The New Economic Policy (NEP) which Lenin acknowledged as being State capitalism. After the October Revolution, Lenin used the term State capitalism in a positive way. In spring 1918, during a short period of economic liberalism prior to the introduction of war communism, and again during the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921, Lenin justified the introduction of State capitalism under the political control of the dictatorship of the proletariat to further centralise control and develop the productive forces: “Reality tells us that State capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve State capitalism [then] that would a victory” (Lenin 1918, Collected Works, vol 27, p.293). In addition, Lenin stated: “The State capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the New Economic Policy, is, under Soviet power, a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our State capitalism differs essentially from the State capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the State with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry”.
Marx's ideas are obviously still relevant. Today in the most practical of ways I think his work can be applied by anyone who wishes to work with others to create a functional cooperative way of living. But I think there is a huge psychological learning curve. For me psychological individuation and maturation is an important and necessary component and perhaps could be called a blind spot of Marxist theory that lead others to later combine Freud with Marx. Anyone working with the traumatized or abused will immediately understand that differentiating and healing is necessary to come out of co-dependent attitudes as said in psychology or the master-slave dialectic as described by Hegel.
Marx did not take into consideration of the psychoanalysis of Freud in his equation. In fact, it was the quite opposite. His vision relied on stable, able working, and well minded people to become fed up and take control of their own labor. Thus the machine would begin to build itself.
@@strongfp Marx died 1883, Freud's work on psychoanalysis really began in 1890 - pretty hard for Marx to have taken Freud into consideration considering he was dead haha.
@@strongfp To be fair subsequent psycho-dynamic practitioners did combine such concerns with Marxism - Slavoj Zizek is precisely just one such case. In American psychology Abraham Maslow pointed out that a society organised to facilitate the self-actualization of each and all would likely be philosophically anarchist (he wrote this in his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature). I also suspect that Marx's concept of Species-Being would likely resonate at the biological level of human need with Freud's core notion of the Id.
Matthew Kopp :: Hegel ?! Hegel ?! "The Master-Slave Dialect" --- from Hegel ?! Hegel was a particularly pedestrian racist. His Master-Slave "dialect" was simply a metaphor for Europeans. He cared nothing for actually Slaves --- especially Black people, enslaved !
They say, 'you can't worship Karl Marx'... but they have no issue with WORSHIPING Ronald Reagan. How is that any different. They both used ideas that just were. Some are undeniable and some we could do without... the people they were doesnt' change the fact that truth is truth, no matter who observes and explains it.
@@TheToby121 this. even from a non-marxist perspective, marx was among the finest minds of his time and remains so until this day. reagan was an idiot.
It's not that I don't like Marx, it's just the type of people that follow him now. They are too idealistic and use violence as a means to an end. In the end, the masses will still be looking for big government to take care of them with no way to advance upward in social class.
@@amorales5445 The USA has committed way more violence, exploitation, and political repression than all "Marxist" projects combined so how are we defining what "works" here?
If the Soviet Union had not industrialized it would have been destroyed by the Nazis. On the issue of peasants Mao Zedong saw in them the driving force for the Chinese Revolution to happen, each country has its own circumstances that need to be taken into account.
The two aren't connected. Stalin's forced industrialization started 10+ years before any war between Germany and the USSR. His reasons had nothing to do with the concern of a World War or invasion.
@@JCW86 Stalin was preparing for multiple invasions civil wars and insurrections that were happening and going to happen(did happen).. he and other world leaders also saw problems like german and italian fascism gathering with a lot of private capital as time went on further justifying his decision. invasion was a serious concern on the horizon from multiple countries.
@@JCW86 "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed." - Joseph Stalin, 1931
It's a misnomer connection to make that allowing the existence of autonomous peasant communes or whatever couldn't coexist with the Soviet Union like Chomsky was suggesting in the video, at least how I interpreted it. The industrialization included by Stalin and the party was mostly without the peasants anyway. Marx believed Russia could've communized without capitalism especially because of its semi-feudal conditions. "If revolution comes at the opportune moment, if it concentrates all its forces so as to allow the rural commune full scope, the latter will soon develop as an element of regeneration in Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist system." - Marx's letter to Vera Zasulich (1881) as according to Gilles Duave in Capitalism and Communism: "Underdeveloped countries-to use a capitalist phrase-will not have to go through industrialisation. In many parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, capital oppresses labour but has not subjugated it to what Marx called real submission: it dominates societies which it has not yet fully turned into money and wage-labour relationships. Old forms of social communal life still exist. Communism would regenerate a lot of them-as Marx expected the Russian peasant commune might do-with the help of some 'Western' technology applied in a different way"
We can judge the extent of marxism in Lenin/Stalin by looking at what Marx/Engels stated in the Communist Manifesto: "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production."
@@BrainInJar Sure, but the question then is, are the proletariats capable of becoming the ruling class? In fact the justification for the Leninist vanguardism was exactly that! You may want to read up on that.
@@Sidtube10 When the power over society is in the hands of an elite group of middle-class intellectuals, the proletariat is not the ruling class. And if the proletariat is not yet capable of becoming the ruling class, then you can't make a socialist government. You can only make a government that strives for their conception of what socialism should be using their power to rule the working class as they see fit.
@@BrainInJar That's why Marx said that revolutionary consciousness was a precondition of revolution. But building that took time, and in Russia, Lenin knew that the Bolsheviks had very little time. So he tried to force the issue, and the party led Russia on a miserable forced march through the industrial revolution, only to collapse and be succeeded by the current kleptocracy.
i think chomsky never read 18th of brumaire of louis bonapart.... although chomsky statement that marx foresaw the russian revolutionary potential, he never saw peasants as a vanguard class (lenin did at some point), that is because of the nature of their class(petit-bourgeois) and their way of living, it makes very hard for them to lead the socialist revolution, as they are scattered through land and have interests on the private property....
It sounds like you haven't read Marx's letter to Otecestvenniye Zapisky or his letter (and drafts) to Zasulich. What Chomsky says is accurate. Marx did not believe dogmatically in economic stage theory. He thought it was ridiculous to apply his analysis of Western Europe to other places with different histories and social conditions. He indeed did not see the European peasant as possessing revolutionary potential, but he did see that potential in the Russian peasant and the peasant commune, so much so that he believed (articulating an early form of uneven and combined development) it would allow the Russians to obviate the phase of capitalist development entirely. These are opinions which, as Chomsky points out, he arrived at at the end of his life, and, being mostly set down in correspondence, are less well known.
@@soensocomrade600 my friend its is patent that you never read Das Kapital. tell me, where in that book marx was concerned with peasants? only the working class can seize power. peasants only follow.
Truthseeker1515 philosopher 1st and foremost, u need the solid base to unravel the information that economics sends you. Dialectical materialism, all you need to assess the objective world.
While I do respect Noam obviously for his body of work, this really is a comical misunderstanding of Bolshevism. Of course Lenin and Trotsky acknowledged the radical potential of the peasantry, that was a major component of the October revolution lol. They also understood, correctly, that on their own it was not in the interests of the peasantry to conduct a socialist revolution because their class interests were quite different to that of the proletariat. It is this sort of obviously wrong assertion that makes me convinced Chomsky has never actually bothered to read any Lenin or Trotsky.
Trotsky recognizing the radical potential of the peasantry? WTF Laughable! Lenin and Trotsky had arguements over the peasantry, with Lenin claiming that the peasants of Russia and the proletariat should work together while Trotsky saw otherwise. Lenin and Trotsky were never even that close to begin with.
Wether good or bad the Soviet Union is an example of the fact that you can carry on as a society for extended periods of time without bowing to the whims of the market.
@@joaquind254 And then any attempt to extend the life span of capitalism after that point is greed. “War Communism” was an abject failure it led to famine, and hostility between the regime and the people. Lenin’s goal by going back to a market economy was to stimulate it to a point of sustainability as Russia had basically collapsed into an undeveloped nation by the end of WW1.
If Chomsky thinks Lenin was an anti-Marxist he has no idea about Marx or Lenin. Lenin wasn't trying to force the middle peasants -I.E. the subsistence farmers who lived off the land - to do anything. There were different classes of peasantry. Kulaks were peasant landlords who would charge farmers to work the land and take a percentage of their yield. Look up Lenin's speech on here RE: Middle peasantry to find out what he actually thought about them. The fact that Chomsky doesn't know this is shocking for a so-called authority on this stuff. Anti-communism is brain rot, even for intelligent people.
This confuses me also. Usually anarchists are western chauvinists who don't study much of anything and swallow propaganda uncritically. But Chomsky has done all the reading and then some. He must just be lying.
Kulaks were anyone who didn't like living on Stalin's collective farms, objected to having their produce stolen to finance Stalin's industrialization, or didn't want to be starved to death by the millions by the Communists. Anyone inconvenient to the Communists was a Kulak and could be liquidated during Stalin's collectivization campaign.
whatever the politico/economic system, it can only degenerate into totalitarian rule by brute force if it involves centralization and concentration of power. humanity comes with tendency for corruption, so the only way to minimize the effects is to spread out the power as widely as possible and raise the overall education level so a democratic majority votes on the optimal compromise. if in marxism we place the power solely in the state, we end up with examples all to common as one party regimes.
+bademoxy Chomsky just explained that true Marxism doesn't involve centralization and concentration of power. You're describing Leninism, if anything. Re-watch the video.
Denzak look-we damned well know what marx wrote-including destroying cultures "in the way of utopian progress". his "final solution" is what was used by hitler.
What this all say is, from the point of view of the low in society, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.
That might be so, but for the people of Russia it meant a dramatic change in standards of living. The USSR was oppressive, and little real democracy. But the material well being improved rapidly. From feudalism to cosmonauts. There has been a lot of mixed feelings of the loss of the USSR by those who lived especially living through the 1990 nightmare.
> It's ironic that after 150 years of struggle, the working class finally achieved the election of a President who expressed their interests. His name is TRUMP. And of course, Trump opposed and was opposed by the middle class bourgeoisie of the Democratic Party even more than by the capitalists. They bare the enemy of the working class in the United States and Europe. The Brexit vote was a similar example of the triumph of the working class over the ruling class of Bourgeois intellectuals. And that revolution appears to be increasingly breaking out among European nations, always opposed by the liberal bourgeois and their own political agenda.
@@arthurverlaine6434 Chomsky is wrong because Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks absolutely recognized the revolutionary and democratic potential of the peasants. They based the revolution on an alliance between the working class and the peasants. This is what the hammer and the sickle on the USSR flag represents.
Chomsky criticizes Lenin and USSR but just think for a moment about Lenin's time: Russia had a poor illiterate population, rampant inequality, no industry, WW1 took place, lack of food, a civil war between bolsheviks and mensheviks, the economic and military intervention of Europe and US , and in spite of all these huge problems, Lenin was able to found the first socialist country in the world, that inspired workers all around the world to fight for their rights. Everything was perfect in the USSR? Not of course not, but people had a good life with work, education, health, housing, no homeless people, and all of that in spite of having to fight for survival. Additionally, they supported the fight against racial discrimination in Africa, defeated Hitler, and made progress in science, technology, spports, music, arts.
@@stupididietmoron9996 its utterly irrelevant if it was socialist according to utopists definitions. What matters is that it offered a non profit driven alternative to the western imperialist system.
@@mnialu6249 they had wage labor, a state that used peoples surplus value to fund their bloated military which was used to crush socialist revolutions as was the case in Hungary, also in the creation of the worst kind of weapon, nuclear weapons. to fund gulags and their police state, to give higher wages to higher ranked govt officials. Stop making excuses for state capitalism
@@stupididietmoron9996 Oh no the poor murderers and thieves who ended up in the gulag(which treated people better than US prisons today do). Also oh no, the evil military which was used to defend against western imperialism and supproted third world national liberation movements. How could those evil soviets use the hard work of their people to help other people outside their state!!! You liberals really dont stray far from your fascist friends. "Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish-while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba, provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela's African National Congress in South Africa."-
Marx and Engels used the terms 'Communism' and 'Socialism' interchangeably and not to differentiate between different states of the social revolution. The different stages of the revolution is a myth...the means of production may either described as 'Common Ownership' or capital ...it cannot be both!
Dude, read Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx outlined 2 stages of communism, lower-phase and higher-phase, it is correct that they labelled both interchangeably as socialism and communism though.
I think history has shown socialism is very unlikely to be accomplished through social democratic or parliamentary means. Allende was the only one who could pull that right and he was vulnerable and easily overthrown. Look at how Venezuela is doing with Maduro too. Apart from that, the typical "social democrats" are pretty much liberal crooks. Regarding the peasantry part, the Maoist revolution had its support from the peasantry and they estabilished peasant communes. Trotsky was the only revolutionary who openly supported the urban proletariat ruling over the peasants, and very few Marxists take any of his theories seriously.
1st Lenin later stoped working with social democrats and with Trosky and he even called him opportunist. 2nd Peasantry wasn't forced on industrialization, but industrialization was LEAD BY THE FORCE OF PEASANTRY so some farmers would start working in factories so they can industrialize. 3rd You didn't understand any of Lenin's writings and you don't understand Dictatorship of Proleteriat which is most litteraly the whole Leninist theory. Leninism isn't changing Marxism it's just Marxist prax of armed Proleteriat to opress Burgeoise and to change state from Burgeoise state into Proleteriat state that is contrloed by one party, but the main thing you don't understand is that isn't that people work for the party but rather party working for the people. I'm gonna simplify it, so the party rule the state but work only for intrests of the working people.
@@laza6141 Noam Chomsky defines socialism in terms of authority. "Socialism=no authority." The soviets defined socialism by the abolition of private property. Anarchists, by decrying state authority, are really decrying the only thing thing that could intervene to break the Capitalist hold on economy. "Lack of authority" is a neo-liberal dream (as proved by America's non-response to coronavirus). Capitalism is already anarchy.
@@jacobgiolas7314 This is nonsense. Noam defines "socialism" as involving the workers controlling the means of production. Because (as he says - and correctly) this is the "core principle" of socialism. The Soviet Union was not a society which even remotely gave workers control of production. Thus the Soviet Union's economy was not an example of "socialism" as Noam defined it.
@@jacobgiolas7314 Chomsky defines socialism the same way Marx did: Worker ownership of the means of production. The Soviet system was a vanguard party controlling a state that owned the means of production, ostensibly in the interest of the workers. But the party apparatchiks weren't the workers, and had class interests that conflicted with those of the working class. Your argument that only state authority can break capitalism has now been tested on a large scale in both Russia and China. The result is two single-party (de facto in Russia, de jure in China) authoritarian capitalist states.
@@futatorius When Noam Chomsky's theory can raise a billion and a half people out of poverty, going against the last 500 years of history whereby the Global South declined while the imperialist core sucked them dry, I will listen to his theory. Until then, I'm with the billion and a half people of China.
Lenin’s philosophy was a general extension of Marxism. Hence, Stalin implemented those philosophies while consolidating power. That became the Soviet Union as we knew it. 1 1/2 socks for every Soviet were produced in the early 50s. Chomsky is notorious for cherry picking information while ignoring other vital information. What he fleshes out in the end is a world of his own making.
superlyger A general extension? He abandoned it as soon as he came to power. Where were all the workers owning the means of production in Lenin’s socialist paradise? That’s the very core of Marx’s ideas is it not? And you completely fail to mention that the Soviet Union in the 50s was still recovering from a war that saw tens of millions of its workforce perish.
@@Bucketheadhead Please explain this quote from the Commie Manifesto then [and how do you interpret this as 'worker ownership']: "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production."
Sidtube10 “I.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class”. The proletariat becoming the ruling class, being in control of the means of productions themselves. This is the opposite of what we saw in the USSR and China. The bourgeoisie were simply replaced rather than removed, and the proletariat remained where they were, and with very little if any real power. Nothing in Marx’s work supported banning trade unionism in favour of purely centralised state power with no involvement of the workers in decision making. Marx’s vision was not for the proletariat to remain subjugated and taking orders, but to become the masters of their own fates . Glad to have cleared the up for you.
@@Bucketheadhead Not sure why I didn't get notified about your response. Anyway, the question is can the proletariat even be organized as the ruling class? Are they capable? There was a reason why Lenin came up with the concept of the Vanguards.
Nope. Democratic Centralism is proven to be the most effective method of worker control. USSR was socialist. Idealists like from Trotsky to Orwell to Chomksy will go on and on in defense of the freedoms of Bourgeois reactionary classes without achieving a fraction of success that the global Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement has had.
@@chairmanbunker4418 Leninism, Hitlerism and Western capitalism are essentially the same thing - a slave totalitarian system. Marx actually warned about this as Chomsky accurately describes.
@@chairmanbunker4418 Lmao "democratic" centralism lead to fucking Stalin. Also the worker had 0 control over the means of production in the USSR and China or any other State Capitalist shit hole. The black panther party failed because of this form of organisation, this is why most surviving Panthers are now Anarchists criticising the failures of centralism. You gonna call it succeful when it allowed reformists to take control and move all your "Socialist" countries straight back to Capitalism. "Democratic" centralism has literally never worked.
@@1997lordofdoom hey man, I know the cia must’ve been late, but Stalin being a dictator is a last week narrative, as your superiors already said that his power in the party was the same as the others members. I get you want to defend you brothers in the fbi, ignoring they are what caused the bpp to fail, but they did, they had plants in it as well as killed a portion of the party, sadly, like late era ussr, they didn’t purge the revisionist, so both fell, i hope you’re getting paid for defending Chomsky
Who else were you about to vote for? Trump? Lol MLs are so lost that they are criticizing Chomsky saying "vote Biden over Trump". Do you disagree with that statement? Like wtf is even happening at this point? You have a lot of reflection to do if you disagree with that statement.
@@acclips2297 Trump is more leftist than Biden is you idiot. You really dont understand mass movements. You are completely brainwashed by a left to right political ideology compass
I love that Chomsky can so calmly and rationally describe Leninism for what it is ("a right-wing deviation of socialist thought"). Authoritarian Marxists are *always* just bored middle class college kids. They've never had to punch a clock and work a degrading job, they work in elite universities or sit in an office as a staffer for a labor union. They're never rank-and-file workers because they found a dusty old philosophy that allows them to rationalize being part of a "vanguard" of a comfortable, well-fed intelligentsia.
The success of Stalin - the man who used to boast that he conquered the United States "from the plow to the atomic bomb in just a generation" - compared to Gorbachev's failure shows that a socialist economy is unable to function with a minimum of efficiency without requiring a massive dose of political violence. In an attempt to reform a decadent regime, Gorbachev moved faster with the process of economic opening in the hope of removing the predictable resistance that the Soviet bureaucracy would create to economic reform measures, as thorough proof with the failed attempt. coup d'état in August 1991 - which ended up precipitating the final crisis of socialism and the dissolution of the USSR itself Its Chinese parallel - Deng Xiaoping - adopted a logic diametrically opposed to that of Gorbachev: it prioritized the achievement of economic prosperity (adopting in practice capitalism) precisely to delay any attempt at political opening, as was evident with the acceleration of the economy. reforms after the Tiananmen Square massacre. It is important to note that it was Karl Marx himself who, in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, discerned the scenario in which the conditions for a social revolution process are formed, describing it as follows: 'At a certain stage in its development, the material productive forces of society contradict existing production relations or - which is only their legal expression - with the property relations in which they have been active until then. From the forms of development of the productive forces, these relations are transformed into fetters of them. So, it is a time of social revolution. ' (Reproduced according to MARX, K. Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, organized by Florestan Fernandes and published under the title K. Marx: Theory and historical process of the social revolution, In Marx & Engels, Great Social Scientists Collection, History, vol. 36. São Paulo: Ática, 1983. p. 232. Commemorative edition of the centenary of Karl Marx's death) By rejecting the pursuit of profit maximization as an instrument to stimulate innovation, socialist countries ended up condemning themselves to obsolescence. Thus, they lost the chance to incorporate the productivity gains made possible by technological progress. That is why the capitalist countries managed to provide a greater rise in the standard of living of their population, even without pursuing the egalitarian ideal. Therefore, until the “final crisis of socialism” (to paraphrase K. Marx's own definitions once again), it was only a matter of time. But religious fanatics do not give up on their faith, even against the indisputable proof of the facts, which completely refute it!
"The success of Stalin - the man who used to boast that he conquered the United States "from the plow to the atomic bomb in just a generation" - compared to Gorbachev's failure shows that a socialist economy is unable to function with a minimum of efficiency without requiring a massive dose of political violence." LOL. Now do capitalism.
I am genuinely trying to understand socialism and Marxism better, so this isn't a gotcha question it's an actual one. He says Marx would have liked a parliamentary system but doesn't Marx call for a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"?
The dictatorship of the proletariat refers to the rule of the proletariat as a class, in contrast with the current system (the dictatorship of the bourgeoise). The only way for an entire social class representing the majority of society to collectively hold power is through democracy.
Does Chomsky ever say anything good about any political party? It seems he always finds the bad side of political parties such as socialists and social democrats in this video.
+Menalot Daranciang Yes, he talks very well about the spanish revolution. Search Spanish Revolution of 1936 in Wikipedia, or search Chomsky on the spanish revolution on youtube.
Bingo. He loves to undermine actually existing socialism in favor of both anarchist utopianism and amatuerishness. Workers need power to smash the bourgeoisie state. This power comes in the form of an organized mass workers party, arming the proletariat and raising class consciousness. I'm wary of these intellectuals that decry power itself with the side effect of defanging and disarming truely revolutionary workers movements that seek to achieve a society led by the proletariat. What a shame! Can't believe I used to lap up every word this linguist would write in my anarchist phase...
The problem with intellectuals is they never pay a consequence to the idea's they espouse. Ego being the driver of their idea's in order to feel relevant. Nearly all idea's are wrong. And Socialism/Marxism courtesy of Chomsky is no exception.
If there was a parliamentary way to Socialism, it would have been done already. The western "democracies" are not democracies. They are the organized class rule of the bourgeoisie (or in layman's terms, the 1%). They are fundamentally designed to keep power in the hands of the bourgeoisie with an ever more sophisticated system. So no, you cannot just get to Socialism through a parliamentary route. Not unless the bourgeoisie willingly decide to give up their power. Everything that we get in parliamentary struggles will be concessions to the working class that don't fundamentally change the balance of power in society. And they can only give us these concessions because they stole so much from the third world that they can afford to give a little bit of their fortune. No. The system must be abolished. All of it. A new government, based upon Marxist-Leninist lines, but learning from the mistakes of previous Socialist experiments (and there were plenty of mistakes) must be formed, and it must be a truly international body representing the proletariat of the entire world. We need to finally crush the imperialist system at its roots and root it out, whether it comes from the US, Europe, China, or any other power. It is time to work with the proletariat all around the world.
I'm glad you wrote this, so I don't have to. Time and time again we see how parliamentary systems are useless to leftist parties because they always have to compromise in useless coalitions. Unless someone gets a single majority, we won't ever see true change in the radical reformist ways that these people so often speak of - and even then I remain very very skeptical. They talk as if the bourgeois capitalist democracies didn't make one gazillion mistakes in order to get to where they are today, somehow they're more okay with these mistakes and love to set the insanely high standard to the marxist-leninist line.
Bourgeois democracy is inherently oppressive and flawed but that does not mean it is completely bad. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to protest are all good things. We must create a proletarian society that combines the benefits of all ideologies (with the exception of ideologies that have no benefits) to create a brighter future
@AnarchistCommunist333 what do you do when the people are hoodwinked into giving up their power through the electoral process , completely negated the revolution, as happened in Germany?
In the very start of his career, was Nom Chomsky being against Soviet Union and its “revolution” , was, rather, being more dishonest, more careerist than being wrong??
@@envy928 even parenti to me was a little too tamed and conservative in his critique of capitalism , but I see both had some good contributions for the critique of Capitalism but we who are young today must take the conclusions to their logic conclusion which is the total end of Capitalism by any means necessary
@@sunwukong6917 I think Parenti's strong suit is showing just how vile and insidious imperialism is, as well as demonstrating the hidden ideology of mass media and class interests. "The sword and the dollar", "Inventing reality", and "Images of imperialism" are my favourite lectures of his, if you haven't listened to them already!
Achei o clipe com legendas em português! E este canal tem muito mais vídeos que você pode gostar! ruclips.net/video/nGBSl3lIuZ8/видео.html - 'Noam Chomsky - Marxismo vs Leninismo'
According to Noam , Karl Marx had some sort of perfect plan for the world but how come every approximation they have tried to implement in real life has failed miserably while Capitalism even when badly implement ( because of cases of cronyism and corruption ) has lifted the world out of poverty and repression like no other system has ever done before, let's remember Adam Smith wasn't just an economist but also a moral philosopher, the true version of Capitalism is free enterprise business mixed with free international trade combined with limited but reliable governments for each country, that has and will continue raising the standard of living of society when followed with consciousness and compassion for the environment and the people. No need to go back to a spoiled intellectual like Marx to get your answers there.
if you listened to the video chomsky makes the point that Marx would turn over in his grave if he knew what China was doing under the guise of "communism", it's not even close to communism, neither in strict political theory or even in a colloquial sense
on the other hand Russia was not Capitalist either, and the people that were foolishly associating Marxism to Russia that were leaving Marxism behind were Marxists, so i'd say Marxism had more things attached to it than just Russia's nightmare.
Would China and Russia be better situated to progress towards socialism had the Bolsheviks and Chinese revolutionaries been defeated? If Stalin had rejected Bolshevism and embraced parliamentary democracy on the eve of World War 2… what exactly would have happened when the Nazis invaded?
What an absolute joke. The peasants never had or will never have revolutionary potential. Only the proletariat will ever have the ability to run society and Marx never thought peasants had this potential.
What do you consider work? He’s been a working professor, scientist, author, and lecturer for most of his life. He also worked at a newsstand and on a farm in his younger days.
@@evan2173 You clearly have no idea what that book is about or what Left-communism is. To label one of the most successful Marxists of all time an "anti-Marxist" is beyond a joke. The man who built possibly the strongest example of key Marxist ideas being put into practice is "anti-Marxist"?! It's all there buddy: - Dictatorship of the proletariat - Abolition of private property (to a large extent) - no markets - compensation according to work Outrageous claims by Chompsky.
@@evan2173 You're a Leftcom and you don't even know it. You are actually trying to say that marxism doesn't advocate the dictatorship of the proletariat 😅. Catalonia maintained plenty of state apparatus and was based on non-Marxist ideas i.e. anarchism. It was a short lived experiment but never got the chance to develope. It was certainly not fully Communist by any means. Marx never expressed the delusional belief that everything can just be immediately collectivised and that the state could magically disappear. He knew that socialism had to be built over time to allow the withering away of the state etc. You can spout "not real socialism" all you want, but if you do then you are saying that Marxism isn't real socialism. The USSR under Lenin and Stalin did build socialism by applying Marxism to the USSR. You talk about collectivisation and yet the USSR had a massive collective farming sector. Industry was publicly owned and there was barely any truly private property. You don't have to agree with Marxism, Leninism or socialism; but to say that the USSR wasn't any of these (until revisionists took over) is absurd. Also it's cute that you seem to think that people are taught Marxism-Leninism their "whole lives". I don't remember any classes on vanguardism in primary school 😂. And of course you ask if I've read the two most well-known books by Marx, even though Capital is about economics and The Communist Manifesto is hardly a very detailed or focused work, but more a general statement of principles. Furthermore, nobody claims that the USSR was fully communist. Full Communism has never been achieved. To imply that you can be Communist without a transitional period of socialism (or lower phase communism) is absurd. From a marxist point of view at least.....
@@evan2173 Again you have no idea what "Left-communism: An infantile disorder" is about. You are saying that, despite being mentioned multiple times by Marx, the dictatorship of the proliteriat is not a marxist concept? I mean, how are you to be convinced? "My own contribution was to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; [and] that this dictatorship, itself, constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society" - Karl Marx, 1852 You clearly don't have a firm grasp on what marx's conception of the state is. The man did not claim that society could magically become stateless and classless overnight. If there are classes then there must be a state (says Marx) so; unless you believe that all class struggle ends immediately after a revolution, there must be some sort of workers state. As for Catalonia. Anarchism may be based on statelessness, but nonetheless Catalonia had a state. I'm honestly gobsmacked at the level of ignorance. Lenin: guy who's among those who first applied Marx's theory, who incessantly quotes Marx, who based all of his own ideas on Marx's ideas, whose theory is called Marxism-Leninism "hates Marx". Yeh, excuse me while I get sick. What planet are you living on like? 😅 "Left-Communism: An infantile disorder" is about people like you almost. Who seemingly have no idea about Marx's actual ideas. And you seem to be reading words that aren't there as well. How does pointing out that a book about economics isn't really relevant to the system of government "invalidate" it? Horseshite mate. As for "it's technically not Communism cos feudalism"; I've never hears such tripe in my life. Russia did indeed have a proletariat, contrary to your unfactual statements about it being a feudalist country. What are these failures of the USSR? Industrialisation? Raising the standard of living? Defeating the Nazis? The Manifesto covers fundamentals, like you said. It is not a very detailed on all areas of marxism. It certainly isn't the all-encompassing guide that you seemed to allude to it as. You continue to just spit baseless lies about Leinin "hating Marx" with no evidence backing you up. You clearly have a very poor grasp of Marxism (I'm no expert myself but I get the basic stuff which you seemingly have never heard). I mean how can you be a pacifist and a marxist? Would a pacifist not oppose revolution? And if so then you are rejecting one of Marx's core ideas.
@@evan2173 I have no idea why you would call yourself a Marxist if you have no idea of what Marx actually believes. It sounds like you have so far just ASSUMED what he believes. Like if you don't know about something as fundamental as the dictatorship of the proletariat or the need for revolution how can you claim to be a Marxist. It just baffles me. And yes "Left-wing Communism" is about people like you to a certain extent. You claim to be a Marxist and yet you put forward a completely mangled version of what Marx "believed". Have you read the book? I know that you definitely haven't read it. If you even read the fucking first page you'd see this like 😅: "He also.......stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other." It's okay to be ignorant but pretending to know about this stuff when you clearly don't is just silly. As for the "Stalin killed millions argument".....I think it's you who's being influenced by cold war, capitalist propaganda. Saying Russia wasn't socialist because they didn't have a big enough proliteriat is laughable. The fact that socialism was developed in the USSR despite this supposedly insufficient proliteriat just proves you wrong. As for Lenin hating marx, you're bordering on the absurd here. I know that you haven't read anything Lenin wrote because it would be impossible for you to have such a ridiculous take on things. Like there's no convincing someone who doesn't actually read books, but instead assumes what they are about and then takes that as truth. Read The State and Revolution or any book by Lenin because you clearly haven't a clue. You say Marx would be turning in his grave at the USSR and yet you haven't identified a single one of Marx's ideas aren't being followed. Conclusion: I'm sure you're a nice guy, but when it comes to what Marxism claims, you have barely any knowledge.
The most successful socialist experiment on earth, liberating millions from capitalism through the use of Marxian analysis of material conditions, wasn't Marxist? yeah ok
01:13 01:32
obviously talking about Marxism he quoted Slavoj Zizek
"and so on"
lmaooo
4/10 not enough sniffling
@@NovaCaine2489 Scaruffi
Honestly made me laugh out loud.
🤣🤣
The big difference was in their application of Socialism. Marx believed that the working class would eventually gain "class consciousness," in other words, that gradually the proletariat would begin to understand the tyranny of the means of ownership and overthrow the Bourgeoisie. The Socialist party would comprise mainly of the workers, and they must be the majority. Lenin, on the other hand, saw this view as impractical. The working class focused mainly on creating trade unions, but this would lead to a middle way position that couldn't ensure a socialist government. Lenin didn't want to wait for the working class to become "enlightened" of the truths of socialism and decided that revolution must be orchestrated by an elite group of individuals, none other than the Bourgeoisie intellectuals that created Marxist political philosophy. In short, his 1917 coup reflects this, as his Communist party was not even the majority, and had to bribe the populace with promises of bread and water during the food shortages after World War I...which of course was only accomplished by massive industrialization and the 5 year plan. Kinda the antithesis of what Marx wanted. D=
Dude ... How many people back then actually followed Marx's publications and opinion pieces in his journalism? It was only when the communist manifesto was released did his rise to absolute fame come. And it called for revolution and radical change.
Who actually read into Marx and could view his opinion pieces knew what he was talking about the whole time? It's even speculated that Abraham Lincoln was reading some of his work before the America civil war, even citing hints of labor theory. Deep down if everyone read into what Marx was trying to get across to us all and got past this fantasy world of communism he really did make sense. Lenin obviously had been following Marx's work for sometime, and took his words literally, when the manifesto surfaced, all gloves were off.
That's just not true at all.
Anyone who actually read Lenin could tell you that.
@@strongfp You're a dumbass
Marx didn’t see class consciousness as something that would just magically be acquired. Leftist proletariats have to work to promote said class consciousness
@@zachrisser6789 That's not true at all, class consciousness is supposed to arise out of a shared set of material conditions. The emergence of class consciousness is one of the contradictions of capitalism, it can hardly be a contradiction if it has to be constructed.
It's amazing how the USSR was linked to Marxism in the Western zeitgeist, especially when you consider some of the biggest critics of the Soviet Union were Marxist/socialist. Rosa Luxemburg and George Orwell are just two of the more prominent figures I can think of. There's definitely been heavy criticism by libertarian Marxists who are influenced by Marx's later writings.
+Peter Thrupp Just because they were prominent figures, doesn't mean their scientific analysis of the material reality was right. Rosa, for example, was blinded by its petite-bourgeois mentality and didn't support Poland's right to self-determination, between other mistakes.
***** I hate to break it to Marxist-Leninists and Orthordox Marxists everywhere, but Marxism isn't a hard science. There's undoubtedly material truth involved in there and some economic science, but overall it is a political philosophy. Dismissing any interpretation of that political philosophy as not being in line with the "science" of Marxism is not a valid criticism. Also, accusing Luxemburg of being blinded by petite-bourgeois mentality is exactly the same type of argument you could make against Engels. Also, because I view Marxism as a philosophy and not a science, I don't have to discredit the entire outlook of people like Luxemburg simply because there's one or two points I disagree with them on.
Marxism practically gave birth to sociology and social science. I wouldn't say that. We make an emphasis on class relations on our analysis of reality. I say that of Luxemburg because her positions weren't too much of a correct revolutionary. i can't understand why she would be, as a marxist, against the self-determination of nations. That's a hard leftist deviation, and an error. Workers of those nations will want to be free from imperialism and any kind of subjugation as it's inside their respective nations where the worker's movement must take place and take power.
Exactly
I don't think its very amazing. After all it was the mixture of these powers with these ideas of marxism that lead to the abominations that we called communism. I think that, looking at the historical evidence, it should be quite hard to argue that trying to create a marxist society will actually turn out well.
Was this filmed in Norway? The guy asking the question has a really typical Norwegian accent!
KritiskeKris Yes, this took place in Norway. Here's the whole thing: ruclips.net/video/kVNq8knHGew/видео.html
Like two seconds in the video and about to comment the excact same thing 😅
@@chomskysphilosophyis this The real Noam Chomsky?😮
I'm not so sure Chomsky is right. Marx was an observer, not of what an ideal working class would do, but of the real developments and changes within the class structure of capitalism. There is this tendency to confuse Marx the academic with Marx the activist, participating in the issues of his day through the first international and in debate with his fellow socialists, communists and anarchists. He would have had plenty to criticize, because that's what he did, but the idea that he would have outright condemned the Bolsheviks and Maoists in the context of all the efforts the capitalist world made to destroy the workers' states is a bit far fetched to mind.
" but the idea that he would have outright condemned the Bolsheviks and Maoists in the context of all the efforts the capitalist world made to destroy the workers' states is a bit far fetched to mind."
why?
The mere idea of the workers' state needs to be challenged. I'm going to paste some parts of a book "What is to be Done?" that is a book from 2004 on anti-Leninism.
The society of the free and equal, then, can neither be decreed by the revolutionary party nor can it be realized through the good offices of the state.
Marx’s critique of political economy does therefore not rest in its macro-economic interpretation by the party leadership ostensibly endowed with scientific insights into economic laws and their application through the good offices of the state. Rather, it is realised in its negation (Marcuse, 1979, p.242).
In sum, ‘all emancipation is the restoration of the human world and of human relationships to Man himself’ (Marx).
The idea of the revolutionary party as the organizational form of revolution has to be abandoned.
The form of the party contradicts the content of revolution, and that is, human emancipation - the emancipation of the dependent masses can only be achieved by the dependent masses themselves. The notion of the form of the state as an instrument of revolution has to go. The idea of the seizure of power on behalf of the dependent masses has to be exposed for what it is: the denial of the society of the free and equal. Moaning about the ‘excesses’ of capital has to stop.
A lamenting critique merely seeks to create a fairer capitalism, conferring on capital the capacity to adopt a benevolent developmental logic. Capital is with necessity ‘excessive’ in its exploitation of labour. To lament this is to misunderstand its social constitution.
This isn't a complete picture by any means but the book is hosted as a PDF on a site called libcom - just Google it. Good stuff.
@@brmbkl He had some strong criticisms of the philosophy and application of the Paris Commune - but when shit hit the fan and the workers took control, even if he didn't think it was perfect or ideal, he hailed it as the first attempt at the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and supported it long after the workers were defeated and suppressed by the French state. Marxism isn't about being perfect or utopian, it's about trying things out. The Soviet Union had a huge laundry list of problems, but that doesn't mean we should dismiss the attempt or just uncritically believe what their cold war rivals say about them.
Prof. Chomsky with due respect must read Marx to the fullest. Ethnological Notes by Marx. Asiatic Mode of Production (AMoP). Chomsky is half read. Half baked. Has no proper answer. Sorry for him!
@Tim Romanal Paradox. Would Russia under Czar come out of Medieval backwardness in 500 years? Would she b able to stand up to USA or the West or beat recalcitrant Ukrsine? At thd same time killing Czar family was an act of cowardice, fear, lackmof vision. Czar would in deed have been content with farming job and decent future as he desired to be let alive. Lenin & comrades said, no. Why? Let him live. It's your competence whether you can manage poor Czar alive!
Something we must remember is that the meaning of socialism was twarted by both the United States and the URSS. Not to say that economic systems that focus on wealth redistribution are not desirable, but it we are strict with our definitions, we got to uderstand that there is an abysmal difference between a government controlling the means of production and *workers owning the means of production*. One entails trusting the good will of those in charge, and the other entails the highest form of democracy.
There is no difference IF the government is OF the working people. It sounds like you have difficulty even imagining a working *people's party* assuming the power to govern themselves.
@@Imperator_Primeand how do you make sure that the goverment will be OF the working people?
@@TheCommun3*i* don't- i can't, by myself- *the working people, collectively,* have to do that ourselves. By fuckin' taking part in the process of building it and operating it and maintaining it- by fuckin' participating in the construction of a democracy, not just capitulating to one of two, or three, or four capitalist-serving parties that dictate themselves as the only options in some voting booth every 4 or 5 or however many years.
@@Imperator_Prime how about we go the easy route instead of risking it all to corruption then?
It's so easy to say that every country that ever attempted socialism wasn't real socialism when you've never lived in a country that actually attempted and succeeded in building socialism. Building a new society isn't easy it's very difficult it is so easy to live in a first world country and criticize what third world countries managed to accomplish under difficult circumstances this is Western chauvinism to the highest degree.
"Western chauvinism" is precisely the phrase I use. Note that when it comes down to it, Chomsky endorses people like Joe Biden.
When you are secure and affluent, you can afford to engage in idle fantasies. Meanwhile real-world socialism continues to raise living standards for billions and represents the best hope for humanity's survival.
This comment was much easier than considering what’s actually being said by Chomsky.
shut up.
No, it's rational
@@rsavage-r2vexactly. Ofc a Vaushian socialist in a Beverly hills suburbs drinking mochas from Starbucks will say that was not real socialism and the only real socialism is muy socialism.
Marxism-Leninism and State socialism are actual, pragmatic socialism that can help and improve living standards
Lenin was aware enough to know that the Russian Revolution could not lead to a socialist or communist society and as a result completely perverted the view held by Marx. Lenin claimed, “…the organisation of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession” and “must perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret as possible” (‘What is to be done?’ 1902) This is contrary to Marx’s view, “All previous historical movements were the movements of minorities, in the interest of minorities. The proletarian revolution is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.” (Communist Manifesto 1848) This basic principle was defended by Marx throughout his forty years of socialist activity and was repeated in the clause of the General Rules of the First International that, “…the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working classes themselves”. This is an unequivocal rejection of the view that socialism can be introduced for the working class or that the working class can be led to socialism by some enlightened minority. Later in Capital (1867) Marx explains:“…previously it was a matter of the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers: but in this case, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people”. Lenin still insists that the proletariat: “[were] capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited masses” [but it is the vanguard of the proletariat, rather than the proletariat itself,] “which is capable of taking power and leading the whole people to socialism”. (‘Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder’ (1920) It is interesting to note that what Lenin is really proposing is a progressive narrowing of the decision making vanguard, which might logically even be narrowed down to a single individual, a proposition which is precisely what was suggested when he claimed: that the vanguard need not even concern itself with establishing majority support prior to the seizure of power. “It is clear, therefore, that it is the vanguard and not the class which is to rule - which plainly cannot be described as anything resembling democracy. A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses.” (Lenin, Speech On The Agrarian Question, November 14 1917) But he went even further: “…the will of a class may sometimes be carried out by a dictator, who sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary”, and, “absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline”, are to be regarded as, “an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie”. (Ninth Congress of Russian Communist Party, March 1920) This, together with lack of other essential pre-requisites for revolution, provides the reason why Russian after 1917 could never have become socialist but instead inevitably became a capitalist dictatorship orchestrated by the State under Lenin and later Stalin. This was formally recognised with the emergence of The New Economic Policy (NEP) which Lenin acknowledged as being State capitalism. After the October Revolution, Lenin used the term State capitalism in a positive way. In spring 1918, during a short period of economic liberalism prior to the introduction of war communism, and again during the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921, Lenin justified the introduction of State capitalism under the political control of the dictatorship of the proletariat to further centralise control and develop the productive forces: “Reality tells us that State capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve State capitalism [then] that would a victory” (Lenin 1918, Collected Works, vol 27, p.293).
In addition, Lenin stated:
“The State capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the New Economic Policy, is, under Soviet power, a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our State capitalism differs essentially from the State capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the State with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry”.
Love that all other comments have MLs coping and this one is so full of facts that they just ignore it
Marx's ideas are obviously still relevant. Today in the most practical of ways I think his work can be applied by anyone who wishes to work with others to create a functional cooperative way of living.
But I think there is a huge psychological learning curve. For me psychological individuation and maturation is an important and necessary component and perhaps could be called a blind spot of Marxist theory that lead others to later combine Freud with Marx.
Anyone working with the traumatized or abused will immediately understand that differentiating and healing is necessary to come out of co-dependent attitudes as said in psychology or the master-slave dialectic as described by Hegel.
Marx did not take into consideration of the psychoanalysis of Freud in his equation.
In fact, it was the quite opposite. His vision relied on stable, able working, and well minded people to become fed up and take control of their own labor. Thus the machine would begin to build itself.
@@strongfp Marx died 1883, Freud's work on psychoanalysis really began in 1890 - pretty hard for Marx to have taken Freud into consideration considering he was dead haha.
@@strongfp To be fair subsequent psycho-dynamic practitioners did combine such concerns with Marxism - Slavoj Zizek is precisely just one such case. In American psychology Abraham Maslow pointed out that a society organised to facilitate the self-actualization of each and all would likely be philosophically anarchist (he wrote this in his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature). I also suspect that Marx's concept of Species-Being would likely resonate at the biological level of human need with Freud's core notion of the Id.
Matthew Kopp ::
Hegel ?! Hegel ?!
"The Master-Slave Dialect" --- from Hegel ?!
Hegel was a particularly pedestrian racist.
His Master-Slave "dialect" was simply a metaphor for Europeans. He cared nothing for actually Slaves --- especially Black people, enslaved !
Matthew Kopp so well said
They say, 'you can't worship Karl Marx'... but they have no issue with WORSHIPING Ronald Reagan. How is that any different. They both used ideas that just were. Some are undeniable and some we could do without... the people they were doesnt' change the fact that truth is truth, no matter who observes and explains it.
Saintg 4fun Ronald Reagan is a dimwit. He was a puppet. Marx is/was a widely renowned intellectual
@@TheToby121 this. even from a non-marxist perspective, marx was among the finest minds of his time and remains so until this day. reagan was an idiot.
It's not that I don't like Marx, it's just the type of people that follow him now. They are too idealistic and use violence as a means to an end. In the end, the masses will still be looking for big government to take care of them with no way to advance upward in social class.
Reagan worked and Marx....... that's the difference haha
@@amorales5445 The USA has committed way more violence, exploitation, and political repression than all "Marxist" projects combined so how are we defining what "works" here?
If the Soviet Union had not industrialized it would have been destroyed by the Nazis. On the issue of peasants Mao Zedong saw in them the driving force for the Chinese Revolution to happen, each country has its own circumstances that need to be taken into account.
chomsky is way too purist in this sense... but a lot of ML's are just as guilty the other way from my experience
The two aren't connected. Stalin's forced industrialization started 10+ years before any war between Germany and the USSR. His reasons had nothing to do with the concern of a World War or invasion.
@@JCW86 Stalin was preparing for multiple invasions civil wars and insurrections that were happening and going to happen(did happen).. he and other world leaders also saw problems like german and italian fascism gathering with a lot of private capital as time went on further justifying his decision. invasion was a serious concern on the horizon from multiple countries.
@@JCW86
"We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed." - Joseph Stalin, 1931
It's a misnomer connection to make that allowing the existence of autonomous peasant communes or whatever couldn't coexist with the Soviet Union like Chomsky was suggesting in the video, at least how I interpreted it. The industrialization included by Stalin and the party was mostly without the peasants anyway. Marx believed Russia could've communized without capitalism especially because of its semi-feudal conditions.
"If revolution comes at the opportune moment, if it concentrates all its forces so as to allow the rural commune full scope, the latter will soon develop as an element of regeneration in Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist system." - Marx's letter to Vera Zasulich (1881)
as according to Gilles Duave in Capitalism and Communism:
"Underdeveloped countries-to use a capitalist phrase-will not have to go through industrialisation. In many parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, capital oppresses labour but has not subjugated it to what Marx called real submission: it dominates societies which it has not yet fully turned into money and wage-labour relationships. Old forms of social communal life still exist. Communism would regenerate a lot of them-as Marx expected the Russian peasant commune might do-with the help of some 'Western' technology applied in a different way"
We can judge the extent of marxism in Lenin/Stalin by looking at what Marx/Engels stated in the Communist Manifesto: "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production."
The key part there is that the proletariat would be the ruling class, not the vanguard party.
@@BrainInJar Sure, but the question then is, are the proletariats capable of becoming the ruling class? In fact the justification for the Leninist vanguardism was exactly that! You may want to read up on that.
@@Sidtube10 When the power over society is in the hands of an elite group of middle-class intellectuals, the proletariat is not the ruling class. And if the proletariat is not yet capable of becoming the ruling class, then you can't make a socialist government. You can only make a government that strives for their conception of what socialism should be using their power to rule the working class as they see fit.
@@BrainInJar dude how can a fucking party be a ruling clas... 0 understanding of class
@@BrainInJar That's why Marx said that revolutionary consciousness was a precondition of revolution. But building that took time, and in Russia, Lenin knew that the Bolsheviks had very little time. So he tried to force the issue, and the party led Russia on a miserable forced march through the industrial revolution, only to collapse and be succeeded by the current kleptocracy.
i think chomsky never read 18th of brumaire of louis bonapart.... although chomsky statement that marx foresaw the russian revolutionary potential, he never saw peasants as a vanguard class (lenin did at some point), that is because of the nature of their class(petit-bourgeois) and their way of living, it makes very hard for them to lead the socialist revolution, as they are scattered through land and have interests on the private property....
I think chomsky barely read anything of marx or lenin at all
It sounds like you haven't read Marx's letter to Otecestvenniye Zapisky or his letter (and drafts) to Zasulich. What Chomsky says is accurate. Marx did not believe dogmatically in economic stage theory. He thought it was ridiculous to apply his analysis of Western Europe to other places with different histories and social conditions. He indeed did not see the European peasant as possessing revolutionary potential, but he did see that potential in the Russian peasant and the peasant commune, so much so that he believed (articulating an early form of uneven and combined development) it would allow the Russians to obviate the phase of capitalist development entirely.
These are opinions which, as Chomsky points out, he arrived at at the end of his life, and, being mostly set down in correspondence, are less well known.
Of course Marx didn't see peasants as a "vanguard class" because vanguardism is a Leninist invention and also not a class.
@@soensocomrade600 my friend its is patent that you never read Das Kapital.
tell me, where in that book marx was concerned with peasants?
only the working class can seize power. peasants only follow.
@@o_corisco that has nothing to do with what i said
People forget Marx was an economist first and foremost....
+Truthseeker1515
Journalist really, observer and commentator.
Truthseeker1515 philosopher 1st and foremost, u need the solid base to unravel the information that economics sends you. Dialectical materialism, all you need to assess the objective world.
Truthseeker1515
People neither perceive communities under Marshall Law is true ism.
Because economists don`t consider Marx as their peer.
No he initially studied philosophy
While I do respect Noam obviously for his body of work, this really is a comical misunderstanding of Bolshevism. Of course Lenin and Trotsky acknowledged the radical potential of the peasantry, that was a major component of the October revolution lol. They also understood, correctly, that on their own it was not in the interests of the peasantry to conduct a socialist revolution because their class interests were quite different to that of the proletariat.
It is this sort of obviously wrong assertion that makes me convinced Chomsky has never actually bothered to read any Lenin or Trotsky.
Their actions speak otherwise
@@bantix9902 In what sense?
Trotsky recognizing the radical potential of the peasantry? WTF
Laughable! Lenin and Trotsky had arguements over the peasantry, with Lenin claiming that the peasants of Russia and the proletariat should work together while Trotsky saw otherwise.
Lenin and Trotsky were never even that close to begin with.
The Soviet Union = State Capitalism not socialism/communism.
no, it is socialism. the only way it can be practiced.
@@kurokamei Socialism is literally "worker ownership of the means of production", which is not even close to what they had in the USSR.
Wether good or bad the Soviet Union is an example of the fact that you can carry on as a society for extended periods of time without bowing to the whims of the market.
Not true, Lenin conceded that the ussr was socialist only in name and had to develop capitalism to “industrialize”
@@joaquind254 And then any attempt to extend the life span of capitalism after that point is greed. “War Communism” was an abject failure it led to famine, and hostility between the regime and the people. Lenin’s goal by going back to a market economy was to stimulate it to a point of sustainability as Russia had basically collapsed into an undeveloped nation by the end of WW1.
@@joaquind254 The Soviet Union as we know though did live on past War Communism. It was another 7 decades before it fail.
The USSR was state capitalism, the bourgeoisie were simply replaced by the Central Committee, what Mao later described as a “red bourgeoisie.”
@@zyriankobani6930 Mao is also a dictator so why should his opinion be taken anymore seriously than anybody else’s?
If Chomsky thinks Lenin was an anti-Marxist he has no idea about Marx or Lenin.
Lenin wasn't trying to force the middle peasants -I.E. the subsistence farmers who lived off the land - to do anything. There were different classes of peasantry. Kulaks were peasant landlords who would charge farmers to work the land and take a percentage of their yield. Look up Lenin's speech on here RE: Middle peasantry to find out what he actually thought about them.
The fact that Chomsky doesn't know this is shocking for a so-called authority on this stuff. Anti-communism is brain rot, even for intelligent people.
This confuses me also. Usually anarchists are western chauvinists who don't study much of anything and swallow propaganda uncritically. But Chomsky has done all the reading and then some. He must just be lying.
You hit the nail on the head.
Kulaks were anyone who didn't like living on Stalin's collective farms, objected to having their produce stolen to finance Stalin's industrialization, or didn't want to be starved to death by the millions by the Communists. Anyone inconvenient to the Communists was a Kulak and could be liquidated during Stalin's collectivization campaign.
anyone know when was this filmed?
Noam Chomsky em português 2011. Here's the whole thing: ruclips.net/video/kVNq8knHGew/видео.html
When it comes to communism Noam is incredibly insufficient
whatever the politico/economic system, it can only degenerate into totalitarian rule by brute force if it involves centralization and concentration of power.
humanity comes with tendency for corruption, so the only way to minimize the effects is to spread out the power as widely as possible and raise the overall education level so a democratic majority votes on the optimal compromise.
if in marxism we place the power solely in the state, we end up with examples all to common as one party regimes.
+bademoxy
Chomsky just explained that true Marxism doesn't involve centralization and concentration of power. You're describing Leninism, if anything. Re-watch the video.
+bademoxy Look up social anarchism, it would harbour your discontent!
+Denzak
Exactly.
Denzak
look-we damned well know what marx wrote-including destroying cultures "in the way of utopian progress".
his "final solution" is what was used by hitler.
I'm sure you've read Marx, or even Hitler, for that matter! Your just an Onision, know it all!
0:38 Driving the peasantry to industrialization by force
What this all say is, from the point of view of the low in society, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.
That might be so, but for the people of Russia it meant a dramatic change in standards of living. The USSR was oppressive, and little real democracy. But the material well being improved rapidly. From feudalism to cosmonauts. There has been a lot of mixed feelings of the loss of the USSR by those who lived especially living through the 1990 nightmare.
>
It's ironic that after 150 years of struggle, the working class finally achieved the election of a President who expressed their interests. His name is TRUMP.
And of course, Trump opposed and was opposed by the middle class bourgeoisie of the Democratic Party even more than by the capitalists. They bare the enemy of the working class in the United States and Europe.
The Brexit vote was a similar example of the triumph of the working class over the ruling class of Bourgeois intellectuals. And that revolution appears to be increasingly breaking out among European nations, always opposed by the liberal bourgeois and their own political agenda.
Fascinating analysis. I never knew that.
Does anyone know what text Chomsky is referring to here where Marx wrote about Russian peasant society?
The Letter to Vera Zasulich. Also, probably anything else written during the last decade of his life.
thanks for spreading these ideas
Wow. Chomsky was so wrong here it’s actually amazing. He must of read the Wikipedia page for his source material. What a joke.
Yes, of course you say this with no argouments, can you explain at what point and WHY is he mistaken?
@@arthurverlaine6434 soy
@@arthurverlaine6434 Chomsky is wrong because Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks absolutely recognized the revolutionary and democratic potential of the peasants. They based the revolution on an alliance between the working class and the peasants. This is what the hammer and the sickle on the USSR flag represents.
For anyone interested in a lot more information on this topic, the channel What Is Politics has a great video on it (11.1 in his series)
Chomsky criticizes Lenin and USSR but just think for a moment about Lenin's time: Russia had a poor illiterate population, rampant inequality, no industry, WW1 took place, lack of food, a civil war between bolsheviks and mensheviks, the economic and military intervention of Europe and US , and in spite of all these huge problems, Lenin was able to found the first socialist country in the world, that inspired workers all around the world to fight for their rights. Everything was perfect in the USSR? Not of course not, but people had a good life with work, education, health, housing, no homeless people, and all of that in spite of having to fight for survival. Additionally, they supported the fight against racial discrimination in Africa, defeated Hitler, and made progress in science, technology, spports, music, arts.
how was it socialist
@@stupididietmoron9996 its utterly irrelevant if it was socialist according to utopists definitions. What matters is that it offered a non profit driven alternative to the western imperialist system.
@@mnialu6249 they had wage labor, a state that used peoples surplus value to fund their bloated military which was used to crush socialist revolutions as was the case in Hungary, also in the creation of the worst kind of weapon, nuclear weapons. to fund gulags and their police state, to give higher wages to higher ranked govt officials. Stop making excuses for state capitalism
@@stupididietmoron9996 Oh no the poor murderers and thieves who ended up in the gulag(which treated people better than US prisons today do). Also oh no, the evil military which was used to defend against western imperialism and supproted third world national liberation movements. How could those evil soviets use the hard work of their people to help other people outside their state!!! You liberals really dont stray far from your fascist friends.
"Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish-while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba, provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela's African National Congress in South Africa."-
@@mnialu6249 you’re a neoliberal
Marx and Engels used the terms 'Communism' and 'Socialism' interchangeably and not to differentiate between different states of the social revolution. The different stages of the revolution is a myth...the means of production may either described as 'Common Ownership' or capital ...it cannot be both!
Dude, read Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx outlined 2 stages of communism, lower-phase and higher-phase, it is correct that they labelled both interchangeably as socialism and communism though.
I think history has shown socialism is very unlikely to be accomplished through social democratic or parliamentary means. Allende was the only one who could pull that right and he was vulnerable and easily overthrown. Look at how Venezuela is doing with Maduro too. Apart from that, the typical "social democrats" are pretty much liberal crooks. Regarding the peasantry part, the Maoist revolution had its support from the peasantry and they estabilished peasant communes. Trotsky was the only revolutionary who openly supported the urban proletariat ruling over the peasants, and very few Marxists take any of his theories seriously.
Armindo Ribeiro I agree with everything you said except that part about very few Marxists taking Trotsky's theories seriously
Gabe Palcic Most marxists I know are marxist-leninists, who frequently bash Trotsky.
Armindo Ribeiro so you're basing that statement purely on personal experience
Gabe Palcic Look at the communist parties over the world, for example. They're generally Marxist-Leninist / M-L-M.
Armindo Ribeiro I've been wondering about this. Do you think there are more people who take Stalin's side over Trotsky's, or the other way around?
1st Lenin later stoped working with social democrats and with Trosky and he even called him opportunist. 2nd Peasantry wasn't forced on industrialization, but industrialization was LEAD BY THE FORCE OF PEASANTRY so some farmers would start working in factories so they can industrialize. 3rd You didn't understand any of Lenin's writings and you don't understand Dictatorship of Proleteriat which is most litteraly the whole Leninist theory. Leninism isn't changing Marxism it's just Marxist prax of armed Proleteriat to opress Burgeoise and to change state from Burgeoise state into Proleteriat state that is contrloed by one party, but the main thing you don't understand is that isn't that people work for the party but rather party working for the people. I'm gonna simplify it, so the party rule the state but work only for intrests of the working people.
The Soviet Union was a socialist society and denying that is a total cop-out.
can you explain in more detail ?
@@laza6141 Noam Chomsky defines socialism in terms of authority. "Socialism=no authority." The soviets defined socialism by the abolition of private property. Anarchists, by decrying state authority, are really decrying the only thing thing that could intervene to break the Capitalist hold on economy. "Lack of authority" is a neo-liberal dream (as proved by America's non-response to coronavirus). Capitalism is already anarchy.
@@jacobgiolas7314 This is nonsense. Noam defines "socialism" as involving the workers controlling the means of production. Because (as he says - and correctly) this is the "core principle" of socialism. The Soviet Union was not a society which even remotely gave workers control of production. Thus the Soviet Union's economy was not an example of "socialism" as Noam defined it.
@@jacobgiolas7314 Chomsky defines socialism the same way Marx did: Worker ownership of the means of production. The Soviet system was a vanguard party controlling a state that owned the means of production, ostensibly in the interest of the workers. But the party apparatchiks weren't the workers, and had class interests that conflicted with those of the working class. Your argument that only state authority can break capitalism has now been tested on a large scale in both Russia and China. The result is two single-party (de facto in Russia, de jure in China) authoritarian capitalist states.
@@futatorius When Noam Chomsky's theory can raise a billion and a half people out of poverty, going against the last 500 years of history whereby the Global South declined while the imperialist core sucked them dry, I will listen to his theory. Until then, I'm with the billion and a half people of China.
Lenin’s philosophy was a general extension of Marxism. Hence, Stalin implemented those philosophies while consolidating power. That became the Soviet Union as we knew it. 1 1/2 socks for every Soviet were produced in the early 50s. Chomsky is notorious for cherry picking information while ignoring other vital information. What he fleshes out in the end is a world of his own making.
superlyger A general extension? He abandoned it as soon as he came to power. Where were all the workers owning the means of production in Lenin’s socialist paradise? That’s the very core of Marx’s ideas is it not? And you completely fail to mention that the Soviet Union in the 50s was still recovering from a war that saw tens of millions of its workforce perish.
@@Bucketheadhead Please explain this quote from the Commie Manifesto then [and how do you interpret this as 'worker ownership']:
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production."
Sidtube10 “I.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class”.
The proletariat becoming the ruling class, being in control of the means of productions themselves. This is the opposite of what we saw in the USSR and China. The bourgeoisie were simply replaced rather than removed, and the proletariat remained where they were, and with very little if any real power. Nothing in Marx’s work supported banning trade unionism in favour of purely centralised state power with no involvement of the workers in decision making. Marx’s vision was not for the proletariat to remain subjugated and taking orders, but to become the masters of their own fates .
Glad to have cleared the up for you.
@@Sidtube10 Marx says wc takes over - not a small elite.
@@Bucketheadhead Not sure why I didn't get notified about your response. Anyway, the question is can the proletariat even be organized as the ruling class? Are they capable? There was a reason why Lenin came up with the concept of the Vanguards.
the whole point of socialism is to give power to the workers, lenins ussr was authoritarian. not socialist
Nope. Democratic Centralism is proven to be the most effective method of worker control. USSR was socialist. Idealists like from Trotsky to Orwell to Chomksy will go on and on in defense of the freedoms of Bourgeois reactionary classes without achieving a fraction of success that the global Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement has had.
@@chairmanbunker4418 Leninism, Hitlerism and Western capitalism are essentially the same thing - a slave totalitarian system. Marx actually warned about this as Chomsky accurately describes.
@@chairmanbunker4418 Lmao "democratic" centralism lead to fucking Stalin. Also the worker had 0 control over the means of production in the USSR and China or any other State Capitalist shit hole.
The black panther party failed because of this form of organisation, this is why most surviving Panthers are now Anarchists criticising the failures of centralism.
You gonna call it succeful when it allowed reformists to take control and move all your "Socialist" countries straight back to Capitalism.
"Democratic" centralism has literally never worked.
@@1997lordofdoom hey man, I know the cia must’ve been late, but Stalin being a dictator is a last week narrative, as your superiors already said that his power in the party was the same as the others members. I get you want to defend you brothers in the fbi, ignoring they are what caused the bpp to fail, but they did, they had plants in it as well as killed a portion of the party, sadly, like late era ussr, they didn’t purge the revisionist, so both fell, i hope you’re getting paid for defending Chomsky
Chomsky: Lenin was anti marxist right wing deviation
Also chomsky: vote for Biden
What's the link between those two things?
Who else were you about to vote for? Trump? Lol MLs are so lost that they are criticizing Chomsky saying "vote Biden over Trump". Do you disagree with that statement? Like wtf is even happening at this point? You have a lot of reflection to do if you disagree with that statement.
@@acclips2297 Trump is more leftist than Biden is you idiot. You really dont understand mass movements. You are completely brainwashed by a left to right political ideology compass
@@BioChemistryWizard lol, I had a little soft spot for tankies but this is just too far.
@@BioChemistryWizard Trumps the most fat right leader Americas seen in decades.
Bro is cooking nothing 💯
I love that Chomsky can so calmly and rationally describe Leninism for what it is ("a right-wing deviation of socialist thought"). Authoritarian Marxists are *always* just bored middle class college kids. They've never had to punch a clock and work a degrading job, they work in elite universities or sit in an office as a staffer for a labor union. They're never rank-and-file workers because they found a dusty old philosophy that allows them to rationalize being part of a "vanguard" of a comfortable, well-fed intelligentsia.
I've been thinking this my whole life.
Read Parenti
The success of Stalin - the man who used to boast that he conquered the United States "from the plow to the atomic bomb in just a generation" - compared to Gorbachev's failure shows that a socialist economy is unable to function with a minimum of efficiency without requiring a massive dose of political violence. In an attempt to reform a decadent regime, Gorbachev moved faster with the process of economic opening in the hope of removing the predictable resistance that the Soviet bureaucracy would create to economic reform measures, as thorough proof with the failed attempt. coup d'état in August 1991 - which ended up precipitating the final crisis of socialism and the dissolution of the USSR itself
Its Chinese parallel - Deng Xiaoping - adopted a logic diametrically opposed to that of Gorbachev: it prioritized the achievement of economic prosperity (adopting in practice capitalism) precisely to delay any attempt at political opening, as was evident with the acceleration of the economy. reforms after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
It is important to note that it was Karl Marx himself who, in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, discerned the scenario in which the conditions for a social revolution process are formed, describing it as follows:
'At a certain stage in its development, the material productive forces of society contradict existing production relations or - which is only their legal expression - with the property relations in which they have been active until then. From the forms of development of the productive forces, these relations are transformed into fetters of them. So, it is a time of social revolution. ' (Reproduced according to MARX, K. Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, organized by Florestan Fernandes and published under the title K. Marx: Theory and historical process of the social revolution, In Marx & Engels, Great Social Scientists Collection, History, vol. 36. São Paulo: Ática, 1983. p. 232. Commemorative edition of the centenary of Karl Marx's death)
By rejecting the pursuit of profit maximization as an instrument to stimulate innovation, socialist countries ended up condemning themselves to obsolescence. Thus, they lost the chance to incorporate the productivity gains made possible by technological progress. That is why the capitalist countries managed to provide a greater rise in the standard of living of their population, even without pursuing the egalitarian ideal. Therefore, until the “final crisis of socialism” (to paraphrase K. Marx's own definitions once again), it was only a matter of time. But religious fanatics do not give up on their faith, even against the indisputable proof of the facts, which completely refute it!
"The success of Stalin - the man who used to boast that he conquered the United States "from the plow to the atomic bomb in just a generation" - compared to Gorbachev's failure shows that a socialist economy is unable to function with a minimum of efficiency without requiring a massive dose of political violence."
LOL. Now do capitalism.
I don't think this dude knows what he's talking about
The biggest area that most political philosophers Miss and underestimate is criminality.
He is exactly 💯 right.
I am genuinely trying to understand socialism and Marxism better, so this isn't a gotcha question it's an actual one. He says Marx would have liked a parliamentary system but doesn't Marx call for a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"?
You’re exactly correct. Chomsky has very little understanding of Marxism
The dictatorship of the proletariat refers to the rule of the proletariat as a class, in contrast with the current system (the dictatorship of the bourgeoise). The only way for an entire social class representing the majority of society to collectively hold power is through democracy.
You should know that the proletariat (working class) should not have only one party, right? 🤔
If Marx was alive today, his biggest regret would be saying that. He meanr democracy!
Chomsky has had good and bad moments. this is among the bad ones
Both Noam and posthumously Marx are totally dabbing on the tankies in this comment section.
nothing is more antimarxist than anarchism. have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution?!
Marx's entire endeavor involved the creation of a stateless society.
This guy is kind of an anarchist
Does Chomsky ever say anything good about any political party? It seems he always finds the bad side of political parties such as socialists and social democrats in this video.
+Menalot Daranciang Yes, he talks very well about the spanish revolution. Search Spanish Revolution of 1936 in Wikipedia, or search Chomsky on the spanish revolution on youtube.
it takes some time to realize he is unhappy with virtually everything.
nothing in existence seems to satiate his perpetual grumbling.
Or apparently yours.
@Mike Girard he endorses on the basis of climate change.
Kevin Kalbermatten He seemed to be pretty praiseful of Jeremy Corbyn.
Chomsky is the urban intel par excellence. Who else. A trot obviously
Bingo. He loves to undermine actually existing socialism in favor of both anarchist utopianism and amatuerishness.
Workers need power to smash the bourgeoisie state. This power comes in the form of an organized mass workers party, arming the proletariat and raising class consciousness. I'm wary of these intellectuals that decry power itself with the side effect of defanging and disarming truely revolutionary workers movements that seek to achieve a society led by the proletariat. What a shame! Can't believe I used to lap up every word this linguist would write in my anarchist phase...
An anarchist actually
The problem with intellectuals is they never pay a consequence to the idea's they espouse. Ego being the driver of their idea's in order to feel relevant.
Nearly all idea's are wrong. And Socialism/Marxism courtesy of Chomsky is no exception.
If there was a parliamentary way to Socialism, it would have been done already. The western "democracies" are not democracies. They are the organized class rule of the bourgeoisie (or in layman's terms, the 1%). They are fundamentally designed to keep power in the hands of the bourgeoisie with an ever more sophisticated system. So no, you cannot just get to Socialism through a parliamentary route. Not unless the bourgeoisie willingly decide to give up their power. Everything that we get in parliamentary struggles will be concessions to the working class that don't fundamentally change the balance of power in society. And they can only give us these concessions because they stole so much from the third world that they can afford to give a little bit of their fortune. No. The system must be abolished. All of it. A new government, based upon Marxist-Leninist lines, but learning from the mistakes of previous Socialist experiments (and there were plenty of mistakes) must be formed, and it must be a truly international body representing the proletariat of the entire world. We need to finally crush the imperialist system at its roots and root it out, whether it comes from the US, Europe, China, or any other power. It is time to work with the proletariat all around the world.
I'm glad you wrote this, so I don't have to. Time and time again we see how parliamentary systems are useless to leftist parties because they always have to compromise in useless coalitions. Unless someone gets a single majority, we won't ever see true change in the radical reformist ways that these people so often speak of - and even then I remain very very skeptical. They talk as if the bourgeois capitalist democracies didn't make one gazillion mistakes in order to get to where they are today, somehow they're more okay with these mistakes and love to set the insanely high standard to the marxist-leninist line.
Bourgeois democracy is inherently oppressive and flawed but that does not mean it is completely bad. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to protest are all good things. We must create a proletarian society that combines the benefits of all ideologies (with the exception of ideologies that have no benefits) to create a brighter future
@AnarchistCommunist333 what do you do when the people are hoodwinked into giving up their power through the electoral process , completely negated the revolution, as happened in Germany?
@@kerryannegarnick1846 Simple. You dont recrate the extremly flawed government of East Germany
@@DemocraticConfederalist33 I'm talking about Weimar Germany when the type of revolution you are talking about led to Hitler and the Nazis.
In the very start of his career, was Nom Chomsky being against Soviet Union and its “revolution” , was, rather, being more dishonest, more careerist than being wrong??
Professor in cozy teacher position tells the world's oppressed they aren't Marxist enough
he's controlled opposition, parenti is miles better in every aspect
@@envy928 even parenti to me was a little too tamed and conservative in his critique of capitalism , but I see both had some good contributions for the critique of Capitalism but we who are young today must take the conclusions to their logic conclusion which is the total end of Capitalism by any means necessary
@@sunwukong6917 I think Parenti's strong suit is showing just how vile and insidious imperialism is, as well as demonstrating the hidden ideology of mass media and class interests. "The sword and the dollar", "Inventing reality", and "Images of imperialism" are my favourite lectures of his, if you haven't listened to them already!
@@sunwukong6917 Any recommendations for people who you think are less conservative in their critiques than parenti?
Vulgar Marxism is what it came to be known as. But Lenin abandoned Marxism after his first week in office.
Nah lenin enneacted Marxist ideology for the first time ever.
The guy talking sounds a little like jeff goldblum
+dennis degas "The guy talking"
it's probably the other way around
You mean.. Noam Chomsky as stated in the title? Lol And yes it would be the other way around; Noam is older - much more so.
It might be a little different, but it ends in the same hellish society.
Go to any capitalist country in Africa so you can actually see what hell is like
Chance de ouvir Chomsky sem tradução?
E impedoável! !
Achei o clipe com legendas em português! E este canal tem muito mais vídeos que você pode gostar!
ruclips.net/video/nGBSl3lIuZ8/видео.html - 'Noam Chomsky - Marxismo vs Leninismo'
se vc ainda tiver interesse posso transcrever e traduzir pra você
Posso traduzir pra você. Dez reais por minuto de vídeo.
Chomsky is better here on Marxism than is usually true of him
clair boy?
Just here to be comment #666. 😈 ✌🏼
Nice comment!
According to Noam , Karl Marx had some sort of perfect plan for the world but how come every approximation they have tried to implement in real life has failed miserably while Capitalism even when badly implement ( because of cases of cronyism and corruption ) has lifted the world out of poverty and repression like no other system has ever done before, let's remember Adam Smith wasn't just an economist but also a moral philosopher, the true version of Capitalism is free enterprise business mixed with free international trade combined with limited but reliable governments for each country, that has and will continue raising the standard of living of society when followed with consciousness and compassion for the environment and the people. No need to go back to a spoiled intellectual like Marx to get your answers there.
capitalism is wrecking both the environment and the people. i dont understand how you figure it otherwise.
Chomsky dodges the questions so brilliantly. In that manner he is brilliant. However very few realize this truth!
so obvious that Chomsky never actually read Lenin or much history
Tankies who are Winnie the Pooh apologists that call themselves communist…. Kids these days….
if you listened to the video chomsky makes the point that Marx would turn over in his grave if he knew what China was doing under the guise of "communism", it's not even close to communism, neither in strict political theory or even in a colloquial sense
on the other hand Russia was not Capitalist either, and the people that were foolishly associating Marxism to Russia that were leaving Marxism behind were Marxists, so i'd say Marxism had more things attached to it than just Russia's nightmare.
We are all now dumber for having watched this
U cant defend the revolution with farm crops
Greatest thinker
Would China and Russia be better situated to progress towards socialism had the Bolsheviks and Chinese revolutionaries been defeated?
If Stalin had rejected Bolshevism and embraced parliamentary democracy on the eve of World War 2… what exactly would have happened when the Nazis invaded?
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What's a little evil marxists.
What an absolute joke. The peasants never had or will never have revolutionary potential. Only the proletariat will ever have the ability to run society and Marx never thought peasants had this potential.
x
This egghead, like Marx, never worked a day in his life
What do you consider work? He’s been a working professor, scientist, author, and lecturer for most of his life. He also worked at a newsstand and on a farm in his younger days.
This is so bad. I don't even know where to begin.
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This is pure nonsense
@@evan2173 Mabye the part where he called Lenin "anti-Marxist"
@@evan2173 You clearly have no idea what that book is about or what Left-communism is.
To label one of the most successful Marxists of all time an "anti-Marxist" is beyond a joke. The man who built possibly the strongest example of key Marxist ideas being put into practice is "anti-Marxist"?! It's all there buddy:
- Dictatorship of the proletariat
- Abolition of private property (to a large extent)
- no markets
- compensation according to work
Outrageous claims by Chompsky.
@@evan2173 You're a Leftcom and you don't even know it. You are actually trying to say that marxism doesn't advocate the dictatorship of the proletariat 😅.
Catalonia maintained plenty of state apparatus and was based on non-Marxist ideas i.e. anarchism. It was a short lived experiment but never got the chance to develope. It was certainly not fully Communist by any means.
Marx never expressed the delusional belief that everything can just be immediately collectivised and that the state could magically disappear. He knew that socialism had to be built over time to allow the withering away of the state etc.
You can spout "not real socialism" all you want, but if you do then you are saying that Marxism isn't real socialism. The USSR under Lenin and Stalin did build socialism by applying Marxism to the USSR.
You talk about collectivisation and yet the USSR had a massive collective farming sector. Industry was publicly owned and there was barely any truly private property.
You don't have to agree with Marxism, Leninism or socialism; but to say that the USSR wasn't any of these (until revisionists took over) is absurd.
Also it's cute that you seem to think that people are taught Marxism-Leninism their "whole lives". I don't remember any classes on vanguardism in primary school 😂.
And of course you ask if I've read the two most well-known books by Marx, even though Capital is about economics and The Communist Manifesto is hardly a very detailed or focused work, but more a general statement of principles.
Furthermore, nobody claims that the USSR was fully communist. Full Communism has never been achieved. To imply that you can be Communist without a transitional period of socialism (or lower phase communism) is absurd. From a marxist point of view at least.....
@@evan2173 Again you have no idea what "Left-communism: An infantile disorder" is about.
You are saying that, despite being mentioned multiple times by Marx, the dictatorship of the proliteriat is not a marxist concept? I mean, how are you to be convinced?
"My own contribution was to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; [and] that this dictatorship, itself, constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society"
- Karl Marx, 1852
You clearly don't have a firm grasp on what marx's conception of the state is. The man did not claim that society could magically become stateless and classless overnight. If there are classes then there must be a state (says Marx) so; unless you believe that all class struggle ends immediately after a revolution, there must be some sort of workers state.
As for Catalonia. Anarchism may be based on statelessness, but nonetheless Catalonia had a state.
I'm honestly gobsmacked at the level of ignorance. Lenin: guy who's among those who first applied Marx's theory, who incessantly quotes Marx, who based all of his own ideas on Marx's ideas, whose theory is called Marxism-Leninism "hates Marx". Yeh, excuse me while I get sick. What planet are you living on like? 😅 "Left-Communism: An infantile disorder" is about people like you almost. Who seemingly have no idea about Marx's actual ideas.
And you seem to be reading words that aren't there as well. How does pointing out that a book about economics isn't really relevant to the system of government "invalidate" it? Horseshite mate.
As for "it's technically not Communism cos feudalism"; I've never hears such tripe in my life. Russia did indeed have a proletariat, contrary to your unfactual statements about it being a feudalist country.
What are these failures of the USSR? Industrialisation? Raising the standard of living? Defeating the Nazis?
The Manifesto covers fundamentals, like you said. It is not a very detailed on all areas of marxism. It certainly isn't the all-encompassing guide that you seemed to allude to it as.
You continue to just spit baseless lies about Leinin "hating Marx" with no evidence backing you up. You clearly have a very poor grasp of Marxism (I'm no expert myself but I get the basic stuff which you seemingly have never heard). I mean how can you be a pacifist and a marxist? Would a pacifist not oppose revolution? And if so then you are rejecting one of Marx's core ideas.
@@evan2173 I have no idea why you would call yourself a Marxist if you have no idea of what Marx actually believes. It sounds like you have so far just ASSUMED what he believes. Like if you don't know about something as fundamental as the dictatorship of the proletariat or the need for revolution how can you claim to be a Marxist. It just baffles me.
And yes "Left-wing Communism" is about people like you to a certain extent. You claim to be a Marxist and yet you put forward a completely mangled version of what Marx "believed". Have you read the book? I know that you definitely haven't read it. If you even read the fucking first page you'd see this like 😅: "He also.......stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other."
It's okay to be ignorant but pretending to know about this stuff when you clearly don't is just silly.
As for the "Stalin killed millions argument".....I think it's you who's being influenced by cold war, capitalist propaganda.
Saying Russia wasn't socialist because they didn't have a big enough proliteriat is laughable. The fact that socialism was developed in the USSR despite this supposedly insufficient proliteriat just proves you wrong.
As for Lenin hating marx, you're bordering on the absurd here. I know that you haven't read anything Lenin wrote because it would be impossible for you to have such a ridiculous take on things. Like there's no convincing someone who doesn't actually read books, but instead assumes what they are about and then takes that as truth. Read The State and Revolution or any book by Lenin because you clearly haven't a clue.
You say Marx would be turning in his grave at the USSR and yet you haven't identified a single one of Marx's ideas aren't being followed.
Conclusion: I'm sure you're a nice guy, but when it comes to what Marxism claims, you have barely any knowledge.
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Both ideas are a massive failure!!
Debatable on a lot of fronts.
Christ that's embarrassing.
the soviet union were far from marxist
The most successful socialist experiment on earth, liberating millions from capitalism through the use of Marxian analysis of material conditions, wasn't Marxist? yeah ok
India had a parliamentary communism.
What you mean?
Can you explain??
i doubt that, india has a caste system
Jews Jews Jews
Any commie wants to play let me know!