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Chomsky on Leninism

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul Kimball
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Paul Kimball

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A great deconstruction of Leninism by Noam Chomsky, who illustrates why you shouldn't believe anyone who tries to tell you that communism or socialism = what we saw in the USSR.

The "question" that opens it is quite amusing in and of itself! :rolleyes:
 

A great deconstruction of Leninism by Noam Chomsky, who illustrates why you shouldn't believe anyone who tries to tell you that communism or socialism = what we saw in the USSR.

The "question" that opens it is quite amusing in and of itself! :rolleyes:

The Paracast has become a socialist/communist propaganda site. Yay! Don't ya love free speech? Enjoy it while you can!
 
A great deconstruction of Leninism by Noam Chomsky, who illustrates why you shouldn't believe anyone who tries to tell you that communism or socialism = what we saw in the USSR.

The "question" that opens it is quite amusing in and of itself! :rolleyes:

I didn't know someone could become so emotional when asking a question. :D
 
That's actually some of the smartest analysis I've heard from Chomsky in a long while (some of his stuff in recent years has been shall we say...lacking in nuance? simplistic in its depiction of heroes and villains?). Very well explained.
It's unfortunate that a century of propaganda from all sides has made the word "socialism" into a bogey that precludes further thought or debate, just as many people think "capitalism" means something it doesn't (such as the quaint belief that it is intrinsically connected with democracy).

White-washing Lenin was of course very useful for later Soviet leaders, since it allowed them to portray Stalin as the aberration and assure the public and impressionable minds overseas that "Stalin's dead, so everything's fine now. Go back to work".

By analogy with the green-washing ads of BP and similar companies (just to be topical) you could argue that Lenin (and Mao after him) practised "left-washing", to sell old-style authoritarian rule by a strongman as socialism.
 
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