Noam Chomsky on Leninism

like I'm sure many many many other people who are here tonight are deeply indebted to your work it's been absolutely essential in helping us cut through the kind of garbage that we're faced with every day when we try to figure out what's going on in the world what I think continue I think there is also a problem in the analysis that I've seen in your works and that you presented tonight in the sense that I think we can tend to lose the forest for the trees that you present so many you know astonishing details about what is wrong with this system and about what is wrong with the media that we can tend to lose sight of what I think the really key question is which is why is this control necessary in the first place and I would submit at least that I think it's because there's antagonism I got a minute and a half I swear to god it's no longer it's because there's antagonistic interest involved they didn't talk about milkmaids and dairy wood whatever it was dairymaids and spinsters and labors in the 17th century for no reason it was because they were a working class and what we see today in this country I think it's quite frankly let's speak bluntly a ruling class which tries to control a working class population and that's what it's about is holding on to that power if that's the case then it seems like to me the question that we face is how to organize to change that system to challenge capitalism and I think in that effort you do a disservice to your listeners and to the people who respect your work when you equate Lenin with Stalinism as blithely as you did tonight I say that and I think it's also important to point out that that is an unquestioned assumptions and also an easy applause getter we saw that you share with the mainstream media and I think if it were actually that simple the couple the horrific kinds of measures that even bushwa historians describe as a counter-revolution under Stalin would not have been necessary if they were all the same to begin with now in short to sum up the situation that you have outlined tonight I think is extremely serious and I think it's important that we all take it seriously what we're talking about is literally the fate of millions of lives around the world particularly in the international politics that you describe that being the case then I think we need a full and a serious and a fair discussion of various different alternatives not just talking about the horrors of capitalism but actually how to change it to end this stuff once and for all well I think you made it okay I think well there's several questions there one is about the discussion of the United States and I think what I said is approximately what you said except I didn't use some of that rhetoric the I you know which I don't particularly helpful to pay the truth either analytically or to understand or whatever but it's the same picture John Jay had it straight the people who own the country or a government and the people who own the country have basically now are a network of corporations and conglomerates and banks and so on they ought to govern it and the way they do it is by the methods we've described now as far as the Soviet Union is concerned I didn't happen to talk about it tonight but I've written about this topic I haven't just made the charge I've written about it and explained why I think it's true and it doesn't bother me if I happen to agree with the mainstream media on this Trotsky to pick somebody who you remember once he was charged in the 1930s with agreeing with the fascists in his condemnation of the Soviet Union and he pointed out that his critique was to be true didn't wasn't gonna abandon it if somebody else had to sit up and say it for different reasons so the question is about the Soviet Union and particularly about Lenin so what was Leninism well and my here we have to look at the facts now you know you look at the fact I think here's which fine Lenin was a right wing deviation of the socialist movement and he was so regarded he was regarded as that by the Marxist by the mainstream Marxist we've forgotten who the mainstream Marxist were because they lost and you only remember the guys who won but if you go back to the to that period the mainstream Marxist were people like for example Anton punycode who was head of education for the for the Marxist movement and a serious he's the one one of the people who Lenin later denounced as an infantile leftist but he was one of the leading intellectuals of the actual Marxist movement rosa luxemburg was another mainstream Marxist and there were others and they were very critical in fact Trotsky was one up until 1917 they were all very critical of Leninism because of this what they regarded as this to Mystic Vanguard ISM the idea that the radical intelligentsia were going to exploit popular movements to seize state power and then to use that state power to whip the population into the society that they chose now that was quite inconsistent with Marxism as understood by the mainstream sort of I'd say left Marxists from this point of view Bolshevism was a right-wing deviation Trotsky made the same points up till 1970 now when Lenin came back to Russia in April 1917 he took a different line quite a different line than the one he'd had in the past there you take a look at Lenin's work it shifted character in April 17 in April 1917 it became kind of libertarian that's when he came out with the April theses and that's when he wrote state and democracy came out it came out of here later but that's when it was written and these were a state and revolution these these were basically libertarian works they were very much more in the main in the mainstream of sort of less a libertarian socialism from sort of you know this range that goes from anarchism over the left Marxism of the panic of closer look Sandburg variety any talk to that Soviets in the need for you know a workers organization and so on in fact came really closer to what the essence of socialism was always understood to be after all the core of socialism was understood to be workers control over production that was the core that's where you begin with then you go on to other things but the beginning is controlled by the workers over production that's where it begins then Lenin took power in October 1917 and what's called a revolution but in my view ought to be called a coup and the then the and things followed that coup or revolution if you want to call it that one of the things that followed it was the immediate moves to destroy the Soviets and the factory councils those were some of the first moves of Lenin and Trotsky after they took the Trotsky joined at that point after they took state power in fact if you look at what Lenin wrote after that period or did you'll find it's a reversion to the earlier position this sort of left deviation is that a deviation you could ask why in my view it was just opportunistic he knew that in order to gain power he was going to have to go along with the popular currents that were developing which were in fact spontaneous and libertarian and socialist as most popular movements are have been in fact since the 17th century and being an astute politician which he was he sort of went along with that and talked the line that the people wanted to hear it's just like when an American politician goes somewhere and his pollsters tell him say so-and-so and he says it believes and letting Lenin was doing the same thing with that polls in any event whatever your interpretation is when he took power he reverted to the former Vanguard ISM and moved at once to eliminate the organs of workers control now that meant he was moving to destroy socialism if socialism has as its core workers control over production the soviets and factory councils were instruments of workers control and same you could say they're defective instruments this may be worked out better and so on yeah yeah but they were the instruments that had been developed in the course of popular struggle for to implement basically workers control and those were the first things to go by early 1918 this is now it's it's still really before the Civil War sit in Lenin's view was pretty clearly expressed it was the view that both he and Trotsky took the position that what you need is with what Trotsky called the labor army which is submissive to the control of a single leader he said modern you know progress and development and socialism requires that the mass of the population subordinate themselves to a single leader in a disciplined workforce well that has absolutely nothing to do with socialism in fact the exact opposite of it and was criticized for that by the in a sense in a spirit of some solidarity because you know the revolutionary forces were still operative it was credit he was criticized for that by people like Rosa Luxemburg and by Pannekoek and gore her and the other mainstream sort of left Marxists and that and I think they were right it seems to me that and then it just goes on from there I mean Lenin reconstructed these are systems of oppression often more efficiently check KGB and other techniques of control and oppression I think from that point on there was nothing remotely like socialism in the Soviet Union I think it was in fact MIT was a precursor of later forms of death all terian ISM now you know you could that's what I think happened and I think that's what you discover if you look at the facts now why is it called socialism well I think there I think that's complicated we should look at it this to the Soviet Union calls it socialism and you know after they took control of the they did take control pretty soon of most of the international socialist movement because primarily the prestige of having created something sort of socialism instantly just aside remarked Lenin remained despite at all as sort of an orthodox Marxist in many respects and as an orthodox Marxist he didn't believe that it was possible to have socialism in the Soviet Union this was supposed to be up to his death or you know shortly before his death when he was still writing you know speaking lucidly he took kept the view that the Soviet revolution was a holding action they were just kind of hold things in place until the real revolution took place in Germany because the revolution according to Marxist doctrine was going to take place in the most advanced sector of modern capital industrial capitalism you know for all the reasons that you read about in Marx that's where the revolution had to take place obviously that wasn't the Soviet Union so they couldn't be socialism there it was just some kind of holding action and that presumably gave some sort of justification for eliminating the socialist institutions I don't think it's a real justification but probably that was the internal justification and again in taking that you he was in accord with the mainstream Marxist tradition well after that that comes the view that all of this is socialism and why should the communist parties take that view I think the reason is because they wanted to sort of exploit the moral force which was quite real you know it's kind of hard to remember that today but at that time it was very real this was regarded as a you know as prot as a progressive moral force and by associating their own destruction of socialism with the aura of socialism they hope to gain credit in the working classes and other progressive sectors now the West also identified that with socialism and they did it for the opposite reason they wanted to associate socialism with the brutality of the Russian state that undermined socialism so what you had is that the two major world propaganda agencies for their own and quite different reasons were claiming that this is socialism that this destruction of socialism is socialism now it's very hard to break out of the control of the world's two major propaganda agencies when they agree they agreed for different reasons but they basically agreed and that then became doctor and dogma well I think people should ask whether that's true take a look back and see whether the moves that Lenin took and the Trotsky supported him in taking and that they both advocated had anything to do with socialism as it was understood by the say in the Marxist tradition or in the left libertarian tradition and I think the answer that you'll discover when you look at that is that they didn't in fact this was a destruction of socialist institutions well you know this may be true or it may be false but if it's true and I think the evidence pretty strongly supports it then I don't see any reason why we shouldn't Express that fact and I certainly don't think that we should be deterred in expressing this fact if other people who's you know on fascists whatever happened to condemn the Soviet Union just for the same reasons that Trotsky mentioned in the 1930s

Channel: Chomsky's Philosophy

Views: 626,296

Rating: 4.7183142 out of 5

Keywords: Leninism (Political Ideology), Philosophy (Field Of Study), Noam Chomsky (Author), Political Philosophy (Field Of Study), Vladimir Lenin (Politician), Leon Trotsky (Military Commander), Soviet Union (Country), Politics (TV Genre)

Id: jxhT9EVj9Kk

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/HealthClassic]

Petty bourgeois idealism!!! CIA Propaganda!!

/s

Some books to read more on the question of Lenin and socialism:

The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control by Maurice Brinton

Leninism or Marxism? by Rosa Luxemburg

State and Revolution: Theory and Practice by Iain McKay

My Disillusionment in Russia by Emma Goldman

Bloodstained, a compilation of essays (AK Press)

[u/Moth4Moth]

I gotta say I'm almost in complete agreement with Chomsky on this analysis of Marxist-Leninism and the USSR

[u/northrupthebandgeek]

Well put. A lot of the same criticisms hold true with the PRC (even under Mao, but especially under Deng and Xi): it's hard to honestly and in good faith call a regime "socialist" when it fundamentally contradicts the very basis of socialism (that is: worker autonomy).

[u/Conquestofbaguettes]

Fucking nailed it.

Of course.