Lenin and the origins of the USSR deconstructed by Hedges: state capitalism is what Lenin constructed
"with Lenin writing that “as long as there is a state there is no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no state.” But Lenin in power, like Leon Trotsky, was an opportunist who made promises, such as “all power to the soviets,” that he had no intention of keeping. "
"Stalinism was not an aberration. It was the natural heir of Leninism."
" Mikhail Bakunin warned, presciently, that Marxists proposed to replace the capitalist with the bureaucrat. The Marxist society, he said, was nothing more than capitalism under centralized state management and it would, he said, be even more oppressive. "
" He, like John Dewey, understood that as long as the capitalist class has control of the means of production no real democracy will ever be possible."
"The ossified systems of governance—evidenced in the United States by our corporate-managed elections, our dysfunctional Congress, our commercialized press and our failed judiciary, which just legalized gerrymandering, ... are transparent puppets of the ruling cabal. Reform through these structures is impossible. This understanding creates a huge divide between the liberals, who hold out hope for reform—you can see them once again foolishly investing time and energy in the Democratic Party—and revolutionaries who seek not to placate or work within the system but to destroy it."
"Lenin had a temperamental dislike of intellectuals, but he knew there was no other class that could shape and lead a revolutionary movement. "
"These revolutionary leaders are not, Brinton points out, Plato’s philosopher-kings, but philosopher-killers. "
"Mass uprisings, Lenin understood, provide fleeting moments that if not seized by the revolutionary may never again occur ... Timing was all, Lenin repeated monotonously. At timing, Lenin was a master. “There are decades when nothing happens—and there are weeks where decades happen,” he wrote."
"Violence was never a substitute for mass mobilization. It was never a substitute for the long and tedious work of building a revolutionary political party. And without a revolutionary party, Lenin warned correctly, revolution was impossible."
"Lenin warned that when capitalism is seriously threatened, fascism is always the default option ... liberals, who fear the radical left, become in a revolutionary moment the revolutionary’s enemy. "
"the most effective way to weaken the resolve of the ruling elite was to tell it exactly what to expect. "
"The late stage of capitalism inverts classical economics. What was considered unproductive—the parasitism of the rentier class—becomes the real economy. And what was considered the productive sector of the economy—labor and industry—is treated as the parasite. The ascendancy of global speculators is deadly to the capitalist system, which consumes itself."
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-dilemma-of-vladimir-lenin/Read the whole thing. I disagree with some of the article, but Hedges, as usual makes me think. I shall have to reread a little or perhaps a lot of Lenin.
sidd