14:28 : "so what you have is the 2 major world propaganda agencies, for their own quite different reasons, were clainming this is 'socialism', this destruction of socialism is 'socialism'. It's very hard to break out the control of the world's 2 major propaganda agencies when they agree, they agree for different reasons, but they basically agree. Then became doctrine and dogma."😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀
Dr.Gavagai false. It wasn’t opposite ends of the spectrums fighting each other. They were fascists and socialists both left wing ideologies.... no matter how many times you’re grand wizard says fascism and socialism are opposites.
David Parry yep you got it. Government control of economies. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. Good job, it is the “big government” paradigm vs the freedom of individuals paradigm.
Can we give credit to our editor here, for piecing through hours of Chomsky to find his most illuminating points on the subject? Edit: And our editor's strength of judgement in choosing which segments made the cut.
not to mention splicing that one cut in between those two other pieces. that seemed almost perfect like one video, but I think they had to take a second source, judging by the fade to black and the static.
I couldn't agree more with Chomsky. Grown up as a Chinese, I was forced to learn all the twisted version of Marxism. Seeing all the shit happening around me, I thought Marxism is a lie and it always brings evil things. Then in university, I got to know some real Marxists (who were actually arrested later for conductiong working condition surveys). And I started reading about the books myself, I made a U-turn and became a leftist. It is through the lenses that the "communist" party of China gave me, I finally see what it really is, a right-wing nationalism and state capitalism regime.
Now hold up. isnt china going by Mao's vision? (Correct me if im wrong, i learn only from hearsay) Wasnt Maos view that capitalism had to run its natural course, and society would then, naturally, turn into socialism? isnt this why China still have capitalistic elements in a socialist regime? and if i understood it correctly, china plan on turning into a full socialist state by 2050?
Very interesting! Marx was a brilliant analyst and critic of industrial capitalism but he never wrote about the nature of the socialist state at all. Those who blame Marx for the state capitalism of the Soviet Union and Communist China have simply never studied Marx. Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin and Mao were brutal dictators who called themselves “Marxists” but their practices were not consistent with Marx’s writings at all.
A Fucking Leaf What do you mean by “implementing Marx’s ideas”? What “ideas” do you refer to? Marx was a critic of capitalism. He never wrote anything about socialism. He did believe that when conditions got bad enough, the working class (industrial proletariat) would rise up and overthrow the capitalist order and seize power themselves and would create a classless society. Obviously, that has not happened. If what you’re asking me is whether it’s possible to create a socialist society without resort to violence, I would say, “That all depends on how the capitalist state responds to a popular revolution”. The state will probably respond with violence to any popular uprising, no matter how peaceful. That’s how the state always responds to demonstrations of mass discontent. That’s why the police today are armed like the military - they have tanks and military firearms at the ready. They are dressed like soldiers. So state violence is to be expected the minute the people rise up in rebellion. Will the people respond with violence against the police and the armed forces? Done probably will. I don’t know. I hope not. But with all the guns in the USA Today it’s hard to imagine they won’t. Our best hope is if the soldiers and police come over to the side of the people and abandon their state masters. If that happens, the revolution will succeed. If it doesn’t happen, a lot of people will probably get killed. Sad but true. ,
Just realized you're the person making the "Chomsky and Peterson on ___" stuff. I like what you're doing there. It really highlights the superficiality of some of Peterson's gesticulations when you compare his take on a given topic with Chomsky's far more educated, well read, articulate, and nuanced view(s) on the same topic.
@@erc9468 WTF Despite all his cruel massacres, Stalin WAS in fact right wing. The Soviet system was nothing but State Capitalism, and Stalin did it the most brutal way. Literally NOT Socialism!
Chomsky practically poses the argument “tHat wAs nOt rEAl sOciALism” and I completely agree with him even if other people constantly mock this argument.
Yep. Just because theyt called it that, doesn't mean they achieved it. Hell, Democratic People's Republic on North Korea, is neither democratic, for the people, or a republic.
To say that Chomsky is basically the 20th century version of Karl Marx is not a farfetched comparison. Much, if not most, of Chomsky's ideas derive from Marx and classic Marxism.
@@erniereyes1994 What are you saying comrade?! The video starts with him saying that Marxian thought was pernicious for the emancipaton of humanity. Chomsky always had the same political ideas, he just had to read 'Nationalism and Culture' by Rudolf Rocker, its all there. You can compare their influence, they also have in common their rejection of Philosophy as such, but it makes no sense to say hes ideas derive from him. Chomsky vindicates the 18th century - Enlightenment, not the 19th - violence, state power and revolutions.
@@contrapranto7756 it must be clear that Karl Marx and Marxism can be seen as two separate entities. If Chomsky was living and operating within the time period and region as Marx, I'm almost certain that Chomsky would have the same views, theories and arguments (his arguments against a market economy is almost a copy-and-paste of what Karl Marx said about the American economy in relation to slavery and cotton-picking). Chomsky's views on mainstream media also seems closely aligned with the spirit of Marx: I can see Marx, if he was living and operating within the 1970s and 80s, writing his own version of Manufacturing Consent. I believe Chomsky (unlike, say, Hitchens) possibly outgrew his admiration for Marx and his ideas, but the residue is still there.
And of course thats a setup to the retort "The first successful experiment in Socialism is always the NEXT one..." I'm patiently interested in social idea systems; though they frequently fail to account for human nature & bad faith in the execution.
@ThisIsMyRealName It would be very nice if you could actually provide sources for that Chomskian claim of Lenin destroying worker soviets and unions. But you can't can you?
@Salmon Parenti already debunked that. This wasn't the systematic destruction of workers' control, it was necessary disciplinary action against particularist greed in a time of great distress. It's no more "state capitalist" of Lenin than it was "socialist" of Hitler to expropriate and imprison recalcitrant capitalists during a war he was fighting for *their* class interest.
I hadn't heard Chomsky's take on Lenin until very recently, but I gotta say that it answers a lot of questions I've had about the USSR and PRC. Hard to rebut.
Nuclear Confusion I was a follower of Parenti when I was a teenager. After experiencing the reality of the world and this country, I see that his constant complaining is not justified. The problem with these leftists is that they are literally amoral (read: immoral) and therefore fundamentally justify anything and everything. In short, the Parenti paradigm is a house of cards built on sand.
Nuclear Confusion I understand Parenti better than you understand yourself, and I’m sure I’ve read and listened to him more than you. The problem with Parenti is that he identifies the problem(s) very well, but his solutions are way off. He is a full fledged communist which is a direct endorsement of AMORAL/IMMORAL actors and actions such as the murder of the Tsar and royal family, murder of the rich, etc etc, but the ends DO NOT justify the means. Moral posturing is necessary when the foundation of your philosophy is Godless nothingness.
Evan Richards see above. There is a difference between being a moral person, moral philosopher, or moralizing communist. True morality comes from God alone and without God there is NO morality
@@FrancisSpaghetti I whole-heartedly reject the notion that morality springs from God and God alone, for a couple reasons. 1: atheists are not all mass-murdering psychopaths 2: the natural world exhibits too much built-in cruelty, suffering and pain for me to accept that any entity that deliberately created it is a moral authority 3: many of the actions attributed to God in the Bible depict Him as jealous and vindictive, traits that are taught as sinful for Man. In short, even if I completely set aside the question of whether God exists in the first place and granted that He exists exactly as depicted in scripture, I would still reject His moral authority over me and mankind as a whole. So good luck at changing my mind with appeals to God.
Imo Einstein in his "Why Socialism" article best represented the Socialist ideas. And he, unlike Marx.., was honest enough to admit that they don't have yet a solution for HOW exactly would the proletariat rule (without falling into a Dictatorship of the "Representative"). Imo they didn't had enough infrastructure back then. Just like if you don't have roads you can't even have a country, if you don't have communication you can't have a Democracy. Socialism is Democracy on steroids, thus you have to establish a better Democracy (than Direct Democracy which has the problem of the people being dwmb and easily manipulated by the rich who own the media, or Representative Democracy which also has the problem of Populism (like Direct Democracy) but also adds the hidden agenda of the "representatives"). Imo we need a Rational Democracy, or I'd call it actually a Spiritual Democracy (because the aim is for the impersonal Human Spirit to rule). We have the internet to write and share and compare ideas, thus the Government could be a Forum for Policy Proposals (from anyone), where not the Popular Vote, but the Arguments are the deciding factor, and maybe we can agree on a Scoring System to transparently score all policy proposals. This score should give priority according to Maslow's table of human needs and be taken as a coefficient factor (multiplied with the number of people advantaged). Or any other idea of a Rational Democracy, where we agree on a scoring system and we, not some "Representatives" do the ruling.
Don't know if Chomsky ever spoke much about socialism in East Germany. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was arguably the most advanced socialist state until its annexation by the Federal Republic of Germany following the end of the Berlin Wall. Women in the GDR had more status, social equality and rights than their sisters in West Germany. The people of GDR were simply absorbed into greater Germany along with the country's significant industrial and commercial assets. Not exactly a democratic or liberal act by a reunified Germany.
Right, so... socialism under the USSR/Europe was something like Worker's Party versus Social-Democrats of Brazil selling the gospel to both casa-grande and the senzala, with Marx tweeting from a MST Organic football-luncheon.
Chomsky is 100% correct. It’s not complicated. Lenin and Stalin created a slave labour society with no worker rights. America has had labour unions for a long time...therefore the US was more socialist than at any time throughout the period of the USSR. The Soviet Union was a capitalists dream come true, powerful people having total control of the workforce, with maximum profits and minimal costs. Major US corporations opened up factories in the USSR while all this was going on. I wonder why?
my main question is if Chomsky identifies two opposing stages of Marx's thought, i.e. the earlier socialist libertarian vs the later and more radical historical materialist (which by his own admission inspired orthodox Leninism), then how can he so conclusively deny the connection between Marxism and its more morbid derivations. Is he really saying the later Marx is not real Marxism, or that the later Marx is not real socialism, because as he mentioned it reduces humans to 'clay' that can be moulded by a radical vanguard, opening the ideology to authoritarian drifts?
Because one doesn't necessarily follow from the other. If Marxism conclusively led to Leninism by itself, then Lenin wouldn't have had to invent Leninism. Its just a simple fact that Marx had very little to say on what a post-capitalist society would look like. He did think that communism was an economic necessity, and had his own ideas about where and how it would develop, but there's nothing in any of his writing about gulags, dictatorships, or vanguard parties. In many ways, things like Maoism and Leninism are direct contradictions of orthodox Marxism, because they attempted to artificially bypass the productive forces of capitalism which were required to build a communist society - Marx thought that the first revolutions would take place in the most developed economies like Britain, after capitalism had run its course, not in states which were still basically feudal and didn't have the material base to even feed their own populations.
Although I largely agree with Chomsky in regards to democratic worker control of industries, his claim is that it didn’t exist at all, which is not true. For example the independent Artels during the Stalin era were cooperative craft workshops existed then and til the end. And the attitude was that of tolerating it because of its cooperative structure looked more like socialism than capitalism. It’s not like the ideas vanished completely. Also in the DDR the cooperatives that existed ended up suing the new United German government because the cooperatives were officially not state institutions but private institutions. And there were various other examples of this. The point I am making is the idea of the socialism that Chomsky speaks of never vanished but was marginalized to state collectivism. And when Gorbachev instituted his first reforms they were in fact cooperative industries. But here is one of the real issues. The cooperative industries under Gorbachev faced the realities of market forces, some failed and some succeeded. This instability worsened the conditions of the USSR, and the one’s that succeeded sowed resentment of a new semi wealthy class. Before the USSR, Bismarck instituted what was called Staatsocialismus which gave no power to workers but provided a very basic welfare state. So perhaps a better understanding would be to call the USSR and Eastern Bloc a type of Bismarck Staatsocialismus where instead of a monarchy aristocracy and capitalist class there was the Vanguard party and a much more generous welfare state. So, although it may not be the 19th century version of socialism, it had some similarities to social democratic states with truncated guaranteed rights in some areas and expanded guaranteed rights in other areas. The guaranteed right to housing, work, education, and medicine were something. Other rights like religion were in the constitution but often violated. The question is does the USA have anything to do with liberalism? The USA got a small fraction of liberalism when it was founded, for example it still had slaves, permitted monopolies, limited voting rights etc. So one could equally make the hyperbolic charge the USA has nothing to do with liberalism. And to be fair to Lenin, he said „we don’t have socialism we have to build it.“ the writers of the US constitution actually claimed it was liberalism. And the fact that the USSR and Eastern Bloc had some resemblance to Staatsocialismus and Social Democracy should imply that such forms can and often do fall into bureaucratic tyranny especially when it is outside of the populations control altogether.
i always imagine a world or a parallel universe, where Bernie + Chomsky are presidents, with counsellor/ strategist including Carl Sagan + Neil Degrasse Tyson LOL. watching youtube while travelling intergalactic powered by fusion energy in 2010 ...
This is great! I am fascinated with and want to learn more about Karl Marx, but half of those that call themselves "Marxist" don't seem to know what they're talking about. Any suggestions for books or articles by Chomsky about Karl Marx and those who claim to have supported his principles?
Craig Bowers Chomsky generalizes what Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky(to an extent) sought to achieve. They personally never believed that the Soviet Union had reached the stage of Socialism, what they did accept was that they had initiated the transitional stage, the forceful artificial process which involved the material development of modernizing and industrializing the Soviet Union, prior to implementing democratic control. Chomsky is right when he states that Lenin and Stalin weren’t seeking to create Socialism outrightly, but he is wrong as to why. What Lenin and then Stalin sought to achieve was in reaching economic parity with the industrialized Western nations. What WW1 and the European Social Revolutions had made painfully obvious was that an international revolution was impossible and that the Soviet Union was weak defensively and offensively. The international revolution which Trotsky so adamantly supported was utopian idealism. Democratic socialism was impossible to preserve primarily due to the conditions which arose during the Civil War and also due to the fact that the Soviets possessed little control within the economy. The black market which had developed prior and post civil war was detrimental to the economic development plan which the Soviets sought. Not only that, but kulaks would cease to sell their grain when its value would depreciate, creating inflation and massive chaos within cities. This level of corruption from the peasantry, the obliterated heavy industries, the droughts and famines that caused the deaths of millions forced a different form of organization to take place. A redistribution economy needed to be emplaced, but knowing that such a move would’ve been too hasty a more tolerant approach was taken instead, thus the NEP was created. What the majority of Communists in the West such as Chomsky can’t contemplate, nor can they rise above their idealism to understand due to the relative extravagant lifestyles that they lead, is that democracy is a symptom of highly advanced and prosperous societies, not socially primitive, economically devastated nations. What Chomsky can’t contemplate from the relative luxury that he has taken for granted in his secure and dormant environment, is that the populace itself within Russia was inherently undemocratic especially within the rural areas. You have to understand that what Democracy meant to a Ukrainian Peasant tenant living under the brutal rule of landowning Cossacks was something drastically different than what it meant to an Armenian, a Georgian and many other ethnic groups which sought to gain their autonomy and independence. If true Democracy was fully implemented within the Soviet Union, this idealistic Anarcho-Syndicalistic Communitarian Utopia wouldn’t even last a day. What would've emerged instead would have been a complete catastrophe, the devolution of the state, leading to a multitude of ultra-nationalistic expansionistic ethno-centric Republics(akin to what occurred in the 90’s), that would’ve either been victims of regional militaristic imperialism(Ottoman Empire/Turkey, Imperial Japan, possibly England), or enslavement through the international markets. Democracy was not an option. It was simply impossible to implement, for if it was implemented through the means sought by the Mensheviks or the Social Revolutionaries (The Cadets sought the facade of Democracy under the rule of the Oligarchy) Russia would’ve remained a backwater second rate power reliant on hard goods from the Western Europeans and in the end the Right would re-emrge, reimplementing its brutal repressive policies.
Alison Edgley has a book about Chomsky in which she compares his ideas to Marx's. It's very insightful. It's called "The Political Thought of Noam Chomsky" or something.
@@WeltschmerzvonGavagai obviously China is communist Party running capitalism. He wanted to say this: China is state capitalist country, just like USSR, However Chinese leaders perceive this as their own special "Chinese" Form of socialism. Wolff never declared China as communist country, he just tells what people think about it. For him real or "21st century socialism" is worker self management, kind of libertarian or market socialism. This is because he's economist and not much of politician/political scholar.
@@nicholas6287 Lenin and Trotsky weren't utopian but they were actually practical people. Russia wasn't even fairly ok country to start with. Socialism is next stage of capitalism and it didn't existed in Soviet Union. Also socialism, or actually any economic policy should be international. U can see it every day. Even capitalist countries can't survive due to isolation and sanctions put by other capitalist countries. And here, soviet Union itself isolated from whole world under name of "socialism in one country". Just impossible. International revolution doesn't mean revolution to take place in all countries in given period of time. It only means that revolution should take place in leading capitalist countries. Because these countries have large economic impact on whole world, in 20th century due to colonisation and now due to globalization as a result of which change in economic policies of these countries would automatically affect those in rest of world. This is what Marx meant by internalism in communist Manifesto. Targeted countries at those time were Britain France and Germany, while now US itself would be big deal
@@shubhamwr reread my comment and then get back to me, because I’m arguing the same point you’re trying to make, but in a more complex and intense manner. Im a Marxist-Leninist, no need to lecture me on something I already understand.
I'm not a socialist, but I knew from the beginning when I heard socialism means workers owning the means of production then USSR China Cuba and such were not socialist because workers don't own anything there. It sounds more like workers owned businesses.
Workers and citizens could own a business but it was very restrictive. Read about Lenin’s NEP policy and under Stalin he ended NEP but some businesses were allowed and Artels (collective craft workshops) were permitted and tolerated, farmers after 1933 were given 40 hectors of private plot. And you could own a home and had patent right ownership could be owned and sold. But under Stalin things were mostly state collectivization. Different laws different periods.
I believe Marx and Engels also called for central planning of the economy, which implicitly requires that the business decision of the workplace be alienated from the workers there, whether you call it a nationalised industry or a co-op, since the agricultural sector of Soviet model economies tended to be co-ops, officially. If I'm right, then there is a contradiction there from the beginning, that is a legacy of the Utopian socialists who advocated planned economy. Part of Marx's Critique of Political Economy is about the chaos of market economies and their intrinsic tendency to periodic crises which destroy livelihoods and production, and the need to overcome that chaos and irrationality in the course of bringing society under conscious collective control. To that extent I think Prof. Chomsky was exaggerating the difference between Marx's conception of socialism and the Soviet practice for the sake of effect. The other thing that he seems to be ignoring is the need for a strong state to secure the revolution, and this is any revolution with remotely socialist objectives or character, against Imperialist interference from outside, the inevitable and repeated attempts to impose counter-revolution by all the methods that the US and the European colonial empires which are subsumed within the US's global hegemony, habitually employ. Speaking of counter-revolutions, it is also worth remembering that popular uprisings of the people against their overlords and wealth-owning classes have always faced violent repression and slaughter going back thousands of years, and such unreasonable responses to demands for democracy and redistribution of wealth and vilification of those movements and leaders making those demands long preceded Lenin and the October Revolution, or Coup if you prefer. Lenin and the Bolsheviks are not to be blamed for arousing the hostility of capitalists and of imperialism as if everything would have been rosy and simple for socialists and the working class to take charge of society and steer us out of capitalism if only Lenin had never published his version of _What is to be Done?_ and split the RSDWP. Lenin was in nappies when the French ruling class, in collusion with Prussian imperialism, massacred the Communards in Paris. Anti-communist "historians" tend to want to backdate all atrocities against workers, peasants and millenarians to Lenin's account, justifying one wholesale massacre after another as necessary pre-emption of a Stalin Tyranny going back to the Reformation or beyond, and use Lenin's name to assert that revolution is necessarily nothing but terrorism aimed at creating dictatorship. The question is how to restore proletarian democracy and workers' control if and when the threat of external interference from Imperialism has been overcome? This is why Marx talked about world revolution, and hoped that the revolution would start in the most highly developed industrialised capitalist economies, which controlled the great empires of the 19th century, and why the question of whether the Russian Revolution was going to spread and be joined by other European states in solidarity with it, or was going to be isolated and forced to deal with its famine, underdevelopment, mass poverty and urgent defence needs on it's own and under global blockade was so decisive after February 1917 for the political discourse inside the Bolshevik party and across the whole revolutionary spectrum it was part of.
Fairly brand new to this topic and I can appreciate the nuances Chomsky is trying to draw out here. As I hear the back and forth from those for or against socialism I always hear people say that socialism failed miserably enough in the 20th for us to throw it away. Chomsky here is saying all those examples simply WERE NOT ACTUAL socialism if you consider the absolute dogma to be workers control of production. So my question would be for Chomsky, are there any examples of that ACTUAL socialism being practiced at some decent enough degree that we can analyze data from? Anyone have any examples they would like to refer me to? Thanks a ton, God bless you all.
@@WeltschmerzvonGavagai Right right but those nation states don't practice the original socialism that Chomsky was talking about right? Workers ownership of production? Do you know of any examples where that core he was talking about has been practiced sir?
@@kojipreston7662 the nearest thing we currently have to the kind of bottom-up, directly democratic socialism Chomsky refers to is in Rojava. there are lots of historical examples - anarchist Catalonia, Makhnovia in Ukraine, the Paris Commune, Soviet workers’ councils before 1918 - but none lasted very long, at least not long enough to be considered anything more than experiments
His letters... Marx has a lot of writings. Sadly, most of it is dry and boring. If you can read it and understand it, kudos, because there is plenty of nuggets there. Some of the things he predicted were later proved wrong, but a great deal has been proved right.
I have not read many books on comminism but i always knew the core problem is curroption and personal agenda actually in any given system with almost any ideology if it's applied with intgrity everything will be fine .
also, i've heard leninists say that for, at least a few decades, the ussr didn't have wage labor. they had a system where workers got a minimum pay and if they exceeded the level of production represented by that minimum the full value of that extra was added onto their pay (or something like that lol i only just learned that the other day, still shaky on it). so is chomsky wrong when he claims the ussr had wage labor or is he referring to a later time in the ussr (i think wage labor was reintroduced in the 60s?)?
hhhhh They got paid according to the quantity and quality of their work. In practice this was “amount” based. Meaning, if you’re a coal miner, your quota is let’s say 1 ton of coal. You get a base salary for 1 ton of coal. Every percentage you mine over that (i.e 10% [1.1 ton], 15% [1.15 ton], 20% [1.2 ton] etc. It differs between different enterprises and fields) is paid as a particular percentage of your base salary on top of your already received base salary. For example, you got paid a base-salary of 300 roubles after meeting your quota, but you mined 1.2 tons (20% over your quota). 20% above quota is paid out as I.e 30% your base salary, so you get paid an extra 100 roubles. In the end, base salary 300 roubles + over fulfilling quota by 20% (100 roubles) = 400 roubles The USSR was Socialist, all it takes is learning some history to understand this.
@@SEAL341 Yes. Also, google is extremely helpful for this. Or use DuckDuckGo. However, whether or not that was how workers got paid has nothing to do with whether or not the USSR was socialist.
@@SEAL341 Ah, I was referring to Biggie ventura8's last line. He concludes that "The USSR was Socialist, just read history" after spouting all those details about wages, as if it somehow followed from that.
Chomsky misses a prime reason for a dedicated (vanguard) party leading the overthrow of capitalism and the attempt at socialism. I'm not an expert! After the Soviets took power and deposed the Tsar, it was believed by most leaders (including the Bolsheviks) that Russia should form some kind of (US style?) constitutional or representative govt. Kerensky was to lead this till Oct 1917 (roughly 7 months). Two things happened that convinced a majority in the Soviets and the majority of workers to the Bolsheviks. 1. Kerensky wasn't awake to the situation and did nothing to defend the Soviets when White Russians were going to overwhelm the Soviets and when it happened he begged the Bolsheviks to fight Kornilov (the white Russian general). This made Kerensky look weak and uninformed. The workers and Soviets then celebrated that the reds organized a militia and beat Kornilov saving a immediate defeat of the revolution. 2. Kerensky would not think beyond a Constitutional democracy. In the months between Feb and Oct 1917 the Russian people could not help but notice that the Soviets were thinking, and acting like a government even though the Soviets had been formed to create a parliamentary govt. The Soviets ran food, phones, rail, and managed to keep Petrograd fed. The Bolshevik slogan "All Power To the Soviets" was at once shocking, and at the same time, merely pointing what was already happening. The Soviets held power, elected representatives and didn't need a Constitutional setup that might even divide the workers from policy. Again the Bolsheviks and Lenin in particular led in seeing the Soviets not as a transition to but an embodiment of govt. Kerensky was still head of the "Transitional Government" and trying issuing orders to the Soviets. The next and largest protest of 1917 was against Kerensky and the Provisional Government that had been set up by the Soviets. This protest, led by the Bolsheviks, consolidated the thinking (all power to the Soviets) necessary for the revolution to survive and that Russia no longer sought a parliamentary form of govt. It wasn't a coup, at least not in Oct 1917. Now comes the hard part for the revolution when Soviet democracy disappears - a huge backward country (and revolution) tries to survive WW! and a civil war that destroys factories and farms, and both kills and starves millions. The civil war (and any war) required central authority to succeed against 15 foreign armies on 5000 miles of border. The wars have reduced Russia to 1/4 its pre-revolution size. Famine resulting from the total internal disruption of a civil war leaves the Soviets depleted of energy both from fighting over vast area, and reduced life to mere survival for the most Russians. Lenin's response was the "war economy". This is where one decides where the last food and other surviving resources and labor will go. Also during the civil war new political factions (particularly those still wanting a parliamentary govt. and blaming the Soviets and/or Bolsheviks for the disaster that is daily life in Russia) form and a fight within the revolution itself fed by deprivation begins. Lenin decides that the revolution itself must be held together long enough that the revolution in Germany can save Russia. The drastic steps of forming secret police to fend off internal factions and draconian economic decrees to resurrect farming and industry begin. Soviet democracy is now dead and awaiting life support from abroad. Lenin was also dying himself at this time and has mistakenly has appointed Stalin. Before he dies he realized Stalin is not psychologically fit and appoints Trotsky, but Stalin is already Party Secretary, has more support at the top levels and wins the battle between himself and Trotsky to lead. The Russian revolution already largely dead (from todays point of view) becomes a shadow reality still able to defeat Germany in WW2 but no longer recognizable in its origins. My take is that Lenin and the reds saved the revolution from Kornilov and simply recognized the fact that the Soviets themselves were govt. Lenin was defacto leader of Russia because he had the thinking necessary for a totally new reality (Soviet rule) in the historical development of govts and in revolutionary Russia. Chomsky fails to lay out the quickly moving events and shifts in the Russian revolution between 1917 and 1922, and for that reason is too quick and unable to accurately judge events. He also is a proponent of one of the antagonist theories that vied for leadership in revolutionary Russia. He isn't being neutral, nor can anybody really, in looking at this revolution,
He says at 21:00 that by mid 1918 the Soviets and factories councils and constituent assemblies were destroyed and Lenin was instituted as the "leader" - of the army, etc.
@@jeffmoore9487 You didn't click on the hypertext link to get the actual quote from Chomsky? I can do that for you. First I'll repost the email response I received from Chomsky in 2001: From: Noam Chomsky Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:56:25 -0500 To: Drew W Hempel (by way of Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Minnesota Dear Drew Hempel, God save us from our friends -- not for the first time. I'm a little surprised that Brokaw would credit a source like that. Surely he wouldn't in the case of anyone who falls within approved doctrinal bounds. You're quite right about activists not being willing to read. I get a good measure of it when publishers send sales records or in the signing frenzies after I give talks. In both cases it's overwhelmingly the small pamphlets with interviews, etc.; easy reads, and short. But it's not just activists. Same with academic scholars. It's very rare for them to go beyond the limits of the guild, a practice far more pronounced in the social sciences, history, etc., than in the sciences, something I've observed from a lot of first-hand experience in the last 1/2-century. It's too bad about Guerin-Rocker, and in fact all of the rich literature on anarchism. Contemporary anarchists -- at least those who use the name -- seem to divide, mostly, between people who don't want to read and those who are immersed in often arcane scholarship. There are exceptions, of course, but the tendencies are noticeable. It was quite different in the days when workers education was a normal part of everyday life for great numbers of people, and labor-based media were common fare. No plans for reissue of At War with Asia or For Reasons of State, much to my regret. In fact, they were scarcely looked at in the first place. Wrong story. Even left academics don't want to hear such things, and it went -- and goes -- beyond the interests of most activists. How far the anti-war movement was from understanding anything that was going on was revealed pretty dramatically by the reception of McNamara's awful memoirs -- actually welcomed by leading figures as a vindication of their stand. Few could comprehend what an incredible display of apologetics it was. Wrote a few things about it, which I noticed could not be understood even by left academics, for the most part. The Party Line is much more influential than many think. Thanks for sending along the excerpt from what you've been writing. Interesting, and well done I think -- but then, I would. I've read some of what Zerzan has written, under various names. Occasionally, out of curiosity, I've written brief letters asking if he could supply some of the sources for particular quotes, which I know he has invented (though I didn't say so). I'm constantly promised that they'll be coming. They won't, of course. This is just a silly game, in my opinion, defaming the good name of anarchism -- not for the first time; there's a rich history of that. Noam
@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 I don't see a hyperlink. I read what you re-printed from Chomsky. He's a good writer but I don't get anything that applies to the vid. Maybe I'm being slow, and I'm certainly not real good with digital tools. Not sure why you said Lenin was the leader of the army. I don't think its a question anyway. It's a given. The kind of fact that can be agreed on pretty easily. I also don't know what your purpose was with your last post about the destruction of the Soviet infrastructure during the civil war?
Seems silly arguing Lenin destroyed socialism when he himself understood what was going on and that it was the only way to oppose counter-revolution. I can hardly believe Noam is not aware of the intervention by a dozen countries after the revolution. Lots of points are not quite substantiated. > Says 'socialism can be built in the most economically developed countries' > Blames Lenin for building a temporary state capitalism (Russia at that point was still far from capitalism, most of capital came from abroad thus penetrating the economy. Lenin saved the country, plenty of evidence there, but Chomsky still lays yet more stress on 'AUTHORITARIAN'. Sir, it couldn't be otherwise. I mean, that's a ridiculous claim that the country would just slip into 'proper socialism' - it'd be gone within, if not days, than weeks.
Nikolas Torn your mediocre understanding about what he said leads you into some woods not even you know how did you get into them. Let me simplify it for you. The core definition of communism does not include any word that says dictatorship, totalitarians or anything of that fashion. Left wing communists like Rosa Luxembourg and a anarco sindicalists understood very well that any hierarchy of power leads only to corruption. History prove them right. What is missing in this compilation is that communism as defined clearly was never implemented in any country ever.
Alex Rock god bless the child. Go read Communist Manifesto NOW, you undergraduate aspiring idealist. (Hint: not a word about hierarchy, you thought it up in your brainless heads when in reality nobody ever wrote about that).
@@clockfixer5049 LOL only stupid people like you think tha comunnism manifesto advocates for a totalitarian dictatorship i'm not a comunnist i'm social democrat but hilarous how the right wing brainless people think that anything from the left only results in totalitarian dictatorships that just shows how stupuid most right wing people are
Classical criticism on classical Marxism. Those points which are highlighted by professor Chomsky as flaws or shortcomings are interpreted by the Neo Marxist in a way different from the classical Marxism.
Karx Marx always aim to Western world!!! Not you Eastern!!! His mind true changes the West Country more than anything!!! The Jewish never aim to your world East countries
After listening to Noam, and reading comments here, I'm kind of interested in learning a bit more about socialism, or at least actually hearing/reading about it from pro-socialist/marxist writer's perspective. I do wonder if it is even possible for a socialist society to work in practice, and not just on paper, due to the extremely bad implementations we have seen in recent history (although many people here are commenting, and Noam says it too, that Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam are not really examples of socialism. I don't know if that is necessarily true...) The only successful roll-outs of partial socialist societies I can think of are the Scandinavian countries, which consist of incredibly homogeneous populations, with vast natural resources compared to their relative population sizes. I don't like our two party system, I am not a fan of Wall Street, I don't like special interest groups' power over our executive and legislative branches of government, and I question the size of the 'defense' spending of the US, and I don't like our profitized/bastardized healthcare system, but I am otherwise conservative. I wish we could balance the national budget, I am religious and I am pro-religious freedom, I think that separation of church and state is necessary, however, I don't think we need to wipe our Christian heritage off the face of our public places. I don't see harm in recognizing other major faiths in our public places too (except for satanists, which is not a major faith. I saw a funny article showing a design for a multi-faith monument, which included a statue of Satan with children playing on his lap in a park. Let's not get there people, that is insane.). I believe in the sovereignty of the USA. I wish that immigration was not such a politically divided topic, but I think it is so on purpose, because I believe that it gets in the way of a common-sense legal immigration process, and draws out the drama of the issue. Democrats and Republicans have really fouled this issue up due to both taking a very hard-line stance (lock them up vs. no borders, no process). I think I may be rambling, but I wanted to illustrate some of my stances to show how I fit into the current political system via my ideology. The two party system doesn't address nuance, and ultimately, both parties have the same shortcomings of governance, and differentiate themselves over extremely divisive, yet ultimately inconsequential issues. For example, abortion law, immigration policy wont matter much when the crushing national debt and other liabilities of the nation fall apart, social security collapses, and destroys the monetary stability of the nation. I think Reps/Dems are all complicite in perpetuating our fiscal woes, and bowing to special interests. I often wonder at this point if our current form of governance is sustainable. Thus, I may have some reading to do.
Britty2Hottie be aware there are barely no sane “ communist” here speaking english. Other languages neither. For example Wolff praise china like hell, which is something like a 4th reich in my 👁.not talking about Michael parenti, avakian etc and those mad guy are praised by mainstream leftists. Look my community tab, Noam was mad in 1967 when he praise china, talking with Arendt. Thing about original socialism, if u do some research, ppl like Owen, did experiment where? Possibly in churches or similar environments. If u compare Christianity with original socialism there are some similarities. Sounds crazy? Perhaps to most muricans who eat too much propaganda. Christianity and socialism in it’s original idea, want something better, on earth, something should be but not used to be. A beyond world, a better world. Etc, just a begging, might help your reading.
Anyone else disagree around 25:30ish where chomsky says the fall of the soviet union is good for socialism? I get his argument, but does the place splintering, declining birthrate, sacking of the state and making it into an ultranationalist cesspool make it any better? Don't think so.
Its a victory of socialism bcz a totalitarian anti marxism who self claimed communism state collapsed but it doesn't means the new regime is a socialism marxism state
Bertrand Russell was also a total hawk regarding the Soviet Union. He was deathly afraid of Soviet proliferation. Plus, it's historically accurate to compare the Bolshevik uprising to the Nazi uprising; all of the leftist originations were destroyed, & dissenters incarcerated or executed.
Anti-idealism is the ongoing blind spot of Marxist-Leninism. Lenin’s essay on Kant reveals a very crude man who believed that Kant‘s intentions were to simply obscure reality. Interestingly this assessment is similar to Ayn Rand Objectivists almost as if she appropriated it from Lenin. Kantian philosophy was the basis on which the structure of Marxism was built-particularly as it was developed by Hegel. Hegel's dialectical method, which was taken up by Karl Marx, was an extension of the method of reasoning by antinomies that Kant used. People think that because Marx created dialectical Materialism that he was entirely anti-idealist. This is a poor reading. There are foundational ideas in Marx which are idealist in nature most notably his theory of alienation. What does in mean to be alienated from oneself and one’s own nature, this implies that we are alienated ti something a priori to our social and historical conditionings.
Except their work is completely demolished by the historic facts. If you examine the history of China and Russia from a purely economic perspective, putting aside the genocidal atrocities, what happened there was nothing less than economic miracles. Socialism turned the collapsed nation of Russia into an industrial powerhouse that went on to invent space travel. And China of course went on to drastically eradicate poverty and to rival the United United as their main economic competition. Sowell and Friedman are buffoons that cling to debunked nonsense for emotional reasons. No thinking person pays attention to them anymore.
Supernautiloid this is indicative of the new reality where basic facts of history are up for grab based on one’s ideological lens. I thought much like you until I considered that perhaps what I think is informed by an ideological lens that I happen to wear. Nations succeed economically, at least, when they adopt free market principles, regardless of the form of government.
@namaan123 Except there is no evidence for that whatsoever. Everyone has an ideological lens, because we are only human. That’s why we rely on empiricism and verifiable facts to show us the pathways towards truth. And the objective reality is that the great economic successes of nations, including the United States, happened specifically because their markets were NOT free. The US is the prime example of this. It’s markets are not even remotely free and they never have been. That’s why it grew into an economic powerhouse. Conversely, when countries actually do try to apply free market principles, the few times it’s actually been authentically implemented, it has always ended in disaster and ruin.
@@Supernautiloid No, we hope our empiricism overcomes our peculiar ideology, but this is generally not the case. Your understanding despite all evidence to the contrary is testament to this. You may want to give Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell a try, even if it's just to prove me and him wrong.
@Supernautiloid In fact I should say that empiricism and rationality falling prey to our ideologies, to our egos, is the human story throughout history. It's just now becoming central due to the vast proliferation and ubiquity of "facts" in this age of information.
Marx said socialism will take on different forms in different societies, based on means of production, history, political culture. In that sense, Marxism is little different to capitalism, democracy, Christianity, Islam or any other ideology. E.G. Capitalism the Catholic Church, Islam, even democracy - are very different in the Philippines, India, Egypt etc to what they are in the West. Brutal conditions, create brutal politics. So I think it's naive to believe Libertarian socialism would've lasted in Russia and China. Even today, Russia and China are not democratic, let alone when they were emerging from feudalism. In many developing countries, the forces of reaction are too strong to subdue democratically. In fact in developed nations we are reaching a point whereby reactionaries may need to be suppressed it's high time we deconstructed Liberalism and democracy, not seeing them as ideologies per se, but rather as superstructures of imperialism. Luxuries of the strong wealthy countries with large petty bourgeois populations trusted to vote in accordance with elite interests. As the West gets poorer, and reactionaries become more dangerous, the Western Left may need to exert more force. The consequences of not doing so could be catastrophic for the poor of the world.
Original Liberalism was an Anti-capitalist populist philosophy. There are clear examples of this with Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. I can’t go into everything but aside from guaranteed rights of citizens, both we’re vehemently anti-monopoly, and it’s important to know what monopoly meant: when the interests of the few dominate over the interests of the many. And both advocated for redistribution of wealth in two different ways but same principle. Look up Jefferson‘s letter to Madison in regards to taxing land monopolies and you get a clear idea of this but there are numerous writings on similar issues. Jefferson was intentionally not invited to the constitutional convention and Jefferson had many objections to the document. It is much clearer to say that by appealing to liberalism the new government could claim to be legitimate (consent of the governed). But in reality only half of liberalism was ever implemented, the half that did not threaten wealth. I personally believe that real original liberalism is archaic we no longer live in an agrarian society so a lot of its form is no longer tenable. But from liberalism we can extrapolate a set of important necessary ideas as to what an economically independent individual may look like and how it should be applied in modern society. The agrarian focus was that of self sufficient independent labor (sovereign individuals). Which could be translated now as the right to self sufficiency in the least and freedom from coercion of labor. So-called liberal democracies are obviously oligarchies which use liberalism and democracy as rhetoric to obscure reality. But certain aspects are in fact in the law and we benefit from them to some extent. But IMO any socialism which does not square fairly with the achievements of liberalism will in fact create just another tyranny.
@@matthewkopp2391 Adam Smith was the economic guru of liberalism and still is to a large extent. And the failures of Jefferson and Paine speak volumes, that's the way liberalism always goes. Everyone has free speech but the rich can afford more of it than anyone else. And liberal democracies are tyrannies, they just deploy money as a means of control rather than violence, but when the money stops working they soon opt for violence. But Marxism is a completely new paradigm in world history so is often misunderstood. Marxists don't see liberals as people with rights, they just see them as class enemies, as criminals out to swindle the poor. Liberals are seen as bourgeois enablers of fascism, by granting freedom to fascists they are fascist enablers. We saw what happened in Germany with liberals that took control in the 1920s -sorry but anyone protecting the rights of fascists after 80 million deaths, really are degenerates. And how is that opposed to tyranny, when black, Jewish, Latino, homosexuals have to live in fear of the revival of fascism? Sorry but locking up fascists is just locking up criminals as I see it. You see Marxists see property as tyranny, religion as tyranny; you don't get free from tyranny by having religious freedom or access to property rights So what you see as Marxist tyranny is really just a different jurisprudence. Don't break Marxist laws and there's really nothing to worry about. As in don't fright against the working class interest. Don't profiteer, don't support fascists, don't enable fascists, don't enable the forces of religion to swindle the working class. These are pretty simple rules, and make rational sense. Much what you call freedom is just freedom to commit crime from a Marxist point of view.
"working people take control of production". Easy to say when is someones else's production. I wonder if professor Chomsky has ever let people take control of his production. I guess he hadnt, because his name, his reputation, his money, his future was on the line. I assume a guy this smart doesnt want to have someone else speak for him or mess with this ideas. This is a major contradiction that i find with educated people defending socilalism. I would say, how about your first run a company, know what its like to come up with an idea, execute it, invest in it, hire people, assume responsibilities, have the government take 40% of your profit on a monthly basis and then listen to a charlatan who has never stepped inside a factory telling you how its supposed to be ran?
Well read Jefferson‘s ideas of taxing monopolies out of existence and ask yourself if we have real liberalism? The USA adopted some liberal ideas of guaranteed rights of man but the specific ones which were adopted were the ones which didn’t threaten wealth to much. Jefferson employed Madison to include freedom from monopolies in the Bill of Rights. The same issue can be said of the Soviets. Is communist vanguardism even remotely democratic? Lenin certainly had socialist ideas but he didn’t adopt the one‘s which threatened his power. Just like the federalist did not adopt the liberal ideas that threatened their wealth
Do you not know how to Google? And what "socialism" are you blabbering about? The only form of socialism I've seen in my lifetime is that of Corporate socialism.
@@erc9468 Venezuela has been a petrostate since the 1920s. It's always had a problem with corruption and capital flight, before the socialists took power. It got worse when they took power for the same reason any other country does when they elect a socialist - economic warfare. Latin America has a history of imperialism and class divisions between the light skinned compradores and dark skinned natives. Socialism for them was more about asserting autonomy over their affairs and helping the natives (themselves) who had been subjugated for so long.
Its time for a new word for socialism. Same core principle, just a fresh start. Social democracy is one such word but it too long. How about Workmocracy, caplite, or something.
Headphones help, yet you are right. Adjusting the frequency levels could help eliminate the background white noise. This is very technical and time consuming, so for now we listen to the VHS quality.
@@tarasivashchuk1973 chomsky uses the same propaganda technics he criticize in "manufacturing consent " for capitalist interest here. Probably something to do with the CIA funding his MIT research.
@@tarasivashchuk1973 Don't, it's idiotic. The idea is that since MIT has done a lot of work in support of the Pentagon, you know research and development of high technology. That if someone teaches there, then they must secretly be a CIA operative that is saddled up to the state. Pushing liberal propaganda as some kind of leftist gatekeeper.
"My god, I've never heard of a man who was more empirically wrong." - Zizek. Does he misunderstand Marx's background and evolution, or is he just being disingenuous? The speaker in the third clip has an excellent point.
Einen der größten Männer der Geschichte zu beleidigen. XD Die Bolschewiki haben wenigstens was getan. Die Anarchisten kriegen nichts anderes auf die Reihe als alle anderen schlecht zu reden. Wer Lenin als Antidemokrat und Antisozialist bezeichnet ist dumm und schwachsinnig.
@@WeltschmerzvonGavagai It's just two different systems claiming they are more superior than the other, it's an restless game which I grew tired to watch.
To reduce what happened in Russia or the Soviet Union to few lines doesn't add any value to the socialist argument. In fact all he does is repeat the same argument over and over without elaborating on it. Nearly every Marxist agreed that a popular revolution that would sweep away tsarism was long overdue, they only disagreed on the nature of the revolution. the majority felt it was a bourgeois or democratic revolution, but Trotsky argued that since the Russian bourgeoisie was in its infancy and thoroughly reactionary they could never be expected to play a similar role like their French counterparts had done. Lenin and Trotsky both agreed that the Russian economy was too backward to build socialism, in fact it was Stalinist propaganda which claimed Russia to be a communist state (which by the way is an oxymoron), Trotsky wrote extensively on this and exposed it for what it truly was. My problem with Professor Chomsky is his failure to delve deeper into the Russian Revolution - I know he believes October was a coup, but what about February - and this is unfortunate because with his knowledge of socialism and anarchism he could've made a genuine contribution to our understanding of the 20th century. Its easy to point out what is wrong in society, the real work is when you trying to provide solutions for all these problems and I honestly feel here is were Chomsky has been found wanting.
There it is: he says the rhetoric isn't helpful. It's somehow helpful to agree with anticommunist propaganda that socialism has never worked?? Lmao we Leninists will continue to organize while Chomsky sits in his ivory tower and cries about Lenin being too mean
@Salmon Lenin was not a mass murderer. He saved lives the Tsarist regime would have taken. He pulled out of WW1, and freed the serfs. And about helpful, I think we agree about what he's saying, my point is that he's swallowing the MSM narrative whole, that people don't think socialism has ever worked. Why concede this gigantic point? People are not stupid, they have just been propagandized. So why agree with the media's lies?? Socialism has worked, everywhere it's been tried, but neither Chomsky nor the capitalists will ever say so.
@booseyhey I think this is arguing semantics. Chomsky says USSR wasn't socialist, I say it was, but we agree it was a socialist-oriented project, and our main disagreement is whether to accept the MSM narrative that it was an evil empire, or to take a critical stance and examine the Soviet Union holistically, and praise the gains in workers rights and standard of living.
@Salmon I assume you're an anarchist. What should the Soviet Union have done during WW2 if it had splintered into chaos following the revolution? If you think any rule is unjust, then in reality you just get one leader overthrowing another repeatedly. You see this in countries like Burkina Faso
@Salmon Your distinction between just and injust rule is antimaterialist. What colors a country's rule is the ruling class. In the Soviet Union the ruling class was the working class, judging by their focus and actions.
@@younggotti8195 You haven't had a valid argument yet. Just a bald opinion. Please be assured I understand your opinion. Its just patently invalid as an argument or claim to evidence.
