"The Soviet Union Versus Socialism" - By Noam Chomsky

You spit all of this unsubstantiated nonsense than say "Read a history book" That is great, so hilarious



Freedom and liberty is overrated, right wingers use those words for propaganda purposes, for example, dumping toxic waste in a river to save money is no longer pollution, its "FREEDOM!!!", discriminating against gay people is no longer intolerance, its "FREEDOM!!!!", and so on and so on. The only reason you use freedom as a buzz word is because it sounds nice when you promote it and it sounds bad when we denounce it because than it sounds like we are denouncing freedom, which we are essentially but only certain freedoms, bourgeoisie freedom to be more precise.

"And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations." - Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto

 

The projection is so strong in this post, you complain about Chomsky's "pseudo-intellectual psycho-babble" than what do you go on to do? Spew your very own "pseudo-intellectual psycho-babble" You are such a hypocrite its hilarious, the funniest part though is you cant see it

 

William Buckely once tried that, the interview is on You Tube, and Chomsky tore him apart with facts.

To say Chomsky was debunked means you have not paid attention to the debates he has been in. You cannot debunk Chomsky, the absurdity of that is devoid of any intellectual honesty at all. Not that I am a follower or fan of Chomsky, but I have listened to him debate right wingers. No debunking every occurred, for you can only debunk idiots. And he is no idiot.

 

Perfect system if you are dealing with creatures who are not self aware and are all equally driven. In the real world such a system you describe invariably winds up with fewer and fewer producers and more and more people sitting at home watching TV. This is why many on the left tend to start blaming various and sundry tools for man's short comings because in order for these wondrous systems to work they are perforce required to make more of human beings than they either are or can become.

 

For centuries the starving poor have been labelled "lazy bums" and all of that nonsense, for your main argument against socialism to be "it will create lazy bums" is really not going to affect my position, its only strengthening it. When the Irish were starving on the doorstep of the richest nation in history, the English simply said the Irish were lazy and should work harder if they dont want to starve. Needless to say, they starved by the hundreds of thousands despite how incredibly hard they and their kids worked. The concept that if you arent making enough money to live its because you are lazy is absolute utter bull(*)(*)(*)(*), plain and simple. That propaganda piece does not work on me, not even slightly. In fact, its what I expected you to say, its been the same talking point for Reich Wingers like you for literally centuries.

 

You need to read up more on the Irish Potato Famine because you've gotten it completely wrong. So wrong in fact that both patriotic Irishmen and Brits in earlier days would have punched you in the nose for even suggesting such an ahistorical bit of garbage. They weren't trying to starve out the Irish because they thought them too lazy but because they thought them to be a bunch of trouble makers and Catholics into the bargain, which by the way the English and Scots Protestants thought even worse than being rebellious.

 

So because they didnt like them for being Catholics, which is true, that means there was NO other reasons for them not liking the Irish? Thats whats called a "strawman", the two are not mutually exclusive, they did hate them for being Catholics yes of course, but they also thought they were lazy drunkards.

http://www.victoriana.com/history/irish-political-cartoons.html

Stereotyping of the Irish Immigrant in 19th Century Periodicals
"Cartoons for magazines such as Harper's Weekly featured cartoons by Thomas Nast and depicted Irish immigrants as ape-like barbarians prone to lawlessness, laziness and drunkenness. "St. Patrick's Day, 1867...Rum, Blood, The Day We Celebrate" shows a riot with policemen and ape-like Irishmen."

"The Irish were stereotyped as uncivilized, unskilled and impoverished and were forced to work at the least desired occupations and live in crowded ethnic ghettoes."

This is EXACTLY what we do to black people today, absolutely exactly the same thing. Guess how the Irish got most people to stop discriminating against them? By turning their back to black people and oppressing them.

http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/gen...came-white-immigrants-in-mid-19th-century-us/
"When the Irish became white: immigrants in mid-19th century US: Inspired by Black History Month, Patrick McKenna shares what he has learned of the history of Irish immigrants and Abolition in the US in the mid-19th century

When Irish (poor, and Catholic) immigrants landed in the mid-19th century US they changed. They jettisoned the core of their identity – the long struggle for freedom. They joined in the oppression of African-Americans. Since I understand that this may seem controversial please allow me to explain.
In those days, the Irish immigrants had much in common with African-Americans; they might be nicknamed “Negroes turned inside out” while African-Americans would be “smoked Irish”. A quip, attributed to an African-American, went something like this: “My master is a great tyrant, he treats me like a common Irishman.” In the census of 1850, the term “mulatto” appears for the first time, due primarily to inter-marriage between Irish and African-Americans.
The white, Protestant business establishment believed amalgamation between the races would begin with the Irish and African-Americans. The resulting united front of labour would have increased wages, something the establishment did not want.
However this “alliance of the oppressed” did not happen. The Irish supported the continuance of slavery, turning their backs on the Abolitionist cause, despite the urgings of Daniel O’Connell."

 

A thought exercise in which I miserably failed.

I got his conclusion: The society created by Lenin and Trotsky, and furthered by Stalin was not a socialist society.

I couldn't penetrate the several paragraphs for brief, illustrative premises. (My bad)

Could the OP, if so inclined, fashion Mr. Chomsky's argument in the standard format:

A) since this, and

B) because of this

C) therefore: "The society created by Lenin and Trotsky, and furthered by Stalin was not a socialist society."

Brevity could indeed be the soul of wit.

 

A) Since Marx believed in a society ran by and for the people, Direct Democracy, he was not an Authoritarian and believed deeply in people forming a Commune (Communism) so they can work together and destroy the Elitist system of oligarchs running the country.

B) Because of this reasonable and popular perspective on society, Lenin and Stalin were able to take the widely accepted notion of Socialism and manipulate it for their own gain, they helped the Revolution and the Socialists set up the first Democracy ever in Russia and began voting, Lenin received less than a quarter of the vote and got extremely pissed off so he can into parliament with guns and took it over, abolishing all left wing Socialist parties and only leaving his Party of Lenin remaining. Lenin was shot in the face by another Socialist for doing this, most left wing Socialists were heavily critical of Lenin right from the very beginning.

C) Therefore, since Lenin went against just about every single thing Marx stood for and what left wing socialists stood for, he was obviously not a socialist, he used the name of Socialism to rally support from people who didnt know any better, they were masters of propaganda just like America. Lenin was admittedly not a left wing Socialist/Communist, he even wrote a book literally called "Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" where he openly attacks left wingers in the socialist and communist system. As most people know, the very concept of Socialism and Communism is left wing, so for him to despise the left wing while also being a socialist would be an oxymoron, its simply not possible, its like saying hes a married bachelor, logically it is not possible.

 

good post, will digest - and get back to you , but surely Noam is a Libertarian Socialist anyhow so doubt he'll agree too much with Lenin and Stalin, Trotsky etc..?

 

He despises them, although as far as im concerned he does like Trotsky a bit because Trotsky was also a bit more libertarian leaning, at least relative to Lenin and Stalin. I took a political compass test and it said im a EXTREMELY far left libertarian,

You should take the test too because I say you are not a left winger so lets see what the test says ok?
http://www.politicalcompass.org/test

 

Excellent. Thanks for the lead.

Perhaps we could eliminate more sentences and bring the point into clarity.

A) Marx was an advocate of communism through direct democracy.

B) Lenin fairly lost a direct democracy election, and resorted to force to gain power.

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C) Therefore Lenin was not a practitioner of communism through direct democracy.

This argument seems sound to me.

 

Indeed, that is the gist of what I said and is accurate

 

How's their economy doing right now?

 

Too bad every quote you just gave comes from American sources and not British ones.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

 

This is how it goes, Lenin used to be the one that best understood socialism, then clearly it's Stalin and Trotsky, but Stalin said f--k Trotsky I'm the one that understand socialism the best! Then came Kryuchev, who said f--k Stalin and his purging and his money envelope, I know socialism the best, and then came Leonid Brezhnev, who basically said "my goodness they were all lying, and I need to start a war in Afghanistan to save my butt!"... Until now... it's two dollar pricks that hadn't read more than 10 pages of Marx claiming to be the true practitioner of socialism.

Marxism is just a religion, like any other religion, it has sects, cults and factions, with each claiming to be the only true way of salvation.

Nevertheless it reminds me of a great joke:

 

From your own link you posted,

"The government hoped that they would not "stifle private enterprise" and that their actions would not act as a disincentive to local relief efforts. The new Whig administration, influenced by the doctrine of laissez-faire (Capitalism),[71] believed that the market would provide the food needed and refused to intervene against food exports to England, then halted the previous government's food and relief works, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people without any work, money or food.[72] Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of government relief, limited the Government's food aid programme because of a firm belief in laissez-faire (Capitalism).[74] He thought "the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson"."


As you can see, the British government refused to help them because they believed in laissez-faire capitalism, exactly as I said initially, this genocide was purely the fault of capitalism, even according to your own damn link you posted. Maybe you should read your links before posting next time?

 

Maybe you should recall that I was addressing your notion that the Brits thought the Irish lazy. That was a purely American invention. Nothing in there states exactly what lesson Travelyan thought God was trying to teach the Irish. Given the thinking of the day it was likely about dropping that Catholic nonsense and becoming loyal subjects of the British crown.

 

Claiming Marxism is a religion is utter nonsense, either you are ignorant and dont even know the definition of religion or you are willfully spreading propaganda, I believe its the latter.

 

Regardless, they were Capitalists who did this and they used the free market to do it.

"The free market has never been free, because the market does not regulate itself, its manipulated like a puppet" - Immortal Technique

 

No under a free market the excess get exported. The same processes were at work in Ireland as they were in the Ukraine 70 odd years later. the people most directly effected - the starving - weren't given a choice in what to do with the product of their own labors. That ain't capitalism that's government.

 

You think laborers get a choice in what to do with the products they make under Capitalism? Do you even know what the (*)(*)(*)(*) Capitalism is? Holy hell. So are you saying if a laborer makes a pillow in a pillow factory, he gets to decide what to do with that pillow? NO he doesnt, its absolutely foolish to pretend a laborer who makes something gets any control over that product when its finished, everyone knows the poor work for the rich and the rich decide where those products go and who to sell them too, that is Capitalism. Even other Right Wingers will disagree with you on this its so incredibly ignorant, but they wont do it until I bring it up to them because when one of their own tribe says something ignorant and blatantly false they tend to ignore it.

 

When they are small farmers as is the case here they certainly do. English law had dispossessed the Irish farmers of their land, giving it to absentee landlords.

 

This was all before the Great Famine, those laws were already largely reformed by than,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Landlords_and_tenants
"In the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish Catholics had been prohibited by the penal laws from purchasing or leasing land, from voting, from holding political office, from living in or within 5 miles (8 km) of a corporate town, from obtaining education, from entering a profession, and from doing many other things necessary for a person to succeed and prosper in society. The laws had largely been reformed by 1793, and in 1829, Irish Catholics could again sit in parliament following the Act of Emancipation.[13]"

 

But apparently they still didn't own their own land since only an idiot lets friends and family starve in order to make an extra nickel somewhere down the road. To say nothing about the fact that complaints of absentee landlords and there abuses persist at least until1900.