"The Soviet Union Versus Socialism" - By Noam Chomsky

The main attack against Socialism is the Soviet Union, so lets deal with this issue, here is Noam Chomsky a great intellectual and he explains in 1986 how and why the Soviet Union is not Socialist and why America and Russia say it is, each for their own mutual gain.

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1986----.htm
"The Soviet Union Versus Socialism
Noam Chomsky
Our Generation, Spring/Summer, 1986

"When the world's two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and molded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction.
It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist -- surely any serious Marxist -- should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism.

As for the world's second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the 'socialist' dungeon.

The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period.

One may take note of another device used effectively by State capitalist ideologists in their service to existing power and privilege. The ritual denunciation of the so-called 'socialist' States is replete with distortions and often outright lies. Nothing is easier than to denounce the official enemy and to attribute to it any crime: there is no need to be burdened by the demands of evidence or logic as one marches in the parade. Critics of Western violence and atrocities often try to set the record straight, recognizing the criminal atrocities and repression that exist while exposing the tales that are concocted in the service of Western violence. With predictable regularity, these steps are at once interpreted as apologetics for the empire of evil and its minions. Thus the crucial Right to Lie in the Service of the State is preserved, and the critique of State violence and atrocities is undermined.

It is also worth noting the great appeal of Leninist doctrine to the modern intelligentsia in periods of conflict and upheaval. This doctrine affords the 'radical intellectuals' the right to hold State power and to impose the harsh rule of the 'Red Bureaucracy,' the 'new class,' in the terms of Bakunin's prescient analysis a century ago. As in the Bonapartist State denounced by Marx, they become the 'State priests,' and "parasitical excrescence upon civil society" that rules it with an iron hand.

In periods when there is little challenge to State capitalist institutions, the same fundamental commitments lead the 'new class' to serve as State managers and ideologists, "beating the people with the people's stick," in Bakunin's words. It is small wonder that intellectuals find the transition from 'revolutionary Communism' to 'celebration of the West' such an easy one, replaying a script that has evolved from tragedy to farce over the past half century. In essence, all that has changed is the assessment of where power lies. Lenin¹s dictum that "socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people," who must of course trust the benevolence of their leaders, expresses the perversion of 'socialism' to the needs of the State priests, and allows us to comprehend the rapid transition between positions that superficially seem diametric opposites, but in fact are quite close.

The terminology of political and social discourse is vague and imprecise, and constantly debased by the contributions of ideologists of one or another stripe. Still, these terms have at least some residue of meaning. Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation. As the Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, "this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie," but can only be "realized by the workers themselves being master over production." Mastery over production by the producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have regularly been devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional ruling classes and the 'revolutionary intellectuals' guided by the common principles of Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances. But the essential element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.

The Leninist intelligentsia have a different agenda. They fit Marx's description of the 'conspirators' who "pre-empt the developing revolutionary process" and distort it to their ends of domination; "Hence their deepest disdain for the more theoretical enlightenment of the workers about their class interests," which include the overthrow of the Red Bureaucracy and the creation of mechanisms of democratic control over production and social life. For the Leninist, the masses must be strictly disciplined, while the socialist will struggle to achieve a social order in which discipline "will become superfluous" as the freely associated producers "work for their own accord" (Marx). Libertarian socialism, furthermore, does not limit its aims to democratic control by producers over production, but seeks to abolish all forms of domination and hierarchy in every aspect of social and personal life, an unending struggle, since progress in achieving a more just society will lead to new insight and understanding of forms of oppression that may be concealed in traditional practice and consciousness.

The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the very start. In revolutionary Russia, Soviets and factory committees developed as instruments of struggle and liberation, with many flaws, but with a rich potential. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of these instruments, establishing the rule of the Party, in practice its Central Committee and its Maximal Leaders -- exactly as Trotsky had predicted years earlier, as Rosa Luxembourg and other left Marxists warned at the time, and as the anarchists had always understood. Not only the masses, but even the Party must be subject to "vigilant control from above," so Trotsky held as he made the transition from revolutionary intellectual to State priest. Before seizing State power, the Bolshevik leadership adopted much of the rhetoric of people who were engaged in the revolutionary struggle from below, but their true commitments were quite different. This was evident before and became crystal clear as they assumed State power in October 1917.

A historian sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, E.H. Carr, writes that "the spontaneous inclination of the workers to organize factory committees and to intervene in the management of the factories was inevitably encourage by a revolution with led the workers to believe that the productive machinery of the country belonged to them and could be operated by them at their own discretion and to their own advantage" (my emphasis). For the workers, as one anarchist delegate said, "The Factory committees were cells of the future... They, not the State, should now administer."

But the State priests knew better, and moved at once to destroy the factory committees and to reduce the Soviets to organs of their rule. On November 3, Lenin announced in a "Draft Decree on Workers' Control" that delegates elected to exercise such control were to be "answerable to the State for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property." As the year ended, Lenin noted that "we passed from workers' control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy," which was to "replace, absorb and supersede the machinery of workers' control" (Carr). "The very idea of socialism is embodied in the concept of workers' control," one Menshevik trade unionist lamented; the Bolshevik leadership expressed the same lament in action, by demolishing the very idea of socialism.

Soon Lenin was to decree that the leadership must assume "dictatorial powers" over the workers, who must accept "unquestioning submission to a single will" and "in the interests of socialism," must "unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process." As Lenin and Trotsky proceeded with the militarization of labour, the transformation of the society into a labour army submitted to their single will, Lenin explained that subordination of the worker to "individual authority" is "the system which more than any other assures the best utilization of human resources" -- or as Robert McNamara expressed the same idea, "vital decision-making...must remain at the top...the real threat to democracy comes not from overmanagement, but from undermanagement"; "if it is not reason that rules man, then man falls short of his potential," and management is nothing other than the rule of reason, which keeps us free. At the same time, 'factionalism' -- i.e., any modicum of free expression and organization -- was destroyed "in the interests of socialism," as the term was redefined for their purposes by Lenin and Trotsky, who proceeded to create the basic proto-fascist structures converted by Stalin into one of the horrors of the modern age.1

Failure to understand the intense hostility to socialism on the part of the Leninist intelligentsia (with roots in Marx, no doubt), and corresponding misunderstanding of the Leninist model, has had a devastating impact on the struggle for a more decent society and a livable world in the West, and not only there. It is necessary to find a way to save the socialist ideal from its enemies in both of the world's major centres of power, from those who will always seek to be the State priests and social managers, destroying freedom in the name of liberation."

 

The soviet union was socialism taken to its logical conclusion.

 

I love how you ignore everything in the OP and just continue to spout Reich Wing talking points without even attempting to provide substance, too (*)(*)(*)(*)ing funny

 

Chomsky has been pretty thoroughly debunked on anything outside of linguistics. He is only popular with liberals who ensure his crap still gets taught in university's because he is an intellectual like them.

 

You cant "debunk" a person, you can debunk his arguments yes, but not the person himself so idk what the hell you are talking about, you are pretending like every single thing hes ever said was "thoroughly debunked" yet refused to provide any evidence, my bull(*)(*)(*)(*) radar is going off

 

If Chomsky is so great, let him set up his own country with its own economy and make it a success.

Oh, I forgot. He's an 'intellectual'. He can't actually do anything, just try and convince you he's could if he ever got the chance, which he doesn't want.

 

He contradicts himself all the time.

He claims the democrats and republicans are part of the same corporate sellouts and need to be replaced with a vanguard unit of people that will get rid of American capitalists horrors around the world yet he openly advocated for both John Kerry and Barack Obama.

That is just one flaw of his that destroys his credibility. Go look up what he claimed about Libya and how wrong he was if you want to know more.

 

Democrats and Republicans ARE corporate sell outs, but Republicans admit it and are 100% sold out, Democrats dont admit it and are only partly sold out, like the Clintons for example. Obama however, he is doing plenty of good and would be able to do much more if Republicans didnt stop him and use massive propaganda against him. In general yes the Democrat party sold out, but that doesnt mean the Democrat party should be abandoned we just need to reform it and ignore the Democrats who did sell out, like Hillary Clinton. Democrats like Elizabeth Warren are what we want. Its a two party system, Democrats are BY FAR the lesser of two evils.

 

What a bogus argument.

When America becomes fully Socialist when Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders is elected and you start crying "Socialism is bad arrghh" guess what im going to say? "set up your own country with your own economy and make it a success" basically telling you to (*)(*)(*)(*) off the same way you are trying to do now.

 

Except that is not what he has claimed over the years, that is what you are claiming now.

Chomsky was very anti-establishment party for a very long time and then he changed his view with destroys his theory. Chomsky is, or was, a socialist anarchist and had built his career on theories about that but now he is doing the exact thing he had blamed the politicians of doing before he got famous.

He is a hypocrite.

That is just one example.....there are many of them.

This is why nobody outside of liberals pays him any attention anymore.

 

You your childish attempt to characterize my comment as having something to do with the "reich" is noted.

Why don'r you address my comment that the ussr was socialism taken to its logical conclusion. In a socialist state a small elite make the rules, and the individual has only those freedoms the state allows him.

 

Utterly false accusations not backed up by any proof whatsoever.

This is why nobody outside of Reich Wingers refuses to take Chomsky seriously.

 

Chomsky certainly writes well but his verbal virtuosity is fatally undermined by his misunderstanding of the subject matter. Socialism in any manifestation is dependent on the good will of the selected nucleus of individuals who administer it. Chomsky is really just echoing the bedridden belief that the Soviet Union failed because it was captained by leaders who were not acting in good faith or somehow violated the true concept of socialism. The state must be supreme in order for socialism to function and the individual must be subordinated to the state without choice.

Chomsky seems to be unfamiliar with the time tested observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Soviet communism was advertised to be a society where ownership of all the means of production were in the hands of the working class but socialism in any form is in fact society run by a ruling class only ostensibly for the benefit of the working class. Those who can find their way to the top under socialism often do so through corruption that makes capitalism look saintly and a middle class under socialism is nonexistent..

Chomsky's great writing can be summarized succinctly.The Soviets took the wonderful concept of socialism and didn't do it right. If they had done it correctly the Former Soviet Union would not only still exist, it would be a Shangri-La. We've all heard this before and know better. Unfortunately the fixation that people like Chomsky have with intellectuals deciding what's best for the rest of us is beginning to catch on with many of the young and naïve.

 

"In a socialist state a small elite make the rules"

Every single person who knows ANYTHING about Karl Marx or Socialism in general knows this is absolute bull(*)(*)(*)(*). The main concept of Socialism is to GET RID OF ELITES ENTIRELY and let the people themselves run the factories and the government. This is undeniable, every rational person who knows anything about this system knows that is by far the main goal, to get rid of classes and elitism. It may not work in practice, but in theory that is undoubtedly the goal.


Just saying vague unsubstantiated bull(*)(*)(*)(*) like "the ussr was socialism taken to its logical conclusion" is not an argument at all, as I said its simply vague unsubstantiated bull(*)(*)(*)(*) you dont even attempt to prove what you say with evidence nor with logic, you just say it and pretend its true because thats what your Reich Wing parents told you since childhood

 

Did you even read what he said? He completely condemns the idea of "intellectuals deciding whats best for the rest of us" he was saying thats exactly what went wrong with the USSR, not that they didnt have good enough intellectuals to lead the people, the problem was the people were supposed to lead themselves but the Revolution was hijacked by both Stalin and Lenin. You are misunderstanding Chomsky's view. Look at it like this, in the Middle East they have religious leaders subvert and take control of the population and essentially tell them who to vote for (as far as im concerned) than they end up voting in the Muslim Brotherhood or some crazy (*)(*)(*)(*), does this mean Democracy is bad and should be gotten rid of because of "religious leaders deciding whats best for the rest of us"? NO, of course not, just because Democracy is hijacked in the Middle East, and even in America by corporations, doesnt mean Democracy is failed and we should give up on it, the same goes for Socialism. Just because some people have hijacked Socialist States doesnt mean the idea of Socialism has failed, again the exact same concept goes for Democracy. Democracy is not perfect, neither is Socialism, nothing is, so again just because a small elite group hijack something doesnt mean the entire thing is a failure and should be abandoned completely, if we had that attitude we would have abandoned democracy already.

 

This is why your credibility along with Chomsky's border's on zero. Chomsky though gets credit for linguistics. The state was the corporation in the former Soviet Union, Chomsky's argument only makes sense if you think you can have socialism without a large, intrusive central government to determine means and needs.

 

Well to be fair, Chomsky is an Anaracho-Syndicalist, so im sure that is along the lines of what he does believe. Most Anarchists are actually far left wingers or Communists believe it or not, many Communists believe the end goal is to get rid of the State all together, I know I know, *Mind blown*

"Anarchist communism[1] (also known as anarcho-communism, free communism, libertarian communism,[2][3][4][5][6] and communist anarchism[7][8]) is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, capitalism, wages and private property (while retaining respect for personal property),[9] and in favor of common ownership of the means of production,[10][11] direct democracy, and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".[12][13]"

 

Wait....Are you defending the concept of needing "intellectuals to dictate to the rest of us what is best for us"? Yeah, that is definitely what you said....I dont understand your position, are you saying Socialism is good as long as there is leaders like Lenin? That is definitely what you are saying, but it doesnt make sense because you demonize the idea at the same time. You didnt even get past my first sentence when you quoted me, you are not making your position very clear at all.

 

Of course it does not work in practice, because it goes against human nature. It inevitably leads to the dictatorship of an elite.

I have advanced degrees in Economics, I have a lot more background than my parents. I have been around enough to be realistic. The ideals of socialism are not realistic.

I suspect you are very young. Hopefully you will learn that ideals are not always realistic.

 

This nonsense that "Socialism is not realistic and will never work" has been historically proven false over and over. Every industrialized nation in the world has SOME Socialism, so clearly at least some parts of it are realistic, dismissing the entire thing as "not realistic" is intellectually dishonest. I love how you say something to be proven false with such absolute confidence.

As for human nature, no, it doesnt go against human nature. Altruism is part of human nature, humans are both cruel and kind, loving and hateful, greedy and selfless, etc. We are not JUST greedy, and JUST hateful, and JUST cruel, nor are we JUST loving, and JUST kind, and JUST selfless, we are all of that simultaneously, so to claim "humans are greedy therefore Capitalism is right" is not intellectually honest, because people are also selfless at the same time, things are not as black and white as "humans are selfish = capitalism is good".

It can just as easily be argued Capitalism inevitably leads to a dictatorship of the elite also, 1% of the country owns almost half the wealth, 95% of the time the person with more money wins the election, with the citizens united ruling spending caps were removed giving the wealthy more power over our politics, we are now undoubtedly ran by a extremely wealthy elite, we now live in a autocracy ruled by a small elite because of Capitalism.

 

Three pages and everyone has failed to address your argument.

I run into the same problem when I cite Chomsky. He seems to be the voice of common sense on most issues.

 

I honestly dont even believe a single Reich Winger even read the entire thing, they literally just read the title than comment based on the title. They do it every single time. They dont trust anything that isnt from Fox News, Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh.

 

i'm always amused by chomsky's pseudo-intellectual psycho-babble and even more amused by the fools who use it to try to justify the existence of an economic system that never has and never will exist. there is only one economic system - capitalism, the ownership of the means of production in the hands of the individual. you can try to claim that everyone owns everything, but that is not a system. that is economic anarchy. in order to get anything done someone will eventually have to coordinate all of that "non-ownership" into ownership. someone will then have to manage that ownership, giving them the power of that ownership as if it were their own. having the power of ownership is essentially the same as having ownership, so we end up with ownership in the hands of the individual(s). you can restrict capitalism through authoritarian means and invest the ownership of the economy in "the state", but that is merely handing that ownership over to different individuals. you can try claiming that the state "is" the people and that state ownership is a shared ownership, but that is a lie. "the state" itself is a fallacy, an invention that is actually just individuals acting as representatives of the people. in representing the people, these individuals assume the power of those they represent and, with it, the ownership of all that conveys that power in the first place. the anarchists that coined the term "state capitalism" in reference to the soviet union were precisely correct, as the socialism the soviet union claimed was an impossibility to begin with. theirs was nothing more than a state operated capitalist society, run and kept running through the use of force.

simply dismissing a statement like "The soviet union was socialism taken to its logical conclusion." as mere right wing talking points may impress your school chums, but it does not address the truth within. in the quest for a socialist society there are only a few end games. the first and most obvious is to never progress beyond economic anarchy. such a society really doesn't matter to us, as it almost immediately stagnates and dissolves. even on the smallest scale, a society without ownership denies human nature and eventually tears itself apart. next is to follow the path of the soviet union, to use increasingly violent force to keep ownership within the state. though the force of public opinion may be all that is needed in a small, relatively homogeneous society, large diverse populations demand increased militarization in order to subdue the individuals' natural inclination toward self-determination. even the most backward, cowed populations will eventually tire of supporting the bureaucracy and demand a return of the power that they have invested in the representatives of the state. the third path (the final one for this exercise) is to finally give up on the whole "socialism" thing entirely. we see this beginning to happen in china, as individuals outside of the state begin to increasingly exert the power of ownership. the eventual collapse of "the party" as the main economic force lies at the end of this path, but it really isn't an end at all. once all pretense at the viability of socialism is dropped, the long journey down the road of capitalism can begin in earnest.

 

No. I'm citing history that demonstrates again and again that the exact opposite is what works best. When intellectuals are at the helm we are headed into a storm of oppression. Socialism cannot live without feeding on the liberties of its citizens, weakening productivity and turning children into agents of the state. If something is broken it stays that way, if it works, it is "fixed" until it is broken. All for the perceived greater good of course. Read a history book.