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: : It's like Monty Pythons the Life of Brian.: : This is poisionious, this tendency, it leads to spliting the labour movement and civil war within the progressive ranks.
: But one cannot be FOR EVERYTHING---no matter how 'popular' that might be---one must stand up for SOMETHING.
Yes you have to have a perspective but has it to be eliteism and political sectarianism and dogma or doctrine?
: : [J]ust read Chomsky's 'Socialism real and fake' in "What Uncle Sam Really Wants", so it's a hopeless distortion on Lenin's part to suit his own infatuation with power and the state, 'The State and Revolution' is nothing more than the account of a reluctant syndicalist who is trying to slowly force the state back into the centre stage.
: Just make sure you read State and Revolution AS WELL as Chomsky's 'take' on it.
I have read state and revolution and I disagree with many of Lenin's conclusions, for instance, when he says that the peasantry or workers cant conduct the affairs of state or the economy without interfere this is more or less his opinion, he has no facts or figures. The entire books is more or less a reflection of the fact that here was a man who no longer, dispite all his conspiratorial activities in vanguards, didnt believe a revolution was possible, at least not in Russia, then it happens spontaneously with nothing much more than trade union consciousness as a catalyst now he has to integrate this into his theories because he cant possibly be wrong. Then it is very clear that Lenin is a statist and a simple bureaucrat in love with the idea of planning because he is more concerned with this than the destruction of the state.
: Chomsky once said Skinner was advocating Third Reich techniques---and many (silly) people on the left believed him...
I think Chomsky was implying that Skinners view that people could all be made happy if suttle manipulation was employed was facistic, it's a mistake he and a lot of other left wing authors makes fairly often by associationg authoritarianism etc. with facism, when facism is far more dangerous and complex ideology than that.
Using the definition like that makes it lose it's impact and diminishes the it's importance.
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