You cast the first stone BrotherCadfael, you seem to know everything about everyone. A billion living Chinese who mistakenly admire Mao are moral cretins because of their opinions, not their actions?
I’m glad that I’m allowed to be mistaken.
I too think that democracy is a world changing idea when tempered with representation. History shows us that Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao all did evil of a tremendous scale, and their atrocities can teach us something. The OP is merely pointing out that Lenin actually taught us something useful by writing a pamphlet. There are propagandists here who don’t want us to read Lenin’s propaganda because it conflicts with theirs.
I’ve read it. It contains a valuable analysis.
None of which supports your accusation that Hitler was hired by someone else to do the deed, with the capitalists as the men behind the throne who wanted to make the Holocaust a reality.
You’re the one that believes this bullshit. You provide the cites.
I doubt that a significant number of such people exist. The problem is, mass murder and tyranny tend to poison the well just a little bit. Most people don’t want to read it, because it’s Lenin. Even a cookbook by Lenin would likely get a hostile reception, much less a political piece.
So, no it hasn’t “taught us something useful”, because most people won’t read it and would consider any claims made to be highly suspect due to the source. In fact, picking something written by Lenin to push a political position is counterproductive as it only hands ammunition to the people who like to equate anything even slightly left wing with Communism.
And I am surprised that I apparently actually had to explain all this.
I haven’t read “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” in at least twenty years, but as I recall, he claimed that the point of imperialism was to gain superprofits in the colonies to pay off the metropolitan proletariat. Since European imperialism didn’t actually turn a profit, that argument doesn’t really work.
I do like the word “superprofits,” though.
Quite right. My recollection is along the same lines (certainly nothing motivates me to lose precious time out of life redoing that).
Everything in history of 19th century colonial effort rather highlights how marginal it was to ‘profits’ of anything like ‘capitalism’ - the old phrase, an empire acquired in a fit of absence of mind is rather closer to the truth, given how much empire territory was acquired by prestige seeking little colonels, and frontier military men seeking conquest of bloody useless tracts to win medals.
Lenin was like Marx fundamentally wrong from A to Z.
But a master polemicist.
You know who else despised capitalism?
Of course people like Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Torquemada, Caligula, and Dick Cheney can’t be 100% wrong about everything. Vegetarianism isn’t evil just because Hitler was a vegetarian. But you’re not going to convince many people if you start quoting Hitler’s views on eating meat, now are you? That’s because Hitler was a mass murdering monster, yeah?
The view that the Soviet Union was doing OK until Stalin screwed everything up is simply delusional. I’ll give you that Stalin was worse than Lenin, in the same way that Hitler was worse than Mussolini. But the apparatus of state power that Stalin inherited was created by Lenin, and Lenin sure wasn’t shy about using it to exterminate millions of people. As the old Russian saying goes, “Lenin has killed his millions, and Stalin his tens of millions”.
Given the quality of adhay’s arguments, I insist he have the right to defend Lenin.
Just don’t get on the side of anything I like, okay?
I have not been defending Lenin but thanks for your concern.
Well, then don’t not defend something I like, please.
<points at thread title again>
And the rest of the OP.
Excellent post Stranger. It was intelligent, accurate, succinct, and pretty damn funny too
Speaking as probably the only person in this forum who has lived under a Marxist-Leninist regime I must say that I found it to be utter crap.
Well, I’m not polemicizing in this instance. Left wing and communism are not the same thing in virtually all instances. Liberalism is considered by communists and socialists to be a bigger enemy than capitalism for good reason: it is an workable alternative to both. Anyone interested in the theory behind politics should at some point read Lenin’s Imperialism. Just as they should also read anything written by Machiavelli. Lenin actually committed a lot of evil. Machiavelli committed little to no evil, but was a teacher of evil, but nonetheless understanding him is essential. Not so coincidentally, both Hitler’s and Stalin’s favorite book was The Prince.
As for the right wing propagandists who want to conflate have read Lenin (or Marx) and seeing they had a valid point here and there to be the same as agreeing, that is just spreading fear and ignorance. If we want to avoid the mistakes of the USSR, we do need to study the USSR and the ideas behind it. That road to hell was paved with good intentions.
We live in the world as it is, with the history it has, not the world we fantasize about with the fairy tales about history taught to school children. (Also a part of the world we live in.)
Ike had the benefit of being in the Cold War early, I agree he was a pragmatic individual and surely saw the signs of what generations of high military alert would mean but I think you give your seer too much predictive credit. Ike saw two threats but theres no doubt in his mind Communism was the greater. His Farewell Address argument begins with ‘we recognize the imperative need for this development’ then adds a large BUT, but this speach was addressed to Americans. Only we can do anything about our growing industrial complex and we can’t decide what the Russians will do. It was a warning against a threat that was dangerous because it was insidious, because there was no need to address the already very real and very obvious danger.
Can you start an “Ask the communism survivor” thread? I’ve a bunch of questions.
I’d like to thank Second Stone and Stranger for cogent responses to the OP.
SS has read the reference I based my thesis on and agrees that it’s relevant to the OP.
SOAT obviously is hip to the Corporate Kleptocracy which is running the world into ruin and I agree with his assessment of Lenin as an asshole.
As for most of the rest of you, it’s time for your nap…
You haven’t established the necessary elevation to condescend to anyone.
You actually do have a sense of irony.
Meanwhile …
Turns out it’s the address of World Inc, 666 Perdition Way, at a location near you.
All that is moot in light of the Marshall Plan and the Costa Rican withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1925. The connection should be obvious to anyone with a grade-school education.