Affirmed:Lenin really is the tits

[lalenin]

@adhay

For those unaware, lalenin (talk about an ironically perfect user name) managed to escape Castro’s grasp when he was 12, IIRC.

I doubt I’ll be subscribing to the Ask The Man Who Survived Castro’s Chamber Of Horrors thread so perhaps you’d ask him how he thinks the bottom 70% of the Cuban population would be faring these days under another 50 years of corporate parasitism under Batista and the Mob.

And now for a longer, more measured response than the one I originally typed.

I am not into writing alternate histories, so I don’t know the answer to your question. However I do know that Batista ran Cuba from 1952-58, 6 years of brutal dictatorship, when political opponents were routinely jailed and killed. The Castro brothers have managed the same feat for 50 fricking years!

I’m not expert in math but given the choice between 6 years of repression or 50 years of the same, I know which like I’d be standing in. Standing in lines, by the way, is something all Cubans, and everyone who has lived in a communist country, have a lot of experience in.

And if you think Cuba was a hellhole prior to the Castro brothers, take a look at this passage from Castro’s “History Will Absolve Me” speech, where he describes pre-Batista Cuba:

“Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time there was a Republic. It had its Constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a President, a Congress and Courts of Law. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom. The people were not satisfied with the government officials at that time, but they had the power to elect new officials and only a few days remained before they would do so. Public opinion was respected and heeded and all problems of common interest were freely discussed. There were political parties, radio and television debates and forums and public meetings. The whole nation pulsated with enthusiasm. This people had suffered greatly and although it was unhappy, it longed to be happy and had a right to be happy. It had been deceived many times and it looked upon the past with real horror. This country innocently believed that such a past could not return; the people were proud of their love of freedom and they carried their heads high in the conviction that liberty would be respected as a sacred right. They felt confident that no one would dare commit the crime of violating their democratic institutions. They wanted a change for the better, aspired to progress; and they saw all this at hand. All their hope was in the future.”

From this link:

http://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm

[adhay]

@lalenin

The Castro brothers have managed the same feat for 50 fricking years!

I’m not expert in math but given the choice between 6 years of repression or 50 years of the same, I know which like I’d be standing in. Standing in lines, by the way, is something all Cubans, and everyone who has lived in a communist country, have a lot of experience in.

Look, this is not the thread to get into this. (thanks so much, Bryan)

Let me just point out one thing. In the 60 fricking years that we in one way or another controlled Cuba after we “liberated” her from Spain, the best we could come up with was Batista. In the words of a US senator, Batista is a bastard but at least he’s our bastard.

The US was never “good” for Cuba, Cuba was good for US corporate exploitation at the painful expense of the large majority of Cubans. The US made someone like Castro inevitable. Much of that standing in line (not to mention Castro’s “paranoia”) is/was due the our overt and covert aggression since the revolution.

I’ll be happy to continue this conversation in your new thread but, please, give it a rest here.

[lalenin]

@adhay

Look, this is not the thread to get into this. (thanks so much, Bryan)

Let me just point out one thing. In the 60 fricking years that we in one way or another controlled Cuba after we “liberated” her from Spain, the best we could come up with was Batista. In the words of a US senator, Batista is a bastard but at least he’s our bastard.

The US was never “good” for Cuba, Cuba was good for US corporate exploitation at the painful expense of the large majority of Cubans. The US made someone like Castro inevitable. Much of that standing in line (not to mention Castro’s “paranoia”) is/was due the our overt and covert aggression since the revolution.

I’ll be happy to continue this conversation in your new thread but, please, give it a rest here.

Sorry but no, your thread seeks to highlight the genius of Lenin, and Castro’s Cuba is a perfect example of how following the doctrines of Lenin leads to worse repression and economic conditions.

And please, if you’re going to discuss Cuba at a minimum read the wikipedia entries on it.

Between 1940 and 1952 Cuba actually enjoyed a stable, prosperous democracy. That period was ended by Batista’s coup in 1952, (and parenthetically, the Cuban Communist Party was a member of Batista’s government, both before and after the coup.) That period was even referenced by Fidel Castro as what he wanted to restore, naturally he didn’t.

[lalenin]

@adhay

In the words of a US senator, Batista is a bastard but at least he’s our bastard.

And by the way that quote is generally attributed to John Kennedy in reference to Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

[Captain_Amazing]

@lalenin

And by the way that quote is generally attributed to John Kennedy in reference to Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

And earlier to FDR in reference to Somoza ("He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.), and even earlier to Thaddeus Stevens in reference to appointing government officials. (“They’re both damned rascals.” “Well, which one is our damned rascal?”)

[adhay]

@lalenin

Sorry but no, your thread seeks to highlight the genius of Lenin,

For the last time to you and everyone else on this thread, I am highlighting the validity of Lenin’s analysis of corporate imperialism in a particular pamphlet. Period. Period. Period!

I am not trying to justify Lenin as a person, Leninism or Castro for that matter.

Everybody straight on that? Good.

Thanks, esp. to those few who have managed to stay on topic.

[lalenin]

@adhay

For the last time to you and everyone else on this thread, I am highlighting the validity of Lenin’s analysis of corporate imperialism in a particular pamphlet. Period. Period. Period!

I am not trying to justify Lenin as a person, Leninism or Castro for that matter.

Everybody straight on that? Good.

Thanks, esp. to those few who have managed to stay on topic.

Wow, not even in the school I attended in Cuba, (“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”, which is where my username comes from, since the school is usually called ‘la lenin’), are Lenin’s theories given any credence. And, although you won’t like it, it is demonstrably crap, by looking at Cuba’s example.

According to Lenin imperialism is the higher state of capitalism, and can only be replaced by revolutionary means. That revolution, by definition also according to Lenin, can’t take place in a fully developed imperialist country and can only be brought about in an underdeveloped country (he was talking about Russia as an underdeveloped country, and Germany as the imperialist, fully developed state).

That’s a real problem, didactically speaking, because it implies that an underdeveloped country will never achieve socialism, and its successor communism, since capitalism will never have fully developed in that country. Lenin tries to get around that conflict by proposing that the revolution would spread from the underdeveloped state to the imperialist state. Which then, after it is defeated by the underdeveloped state helps develop the economy of the underdeveloped state, which has just conquered it.

Or a series of small undeveloped countries go through a revolution, and together bring socialism to the larger, capitalist-imperial world, in other words the USSR conquers the world.

Not only is the theory demonstrably false, look around, is there a USSR around? But even Cuba has moved away from it, since the theory also implies that socialism can’t survive in an undeveloped country on its own, and Cuba’s nationalist political system dictates that Cuba will not be state in a larger federation.

Conclusion: the theory fails, you get to spend the next two months in a Intensive Communist Didactic Course, and your membership in the Communist Youth is placed on hold.

Lenin was an idiot which is fine, but he happened to be an idiot with power who managed to convince others than killing all your political opponents is the only way to save the people from themselves.

[adhay]

@lalenin

Wow, not even in the school I attended in Cuba, (“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”, which is where my username comes from, since the school is usually called ‘la lenin’), are Lenin’s theories given any credence…

… and bla bla bla.

Again I am not in any sense putting forth “Leninism” or Lenin’s theories on world revolution as anything but stupidity, esp. in view of the end of the USSR.

Please, let me repeat:

Again I am not in any sense putting forth “Leninism” or Lenin’s theories on world revolution as anything but stupidity, esp. in view of the end of the USSR.

Got that? I am saying that his observations such as

… the monopolies have never pursued the aim, nor have they had the result, of benefiting the consumer, or even of handing over to the state part of the promoter’s profits; they have served only to facilitate, at the expense of the state, the recovery of private industries which were on the verge of bankruptcy.

and

As banking develops and becomes concentrated in a small number of establishments, the banks grow from modest middlemen into powerful monopolies having at their command almost the whole of the money capital of all the capitalists and small businessmen and also the larger part of the means of production and sources of raw materials in any one country and in a number of countries. This transformation of numerous modest middlemen into a handful of monopolists is one of the fundamental processes in the growth of capitalism into capitalist imperialism;

are quite relevant and describe quite accurately what has come to pass since he wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1916.

In this regard, the history of Cuba is only relevant as just another example of the results of US corporate imperialism. The extent to “Leninism” has been disavowed in Cuba and elsewhere is quite beside the point. Please leave it there.

[Bryan_Ekers]

So, lalenin, under the Cuban version of Marxism/Leninism (or whatever term they used), what happens to inventors and entrepreneur types who try to implement new ideas that would save a lot of time and labour?

[begbert2]

@adhay

Got that? I am saying that his observations such as

and

are quite relevant and describe quite accurately what has come to pass since he wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1916.

You mean, the sparse selection of observations he made that can be successfully extracted from the rest of his skewed agenda and which happen to (when taken out of context) describe somewhat accurately what has come to pass since then?

Lenin was operating from bad assumptions and theories, and therefore his conclusions are considered dismissable based on their methodology alone, but this doesn’t mean that every string of words and letters he’s ever emitted is incorrect. He’s the man who does does addition by multiplying; he’ll tell you that 1+1 = 1, 3+3 = 9, and 4+4=16. Which makes us unimpressed when he tells us that 0+0 = 0 and 2+2 = 4.

[XT]

@adhay

are quite relevant and describe quite accurately what has come to pass since he wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1916.

How so? Natural monopolies as Lenin envisioned are actually pretty rare, contrary to popular opinion. And where is the evidence that banks have become concentrated into smaller and smaller establishments over time? This is part of the whole psudo-reality of communism, where the end game for capitalism has fewer and fewer capitalists concentrating more and more power until they have some kind of Highlander death match and then someone declares that THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

He’s full of shit. He was full of shit then, and he’s full of shit today (literally, considering what they have to stuff him full of to keep his rotting corpse presentable). He wasn’t a visionary, he was a deluded quack who became a mass murderer. His insights were, at best, murky, and at worse were ludicrous, and no more insightful than the ones put forth in another thread about Ron Paul. The only difference being that Ron Paul is highly unlikely to find himself in a position to murder millions in the name of his own silly theories…

-XT

[Maggie_the_Ocelot]

I dunno about anything else, but Lenin was certainly a suave looking motherfucker.

[adhay]

@Bryan_Ekers

Personally, I blame a congruence of sino-corporate power agglomeration and protoneo-fascist cryptosocialism.

@Bryan_Ekers

The people’s global anarcho-capitalist hegemony doesn’t think in such terms, so why must we?

@Bryan_Ekers

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?

@Bryan_Ekers

Can you start an “Ask the communism survivor” thread? I’ve a bunch of questions.

@Bryan_Ekers

You haven’t established the necessary elevation to condescend to anyone.

@Bryan_Ekers

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.

@Bryan_Ekers

Ah, but he didn’t take the 17/23 correlation into account, and that was his downfall.

@Bryan_Ekers

Don’t have to - the Americans with Disabilities Act mandates the informational release publish promulgations.

@Bryan_Ekers

But what about the Heinz corporation’s involvement and the mystical influence of the number 57?

@Bryan_Ekers

So, lalenin, under the Cuban version of Marxism/Leninism (or whatever term they used), what happens to inventors and entrepreneur types who try to implement new ideas that would save a lot of time and labour?

An interesting question I’m sure but not one to be answered here.

I’m generally not one to whine or junior mod but this is thread shitting pure and simple. Mods, correct me if I’ve I’m being unfair.

[adhay]

@xtisme

How so? Natural monopolies as Lenin envisioned are actually pretty rare, contrary to popular opinion. And where is the evidence that banks have become concentrated into smaller and smaller establishments over time?

Where does he ever say this? He says that they become fewer and larger which is quite evident over the past 50 years in this country.

[XT]

Sorry, I mis-typed there (it’s hard to really post from your phone). What I meant was they are becoming more concentrated into fewer but more powerful groups (that’s what I meant by ‘smaller’).

And where is your evidence that this has happened? Are there fewer banks today than there were in Lenin’s time or more? It’s one of the core flaws in communist philosophy. Capitalism doesn’t work the way Lenin et al envisioned it did. There aren’t fewer and fewer players getting more and more powerful (and more and more of a finite, fixed pie that represents all of production) until there is only one giant corporation/capitalist controlling each market or sector, who will then degenerate into a final penultimate squabble for total supremacy. Instead you have many large corporations who compete for market share and who come and go, based on the decisions they make in their given market, and who are superseded by newer, more vigorous corporations in an endless dance.

-XT

[adhay]

@xtisme

… And where is your evidence that this has happened? Are there fewer banks today than there were in Lenin’s time or more?

That’s not really the question. Certainly you’re aware of some recent financial consolidation.

Instead you have many large corporations who compete for market share and who come and go, based on the decisions they make in their given market, and who are superseded by newer, more vigorous corporations in an endless dance.

-XT

Dance on your grave is more like it. They don’t just go, they either merge and thus become more efficient market predators or if reckless profiteering brings them to ruin, they are judged too big to fail and are bailed out.

Lenin, on this

… the monopolies have never pursued the aim, nor have they had the result, of benefiting the consumer, or even of handing over to the state part of the promoter’s profits; they have served only to facilitate, at the expense of the state, the recovery of private industries which were on the verge of bankruptcy.

And it’s not just banks.

http://www.billshrink.com/blog/6834/the-12-biggest-mergers-in-american-history/

[begbert2]

Dude, read your own lenin quote. You say that lenin predicted/criticized mergers and government bailouts. He actually criticized corporations for not giving money back to consumers or the state, and government bailouts. You are criticizing them for rising to dictatorial power over the state, Lenin was critizing them for not being agents of a communist state.

Perhaps you should find someone to champion who actually said what you think they should have said.

[adhay]

Here’s Chalmers Johnson from Sorrows of Empire

"Four sorrows … are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787.

Lenin would probably say and I would agree that, in fact, the Constitution, which united the Original Thirteen Oligarchies, made inevitable the eventual concentrations of wealth and political power we look on today. But to continue:

First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut.

Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal ‘executive branch’ of government into a military junta.

Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions.

Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens."

Lenin would correctly blame this on corporate imperialism.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@adhay

An interesting question I’m sure but not one to be answered here.

I’m generally not one to whine or junior mod but this is thread shitting pure and simple. Mods, correct me if I’ve I’m being unfair.

I like to think of it as parody, myself. On the first page of this thread, I made a few somewhat serious comments (none of which you quoted), but by post #43 I began to wonder if my inability to understand you was your fault, not mine. Post #78 was my last effort to discuss this issue with you in a serious fashion (all evidence suggests this will be completely unrewarding) and after that came the effort to string together buzzwords in a manner that seemed vaguely coherent but meant nothing, and several of those nonsense phrases could fit seamlessly into your posts, I’m confident.

Anyway, if you don’t want to answer the question at hand, I won’t think any less of you, but it seems to me this thread has plenty of space for both the starry-eyed admiration of Lenin’s theories and the blunt reality of his practices.

[adhay]

@begbert2

Dude, **… You are criticizing them for rising to dictatorial power over the state, Lenin was critizing them for not being agents of a communist state.

What?

Perhaps you should find someone to champion who actually said what you think they should have said.

Perhaps you should consider taking a remedial English Comprehension class.