Noam Chomsky on Lenin

[Mechaghostman2]

So here Noam Chomsky essentially calls lenin out as being a right-wing dictator out for a power grab rather than a true socialist. Do you agree, or do you think Chomsky is just full of shit?

[Anomalocaris]

Define right wing.

[Mr Greene]

Given the way any opposition was silenced he was certainly a dictator out to grab power at any cost.
What is truly appalling is the way the 'revolutionaries' helped themselves to the Romanov's possessions after their executions. Nothing but thieves and murderers.

[abaris]

What is truly appalling is the way the 'revolutionaries' helped themselves to the Romanov's possessions after their executions. Nothing but thieves and murderers.

Nothing new under the sun. And to be expected.

If we want to talk about appalling events, the mass executions and the famine come to mind. A famine that was more or less initiated by confiscating everything the rural population owned.

[downbeatplumb]

Define right wing.

The political terms left and right wing comes from the early days of the French republic and was down to the seating arrangements in the debating chamber with the people who supported the continued stratification of society sat on the right and the people who were for a more equal society on the left. The further to the extremes you sat the more extreme your view on those issues was supposed to be.
So
left wing, a more equal society with social mobility and sharing of economic wealth.
Right wing, no social mobility and wealth stays concentrated in a few. 

In a nutshell.

[Anomalocaris]

Given the way any opposition was silenced he was certainly a dictator out to grab power at any cost.
What is truly appalling is the way the 'revolutionaries' helped themselves to the Romanov's possessions after their executions. Nothing but thieves and murderers.

Which violent revolution did not see revolutionaries enriching themselves through plunder in preference to enriching those in whose name the revolution was fermented?

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Define right wing.

The political terms left and right wing comes from the early days of the French republic and was down to the seating arrangements in the debating chamber with the people who supported the continued stratification of society sat on the right and the people who were for a more equal society on the left. The further to the extremes you sat the more extreme your view on those issues was supposed to be.
So
left wing, a more equal society with social mobility and sharing of economic wealth.
Right wing, no social mobility and wealth stays concentrated in a few. 

In a nutshell.

Then the communist revolution in Russia was decidedly not a right wing revolution.  Whatever the excesses of the revolution and the immediate civil war that followed, the communists did bring in a system that was perhaps equal in terror, but vastly more socially mobile, economically egalitarian and dynamic compared to the pre-existing Romanov autocracy.

[Autumnlicious]

I disagree in that the society that displaced Imperial Russia developed its own form of aristocracy after destroying the prior aristocrats. The familial wealth of most mid to high level Politburo personnel comes to mind. The case of near inherited positions for most bureaucrats also comes to mind.

It is true that social mobility increased. Economically egalitarian? That's harder to qualify - it isn't a good point if the method of making things more egalitarian is "make everyone effectively unable to purchase any goods for any non-government approved reason regardless of cost or reason".

The existence of closed cities and a return to the feudal system of lower class Russians being unable to leave their official places of residency (i.e. A city) under many circumstances negates a lot of the mobility offered.

Compared to Imperial Russia it is quite different. When compared with neighboring cultures and powers, less so.

Freedom of movement seems rather important if one is to take advantage of social mobility. If anything, Soviet Russia's revolution wasn't a revolution at all but a replacement of one ruling class with another one.