Ok, with respect to your views, I think I can narrow it down to a single question. I said that Marxism-Leninism has goals that can be achieved only through a great deal of violence against the population, and as a consequence whenever Marxist-Leninists come to power, this is what they practice.
That means that even if a Marxist-Leninist party came to power that was headed by a basically good person, and was not threatened externally, it would still behave quite oppressively toward its population.
My question is, do you agree that due to the nature of its basic goals, Marxist-Leninist regimes must be so oppressive?
I keep saying this, but I have strong doubts in Leninism. I don't think someone would push for that system unless they cared more about seizing power than the wellbeing of the people. That will likely lead to oppression, without any policy changes. I'll address some points, though for the most part I am nor considering a Leninist central party.
>The problem is that invariably a large portion of the population is opposed to this, to the bottom of their souls.
I don't agree with this. The bourgeoisie would be opposed to it, but they can't be described as a large portion of the population. Ideally, everybody else benefits from the change, they have no reason to oppose what's going on and there should be no reason to opress them.
So yes, any such revolution must involve some manner of getting rid of the bourgeoisie. They would likely feel oppressed, though they would just be losing privileges unique to them. They would also likely turn to violence, but wide scale lasting oppression you describe.
Leninism has always lead to great oppression. But that doesn't mean that the people who supported it understood that. Lot of bright, well-meaning people have philosophical, political and religious beliefs that are very wrong. Also, remember, we are not just talking about Lenin's own motives and beliefs, but many if not most of the thousands of party members who supported Leninism. Most of them were sincere idealists (which is why Stalin got rid of them all in the Moscow purge trials).T
I strongly disagree that only the bourgeoisie would be opposed. Leninist revolutions take place in preindustrialized societies. That is because Lenin believed that peasants were naturally cooperative and so would eagerly adopt socialism (he got this from the Russian philosophy of narodnikism).
But that is simply mistaken. Peasants are deeply conservative and traditional, including being completely embedded in extended kinship networks, raised to value life as a farmer, and extremely religious.
Communism in a preindustrial society means tearing that whole culture completely apart, and that requires enormous state violence. Yes, a lot of them got fooled by propaganda for a while, especially before the revolution was over, but many more in Russia were never won over, and many of the ones who had supported it changed their minds once they saw it in practice.
And in fact I have read that once the Communists came to power in Russia, Lenin regularly denounced, in private, the peasants for their resistance.
So what I am saying is that leninists are generally well-meaning, intelligent people who sincerely believe it will lead to a socialist paradise, but leninism's ideas, when you try to put them in practice in a preindustrial society invariably lead to massive state violence.
>I strongly disagree that only the bourgeoisie would be opposed. Leninist revolutions take place in preindustrialized societies
I made myself very clear that I was not discussing a Leninist system. As I said, that system prioritizes obtaining power over the wellbeing of the people.
Many Leninists thought their seizure of power could then be used to help the people, but prioritizing anything over the wellbeing of the people is going to end in some form of oppression. Plenty of Russian Socialists agreed with this take, it was at least part of the reason for the Bolshevik/Menshevik split.
I don't understand what conversation you're trying to have. You've abandoned your attempted condemnation of Chomsky, and seem to be trying to get me to defend an ideology I oppose.
Ok, we agree that Leninism leads to oppression. My point is that, as far as I can tell, Chomsky doesn't agree, and the same is true of many on the left. And that this is why he took the position he did on Cambodia, and why so many defend him.
Let me say some about where I am coming from. I have been interested in these issues since the late 1950's. At the time the left was split over Stalin and the Soviet Union. Many of them said they were wonderful. Many others said they were terrible, and this was the inevitable result of leninist philosophy.
Later like with Solzinitzen, it became impossible to defend Stalin. So many on the left switched to arguing that leninism could turn out fine, and it had gone badly in this case because the leaders had fallen away from good communist principles. It seems to me that this is Chomsky's position, and many on the left who defend him.
But you seem to be a lot more familiar with Chomsky than I am. So let me ask you, what is his position on leninism?
>Leninist doctrine holds that a vanguard Party should assume state power and drive the population to economic development, and, by some miracle that is unexplained, to freedom and justice. It is an ideology that naturally appeals greatly to the radical intelligentsia, to whom it affords a justification for their role as state managers. I can't see any reason -- either in logic or history -- to take it seriously. Libertarian socialism (including a substantial mainstream of Marxism) dismissed all of this with contempt, quite rightly
Ok, with respect to your views, I think I can narrow it down to a single question. I said that Marxism-Leninism has goals that can be achieved only through a great deal of violence against the population, and as a consequence whenever Marxist-Leninists come to power, this is what they practice.
That means that even if a Marxist-Leninist party came to power that was headed by a basically good person, and was not threatened externally, it would still behave quite oppressively toward its population.
My question is, do you agree that due to the nature of its basic goals, Marxist-Leninist regimes must be so oppressive?