ABSOLUTELY WRONG TITLE. The title can easily be "Why Lenin isn't a DOGMATIC Marxist", he even explicitly says that, and that's what he was pointing to in this whole talk. And regarding who is a "real Marxist" Žižek also implies here, and states explicitly elsewhere, that a Marxist revolution couldn't even become real without betraying the dogma in some way. The title of this video is in every sense of this word stupid.
Agreed, buuuuuut in channel's defense...that was probably the point. Clickbait baybee. The lamest form of clickbait ever, but clickbait nonetheless. Or not, I don't know. *_sniff_*
@@Bisquick Clickbait is stupid by definition, especially if we accept Deleuze's definition of stupidy as the inability to tell apart the ordinal from the singular.
@@theinternet1424 a valid point indeed, though if _we're_ being good marxists we should note the necessity of this stupidity as it is tied to material outcomes in this dumb economic circumstance, so maybe that takes some of the edge off.
@@Bisquick It is what it is, a small part of the whole swamp of online attention grabbing. Not the end of the world as we know it or end of anything really, just a continuation of ordinary cycles that feed the cynically stupid things we do because of ideology. How much of the title's misdirection is intentional I don't know and I don't think it matters as much. Still I think that it's important to point out how stupid and misleading it is and I really don't think there is an excuse. It's one thing to understand the relative necessities of capitalism and the need to subject ourselves to those necesseties because of it's overwhelming dominance, that's a common thing and something Marxists should accept and take in their stride. But pointing out what is being destroyed or exploited (in this case, truth about Žižek's views on Lenin) is on the other side of the process and always relevant for critique in its own right. This title is, for example, more damaging than ordinary generic "just enjoy yourself" commodity fetishism / consumerism because, through just one simple word trick, they are misdirecting us by using a talk that has the completely opposite purpose. I see a lot of people in this comment section having completely baseless arguments about important issues just because they believed a title that's driven by trivial ideology of clickbait. That's the work of ideology we most oppose whenever possible.
@@panbert8092 that quote is taken out of context. The full quote goes "...what is certain is that [if they are Marxists], [then] I myself am not a Marxist" by which he meant Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue. Marx was indeed a marxist and anyone who subscribes to ideas of dialectical materialism, class struggle and labour theory of value can be called a marxist. Naturally marxists vary from man to man, many people have contributed to marxist theory themselves so there is no "true marxism", just various interpretations.
@@crniskadu9881Joseph Dietzgen developed the notion of "Dialectical MaterialismTM", not Marx nor Engels. Kautsky used the term in his written biography about Friedrich Engels and the original populariser of Marxism in Russia, Georgi Plekhanov, a Kautskyist, used the terms "dialectical materialism" and "historical materialism" interchangeably. So I wouln't say that "dialectical materialism" is Marxist because it's not a theory of Marx.
Zizek wants Lenin to have a clear view of what a revolution should be. Of course, this is impossible. He had to interpret the world and change it as it was happening. In this sense, I can argue that Marx was not a real Marxist as he never had the material basis on how a revolution should proceed until the power was taken.
I really like Zizek’s work on ideology and cultural analysis, also his critique of the concept of totalitarianism, but in terms of analysing real socialism he is truly out of his depth
Zizek describes being a revolutionary like being a captain on the open sea. Real leaders are out in the unknown, navigating a course by reading the constellations. There is no other way since reality can never be closed/whole. Additionally.. to +Raphael Harris’ criticism.. I challenge you. To say Zizek “is out of his depth” in analyzing socialism is _terribly_ pretentious. Have you read his books/heard his debates? Zizek has an international academic journal dedicated to him... he is a vanishing mediator who’s ideas will still be relevant a hundred years from now. Please do more research before leaving such baseless comments.
Admittedly I haven’t read Zizek in his entirety, so I’m open to changing my opinion. However in interviews and talks and Q&As he constantly bashes real socialism and brands it as ‘a total failure’. In my opinion, it’s true that it failed, at least in the Soviet Union/DDR/Yugoslavia. But I don’t like the defeatist attitude, something he inherits very much from the Frankfurt School and is quite common in the mainstream left. In my opinion, however flawed real socialism was/is, and in this regard I’m including even the worst years of Stalin & Beria, it should be celebrated and used as an example that revolutions are possible and not an a priori failed idea. When we use this lingo of ‘total failure’ or ‘actually the USSR was state capitalism’ what we are saying is, “a post-capitalist society is impossible to reach”. This is what makes most communists capitulate into social-democracy. I reiterate that I like Zizek’s work and respect him very much but this is one aspect of him that I disagree with.
Raphael Harris I do appreciate your reply, apologies if my initial comment was somewhat harsh, you sound like a reasonable person. I agree, Zizek’s communism does lean toward social democracy but to exemplify caretaking examples I’d say, especially since capitalisms market society rubric has globalized so thoroughly/deeply. He doesn’t claim social democracy is the end all be all though. Tyler Cowen wants to box Z up to amputate the remainders of his position, Tyler can’t deal with the open ends.. he thinks of Zizek as a “Singapore type of state interventionist capitalist-a communist conservative” however Zizek likens Singapore to “fascism with a very human face”. Zizek claims the reason capitalism works is because it is unfair. The paradox being that ones pride is allowed to remain in-tact through offloading their failure onto the unfairness of “the system”-no one has to fully confront their impotence/weakness so you never have to be a full loser technically. From the full conversation: Zizek: _”Okay. But isn’t Stalinism a much more traumatic example of this than fascism? With fascism, things are relatively simple, I think. It’s a model of conservative revolution and so on and so on. But Bolshevism, which tried to do a radical emancipation and it turned into a traumatic...Even today, we don’t have a good theory of Stalinism. That’s what bothers me, not any return to it.”_ Zizek: _”People, idiots tell me-not you-‘Why don’t you call it socialism?’ Everybody is a socialist today. Bill Gates says he’s a socialist, and so on. It’s meaningless. Socialism basically means today you care for society. Hitler cared for society. I don’t care; I just want to signal that, as you nicely said now, something a little bit more radical will be needed. That’s all I’m saying.”_ My point is that, Zizek is a real radical. He lived through actually existing socialism and admits it was a failure, but also that it was a totally necessary deadlock to reignite emancipatory struggles. like how Trump was a healthy trauma for American political involvement. Transcript from full discussion: medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/slavoj-%C5%BEi%C5%BEek-on-his-stubborn-attachment-to-communism-ep-84-bonus-8e568bd62423
For anyone who’s interested in what Lenin actually wrote and thought, I highly recommend his “The State and Revolution,” written on the eve of the October Revolution. In fact, it remains unfinished, due to the pressing demands upon Lenin to not merely theorize upon revolution, but to actually prosecute and experience one. It might surprise many people who regard his interpretation of Marxism as “inherently authoritarian”, or what have you, to read his analysis of the ultimate function and fate of the state, and to what great lengths he goes to uphold consistent Marxism-which necessarily entails the “withering away” of bureaucracy in a classless future. That is the end to which real progress tends, according to both Marx and Lenin. History had another way with things.
Did you not listen to the video? Lenin abandoned "State and Revolution" when he acquired power. It's essentially a meaningless text outside of observing contradictions.
Joker Smith It’s a banal observation that revolutionists have to adjust their approach, and therefore modify their theories, to material reality. Throughout “The State and Revolution” Lenin emphasizes and reiterates, like Marx did throughout his career, that the real experience of revolution is inevitably more instructive than any theories respecting it could be-hence the science of material dialectics: the theory of Marxism is based upon historical experience. That does not make the text “meaningless.” It gives evidence that, on a purely theoretical basis, at the very least, Lenin’s Marxism is far more consistent and orthodox than Zizek’s, and it’s ridiculous of Zizek to claim that Lenin merely “pretended to be” an orthodox Marxist. He projects his own opportunism onto Lenin. What might rather be asserted is that Lenin was too dogmatic, and too rigid, too zealous, at least initially. Zizek makes some true observations, but what is true in them is so uncontroversial as to be trivial, and, on the basis of such trivialities, he vulgarizes the intent of Lenin. If you want to seriously grasp his intent in doing what he did, read his writings for yourself.
@@simonmacconmidhe9489 It’s almost like Marx thought that capitalism would end as a result of automation collapsing the labor market and not some “communist state” (oxymoron) merely saying one day that private property is now banned. It’s almost like he said merely trying to ban private property during the capitalist mode of production would result in “crude communism”, where the community is the universal capitalist and the state becomes the new bourgeoise.
@@CripplingDuality It's almost like I have. On "crude communism" (state capitalism): _”The category of the worker is not done away with, but extended to all men. The relationship of private property persists as the relationship of the community to the world of things. Finally, this movement of opposing universal private property to private property finds expression in the brutish form of opposing to marriage (certainly a form of exclusive private property) the community of women, in which a woman becomes a piece of communal and common property. It may be said that this idea of the community of women gives away the secret of this as yet completely crude and thoughtless communism. Just as woman passes from marriage to general prostitution, so the entire world of wealth (that is, of man’s objective substance) passes from the relationship of exclusive marriage with the owner of private property to a state of universal prostitution with the community. This type of communism-since it negates the personality of man in every sphere-is but the logical expression of private property, which is this negation. General envy constituting itself as a power is the disguise in which greed re-establishes itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. The thought of every piece of private property as such is at least turned against wealthier private property in the form of envy and the urge to reduce things to a common level, so that this envy and urge even constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of this envy and of this levelling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited, standard. How little this annulment of private property is really an appro- priation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even reached it._ _The community is only a community of labour, and equality of wages paid out by communal capital-by the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality-labour as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community.”_ -- Karl Marx, Marx Engels Collected Works Vol 3, Page 295 Does that sound like a ringing endorsement of Leninism to you? State ownership is not communism. It is capitalism expressing private property and wage enslavement in a universal way.
All the Lenin defender in this comment section, just one question... what happened to all the worker concils? Weird how there wasnt really any soviets in the Soviet Union once the Vanguardists one. Weird how they then defined "workers control" as "control by the state, which DEFINITELY has the best interest of the workers in mind!" Also, what happened at that meeting with all the anarchists and syndicalists, oh, and last question, whats going on over there in Kronstadt?
Lenin understood even if there is over accumulation in one matured capitalist country, global economy as a whole is still not industrialized. Lenin understood class contradiction within a matured capitalist country is secondary to contradiction between advanced countries and dependent still non industrialized countries. Thus Lenin made Marx relevant in 20th century.
No, Lenin did not think that national liberation struggles or anti-Imperialist struggles were at all "primary" or that class struggle of the proletariat, in any country, was "secondary": "Unity with the [nationalists] is betrayal of the revolution, betrayal of the proletariat, betrayal of socialism, desertion to the bourgeoisie, because it is “unity” with the national bourgeoisie of “one’s own” country against the unity of the international revolutionary proletariat, is unity with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. The war of 1914-18 has definitely proved this." "...the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form."
@@DugongClock right. Say a country led by bourgeois or renters or tribals fighting imperialism honestly. Commies need to support that anti imperialist leadership. Commies cant say bourgeois leadership is bad as it's not giving liberation to women.
Lenin was pretty good. No event and no figure ever was perfect, things need to be analyzed from a historically impartial, not emotional, perspective with the bigger picture being kept in mind. The 1917 revolution was ultimately an impressive accomplishment of the first wide-scale and long-lasting attempt at socialism, the first economic system of its kind ever in history. The transition from feudalism to capitalism did not happen smoothly overnight. It encompassed a long period of failed attempts, bloody revolutions, and more. The transition from capitalism and socialism will be the same. Remember to be objective materialists, not dogmatic idealists
Casey Thornton www.marxist.com/makhno-anarchists-kronstadt-russia.htm These are Marxist sources, so their commentary will inevitably be biased. Regardless, the going through them reveals concrete quotes and evidences that they directly sourced. These can’t be disputed
Casey Thornton and to add on one thing, it was mostly Trotsky responsible for dealing with the anarchists. Lenin himself and most of the others were not quite as involved
Can someone tell me what he said? I thought I was following along, he was saying something about returning to zero(My understanding is Marx said we need to completely deconstruct society, an upending of all social norms and structures to create the communist utopia), then concluded Lenin wasn't a marxist.
I’m having the same issue. I’m guessing what he’s going for is the pretty well-trodden notion that USSR’s statist, centralized regime contradicts what Lenin had postulated in places like State & Revolution, wherein he was preoccupied with the Marxian idea that the state would disintegrate under socialism. You get that more from the beginning of his answer than towards the end.
What does Zizek mean at the start when he says 'I have never edited collected works of Lenin. I never read them'. I have two Zizeks books on Lenin with selected writing of Lenin and fore-after word from Zizek....Did he just forget or something?
Ramblings of Slavoj the Madman... Lenin took power in a semi-feudal primitive country, with little capitalist development, in a society that was economically and socially medieval. Not to mention ravaged by two freaking WARS! He was forced to work literary from scratch. There was nothing "Marxist" whatsoever about a situation in which Lenin found himself. It's easy to be so patronizing in the comfort of your ivory tower.
Uh yeah, that’s why Lenin never had a chance of ending capitalism. Marx’s conception of the end of capitalism depends utterly on technological progress and the elimination of the labor market through automation. Lenin was never entitled to be the one to end capitalism just because he was committed to that ideal.
@@IAmNumber4000 Sorry for necroposting. Yeah, and that's why nowadays every critique of communism is a bit odd, because they still critique the "dictatorship of proletariat" while everyone already figured out that it's about elimination (I predict some joke about it) of that proletariat and establishing "dictatorship of scientists and specialists" if you wanna call it like that.
"If we take that huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic pile, we must ask: who is driving whom? I very much doubt that it can be honestly said that the communists are directing this mountain. To tell the truth, they are not directing, they are being directed" . Lenin, XI Congress of the Bolshevik Party, 1922 (The day that defined Stalin as general secretary)
@@simonmacconmidhe9489 Stalin didn't abandon NEP until 1928, in a very abrupt and disruptive manner. Whereas Trotsky was calling for the transition away from NEP in 1924, proposing 5 year plans in its place. What happened from 1924 to 1928 was doubling down on NEP, using the rise of bureaucratism to eliminate the Left Opposition from the CPSU.
@@kierstanfaulks Right. Most people(especially the peasants, who were the largest demographic in Russia at that time, by far.) wouldnt have been able to tell you what the Bolsheviks stood for. Or what communism was. The vast majority of people in Russia didnt even know the revolution had happened until weeks after.
@@adamwatson6916 completely abandoned his ideals by putting the Soviets in power, and running the revolution. Only to then use the state to consolidate it, then died. You see the problem with this (Chomsky and “bing 4” up there’s point). Lenin died 5 years after the revolution, and 2 years after the ussr formed. There is no communism now switch. Revolutions are shit shows and it takes a while to fix an entire country.
@@Fwazonly Integrating the unions into the party for closer political cooperation is not "sidelining and suppressing the soviets", it's consolidating soviet power exactly as explained in state and revolution.
@@1vlaadchamp198 Yeah, but didn't the soviets lose all political value if there's just one party? On paper the councils were the highest political body, but the de facto power lay with the CPSU politburo. If other parties were represented in the soviets and people could vote, like during 1917, then there would be 'soviet power' instead of Bolshevik power. One can argue the party had little choice because of the civil war, and had to defeat its enemies, I would agree with that
Ok, so the logic of the dialectical argument: The rot was there from the beginning, negated by where we must concentrate our attention to is Lenin´s materialism as it were: the opening that allowed for a number of things. The fact that Marx´s analysis concentrates on capital and should help in have a sense of how not to imitate what is found within capitalists relations of production. So, he was not a Stalinist. The rot was not there from the get-go. Yeah, it is a typical Lacanian analyst way to present an argument, but when done in places such as this it gives way too much to the reactionaries. It teaches the wrong lesson "if you deposit your trust upon the exploiter, and play the game you can address their unconscious negative-hallucination style, and thereby reconstituting the relations of exploitation at the level of the academy, and what is possible at the level of cultural exchanges" There is everything to lose (when all has been lost to the capitalist exploiter) in masking oneself. In pretending that surveillance capitalism does not exist and that we are the safest when we deposit our faith in the capitalist with our lives with every daily decision we make. Those are gigantic ideological losess in the Marxists sense; we do not know, but we are doing it.
Lenin was probably one of the most real Marxists. Marx said that in order to for socialism to be implemented properly, it needs to happen in a highly developed and industrialized capitalist society. And so Lenin was trying to create that with his NEP.
He was a state capitalist who stained the name of socialism and simply took control over the means of production from the capitalists and gave it to himself and high ranking party members. He did not help spread wealth or economic control. He sent people to prison camps and firing squads and to be starved. He was not a real communist or Marxist or socialist he was a fake We don’t need him anyways. Real socialism never existed under Lenin or Stalin or under Mao in China. It doesn’t matter though we just have to learn from it and create soemthing better and avoid counter revolutions and coups like they caused as Orwell and as Chomsky warn us
Yes my thoughts are similar. And I am sympathetic to Lenin and Stalin’s circumstantial economic decisions. Although I do think vanguardism was the worst narrow Lenin idea which was anti-Marxist as it restricted Democracy unnecessarily. And I would think it was it’s single most fatal flaw. I think both had appropriate economic policies for historical circumstances. It was true belief in historical materialism. Most people think that Marxism is a specific economic policy of their imagination when it isn’t. It’s a philosophy of progress. The appropriate economics after feudalism was liberalism and the creation of a literate society. Stalin only abandon the NEP until one month after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. when liberalism became an international failure. So his policy too fits with historical materialism. I honestly am skeptical of most of western propaganda on the topic. What western power is terrified of is simply dictatorship of the worker or a progress government that won’t allow a capitalist class. If the USA government really cared genuinely about equal rights and civil liberties there would not have been segregation, lack of women’s rights, Vietnam and McCarthyism during the same era.
yeah and they still wouldn’t have been highly developed and industrialized enough in that time period to become socialist or communist. There is no technology that makes it efficient enough to replace capitalism in which that replaced feudalism and serfdom. Communism is clownish utopian ideology that needs perfection circumstances for its perfection attempt of a society. It’s biggest scam of the working class shifting from one bourgeoisie oppression to another under the false guise of “dictatorship of the proletariat”. China today isn’t even advanced enough for socialism but it’s still industrialized and one of the biggest economies of the world. Marxist-Leninism-Maoism is a tragic failure, and Anarcho-communism is cringe. Can’t believe modern communists exist sticking to an outdated failed utopian ideology that has killed millions “bUt ThAt WaSnT rEAl CoMmUnIsM” bullshit
@@matthewkopp2391what are u talking about it was unrestricted free market capitalism that failed after the great depression along with federal reserve failures in creating it and not doing anything to prevent it from worsening. He got rid of NEP and did a planned economy as he thought tit would be e chapter to get resources to industrialize with five year plan, it was successful but it was largely brutal and also thanks to western capitalists investing and helping industrialize the USSR. Liberalism is still used today and more prevalent than it was pre-ww2
When I first got into Marxism, mainly Marxism-Leninism (which belongs in quotes) I totally disagreed and thought surely Zizek have misunderstood Leninism. But no, it's true. Not only was Lenin a populist, but the 1917 revolution was a bourgeois revolution. To quote "What is to be Done? Leninism, Anti-Leninist Marxism and the Question of Revolution Today" edited by Werner Bonefeld and Sergio Tischler: "What happened was the following: capitalism (hardly developed) was not toppled. Wage labor remained, which Marx, as it is well known, insisted ks predicated on capital, as conversely capital is predicated on wage labor. The workers did not obtain control over the means of production; that control fell rather to the Party (or the state). The Russian workers accordingly remained producers of surplus value. Neither the fact that surplus value was not expropriated but a class of private capitalists, but by the state, or by the Party elements in control of the state, nor the fact that economic development in Russia - because of the absence of a bourgeois class - took snktjer course than that of the West, changed anything for the position of the Russian workers as object of exploitation or wage slave. " (pp. 19-20) Not that Russia could have "built socialism" out of feudalism / semi-feudalism / very early stage capitalism. Another thing specifically about Lenin is that he didn't have access to "The German Ideology", thus he was missing important insights Marx and Engels made regarding ideology. The supposed Marxism of Lenin exists in name only, for the most part at least. I highly recommend the book I quoted and you can find it online.
The fact that the Soviet Union referred to Lenin ideology as "Marxist-Leninist" shows this already. Otherwise why the need to refer to the ideology as such
More than that, Lenin wrote extensive critical commentaries on Marx in which he rejected or modified a lot of Marx’s ideas. Lenin was a close student of Marx, but he also represented a significant departure from him.
@Rizu der Rotfuchs I have a book written by him (admittedly over 25 something years ago) and in it he clearly states he's a marxist and the whole book is a defence of Marxism and why in his opinion the Soviet union and Maoist China was not. So unless his views have changed and he no longer recognises himself as a Marxist then ok I'm sorry. But the literature he's put out in the past states so. If I'm wrong then sorry. Don't crucify me
@@T4SelNiNO According to his statements and beliefs he would be considered a social democrat. The media presents him as a Marxist because it helps with ratings. His views aren't really extreme and he makes a lot of sense. You should check more of his videos.
We forget always how big and wild is Russia. Lenin saw opportunitie to steer the change that was already going. Is not revolution that destroyed carism it was industrial progres, and of course world war. Lenin was ingenious to step in this mess and to steer it towards some realisation. If this didn't happen, in WW2 Russia would be defeated. Even one could say that Hitler is result of western fear of soviet communism. Actually its result of volatile capitalistic economy, and reaction to it in western countries. So weakened Russia from ww1 would not have much chance to stand against Hitler, and world would be much different if that would happen. So in a way Lenin was last stance for liberating World from imperialism, and liberties of working man. Forgetting this is bad. And Staljin too. Yes it was totalitarian state. But still held some universal principles of human rights, it was not based on supremacy, which is big difference.
@@ok-up4qx probably, because it could not mobilize all that human and natural resources without strictly organized state structure that employs all means of production in a way that benefits more state than private wealthy individuals. Because Germany was organized in similar way they could made such impact on others in short period of time.
The G I S T of this speech is extremely vague He's telling a story with great intensity, perfectly describes the circumstances of late 1910s and early 20s, but there are no details nothing to hold on in his speech when hi talks of Lenin's Ideology.
Couldn't give any specific examples and no trot had ever claimed if Lenin had just "lived longer" than the revolution would have been saved. He's so vague. It's so simple, anything that's workers democracy, go in that direction.
We need more or less an entropic kind of economy where accumulation and growth is not needed to develop and so on and so on. Just a little economy lessons from entropic behavior of animals and species.
How many time do we need until people realize they are making the same jokes about his tics all the time? At least add something new or original, it stopped being funny many years ago.
Lenin and Armand Hammer had an interesting business relationship, the former called Hammer his "path" to America, and he worked to secure technology in exchange for resource concessions from the Soviet Union.
As Marx said: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." Zizek exposes himself as a clueless idealist with the way he speaks of Lenin, as if Lenin and the Bolsheviks alone could have transformed Russia from a famine-stricken, semifeudal wasteland into some utopia, if only they had the correct ideas. Zizek's claims that after the civil war, Russia was returned to "everyday life"-as if its political leadership hadn't been exterminated, its economy hadn't been pulverised and its social relations hadn't been disintegrated-and that the Bolsheviks should have simply "invented new forms" of society thereafter is especially utopian. Only an idiot would believe it possible to build a totally new form of society from such material conditions. Furthermore, Lenin repeatedly stressed, before, during and after the revolution, that Russia could never achieve even a transitional socialist society, let alone a classless communist society, unless it had the help of at least one soviet regime established in an advanced capitalist country, such was Russia's economic backwardness. The primary objective of the Russian Revolution, therefore, was to spark workers' uprisings throughout the rest of the world, especially in Europe, and to then help secure the victory of the workers in an advanced, industrialised nation, e.g., Germany or Britain. The more developed country would then be able to help pull Russia out of economic backwardness. As Lenin stated on 7 March, 1918, as well as on many other occasions before and after: “At all events, under all conceivable circumstances, if the German Revolution does not come, we are doomed.” The key takeaway here is that the Russian Revolution and the world socialist revolution it sparked was a living struggle. The defeat of these revolutions and the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy wasn't at all a predetermined outcome, doomed by some original sin committed by Lenin, as this anti-Marxist falsifier of history claims. In fact, it was precisely these self-important, ignorant, middle-class elements like Zizek who sided with Stalin against Lenin in the first place and formed the backbone of the bureaucracy.
Stephen Shannan spoken like a true Trotskyite . He literally mentions that he is not part of the Trotskyite logic and that triggers you to condemn his rather progressive take on marxism-Leninism.
While I can't vouch for it's perfection as a text, I think if you read "Another View of Stalin" you'll see that, from documents and quotes and actions, at least two of the things you suggest here are, at best, only partially true.
If you believe that communism is a utopia, you aren't a Communist Also it's funny how you admit it was impossible for Lenin to build communism in Russia
Strangely the closest economics to Stalin of any US president is Donald Trump as they both instituted forced Mercantilism. That’s why economic liberals hated Trump. Lenin would be described as a progressive liberal. His policy NEP was criticized by Stalin as „national liberalism“. It included small scale free market private businesses and private cooperatives and a government economic sector for only certain industries. But Lenin’s theory was „set the progressive forces in motion.“
He admitted he did not read Lenin's book. It is obvious he did not lie about that. Dear Zizek, read State and Revolution 5th chapter to see that Lenin was a real Marxist.
Because Marx was wrong, so Lenin had to create an intellectual vanguard to push the revolution as the proletariat didn't naturally revolt as Marx predicted.
well, one can argue that in the case of backward, illiterate Russia, to build a strong party was a useful tactic. Don't see how Marx was wrong in this context
Marx wasn’t wrong. For some reason no Leninists actually bother to read why Marx thought capitalism would end in the first place. Capitalism will never end so long as the labor market still exists. In order for capitalism to end, automation must collapse the labor market. You can’t end capitalism by just banning private property one day.
@@IAmNumber4000 Not banning private property overnight, no (private property btw in Marxian language means capital aka the means of production, not the clothes you're wearing). Marx didn't talk about waiting for automation to take over labour, he was a revolutionairy thinker. So the proletariat must grab the capital and use it for the society as a whole, instead of enriching a few at the top. That would be the end of capitalism as that class-relation ends. The idea Lenin had was that the revolutionairy party would grab state power and temporarly use that dictatorship to build socialism. (I believe he wrote this in 'State and Revolution') But the socialism of workers collectively run the businesses and political organs was never achieved, it hung on to the one-party state rule. That's where disasters like collectivization of agriculture came from
What he says there is actually quite admirable in its transparency. You can tell from what he says in the rest of the video that he has read some of Lenin's works, but he admits at the start that he has not read *all* of them, only merely a subset.
"The only livable communism - China", haha. Well, the only livable capitalism is the imperialist center where the loot is being held and distributed. He got some as well.
Lenin was aware enough to know that the Russian Revolution could not lead to a socialist or communist society and as a result completely perverted the view held by Marx. Lenin claimed, “…the organisation of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession” and “must perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret as possible” (‘What is to be done?’ 1902) This is contrary to Marx’s view, “All previous historical movements were the movements of minorities, in the interest of minorities. The proletarian revolution is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.” (Communist Manifesto 1848) This basic principle was defended by Marx throughout his forty years of socialist activity and was repeated in the clause of the General Rules of the First International that, “…the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working classes themselves”. This is an unequivocal rejection of the view that socialism can be introduced for the working class or that the working class can be led to socialism by some enlightened minority. Later in Capital (1867) Marx explains:“…previously it was a matter of the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers: but in this case, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people”. Lenin still insists that the proletariat: “[were] capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited masses” [but it is the vanguard of the proletariat, rather than the proletariat itself,] “which is capable of taking power and leading the whole people to socialism”. (‘Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder’ (1920) It is interesting to note that what Lenin is really proposing is a progressive narrowing of the decision making vanguard, which might logically even be narrowed down to a single individual, a proposition which is precisely what was suggested when he claimed: that the vanguard need not even concern itself with establishing majority support prior to the seizure of power. “It is clear, therefore, that it is the vanguard and not the class which is to rule - which plainly cannot be described as anything resembling democracy. A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses.” (Lenin, Speech On The Agrarian Question, November 14 1917) But he went even further: “…the will of a class may sometimes be carried out by a dictator, who sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary”, and, “absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline”, are to be regarded as, “an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie”. (Ninth Congress of Russian Communist Party, March 1920) This, together with lack of other essential pre-requisites for revolution, provides the reason why Russian after 1917 could never have become socialist but instead inevitably became a capitalist dictatorship orchestrated by the State under Lenin and later Stalin. This was formally recognised with the emergence of The New Economic Policy (NEP) which Lenin acknowledged as being State capitalism. After the October Revolution, Lenin used the term State capitalism in a positive way. In spring 1918, during a short period of economic liberalism prior to the introduction of war communism, and again during the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921, Lenin justified the introduction of State capitalism under the political control of the dictatorship of the proletariat to further centralise control and develop the productive forces: “Reality tells us that State capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve State capitalism [then] that would a victory” (Lenin 1918, Collected Works, vol 27, p.293). In addition, Lenin stated: “The State capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the New Economic Policy, is, under Soviet power, a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our State capitalism differs essentially from the State capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the State with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry”.
@@morse1883 First of all, your point is mostly semantic. Lenin, obviously, was influenced greatly by Marx. As such, it would not be inaccurate to say that Leninism was derived from Marxism. The differences between the ideologies may be substantial to ideologues and intellectuals, but is mostly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. To a layman, Marxism and Leninism are the same. The same is true for Facism and Nazism or Christianity and Lutheranism. Yet to someone who knows the nuances between each ideology, there are clear differences. Secondly, I am curious about how Marx planed for his movement to actually coordinate, organize, and strategize without leadership. In nearly every single example of a successful uprising or revolution (that I know of) starts with or develops some kind of leadership. Leadership and government is also necessary for a stable society that can respond to unexpected developments like crisis like natural disasters, invasions, or things like subversive elements. Surely he must have addressed this?
@@josephpentony4804 every previous successful revolution had been led by a minority class to gain control of the state and create a new class society, communism will be led by the proletariat, who make up the majority of people, and it seeks to abolish class society - not continue it like the October revolution
The discussion could have been ended after he said "I've never read Lenin's works". Not informed? Stfu. Zizek is a stand up "philosopher". Long live Lenin.
@@kylescott169 Well, a lot of people write semi-or-uninformed books about people. He suggests throught his writings that he has only barely skimmed the texts he talks about. It makes him seem intellectually lazy.
No one will remember this political celebrity in a hundred years. Lenin’s name will never be forgotten as long as the masses struggle to be free of their chains.
All the Leninists in this comments section seem to be forgetting that Marx never said that outright banning private property would end capitalism. In fact he said the opposite and called that ideology “crude communism”. He predicted it would lead to a society in which the community is the universal capitalist, since banning private property merely shifts ownership to the state. And that this form of society would become totalitarian. 26 years before Lenin was born. Source: Marx’s Concept of Socialism, Monthly Review Trying to end capitalism by simply banning private property completely undermines Marx’s theory of historical materialism and the TRPF. His two most important reasons for why capitalism should end in the first place. Lenin didn’t just deviate from Marx’s theories slightly, he used Marxism as an aesthetic facade for a doomed state capitalist autocracy pretending to be socialist. He ignored the most important parts of Marx’s critique of capitalism.
Imagine backing up what you wrote about Marx not with one of his texts, but with some other text. While the idea of "commodity production in the socialist mode of production" is something Marx disagreed with, you are going so far against historical materialism when you say that a socialist revolution unconditionally needs to abolish commodity production at the first oppurtunity. The conditions in Russia made that completely impossible, the closest they got was arguably war communism and that upset the peasantry so much that they needed to enact the NEP to prevent an uprising. He said in Critique of the Gotha Program that the law of value will be used in the first stage of a proletarian society. He also didn't call it "crude communism", he called it bourgeois socialism.
@@danielhorritt3574 The citations to Marx Engels Collected Works are in the article. If I link to Google Books here, UA-cam will hide the comment as spam. No kidding the conditions in Czarist Russia made a socialist revolution impossible. That's my point. It was in every way a bourgeois revolution that installed the Soviet bureaucracy as the new ruling class, that organized production, exploited labor, coerced labor, and collected surplus value at the state level. The USSR's mode of production was identical in form (class, currency, state, lack of worker ownership) to any other capitalist country, because it was fundamentally a state capitalist system. Except it was less efficient at producing value than other forms of capitalism. Authoritarianism has been used throughout every era of history to shoehorn an ineffiient form of production into an inappropriate time and place. And it still didn't prevent them from collapsing. They never could have achieved socialism or communism, because that requires collapsing the labor market with technological development (automation). They never got even remotely close. They implemented what was clearly a state capitalist system and rebranded it as socialism. How do you think it would have been possible to sustain a socialist "transition to communism" for the entire duration of Russia's capitalist mode of production? If the USSR hadn't collapsed then how many centuries do you think the "socialist transition" to a stateless communist society would have taken? The central tankie misunderstanding of "global revolution" is that they don't realize the primary driver of revolution is technological development. Not ideology. There is only one point when it will be possible to overthrow the capitalist mode of production and that will be when automation causes the labor market to collapse and people everywhere are forced to either seize production or starve to death. Until then, pretending that a revolution is possible is not realistic. The vast majority of workers prefer to cling to their stable, semi-shitty lives rather than risk it all in a violent bid to seize power. Premature revolution requires getting the vast majority of people radicalized enough by Marxist theory to pick up guns and that is not going to happen. Not even leftists can agree on what Marx said, case in point. Because ideology isn't what causes modes of production to change. Material conditions are. Capitalism must exhaust its ability to generate new value. If you want an indicator of when capitalism will collapse, look at the projected US debt to GDP ratio for the coming decades. The US is forced to spend more each year to keep the GDP growth rate at its normal rate of 2-3% per year, at an exponentially increasing rate. If they don't do that, the Great Depression will repeat itself. But debt spending is leading to diminishing returns on GDP growth, proving Marx's central thesis that capitalist growth undermines capitalism's requirements for existence. The projected ratio has a distinctly exponential regression. We are nearing the end.
@@IAmNumber4000 That's one thing, but to denounce Lenin for not ending commodity production immediately is something completely different. The peasantry made this impossible, not Lenin.
@@danielhorritt3574 I'm denouncing Lenin for trying to force a socialist transition in a time and place where it did not belong, personally having many innocent people killed while doing so. And for calling his bourgeois revolution "socialist". The difference between Marx and Lenin is like the difference between Darwin and "social Darwinists" in my estimation. A misinterpretation of a good theory created to justify the unconscious drive for power. If that's what a socialist revolution is supposed to look like, like another Great Terror, then why would any working class person in their right mind want that? I'm sure some of them are alienated and desperate enough to prefer widespread destruction to their current situation but without the majority of the proletariat on board, there will never be a revolution in the way you've conceived of it. Americans in particular already have a near-apocalyptic perception of all the previous times Leninism was attempted. You would have to convince the vast majority of the American working class that a revolution would improve their material situation enough to justify fighting and potentially dying. And do you actually know that it will?
Stalin was not a real communist. Just because he was General Secretary of the CPSU, what does he know about communism? And I always thought every living thing had a brain. I stand corrected.
If you want to get Zizek's 'I WOULD PREFER NOT TO' t-shirt you can do so here:
i-would-prefer-not-to.com
ABSOLUTELY WRONG TITLE. The title can easily be "Why Lenin isn't a DOGMATIC Marxist", he even explicitly says that, and that's what he was pointing to in this whole talk. And regarding who is a "real Marxist" Žižek also implies here, and states explicitly elsewhere, that a Marxist revolution couldn't even become real without betraying the dogma in some way. The title of this video is in every sense of this word stupid.
Agreed, buuuuuut in channel's defense...that was probably the point. Clickbait baybee. The lamest form of clickbait ever, but clickbait nonetheless. Or not, I don't know. *_sniff_*
@@Bisquick Clickbait is stupid by definition, especially if we accept Deleuze's definition of stupidy as the inability to tell apart the ordinal from the singular.
@@theinternet1424 a valid point indeed, though if _we're_ being good marxists we should note the necessity of this stupidity as it is tied to material outcomes in this dumb economic circumstance, so maybe that takes some of the edge off.
@@Bisquick It is what it is, a small part of the whole swamp of online attention grabbing. Not the end of the world as we know it or end of anything really, just a continuation of ordinary cycles that feed the cynically stupid things we do because of ideology. How much of the title's misdirection is intentional I don't know and I don't think it matters as much.
Still I think that it's important to point out how stupid and misleading it is and I really don't think there is an excuse. It's one thing to understand the relative necessities of capitalism and the need to subject ourselves to those necesseties because of it's overwhelming dominance, that's a common thing and something Marxists should accept and take in their stride. But pointing out what is being destroyed or exploited (in this case, truth about Žižek's views on Lenin) is on the other side of the process and always relevant for critique in its own right.
This title is, for example, more damaging than ordinary generic "just enjoy yourself" commodity fetishism / consumerism because, through just one simple word trick, they are misdirecting us by using a talk that has the completely opposite purpose. I see a lot of people in this comment section having completely baseless arguments about important issues just because they believed a title that's driven by trivial ideology of clickbait. That's the work of ideology we most oppose whenever possible.
Bertrand Russell in his 1920 visit and book said Lenin was a dogmatic Marxist much like dogmatic Christians.
Marx was not a real Marxist
Abdullah Qahtani “i am not a Marxist” -Karl Marx, Parti Ouvrier de France
Mao was not a real Maoist
@@panbert8092 that quote is taken out of context. The full quote goes "...what is certain is that [if they are Marxists], [then] I myself am not a Marxist" by which he meant Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue.
Marx was indeed a marxist and anyone who subscribes to ideas of dialectical materialism, class struggle and labour theory of value can be called a marxist. Naturally marxists vary from man to man, many people have contributed to marxist theory themselves so there is no "true marxism", just various interpretations.
@@crniskadu9881Joseph Dietzgen developed the notion of "Dialectical MaterialismTM", not Marx nor Engels. Kautsky used the term in his written biography about Friedrich Engels and the original populariser of Marxism in Russia, Georgi Plekhanov, a Kautskyist, used the terms "dialectical materialism" and "historical materialism" interchangeably.
So I wouln't say that "dialectical materialism" is Marxist because it's not a theory of Marx.
Of all the people who had movements named after them, only Posadas was a real Posadist. But alas, he didn't have the boom boom thingy.
Zizek wants Lenin to have a clear view of what a revolution should be. Of course, this is impossible. He had to interpret the world and change it as it was happening. In this sense, I can argue that Marx was not a real Marxist as he never had the material basis on how a revolution should proceed until the power was taken.
I really like Zizek’s work on ideology and cultural analysis, also his critique of the concept of totalitarianism, but in terms of analysing real socialism he is truly out of his depth
Zizek describes being a revolutionary like being a captain on the open sea. Real leaders are out in the unknown, navigating a course by reading the constellations. There is no other way since reality can never be closed/whole.
Additionally.. to +Raphael Harris’ criticism.. I challenge you. To say Zizek “is out of his depth” in analyzing socialism is _terribly_ pretentious. Have you read his books/heard his debates? Zizek has an international academic journal dedicated to him... he is a vanishing mediator who’s ideas will still be relevant a hundred years from now. Please do more research before leaving such baseless comments.
It's not baseless. I am answering regarding his comments on the video. What he says contradicts your assertion.
Admittedly I haven’t read Zizek in his entirety, so I’m open to changing my opinion. However in interviews and talks and Q&As he constantly bashes real socialism and brands it as ‘a total failure’. In my opinion, it’s true that it failed, at least in the Soviet Union/DDR/Yugoslavia. But I don’t like the defeatist attitude, something he inherits very much from the Frankfurt School and is quite common in the mainstream left. In my opinion, however flawed real socialism was/is, and in this regard I’m including even the worst years of Stalin & Beria, it should be celebrated and used as an example that revolutions are possible and not an a priori failed idea. When we use this lingo of ‘total failure’ or ‘actually the USSR was state capitalism’ what we are saying is, “a post-capitalist society is impossible to reach”. This is what makes most communists capitulate into social-democracy. I reiterate that I like Zizek’s work and respect him very much but this is one aspect of him that I disagree with.
Raphael Harris I do appreciate your reply, apologies if my initial comment was somewhat harsh, you sound like a reasonable person.
I agree, Zizek’s communism does lean toward social democracy but to exemplify caretaking examples I’d say, especially since capitalisms market society rubric has globalized so thoroughly/deeply. He doesn’t claim social democracy is the end all be all though. Tyler Cowen wants to box Z up to amputate the remainders of his position, Tyler can’t deal with the open ends.. he thinks of Zizek as a “Singapore type of state interventionist capitalist-a communist conservative” however Zizek likens Singapore to “fascism with a very human face”.
Zizek claims the reason capitalism works is because it is unfair. The paradox being that ones pride is allowed to remain in-tact through offloading their failure onto the unfairness of “the system”-no one has to fully confront their impotence/weakness so you never have to be a full loser technically.
From the full conversation:
Zizek: _”Okay. But isn’t Stalinism a much more traumatic example of this than fascism? With fascism, things are relatively simple, I think. It’s a model of conservative revolution and so on and so on. But Bolshevism, which tried to do a radical emancipation and it turned into a traumatic...Even today, we don’t have a good theory of Stalinism. That’s what bothers me, not any return to it.”_
Zizek: _”People, idiots tell me-not you-‘Why don’t you call it socialism?’ Everybody is a socialist today. Bill Gates says he’s a socialist, and so on. It’s meaningless. Socialism basically means today you care for society. Hitler cared for society. I don’t care; I just want to signal that, as you nicely said now, something a little bit more radical will be needed. That’s all I’m saying.”_
My point is that, Zizek is a real radical. He lived through actually existing socialism and admits it was a failure, but also that it was a totally necessary deadlock to reignite emancipatory struggles. like how Trump was a healthy trauma for American political involvement.
Transcript from full discussion:
medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/slavoj-%C5%BEi%C5%BEek-on-his-stubborn-attachment-to-communism-ep-84-bonus-8e568bd62423
The real question we have to ask "Is Zizek a marxist?".
"I am more of a Hegelian" - Zizek ;-)
More of a dumbass
He's controled opposition. His analysis are not materialistic at all
No not at ALL
For anyone who’s interested in what Lenin actually wrote and thought, I highly recommend his “The State and Revolution,” written on the eve of the October Revolution. In fact, it remains unfinished, due to the pressing demands upon Lenin to not merely theorize upon revolution, but to actually prosecute and experience one. It might surprise many people who regard his interpretation of Marxism as “inherently authoritarian”, or what have you, to read his analysis of the ultimate function and fate of the state, and to what great lengths he goes to uphold consistent Marxism-which necessarily entails the “withering away” of bureaucracy in a classless future. That is the end to which real progress tends, according to both Marx and Lenin. History had another way with things.
Did you not listen to the video? Lenin abandoned "State and Revolution" when he acquired power. It's essentially a meaningless text outside of observing contradictions.
Joker Smith It’s a banal observation that revolutionists have to adjust their approach, and therefore modify their theories, to material reality. Throughout “The State and Revolution” Lenin emphasizes and reiterates, like Marx did throughout his career, that the real experience of revolution is inevitably more instructive than any theories respecting it could be-hence the science of material dialectics: the theory of Marxism is based upon historical experience. That does not make the text “meaningless.” It gives evidence that, on a purely theoretical basis, at the very least, Lenin’s Marxism is far more consistent and orthodox than Zizek’s, and it’s ridiculous of Zizek to claim that Lenin merely “pretended to be” an orthodox Marxist. He projects his own opportunism onto Lenin. What might rather be asserted is that Lenin was too dogmatic, and too rigid, too zealous, at least initially. Zizek makes some true observations, but what is true in them is so uncontroversial as to be trivial, and, on the basis of such trivialities, he vulgarizes the intent of Lenin. If you want to seriously grasp his intent in doing what he did, read his writings for yourself.
@@simonmacconmidhe9489 It’s almost like Marx thought that capitalism would end as a result of automation collapsing the labor market and not some “communist state” (oxymoron) merely saying one day that private property is now banned. It’s almost like he said merely trying to ban private property during the capitalist mode of production would result in “crude communism”, where the community is the universal capitalist and the state becomes the new bourgeoise.
@@IAmNumber4000 it's almost like you haven't actually read Marx and Engels
@@CripplingDuality It's almost like I have.
On "crude communism" (state capitalism):
_”The category of the worker is not done away with, but extended to all men. The relationship of private property persists as the relationship of the community to the world of things. Finally, this movement of opposing universal private property to private property finds expression in the brutish form of opposing to marriage (certainly a form of exclusive private property) the community of women, in which a woman becomes a piece of communal and common property. It may be said that this idea of the community of women gives away the secret of this as yet completely crude and thoughtless communism. Just as woman passes from marriage to general prostitution, so the entire world of wealth (that is, of man’s objective substance) passes from the relationship of exclusive marriage with the owner of private property to a state of universal prostitution with the community. This type of communism-since it negates the personality of man in every sphere-is but the logical expression of private property, which is this negation. General envy constituting itself as a power is the disguise in which greed re-establishes itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. The thought of every piece of private property as such is at least turned against wealthier private property in the form of envy and the urge to reduce things to a common level, so that this envy and urge even constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of this envy and of this levelling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited, standard. How little this annulment of private property is really an appro- priation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even reached it._
_The community is only a community of labour, and equality of wages paid out by communal capital-by the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality-labour as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community.”_
-- Karl Marx, Marx Engels Collected Works Vol 3, Page 295
Does that sound like a ringing endorsement of Leninism to you? State ownership is not communism. It is capitalism expressing private property and wage enslavement in a universal way.
All the Lenin defender in this comment section, just one question... what happened to all the worker concils? Weird how there wasnt really any soviets in the Soviet Union once the Vanguardists one. Weird how they then defined "workers control" as "control by the state, which DEFINITELY has the best interest of the workers in mind!" Also, what happened at that meeting with all the anarchists and syndicalists, oh, and last question, whats going on over there in Kronstadt?
You’re an idiot and a philistine.
Lenin understood even if there is over accumulation in one matured capitalist country, global economy as a whole is still not industrialized.
Lenin understood class contradiction within a matured capitalist country is secondary to contradiction between advanced countries and dependent still non industrialized countries.
Thus Lenin made Marx relevant in 20th century.
No, Lenin did not think that national liberation struggles or anti-Imperialist struggles were at all "primary" or that class struggle of the proletariat, in any country, was "secondary":
"Unity with the [nationalists] is betrayal of the revolution, betrayal of the proletariat, betrayal of socialism, desertion to the bourgeoisie, because it is “unity” with the national bourgeoisie of “one’s own” country against the unity of the international revolutionary proletariat, is unity with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. The war of 1914-18 has definitely proved this."
"...the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form."
@@DugongClock right.
Say a country led by bourgeois or renters or tribals fighting imperialism honestly.
Commies need to support that anti imperialist leadership.
Commies cant say bourgeois leadership is bad as it's not giving liberation to women.
"I'm a pessimist here"
Psesssimissst
I'm a pessimist too comrade
"!Uuh! -- HERe's Why --"
Could do a Slavoj bingo with that, the coffee joke, "and so on", and so on...
THIS VIDEO TITLE IS SO MISLEADING: a convenient way of attempting to dismiss Lenin & Leninism, which is NOT what Zizek is doing in this video.
Leon Trotsky should be in Smash Bros.
his final smash is a giant ice pick.
@@xwoog5686 Will Mennaker's grandpa is the guy with the ice pick
In my opinion, you gotta view this as how the Greeks view the Trojan wars; ancient history you learn lessons from without moralizing.
Lenin was pretty good. No event and no figure ever was perfect, things need to be analyzed from a historically impartial, not emotional, perspective with the bigger picture being kept in mind. The 1917 revolution was ultimately an impressive accomplishment of the first wide-scale and long-lasting attempt at socialism, the first economic system of its kind ever in history. The transition from feudalism to capitalism did not happen smoothly overnight. It encompassed a long period of failed attempts, bloody revolutions, and more. The transition from capitalism and socialism will be the same. Remember to be objective materialists, not dogmatic idealists
I see you around a lot lately. Corona is hard on us all, stay strong ^^
I'm so done with this name choosing sh*t aha wow I’m a celebrity now :D and thanks stay safe man
Executing Anarchist allies is far far far from perfect
Casey Thornton www.marxist.com/makhno-anarchists-kronstadt-russia.htm
These are Marxist sources, so their commentary will inevitably be biased. Regardless, the going through them reveals concrete quotes and evidences that they directly sourced. These can’t be disputed
Casey Thornton and to add on one thing, it was mostly Trotsky responsible for dealing with the anarchists. Lenin himself and most of the others were not quite as involved
Then again, I hear the phrase "real communism has never happened."
Of course he has never read Lenin; it all makes sense now...
The CIA's dollars just dropped
This fellas animated n personable in a very unique way. 2 thumbs up
Great job with the clickbait title op 😡
it's funny how they put the template of him touching his nose just to make the video more interesting
Can someone tell me what he said? I thought I was following along, he was saying something about returning to zero(My understanding is Marx said we need to completely deconstruct society, an upending of all social norms and structures to create the communist utopia), then concluded Lenin wasn't a marxist.
Zizek was put on this Earth to rival Carl of Akkod. They've been enemies throughout time, and history, even parallel universes.
I’m having the same issue. I’m guessing what he’s going for is the pretty well-trodden notion that USSR’s statist, centralized regime contradicts what Lenin had postulated in places like State & Revolution, wherein he was preoccupied with the Marxian idea that the state would disintegrate under socialism. You get that more from the beginning of his answer than towards the end.
Same issue here. No idea what he actually said.
What does Zizek mean at the start when he says 'I have never edited collected works of Lenin. I never read them'. I have two Zizeks books on Lenin with selected writing of Lenin and fore-after word from Zizek....Did he just forget or something?
@@simonmacconmidhe9489 I like Zizek, but his intro to Verso’s book on Mao was terrible
@@simonmacconmidhe9489 I swear I’m either thick or this guy just rambles on about nothing half the time
@@quinnnosbod3673 So did he not read Mao either? lmao jfc
He looks more like a stand-up philosopher.
True 😂
I don't think he stand up much.
@@tmm4461😂
Ramblings of Slavoj the Madman... Lenin took power in a semi-feudal primitive country, with little capitalist development, in a society that was economically and socially medieval. Not to mention ravaged by two freaking WARS! He was forced to work literary from scratch. There was nothing "Marxist" whatsoever about a situation in which Lenin found himself.
It's easy to be so patronizing in the comfort of your ivory tower.
Uh yeah, that’s why Lenin never had a chance of ending capitalism. Marx’s conception of the end of capitalism depends utterly on technological progress and the elimination of the labor market through automation. Lenin was never entitled to be the one to end capitalism just because he was committed to that ideal.
@@IAmNumber4000 Sorry for necroposting. Yeah, and that's why nowadays every critique of communism is a bit odd, because they still critique the "dictatorship of proletariat" while everyone already figured out that it's about elimination (I predict some joke about it) of that proletariat and establishing "dictatorship of scientists and specialists" if you wanna call it like that.
Start from what level?
I don't understand the word.
2:17
But we should return to the zero level, begin from nowhere
"If we take that huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic pile, we must ask: who is driving whom? I very much doubt that it can be honestly said that the communists are directing this mountain. To tell the truth, they are not directing, they are being directed" .
Lenin, XI Congress of the Bolshevik Party, 1922
(The day that defined Stalin as general secretary)
@@simonmacconmidhe9489 Stalin didn't abandon NEP until 1928, in a very abrupt and disruptive manner. Whereas Trotsky was calling for the transition away from NEP in 1924, proposing 5 year plans in its place. What happened from 1924 to 1928 was doubling down on NEP, using the rise of bureaucratism to eliminate the Left Opposition from the CPSU.
"Not a single Marxist understand Marx." - Lenin
एक भी मार्क्सवादी मार्क्स को नहीं समझता ? इसका तात्पर्य क्या है?
Communism is when i never have to work again and AI does everything for us.
lenin lived in a tkme when most of the population was illiterate. he was using hyperbole.
@@kierstanfaulks Right. Most people(especially the peasants, who were the largest demographic in Russia at that time, by far.) wouldnt have been able to tell you what the Bolsheviks stood for. Or what communism was. The vast majority of people in Russia didnt even know the revolution had happened until weeks after.
"I am the one true marxist basically" -Lenin
Lenin completely abandoned his positions made in "The state and revolution".
What? Ive never heard that before.
Chomsky said something similar
@@adamwatson6916 completely abandoned his ideals by putting the Soviets in power, and running the revolution. Only to then use the state to consolidate it, then died. You see the problem with this (Chomsky and “bing 4” up there’s point). Lenin died 5 years after the revolution, and 2 years after the ussr formed. There is no communism now switch. Revolutions are shit shows and it takes a while to fix an entire country.
@@1vlaadchamp198 He came to power purportedly on behalf of the soviets and then sidelined and suppressed the soviets afterwards.
@@Fwazonly Integrating the unions into the party for closer political cooperation is not "sidelining and suppressing the soviets", it's consolidating soviet power exactly as explained in state and revolution.
@@1vlaadchamp198 Yeah, but didn't the soviets lose all political value if there's just one party? On paper the councils were the highest political body, but the de facto power lay with the CPSU politburo.
If other parties were represented in the soviets and people could vote, like during 1917, then there would be 'soviet power' instead of Bolshevik power. One can argue the party had little choice because of the civil war, and had to defeat its enemies, I would agree with that
Ok, so the logic of the dialectical argument: The rot was there from the beginning, negated by where we must concentrate our attention to is Lenin´s materialism as it were: the opening that allowed for a number of things. The fact that Marx´s analysis concentrates on capital and should help in have a sense of how not to imitate what is found within capitalists relations of production. So, he was not a Stalinist. The rot was not there from the get-go. Yeah, it is a typical Lacanian analyst way to present an argument, but when done in places such as this it gives way too much to the reactionaries. It teaches the wrong lesson "if you deposit your trust upon the exploiter, and play the game you can address their unconscious negative-hallucination style, and thereby reconstituting the relations of exploitation at the level of the academy, and what is possible at the level of cultural exchanges" There is everything to lose (when all has been lost to the capitalist exploiter) in masking oneself. In pretending that surveillance capitalism does not exist and that we are the safest when we deposit our faith in the capitalist with our lives with every daily decision we make. Those are gigantic ideological losess in the Marxists sense; we do not know, but we are doing it.
imagine taking this guy seriously lol
We need subtitles for this
He's on coke
@@mpbh6672 😂😂😂😂😂
Lenin was probably one of the most real Marxists. Marx said that in order to for socialism to be implemented properly, it needs to happen in a highly developed and industrialized capitalist society. And so Lenin was trying to create that with his NEP.
He was a state capitalist who stained the name of socialism and simply took control over the means of production from the capitalists and gave it to himself and high ranking party members. He did not help spread wealth or economic control. He sent people to prison camps and firing squads and to be starved. He was not a real communist or Marxist or socialist he was a fake
We don’t need him anyways. Real socialism never existed under Lenin or Stalin or under Mao in China. It doesn’t matter though we just have to learn from it and create soemthing better and avoid counter revolutions and coups like they caused as Orwell and as Chomsky warn us
@@thelonewanderer4084 lib moment
Yes my thoughts are similar. And I am sympathetic to Lenin and Stalin’s circumstantial economic decisions.
Although I do think vanguardism was the worst narrow Lenin idea which was anti-Marxist as it restricted Democracy unnecessarily. And I would think it was it’s single most fatal flaw.
I think both had appropriate economic policies for historical circumstances.
It was true belief in historical materialism.
Most people think that Marxism is a specific economic policy of their imagination when it isn’t. It’s a philosophy of progress.
The appropriate economics after feudalism was liberalism and the creation of a literate society.
Stalin only abandon the NEP until one month after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. when liberalism became an international failure. So his policy too fits with historical materialism.
I honestly am skeptical of most of western propaganda on the topic. What western power is terrified of is simply dictatorship of the worker or a progress government that won’t allow a capitalist class.
If the USA government really cared genuinely about equal rights and civil liberties there would not have been segregation, lack of women’s rights, Vietnam and McCarthyism during the same era.
yeah and they still wouldn’t have been highly developed and industrialized enough in that time period to become socialist or communist. There is no technology that makes it efficient enough to replace capitalism in which that replaced feudalism and serfdom. Communism is clownish utopian ideology that needs perfection circumstances for its perfection attempt of a society. It’s biggest scam of the working class shifting from one bourgeoisie oppression to another under the false guise of “dictatorship of the proletariat”. China today isn’t even advanced enough for socialism but it’s still industrialized and one of the biggest economies of the world. Marxist-Leninism-Maoism is a tragic failure, and Anarcho-communism is cringe. Can’t believe modern communists exist sticking to an outdated failed utopian ideology that has killed millions “bUt ThAt WaSnT rEAl CoMmUnIsM” bullshit
@@matthewkopp2391what are u talking about it was unrestricted free market capitalism that failed after the great depression along with federal reserve failures in creating it and not doing anything to prevent it from worsening. He got rid of NEP and did a planned economy as he thought tit would be e chapter to get resources to industrialize with five year plan, it was successful but it was largely brutal and also thanks to western capitalists investing and helping industrialize the USSR. Liberalism is still used today and more prevalent than it was pre-ww2
Maybe I'm slow but I don't understand what it is he's saying!
You don't speak phlegm?
When I first got into Marxism, mainly Marxism-Leninism (which belongs in quotes) I totally disagreed and thought surely Zizek have misunderstood Leninism. But no, it's true. Not only was Lenin a populist, but the 1917 revolution was a bourgeois revolution.
To quote "What is to be Done? Leninism, Anti-Leninist Marxism and the Question of Revolution Today" edited by Werner Bonefeld and Sergio Tischler: "What happened was the following: capitalism (hardly developed) was not toppled. Wage labor remained, which Marx, as it is well known, insisted ks predicated on capital, as conversely capital is predicated on wage labor.
The workers did not obtain control over the means of production; that control fell rather to the Party (or the state). The Russian workers accordingly remained producers of surplus value. Neither the fact that surplus value was not expropriated but a class of private capitalists, but by the state, or by the Party elements in control of the state, nor the fact that economic development in Russia - because of the absence of a bourgeois class - took snktjer course than that of the West, changed anything for the position of the Russian workers as object of exploitation or wage slave. " (pp. 19-20)
Not that Russia could have "built socialism" out of feudalism / semi-feudalism / very early stage capitalism. Another thing specifically about Lenin is that he didn't have access to "The German Ideology", thus he was missing important insights Marx and Engels made regarding ideology. The supposed Marxism of Lenin exists in name only, for the most part at least. I highly recommend the book I quoted and you can find it online.
Might be as Lenin never discusses ending class realtion in soviet state
So, what did he say, boiled down to a few simple sentences?
The fact that the Soviet Union referred to Lenin ideology as "Marxist-Leninist" shows this already. Otherwise why the need to refer to the ideology as such
More than that, Lenin wrote extensive critical commentaries on Marx in which he rejected or modified a lot of Marx’s ideas. Lenin was a close student of Marx, but he also represented a significant departure from him.
because it took marxism the next step? acknowledges lenin's contributions to the next phase? fucking obviously?
>radical revolution
>zizek
Coming from this man,the level of irony is insurmountable
but he doesn't claim to be a 'real' marxist wtf is your point
@@inco9943 he says he's a Marxist. So what's your point?
SMERSH you’ve clearly never interacted with zizekian literature
@Rizu der Rotfuchs I have a book written by him (admittedly over 25 something years ago) and in it he clearly states he's a marxist and the whole book is a defence of Marxism and why in his opinion the Soviet union and Maoist China was not. So unless his views have changed and he no longer recognises himself as a Marxist then ok I'm sorry. But the literature he's put out in the past states so.
If I'm wrong then sorry. Don't crucify me
@@T4SelNiNO According to his statements and beliefs he would be considered a social democrat. The media presents him as a Marxist because it helps with ratings. His views aren't really extreme and he makes a lot of sense. You should check more of his videos.
We forget always how big and wild is Russia. Lenin saw opportunitie to steer the change that was already going. Is not revolution that destroyed carism it was industrial progres, and of course world war. Lenin was ingenious to step in this mess and to steer it towards some realisation. If this didn't happen, in WW2 Russia would be defeated. Even one could say that Hitler is result of western fear of soviet communism. Actually its result of volatile capitalistic economy, and reaction to it in western countries. So weakened Russia from ww1 would not have much chance to stand against Hitler, and world would be much different if that would happen. So in a way Lenin was last stance for liberating World from imperialism, and liberties of working man. Forgetting this is bad. And Staljin too. Yes it was totalitarian state. But still held some universal principles of human rights, it was not based on supremacy, which is big difference.
what exactly is your point? that russia wouldn't have won against germany if it wasnt for lenin and stalin?
@@ok-up4qx probably, because it could not mobilize all that human and natural resources without strictly organized state structure that employs all means of production in a way that benefits more state than private wealthy individuals. Because Germany was organized in similar way they could made such impact on others in short period of time.
@@svetlicam i just noticed you made that comment 2 years ago, sorry for being annoying
Accurate thumbnail, he's picking his nose.
The G I S T of this speech is extremely vague
He's telling a story with great intensity, perfectly describes the circumstances of late 1910s and early 20s, but there are no details nothing to hold on in his speech when hi talks of Lenin's Ideology.
I see a crazy man instantly telling me he isn't crazy.
In this COVID -19 crisis this man is a public hazard. He reminds me of Silvester the cat.
He went on to write as Isaac Asimov ?
Another Zizek W
Couldn't give any specific examples and no trot had ever claimed if Lenin had just "lived longer" than the revolution would have been saved.
He's so vague. It's so simple, anything that's workers democracy, go in that direction.
posadist gang
Ridin on my dolphins
Nukin' up da pussies
As my little green comrades say
If you want revolution nuclear winter is the way
Leninists in comments mad
We need more or less an entropic kind of economy where accumulation and growth is not needed to develop and so on and so on.
Just a little economy lessons from entropic behavior of animals and species.
wuh?
Trotsky lives
Should be retitled "Communist Slander"
hot take
How many time do we need until people realize they are making the same jokes about his tics all the time? At least add something new or original, it stopped being funny many years ago.
Lenin and Armand Hammer had an interesting business relationship, the former called Hammer his "path" to America, and he worked to secure technology in exchange for resource concessions from the Soviet Union.
3:00 Really well put. Quite surprised by what he says at the end.
As Marx said: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."
Zizek exposes himself as a clueless idealist with the way he speaks of Lenin, as if Lenin and the Bolsheviks alone could have transformed Russia from a famine-stricken, semifeudal wasteland into some utopia, if only they had the correct ideas. Zizek's claims that after the civil war, Russia was returned to "everyday life"-as if its political leadership hadn't been exterminated, its economy hadn't been pulverised and its social relations hadn't been disintegrated-and that the Bolsheviks should have simply "invented new forms" of society thereafter is especially utopian. Only an idiot would believe it possible to build a totally new form of society from such material conditions.
Furthermore, Lenin repeatedly stressed, before, during and after the revolution, that Russia could never achieve even a transitional socialist society, let alone a classless communist society, unless it had the help of at least one soviet regime established in an advanced capitalist country, such was Russia's economic backwardness.
The primary objective of the Russian Revolution, therefore, was to spark workers' uprisings throughout the rest of the world, especially in Europe, and to then help secure the victory of the workers in an advanced, industrialised nation, e.g., Germany or Britain. The more developed country would then be able to help pull Russia out of economic backwardness. As Lenin stated on 7 March, 1918, as well as on many other occasions before and after: “At all events, under all conceivable circumstances, if the German Revolution does not come, we are doomed.”
The key takeaway here is that the Russian Revolution and the world socialist revolution it sparked was a living struggle. The defeat of these revolutions and the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy wasn't at all a predetermined outcome, doomed by some original sin committed by Lenin, as this anti-Marxist falsifier of history claims. In fact, it was precisely these self-important, ignorant, middle-class elements like Zizek who sided with Stalin against Lenin in the first place and formed the backbone of the bureaucracy.
Stephen Shannan spoken like a true Trotskyite . He literally mentions that he is not part of the Trotskyite logic and that triggers you to condemn his rather progressive take on marxism-Leninism.
While I can't vouch for it's perfection as a text, I think if you read "Another View of Stalin" you'll see that, from documents and quotes and actions, at least two of the things you suggest here are, at best, only partially true.
If you believe that communism is a utopia, you aren't a Communist
Also it's funny how you admit it was impossible for Lenin to build communism in Russia
Older version Vaush???
Nu pentru ca vaush e doar un social democrat ceea ce l-ar face un PSD-ist
Stalin was a progressive liberal then
Strangely the closest economics to Stalin of any US president is Donald Trump as they both instituted forced Mercantilism. That’s why economic liberals hated Trump.
Lenin would be described as a progressive liberal. His policy NEP was criticized by Stalin as „national liberalism“. It included small scale free market private businesses and private cooperatives and a government economic sector for only certain industries. But Lenin’s theory was „set the progressive forces in motion.“
Trotsky lives
Loving all the tankie tears in the comments. Keep ‘em coming.
He admitted he did not read Lenin's book. It is obvious he did not lie about that. Dear Zizek, read State and Revolution 5th chapter to see that Lenin was a real Marxist.
He said he didn't read all his collected writings
Never cook again
What the fuck
NOOOOOO NOOOOOO
Came to see what thevole cocainevbandit was saying!!
Because Marx was wrong, so Lenin had to create an intellectual vanguard to push the revolution as the proletariat didn't naturally revolt as Marx predicted.
well, one can argue that in the case of backward, illiterate Russia, to build a strong party was a useful tactic. Don't see how Marx was wrong in this context
Marx wasn’t wrong. For some reason no Leninists actually bother to read why Marx thought capitalism would end in the first place. Capitalism will never end so long as the labor market still exists. In order for capitalism to end, automation must collapse the labor market. You can’t end capitalism by just banning private property one day.
@@IAmNumber4000 Not banning private property overnight, no (private property btw in Marxian language means capital aka the means of production, not the clothes you're wearing).
Marx didn't talk about waiting for automation to take over labour, he was a revolutionairy thinker. So the proletariat must grab the capital and use it for the society as a whole, instead of enriching a few at the top. That would be the end of capitalism as that class-relation ends.
The idea Lenin had was that the revolutionairy party would grab state power and temporarly use that dictatorship to build socialism. (I believe he wrote this in 'State and Revolution') But the socialism of workers collectively run the businesses and political organs was never achieved, it hung on to the one-party state rule. That's where disasters like collectivization of agriculture came from
a vanguard party is a outdated idea
Well he was a follower
Why because he was Leninist.
So this guy never reads Lenin but talks about his work? Did I hear it right?
What he says there is actually quite admirable in its transparency. You can tell from what he says in the rest of the video that he has read some of Lenin's works, but he admits at the start that he has not read *all* of them, only merely a subset.
As
Scholar of the DHS/CIA/etc., Zizek
Was this guy talking or snorkeling? Goodness.
True, but who was?
It's only Marxism when it works, but it's gonna work this time, I can feel it.
@@rswindol And Rod McKuen said "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the son," which is *also* not how the song goes... =P
po druhé svetové vojne nemal som vedomie smrť vôbec existuje otvoril som v škole atlas hneď som obraz rozšíriť pevninu nad oceánom
"The only livable communism - China", haha. Well, the only livable capitalism is the imperialist center where the loot is being held and distributed. He got some as well.
Watching this three minute video so I can say "yeah I'm pretty familiar with the works of Marx and Lenin" like a fukcing idiot
hehe
He is an addict of some high stuff
Very misleading title, Lenin was a Marxist-Leninist, not a "Marxist".
No he wasn't, that was invented by Stalin
it's like saying jesus was Christian, kind of, not really.
oh god i hate this guy... wtf did he try to say? someone?
Saying Lenin wasn’t a Marxist is like saying Mr. Mustache Man wasn’t a nazi.
Lenin was aware enough to know that the Russian Revolution could not lead to a socialist or communist society and as a result completely perverted the view held by Marx. Lenin claimed, “…the organisation of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession” and “must perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret as possible” (‘What is to be done?’ 1902) This is contrary to Marx’s view, “All previous historical movements were the movements of minorities, in the interest of minorities. The proletarian revolution is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.” (Communist Manifesto 1848) This basic principle was defended by Marx throughout his forty years of socialist activity and was repeated in the clause of the General Rules of the First International that, “…the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working classes themselves”. This is an unequivocal rejection of the view that socialism can be introduced for the working class or that the working class can be led to socialism by some enlightened minority. Later in Capital (1867) Marx explains:“…previously it was a matter of the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers: but in this case, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people”. Lenin still insists that the proletariat: “[were] capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited masses” [but it is the vanguard of the proletariat, rather than the proletariat itself,] “which is capable of taking power and leading the whole people to socialism”. (‘Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder’ (1920) It is interesting to note that what Lenin is really proposing is a progressive narrowing of the decision making vanguard, which might logically even be narrowed down to a single individual, a proposition which is precisely what was suggested when he claimed: that the vanguard need not even concern itself with establishing majority support prior to the seizure of power. “It is clear, therefore, that it is the vanguard and not the class which is to rule - which plainly cannot be described as anything resembling democracy. A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses.” (Lenin, Speech On The Agrarian Question, November 14 1917) But he went even further: “…the will of a class may sometimes be carried out by a dictator, who sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary”, and, “absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline”, are to be regarded as, “an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie”. (Ninth Congress of Russian Communist Party, March 1920) This, together with lack of other essential pre-requisites for revolution, provides the reason why Russian after 1917 could never have become socialist but instead inevitably became a capitalist dictatorship orchestrated by the State under Lenin and later Stalin. This was formally recognised with the emergence of The New Economic Policy (NEP) which Lenin acknowledged as being State capitalism. After the October Revolution, Lenin used the term State capitalism in a positive way. In spring 1918, during a short period of economic liberalism prior to the introduction of war communism, and again during the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921, Lenin justified the introduction of State capitalism under the political control of the dictatorship of the proletariat to further centralise control and develop the productive forces: “Reality tells us that State capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve State capitalism [then] that would a victory” (Lenin 1918, Collected Works, vol 27, p.293).
In addition, Lenin stated:
“The State capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the New Economic Policy, is, under Soviet power, a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our State capitalism differs essentially from the State capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the State with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry”.
@@morse1883 First of all, your point is mostly semantic. Lenin, obviously, was influenced greatly by Marx. As such, it would not be inaccurate to say that Leninism was derived from Marxism. The differences between the ideologies may be substantial to ideologues and intellectuals, but is mostly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. To a layman, Marxism and Leninism are the same. The same is true for Facism and Nazism or Christianity and Lutheranism. Yet to someone who knows the nuances between each ideology, there are clear differences.
Secondly, I am curious about how Marx planed for his movement to actually coordinate, organize, and strategize without leadership. In nearly every single example of a successful uprising or revolution (that I know of) starts with or develops some kind of leadership. Leadership and government is also necessary for a stable society that can respond to unexpected developments like crisis like natural disasters, invasions, or things like subversive elements. Surely he must have addressed this?
@@josephpentony4804 every previous successful revolution had been led by a minority class to gain control of the state and create a new class society, communism will be led by the proletariat, who make up the majority of people, and it seeks to abolish class society - not continue it like the October revolution
Mao was not a Maoist
The discussion could have been ended after he said "I've never read Lenin's works". Not informed? Stfu. Zizek is a stand up "philosopher". Long live Lenin.
Yea idk about taht. He’s written books about Lenin sooooo I think he misspoke
@@kylescott169
Well, a lot of people write semi-or-uninformed books about people. He suggests throught his writings that he has only barely skimmed the texts he talks about. It makes him seem intellectually lazy.
You must be hard of hearing since he clearly said he's never read Lenin's COLLECTED works, ie everything he ever wrote
TANKIES MAD TANKIES MAD
So, in conclusion, Žižek bad?
No one will remember this political celebrity in a hundred years. Lenin’s name will never be forgotten as long as the masses struggle to be free of their chains.
Can't stop but wonder if Slavoj does cocaine. Genius nonetheless.
This guy is sitting to comfortable on his chair.
All the Leninists in this comments section seem to be forgetting that Marx never said that outright banning private property would end capitalism. In fact he said the opposite and called that ideology “crude communism”. He predicted it would lead to a society in which the community is the universal capitalist, since banning private property merely shifts ownership to the state. And that this form of society would become totalitarian. 26 years before Lenin was born.
Source: Marx’s Concept of Socialism, Monthly Review
Trying to end capitalism by simply banning private property completely undermines Marx’s theory of historical materialism and the TRPF. His two most important reasons for why capitalism should end in the first place. Lenin didn’t just deviate from Marx’s theories slightly, he used Marxism as an aesthetic facade for a doomed state capitalist autocracy pretending to be socialist. He ignored the most important parts of Marx’s critique of capitalism.
Imagine backing up what you wrote about Marx not with one of his texts, but with some other text. While the idea of "commodity production in the socialist mode of production" is something Marx disagreed with, you are going so far against historical materialism when you say that a socialist revolution unconditionally needs to abolish commodity production at the first oppurtunity. The conditions in Russia made that completely impossible, the closest they got was arguably war communism and that upset the peasantry so much that they needed to enact the NEP to prevent an uprising. He said in Critique of the Gotha Program that the law of value will be used in the first stage of a proletarian society.
He also didn't call it "crude communism", he called it bourgeois socialism.
@@danielhorritt3574 The citations to Marx Engels Collected Works are in the article. If I link to Google Books here, UA-cam will hide the comment as spam.
No kidding the conditions in Czarist Russia made a socialist revolution impossible. That's my point. It was in every way a bourgeois revolution that installed the Soviet bureaucracy as the new ruling class, that organized production, exploited labor, coerced labor, and collected surplus value at the state level. The USSR's mode of production was identical in form (class, currency, state, lack of worker ownership) to any other capitalist country, because it was fundamentally a state capitalist system. Except it was less efficient at producing value than other forms of capitalism. Authoritarianism has been used throughout every era of history to shoehorn an ineffiient form of production into an inappropriate time and place. And it still didn't prevent them from collapsing.
They never could have achieved socialism or communism, because that requires collapsing the labor market with technological development (automation). They never got even remotely close. They implemented what was clearly a state capitalist system and rebranded it as socialism. How do you think it would have been possible to sustain a socialist "transition to communism" for the entire duration of Russia's capitalist mode of production? If the USSR hadn't collapsed then how many centuries do you think the "socialist transition" to a stateless communist society would have taken?
The central tankie misunderstanding of "global revolution" is that they don't realize the primary driver of revolution is technological development. Not ideology. There is only one point when it will be possible to overthrow the capitalist mode of production and that will be when automation causes the labor market to collapse and people everywhere are forced to either seize production or starve to death. Until then, pretending that a revolution is possible is not realistic. The vast majority of workers prefer to cling to their stable, semi-shitty lives rather than risk it all in a violent bid to seize power. Premature revolution requires getting the vast majority of people radicalized enough by Marxist theory to pick up guns and that is not going to happen. Not even leftists can agree on what Marx said, case in point. Because ideology isn't what causes modes of production to change. Material conditions are. Capitalism must exhaust its ability to generate new value.
If you want an indicator of when capitalism will collapse, look at the projected US debt to GDP ratio for the coming decades. The US is forced to spend more each year to keep the GDP growth rate at its normal rate of 2-3% per year, at an exponentially increasing rate. If they don't do that, the Great Depression will repeat itself. But debt spending is leading to diminishing returns on GDP growth, proving Marx's central thesis that capitalist growth undermines capitalism's requirements for existence. The projected ratio has a distinctly exponential regression. We are nearing the end.
@@IAmNumber4000 That's one thing, but to denounce Lenin for not ending commodity production immediately is something completely different. The peasantry made this impossible, not Lenin.
@@danielhorritt3574 I'm denouncing Lenin for trying to force a socialist transition in a time and place where it did not belong, personally having many innocent people killed while doing so. And for calling his bourgeois revolution "socialist". The difference between Marx and Lenin is like the difference between Darwin and "social Darwinists" in my estimation. A misinterpretation of a good theory created to justify the unconscious drive for power.
If that's what a socialist revolution is supposed to look like, like another Great Terror, then why would any working class person in their right mind want that? I'm sure some of them are alienated and desperate enough to prefer widespread destruction to their current situation but without the majority of the proletariat on board, there will never be a revolution in the way you've conceived of it. Americans in particular already have a near-apocalyptic perception of all the previous times Leninism was attempted. You would have to convince the vast majority of the American working class that a revolution would improve their material situation enough to justify fighting and potentially dying. And do you actually know that it will?
@@IAmNumber4000 Marx and Engels supported revolutionary terror...
Click bait
Tough, since Marx said he wasn't a Marxist. He wouldn't have said real, or actual though, having read Hegel.
never said that
Marx died before lenin became famous
MFW Lenin was a revisionist
Pelkhanov
This guy just spouts complete gibberish.
Stalin was not a real communist. Just because he was General Secretary of the CPSU, what does he know about communism? And I always thought every living thing had a brain. I stand corrected.
Slavoj is not a real Marxist.
Leftcom gang, assemble!
Lenin was o p p o r t u n i s t
"assemble and...uh...continue theorizing"
@@respobabs Doctrine cannot be divorced from action. The parties I am familiar with work closely with organs of the working class.
@@domoroboto8752 yes, all those leftcom revolutions
@@respobabs there are only proletarian revolutions.
Trying to define who is a real Marxist is like trying to define the scent of a fart.
next one is a Marx is not a Marxist
He said it himself that he wasn't
This guy is nothing but a meme.
Cringe + L + probable ratio