[Jos] So you think Lenin's aim was tyranny? Why would anyone want tyranny? [Arlo] Lenin is a good example here, because he combines the overestimation of man of Marx, with the neoconservative notion that man is too stupid to act in his best interests (with strong politically-leveraged myths to control him).
Whereas Marx saw a temporary communist body to replace the old capitalist, he saw this transitory body as lacking real power, existing only for unavoidable bureaucratic business during the communist transition. The real goal was the abolishment of government ipso facto. "Eventually the state will "wither away" and become obsolete, as people administer their own lives without the need for governments." (Wikipedia, Marxism) Lenin, however, came to deny this and using the neoconservative idea of a benevolent state that rules by strong orienting myths, set up as a final stage the Communist State, which would be promoted through propaganda and used to align patriotism and nationalism to hold the state together. Lenin did not think, in good neoconservative fashion, that man's individual liberty would lead to the altruistic state Marx envisioned, but to the nihilism and debauchery Strauss predicted. When Stalin took power, the strong nationalist ideology was set firmly in place, and this was all he saw. Gone by now where the noble ideas of Marx. All that remained was patriotism and glorification of the state. Human liberty, all that Marx wanted, was replaced with a dictatorship resting on propaganda to support nationalism, which defined itself by virtue of its opposition to "the other", and where individual liberty was suspended entirely "for the good of the state". This is, admittedly, abbreviated and simplistic, but I think it captures the basic themes of the Marx/Lenin/Stalin trajectory. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
