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F. Leon

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Socialism, Real and Fake
by Noam Chomsky

One can debate the meaning of the term "socialism," but if it means
anything, it means control of production by the workers themselves, not
owners and managers who rule them and control all decisions, whether in
capitalist enterprises or an absolutist state.

To refer to the Soviet Union as socialist is an interesting case of
doctrinal doublespeak. The Bolshevik coup of October 1917 placed state
power in the hands of Lenin and Trotsky, who moved quickly to dismantle
the incipient socialist institutions that had grown up during the popular
revolution of the preceding months -- the factory councils, the Soviets,
in fact any organ of popular control -- and to convert the workforce into
what they called a "labor army" under the command of the leader. In any
meaningful sense of the term "socialism," the Bolsheviks moved at once to
destroy its existing elements. No socialist deviation has been permitted
since.

These developments came as no surprise to leading Marxist intellectuals,
who had criticized Lenin's doctrines for years (as had Trotsky) because
they would centralize authority in the hands of the vanguard Party and its
leaders. In fact, decades earlier, the anarchist thinker Bakunin had
predicted that the emerging intellectual class would follow one of two
paths: either they would try to exploit popular struggles to take state
power themselves, becoming a brutal and oppressive Red bureaucracy; or
they would become the managers and ideologists of the state capitalist
societies, if popular revolution failed. It was a perceptive insight, on
both counts.

The world's two major propaganda systems did not agree on much, but they
did agree on using the term socialism to refer to the immediate
destruction of every element of socialism by the Bolsheviks. That's not
too surprising. The Bolsheviks called their system socialist so as to
exploit the moral prestige of socialism.

The West adopted the same usage for the opposite reason: to defame the
feared libertarian ideals by associating them with the Bolshevik dungeon,
to undermine the popular belief that there really might be progress
towards a more just society with democratic control over its basic
institutions and concern for human needs and rights.

If socialism is the tyranny of Lenin and Stalin, then sane people will
say: not for me. And if that's the only alternative to corporate state
capitalism, then many will submit to its authoritarian structures as the
only reasonable choice. With the collapse of the Soviet system, there's an
opportunity to revive the lively and vigorous libertarian socialist
thought that was not able to withstand the doctrinal and repressive
assaults of the major systems of power. How large a hope that is, we
cannot know. But at least one roadblock has been removed. In that sense,
the disappearance of the Soviet Union is a small victory for socialism,
much as the defeat of the fascist powers was.