This is all too familiar.  If it exists , it isn't socialism; socialism
is an idealized concept which doesn't exist.
wcm
>
> Comments?
>
> F. Leon
>
> ------------------------
>
>
> 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.
>