: I guess I owe Mark Bednarz an explanation, since he was decent enough to recognize that the sort of socialism I was discussing was not the variety once promoted by that ugliest of historical villains, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, aka Lenin."ugliest of historical villains"? Are you not going a little bit over the top here? Or have you conveniently forgotten the Stalinist characters who followed him? Or perhaps you think there is no difference between Lenin and Stalin in their approach to "socialism"? Lenin was a theorist and a social activist. Unlike the armchair philisophers who donÆt have to account for the long term consequences of what they advocate, Lenin had to think about the real life situation and respond to the political environment which confronted him at the time. Sure, he made mistakes and nobody can deny that. But even the most ardent critics of Lenin have refrained from insulting his integrity in the way you have done. Obviously "flaming" is not necessarily wrong depending on who is doing it and who is being flamed!
I suggest you Paul MattickÆs work who desoite criticising the Bolshevik leaders in general including Lenin, does not deny that Lenin was one of the most consistent Marxist thinkers of his time. One of the majr mistakes Lenin commited was to advocate the idea of centralisation of the communist party which led the party towards eliticism and ultimately imposition of an undemocratic political system. But this, by no means, invalidates LeninÆs contribution to the socialist movement. It is easy to, with the benefit of the hindsight, criticise everything that Lenin stood for. And it is even easier to remain solely within the realm of ideas and not promote any plan of action lest you make mistakes. But remember we are looking to a social system that, as you say yourself, has never happened before in all of human history. So inevitably, we will make mistakes in trying to achieve it. And we can do nothing else but learn from them.
: My tentative offer to Habermasians, in favor of reviving the discussion about Marx, socialism, anarcho-syndicalism, utopia etc., is that a movement to make capitalism "less capitalist" would have to be a decentralist movement, would have to shift power downward, away from elites on Wall Street, DC, Hollywood, Geneva, Frankfurt, Tokyo etc. and toward individuals with merely "local" power. This might make money and power less important as steering systems.
And how do you propose to restrict the forces of capitalism which work towards profit accumulation and centralisation of capital. If we donÆt somehow control these natural tendencies of capital, wonÆt your "less capitalist" system soon get back to where we are now?
