I am not sure if your comment about apologising for Stalin / MAO etc is aimed at Chomsky or not. But you should be aware that Chomsky is an anarchist socialist and not a Marxist. He has written and spoken some of the most illuminating and critical stuff I have read on the revolution in Russia.
I'm quite familiar with anti-imperialists of various sorts. They generally don't start ranting about Trotskyists. That makes this person sound decades out of date.
Lenin wasn't the proximate cause of generational misery for an entire community of Americans (and yes, I realise there is also a sizeable group of escapees from Soviet communism here, but I hope that I don't have to point out the obvious differences in scale and effect).
> It seems that the smartest, most sincere, most dominant communists the world has ever seen... became capitalists.
Karl Marx said socialism would start in the most economically advanced country. Marx was just one member of the IWMA, which also included Bakunin, but Marx was remembered most. Thus Lenin's call to take over Russia surprised even the Bolsheviks initially. He maintained until his death that Russia was not the vanguard of worldwide socialist revolution - one reason the Comintern was formed.
China was even less in Marx's vision than China - the country was agricultural and essentially feudal, and the revolution was in the countryside led by peasants. Molotov called Mao Pugachev. Actually Mao realized Deng Xiaoping was a "capitalist roader" in 1962, and began working to sideline him in 1966, but Deng Xiaoping came to power after Mao died. Xi is very much in line with Deng Xiaoping. If you're saying Deng Xiaoping and his followers like Xi are capitalist readers then you're echoing what Mao realized in 1962 and expressed in 1966.
I'm sorry you had to live thought the post Khrushchev era Soviet reforms. I'm also sorry that national propaganda taught you your nation was communist, and you haven't questioned this well into your adulthood.
Have you seriously ever read Marx as an adult? Not under a teachers supervision? He disagrees with >75% of everything Stalin, and everyone who came after him did. A strong argument can even be made that Leninism is a fundamental diversion from Marxism.
But (assuming you are European) non-Leninist communist literature was banned.
Chomsky on Leninism:
https://youtu.be/Nz11K1wUbrc
Hint: he’s not a fan
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