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Podcast: New Discourses
Episode: Lenin and the Brutal Magic of Communism
Description: The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 146
One of the great paradoxes of Communism is that in the end, the state is supposed to "wither away," leaving a stateless, classless society in which there is high functioning and little or no want. This circumstance is presented as different to the other stages of history, which are said to proceed through revolutionary overthrow of the existing system. In particular, socialism is meant to be born out of capitalism through a violent proletarian revolution that seizes the means of production and establishes itself as an all-powerful "dictatorship of the proletariat." But...