Lenin and Western Corporate Chiefs
anecdote · history ·
retold in 4 talks
After the Civil War, Lenin invited Western corporate chiefs to the USSR, telling them their organizational skills would function wonderfully in socialism, viewing large corporations as a 'stop towards socialism' that could be repurposed.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 4
“Lenin not only personally these are wonderful details enjoyed talking with them... you with your organizational skills you would have functioned wonderfully in our system”
“Lenin was absolutely fascinated by big efficient capitalists... they are almost already running enterprises because they are so big as public property”
“Lenin was fascinated with them. He saw in them masters of how to coordinate, organize large factories, all the complexity. He saw an emancipatory potential in them.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
principled pragmatism
×2
socialize these mega-corporations
×1
cross-cap
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Alexander Kolchak2Lenín Moreno2Luis Arce3Georges Danton2Louis Dumont1Jayapal Subramaniam1Todd Wolfson1Mensheviks1
alongside works
Every retelling 4
23:30 Slavoj Zizek:Lenin,Stalin, China,India, Africa,Yugoslavia,Latin America, fascism, democracy, & West2024-02-03 · 1:25:29
After the Civil War, Lenin invited Western corporate chiefs to the USSR, telling them their organizational skills would function wonderfully in socialism, viewing large corporations as a 'stop towards socialism' that could be repurposed., illustrating socialize these mega-corporations,Lenin's pragmatism
In his later years Lenin admired large, efficient US capitalists, claiming they already operated almost like administrators of public property. Žižek uses this to show that class struggle means bourgeois elements exist in the working class and proletarian elements in the ruling class., illustrating class struggle as impossible difference,cross-cap
After the Civil War, Western corporate managers including Rockefeller visited Soviet Russia, and Lenin was fascinated by their organizational capacity, seeing in them an emancipatory potential for coordinating large factories., illustrating principled pragmatic stance,New Economic Policy,Lenin's pragmatism
54:09 The Legacy of the French Revolution w/ Slavoj Zizek on Bastille Day | Jacobin Show2021-07-14 · 1:47:12
After the civil war, Lenin welcomed Rockefeller-era Western corporate managers and was fascinated by their organizational capacity, seeing an emancipatory potential in their ability to coordinate large enterprises, a model for principled pragmatism., illustrating principled pragmatic stance,voluntarism