From: "Lew Higgins"
Whatever wrote:
> "What is usually called socialism": i.e., what most people in Lenin's
> _audience_ call "socialism." This part of the sentence has nothing to do
> with what Marx calls socialism. Lenin is simply restating Marx in a
> DIFFERENT terminology that had developed since Marx's death. What MARX
> called "first phrase of socialism/communism" WE (almost everyone in the
> socialist movement as of 1917) NOW call "socialism."
But Lenin prior to S&R in 1917 did not make this distinction. He did not say socialism was a transitional society before then and this is not how it was generally understood then (or now by non-Leninist Marxists). And Lenin said: "What is *usually* called socialism was termed *by Marx* the 'first', or lower, phase of communist society" (emphasis added) and this is a deliberate falsehood.
-- Lew
^^^^^^^^^
CB: Doesn't it make sense, in terms of reality, to anticipate that there will be a transitional phase and society between capitalism and communism ?
Secondly, one practical reason there must be a socialist state is that as long as there are capitalist states, the revolutionary countries must have a state to defend themseleves from the capitalist states, as the first historic experiences with building socialism have proven in spades.