Yes, that is ridiculous. Lenin never came close to devising, let alone instituting, the economic and social control mechanisms of Wal-Mart.
On the subject of Wal-Mart and socialism, as opposed to totalitarianism (a highly inefficient model for power), if Lenin had had Wal-Mart's wondrous IT and inventory control system back in the day, those Hayekian distribution problems in the USSR may never have happened. Of course, this is anachronistic idealism--but wouldn't be for a future socialist society, hint hint.
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 6:29 AM, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> [The writer is an Australian "PhD candidate." He doesn't need to go to
> Chomsky for the view that corporations are private tyrannies. A lot of
> really-existing capitalists -- financiers like Carl Icahn -- have also said
> as much. I've always been amused by the disconnect between academic
> libertarians and their really-existing private sector capitalist heroes, who
> do not proceed under sterling libertarian principles in the real economy
> that the egghead essay writers extol. - B.]
>
>
> http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/oneill1.html
>
>
> On 'Private Tyrannies'
>
> by Ben O'Neill
>
> ...
>
> But what are the "structural conditions" for dictatorial power? And are
> corporations really "about as close to the totalitarian ideal as any
> [institution] that humans have so far constructed," as Chomsky contends? Is
> Starbucks as close to the totalitarian ideal as, say, the National Socialist
> regime of Adolf Hitler? Is Wal-Mart as totalitarian an institution as the
> Bolshevik state of Vladimir Lenin? Even to ask these questions is to see
> their patent absurdity. For, while a dictatorship is certainly structured as
> a hierarchy, this is most clearly not a sufficient condition. Rather, the
> most basic and essential condition for dictatorial power, which stands out
> unmistakably in truly totalitarian regimes, is the ability of the dictator
> to initiate physical force to compel others to do as they are told.
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