In Marx’s view, this new order is supposed
to come about through natural historical processes, whereby the capitalistic stage of
society is replaced by the socialistic stage and, eventually, the communist stage in which
the state withers away.
Lenin, however, believed that capitalist forces would suppress
revolutionary notions and that a revolutionary vanguard needed to seize power by force
and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Not quite. Lenin believed that the time for the revolutionary vanguard was now and that the vanguard should be led by Lenin. To the point that it’s very easy indeed to believe that Lenin worked out that necessity of the vanguard becaue that was the only way that Lenin got to tell everyone what to do and right now.
In this Lenin was partly all too many prophets and eschatologists. That this will happen is not enough, it’s that this is going to happen right now so give me all the virgins. It being obvious enough in at least some cases that the prophecies are only the excuse for the virgin collections.
Now, I’m not saying that George Monbiot is trying to get a collection of Greta Thunbergs but he is performing a part in such a tale. Everything he talks of is about to happen right now. So we must do as George says right now. It maybe Gaia keeling over rather than the Lord returning on the millennium but it’s exactly the same in this one manner – the redemption comes only from changing today for the punishment might not even wait until tomorrow if you don’t.
Much the same with climate change more generally. If the western world carries on as it is right now (that is, building out renewables, fossils being only the necessary balancing and dispatchable parts) the developing world largely develops with renewables and coal or gas only as the necessary dispatchable power for a grid then climate change is, pretty much, and by the measurements of the standard models, solved. It’ll all fade away by 2100. We’re, roughly enough, on the old A1T model and scenario. Where that is exactly what happens. And no destruction of markets and capitalism required.
Which is, of course why all the shrieking because the destruction is the thing desired.
But back to Lenin. Or Monbiot, Greta, anyone really. Anyone at all who says blah,blah, action required right now, may well have argued themselves into that blah blah for the joy it offers of directing all that action right now.