What is soviet power?

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, originally uploaded by Dunechaser.

Today I've been listening to an old recording of the speeches of Lenin. It's an experience I'd recommend even if you don't know Russian; the voice can tell you as much about a person as naked words in translation.

When listening to a historic recording I try as best as I can to put myself in the place of the contemporary listener. Before the Cold War, before Stalin, before institutionalized ideology. And what you hear if you're in that position is rather interesting.

If I had to summarize, I'd say it's Robert Putnam meets John Edwards with guns. The word "soviet" is just the Russian word for a deliberative group, such as a committee or council--when Lenin talks about the power of the soviets against bourgeois capitalism, in normal talk he's saying that associative decision-making is superior to corporate wealth.

It's a rather familiar message if you live in NGO-land, actually. Of course, you might think the gun part is a tad out of place, but then again, just as Lenin saw a need to use force against the tsar today's humanitarians have been known to support the use of force against repression, from Slobodan Milosivich to the Janjaweed.

Since social enterprise is a field where folks equate analysis with advocacy, I have to note yet again that I don't mean to say I'm a Marxist. Quite the opposite, actually. What fascinates me about the Bolshevik Revolution is how damn familiar it all is once you strip off the political overlay. The West has a quite a history of spinning off its own virulent doppelgangers.