I can understand not liking Lenin, but Chomsky& #39;s claim that he was just an opportunist who wrote State and Revolution to capitalize on the popularity of libertarian socialism is absolutely absurd and baseless. Nothing in Lenin& #39;s writings, published or private, suggest that.

Lenin was inspired to write State and Revolution by Bukharin& #39;s clarification that Marx was not a statist, and Lenin wanted to further popularize this fact. The only reason I can think of why Chomsky would claim this is to try to distance Lenin from the socialist tradition.

It& #39;s true that Lenin moved away from his original position past the 20s, but a more reasonable explanation is his position as the representative of a ruling party in a country where the establishment of socialism seemed increasingly less likely due to the difficult conditions.