[cloudfifty]

That's like saying that a Leninist system stops being Leninist when its vanguard inevitably becomes corrupted, because its vanilla state is - in theory - democratic. But that's ridiculous, each system should be held accountable for the outcome of its incentive system, not just its vanilla state.

[kragen]

If a Leninist system institutes free-market capitalism, as in China, it stops being Leninist, however dictatorial it may still be. As it happens, in this case the incentives usually run to the preservation of the system rather than its extinguishment.

The two examples are temporal inverses of one another. In the situation of capitalism collapsing into government-granted monopolies, free-market capitalism is the first stage, and state central planning is the second stage. In the situation in China, the first stage was a vanguard-party-led society governed by a dictatorship of the proletariat that carries out state central planning, and the second stage is mostly free-market capitalism.

I don't think that anyone ever tried to use "Leninist system" to mean "a system where the government is not corrupt", but maybe I just haven't read enough of Lenin?

[cloudfifty]

China and free market mumbling to avoid a simple accountability comparison? Come on. Your just flailing about to keep some neat image of Capitalism intact at this point.

The only thing this had to do with is what incentive structure each set up and what the expected outcomes of those are.

Leninism:

Concentrate the power into professional revolutionaries, a vanguard, to lead the people into making the "correct" choices.

Incentive: Keep this new and unprecedented amount of power indefinitely.

Outcome: Corruption of whatever ideals they might have had.

Capitalism:

Concentrate the wealth and thus power into businessmen/corporations with the purpose of keep accumulating wealth indefinitely.

Incentive: Use the power and influence of wealth to do just that, accumulate more wealth.

Outcome: Manipulation of rules, regulations, and the market.

This is what they are. This is what we've seen for more than a 100 years for both. This is what they are accountable for.