A statement can be both sweeping and largely true. We need to stop giving academics undeserved moral authority. Chomsky is a prime example of someone who speaks far beyond the boundaries of what he understands and advocates for immoral, destructive, and harmful policies and ideas.
> Fwiw, for anyone reading along, Chomsky didn't coin the term "state capitalism" and he was not the first to apply it to the USSR. Lenin himself actually uses the term to describe the USSR, seeing it as a necessary transitional step from (normal) capitalism to a socialist system:
This isn't surprising. as Marx defined it himself, socialism is communism as enforced by the government, meaning, the government seizes control of everything and runs everything. So "state capitalism" just means the existing businesses are now repossessed by the state.
> And I'm of the opinion that the beginnings of the USSR, led by Lenin, were much more idealistic than what it would quickly become.
Idealism is irrelevant. Marxism is a tool for causing people to be discontent and eventually revolt in a bloody revolution, and, so The USSR got exactly this, and so did China. In fact, Mao specifically used the "idealists", his Red Guard, to further his agenda, and, once he took power, he simply killed or imprisoned them all.
Marxism is an entirely failed ideology, as is socialism. All it can do is destroy; it has no vision for building anything of value. That we have to relearn this lesson is a damning indictment to our inability to transmit true knowledge and morality effectively to the rising generations.