The point Parenti makes is that modern Western culture embraces what can accurately be described as neo-fascist politics while condemning similar regimes of the past. A fog of willful amnesia has descended wherein the US can’t see its own atrocities abroad which are numerous and perhaps more so than any single party communist regimes. This book starts out with a convincing polemic against fascist corporatism. Parenti summarizes the fascist regimes of Nazism and Mussolini and mentions the complicity of the US in these regimes before WWII by way of American corporate investment. He pushes on the western mind’s cognitive dissonance that we both condemn fascism yet actively participate in a similar system today. Such neo-fascist corporatism include foreign mutli-national corporate control, subversion of foreign sovereign economic autonomy, relics of the Bretton Woods economic system, IMF subprime loans that prohibit nationalization and subsidies of infant industries and not to mention covert and overt destabilization of democratically elected governments under the guise of communism moral panic. The global US economic and military meddling in global affairs since at least WWII really cannot be overstated and the significance of its impact is impossible to measure. The tone is very much anti-American, anti-capitalist, which in and of itself I don't mind. But it's the "communism only failed because a) Capitalist imperialism and counterinsurgencies and b) the USSR feeling the need to achieve military parity with the US (which is somehow the US' fault), c) Communist systems trying to incorporate parts of capitalism and being taken over by them. Upon assuming state power, Hitler and his Nazis pursued a politico-economic agenda not unlike Mussolini’s. They crushed organized labor and eradicated all elections, opposition parties, and independent publications. Hundreds of thousands of opponents were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered. In Germany as in Italy, the communists endured the severest political repression of all groups.

Absolutely ome of the greatest books written on the disastrous consequences of the resurgence of monopoly capitalism in the post-fall of the USSR. Michael Parenti once again [it seems effortless though we know it isn't] lays out a vast, meticulous history of market reforms that dragged eastern Europe down following 1991, all the way up to 1997, and connects this with the rise of fascism in the early to mid 20th century. Parenti shows how "rational fascism" renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege. He also maps out the external and internal forces that destroyed communism, and the disastrous impact of the "free-market" victory on eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He affirms the relevance of taboo ideologies like Marxism, demonstrating the importance of class analysis in understanding political realities and dealing with the ongoing collision between ecology and global corporatism. But the government was not completely free to pursue this course. By 1921, many Italian workers and peasants were unionized and had their own political organizations. With demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, factory takeovers, and the forceable occupation of farmlands, they had won the right to organize, along with concessions in wages and work conditions. Parenti argues that we can't do this, and that in fact, the socialist countries of the 20th century have had their accomplishments ignored and their mistakes magnified, and that despite their faults, they are still valuable historical examples we can use to make a better world.In Germany, a similar pattern of complicity between fascists and capitalists emerged. German workers and farm laborers had won the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, and unemployment insurance. But to revive profit levels, heavy industry and big finance wanted wage cuts for their workers and massive state subsidies and tax cuts for themselves.

Parenti also dedicates a large section of this book to criticizing and dismissing "left" anti-communists; reactionary anarchists like Noam Chomsky, and leftist intellectuals. How many of their "theories" and analyses are really just anti-Marxist, anti-class jargon dressed up as intellectualism [see: post-modernism, post-Marxism], and that their dedication to ahistorical representation of Marxist leaders [Gramsci, for example], allows for the ruling class to continue downplaying the role of the ruling class in oppressing the working class while acting as if Written with lucid and compelling style, this book goes beyond truncated modes of thought, inviting us to entertain iconoclastic views, and to ask why things are as they are. It is a bold and entertaining exploration of the epic struggles of yesterday and today. State socialism transformed desperately poor countries into modernized societies in which everyone had enough food, clothing and shelter; where elderly people had secure pensions; and where all children (and many adults) went to school and no one was denied medical attention. Some of us from poor families who carry the hidden injuries of class are much impressed by these achievements and are unwilling to dismiss them as merely 'economistic'."Under one or another Democratic administration, 120,000 Japanese Americans were torn from their homes and livelihoods and thrown into detention camps; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an enormous loss of innocent life; the FBI was given authority to infiltrate political groups; the Smith Act was used to imprison leaders of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and later on leaders of the Communist party for their political beliefs; detention camps were established to round up political dissidents in the event of a “national emergency”; during the late 1940s and 1950s, eight thousand federal workers were purged from government because of their political associations and views, with thousands more in all walks of life witchhunted out of their careers; the Neutrality Act was used to impose an embargo on the Spanish Republic that worked in favor of Franco’s fascist legions; homicidal counterinsurgency programs were initiated in various Third World countries; and the Vietnam War was pursued and escalated. And for the better part of a century, the Congressional leadership of the Democratic party protected racial segregation and stymied all antilynching and fair employment bills. Yet all these crimes, bringing ruination and death to many, have not moved the liberals, the social democrats, and the “democratic socialist” anticommunists to insist repeatedly that we issue blanket condemnations of either the Democratic party or the political system that produced it, certainly not with the intolerant fervor that has been directed against existing communism.” This book invites those immersed in the prevailing orthodoxy of democratic capitalism to entertain iconoclastic views, to question the shibboleths of free-market mythology and the persistence of both right and left anticommunism, and to consider anew, with a receptive but not uncritical mind, the historic efforts of the much maligned Reds and other revolutionaries. I think nowadays, especially among younger people, criticisms of capitalism are common, but it's rare for people to provide a historically grounded alternative to it. It's common to hear people say capitalism is fundamentally broken, but it's quite rare to hear anyone (at least in the US) look to history for a solution, and sometimes, I feel as if radical socialists today can be too utopian. I don't consider myself a Marxist-Leninist, however to overlook the accomplishments of ML regimes all through-out the 20th century is like burying your head in the sand and ignoring history. We should learn about these countries, rather than say some weak-ass shit like "communism doesn't work". Because they who control the past control the future. Both Mussolini and Hitler showed their gratitude to their big business patrons by privatizing many perfectly solvent state-owned steel mills, power plants, banks, and steamship companies. Both regimes dipped heavily into the public treasury to refloat or subsidize heavy industry. Agribusiness farming was expanded and heavily subsidized. Both states guaranteed a return on the capital invested by giant corporations while assuming most of the risks and losses on investments. As is often the case with reactionary regimes, public capital was raided by private capital.

This is like diet-lite-marxism-for-beginners from ~24 years ago, so not only am I not the right audience, but this also feels dated as hell.The strong point of the work, and the fact that it is always suggested to non communists as a first read into socialist and marxist theory is that it manages to describe in a very easy to read way (in more of a speech-rant method of writing), all the externalities of capitalism. He doesn't necessarily analyse and explain the basic Marxist critique of capitalism and its inner machinations, he describes, analyses, and points out the external symptoms that come out of capitalism mainly ecological destruction, gender inequality, racism, sexism, imperialism, colonialism etc. These countries, Cuba, the USSR, East Germany etc, are messy, imperfect states, with histories of violence and repression, but, Parenti argues, so are capitalist states, and yet, we don't seem to view our historical failings as evidence of the failure of capitalism. Basically, if you judge socialism by the same criteria you judge capitalism by, you'll find that socialism creates a more fair and prosperous world. Parenti then describes the failures of communist Russia and he does so with transparency. He describes the bureaucratic corruption, food shortages and ruthless one party rule along with the impracticality of a centrally planned economy. At the same time he emphasizes the successes of not only communist Russia but Cuba and Vietnam. He re-frames the failures of communism by asserting that communism for these countries was actually an enormous improvement from their previous social arrangement of feudal states and czarist hegemony. He also argues that the terrors of the Gulag camp are overstated by western propaganda that most people there were actually criminals and not enemies of the state. I think the point he tries to make is the terror of the Reds is exaggerated and used as US state propaganda as a vehicle for global meddling. I don't necessarily agree with this as the accounts of Gulag war crimes is pretty undeniable at this point so I think he over reached here.

His mentions of China as "communist only in name" were also proven outstandingly wrong by the years but i can understand why he'd say what he said in 1997 when China, with the reforms of Jiang Zemin, seemed to be taking the road that other socialist countries were taking into their downfall. Overall I think this is the most popular work by Parenti and I'm glad it is. Not because it is such anIs fascism merely a dictatorial force in the service of capitalism? That may not be all it is, but that certainly is an important part of fascism’s raison d’être, the function Hitler himself kept referring to when he talked about saving the industrialists and bankers from Bolshevism. It is a subject that deserves far more attention than it has received. The political orthodoxy that demonizes communism permeates the entire political perspective. Even people on the Left have internalized the liberal/conservative ideology that equates fascism and communism as equally evil totalitaran twins, two major mass movements of the twentieth century. This book attempts to show the enormous differences between fascism and communism both past and present, both in theory and practice, especially in regard to questions of social equality, private capital accumulation, and class interest. I found this argument interesting, but it’s also pretty difficult to disprove. The “well, they had to do it that way because of the historical conditions” defense can be used to justify pretty much any shitty thing that a government (communist or otherwise) might do. In my opinion, Parenti spent too much time trying to rehabilitate the USSR, rather than just admitting they did a lot of crappy stuff. Admittedly, I know very little about Soviet history, so perhaps Parenti is right about everything, but he doesn’t cite sources for many of his claims, so I’m a bit skeptical. Marx believed that as wealth becomes more concentrated, poverty will become more widespread and the plight of working people evermore desperate. According to his critics, this prediction has proven wrong. They point out that he wrote during a time of raw industrialism, an era of robber barons and the fourteen-hour work day. Through persistent struggle, the working class improved its life conditions from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Today, mainstream spokespersons portray the United States as a prosperous middle-class society. Yet one might wonder. During the Reagan-Bush-Clinton era, from 1981 to 1996, the share of the national income that went to those who work for a living shrank by over 12 percent. The share that went to those who live off investments increased almost 35 percent. Less than 1 percent of the population owns almost 50 percent of the nation’s wealth. The richest families are hundreds of times wealthier than the average household in the lower 90 percent of the population. The gap between America’s rich and poor is greater than it has been in more than half a century and is getting ever-greater. Thus, between 1977 and 1989, the top 1 percent saw their earnings grow by over 100 percent, while the three lowest quintiles averaged a 3 to 10 percent drop in real income.”