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. Here were two peoples, the Italians and Germans, with different histories, cultures, and languages, and supposedly different temperaments, who ended up with the same repressive solutions because of the compelling similarities of economic power and class conflict that prevailed in their respective countries. In such diverse countries as Lithuania, Croatia, Rumania, Hungary, and Spain, a similar fascist pattern emerged to do its utmost to save big capital from the impositions of democracy. ⁴ Whom Did the Fascists Support?

I'd recommend this book to all people who consider themselves to be leftists; especially to those Fukuyamaist social democrats, who think that capitalism is here to stay and it's the best we've got and we should just fight for social reforms rather than an entire system change, even though the welfare capitalism has systematically been disintegrated everywhere in the West since the overthrow of socialist countries and even though the economic exploitation of the so called Third World is greater than ever (the few rich Western countries extract over 3 trillion dollars a year from the poor countries in the world impoverishing them further and further; that's why over 4,5 billion people live in chronic poverty and it's a growing number of people) and social democracy can do nothing about that, because it's still the profit driven capitalist system that needs to expand and grow infinitely at the same time absolutely destroying the environment.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.

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. Let it be said I have read many defences of the USSR, and Stalinism in general, but this is one of the worst defenses of an 'existing socialist' state Ive read for some time. How Parenti manages to go from logically asset stripping capitalism taking account of its errors to defending a society which was nothing more than an ill planned police state is startling.

Recommended

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 I read the chapter yesterday where he discusses gulags, that those weren't nearly as bad as the West made it sound, that there is no proof for the numbers of prisoners that were supposed to have gone through them, etc. And that might be true, I just don't know but that is why I am asking it here.

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. 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. In that same campaign the Nazis received 37.3 percent of the vote, the highest they ever won in a democratic national election. They never had a majority of the people on their side. To the extent that they had any kind of reliable base, it generally was among the more affluent members of society. In addition, elements of the petty bourgeoisie and many lumpenproletariats served as strong-arm party thugs, organized into the SA storm troopers. But the great majority of the organized working class supported the Communists or Social Democrats to the very end. The result of all this? In Italy during the 1930s the economy was gripped by recession, a staggering public debt, and widespread corruption. But industrial profits rose and the armaments factories busily rolled out weapons in preparation for the war to come. In Germany, unemployment was cut in half with the considerable expansion in armaments jobs, but overall poverty increased because of the drastic wage cuts. And from 1935 to 1943 industrial profits increased substantially while the net income of corporate leaders climbed 46 percent. During the radical 1930s, in the United States, Great Britain, and Scandanavia, upper-income groups experienced a modest decline in their share of the national income; but in Germany the top 5 percent enjoyed a 15 percent gain. ⁵ In the December 1932 election, three candidates ran for president: the conservative incumbent Field Marshal von Hindenburg, the Nazi candidate Adolph Hitler, and the Communist party candidate Ernst Thaelmann. In his campaign, Thaelmann argued that a vote for Hindenburg amounted to a vote for Hitler and that Hitler would lead Germany into war. The bourgeois press, including the Social Democrats, denounced this view as Moscow inspired. Hindenburg was re-elected while the Nazis dropped approximately two million votes in the Reichstag election as compared to their peak of over 13.7 million.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. This intellectually anemic end-of-history theory was hailed as a brilliant exegesis and accorded a generous reception by commentators and reviewers of the corporate-controlled media. It served the official worldview perfectly well, saying what the higher circles had been telling us for generations: that the struggle between classes is not an everyday reality but an outdated notion, that an untrammeled capitalism is here to stay now and forever, that the future belongs to those who control the present. Despite this record, most writers have ignored fascism’s close collaboration with big business. Some even argue that business was not a beneficiary but a victim of fascism. Angelo Codevilla, a Hoover Institute conservative scribe, blithely announced: If fascism means anything, it means government ownership and control of business ( Commentary, 8/94). Thus fascism is misrepresented as a mutant form of socialism. In fact, if fascism means anything, it means all-out government support for business and severe repression of antibusiness, prolabor forces. ⁶

It took me a while to read; although flowing, it is dense with fantastic ways of framing or phrasing an issue that I think deserve a moment of contemplation. To maintain profit levels, the large landowners and industrialists would have to slash wages and raise prices. The state in turn would have to provide them with massive subsidies and tax exemptions. To finance this corporate welfarism, the populace would have to be taxed more heavily, and social services and welfare expenditures would have to be drastically cut—measures that might sound familiar to us today. At the time of the 1 996 terror bombing in Oklahoma City, I heard a radio commentator announce: "Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrorize." U.S. media commentators have repeatedly quoted Lenin in that misleading manner. In fact, his statement was disapproving of terrorism. He polemicized against isolated terrorist acts which do nothing but create terror among the populace, invite repression, and isolate the revolutionary movement from the masses. Far from being the totalitarian, tight-circled conspirator, Lenin urged the building of broad coalitions and mass organizations, encompassing people who were at different levels of political development. He advocated whatever diverse means were needed to advance the class struggle, including participation in parliamentary elections and existing trade unions. To be sure, the working class, like any mass group, needed organization and leadership to wage a successful revolutionary struggle, which was the role of a vanguard party, but that did not mean the proletarian revolution could be fought and won by putschists or terrorists.”

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Is 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. 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. As Parenti himself writes: "To say that 'socialism doesn't work' is to overlook the fact that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.