Dr. Michael Parenti Criticizes Anarchists And Non-Bolshevists

[Rakhmetov]

Read, pause, and reflect Dr. Michael Parenti's ingenious observations!

Excerpt From his book Blackshirts And Reds:

A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.

Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish–while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.
Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words).

But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little room for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.
The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism–not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience–could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not. As the political philosopher Carl Shames argued:

How do [the left critics] know that the fundamental problem was the “nature” of the ruling [revolutionary] parties rather than, say, the global concentration of capital that is destroying all independent economies and putting an end to national sovereignty everywhere? And to the extent that it was, where did this “nature” come from? Was this “nature” disembodied, disconnected from the fabric of the society itself, from the social relations impacting on it? . . . Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations. In my observation [of existing communist societies], the positive of “socialism” and the negative of “bureaucracy, authoritarianism and tyranny” interpenetrated in virtually every sphere of life. (Carl Shames, correspondence to me, 1/15/92.)

The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail because their leaders wait too long or act too soon, are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong leadership. But always the leaders fail because they do not put their trust in the “direct actions” of the workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome every adversity if only given the kind of leadership available from the left critic’s own groupuscule. Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country.
Tony Febbo questioned this blame-the-leadership syndrome of the pure socialists:

It occurs to me that when people as smart, different, dedicated and heroic as Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe–and the millions of heroic people who followed and fought with them–all end up more or less in the same place, then something bigger is at work than who made what decision at what meeting. Or even what size houses they went home to after the meeting. . . . These leaders weren’t in a vacuum. They were in a whirlwind. And the suction, the force, the power that was twirling them around has spun and left this globe mangled for more than 900 years. And to blame this or that theory or this or that leader is a simple-minded substitute for the kind of analysis that Marxists [should make]. (Guardian, 11/13/91)

To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely without specific agendas for building the revolution. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an ultra-left group in that country called for direct worker ownership of the factories. The armed workers would take control of production without benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field an army, take security measures, or build and coordinate economic programs and human services on a national scale.

Decentralization vs. Survival
For a people’s revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society’s institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces necessitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to anyone’s liking, not in Soviet Russia in 1917, nor in Sandinista Nicaragua in 1980.

Engels offers an apposite account of an uprising in Spain in 1872-73 in which anarchists seized power in municipalities across the country. At first, the situation looked promising. The king had abdicated and the bourgeois government could muster but a few thousand ill-trained troops. Yet this ragtag force prevailed because it faced a thoroughly parochialized rebellion. “Each town proclaimed itself as a sovereign canton and set up a revolutionary committee (junta),” Engels writes. “[E]ach town acted on its own, declaring that the important thing was not cooperation with other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any possibility of a combined attack [against bourgeois forces].” It was “the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to smash one revolt after the other.”

Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency–which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack. One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolsheviks’ siege psychology with its commitment to lockstep party unity and a repressive security apparatus. Thus, in May 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of internal party democracy and struggled against Trotsky in order to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to the Workers’ Opposition and other factional groups within the party. “The time has come,” he told an enthusiastically concurring Tenth Party Congress, “to put an end to opposition, to put a lid on it: we have had enough opposition.” Open disputes and conflicting tendencies within and without the party, the communists concluded, created an appearance of division and weakness that invited attack by formidable foes.

Only a month earlier, in April 1921, Lenin had called for more worker representation on the party’s Central Committee. In short, he had become not anti-worker but anti-opposition. Here was a social revolution–like every other–that was not allowed to develop its political and material life in an unhindered way.
By the late 1920s, the Soviets faced the choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agrarian collectivization and full-speed industrialization under a commandist, autocratic party leadership, the road taken by Stalin, or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labor unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong military-industrial base.

The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked upon a rigorous, forced industrialization. This policy has often been mentioned as one of the wrongs perpetrated by Stalin upon his people. It consisted mostly of building, within a decade, an entirely new, huge industrial base east of the Urals in the middle of the barren steppes, the biggest steel complex in Europe, in anticipation of an invasion from the West. “Money was spent like water, men froze, hungered and suffered but the construction went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history.”
Stalin’s prophecy that the Soviet Union had only ten years to do what the British had done in a century proved correct. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, that same industrial base, safely ensconced thousands of miles from the front, produced the weapons of war that eventually turned the tide. The cost of this survival included 22 million Soviets who perished in the war and immeasurable devastation and suffering, the effects of which would distort Soviet society for decades afterward.
All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not “make inevitable” the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of “suspect” nationalities.

The transforming effects of counterrevolutionary attack have been felt in other countries. A Sandinista military officer I met in Vienna in 1986 noted that Nicaraguans were “not a warrior people” but they had to learn to fight because they faced a destructive, U.S.-sponsored mercenary war. She bemoaned the fact that war and embargo forced her country to postpone much of its socio-economic agenda. As with Nicaragua, so with Mozambique, Angola and numerous other countries in which U.S.-financed mercenary forces destroyed farmlands, villages, health centers, and power stations, while killing or starving hundreds of thousands–the revolutionary baby was strangled in its crib or mercilessly bled beyond recognition. This reality ought to earn at least as much recognition as the suppression of dissidents in this or that revolutionary society.

The overthrow of Eastern European and Soviet communist governments was cheered by many left intellectuals. Now democracy would have its day. The people would be free from the yoke of communism and the U.S. Left would be free from the albatross of existing communism, or as left theorist Richard Lichtman put it, “liberated from the incubus of the Soviet Union and the succubus of Communist China.”
In fact, the capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe seriously weakened the numerous Third World liberation struggles that had received aid from the Soviet Union and brought a whole new crop of right-wing governments into existence, ones that now worked hand-in-glove with U.S. global counterrevolutionaries around the globe.

In addition, the overthrow of communism gave the green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, no longer restrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West. “Capitalism with a human face” is being replaced by “capitalism in your face.” As Richard Levins put it, “So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay” (Monthly Review, 9/96).
Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don't get it.

[n0thing]

More wise words from Slobodan Milosevic's biggest fan.

[Rakhmetov]

Do you have any rebuttals to Parenti's brilliant remarks other than half-baked criticisms???

[communard resolution]

I'm disappointed to read that the author is supposedly "Milosevic's biggest fan" (though I would appreciate if the claim was backed up in some way), but the text itself is very interesting and contains many points that are worth discussing.

Edit - It strikes me as a very honest text too, regardless whether I agree with the points or not.

[Wanted Man]

Parenti is apparently a "friend of Milosevic" because he was one of the few voices in the US who dissented against the bombing of Yugoslavia.

[Pogue]

In short, Leninist says Leninism is good and libertarian socialism is bad, hardly groundbreaking. And apparently we don't substantiate on our views of how a revolutionary society would be run. Maybe you'd come to that conclusion if you didn't talk to or read libertarians.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

I like how he discusses Orwell's anti-communism without ever mentioning the fact that Orwell's views were born out of his first-hand experience of seeing Stalinists repress a genuine revolutionary movement. Smooth.

[communard resolution]

I like how he discusses Orwell's anti-communism without ever mentioning the fact that Orwell's views were born out of his first-hand experience of seeing Stalinists repress a genuine revolutionary movement. Smooth.

The paragraph on Orwell is indeed outrageous crap. No one who risks his neck fighting in the POUM is a "red-basher pretending to be on the Left."

[punisa]

Shame For Parenti, cause he is a brilliant thinker.
I say "shame" as reffering to the whole Milosevic deal.

He *could* have been against Nato bombing and everyone would respect him for it.
I'm very against Milosevic, one of the icons of hard core nationalism of late 20th century, but I was always against bombardment of Serbia.
Parenti could state his case in the exact same way on this issue.

But he took the wrong path and actually defended Milosevic as a politician (Youtube has speech evidences, if you believe otherwise).
Personally I don't think Parenti was "actually" PRO Milosevic. It was just a very dumb talk he gave, probbably having in mind "sticking it to the western imperialism", but in doing so he made a cardinal mistake and acted out of acting instead of deeply researching the subject.

In comparison to Chomskly, a guy who talks alot about international politics, but I don't remember him going out with wrong information.

Milosevic was a warmonger, ultra nationalist and a very guilty man.
But what to expect from a hard core capitalist? He was a banker in the US prior to coming in power in Yugoslavia.

As for Parenti, he reminds of my grumpy teacher back in college. He'd rather die then clarify himself wrong.
I'm really sorry its like that, cause virtually every single thread about Parenti ends up in discussion of Milosevic.
Well, I better stop right there then :D

[n0thing]

Parenti is apparently a "friend of Milosevic" because he was one of the few voices in the US who dissented against the bombing of Yugoslavia.
And because he wrote this: http://www.michaelparenti.org/Milosevic.html
Also; he let Slobodan write a preface to one of his books.

[communard resolution]

And because he wrote this: http://www.michaelparenti.org/Milosevic.html
Also; he let Slobodan write a preface to one of his books.

Ugh... that's a shame.

[Nwoye]

"Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations."

examples plz.

[Rakhmetov]

Why haven't you critics gone through the trouble of refuting Parenti's remarks?? Maybe because you are sorely lacking in any capacity to refute real rational thinking instead of musing on Utopian anarcho-reveries.


After thought on another topic

By the way: You guys should read Parenti's other book---Make Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment where Parenti goes through the trouble of analyzing Hollywood movies, Soap Operas, T.V. shows, cartoons, etc. Unbelievable stuff, really.

[El Rojo]

The Soviet Union defense section is also shameless promotion, neatly glossing over that small matter of the deportations and murder of millions of non-russians, kulaks and anyone else Stalin didn't like the look of, the astronoical government corruption, total lack of democracy after the closing of the Constituent Assembly, a foreign policy that put the USSR above the world revolution, or anyone else and responsibility for most of the world's nuclear waste. They also made shite cars.

I do not deny the sucesses of the USSR, and they were legion, but to be this horribly biased is inexcusable for an academic.

[Rakhmetov]

In short, Leninist says Leninism is good and libertarian socialism is bad, hardly groundbreaking. And apparently we don't substantiate on our views of how a revolutionary society would be run. Maybe you'd come to that conclusion if you didn't talk to or read libertarians.

And how long did your "libertarian revolution" last? Did this revolution get off the ground and dispatch many fascists to their early graves? Read Parenti again.

[communard resolution]

Why haven't you critics gone through the trouble of refuting Parenti's remarks?? Maybe because you are sorely lacking in any capacity to refute real rational thinking instead of musing on Utopian anarcho-reveries.

It's a long text. Which points would you like to discuss in particular?

[scarletghoul]

Does he really "support" Milosevic or does he just criticise the bourgeois demonisation and narrative of the whole Yugoslavia thing? You know, similar to Chomsky's "support" for Pol Pot.

Anyway, Parenti's articles are usually great but I disagree with the stuff about Orwell, who was a good man who fought for socialism, and also the idea that anarchists have never put forward ideas for how society should be run post-revolution.

However his criticism of the antistalinist criticism of Leninism is valid. The idea that socialist countries can have a bad time just becuase their leaders (who have usually dedicated much of their life to revolution) turn evil and corrupt is stupid, and ignores the external forces at play. These are the capitalist forces that have threatened and undermined every socialist revolution, including the anarchist ones which have very rarely survived

[Rakhmetov]

El Rojo wrote:

<<<<<<<The Soviet Union defense section is also shameless promotion, neatly glossing over that small matter of the deportations and murder of millions of non-russians, kulaks and anyone else Stalin didn't like the look of, the astronoical government corruption, total lack of democracy after the closing of the Constituent Assembly, a foreign policy that put the USSR above the world revolution, or anyone else and responsibility for most of the world's nuclear waste. They also made shite cars.>>>>>>>>>>>>>



Parenti devotes a whole chapter to that in his book. Go to google books and type in "blackshirts and reds parenti" and look in the table of contents and see the chapter entitled "Stalin's Fingers". I can't post links now since I'm a new member.
Well Parenti asserts the actual number of victims was not in the millions. He gives the number 745,000 more or less (I'm paraphrasing). Needless to say, who are the people that claim the USSR killed 100 million people?----the same people who gave us the pretexts to invade Iraq, the Gulf Of Tonkin story to invade Vietnam and every other Iran-Contra scandal/lie. And you are ready to believe them? I wish I had some bridges to sell you. Parenti says that if the gulag existed right down to the last days of communism (1989-1991) then why weren't Nuremberg-type trials conducted and the perpetrators brought to justice? Where were the victims and their relatives to denounce the murderers? Where? Read his book!

[Rakhmetov]

It's a long text. Which points would you like to discuss in particular?

Just for starters:

"The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted."

Orwell's Homage to Catalonia speaks about "Workers' Patrols"---- isn't that a form of state even if you call it a mini-state? States are "bodies of armed men with prisons at their disposal" as Lenin said in State & Revolution.

[communard resolution]

Does he really "support" Milosevic or does he just criticise the bourgeois demonisation and narrative of the whole Yugoslavia thing? You know, similar to Chomsky's "support" for Pol Pot.

Glancing over the Milosevic piece an earlier poster linked to, I would say that he does support him implicitly insofar as he doesn't have one critical word to say about him. He depicts Tudjman as a rabid nationalist, which is certainly true, but he omits that Milosevic could be characterised as just the same.

So yes, he clearly takes sides in a nationalist conflict - I'm not really sure why, but then the ways of AntiImps are often impenetrable.

[communard resolution]

Just for starters:

"The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted."


I don't find it very useful that he simply refers to all the non-Stalinite factions as 'pure socialists' to begin with. Anarcho-syndicalists, Trotskyists, Luxemburgists, Lefts etc. all have very different concepts of how a revolutionary society would be organised.

[Prairie Fire]

Parenti is wise on many things, and I agree with large parts of this analysis, specifically the solid materialist stand-point that he is taking. He is correct that the mechanisms of the dictatorship of the proletariat in various socialist coutries, and other progressive/revisionist countries, arose in reaction to material realities and factors both external and internal, rather than based on whims. Also, his characterization of the left oppostion accurately applies to most of it's advocates.

In this sense, Parenti takes a materialist stance, and it is admirable.

In other parts of this paper though, Parenti takes other political lines that are not as admirable, which I take issue with.


And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.


Yes, but it is also important to not completely ignore the role of the export of Soviet finance capital and their quest for neo-colonies in the equation either.

Certainly the aid that the USSR provided to struggling peoples around the world was on a more principled basis than the US and it's allies, and certainly any Soviet intervention on the world scale is dwarfed by the sheer size and scale of American interventions around the world, in practically every continent during the same time period.

That said, ignoring neo-colonial ambitions on the part of the revisionist-USSR and it's proxies (ie. Cuba) can be just as dangerous.

Certainly the latter-day USSR was not a carbon-copy of the US (just as China is not today), and perhaps they were the lesser evil, but certainly the economic nature of the USSR also changed fairly quickly after the on-set of the cold-war, and not necesarily because of the demands of the times.

http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html (For those who have the time, I recommend this read).


An excellent criticism of Soviet finance capital looking for a return on it's investment, specifically in relation to the Cuban sugar industry, can be found in the RCP pamphlet "Cuba: the evaporation of a Myth"

In this criticism of the internal and external policies of the late USSR, I am not echoing the same "OMG totalitarianizm!" that Parenti is criticizing here. I am criticizing the USSR on the basis of socialist economics rather than on a basis of percieved humyn rights violations, Big brother archetypes, and fictional novels about anthropomorphic animals.

When I criticize the USSR during the majority of the cold war here, I am not calling for liberalism in their conduct (ironically, occasionally Parenti is,), nor am I denying that they ever had socialist property relations or political power of the working class.
Certainly they did.

Whole-sale rejection of the Soviet Union (especially based on hear-say from the dominant narrative of the bourgeoisie) is childish nonsense, but rationalizing their gradual transformation into a capitalist economy from the 50's to the 90's, rationalizing some of the later Soviet doctrines with capitalist accumulation and expansion as their basis, and rationalizing the majority of all Soviet military interventions during the period of 1956-1991 (if I recall correctly, Parenti justifies the Soviet military occupation in Afghanistan) is just as incorrect.

I am not criticizing the USSR on the basis that they had a state and mechanisms of social administration, nor do I ever criticize the USSR divorced from the times in which they lived, and their material situation.

I criticize the USSR from a rational, materialist, socialist point of view, and when they strayed from socialism, without external necesity (there is a large difference in context and goals between the NEP and the capitalist transformations of the Kruschev era), I will not turn a blind eye.

I didn't break out the champagne when the USSR dissolved (I was a toddler at the time :lol:), but I wouldn't have broken it out when they sent troops to Afghanistan either. There is a rational position to take, and just because the majority of the american "left" are polarized along lines of whimsical liberal/idealist opposition and die-hard soviet loyalists (who can't seem to recognize any socio-economic shift in the internal and external policies of the USSR during their history) , doesn't mean that one has to choose between these two camps.

While both camps may have a few pearls of historical truth (admittedly, even the obstinate Soviet loyalists, examplified by the CPC in my country, are more grounded in logic and critical thinking than the liberals and Non-marxist left that opposes them), neither stand point is correct in it's entirety.


...And to blame this or that theory or this or that leader is a simple-minded substitute for the kind of analysis that Marxists [should make].

I understand what Tony Febbo is trying to say, and to an extent agree. On the flip-side, theory and (political) leadership is not inconsequential to how events play out, and to take such a stand point is just as ahistorical.

The theory of "peaceful coexistance and competition with capitalism", advanced by the Soviet leadership in the first years of the cold-war, was not an un-avoidable adaptation to the world situation, nor did it reflect the real demands of the times. It was a manifestation of the capitalist economic rectification that began in the USSR at that time, which was hardly a "necesary evil".

Even Parenti doesn't fully identify with not holding leaders or theory culpable for the decisions that are made, and he makes this clear in his liberal criticisms of Stalin.

The only common denominator between revolutionaries like V.I. Lenin and revolutionaries like Mugabe and Ortega of questionable socialist merit (both have now re-invented themselves as bourgeois capitalist statesmen), is the common enemy.

Certainly capitalism has undermined and sabotaged every experiment in revolutionary transformation on the planet earth, always has, and most of these revolutionary transformations succumbed to this pressure.

I agree that all of these revolutionary movements, despite their merits and detractions, faced the same enemy, and this was ultimately the death of most of them.

I disagree with the implications, though, that one revolutionary theory/leader/party was as good as the others, because they all ended up at the same place.

As Parenti himself points out, with aid from Engels writings, the tactics,decisions and theory of the anarchists in Spain lead to sound defeat in the 1800's. Meanwhile, the tactics,decisions and theory of the Bolsheviks lead to triumph in 1917.

To say that "this or that theory" was not to blame, in this case, becomes absurd. Theory is the guide to action. While correct theories are usually those that properly reflect the demands and material conditions of the times, and incorrect ones are those that do not, still an incorrect theory leads to incorrect action, and that more often than not leads to historical failure when it is not inevitable.

I understand some of the points Febbo is trying to make, but he over-simplifies the situation until he is no longer entirely correct.



By the late 1920s, the Soviets faced the choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agrarian collectivization and full-speed industrialization under a commandist, autocratic party leadership, the road taken by Stalin,

The party leadership in the time of Stalin was hardly "autocratic". Stalin was elected as General secretary, and even Trotskyists aknowledge this.



or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labor unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong military-industrial base.


The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society.

Here Parenti takes a liberal down-turn.

While he was quite correctly identifying the state apparatus and the general militarization of society as nececities demanded by the internal and external conditions of the time, he incorrectly identifies the lack of many main-stays of capitalist society as also being an unfortunate necesity, rather than just the implementation of the actual practices of socialism.

* Parenti calls for private ownership of "small buisnesses" (liberals have an on-going crush on "small buisness", in contrast to the evil faceless corporations, when both are manifestations of the exact same socio-economic system and modes of accumulation and distribution), in essence calling for the existance of the petty-bourgeoisie class to not only be tolerated, but enshrined in the frame work of the new "socialist" system.

Somehow allowing the private appropriation of social production on a small scale (and most likely exploitation of labour along with it), and allowing class divisions to exist without an attempt to abolish them, not to mention private property in land ownership, will somehow give way to a classless society of social appropriation eventually.

Nevermind that also, with private ownership of land/buisnesses comes private distribution (what would be the point to the petty-bourgeoisie of owning a buisness, if the wealth or products generated are still socially distributed?)not to mention right of inheritance (and with it, defined class divisions in succsesive generations) and all of the other tenets of the previous capitalist system that this new "socialism" was trying to replace.

Even in Parenti's ideal "socialism", there are still at least a small corner where there are buisness owners and the people who work for them, exploiters and exploited.

* "Independent agricultural development by the peasantry"? So, in Parenti's ideal "socialism", there still is a peasantry (by definition, people who work the land, and surrender a portion of their harvest to their land lord who owns the land)? Rather than trying to integrate them into the working class (as capitalism has allready done in most countries), the peasantry will also be preserved under an ideal "socialist" society?

* Calling for more "political diversity" and "open debate and criticism" is class-vague,
and the implication is that the capitalist countries did possess these things (which the socialist countries were lacking).

In reality, bourgeois pluralism has always been an illusion, with political power held firmly in the hands of the bourgeoisie, and every time their hold on political power is truly threatened ( even by peaceful means,), the mask comes off and all facades of "political diversity" are dropped.

As I pointed out in a previous post, bourgeois revolutionaries in the USA and in France understood the necesity and importance of suppressing the exploiter classes that they had just overthrown (the feudal aristocracy), and despite all of their lofty ideals of democratic pluralism, it was immediately understood that this new pluralism was not a class-vague absolute.

While Parenti aknowledges that for a revolution to survive, the revolutionary forces must take power as well as hold on to it, he seems to not understand class struggle very well. Reactionary counter attacks come in other forms than just foriegn invasions, hence the necesity of the socialist stage at all (aka the dictatorship of the proletariat).

Also, saying open debate and criticism was lacking in the socialist countries is not quite historically true (criticism and self-criticism was practiced in the USSR, in Albania, and in China.)

All of these liberal measures that Parenti advocates for ideal "socialism", a socialism not besieged by reaction, would lead to the inevitable re-instatement of capitalism, and it really demonstrates that perhaps Parenti doesn't understand why socialist revolutions occured in the first place.



All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity.


At least he recognizes that not everything done in the USSR was a historical necesity, but unfortunately he uses this consiousness to insert the obligatory Stalin-bashing into his paper.


The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not “make inevitable” the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders,

Yes it did, and if he understood class struggle, he would understand that.


the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement,

This was not a fabrication of Stalin. In fact, he had nothing but disdain for it:
http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/StalinBB.htm


the suppression of party political life through terror,

Again, Michael seems to grasp the concept of external reaction, but not internal reaction.


the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life,

Again, the implication is that this is not the case in the capitalist sphere.

The class struggle is every bit as sharp in the capitalist countries. Yes, perhaps a persyn is "free" to make a socialist themed painting in a capitalist country, but how likely are you to see that painting in an art gallery?

The only time that socialist intellectual and cultural achievements are given mainstream attention in capitalist society is as academic museum peices or as tackey appropriation of socialist iconography for persynal profit (ie. Che Guevera T-shirts) .
Both are done with the object of discrediting socialism, converting it into something harmless.

Other than that, socialist outlooks and theory are generally kept out of the mainstream, and any that do exist can be supressed in a second. Sure, maybe you can buy a copy of the Communist Manifesto at Barnes and Nobel now, but you couldn't during the McCarthy days. It will be the same situation, when capitalism is threatened again.

The goals and outlook of capitalist society, and the bourgeoisie as a class, are generally espoused in all of the ideas and culture of the society. Here is Marx on the subject:




the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch

.
- Karl Marx, The German Ideology

Michael seems to think that it is possible to revolutionize a society without revolutionizing the dominant ideas and the culture of the society as well. This adds more credibility to my analysis that Class-struggle is still eluding Parenti.


In addition, the overthrow of communism gave the green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, no longer restrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West. “Capitalism with a human face” is being replaced by “capitalism in your face.” As Richard Levins put it, “So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay” (Monthly Review, 9/96).
Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don't get it.

Michaels choice of ending is appropriate to any of the old Soviet loyalists around the world, as this does encompass their world view.

To this day, when I listen to the old members of the revisionist CPC in my country bemoan the fall of the soviet union,they actually express nostalgia for a bi-polar world division.

It is not necesarilly socialism (and then communism) that they have nostalgia for, but this bi-polar division of the world between two superpowers.

They cherished the days when the Soviet Union existed as a "counter balance" in the world, to make the USA "act properly", as this is the role that the USSR played ever since the peaceful coexistance doctrine of Kruschev. Even some capitalists are nostalgic for those days, which speaks volumes.

But as a Marxist-Leninist, if I am nostalgic at all, it is for the days before the Soviets became the "counter weight", back in the days when the Soviet Union was the liberated zone that aided other countries in their own triumphant socialist revolutions!
There was a time when the revolutionary USSR over-saw the greatest proliferation of socialist revolution and socialist triumph that the world has seen so far, and that is the situation that revolutionaries around the world would like to return.

The role of a true socialist state is not as the 'Loyal oppostion' in a capitalist world. It is as the base for revolution to spread across the surface of the earth, into what ever region is fertile for working class uprising.

I don't want the capitalists of the world to be "tamed" and forced into good behavior; I want them to be overthrown, expropriated, suppressed, and eventually phased out as a class.

The revolutionaries and communists of the world aren't trying to build a world based on "Checks and balances", they are trying to build a world based on the abolition of exploitation and the class divisions and economic systems that perpetuate it.

To me, this really exposes the old Kruschevites as the red-streaked liberals that they are (and helps to explain why they are so involved with "9/11 truth" ,and handing me flyers calling JFK and MLK "progressive martyrs"), and because Michael Parenti himself defends socialism, but at the same time seems to be struggling with the reasons for a socialist society in the first place, I suppose it was a fitting ending for him.

Don't get me wrong: Large parts of this analysis were correct, as is a lot of Parenti's stuff. However, he descended into liberalism, and without Class analsysis, that is bound to happen. For these errors, I call him out, in what was otherwise a decent essay.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Why haven't you critics gone through the trouble of refuting Parenti's remarks?? Maybe because you are sorely lacking in any capacity to refute real rational thinking instead of musing on Utopian anarcho-reveries.
I refuted his slander against Orwell in the first paragraph. I didn't get much further than that, because I have better things to do with my time than critique academics giving long-winded excuses for their favourite sections of the bourgeoisie. This is also why I rarely read Prarie Fire's posts.


And how long did your "libertarian revolution" last? Did this revolution get off the ground and dispatch many fascists to their early graves?
No, partly because it was repressed by your beloved Stalinists. What does that tell you about the side you've chosen?

I don't find it very useful that he simply refers to all the non-Stalinite factions as 'pure socialists' to begin with. Anarcho-syndicalists, Trotskyists, Luxemburgists, Lefts etc. all have very different concepts of how a revolutionary society would be organised.
Agreed, it is a deeply flawed schema.

[yuon]

I didn't read the whole of that long text that started the thread. Why bother? I've got better things to do with my life. I did read this bit though, and then, couldn't waste my time on the rest.

A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.
Obviously this Parenti person is ignorant of attitudes in Britain during the war (especially the second half, after Germany declared war on the USSR). To criticise the USSR was an act of defiance against the government. It was almost attacking the war effort it self! Orwell's experience of the government's attitude towards the USSR, and the abrupt about turn, after the end of the war, went into his final novel. I'll try and find some examples of his writing from that time for you.


"The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted."

Orwell's Homage to Catalonia speaks about "Workers' Patrols"---- isn't that a form of state even if you call it a mini-state? States are "bodies of armed men with prisons at their disposal" as Lenin said in State & Revolution.

Are you a Marxist? Didn't Marx make mention of "classes" went discussing what a state is? Anyway, I doubt that you will find anyone who claims that what Orwell described is the perfect society. Merely a transition, in a most difficult time (a war).

Anyway, as noted above (by Pogue), anarchists have written a large amount of material on what shape a future anarchist society could take. Moreover, anarchists have written a shit load about any transitional society as well. (A hint, most "anarchist communists" today would probably envisage something called "collectivism" as a sort of "half way" between the start of the revolution, and the perfect future anarchist society.)

Oh, and also, didn't Marx refuse to actually describe his idea of what communism might look like? Because, you know, that would be "utopian", something that Marx was against. Beyond the general framework ideas (e.g. freedom and communism) we aren't blue-printing society. It is not for us to decide for future societies what shape their system must look like; it is for them.

[yuon]

An example of British censorship during the war in regards to the USSR is provided in Orwell's "Proposed Preface to ‘Animal Farm’", later published as "The Freedom of the Press" http://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go

[Rakhmetov]

Parenti is wise on many things, and I agree with large parts of this analysis, specifically the solid materialist stand-point that he is taking. He is correct that the mechanisms of the dictatorship of the proletariat in various socialist coutries, and other progressive/revisionist countries, arose in reaction to material realities and factors both external and internal, rather than based on whims. Also, his characterization of the left oppostion accurately applies to most of it's advocates.

In this sense, Parenti takes a materialist stance, and it is admirable.

In other parts of this paper though, Parenti takes other political lines that are not as admirable, which I take issue with.



Yes, but it is also important to not completely ignore the role of the export of Soviet finance capital and their quest for neo-colonies in the equation either.

Certainly the aid that the USSR provided to struggling peoples around the world was on a more principled basis than the US and it's allies, and certainly any Soviet intervention on the world scale is dwarfed by the sheer size and scale of American interventions around the world, in practically every continent during the same time period.

That said, ignoring neo-colonial ambitions on the part of the revisionist-USSR and it's proxies (ie. Cuba) can be just as dangerous.

Certainly the latter-day USSR was not a carbon-copy of the US (just as China is not today), and perhaps they were the lesser evil, but certainly the economic nature of the USSR also changed fairly quickly after the on-set of the cold-war, and not necesarily because of the demands of the times.

(For those who have the time, I recommend this read).


An excellent criticism of Soviet finance capital looking for a return on it's investment, specifically in relation to the Cuban sugar industry, can be found in the RCP pamphlet "Cuba: the evaporation of a Myth"

In this criticism of the internal and external policies of the late USSR, I am not echoing the same "OMG totalitarianizm!" that Parenti is criticizing here. I am criticizing the USSR on the basis of socialist economics rather than on a basis of percieved humyn rights violations, Big brother archetypes, and fictional novels about anthropomorphic animals.

When I criticize the USSR during the majority of the cold war here, I am not calling for liberalism in their conduct (ironically, occasionally Parenti is,), nor am I denying that they ever had socialist property relations or political power of the working class.
Certainly they did.

Whole-sale rejection of the Soviet Union (especially based on hear-say from the dominant narrative of the bourgeoisie) is childish nonsense, but rationalizing their gradual transformation into a capitalist economy from the 50's to the 90's, rationalizing some of the later Soviet doctrines with capitalist accumulation and expansion as their basis, and rationalizing the majority of all Soviet military interventions during the period of 1956-1991 (if I recall correctly, Parenti justifies the Soviet military occupation in Afghanistan) is just as incorrect.

I am not criticizing the USSR on the basis that they had a state and mechanisms of social administration, nor do I ever criticize the USSR divorced from the times in which they lived, and their material situation.

I criticize the USSR from a rational, materialist, socialist point of view, and when they strayed from socialism, without external necesity (there is a large difference in context and goals between the NEP and the capitalist transformations of the Kruschev era), I will not turn a blind eye.

I didn't break out the champagne when the USSR dissolved (I was a toddler at the time :lol:), but I wouldn't have broken it out when they sent troops to Afghanistan either. There is a rational position to take, and just because the majority of the american "left" are polarized along lines of whimsical liberal/idealist opposition and die-hard soviet loyalists (who can't seem to recognize any socio-economic shift in the internal and external policies of the USSR during their history) , doesn't mean that one has to choose between these two camps.

While both camps may have a few pearls of historical truth (admittedly, even the obstinate Soviet loyalists, examplified by the CPC in my country, are more grounded in logic and critical thinking than the liberals and Non-marxist left that opposes them), neither stand point is correct in it's entirety.



I understand what Tony Febbo is trying to say, and to an extent agree. On the flip-side, theory and (political) leadership is not inconsequential to how events play out, and to take such a stand point is just as ahistorical.

The theory of "peaceful coexistance and competition with capitalism", advanced by the Soviet leadership in the first years of the cold-war, was not an un-avoidable adaptation to the world situation, nor did it reflect the real demands of the times. It was a manifestation of the capitalist economic rectification that began in the USSR at that time, which was hardly a "necesary evil".

Even Parenti doesn't fully identify with not holding leaders or theory culpable for the decisions that are made, and he makes this clear in his liberal criticisms of Stalin.

The only common denominator between revolutionaries like V.I. Lenin and revolutionaries like Mugabe and Ortega of questionable socialist merit (both have now re-invented themselves as bourgeois capitalist statesmen), is the common enemy.

Certainly capitalism has undermined and sabotaged every experiment in revolutionary transformation on the planet earth, always has, and most of these revolutionary transformations succumbed to this pressure.

I agree that all of these revolutionary movements, despite their merits and detractions, faced the same enemy, and this was ultimately the death of most of them.

I disagree with the implications, though, that one revolutionary theory/leader/party was as good as the others, because they all ended up at the same place.

As Parenti himself points out, with aid from Engels writings, the tactics,decisions and theory of the anarchists in Spain lead to sound defeat in the 1800's. Meanwhile, the tactics,decisions and theory of the Bolsheviks lead to triumph in 1917.

To say that "this or that theory" was not to blame, in this case, becomes absurd. Theory is the guide to action. While correct theories are usually those that properly reflect the demands and material conditions of the times, and incorrect ones are those that do not, still an incorrect theory leads to incorrect action, and that more often than not leads to historical failure when it is not inevitable.

I understand some of the points Febbo is trying to make, but he over-simplifies the situation until he is no longer entirely correct.



The party leadership in the time of Stalin was hardly "autocratic". Stalin was elected as General secretary, and even Trotskyists aknowledge this.



Here Parenti takes a liberal down-turn.

While he was quite correctly identifying the state apparatus and the general militarization of society as nececities demanded by the internal and external conditions of the time, he incorrectly identifies the lack of many main-stays of capitalist society as also being an unfortunate necesity, rather than just the implementation of the actual practices of socialism.

* Parenti calls for private ownership of "small buisnesses" (liberals have an on-going crush on "small buisness", in contrast to the evil faceless corporations, when both are manifestations of the exact same socio-economic system and modes of accumulation and distribution), in essence calling for the existance of the petty-bourgeoisie class to not only be tolerated, but enshrined in the frame work of the new "socialist" system.

Somehow allowing the private appropriation of social production on a small scale (and most likely exploitation of labour along with it), and allowing class divisions to exist without an attempt to abolish them, not to mention private property in land ownership, will somehow give way to a classless society of social appropriation eventually.

Nevermind that also, with private ownership of land/buisnesses comes private distribution (what would be the point to the petty-bourgeoisie of owning a buisness, if the wealth or products generated are still socially distributed?)not to mention right of inheritance (and with it, defined class divisions in succsesive generations) and all of the other tenets of the previous capitalist system that this new "socialism" was trying to replace.

Even in Parenti's ideal "socialism", there are still at least a small corner where there are buisness owners and the people who work for them, exploiters and exploited.

* "Independent agricultural development by the peasantry"? So, in Parenti's ideal "socialism", there still is a peasantry (by definition, people who work the land, and surrender a portion of their harvest to their land lord who owns the land)? Rather than trying to integrate them into the working class (as capitalism has allready done in most countries), the peasantry will also be preserved under an ideal "socialist" society?

* Calling for more "political diversity" and "open debate and criticism" is class-vague,
and the implication is that the capitalist countries did possess these things (which the socialist countries were lacking).

In reality, bourgeois pluralism has always been an illusion, with political power held firmly in the hands of the bourgeoisie, and every time their hold on political power is truly threatened ( even by peaceful means,), the mask comes off and all facades of "political diversity" are dropped.

As I pointed out in a previous post, bourgeois revolutionaries in the USA and in France understood the necesity and importance of suppressing the exploiter classes that they had just overthrown (the feudal aristocracy), and despite all of their lofty ideals of democratic pluralism, it was immediately understood that this new pluralism was not a class-vague absolute.

While Parenti aknowledges that for a revolution to survive, the revolutionary forces must take power as well as hold on to it, he seems to not understand class struggle very well. Reactionary counter attacks come in other forms than just foriegn invasions, hence the necesity of the socialist stage at all (aka the dictatorship of the proletariat).

Also, saying open debate and criticism was lacking in the socialist countries is not quite historically true (criticism and self-criticism was practiced in the USSR, in Albania, and in China.)

All of these liberal measures that Parenti advocates for ideal "socialism", a socialism not besieged by reaction, would lead to the inevitable re-instatement of capitalism, and it really demonstrates that perhaps Parenti doesn't understand why socialist revolutions occured in the first place.



At least he recognizes that not everything done in the USSR was a historical necesity, but unfortunately he uses this consiousness to insert the obligatory Stalin-bashing into his paper.



Yes it did, and if he understood class struggle, he would understand that.



This was not a fabrication of Stalin. In fact, he had nothing but disdain for it:


Again, Michael seems to grasp the concept of external reaction, but not internal reaction.



Again, the implication is that this is not the case in the capitalist sphere.

The class struggle is every bit as sharp in the capitalist countries. Yes, perhaps a persyn is "free" to make a socialist themed painting in a capitalist country, but how likely are you to see that painting in an art gallery?

The only time that socialist intellectual and cultural achievements are given mainstream attention in capitalist society is as academic museum peices or as tackey appropriation of socialist iconography for persynal profit (ie. Che Guevera T-shirts) .
Both are done with the object of discrediting socialism, converting it into something harmless.

Other than that, socialist outlooks and theory are generally kept out of the mainstream, and any that do exist can be supressed in a second. Sure, maybe you can buy a copy of the Communist Manifesto at Barnes and Nobel now, but you couldn't during the McCarthy days. It will be the same situation, when capitalism is threatened again.

The goals and outlook of capitalist society, and the bourgeoisie as a class, are generally espoused in all of the ideas and culture of the society. Here is Marx on the subject:

.
- Karl Marx, The German Ideology

Michael seems to think that it is possible to revolutionize a society without revolutionizing the dominant ideas and the culture of the society as well. This adds more credibility to my analysis that Class-struggle is still eluding Parenti.



Michaels choice of ending is appropriate to any of the old Soviet loyalists around the world, as this does encompass their world view.

To this day, when I listen to the old members of the revisionist CPC in my country bemoan the fall of the soviet union,they actually express nostalgia for a bi-polar world division.

It is not necesarilly socialism (and then communism) that they have nostalgia for, but this bi-polar division of the world between two superpowers.

They cherished the days when the Soviet Union existed as a "counter balance" in the world, to make the USA "act properly", as this is the role that the USSR played ever since the peaceful coexistance doctrine of Kruschev. Even some capitalists are nostalgic for those days, which speaks volumes.

But as a Marxist-Leninist, if I am nostalgic at all, it is for the days before the Soviets became the "counter weight", back in the days when the Soviet Union was the liberated zone that aided other countries in their own triumphant socialist revolutions!
There was a time when the revolutionary USSR over-saw the greatest proliferation of socialist revolution and socialist triumph that the world has seen so far, and that is the situation that revolutionaries around the world would like to return.

The role of a true socialist state is not as the 'Loyal oppostion' in a capitalist world. It is as the base for revolution to spread across the surface of the earth, into what ever region is fertile for working class uprising.

I don't want the capitalists of the world to be "tamed" and forced into good behavior; I want them to be overthrown, expropriated, suppressed, and eventually phased out as a class.

The revolutionaries and communists of the world aren't trying to build a world based on "Checks and balances", they are trying to build a world based on the abolition of exploitation and the class divisions and economic systems that perpetuate it.

To me, this really exposes the old Kruschevites as the red-streaked liberals that they are (and helps to explain why they are so involved with "9/11 truth" ,and handing me flyers calling JFK and MLK "progressive martyrs"), and because Michael Parenti himself defends socialism, but at the same time seems to be struggling with the reasons for a socialist society in the first place, I suppose it was a fitting ending for him.

Don't get me wrong: Large parts of this analysis were correct, as is a lot of Parenti's stuff. However, he descended into liberalism, and without Class analsysis, that is bound to happen. For these errors, I call him out, in what was otherwise a decent essay.


There are so many errors in your post that it actually astonishes me! That Cuba could be considered a colony of the Soviet Union is just laughable. And that the Soviet Union exports finance capital to expropriate the land, labor and markets of the people of the Third World is sheer lunacy.
You provide no facts, evidence or data to back up your claims. Really your kind of posts should be prohibited they are just flamers.
Cuba got the USSR to finance its legendary Angolan & Ethiopian operation contrary to their inclinations and got the USSR to help Nicaragua's Sandinistas, etc. Cuba was not a Soviet Colony period.

[Prairie Fire]

Well, I guess the "Red Negus" sure showed me. In one paragraph, he reduced my careful argument to rubble, without bothering to address any of my points.

Mengistu assumes an air of intellectual superiority, and in the first three sentences says that my post is funny, and erroneous and insane all at the same time. No elaboration, no attempts to actually de-bunk anything I put forward.

Mengistu


You provide no facts, evidence or data to back up your claims.


So, did you read my post, or not?

I included two links to two separate texts that have more in depth analysis on the points that I raised. I also gave a reference to a third source (Cuba: evaporation of a myth), which I have in print, but unfortunately I couldn't find online (I looked. If I could, I would link to it).

In addition, I also included an excerpt by Marx from the German Ideology.

To those revlefters who don't mind reading, they may have noticed that I did include sources to back up my claims, just as I usually do.

In the future, instead of emotional reactions that don't correspond to reality (when you say I provided 'no facts, evidence or data', best case scenario you didn't read my text; worst case scenario, you're a liar.),maybe critique the actual content of my posts.


Really your kind of posts should be prohibited they are just flamers.

"Flaming"? I wish that all of the flamers and trolls on revleft wrote 10 paragraphs on average, elaborated on the positions that they took, and posted sources and links to bolster their argument. That would be a renaissance for revleft.

If you think I'm a "flamer" (what a retro-word), I can only imagine what you think of the other various posters on revleft. :D


Cuba was not a Soviet Colony period.

I didn't say "colony", sweetie, I said Neo-colony:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism)

Learn the difference.

I also, highly recommend that book "Cuba: the evaporation of a myth" if you can find it.

Yuon:


I didn't read the whole of that long text that started the thread. Why bother? I've got better things to do with my life. I did read this bit though, and then, couldn't waste my time on the rest.

The ungovernable farce:

I didn't get much further than that, because I have better things to do with my time than critique academics giving long-winded excuses for their favourite sections of the bourgeoisie.

:lol:

Reading's hard.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or2k1GcGcyg

Anyways, I've seen that non-argument a few times. Usually, it is made by people who can't refute someone’s position if their life depended on it, but still want the last word in the argument.

“I’m not gonna' read or respond to what you wrote. I could, but...uh... I'm busy. Yeah, I got lots of stuff to do. Important stuff, better than this. Yeah."

So ,you two clowns come on this forum and reply on threads, just to tell everyone that you have "better things" to do than come on this forum and reply on threads? :lol:

Oh, these anarchists.


This is also why I rarely read Prarie Fire's posts.

O-ho! Ba-zing!

See, that is clever, because what you did there was you implied that I'm actually bourgeois.

By the way, what's my name? Again, if you have disdain for reading, you're probably not too sharp on writing either. Prairie Fire has an "I" in it.

The reason you rarely read my posts is the same reason that you didn't respond to Parenti here, both rooted in the fact that you have the intellect of a small burrowing animal, and the politics to match.

In the future though, I would recommend that you read my posts, but all that I can do is recommend.

[Raúl Duke]

And how long did your "libertarian revolution" last? Did this revolution get off the ground and dispatch many fascists to their early graves? Read Parenti again.

It may have been crushed (although it did "get off the ground and dispatched many fascists to early graves"; see: Spanish Civil War) but to put your ideology "on top of a pedestal" is nonsensical considering that many Leninist regimes have not been glorious successes (except in raising living standards and industrializing; but rather lacking in providing workers' control in workplaces and society) either, due to being degenerated (turned revisionists) and then few collapsing from within (Russia) while others turned capitalist (China and Indochina).


This is also why I rarely read Prarie Fire's posts. I think it's because they are "too long" (the trick is to look for a relevant quote and beginning reading her point below it)

[Rakhmetov]

The paragraph on Orwell is indeed outrageous crap. No one who risks his neck fighting in the POUM is a "red-basher pretending to be on the Left."


But you should like the way Parenti turns doublethink against its creator.

Bwaahahahahha

[Charles Xavier]

Comrades please do not resort to personal attacks. We are brothers and sisters joined in the struggle to fight for a new democratic world for our class. I enjoyed the book Blackshirts and Red. And I think Michael Parenti is one of the best leftist authors out there. He is not prefect in every regard but he is correct a lot of the time.

Don't waste your times trying to get a rise out of each other. Correct incorrect ideas with new ones.

[yuon]

Reading's hard.And life is short.


Anyways, I've seen that non-argument a few times. Usually, it is made by people who can't refute someone’s position if their life depended on it, but still want the last word in the argument.

“I’m not gonna' read or respond to what you wrote. I could, but...uh... I'm busy. Yeah, I got lots of stuff to do. Important stuff, better than this. Yeah."

Funny, you see, I did refute the crap about Orwell. And, that other stuff? If the first section is any indication, there's no point.
Fucking around, reading, looking at RevLeft etc. Far better to use my time for that, than to read crap.

Oh, and it wasn't just Orwell, I also wrote about the perfect future society. That's two major errors in a piece of writing that size, what does it say for the rest?


So ,you two clowns come on this forum and reply on threads, just to tell everyone that you have "better things" to do than come on this forum and reply on threads? :lol:

Oh, these anarchists.
So yeah, it isn't about can't be bothered to read the threads, it's "why the fuck would you post a lot of shit?".

I wish I was a clown, making people laugh and all that. But no, instead, I'm stuck here.

[Das war einmal]

I find the chapter concerning the social-economic problems in state socialist countries interesting and amusing in a kind of way. It reveals that, unlike the bourgeois media wants us to believe, that there really was a shortage of surveillance in state socialist countries. Not only that but Michael Parenti's brilliant insight on how these systems function also breaks down the 'workers are exploited in state socialism' theory. In fact he explains that a lot of workers and farmers and a clique of bureaucrats where at fault themselves for the economic slow down in the 70's and 80's. There was a lot at fault in the socialist systems, particualary the fact that there was no motivation to work hard, the daily quota's were very low and it was actually stupid to deliver quality products, cause then you would not get as much allowance from the state the next year. There was no competition in the state socialist countries, which resulted in inferior luxerious goods. But like said, the whole society and not only the ruling party is to blame

[The Ungovernable Farce]

There was no competition in the state socialist countries, which resulted in inferior luxerious goods.
Um, are you sure you're meant to be a communist?

[Das war einmal]

Um, are you sure you're meant to be a communist?


This is what happened, whether you like it or not. And yes I think competition is possible within a socialist and communist society.

[Bankotsu]

More wise words from Slobodan Milosevic's biggest fan.

The west's agenda for Yugoslavia:


Kosovo and Washington’s Strategic Agenda for Europe and Eurasia

Some months before the US-led bombing of Serbian targets, one of the heaviest bombings since World War II, a senior US intelligence official in private conversation told Croatian officers in Zagreb about Washington’s strategy for former Yugoslavia. According to these reports, communicated privately to this author, the Pentagon goal was to take control of Kosovo in order to secure a military base to control the entire southeast European region down to the Middle East oil lands.

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Kosovo/kosovo.html

Correspondence between German Politicians Reveals the Hidden Agenda behind Kosovo's "Independence"


Mr. Gerhard Schröder

Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

Bundeskanzleramt
Schloßplatz 1
10178 Berlin

Berlin, May 2, 2000

Highly esteemed Mr. Chancellor,



At the end of last week I had the opportunity to attend a conference in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, jointly organized by the American State Department and the American Enterprise Institute (the foreign policy institute of the Republican Party). The main topics of the gathering were the Balkans and NATO enlargement.



The conference was attended by very high level political officials, as witnessed by the presence of a large number of prime ministers, as well as foreign ministers and defense ministers from the region.



Among the numerous important points of discussion, certain themes deserve special mention...



It would be good, during NATO’s current enlargement, to restore the territorial situation in the area between the Baltic Sea and Anatolia such as existed during the Roman Empire, at the time of its greatest power and greatest territorial expansion.

For this reason, Poland must be flanked to the north and to the south with democratic neighbor states, while Romania and Bulgaria are to secure a land connection with Turkey. Serbia (probably for the purposes of securing an unhindered US military presence) must be permanently excluded from European development.

North of Poland, total control over St. Petersburg’s access to the Baltic Sea must be established.

In all processes, peoples’ rights to self-determination should be favored over all other provisions or rules of international law.

The claim that, during its attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, NATO violated all international rules, and especially all the relevant provisions of international law – was not disputed.



http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8304



Interview with Willy Wimmer: " Americans are Recommending Themselves as the Successors of Rome"

http://serbblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/interview-with-willy-wimmer-americans.html


Why is NATO in Yugoslavia?
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/gervasi/why.htm


It Began With a Lie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjP_9LOyBuk


Kosovo, stolen (banned film)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp6C18Jb-Dg&feature=related


Area - Fated on Exile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMs8IfxSCt4&feature=related



British documentary substantiates US-KLA collusion in provoking war with Serbia

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/koso-m16.shtml


CIA Aided Kosovo Guerrilla Army All Along

American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians. Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police...

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/192/38782.html

[rednordman]

I like how he discusses Orwell's anti-communism without ever mentioning the fact that Orwell's views were born out of his first-hand experience of seeing Stalinists repress a genuine revolutionary movement. Smooth.Your right, but the sad truth is that Orwell will always get 'used' for his anti-stalinist works (which has now successfully been transferred to the whole realm of anti-leftwing), more than he will for his fights for socialism and against fascism. So parenti can have a blast if he wants there, if very unjust.

[mikelepore]

The original poster's signature:


Violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. Dr. Karl Marx

Violence or force? In this well-known comment (from 'Capital, chapter 31), I don't know much German, but the word "Gewalt" means force, might, to break through, to break open, etc.

German edition (http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me23/me23_741.htm#Kap_24_6) -

"Alle aber benutzten die Staatsmacht, die konzentrierte und organisierte Gewalt der Gesellschaft, um den Verwandlungsprozeß der feudalen in die kapitalistische Produktionsweise treibhausmäßig zu fördern und die Übergänge abzukürzen. Die Gewalt ist der Geburtshelfer jeder alten Gesellschaft, die mit einer neuen schwanger geht. Sie selbst ist eine ökonomische Potenz."

English edition (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm) -

"But, they all employ the power of the state, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power."

[Misanthrope]

Why haven't you critics gone through the trouble of refuting Parenti's remarks?? Maybe because you are sorely lacking in any capacity to refute real rational thinking instead of musing on Utopian anarcho-reveries.



Instead of quoting a history professor and essentially calling us pussies for not responding, let's hear your criticisms of anarchism, Dr. Mengistu.

[Crux]

While certainly being well-written, and not without correct political points, I take sevral issues with this article and there a fundamental dishonesty and superficiality to his analysis. Which should be to no ones suprise as the author is apparantly a stalinist.

Read, pause, and reflect Dr. Michael Parenti's ingenious observations!

Excerpt From his book Blackshirts And Reds:

A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.
A condemnation of stalinism from the Left at that time was certainly a courages act, something which got many good revolutionaries murdered.
Calling this "doublethink" insuanuationg that this condemnation, arther than coming from the monstorous nature of the stalinist regime itself, was a result of Orwell living in Great Brittain is dishonest and quite obviously nonsense.



Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish–while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.

Except when put against the Trotskyist movement, particuarly the arguments made by Trotsky in The Revolution betrayed, this critique falls flat. Understanding and evalutaing the early period of the Soviet Union is indeed important, and indeed there are people on the left that make serious mistakes in regards to this, particularly in the anarchist movement, were casual dismissal is quite common place.
The victory against fascism and the relative sucesses of the planned economy does not undoe the nature of stalinism.


Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words).
Well, using the poor little children for apologism for brutal dictatorships is something that ought to be scorned. Even more so in the case of the stalinist states, where the potential for something far more better were quite visibly to be seen there in the sucesses of the planned economy smothered by the bureaucratic caste.



But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
Again this is basicly strawmanning, by claiming that this would be the argument of everyone opposing the stalinist system.
Saying that the betrayal of socialism is a neccessity demanded by actual reality is capitaulation to capitalism. the "in a better world arguments" are nosense when confronted with a marxist critique of the murderous stalinist regimes and their complete mishandling of the planned economies and knifes in the back of countless revolutionary movements.




The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little room for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.
The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism–not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience–could have taken hold and worked better.
Ah these handy "pure socialists" and their easily refutable arguemnts. Why would anyone be anything but a stalinist?



Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not. As the political philosopher Carl Shames argued:

How do [the left critics] know that the fundamental problem was the “nature” of the ruling [revolutionary] parties rather than, say, the global concentration of capital that is destroying all independent economies and putting an end to national sovereignty everywhere? And to the extent that it was, where did this “nature” come from? Was this “nature” disembodied, disconnected from the fabric of the society itself, from the social relations impacting on it? . . . Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations. In my observation [of existing communist societies], the positive of “socialism” and the negative of “bureaucracy, authoritarianism and tyranny” interpenetrated in virtually every sphere of life. (Carl Shames, correspondence to me, 1/15/92.)

So, is the good doctor admitting flaws in the stalnists system but saying they were forced by outside conditions or is he saying that outside condtions make any flaw excusable at any time?

There is no graver betrayal than the betrayal of the leadership of a worker's party.

Carl Shames is obviously arguing that socialism is only possible under the dictatorship. history has shown that it's quite the opposite. Also no economy is "independent". Indeed the centralization of power was brought about by the failure of the revolution in germany and western europe. but was the failure of these revolutions somethiong bound to happen by "nature"? looking at the objective situation you will see that this was hardly the case.

Looking at the young communist movement and the mistakes that were made you see that what was lacking was the subjective factor, i e, parties capable of elevating and defending the revolutions.
Many new layers had moved into the communist movement, influenced by the enormous impetus of the russian revolution. unfortnatly many of these new layers were inexperienced and did not know how to react in a revolutionary situation and how to reach the workingclass. In response to some of these members Lenin wrote "Left communism: an infantile disorder" .

And on the other side we have the socialdemocratic movement and the 2nd international who should show quite explicitly why the question of leadership shouldn't be casually dismissed. Or perhaps he thinks that it would have been irrelevant whetever th Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks would ahve taken power of the RDSLP and that the russian revolution would succeed by nature, just as those in western europe failed.



The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail because their leaders wait too long or act too soon, are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong leadership. But always the leaders fail because they do not put their trust in the “direct actions” of the workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome every adversity if only given the kind of leadership available from the left critic’s own groupuscule. Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country.
What wonderfull non-arguments. He sure is full of himself, the good doctor.



Tony Febbo questioned this blame-the-leadership syndrome of the pure socialists:

It occurs to me that when people as smart, different, dedicated and heroic as Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe–and the millions of heroic people who followed and fought with them–all end up more or less in the same place, then something bigger is at work than who made what decision at what meeting. Or even what size houses they went home to after the meeting. . . . These leaders weren’t in a vacuum. They were in a whirlwind. And the suction, the force, the power that was twirling them around has spun and left this globe mangled for more than 900 years. And to blame this or that theory or this or that leader is a simple-minded substitute for the kind of analysis that Marxists [should make]. (Guardian, 11/13/91)

Claiming that Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe all ended up in the same place is nonsense and historical revisionism. Lenin lived his last years fighting against the bureacratization of the party and the stalinist clique and defending genuine marxism. Something which could hardly be said of the rest. While their failures could be blamed on the apparently instoppable "whirlwind", the same could be said of their nominal defence of socialism. Of course the objective situation is essential but if it's simple minded to stress sthe importance of correct theory and correct leadership, then why would we need parties at all? Why not just let the wonderfull all powerfull "whirlwind" do all the work just sit idly by? This doesn't quite sound like any kind of Marxist reasoning at all, and more like convenient apologism for treacherous and murderous leaderships and patently failed theories.




To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely without specific agendas for building the revolution. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an ultra-left group in that country called for direct worker ownership of the factories. The armed workers would take control of production without benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field an army, take security measures, or build and coordinate economic programs and human services on a national scale.

It's quite interesting that this text does not mention the current state of the Sandistina regime, but instead choose to focus on a single ultra left group. In otherwords strawmanning as usual.



Decentralization vs. Survival
For a people’s revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society’s institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces necessitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to anyone’s liking, not in Soviet Russia in 1917, nor in Sandinista Nicaragua in 1980.

Factually correct? Yes. But again this hardly undoes the mistakes and betrayals of stalinism worldwide.

I will have to answer the rest of the article later, but I do hope the original OP reads, and ideally takes some time to think about it aswell, before responding.

[Rakhmetov]

In her biography of Louise Michel, the anarchist historian Edith Thomas asserts that anarchsim is "the absence of government, the direct administration by people of their own lives." Who could not want that? Thomas doesn't say how it would work except to say assert " that anarchists want it right now, in all the confusion and disorder of right now." She notes proudly that anarchism is still intact as an ideal for it has never been tried." That is exactly the problem. Why in so many hundreds of actual rebellions, including ones led by anarchist themselves, has anarchism never been tried or succeeded in surviving for any length of time in an "intact" anarchist form? (In the anarchist uprising Engels described, the rebels, in seeming violation of their own ideology, did not rely on Thomas's "direct administration by the people" but set up ruling juntas.) The unpracticed, unattainable quality of the ideal helps it to retain its better-than-anything appeal in the minds of some.
---Dr. Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds.

[Das war einmal]

While certainly being well-written, and not without correct political points, I take sevral issues with this article and there a fundamental dishonesty and superficiality to his analysis. Which should be to no ones suprise as the author is apparantly a stalinist.

.


Haha such a cheap tactic, thankfully Parenti allready wrote something about these pathetic ultraleftist accusements aswell:


Many on the left continue to deliver impassioned and blanket condemnations of deceased communist countries, Parenti states. “Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anti-communists as ‘Soviet apologists’ and ‘Stalinists,’ even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society.”

[robbo203]

Read, pause, and reflect Dr. Michael Parenti's ingenious observations!


Hardly. More like the very predictable outpourings of a rather ill-informed pro-soviet hack. The article reeks of an inherent conservatism. His lambasts what he calls the "pure socialists". They havenet achieved a revolution but at least the soviet union did. Yeah,big deal. It was a capitalist revolution that installed state capitalism. Parenti concedes that not all is hunky dory with his state capitalist utopia (he apparently doesnt like much of what Stalin did). But, says he, the Bolsheviks had to do what the Bolsheviks had do; they were constrained by circumstances. Of course they were. And when "pure socialists" point out that the Bolsheviks had no option but to establish state capitalism because the preconditions for a genuine socialist revolution simply did not exist in Russia at the time, he finds this distinctly uncomfortable. Apparently we are not allowed to go in for "Soviet bashing" because they achieved more than the "pure socialists". Bollocks to that. Call a spade a spade I say. State capitalism is not what any genuine revolutionary worth his or her salt would really want. And if that is not what you want it behoves you to explain why you do not want it which Parenti construes as "Soviet Bashing"

This is why I find Parenti so utterly conservative in outlook. We are not allowed to raise our sights in his view of things. He is also hugely misinformed on a whole range of things. He has little or no familiarity with the views of "pure socialists" - whatever that may mean - on post revolutionary society. He laughably claims that "pure socialists" feel that their revolution had not come to pass because it was betrayed by the leadership. As if socialists advocate the leadership principle! On the contrary, we reject it completely. We uphold the principle that the emancipation of the working class must be carried out by the working class itself not some vanguard. He is confusing his own leninist leanings with revolutionary socialism

But then he is basically a very confused individual as far as the basics go. In other respects, I would agree, some of his writings have some merit

[Crux]

Haha such a cheap tactic, thankfully Parenti allready wrote something about these pathetic ultraleftist accusements aswell:
One can only assume after that paragraf you stopped reading. Please do tell me what is ultraleft about pointing out, for example, the vast chasm that separeates people like Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Mugabe from Lenin?
Or for that matter opposing blatant determinism and dsiqounting of the importance of leadership? but then again, as i said, you probably diud not read beyond the first paragraph.