Michael Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

BOOKS BY MICHAEL PARENTI

Contrary Notions (2007)

Superpatriotism (2004)

The Assassination of Julius Caesar (2003)

The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond (2002)

To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia (2001)

Democracy for the Few (1974, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1988, 1995, 2001)

History as Mystery (1999)

America Besieged (1998)

Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (1997)

Dirty Truths (1996)

Against Empire (1995)

Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America (1994)

Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media (1986, 1993)

Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment (1992)

The Sword and the Dollar (1989)

Power and the Powerless (1978)

Ethnic and Political Attitudes (1975)

Trends and Tragedies in American Foreign Policy (1971)

The Anti-Communist Impulse (1969)

Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

MICHAEL PARENTI

1997 by Michael Parenti
All Rights Reserved

Cover design: Nigel French
Book design: Nancy J. Peters
Typography: Harvest Graphics

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parenti, Michael, 1933

Blackshirts and reds : rational fascism and the overthrow of communism / Michael Parenti.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-87288-330-1 (hc). ISBN 0-87286-329-8 (pbk.)

1. Communism. 2. Post-communism. 3. Fascism. 4. Capitalism. 5. Free enterprise. 6. Anti-communist movements. 7. Revolutions.

I. Title.

HX44.5.P35 1997

Visit our website: www.citylights.com

CITY LIGHTS BOOKS are edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy J. Peters and published at the City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133.

I am indebted to Sally Soriano, Peggy Noton, Jane Scantlebury, and Richard Plevin for their valuable support and helpful criticisms of the manuscript. On numerous occasions, Jane also utilized her professional librarian skills to track down much needed information at my request. My thanks also to Stephanie Welch, Neala Haz, and Kathryn Cahill for valuable assistance rendered.

Again, I wish to express my gratitude to Nancy J. Peters, my editor at City Lights Books, for her encouragement and her critical reading of the final text. And belated thanks are owed my publisher, the poet and artist Lawrence Ferlinghetti, for inviting me to become a City Lights author some years ago. Finally, a word of appreciation to Stacey Lewis and others too numerous to mention who partook in the production and distribution of this book: they who do the work.

To the Reds and others, nameless heroes many,
who resisted yesterdays Blackshirts and who
continue to fight todays ruthless corporate
stuffed shirts.

And to the memory of Sean Gervasi and
Max Gundy, valued friends and warriors for
social justice.

Per chi conosce solo il tuo colore, bandiera rossa,
tu devi realmente esistere, perch lui esista
tu che gi vanti tante glorie borghesi e operaie,
ridiventa straccio, e il pi povero ti sventoli.

For him who knows only your color, red flag,
you must really exist, so he may exist
you who already have achieved many bourgeois
and working-class glories,
you become a rag again and the poorest wave you.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination.

Revolutions are democratic developments that expand the freedoms of people who enjoyed no freedom under oppressive prerevolutionary regimes. Revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege. They bring a dramatic reduction in political and economic oppression.

Like conservatives and reactionaries, most of the U.S. Left greeted communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with fear and loathing, and with idealized expectations that took no account of Western encirclement and the survival necessities of socialism under siege.

The internal irrationalities and weaknesses of past communist economies and the systemic reasons why productivity stagnated and reforms were so difficult to effect.

Newly published documentation on the gulag reveals a somewhat different picture of the repressive nature of communist systems, both in the past and in recent times. The historic accomplishments in economic development within communist countries represented a positive gain in the lives of hundreds of millions.

Repression by conservative forces in the former communist states in the name of democratic reform. Privileges from pre-communist days restored to the old owning classes. Western investors plunder the public sector at great profit to themselves, reducing the former communist countries to Third World levels.

The emergence of free-market rapacity and growing inequality, widespread crime, social maladies, and victimization, especially of women, children, the elderly, and the poor. The Third Worldization and cultural decay of formerly collectivist societies.

Understanding the fundamental concepts and discoveries of a view of society and politics that today is more relevant than ever, helping us to overcome truncated modes of thought, teaching us to ask why things are as they are.

Class is more than a demographic category. Anything-but-class explanations of social realities invite us to deny the obvious links between wealth and power and the collision of ecology with capitalism.

This book invites those immersed in the prevailing orthodoxy of democratic capitalism to entertain iconoclastic views, to question the shibboleths of free-market mythology and the persistence of both right and left anticommunism, and to consider anew, with a receptive but not uncritical mind, the historic efforts of the much maligned Reds and other revolutionaries.

The political orthodoxy that demonizes communism permeates the entire political perspective. Even people on the Left have internalized the liberal/conservative ideology that equates fascism and communism as equally evil totalitaran twins, two major mass movements of the twentieth century. This book attempts to show the enormous differences between fascism and communism both past and present, both in theory and practice, especially in regard to questions of social equality, private capital accumulation, and class interest.

The orthodox mythology also would have us believe that the Western democracies (with the United States leading the way) have opposed both totalitarian systems with equal vigor. In fact, U.S. leaders have been dedicated above all to making the world safe for global corporate investment and the private profit system. Pursuant of this goal, they have used fascism to protect capitalism, while claiming to be saving democracy from communism.

In the pages ahead I discuss how capitalism propagates and profits from fascism, the value of revolution in the advancement of the human condition, the causes and effects of the destruction of communism, the continuing relevance of Marxism and class analysis, and the heartless nature of corporate-class power.

Over a century ago, in his great work Les Misrables Victor Hugo asked, Will the future arrive? He was thinking of a future of social justice, free from the terrible shadows of oppression imposed by the few upon the great mass of humankind. Of late, some scribes have announced the end of history. With the overthrow of communism, the monumental struggle between alternative systems has ended, they say. Capitalisms victory is total. No great transformations are in the offing. The global free market is here to stay. What you see is what you are going to get, now and always. This time the class struggle is definitely over. So Hugos question is answered: the future has indeed arrived, though not the one he had hoped for.