All over the world, community in the broader sense-the Gemeinschaft with its organic social relationships and strong reciprocal bonds of commonality and kinship- is forcibly transformed by global capital into commercialized, atomized, mass-market societies. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels referred to capitalism's implacable drive to settle "over the whole surface of the globe;' creating "a world after its own image." No system in history has been more relentless in battering down ancient and fragile cultures, pulverizing centuries-old practices in a matter of years, devouring the resources of whole regions, and standardizing the varieties of human experience.” Written with lucid and compelling style, this book goes beyond truncated modes of thought, inviting us to entertain iconoclastic views, and to ask why things are as they are. The first law of the market is to make the largest possible profit from other people’s labor. Private profitability rather than human need is the determining condition of private investment. There prevails a rational systematization of human endeavor in pursuit of a socially irrational end: “accumulate, accumulate, accumulate.” 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.

Parenti argues that we can't do this, and that in fact, the socialist countries of the 20th century have had their accomplishments ignored and their mistakes magnified, and that despite their faults, they are still valuable historical examples we can use to make a better world. While walking through New York’s Little Italy, I passed a novelty shop that displayed posters and T-shirts of Benito Mussolini giving the fascist salute. When I entered the shop and asked the clerk why such items were being offered, he replied, Well, some people like them. And, you know, maybe we need someone like Mussolini in this country. His comment was a reminder that fascism survives as something more than a historical curiosity. most people are worse off than they were under Communism . … The quality of life has deteriorated with the spread of crime and the disappearance of the social safety net” Sporadic rebellion would be replaced by class-conscious revolution. Instead of burning down the manor, the workers would expropriate it and put it to use for the collective benefit of the common people, the ones who built it in the first place.” Absolutely ome of the greatest books written on the disastrous consequences of the resurgence of monopoly capitalism in the post-fall of the USSR. Michael Parenti once again [it seems effortless though we know it isn't] lays out a vast, meticulous history of market reforms that dragged eastern Europe down following 1991, all the way up to 1997, and connects this with the rise of fascism in the early to mid 20th century.This intellectually anemic end-of-history theory was hailed as a brilliant exegesis and accorded a generous reception by commentators and reviewers of the corporate-controlled media. It served the official worldview perfectly well, saying what the higher circles had been telling us for generations: that the struggle between classes is not an everyday reality but an outdated notion, that an untrammeled capitalism is here to stay now and forever, that the future belongs to those who control the present. Not surprisingly, work discipline left much to be desired. There was the clerk who chatted endlessly with a friend on the telephone while a long line of people waited resentfully for service, the two workers who took three days to paint a hotel wall that should have taken a few hours, the many who would walk off their jobs to go shopping." At the time of the 1 996 terror bombing in Oklahoma City, I heard a radio commentator announce: "Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrorize." U.S. media commentators have repeatedly quoted Lenin in that misleading manner. In fact, his statement was disapproving of terrorism. He polemicized against isolated terrorist acts which do nothing but create terror among the populace, invite repression, and isolate the revolutionary movement from the masses. Far from being the totalitarian, tight-circled conspirator, Lenin urged the building of broad coalitions and mass organizations, encompassing people who were at different levels of political development. He advocated whatever diverse means were needed to advance the class struggle, including participation in parliamentary elections and existing trade unions. To be sure, the working class, like any mass group, needed organization and leadership to wage a successful revolutionary struggle, which was the role of a vanguard party, but that did not mean the proletarian revolution could be fought and won by putschists or terrorists.”

Parenti then describes the failures of communist Russia and he does so with transparency. He describes the bureaucratic corruption, food shortages and ruthless one party rule along with the impracticality of a centrally planned economy. At the same time he emphasizes the successes of not only communist Russia but Cuba and Vietnam. He re-frames the failures of communism by asserting that communism for these countries was actually an enormous improvement from their previous social arrangement of feudal states and czarist hegemony. He also argues that the terrors of the Gulag camp are overstated by western propaganda that most people there were actually criminals and not enemies of the state. I think the point he tries to make is the terror of the Reds is exaggerated and used as US state propaganda as a vehicle for global meddling. I don't necessarily agree with this as the accounts of Gulag war crimes is pretty undeniable at this point so I think he over reached here.

There are things that I have spent so much time thinking about, that I can speak or write of them in an impassioned and organized way whenever prompted. This book read like that to me - that Parenti has spent so much time thinking of this topic that this work just flowed straight out of his pen. This seems like Russian propaganda. He seems to be talking about the ideal of communism and not what it is in real life. (not that I am an expert)While I agree capitalism has some major issues which he points out, he seems to minimize communism's shortfalls.He made an interesting point that Capitalist and Fascists play footsie.After the war communists prosecuted many more Nazis than West Germany. Not sure how true that was, however if true I commend them for that.Although, hard decisions had to be made after WW2 to keep the countries working.Overall, worth reading to hear different viewpoints but beware of his agenda. Read more I feel like Parenti never dips more than a toe into any sort of discourse on Stalin, but here he surprisingly dedicates an entire section to Stalin and the myths of the USSR under Stalin. It was pleasant, though I still feel that Parenti is more lukewarm on Stalin than supportive. Anticommunist propaganda saturated our airwaves, schools, and political discourse. Despite repeated and often factitious references to the tyranny of the Red Menace, the anticommunist opinion makers never spelled out what communists actually did in the way of socioeconomic policy. This might explain why, despite decades of Red-bashing propaganda, most Americans, including many who number themselves among the political cognoscenti, still cannot offer an informed statement about the social policies of communist societies.”

As Parenti himself writes: "To say that 'socialism doesn't work' is to overlook the fact that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history. Is fascism merely a dictatorial force in the service of capitalism? That may not be all it is, but that certainly is an important part of fascism’s raison d’être, the function Hitler himself kept referring to when he talked about saving the industrialists and bankers from Bolshevism.” When I was half way through this book I was a bit disgruntled and thought it was just a communist apologetic piece. After finishing it, I realize that this is not what this book is. I find Parenti to be honest of his critiques of both capitalism and communism and providing a thought provoking and clarifying lens about our current global system of power and how western societies have been indoctrinated into excusing the failures of capitalism while condemning those of communism without understanding the important interplay between the two. This book was written in 1997 but it is likely even more pertinent to today, 2022.

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. Basically I want to know if anything in the book is true. I guess I am a product of the capitalist, anti-communist brainwashing the author talks about, because there are a LOT of things where I just go "that doesn't seem right..."

As an anarchist, I certainly have issues with Marxism-Leninism as an ideology. But it's worthwhile to read Parenti and consider his arguments. And to be frank, it's refreshing to engage with the thought of a grownup M-L like Parenti, Hobsbawm, etc., after constantly encountering the kind of Stalin-avi tank-kiddies on social media who say shit like "Stalin was the greatest genius in history," "Khrushchev was a revisionist," squalid authoritarian dictators are heroes of "anti-imperialism," and the like.

True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party’s proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds. ³ Meanwhile a number of right-wing parties coalesced behind the Nazis and in January 1933, just weeks after the election, Hindenburg invited Hitler to become chancellor.