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Kevin's Reviews > Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
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Kevin's review
bookshelves: critique-red-scare, history-fascism, 1-how-the-world-works, 2-brilliant-intros-101
Dec 10, 2023
bookshelves: critique-red-scare, history-fascism, 1-how-the-world-works, 2-brilliant-intros-101
“Red Scare� 101�
Preamble:
--Like many learning Leftism in North America, I was introduced to critiques of capitalism/imperialism by Noam Chomsky (in my case: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance).
…As someone who was finishing elementary school when the “War on Terror� started and finishing secondary school when the 2008 Financial Crisis occurred, Chomsky provided global context (historical/political/philosophical) underlying these otherwise-shocking events which were obscured by my Western-bubble Canadian liberal education (“liberal� = cosmopolitan capitalism).
--By the time I was introduced to Parenti, I was already concerned with the Western/Global North bias of my readings; even the critiques relied on similar Western references. So, I skipped Parenti to focus on Vijay Prashad, who tries to combat his quip (that the “globalization� of ideas is actually one-way, where theory comes from the Global North while the Global South is only expected to produce guerilla manuals) by popularizing Global South theory.
-Ex. The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World:
a) reframing the Global North’s “Cold War� binary (Western “democracy� cosmopolitan capitalism vs. Soviet communism)
b) and instead focusing on Global North imperialism vs. Global South decolonization.
--I also wanted to get a deeper grasp of (geo)political economy, something Chomsky/Parenti/Prashad only reference. I took the most convoluted path imaginable:
i) starting with free market fundamentalists: Hayek/Mises, thanks to the anti-intervention rhetoric of US Republican Ron Paul
ii) step-by-step through liberal reformism: Ha-Joon Chang, Amartya Sen, Krugman, Stiglitz, etc.
iii) eventually into critical geopolitical economy: Varoufakis, Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik, Michael Hudson, etc.
…Now, I am returning to Parenti to review how I would have fared had I started with his lens, and also as an intro to the case study of the USSR.
Highlights:
1) Marxism 101:
--Labels are the ultimate short-cut which we must move past to get anywhere, and I would prefer a label not named after an individual.
--We should also distinguish:
a) Conclusions: many people seem to engage with politics by starting with their answers (“agree�/“disagree� conclusions), and then seek to confirm their answers. And I do not mean starting from principles (ex. recognizing the contradictory potentials of humans, thus aiming to support social structures which bring out the better in us), but rather starting with crude conclusions on messy historical processes (ex. support/condemn USSR) and not spending enough time raising questions.
b) Methodologies/processes: reading to collect a bunch of conclusions seems misguided, as our political priority should not be to answer Yes/No to a history test. Our political priority should be to acquire the tools we need to build a better today/future. This requires learning how to think, rather than what to think.
--What are the key methodologies behind “Marxism�?
i) Historical materialism:
--This lens analyzes history/social change by starting with the material conditions, esp. the production of human/social needs, and the social relations involved.
--Given the creation of surplus amidst scarcity, particular attention is paid on classes of hierarchical political power (i.e. control of decision-making) and the resulting class conflict (i.e. use/disuse of bargaining power).
--Going back to my focus on methodologies rather than conclusions, we can compare Parenti’s book vs. , which also uses the historical materialism lens (the linked video series is foundational) but ends with contrasting conclusions:
-
-
…if we only focused on the contrasting conclusions, we overlook how Parenti and “What is Politics?� are responding to differing contexts (Parenti responding directly to “Red Scare�, “What is Politics?� to apolitical illiteracy).
ii) Marxist political economy:
--Marx really wanted to dissect the historical materialism of “capitalism�, thus all his labour put into his unfinished Capital project (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1) starting with commodities/value system, capital circuit, business cycles, the growth/socialization of the proletariat (working class), systemic crisis and revolution.
--Since the Capital project never got around to volumes on the state/trade/geopolitics, we need further synthesis to build geopolitical economy (Parenti stresses imperialism and counter-revolution).
2) Fascism 101:
--Let’s apply historical materialism/political economy to “fascism�:
i) Rational Fascism: capitalism’s logic:
--Fascism appeared in Europe when global capitalism went through the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914), with every expanding boom/bust business cycle culminating in the 1930’s Great Depression and its expansionary imperialist rivalries culminating in 1914 WWI and 1939 WWII.
…Fascism was capitalism’s rational response to systemic crisis, being the first to recover from the Great Depression by reviving industrial profits through state investment in the war market.
--“Plutocrats Choose Autocrats�: Parenti focuses on the capitalist backing of fascism: big industrialists, finance, big agriculture, top military/police, media, and all the times Social Democrat liberals (“democracy� by rhetoric but actually cosmopolitan capitalism) refused a popular front with leftists (esp. communists) to confront fascism (hoping to fan fascism to the East to destroy USSR) and reviving fascism after WWII to target USSR/Global South decolonization.
-The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
-Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II
-Discourse on Colonialism
-Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
ii) Irrational Fascism: socialism’s logic:
--Fascism’s war market revival could only be sold to the public by pairing it with the irrational mass appeal of mythical origins (racial supremacy), scapegoating villains and the “cruel struggle� of conquest to counter modern decadence.
…All the while, fascism brutally wiped out leftist anti-capitalist alternatives while parodying leftists rhetoric (Nazi = “National Socialist German Workers' Party�). For more on reactionism parodying leftist populism, see:
-The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
-Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
…See the comments below for the rest of the review:
�3) Communism 101�
Preamble:
--Like many learning Leftism in North America, I was introduced to critiques of capitalism/imperialism by Noam Chomsky (in my case: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance).
…As someone who was finishing elementary school when the “War on Terror� started and finishing secondary school when the 2008 Financial Crisis occurred, Chomsky provided global context (historical/political/philosophical) underlying these otherwise-shocking events which were obscured by my Western-bubble Canadian liberal education (“liberal� = cosmopolitan capitalism).
--By the time I was introduced to Parenti, I was already concerned with the Western/Global North bias of my readings; even the critiques relied on similar Western references. So, I skipped Parenti to focus on Vijay Prashad, who tries to combat his quip (that the “globalization� of ideas is actually one-way, where theory comes from the Global North while the Global South is only expected to produce guerilla manuals) by popularizing Global South theory.
-Ex. The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World:
a) reframing the Global North’s “Cold War� binary (Western “democracy� cosmopolitan capitalism vs. Soviet communism)
b) and instead focusing on Global North imperialism vs. Global South decolonization.
--I also wanted to get a deeper grasp of (geo)political economy, something Chomsky/Parenti/Prashad only reference. I took the most convoluted path imaginable:
i) starting with free market fundamentalists: Hayek/Mises, thanks to the anti-intervention rhetoric of US Republican Ron Paul
ii) step-by-step through liberal reformism: Ha-Joon Chang, Amartya Sen, Krugman, Stiglitz, etc.
iii) eventually into critical geopolitical economy: Varoufakis, Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik, Michael Hudson, etc.
…Now, I am returning to Parenti to review how I would have fared had I started with his lens, and also as an intro to the case study of the USSR.
Highlights:
1) Marxism 101:
--Labels are the ultimate short-cut which we must move past to get anywhere, and I would prefer a label not named after an individual.
--We should also distinguish:
a) Conclusions: many people seem to engage with politics by starting with their answers (“agree�/“disagree� conclusions), and then seek to confirm their answers. And I do not mean starting from principles (ex. recognizing the contradictory potentials of humans, thus aiming to support social structures which bring out the better in us), but rather starting with crude conclusions on messy historical processes (ex. support/condemn USSR) and not spending enough time raising questions.
b) Methodologies/processes: reading to collect a bunch of conclusions seems misguided, as our political priority should not be to answer Yes/No to a history test. Our political priority should be to acquire the tools we need to build a better today/future. This requires learning how to think, rather than what to think.
--What are the key methodologies behind “Marxism�?
i) Historical materialism:
--This lens analyzes history/social change by starting with the material conditions, esp. the production of human/social needs, and the social relations involved.
--Given the creation of surplus amidst scarcity, particular attention is paid on classes of hierarchical political power (i.e. control of decision-making) and the resulting class conflict (i.e. use/disuse of bargaining power).
--Going back to my focus on methodologies rather than conclusions, we can compare Parenti’s book vs. , which also uses the historical materialism lens (the linked video series is foundational) but ends with contrasting conclusions:
-
-
…if we only focused on the contrasting conclusions, we overlook how Parenti and “What is Politics?� are responding to differing contexts (Parenti responding directly to “Red Scare�, “What is Politics?� to apolitical illiteracy).
ii) Marxist political economy:
--Marx really wanted to dissect the historical materialism of “capitalism�, thus all his labour put into his unfinished Capital project (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1) starting with commodities/value system, capital circuit, business cycles, the growth/socialization of the proletariat (working class), systemic crisis and revolution.
--Since the Capital project never got around to volumes on the state/trade/geopolitics, we need further synthesis to build geopolitical economy (Parenti stresses imperialism and counter-revolution).
2) Fascism 101:
--Let’s apply historical materialism/political economy to “fascism�:
i) Rational Fascism: capitalism’s logic:
--Fascism appeared in Europe when global capitalism went through the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914), with every expanding boom/bust business cycle culminating in the 1930’s Great Depression and its expansionary imperialist rivalries culminating in 1914 WWI and 1939 WWII.
…Fascism was capitalism’s rational response to systemic crisis, being the first to recover from the Great Depression by reviving industrial profits through state investment in the war market.
--“Plutocrats Choose Autocrats�: Parenti focuses on the capitalist backing of fascism: big industrialists, finance, big agriculture, top military/police, media, and all the times Social Democrat liberals (“democracy� by rhetoric but actually cosmopolitan capitalism) refused a popular front with leftists (esp. communists) to confront fascism (hoping to fan fascism to the East to destroy USSR) and reviving fascism after WWII to target USSR/Global South decolonization.
-The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
-Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II
[US] Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombings. General Motors collected over $33 million.--We can add that fascism is such a natural tool for capitalism because fascist techniques have long been perfected in capitalism’s colonies:
-Discourse on Colonialism
-Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
ii) Irrational Fascism: socialism’s logic:
--Fascism’s war market revival could only be sold to the public by pairing it with the irrational mass appeal of mythical origins (racial supremacy), scapegoating villains and the “cruel struggle� of conquest to counter modern decadence.
…All the while, fascism brutally wiped out leftist anti-capitalist alternatives while parodying leftists rhetoric (Nazi = “National Socialist German Workers' Party�). For more on reactionism parodying leftist populism, see:
-The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
-Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
…See the comments below for the rest of the review:
�3) Communism 101�
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iii) “Siege Socialism�: --Given that Parenti and “What is Politics?� both use historical materialism, their contrasting conclusions basically comes down to the framing of “siege socialism�.
--Parenti frames Lenin’s May 1921 shift to no longer support workers� opposition as more anti-opposition during war-time rather than anti-worker. Even had the Bolsheviks pursued Chomsky’s council communism of worker councils rather than state socialism, it would have been confronted with both the counter-revolution starting in 1918 (including 13 foreign nations esp. Western Allies) as well as later Nazi invasion during (after Stalin’s 1 decade preparation).
--Parenti asks the materialist question: how can “pure socialism� survive the real-world materialist conditions of counter-revolution, without sufficiently prioritizing state security/army? When I read libertarian leftists/anarchists like Chomsky/James C. Scott, I now try to pay attention to how they detail Global South struggles against the sheer brutality of US imperialism. From Parenti:
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 [“pure socialism”], were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack.…The Leftists who cheered the selling out of the USSR soon realized that their own Western welfare compromise was further dismantled, which the Global South received a more vulgar US imperialism. Mainstream historians quickly re-wrote history to claim that USSR simply “didn’t work�/“failed�. More curiously, people seem to associate the subsequent capitalist horrors to the USSR not working. I consider the capitalist horrors of the former Eastern Bloc in reviewing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
--The “Must We Adore Vaclav Havel� section reminded me how US liberals/progressives like Donella Meadows (from “Limits to Growth�/Thinking in Systems: A Primer) adore Havel.
iv) “Communism in Wonderland�:
--Once we get pass the big picture “siege socialism� vs. “state capitalism� debates, we find plenty of synthesis which we would expect from the shared historical materialist lens. I’m eager to read Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union to flesh out Parenti’s general sketch further:
a) Rewarding inefficiency:
--Parenti frames the rigid war-time command economy limited the range of consumer goods, and failed to apply the great Soviet academia to social innovations (esp. computers).
--Disincentives for innovation is traced to the bureaucracy’s risk-adverse managerialism of fixed inputs/quantitative quotas. Production improvements meant being burdened with higher quotas while lower production was rewarded with subsidies.
b) Absence of responsible control:
--Instead of the stereotypical Orwellian 1984 “tdzٲٲԾ�, Parenti frames the USSR experienced by the non-political everyday citizen as actually being the absence of such control, with rampant black markets and personal hoarding.
--I’d like to bring in the critiques of capitalist ‼ǻܳپٲ� in the context of capitalist "work ethic" (a revealing phrase by capitalists, given their state-backed disciplinary violence on the dispossessed to become their workers; let's also remember all the waste/destruction for feeding the elite's passive income) and the need to re-value play/leisure (up to reclaiming “laziness�, which I’m reluctant on), but Parenti frames the lack of work discipline as creating a demoralizing effect.
--Parenti mentions full employment disincentivizing labour-saving innovations. So, full employment seems stuck in the capitalist work ethic paradigm, since innovations can fulfil the ‼ǻܳپٲ� for certain social needs freeing more time for play/leisure.
c) Needs vs. Wants:
--We should take a step back and consider what it means to even consider comparing “super-power� USSR, which just went through a decade of rapid industrialization and lost the most people during WWII, vs. the US built on slavery/had a century of industrialization which was in part subsidized by Britain’s triangular “colonial arrangement�/profited the most from WWII.
--Meanwhile, Parenti considers how public goods, once subsidized/guaranteed, becomes under-valued, whereas the private luxuries promised by capitalist advertising became so seductive. Indeed, the US had to prioritize the advertising industry; with their booming war factories and the end of WWII, how could US capitalists still sell their mountain of commodities for a profit and not fall back into the Great Depression? (The irrationality of capitalism�)
-Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage
-on the evolution of advertising: Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
Re Parenti's comment on the absence of any successful anarcho-syndicalist revolutions, I would not that in at least one case -- Spain -- the failure of anarcho-syndicalism in Catalonia resulted not from the inability of the anarchist and left-communist militias to combat Franco, but from the fact that the Marxist-Leninists in Madrid were willing to divert resources from fighting Franco to fighting their enemies on the left. It was the Republican government, in which the Communist Party had disproportionate influence, which diverted resources into imposing their will on Catalonia and restoring factories to the capitalists in keeping with Stalin's united front strategy -- and it lost anyway.
Kevin wrote: "Re Parenti's comment on the absence of any successful anarcho-syndicalist revolutions, I would not that in at least one case -- Spain -- the failure of anarcho-syndicalism in Catalonia resulted not..."@Kevin Carson:
--Are you still working on researching the geopolitics/security from a libertarian-left/anarchist perspective?
--The best of libertarian-left really respect organizing rather than vulgar “sDzԳٲԱٲ�, so we are really debating the messy middle of the type(s) of organizations/institutions needed for security, and this comes down to the material conditions context of counter-revolution violence.
…It’s one thing to secure initial victory vs. Franco. Would the libertarian-left be able to sustain its defenses against further counter-revolution in Spain surrounded by growing fascism and prevailing capitalist imperialism? What would the geopolitics of this anti-state libertarian-left be like? How applicable is the pre-WWII European context to today?
--Differing material conditions do offer more options. We can ask similar questions for the main recent example, the Zapatistas, as an anti-state movement that has achieved social gains and survived.
…I believe you’ve mentioned how the state today is becoming so ossified, with many fissures and excessive superstructure. Modern security has also changed, if we compare the “War on Terror� vs. WWII.
Yeah, I'm still working on that project. And these are some on-point observations about increasing advantages to the defensive over time. I definitely respect organization, albeit not in the crude "What, gentlemen, is more authoritarian than a revolution?" sense.
Re Spain, I'll just say that -- aside from the question of long-term defensive capability against Franco -- the Madrid regime's priority on suppressing anarchist alternatives in Catalonia arguably undermined their ability to win even in the short-term, and it was arguably due to external interference based on Stalin's obsession with throwing the left under the bus in order to pursue united fronts. See also, the paper I recently posted a link to on my GR blog.
i) Revolutions 101:
--Parenti starts by considering the aims and gains of revolutions, and to distinguish revolutionary violence from counter-revolutionary violence.
...It’s appalling how liberal historians and their cheerleaders (from Steven Pinker to Jordan Peterson) love lumping in the vast death tolls from the counter-revolutionary side into the revolutionary side.
...This is even worse because they normalize/obscure the pre-revolution death toll (i.e. the contextual material conditions). So Mao was the worst mass murderer ever, and the pre-revolution Chinese life expectancy was not around age 30.
--Now, if we turn the focus away from just moralism and consider materialist pragmatism, successful revolutions are by definition careful with analyzing their bargaining power in anticipation of unrestrained counter-revolutionary violence, hence the immediate pursuit for diplomacy and the critique of ultra-left adventurism.
ii) “Left Anticommunism�:
--Perhaps the most infamous chapter of the book, Parenti critiques Chomsky’s framing of Lenin/Bolsheviks as a reactionary counter-revolution. Parenti considers how “Left Anticommunism� seem to have less trouble analyzing their own material conditions in the US and justifying the need to support the Democratic Party as the “lesser evil�.
...Looking forward to reading Lenin's Electoral Strategy from Marx and Engels through the Revolution of 1905: The Ballot, the Streets―or Both.
--Parenti’s greatest condemnation is how the US Left dismantled itself with a self-imposed “Red Scare�. The AFL-CIO purged 12 unions, reduced its members by 1.7 million, and won nothing from US capitalists who continued to redbait unions. For the US/Western Left to prioritize the USSR as the main threat rather than US/Western capitalists is a resounding fail.