0-87288-330-1
(cloth)
0-87286-329-8 (paper)
City Lights Books, 1997 |
Blackshirts
& Reds
explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism,
revolution, democracy and ecology—terms often bandied about but seldom
explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's
trademark.
Parenti
shows how fascism renders service to capitalism, how corporate
power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment
against the forces of exploitative privilege. He also maps out the
external
and internal forces that destroyed communism, and the disastrous impact
of the “free-market” victory on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union. He affirms the relevance of taboo ideologies like Marxism, demonstrating
the importance of class analysis in understanding political realities
and dealing with the ongoing collision between ecology and global corporatism.
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 the way they are. It is a bold and engaging exploration
of the epic struggles of yesterday and today.
Contents
- Rational
Fascism
Plutocrats Choose Autocrats
Whom Did the Fascists Support?
Kudos for Benito and Adolph
The Rational Use of Irrational Ideology
Patriarchy and Pseudo-Revolution
Friendly to Fascism
- Let
Us Now Praise Revolutions
The Costs of Counterrevolution
Presumptions of Power
Whose Violence?
Free Market for the Few
The Freedom of Revolution
What Measure of Pain?
- Left
Anticommunism
Genuflecting to Orthodoxy
Pure Socialism vs. Siege Socialism
Decentralization vs. Survival
- Communism
in Wonderland
Rewarding
Inefficiency
Nobody Minding the Store
Wanting It All
Reactionism to the Surface
Romanticizing Capitalism
- Stalin’s
Fingers
How Many Victims?
Where Did the Gulag Go?
Memories of Maldevelopment
- The
Free-Market Paradise Goes East (I)
Suppression of the Left
One-Way Democracy
Must We Adore Vaclev Havel?
Colonizing the East
- The
Free-Market Paradise Goes East (II)
For Vipers and Bloodsuckers
Shock Therapy for the Many
Crime and Corruption
Cultural Decay
Women and Children Last
“We Didn’t Realize What We Had”
- The
End Of Marxism?
Some
Durable Basics
More Right than Wrong
A Holistic Science
Compartmentalized Ideology
Learning to Ask Why
- Anything
But Class: Voiding The C-Word
The
Class Denial of Class
The ABC Theorists
Everyday Class Struggle
A Disappearing Working Class?
Wealth and Power
Eco-Apocalypse, a Class Act
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