(My deepest gratitude to C for making me discover Parenti! VS)
Michael Parenti has won awards from Project Censored, the Caucus for a New Political Science, the city of Santa Cruz, New Jersey Peace Action, the Social Science Research Council, the Society for Religion in Higher Education, and other organizations. In 2007 he was awarded a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from U.S. Representative Barbara Lee. During his earlier teaching career he received grants or fellowships from the Louis Rabinowitz Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Brown University, Yale University, State University of New York, and the University of Illinois. For several years he was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He now serves on the advisory boards of Independent Progressive Politics Network, Education Without Borders, and the Jasenovic Foundation; as well as the advisory editorial boards of New Political Science and Nature, Society and Thought. He also served for some 12 years as a judge for Project Censored. He is the author of twenty-two books. Some 300 articles of his have appeared in scholarly journals, political periodicals and various magazines and newspapers. He appears on radio and television talk shows to discuss current issues and ideas from his published works. Dr. Parenti’s talks and commentaries are played on radio stations and cable community access stations to enthusiastic audiences in the United States, Canada, and abroad. He lectures on college campuses and before a wide range of community audiences, peace groups, labor organizations, scholarly conferences, and various other venues. His books are enjoyed by both lay readers and scholars, and have been used extensively in college courses.
Excellent!
@johnConnor: oh yes. I owe this video, and the one by Ralph Schoenman, to a friend at Indymedia who made me discover both Parenti and Schoenman. Although I personally do not share some of the “Marxist” ideas of Paranti (and possibly Schoenman too), I find these two intellectual immensely interesting to listen too.
unfortunately, parenti is a Stalinist. but he offers a clear analysis of US imperialism and global capitalism.
@anonymous: how is Parenti a Stalinist? I am not even sure that there is such a thing as “Stalinism” so I would be most interesed in hearing how Parenti is a stalinist.
This said, while I find the Marxist critique of capitalism and liberal democraties most interesting, its the prescriptive part, their solutions, which I often find either morally wrong or practically naive, or both. Still, I feel that I have a great deal to learn from modern Marxists.
Parenti is far too apologetic for Stalin’s crimes and for the Soviet model of authoritarian communism. And is even derisive of ‘libertarian’ marxists who advocate a participatory, democratic model of socialism.
That aside, the neo-marxist understanding of globalization, the world market, the ‘new imperialism’, and ecological and financial crisis, is extremely powerful.
I would recommend the following journals:
— Monthly Review
— The Socialist Register
— Historical Materialism (highly academic but very good).
— New Left Review
— Verso books
The World Socialist Website is a great source of news and analysis from a marxist perspective, but is limited by a sectarian Trotskyist political line.
The International Socialist Organization in the US publishes a good journal, but sometimes engages in sketchy politics as well, for example, trying to take over activist coalitions.
In short, the Marxist movement has developed quite sophisticated analytic tools but is still very disorganized and confused politically and organizationally.
The main reason for this is probably the fact that working-class politics are at such a low point. In this context, Marxist organizations tend to withdrawal into sectarianism, factionalism and scholasticism. They lack a ‘material base’.
When mass social struggles re-emerge in North America and Europe, the Marxist parties will hopefully contribute in positive, democratic ways.
Because capitalism is at the root of most social, economic and political ills, the Marxist contribution will never go away.
(I should add that reading Marx himself is an amazing experience and well worth anyone’s time. The Communist Manifesto and Capital read like they were written just yesterday).
@anonymous#2: thanks a lot for this info. Having spent many years fighting the Soviet regime I used to have a knee-jerk rejection of anything and everything labelled “Marxist”. I would add that I still think that the communist regime in the Soviet Union was profoundly evil and anti-Russian. The best figure I have seen on the estimated number of Russians and non-Russians murdered by the Soviet Bolsheviks is 80’000’000 (eighty million), and I have had relatives murdered in my family too while others had to rot in decades in the GULAG. So I have no regret in having fought the Soviet system.
Still, I find myself in need to reconsider a lot of things considering socialist and marxist ideas. For example, I realize that I all too easily dismissed the role of class warfare in the past. So I have become a very attentive listener to what the Marxists have to say today.
I would just like to say one thing though: there is no evil at all the Stalin did that Lenin and Trotsky had not already done before him. The ONLY difference in his case was that he replaced the dictatorship of the Party by a dictatorship of one individual: himself. As for “Stalinism” as an ideology, I have yet to find a single article by Stalin which would have a quality comparable to what Trotsky and Lenin wrote. I would add that when I say that Trotsky and Lenin were brilliant, I do not mean AT ALL that they were good men. I think they were monsters in comparison to which the official boogeyman on the West – Hitler – looks almost decent (almost only, he was a scumbag too, of course).
One journal you do not mention is the International Socialist Review. Why? I find that it reguarly has very interesting articles.
I FULLY agree with you when you write the Marxist movement has developed quite sophisticated analytic tools and Because capitalism is at the root of most social, economic and political ills, the Marxist contribution will never go away.
Thanks for your info!!
“Parenti is far too apologetic for Stalin’s crimes and for the Soviet model of authoritarian communism.”
Could you tell me where I might find learn more about this side of Parenti?
“Parenti is far too apologetic for Stalin’s crimes and for the Soviet model of authoritarian communism. And is even derisive of ‘libertarian’ marxists who advocate a participatory, democratic model of socialism.”
The above 2 comments are from me. I am new to the comments thing.
Saker, perhaps I am going too off-topic, but I disagree with you. You say that Lenin and Trotsky were worse than Hitler: well, that is the “Baltic Argument”, the official ideology of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, claiming it was good to volunteer in the SS because it was the smallest evil.
Also, the number of 80 million victims of Bolshevism is highly exaggerated. We can say that Russia had 80 or 100 million of population deficit, which is very different from 80 or 100 million victims.
I am not a Marxist either. I am not a supporter of the Soviet regime. But in their defense we have to say that Lenin and Trotsky were revolutionaries: they sincerely believed that, thanks to their revolution, a new world was about to appear, and all kind of means, even the most brutal, was justified. This happens in all revolutions, and that is why I am against it. Stalin was the real monster, someone who had no sincere ideal, and perpetrated even worse crimes just to increase his personal power.
You once said there is no intelligent racist, and I fully agree with you. What makes Hitler so diabolic, much worse than any communist, is exactly racism, the core of Nacional-Socialism ideology. Nazis believed there were inferior races who should be completely exterminated (Jews, Slavs, Gipsies), while nothing similar happened in the USSR.
I think the best ever criticism about Marxism was done by Karl Popper in his epic book “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, recognizing its many strong points while assessing all its faults. I highly recommend this book.
Actually during Stalin’s reign according to declassified Soviet archive between 23-45 1 million people were sentenced to death with a maximum Gulag camp population of 2 1/2 million which includes actually guilty of real crimes according murder, theft, etc and at east the pretext of a court preceding according to real non-Marxist apolitical professors and historians which includes the period of the purges in 37-38 under Ezhov who issued a quota system to find conspirators for high level of arrests and executions who was himself arrest and sentenced to death for his crime under a perceived real Trotskyite threat and industrial sabotage to overthrow the Soviet government prior to WW2.
If you really think about it if Stalin killed 20 million people prior to WW2 why would Soviet citizens 60% being non-Russian fight to the death for such a regime and why did the industrial output not decrease and why did Hitler not breeze into Russia without any resistance? Most causes of death were due to large scale outbreaks of disease.
I only found out about this recently that there is a revisionist view/investigation thoroughly documented and that the main source on Soviet history is Robert Conquest who worked for IRD’s anti-Communist propaganda department and that the leading anti-Stalinist communists are “former” Trotskyite Communist (mostly) Jews. Even today in Russia the Stalinist research is done by shoddy research by CIA funded NED organisation called Memorial who’s work is usually citied by Professors in Universities.
“If you really think about it if Stalin killed 20 million people prior to WW2 why would Soviet citizens 60% being non-Russian fight to the death for such a regime and why did the industrial output not decrease and why did Hitler not breeze into Russia without any resistance? “
First of all, the Germans pretty much did breeze into Russia without much resistance. Large parts of the USSR welcomed the Germans as liberators – the cossacks for examples. It was later when the einsatzgruppe types arrived, and began exterminating people wholesale, that the average Soviet citizen realised that the Nazis were worse than what they had already. That, and the fact that the NKVD were merciless at rooting out traitors. Soviet production figures were the result of some pretty miraculous maneuvers in shifting their facilities beyond the reach of the Germans, behind the Urals, and the corresponding lack of a German long range bomber with which to strike at them.
@EVERYBODY:
Usually, I don’t mind off-topic at all, but in this case a thorough reply to the points raised by Carlo, John and Bruno would really go far beyond the scope of a reply to a comment or even the purpose of this blog. So I ask for your indulgence for the short and admittedly inadequate reply I shall give on this topic. Here we go:
How many millions did the Bolsheviks kill?
If my “kill” we mean actively take life, the best figure is 80’000’000 humans. This figure includes all of the following: the Revolution, the Civil War which followed, the crushing of the innumerable uprisings against the Bolshevik rule (the Tambov farmers, the civil war in Sibera and the Far East, etc. etc. etc., it includes the artificial famine in the Ukraine and, which is always forgotten, in Russia proper. It includes the deaths during the period of “military Communism” and the Trotskyst terror in the Russian cities. It includes the murdered during the collectivization and so-called “de-kulakization” (extermination of the non poor peasantry). It includes the large scale massacres of populations and soliders during WWII (disciplinary battalions for example), it includes the millions of people killed in the Soviet concentration camps starting from the SLON in the Solivki Island in the Russian North, via the entire GULAG system, it includes the deaths during the deportations of entire populations (Volga Germans, Tatars, Chechens, etc.). But it does ONLY include those who were actively killed.
Professor Kurganov made a projection of the population growth in Russia at the beginning of the century (using new census figures) and he calculated that by the late 1950 Russia was lacking 110’000’000 people. Unlike the previous figure, this figure also includes those who were never born. 110’000’000 (one hundered and ten millions!) is the demographic deficit. 80’000’000 is the actual numbers of victims from Soviet communism.
Please keep in mind that entire segments of the Russian society were almost completely exterminated: nobility, clergy, middle class bourgeois and small business owners, Cossaks, but first and foremost the peasantry which the Bolsheviks (correctly) perceived as anti-Communist.
(to be continued)
This is why Russians nowaday speak of a ‘destroyed Russian gene pool’ (опусташенный генофонд) because the Russian nation has de-facto been the object of a genocide (by “Russian” here I really mean what is called Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians). The strongest characteristic of the Bolshevik leaders was their virulant, totally crazed, hatred for the Russian people, the Russian culture and the Russian society. Basically, they wanted to create a “new man”, replace the Russian by the Soviet. I would argue that they succeeded in this project.
Bruno is quite correct when he writes that most Russian greeted the German army as liberators. I personally know people who where involved in these events (on the German and Soviet side) and they are beyond dispute. Stalin totally freaked out at that time, he spoke of a 2nd counter-revolution and then he decided to change his tone. He re-opened the churches, he re-introduced the traditional Russian epaulettes in the military, he began to speak of “brothers and sistes” and about the defense of “Russia” against the Germans, etc. etc. etc.
Stalin, himself a Georgian who could not even speak Russian properly, turned into a “Russian patriot” overnight. The moronic Nazis, in the meantime, pursued a crazed policy of enslavement and terror against the Russian population (just at a time when Stalin was getting people OUT of the Gulag). The choice was stark for Russians: the German Nazis, or a Soviet regime which appeared to be mending its ways, and most chose the latter.
But there still was a large Vlasov army which saw itself as a national liberation army (РОА), and the same happened in the Ukraine the Baltic states. This is impossible to prove, but there is no doubt in my mind that if the dumb Nazis had not been, well, dumb Nazis, but regular Germans, they could have waltzed to Moscow and beyond without the so-called “Red Army” putting up any meaningful resistance. But that was not to happen. For all his faults, Stalin was a very intelligent and shrewed man, whereas Hitler was a delusional and arrogant maniac whose idiotic race theories blinded him to any common sense.
Anyway – 80’000’000 is the figure Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his various research partners and institutions came to and I don’t think that anybody has done more, or better, research on this topic than the author of the Gulag Archipelago. As for the Western academics, sorry, but they ALL had a vested political interest in lowering these figures.
So, I understand you are saying that that people like Parenti have a vested interest in keeping down the numbers so that his Marxist ideas will flourish. But what of the remainder of the academics? They are not all like Parenti.
So, I assume you mean that people like Parenti try and keep down the numbers because it hurts their efforts to teach a little communism.
But, what of the other academics that you referred to as “ALL”?
This is the first I have heard of Parenti being an apologist for Stalin. Could you elaborate or refer me somewhere where I can find out for myself? Thanks.
Saker, I think that in this issue we will always disagree. Solzhenitsyn was an extremely brave, honest and intelligent man, but in some things he was wrong about the USSR. I think the 80 or 100 millions of victims of the Soviet regime isn’t correct, because if we add the 27 million of casualties in WWII, the country would hardly have survived, wouldn’t be able to rebuild after the war and would never be a world superpower. Of course, no one really knows the number of victims due to the various repressions made by the Soviet regime, and the estimates vary greatly. So we can argue endlessly about this, as many historians do, and won’t get to any result.
Now, could you explain this statement? “As for the Western academics, sorry, but they ALL had a vested political interest in lowering these figures.”
I always thought that Western academicians would have the opposite tendency, to exaggerate the number of victims, as now it is quite fashionable to say that Communism was worse than Nazism.
@johnConnor: So, I understand you are saying that that people like Parenti have a vested interest in keeping down the numbers
Not quite. It’s not Parenti or even the Marxists. It the ENTIRE Western academia which has a vested interest in making Stalin into some boogyman while dramatically toning down and forgetting what happened before him under the presumably more “idealistic” Lenin and the much forgotten Trotsky who, I would argue, was THE key figure of the Bolshevik terror. This is a very complex issue which I cannot fully address now, but to sum it up, I would say that, using a Parenti like class analysis, the West is very deeply involved in the Soviet Revolution, no less than it was involved in creating the “freedom fighters” which then turned into the Taliban, and then into al-Qaeda. Both Lenin and Trotsky were Western agents no less than Bin Laden and the West wants to hush all this up. In some cases, the figures are not toned down, but even up, as is the case with the Ukrainian “Holodomor”, but in each case the Golden Rule of the Western academia is the same: diminish the number of Russians killed, inflate the number of non-Russians killed, present the killing of non-Russians as a policy of “russification” (nevermind that the Russians got it worst than all others), turn Stalin into the “sum of all evils”, but let his predecessors sort of fade away even though they were every bit as evil and murderous as he was.
I know that I have made a whole series of generalizations and unsubstantiated statements here, but this is really the best I can do. This entire field is extremely complicated and it took me, and others, literally decades to figure out what really has been going on for almost a century now. We now clearly see the pattnern, and there are some excellent reports on Russian TV about this issue now. All the dots can be connected, but each dot needs to be very painstakingly established first.
Here is what I want to leave you with, my main conclusion on that, though I will throw that out and leave you to pursue this (or not). What happened between 1917 and (roughly) 1946 was a long genocide of the Russian nation. This nation resisted the rule of the Bolsheviks up and until 1946 when, for the very first time, the Bolshevik rule was safe and the resistance of the Russian people was broken (mostly because most resistors were dead – the “gene pool was depleted”).
What you see in “Russia” today is not at all the historical Russia which existed betwen 998 and 1917. Just like Italy is not Rome, so the “Russian Federation” is not Russia. The new, modern, “Russia” is really a new cultural entity which rose from the ashes of old Russia and of the Soviet Union. It is laregely sui generis, the leftover of a successful genocide. Yes, the language is almost the same, as are some borders. But as an ethnos, as a culture, as a nation, Russia has been successfully exterminated. 80 million dead Russians is what it took to do that, and the West was the originator of that genocide and an accomplice all along. And they are still surrounding the modern Russians with US bases, American submarines, color revolutions, etc. etc. etc.
It seems that from the invasion of the Teutonic Knights to today nothing has really changed.
@Carlo: I think that in this issue we will always disagree
Yes, that this is no big deal, really. Russia as a nation is dead. God only knows the exact figure, of course, and unlike the Jews, Russians do not insist on a “one and only acceptable figure” of their dead. Nor will anybody be ever sent to jail for suggesting a smaller figure. Our estimates today make no difference to the murdered millions. Nor does it really make a difference for anybody who lives today. We all know that the numbers were huge, that is certain. But whether we are talking about 20’000’000, 60’000’000 or 100’000’000 really makes no difference, at least to me.
I always thought that Western academicians would have the opposite tendency, to exaggerate the number of victims
I think I explained that in my reply to johnConor above
as now it is quite fashionable to say that Communism was worse than Nazism.
Well, in turns of gross numbers it undeniably was. Although Hitler only had 12 years whereas the Communists had roughly 30 years (1917-1946). But is that a meaningful comparison?
In both cases we are dealing with a truly demonic level of evil, and that is good enough for me.
The one BIG difference is that Hitler hated non-Germans whereas the rulers of the Bolshevik regime hated Russians first and foremost. Hitler, at least, did not consciously try to eradicate the German culture or nation. That is EXCATLY what Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin tried to do and, I would argue, eventually succeeded.
The other big difference is that National Socialism is, as an ideology, absolute rubbish. Idiotic, useless nonsense. Not so with Communism at all which is, in MANY ways, a truly brilliant and insightful political theory and system. Whereas the Nazis were intellectual dwards (even their “ideologues” like Rosenberg), both Trotsky and Lenin were intellecual giants.
Saker, though I don’t agree with many of your statements (mainly that Lenin was a Western agent, or that the Bolshevik purpose was to destroy the Russian nation), I would like to know more about this, because this is a subject that really interest me. What do you suggest I should do?
@Carlo: that is such a huge topic…
Off my head I can think of a recent Russian TV show which investigates in detail the contacts which Trotsky had with American bankers and how they used their “behind the scenes” contacts in the USA, Canada, and Europe to get him to Russia. His links to the British intelligence network in Russia are also carefully analyzed. I got that stuff from megashara.com but this site seems to have been closed. I tried rutor.org but it does not have that documentary. But it is rather recent, and VERY well done.
The first and main source is to read the latest version of the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. This is, by far, the single most important source on this topic. See, Solzhenitsyn himself was from this last generation of non-Soviet Russian, Russians which still had the historical roots and culture of the millions of men who were exterminated in the Gulag. He just happened to have survived.
The figures really do not matter too much. Let’s say that only 30 million people died. This does in no way change the fundamental nature and character of this genocide. it only changes its “success rate” so to speak.
Anyway. To really understand all this it is absolutely essential, an absolute prerequistite, to read Solzhenitsyn and his Gulag Archipelago IN ITS LATEST EDITION (3 volumes).
I am sorry, I know that you are very busy. But all I can say is that reading this book will give you replies on many many topics we discussed here.
Besides, it is also his best book from a purely artistic point of view. It is written extremely powerfully, you can tell that each sentence, each word, each letter is written with the author’s pained gut and soul. This book changed my life forever.
@Carlo: I found two documentaries on rutracker:
http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2113807
http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2404142
Could be either one of them, or neither. Check them out both, if you have the time. Russian TV makes some good documentarires nowadays.
Cheers!
@Bruno
Initially the Nazi breezed in because the Soviets where unpreparred for a Nazi invasion and caught off gaurd. But had tougher resistance when Soviet forces regrouped.
http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/glastu.html
@VINEYARDSAKER
But there is no documentary evidence that and the numbers of tens of millions killed come from the works of Robert Conquest who worked for the British Foreign Office. Real historical work on the issue has been done by real non-political historians and professors like John Arch Getty, Stephen Wheatcroft and Robert W. Thurston.
http://clogic.eserver.org/1-2/furr.html
Soviet archive material during Stalins reign put the number at 1 million by NKVD execution order all fully documented.
http://www.history.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/wheatcroft.html
@VINEYARDSAKER
Millions did not die in the Gulag as it it’s maximum 2 1/2 million people (the US holds 7 ½ million people today) were interned in the Gulag camp system most during the discovery of an anti-Soviet conspiracy under the NKVD direction of Nikolai Ezhov in 37-38 and during and after WW2 the worst reserved for charged with treason (although falsely) like Solzhenitsyn.
I can’t find the original English language translation the best I could find is this link but it is in Russian so I don’t know what it say’s but shows tables and time periods.
http://www.hrono.ru/statii/2001/zemskov.php
Sorry but detailed declassified Soviet material listed the yearly Soviet prison internment that debunks this Cold War myth.
@John: you are making a number of mistaken assumptions:
1) that most people in Russia died in the Gulag. That is not the case.
2) that the population of the Gulag at any one time somehow corrolates to the mortality of the Gulag and/or the political detainees. That is also false.
3) that declassified figures in Russia somehow cover the real full extend of the genocide in Russia.
Imagine this simple event:
You load a train up with people, drive them 500km into the Sibertian permafrost. Unload the people from the train. Leave. End of operation.
That is just one example.
Have you read the Gulag Archipelago by Solznenitsyn?
@Carlo: I just came across this one which might interest you also:
http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2674610
HTH