Reading Blackshirts & Reds and am at about 40% through the book. The amount of critique he is giving to how poorly the economic situation in the USSR was, how Stalin’s way of running things and how people were negligible about their jobs because there was no reason to be competitive or to do a good job is honestly a bit stark. Is this anti-communism or is this just good faith criticism?
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He’s very deliberately speaking to some of the most anti-communist people on the planet, specifically in the context of defending soviet legacy just a few short years after its dissolution. He also has some pretty bad takes on China in retrospect that were far more understandable at the time he wrote the book. For me, it’s useful because it utterly demolishes the fantasy of the USSR as a widespread Orwellian torture society, with real problems far more mundane than fantastical, and tons of real working class achievements dashed by the reintroduction of capitalism.
I recommend it not for comrades, but for liberals. For comrades, something like This Soviet World is going to be both more entertaining and capable of capturing the genuine progress on the ground in the early soviet experience.
Because the USSR collapsed. One of the first things you have to explain defending the USSR is, “Well if it was so great, why isn’t it around anymore?” Obviously, it had flaws, or it’d still be here.
“Well if it was so great, why isn’t it around anymore?” Obviously, it had flaws, or it’d still be here.
That’s a bad argument. It discounts the impact of external factors such as material overmatch. Even a theoretical perfect society without flaws can be destroyed by much more powerful outside forces. And a perfect society does not exist. All societies have flaws. And minor flaws, which under different circumstances would not be anywhere near enough to collapse a society, can be exploited and amplified by a powerful external enemy devoted to undermining and eventually destroying your society. Critical analysis is good. Victim blaming isn’t.
Even a theoretical perfect society without flaws can be destroyed by much more powerful outside forces.
That makes sense for smaller countries, but the USSR was a peer to the US. That’s kind of the “claim to fame” of the USSR, the fact that it was able to develop quickly enough to become a superpower.
And minor flaws, which under different circumstances would not be anywhere near enough to collapse a society, can be exploited and amplified by a powerful external enemy devoted to undermining and eventually destroying your society.
And as long as powerful external enemies continue to exist, it’s crucial to understand what flaws they are able to exploit in order to undermine a society. Which is precisely why it’s so important to identify those flaws through frank, honest criticism.
It strikes me as idealist to defend the USSR with the argument that everything would’ve been fine under different circumstances. I thought the whole point was to adapt policy to the conditions that actually exist - such as a powerful rival superpower existing.
I’d like to point out that what I said was, “One of the first things you have to explain defending the USSR is, “Well if it was so great, why isn’t it around anymore?”” The fact that the USSR had flaws is not automatically discrediting. As you said, “all societies have flaws.” That isn’t “victim blaming.” Some explanation must exist for the fall of the USSR, and if it is not provided by a sympathetic author, then it will be invented by a likely unsympathetic reader.
Marxists of all types have spent the past hundred years critiquing the Soviet Union from every angle imaginable, sometimes with good data and on-the-ground information, often with bad data and completely made up cold warrior nonsense. While Parenti was pro-Soviet throughout his life, he was nevertheless a fish swimming in that river, being pulled by those currents. I would suggest bearing Parenti’s thoughts in mind as you continue reading about Soviet history and synthesize his views with those of other Marxists who also criticized the same system.
One thing I also want to point out: Stalin himself argues in Economic Problems of the USSR that many aspects of capitalist economics cannot simply be abolished, but must be learned and taught like physical laws so that the socialist economy can use them to its advantage. Mostly he’s talking about commodity production and the law of value, but I think it’s fair to extrapolate this framework to other things such as perverse incentives, alienation of labor, etc. From the point of view of the worker, what difference does it make if the assembly line is state owned or capitalist owned? You’re still a cog in the machine - until the means to completely automate this type of drudgery away have been invented, the best a socialist economy can do is give their workers incentives to do good work, something that every economy objectively struggles with (see both America’s “quiet quitting” and China’s “lay flat” movements).
Keep reading! It’s in good faith. There were real economic problems from perverse incentives that should be reckoned with in future socialist programs. Like, yeah, making bread cheaper than animal feed is going to lead to some farmers feeding their animals bread. Abundance of some products is going to make people less careful with these (I believe he discusses running the heat on maximum with the windows open and throwing out slightly broken stuff to get a new cheap one). Subsidizing low productivity factories and increasing the quotas on productive ones is going to make people upset and resentful.
Over this chapter and subsequent ones, he makes two excellent points: 1. they still largely managed to meet and exceed human needs even with these inefficiencies and problems, and 2. these problems are nothing compared to what came after the collapse of the USSR.
What I’m grappling with the most is trying to defend the USSR when “Stalin Bad” comes up. I can’t really defend my point of supporting USSR when there are such glaring issues that can be used against it by even people such as Parentti. Or I just can’t defend the proper points idk
Are_Euclidding_Me hit the nail on the head, many of the critiques of the harshness and centralized control fail to appreciate the siege that the USSR was under. Had they had the luxury of being able to pursue a gentler, more liberal path, there is every reason to believe they would have. That was not their circumstance however, and they correctly deduced that rapid industrialization and upheaval of life was going to be necessary to fight for their survival.
On top of that though, there are unforced errors as well in Soviet society, some of which are cultural holdovers from a conservative populace and leaders, and some of which are mistakes of their very own. Parenti isn’t a hagiographer, he discusses very real problems so that they can be considered and avoided by future generations. “Stalin Bad” is a manta for liberals, “how did Stalin err and why, and how might we learn from it” is the question for comrades. Correctly filing historical figures under the “good” or “bad” heading is not a useful pursuit
I thought the exact same thing when I first read Blackshirts & Reds about 8 years ago. I remember wondering if the .pdf of it that I downloaded had been tampered with by anti-communists or something. I kept thinking, “This is the book that everybody has been banging on, telling me it is a must-read to get educated about the USSR and how it is a the book that all the anti-AES libs need to read to set the record straight?” The very thing you mention about how Parenti seems to be repeating the classic lib canard that communism struggled to function because nobody was incentivized to work hard since lazy people had it just as good as the few hard workers, really stuck out for me too. I did stop reading it for a while out of disappointment and felt pretty disillusioned by all the glowing recommendations for it.
Even though I would like to think that I now have a better understanding of where he was coming from and even what some of his own shortcomings were (like his reliance on western sources as others have mentioned), I still kinda stand by that initial disappointment and negative assessment. This is not to say I don’t love Parenti because I do. I still get fired up watching or listening to a lot of his live talks like the famous Yellow Parenti vid, and I will always recognize him as one of the vanishingly few great western advocates for actual leftism (in a puddle of bozos like Chomsky).
But speaking of which, it is actually many of his lecture videos that I would tend towards recommending to potentially receptive libs, rather than trying to push Blackshirts & Reds on them for the exact reasons you’ve been bringing up in this thread. The book is just too rife with sentences that I know anyone who wants to denigrate the USSR, will latch onto and say “See? Stalin was a bad guy, communism does promote laziness in the workers and authoritarianism in the leaders! The USSR was a bad place to live where no one had any of the choices liberal democracies allow them! Even their own commie spokesperson guy says so!” It’s not that there isn’t some great stuff and plenty of very positive things about the USSR in the book, or even that the criticisms he makes aren’t valid, it’s that so much of it would work for someone looking to vindicate their anti-communist views. It makes it a little too easy to cherrypick the bad stuff and downplay the good. A lot of the responses you are getting here from comrades that are defending the frequently questionable phrasing Parenti uses, they aren’t wrong, but I think they may be missing the issue a bit. As a book for communists who want a critique of the USSR from another communist, BS&R is an excellent choice. But as an introductory piece to USSR/AES validity for the possibly-swayable lib, it is not the pro-communist masterpiece it’s sometimes touted as. If you really want someone to get into Parenti specifically, recommend Inventing Reality first.
I felt a different vibe from his criticisms; it felt more like a way to engage the intended audience. Even now, in the year of our beanis twenty twenty six, when the failings of capitalism are laid bare and fascist brownshirts are executing folks in the street, libs still use “But Stalin Bad!” as a thought-terminating cliché. If the work did not lead in with criticism of AES, it would be dismissed outright as propaganda.
I feel he has a very good grasp of how to meet an audience where they are, and guide them to where they should be.
This is the part I don’t understand, to me this seems very anti-communist or I’m not educated enough yet:
By the late 1920s, the Soviets faced the choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agrarian collectivization and full-speed industrialization under a commandist, autocratic party leadership, the road taken by Stalin, or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labor unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong militaryindustrial base.
The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked upon a rigorous, forced industrialization. This policy has often been mentioned as one of the wrongs perpetrated by Stalin upon his people.10 It consisted mostly of building, within a decade, an entirely new, huge industrial base east of the Urals in the middle of the barren steppes, the biggest steel complex in Europe, in anticipation of an invasion from the West. "Money was spent like water, men froze, hungered and suffered but the construction went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history."11
And what was the outcome of this “mass heroism seldom paralleled in history”?
Parenti tells you in the previous paragraphs:
The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught.
So yes, the Soviets had two roads in front of them. Yes, one of them might have “produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society.” And yes, that would have been a better choice. Yet, history shows us what happens next. How long would that comfortable existence last against the Nazi blitzkrieg?
That is the point Parenti is making here. Often Stalin is criticized for the USSRs industrialization policy with out ever considering the consequences of taking the other path. We cannot relitigate history, we can only learn from it.
It’s part of his greater point about siege socialism. That socialism under siege warps it’s priorities in defense of the revolution. The people during Stalin’s time sacrificed much in defense of the revolution. We can not simply judge socialism based on the form it takes while under siege.
This sentence is key:
The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught.
Parenti isn’t at all saying that the USSR did the wrong thing. He’s simply saying that in a world without Nazis, the USSR would have had the opportunity to be a better society than they were.
The quoted statement at the end is an explicit endorsement of the Soviet Union’s actions. Examine the rhetorical framing, stripped bare.
Paragraph 1:
They could:
- Stalinize (grr bad spooky)
- Liberalize (yay happy society)
Again, assuming the reader is of liberal bent, they are coming into the work with the assumed question “why was Stalin so evil/why are those communists so authoritarian?” This paragraph exposes that question, and phrases it clearly and semi-quantifiably, laying out two possible paths of societal development.
Paragraph 2:
I agree with you, reader, liberal society is fun and carefree, and could have been a cool future for the Soviet Union. Unfortunately Nazis exist and were looking for weakness. The soviets chose to structure their entire society to counter the rising Nazi menace, at great individual cost. This was not evil, it was heroic.
He’s trying to open the reader’s mind to a grander scale of thinking. One where the society matters more than the individual. One where an entire society is the hero, and citizens understood the need to sacrifice individual comfort for the benefit of the whole.
Parenti by his own admission used solely western sources. Given that those are largely forming the anticommunist information bubble, it’s pretty inevitable he inherited at least some of it even though he was clearly good willed and honest about his attempt to discover the truth.
This is also why I’m struggling to keep reading the book tbh, how can you have such a powerful analysis of the USSR using only imperialist anti-communist sources?
Black Shirts and Reds was published in 1997. The USSR dissolved in 1991.
He’s trying to grapple with the legacy of the Soviet Union and figure out where things went wrong.
Given who Parenti was, I’d assume at least some of it is fair. There’s a difference between a lib regurgitating common right-wing talking points and slander against AES vs a Communist who acknowledges that nothing that exists is untainted by reality but nonetheless still understands that scientific socialism remains correct.
Can you share some quotes? I don’t remember this.
Still, the early USSR wasn’t a paradise, the bolsheviks took over a very backwards and underdeveloped nation with a myriad of problems, mistakes were bound to happen.
Should keep in mind people forget how much inherent poverty and slum conditions are involved in almost every transition from feudal serf states to industrial states. Look at how long the UK took - they had an industrial era that took about 500 years to transition to a ‘service’ liberal economy arguably not until 1990. At the peak of UK industrialism the proles average lifespan was under 30 years conditions where so bad.
The fact that the USSR accomplished this transition under worse circumstances in the span of 30-40 years is like with China, nothing short of a miracle.
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
The quote refers to the jscobin revolution but it pretty much applies to any progressive revolution. Media will always obfuscate the present reign of terror that has brough countless of injustices and try to focus on the immediate reign of terror of a revolution, which is something we must grapple, revolution is a bloody business but it needs to be done to end the perpetual reign of terror of imperialism.
Don’t have them on hand right now, but pages 65-70 or so is when he talks about it. It just came as a bit of a shock as until that point he wasn’t overtly critical of anything AES related.
