Blackshirts and Reds

Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

Paperback, 165 pages

English language

Published Feb. 27, 1997

ISBN:
978-0-87286-329-3
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(1 review)

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 “rational 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 as they …

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Clear and clairvoyant - hard to believe it was written in 1997 and yet it perfectly describes the moves of the neo-right that have happened since. The book is mistitled. Though it describes the historical blackshirts and reds, it is more far-reaching, and isn't really a history book as one might think. The book convincingly dissects fascism as authoritarianism in service to capitalism and explains how the intentional conflation of capitalism with democracy has suppressed freedoms all over the world. Very well written with compelling historical examples. A good, challenging read.

Subjects

  • marxism
  • socialism
  • communism
  • Anti-Imperialism
  • History