Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

by Michael Parenti

During the Reagan-Bush-Clinton era, from 1981 to 1996, the share of the national income that went to those who work for a living shrank by over 12 percent.

Thus, between 1977 and 1989, the top 1 percent saw their earnings grow by over 100 percent, while the three lowest quintiles averaged a 3 to 10 percent drop in real income.

Thus, the difference between a multibillionare who might make $100 million in any one year and a janitor who makes $8,000 is not 14 to 1 (the usually reported spread between highest and lowest) but over 14,000 to 1.

Regular employment is being replaced by contracted labor or temporary help, resulting in lower wages with fewer or no benefits.

In Mexico, workers earned 50 percent less in 1995 than in 1980. One-third of Latin America’s population, some 130 million, live in utter destitution, while tens of millions more barely manage.

To understand capitalism, one first has to strip away the appearances presented by its ideology.

What is unique about capitalism is the systematic expropriation of labor for the sole purpose of accumulation. Capital annexes living labor in order to accumulate more capital.

Marxists understand that a class society is not just a divided society but one ruled by class power, with the state playing the crucial role in maintaining the existing class structure.

Capitalism is not just an economic system but a political and cultural one as well, an entire social order.

Instead of thinking that racism is an irrational output of a basically rational and benign system, we should see it is a rational output of a basically irrational and unjust system.

Marxists do not accept the prevalent view of institutions as just “being there,” with all the natural innocence of mountains—

interests and class power. Far from being neutral and independent bastions, the major institutions of society are tied to the big business class.

In the Marxist view there can be no such thing as a class as such, a social entity unto itself. There can be no lords without serfs, no masters without slaves, no capitalists without workers.

More than just a sociological category, class is a relationship to the means of production and to social and state power.

how the imperatives of a capitalist politico-economic order play such a crucial role in prefiguring the political agenda.

The fragmentation of power in the political process is supposedly indicative of (a) a fluidity and democratization of interest-group pluralism, rather than (b) the pocketing and structuring of power in unaccountable and undemocratic ways.

Such an approach places a high priority on epiphenomenal and idiosyncratic explanations, the peculiarities of specific personalities and situations.

Imagine if we attempted something different; for example, if we tried to explain that wealth and poverty exist together not in accidental juxtaposition, but because wealth causes poverty, an inevitable outcome of economic exploitation both at home and abroad.

Then what if, from all this, we concluded that U.S. foreign policy is neither timid, as the conservatives say, nor foolish, as the liberals say, but is remarkably successful in rolling back just about all governments and social movements that attempt to serve popular needs rather than private corporate greed.

Because we tried to explain the particular situation (child labor) in terms of a larger set of social relations (corporate class power), our presentation would be rejected out of hand as “ideological.”

Marxism gets us into the habit of asking why, of seeing the linkage between political events and class power.

“Class” is usually dismissed as an outworn Marxist notion with no relevance to contemporary society.

With the C-word out of the way, it is then easy to dispose of other politically unacceptable concepts such as class privilege, class power, class exploitation, class interest, and class struggle.

Those who occupy the higher circles of wealth and power are keenly aware of their own interests.

The ruling class in this country has labored long to leave the impression that it does not exist, does not own the lion’s share of just about everything, and does not exercise a vastly disproportionate influence over the affairs of the nation.

By including almost everyone, “middle class” serves as a conveniently amorphous concept that masks the exploitation and inequality of social relations. It is a class label that denies the actuality of class power.

References to the presumed deficiencies of underclass people are acceptable because they reinforce the existing social hierarchy and justify the unjust treatment accorded society’s most vulnerable elements.

So sociologists refer to “upper-middle,” “lower-middle,” and the like. Reduced to a demographic trait, one’s class affiliation certainly can seem to have relatively low political salience.

key concept in an entire social order known as capitalism (or feudalism or slavery), centering around the ownership of the means of production (factories, mines, oil wells, agribusinesses, media conglomerates, and the like) and the need—if one lacks ownership—to sell one’s labor on terms that are highly favorable to the employer.

Professionals and managers are not an autonomous class as such. Rather they are mental workers who live much better than most other employees but who still serve the accumulation process on behalf of corporate owners.

Class has a dynamic that goes beyond its immediate visibility. Whether we are aware of it or not, class realities permeate our society, determining much about our capacity to pursue our own interests.

Thus former managing editor of the New York Times A. M. Rosenthal sees the Republican party’s “slash and burn” offensive against social programs as “not only a prescription for class struggle but the beginning of its reality” (New

Seizing upon anything but class, U.S. leftists today have developed an array of identity groups centering around ethnic, gender, cultural, and life-style issues.

Identity groups tend to emphasize their distinctiveness and their separateness from each other, thus fractionalizing the protest movement.

The complaint is not that the very rich have so much more than everyone else but that their superabundance and endless accumulation comes at the expense of everyone and everything else, including our communities and our environment.

Money is the necessary ingredient that gives the rich their immense political influence, their monopoly ownership of mass media, their access to skilled lobbyists and high public office.

Challenges to the privileged social order are treated as attacks upon all social order, a plunge into chaos and anarchy.

Again and again we are asked to choose between freedom and security when in truth there is no security without freedom.

For this reason the captains of capitalism and their conservative publicists support both a strong state armed with every intrusive power and a weak government unable to stop corporate abuse or serve the needs of the ordinary populace.

Capitalism is a rational system, the well-calculated systematic maximization of power and profits, a process of accumulation anchored in material obsession that has the ultimately irrational consequence of devouring the system itself—and everything else with it.

by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature—but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst. …”

With its never-ending emphasis on exploitation and expansion, and its indifference to environmental costs, capitalism appears determined to stand outside nature.

In truth, the problem is not individual choice but the system that imposes itself on individuals and prefigures their choice. Behind the ecological crisis is the reality of class interest and power.

They deny there is a larger problem because they themselves create that problem and owe much of their wealth to it.

The fate of the biosphere is an abstraction compared to the fate of one’s own investments.

Those who have waged merciless war against the Reds have no trouble making war against the Greens. Those who have brought us poverty wages, exploitation, unemployment, homelessness, urban decay, and other oppressive economic conditions are not too troubled about bringing us ecological crisis.

The struggle over environmentalism is part of the class struggle itself, a fact that seems to have escaped many environmentalists. The impending eco-apocalypse is a class act.

The only countervailing force that might eventually turn things in a better direction is an informed and mobilized citizenry. Whatever their shortcomings, the people are our best hope. Indeed, we are they.