Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

by Michael Parenti

At about that time, there began a purge of the purgers, including many intelligence and secret police (NKVD) officials and members of the judiciary and other investigative committees, who were suddenly held responsible for the excesses of the terror despite their protestations of fidelity to the regime.4

While the Chinese government continues under a nominally communist leadership, the process of private capital penetration goes on more or less unhindered.

While presenting themselves as democratic reformers, they soon grew impatient with the way democratic forms of popular resistance limited their efforts to install an unrestrained free-market capitalism.

In Russia, associates of President Boris Yeltsin talked of the “dangers of democracy” and complained that “most representative bodies have become a hindrance to our [market] reforms.” (Nation, 12/2/91 and 5/4/92). Apparently, the free market, said by “reformers” to be the very foundation of political democracy, could not be introduced through democratic means. In 1992, the presidents of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia demanded that their parliaments be suspended and they be allowed to rule by presidential decree, with repressive measures against “hardliners” and “holdovers” who resisted the free-market “reforms.” Their goal was not power to the people but profits to the privileged.

Yeltsin’s commitment is to captialism not democracy.

In March 1996, several months before the election, when polls showed him trailing the Communist candidate, Gennadi Zyuganov, Yeltsin ordered decrees drawn up “that would have canceled the election, closed down parliament and banned the Communist Party” (New York Times, 7/2/96). But he was disuaded by advisors who feared the measures might incite too much resistance. Though he decided not to call off the election, “Yeltsin was never committed to turning over the government to a Communist if he lost” (San Francisco Chronicle, 7/26/96). During the 1996 campaign, Yeltsin and his associates repeatedly announced that a communist victory would bring “civil war.” In effect, they were voicing their willingness to discard democracy and resort to force and violence if the election did not go their way. Nor was it taken as an idle threat. At one point surveys showed that “about half the population believed that civil war would result if the Communists won” (Sacramento Bee, 7/9/96). Through all of this Yeltsin received vigorous support from the White House and the U.S. media.

U.S. politico-economic leaders know what they are doing, even if some editorial writers in this country do not. Their eye is on the money, not the color of the vessel it comes in.

More important than democratic rule was free-market “reform,” a code word for capitalist restoration.

As long as democracy could be used to destabilize one-party communist rule, it was championed by the forces of reaction. But when democracy worked against free-market restoration, the outcome was less tolerated.

No figure among the capitalist restorationists in the East has won more adulation from U.S. officials, media pundits, and academics than Vaclav Havel, a playwright who became the first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia and later president of the Czech Republic. The many left-leaning people who also admire Havel seem to have overlooked some things about him: his reactionary religious obscurantism, his undemocratic suppression of leftist opponents, and his profound dedication to economic inequality and an unrestrained free-market capitalism.

Havel called for efforts to preserve the Christian family in the Christian nation.

Under Havel’s government, a law was passed making it a crime to propagate national, religious, and class hatred. In effect, criticisms of big moneyed interests were now illegal, being unjustifiably lumped with ethnic and religious bigotry. Havel’s government warned labor unions not to involve themselves in politics.

They integrated the erstwhile communist countries into the global capitalist system by expropriating their land, labor, natural resources, and markets, swiftly transforming them into impoverished Third World nations. All this was hailed in the U.S. corporate-owned press as a great advance for humanity.

Emigrés from Communist states are astonished by the amount of bureaucracy they find in the West. Two Soviet immigrants to Canada complained, independently of each other, that “bureaucracy here was even worse than at home” (Monthly Review, 5/88). East Germans living in the West were staggered by the flood of complicated forms they had to fill out for taxes, health insurance, life insurance, unemployment compensation, job retraining, rent subsidies, and bank accounts. Furthermore, “because of the kind of personal information they had to give, they felt more observed and spied on than they were by the Stasi [the GDR security police]” (Z Magazine, 7/92).

Free-market propagandists in the former communist countries claimed that, as capital was privatized and accumulated in a few hands, production would be stimulated and prosperity would be at hand. But first, there would be a “difficult period” to go through. The difficult period is proving to be far more severe and protracted than predicted, and may well be the permanent condition of capitalist restoration.

More opulence for the few creates more poverty for the many.

With the socialist ethic giving way to private greed, corruption assumed virulent new forms in the post-Communist nations.

Education, once free, is now accessible only to those who can afford the costly tuition rates. The curricula have been “depoliticized,” meaning that a left perspective critical of imperialism and capitalism has been replaced by a conservative one that is supportive or at least uncritical of these forces.

Descending upon the unhappy societies of Eastern Europe and Russia are the Hare Krishnas, Mormans, Moonies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bahais, rightist Christian evangelicals, self-improvement hucksters, instant-success peddlers, and other materialistic spiritualist scavengers who prey upon the deprived and the desperate, offering solace in the next world or the promise of wealth and success in this one.

Facing forced privatization, news and entertainment media have had to find rich owners, corporate advertisers, conservative foundations, or agencies within the newly installed capitalist governments to finance them. Television and radio programs that had a left perspective, including some popular youth shows, have been removed from the air. All media have been purged of leftists and restaffed by people with acceptable ideological orientations. This process of moving toward a procapitalist communication monopoly has been described in the Western media as “democratization.”

The overthrow of communism has brought a sharp increase in gender inequality. The new constitution adopted in Russia eliminates provisions that guaranteed women the right to paid maternity leave, job security during pregnancy, prenatal care, and affordable day-care centers.5 Without the former communist stipulation that women get at least one third of the seats in any legislature, female political representation has dropped to as low as 5 percent in some countries. In all communist countries about 90 percent of women had jobs in what was a full-employment economy. Today, women compose over two-thirds of the unemployed. Those who do work are being channeled into low-pay unskilled positions. Women are being driven from the professions in disproportionate numbers and are advised against getting professional training. More than 30 percent of unemployed females are skilled workers and professionals who previously earned higher salaries than the national norm. The loss of maternity benefits and child care services has created still greater obstacles to female employment.