About the Book
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 are. It is a bold and entertaining exploration of the epic struggles of yesterday and today.
Source
About the Author
Michael John Parenti (born September 30th, 1933) is an American political scientist, academic historian, cultural critic and prolific writer. Books
Authored
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome; God and His Demons; Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader; The Sword & The Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution & the Arms Race; Face of Imperialism; History as Mystery; Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies; The Culture Struggle; Democracy for the Few; Waiting for Yesterday
Multimedia
A folder of Parenti Lectures and speeches
Audiobook
Schedule
June 5th: Blackshirts and Reds Part 2June 19: Blackshirts and Reds Part 3Jul 3rd: Blackshirts and Reds Part 4[LATE]
Sections in part 4
- The End of Marxism
- Anything But Class, Avoiding the C-Word
How hard could it be? The right has been largely chased out of academia and those few who remain are deeply closeted. It’s not precarious for leftists, it is a time of blooming, when all positions are available and chuds get ejected all the time.
Academia is actually in a dysfunctional state at the moment. Universities all throughout the country produce more Ph.D graduates than they have spaces for tenured or adjunct faculty. The adjunct faculty pay is at poverty rates (you are kind of expected to work in multiple institutions or hold down a main job, with teaching as a side-gig). Their status is also on a contract basis, so if you were a newly minted Ph.D who read plenty of -good- Marxist theory and think you gotta reach these kids, be careful what you say to them. Your tweets, fb posts, or in-classroom comments might be controversial enough to the kid that comes to class in a suit and bowtie, that they’ll report you to the many GOP/Koch-funded organizations allowing for Faculty Reports for leftist/progressive/anti-colonial views, etc.
Don’t expect your Deans, Chairs or Presidents to side with you, a lowly adjunct. When they have to be chums and buddy-buddy with the State Legislature in order to secure the diminishing funds set aside for State Universities and your existence might cost them an entire fiscal year of funds.
But say you make it your life’s mission to buck the system, and for the most part you are met with outstanding success, within or outside of academia. Your research holds up. Your peers respect you. Universities invite you to lecture. Your books sell like hotcakes. You are a modern public intellectual. Tenure should come easy right? All that the right-wing needs is a rich enough donor or alumni to speak out against your tenure offer and you will end up back to where you started - in a precarious position - or fomenting a national controversy (see the recent Nikole Hannah-Jones controversy in North Carolina University.
I’m not buying it. Critical Theory is crushing resistance and universities are teaching it at a furious pace. In another 20 years it will be seen as a firable offense to be seen displaying symbols of American patriotism in public. It already is, in certain circles. And when you’ve got a whole department who broadly agrees with Marxism from chair to part timers, I don’t see crushing the little guy as a department goal.
??? The liberals in my dept deeply hated the Soviet Union and are explicit in their formulations that selling out the working class and African Americans in the 90s was objectively good and necessary so Dems could win.
This is explicitly an anti-marxist take.
There are entire business schools that literally only teach libertarian economic theory
