This is not an academic review or analysis. I am not trained in polsci. I’m writing this summary to internalise and ask myself questions about this book. I am publishing this online because I believe that it can save you some labour and time. And perhaps, after you have read the book and created your own interpretations, it may help you view things from a different perspective. Summary
The core argument of BSR is that fascism is Capital’s apparatus to destroy socialist/communist movements, hence maintaining hegemony. He focuses on two time periods, pre-WW2 and post-WW2. In the first, he calls attention to the fascist takeovers of Italy, Germany and Japan (Axis powers) and their socioeconomic consequences. In the second, he highlights the USA’s continued funding of fascist movements to prevent communist parties coming to power.
The first half of the book where he elaborates on his first claim is more of a critique of capitalism and an attempt to draw a parallel between it and fascism. The obvious example here is Italy, birthplace of fascism:
“By 1921, many Italian workers and peasants were unionized and had their own political organizations they had won the right to organize, along with concessions in wages and work conditions. To impose a full measure of austerity upon workers and peasants, the ruling economic interests would have to abolish the democratic rights that helped the masses defend their modest living standards For this task Benito Mussolini, armed with his gangs of Blackshirts, seemed the likely candidate.”
Here Parenti draws the link between fascism and capitalism. The bourgeoisie capitalist class, hit with reduced profits, propped up the fascist Mussolini to help them keep making money. He would do this by “smash their unions, political organizations, and civil liberties”.
There’s a striking overlap with Althusser’s Repressive State Apparatus here, where a state institution (usually the police) crushes class struggle. However there’s a small difference here pointed out by my friend Deepseek. RSAs are structural and Mussolini wasn’t actually part of the government in 1921. It would take one more year before he came to power. I think the point Parenti is trying to make here is that the bourgeoisie capitalists chose fascism, and therefore capitalism is responsible for fascism or at the very least funding it. The exact situation occurred in Germany, where “By 1930, most of the tycoons greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, propelling the Nazi party onto the national stage”.
Therein lies the Parenti’s conclusion. Capitalism will support fascism when it suits their needs.
There’s another section on horseshoe theory but I’ll leave it to the end since it’s not that relevant here. Let’s skip to the second claim (Post WW2).
Parenti starts off this section, Friendly to Fascism, by giving a bunch of examples of Allied powers keeping Nazis and fascists around. He doesn’t spell out why, but the implication seems to be that they would rather have fascists than communists in Western Europe (definitely don’t google Herr Adolf Heusinger NATO).
“Fascism never intended to offer a social solution that would serve the general populace, only a reactionary one, forcing all the burdens and losses onto the working public. Divested of its ideological and organizational paraphernalia, fascism is nothing more than a final solution to the class struggle, the totalistic submergence and exploitation of democratic forces for the benefit and profit of higher financial circles”
And there’s the conclusion. Fascism is reactionary. It solves class struggle by giving the means of production back to the factory owners. Therefore it’s a false revolution, putting the people back in that false consciousness so the bourgeoisie stay in power.
The rest of the book is a collection of thoughts about communism and empire in the Post-WW2 era, some of which has been heavily criticised. I’m too lazy to summarise all that. Parenti’s Refutation of Horseshoe Theory
Horseshoe theory maintains that far-left and far-right governance are pretty much the same. I have to admit, the programming had me thinking in this way in the past before I did my research. Communist governments tend to be authoritarian, similar to, say, Mussolini or Hitler’s governments. But while the means are similar, the ends are totally different.
Both governments may carry out authoritarian actions like purges. But for the Communists the goal is seizing the means of production, whereas the Fascists seek to consolidate the means of production within a few.
We hence view fascism as a reactionary movement. Economically and socially, it resembles the liberal democracy more than an authoritarian socialist state. Excerpts
“In pursuit of counterrevolution and in the name of freedom, U.S. forces or U.S.-supported surrogate forces slaughtered 2,000,000 North Koreans in a three-year war; 3,000,000 Vietnamese; over 500,000 in aerial wars over Laos and Cambodia; over 1,500,000 million in Angola; over 1,000,000 in Mozambique; over 500,000 in Afghanistan; 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia; 200,000 in East Timor; 100,000 in Nicaragua (combining the Somoza and Reagan eras); over 100,000 in Guatemala (plus an additional 40,000 disappeared); over 700,000 in Iraq;19 over 60,000 in El Salvador; 30,000 in the “dirty war” of Argentina (though the government admits to only 9,000); 35,000 in Taiwan, when the Kuomintang military arrived from China; 20,000 in Chile; and many thousands in Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Brazil, South Africa, Western Sahara, Zaire, Turkey, and dozens of other countries, in what amounts to a free-market world holocaust.”
“Consider Kerala, a state in India where the actions of popular organizations and mass movements have won important victories over the last forty years against politico-economic oppression, generating a level of social development considerably better than that found in most of the Third World, and accomplished without outside investment. Kerala has mass literacy, a lower birth rate and lower death rate than the rest of India, better public health services, fewer child workers, higher nutritional levels (thanks to a publicly subsidized food rationing system), more enlightened legal support and educational programs for women, and some social security protections for working people and for the destitute and physically handicapped. In addition, the people of Kerala radically altered a complex and exploitative system of agrarian relations and won important victories against the more horrid forms of caste oppression.”
I searched Kerala on reddit and it seems most Indians view it as some kind of paradise, while Keralites complain about the lack of jobs. Are they taking things for granted like the USSR citizens (Parenti claim)? The level of healthcare and benefits are the real deal though. A flight to Kerala is only $300…
Kerala had a Human Development Index of 0.758 in 2022. On par with Mexico and China (!).
“leaders claim to be offended by certain features of social revolutionary governments, such as one-party rule and the coercive implementation of revolutionary change. But one-party autocracy is acceptable if the government is rightist, that is, friendly toward private corporate investment as in Turkey, Zaire, Guatemala, Indonesia, and dozens of other countries (including even communist countries that are sliding down the free-market path, such as China)”
“Cuba’s sin in the eyes of global capitalists is not its “lack of democracy.” Most Third World capitalist regimes are far more repressive. Cuba’s real sin is that it has tried to develop an alternative to the global capitalist system, an egalitarian socio-economic order that placed corporate property under public ownership, abolished capitalist investors as a class entity, and put people before profits and national independence before IMF servitude.”
Are economic sanctions a war crime? Crime against civilians? A tool of empire? I don’t have enough knowledge to make a judgement.
“In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish—while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world.”
How? Critiques and Questions
“the Congressional leadership of the Democratic party protected racial segregation and stymied all anti-lynching and fair employment bills” Is this true? Were claims of gulag deaths as exaggerated as Parenti says? Or do the numbers lie somewhere in the middle? What does this say about Xinjiang where the US claims a genocide is occurring? Can we consider the governments of USA, Israel and India fascist? Okay, maybe the label isn’t important. Are capitalists making political leaders in these countries crush class struggle in the name of profit? Were the social benefits in USSR and Vietnam as good as Parenti claims? Need to research this myself. Parenti claims that the USSR became complacent and lacked productivity because of the social benefits they received. What’s the solution? Mixed economy like China? He doesn’t provide a solution. Does wealth cause poverty? Does the label “fascism” really matter? Do semantics really matter? At what point does reactionary become Or should we forget about theory and focus on lived experiences, applying theory to draw connections between immediate experience and the larger structural forces that shape that experience”? Do fascist governments tend to emerge from weak liberal democracies? What is the canary in the coal mine?
Addendum
No page number references because my copy was in epub
This was published on 26/7/25. 25 Palestinians were killed in Gaza today.