Michael Parenti Quotes

During the Cold War, the anti-communist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

Democracy is something more than a set of political procedures. To be worthy of its name, democracy should produce substantive outcomes that advance the health and well-being of the people.

Those who think Roman slavery was such a benign institution have not explained why fugitive slaves were a constant problem. Owners did not lightly countenance the loss of valuable property. They regularly used chains, metal collars, and other restraining devices. Slaves who fled were hunted down and returned to irate masters who were keen to inflict a severe retribution.

Capitalism's modus operandi is to produce and sell an ever expanding supply of goods and services for ever greater profits. But the earth is finite. So is its ability to absorb wastes and toxins. While food yields shrink, the world's population grows 90 million a year and the planet's life support systems move closer to catastrophe. An ever expanding capitalism and a fragile, finite ecology appear to be on a calamitous collision course.

Whether a leader is acting with admirable “firmness” or “aggressive rigidity” in a situation will often depend on the political values and views of the observer.

Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as "pluralism," "democracy," and the "open society," that it is often not felt as indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are "free."

History has many enemies, including some who profess to serve its cause. The struggle to define the past is part of the struggle to control society itself.

In the end I created a career of my own, concentrating on my writing and lecturing, reaching larger audiences than I would had I ended up with tenure and a full teaching load. It was Virginia Woolf who said that it is terrible to be frozen out of a sacred tradition-but even more terrible to be frozen into it.

Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination.

Conservative pundits have a remarkable amount of free speech.

That a religious belief is propagated by its lower clergy and ordinary adherents does not make it any less the hierarchy’s dictum. Indeed, such lower echelon transmission is an essential factor in maintaining the belief’s hegemony.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, class conflict in feudal times was not a rarity but a constant. Even in the early Middle Ages, various kinds of peasant resistance probably occurred more frequently than we realize: sabotage, fleeing the manor, violating prohibitions, and refusing to pay dues or perform certain services or abide by particular regulations.

To conclude, history is not just what the historians say it is, but what government agencies, corporate publishing conglomerates, chain store distributors, mass media pundits, editors, reviewers, and other ideological gatekeepers want to put into circulation. Not surprisingly, the deck is stacked to favor those who deal the cards.

It may come as a surprise to discover that throughout most of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, leading bourgeois philosophers and economists understood and openly stated, as did John Locke in 1690 that “government was created for the protection of property,” and Adam Smith in 1776 that civil authority “is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

The overthrow of communism gave a green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, and no longer constrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people in the West have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West.