Kevin Carson's Reviews > Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

As an anarchist, I certainly have issues with Marxism-Leninism as an ideology. But it's worthwhile to read Parenti and consider his arguments. And to be frank, it's refreshing to engage with the thought of a grownup M-L like Parenti, Hobsbawm, etc., after constantly encountering the kind of Stalin-avi tank-kiddies on social media who say shit like "Stalin was the greatest genius in history," "Khrushchev was a revisionist," squalid authoritarian dictators are heroes of "anti-imperialism," and the like.
Parenti admits that "Siege Communism" was an actual thing, that the USSR developed gross authoritarian and bureaucratic distortions under Stalin, and that these distortions prevented the kinds of decentralist and horizontal changes that would have been necessary for the Soviet economy to integrate the achievements of the cybernetic revolution. And he recognizes that a lot of regimes the tank-kiddies call "socialist" these days are actually regimes of the national bourgeoisie. There was a time when I wouldn't have considered this a very high hurdle to clear; but I was younger and more optimistic then.