I remember that for much of the 2010s I was one of those snotty anarchists who thought that state-socialists supported the U.S.S.R. and whatnot out of sheer principle rather than because they benefitted the working masses. I still have comments on Fedbook where I said ‘tankies’ unjokingly, and I even disparaged one state-socialist who was trying to respectfully contribute to a conversation.

I believe that it was ‘On Russia, Today’s Liberal Luminaries Take Their Cues From Fascists’ that lead me to Parenti’s work Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, and that was when my understanding of the people’s republics started maturing. It was clear reading the first several chapters that Parenti knew what he was bespeaking; his perception of the people’s republics was not based on ‘wishful thinking’ at all.

From pages 140–141 of the first edition:

Far from lacking in benefits and rights, Soviet workers have a guaranteed right to a job; relatively generous disability, maternity, retirement, and vacation benefits; an earlier retirement age than American workers (60 for men, 55 for women); free medical care; free education and job training; and subsidized housing and transportation.

If measured by the availability of durable-use consumer goods such as cars, telephones, lawnmowers, and dishwashers, the Soviet worker’s standard of living is lower than the American worker’s. If measured by the benefits and guarantees mentioned above, Soviet workers enjoy more humane and secure working and living conditions than their American counterparts. “In relation to national income,” notes the American Sovietologist Alex Nove, “the Soviet Union spends far more on health, education and so on, than highly industrialized Western countries do.”³²

[…]

In fact, while it cannot be claimed that Soviet citizens live under conditions of perfect equality, most of the millions of dachas are fairly modest abodes (except for a few of the more elaborate ones used to entertain foreign guests of state); and the living conditions and consumption levels of the Soviet political and managerial strata are not dramatically different from those of other Russians.

Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, as Time magazine reported, lived in a simple five-room apartment in the same housing project near the Kremlin that once accommodated Leonid Brezhnev. Soviet political leaders, managers, and intelligentsia cannot amass great wealth from the labor of others. They cannot own the means of production nor pass ownership on to their progeny. When they retire, it is to modest living quarters on modest pensions. This hardly constitutes a “new class.”

Other works such as Albert Szymański’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union (which Parenti cited) also contributed to my reevaluation of the people’s republics, but I have Inventing Reality to thank for getting it started. I might have disagreed with Parenti on certain subjects, but I would not have given him up for anything either. I only wish that I could have conversed with him before he gave up the ghost.

Rest in power, Michael Parenti. We’ll miss you.