Michael Parenti at ACME Summit

Parenti spouts ABB bullshit and tells people to vote for Kerry. He says the Greens shouldn't run in the presidential race.

That doesn't say much for his brain.

Parenti was big into describing the murderous capitalist regime of Milosevic in Serbia as "socialist" because they hadn't manged to privatize the state sector of the economy -- due to working class resistance, but let's not go there!

I've read and listened to Michael Parenti for years, and Parenti is no Stalinist. He is anti-totalitarian, anti-corporate, and anti-investor class, and definitely pro-people. He's a fantastic and insightful speaker.

Um, from what i've been able to observe, he does do things like support the soviet intervention in Afghanistan on the ground that it was an oppressive monarchy, and he once yelled at someone on the radio about this. But he is a good orator. There are many many communists who I couldn't deal with - for instance, watch me never watch Bob Avakian or anything remotely near that. But Parenti describes history in a style where the indoctrination quotient is low. In my life, I have no time to read things like Marx, so I rely on others giving a summary of what Marx says, and various events of history that I'm not going to read books about. For instance, both the Parentis have talked about 'overproduction' foretold by marx, and it actually makes a lot of sense and I've brought up this idea among my older relatives in a neutral setting a number of times - like asking why their father in 1930s could support a family of 5 on one paycheck with 2 yrs of college, in a big house, and have a car and food etc. and have them in the best high school in Kansas City, but now, with much higher productivity and machines, a two income family would have a hard time doing that. You can also just reject any objectionable prescriptions for social change by Parenti. With RCP people, it is more difficult to sit though.

what's the fixation with the RCP? they're completely irrelevant--and marxist in name only.

Read "Black Shirts and Reds" its an unapologetic Stalinist love-fest. Christian Parenti, on the other hand, is NOT a Stalinist.