The other day I started a book about U.S. neoliberalism that actually recognized how the mere existence of the Soviet Union led to better conditions for workers in the U.S., and how since its fall the U.S. has tightened the noose on the working class. All right! Let's keep reading!

Two pages later he said something like "This is not to imply that I'm defending communism, which is a reprehensible form of tyranny . . ."

I groaned, put down the book, and googled the author to see how much more dipshittery I could expect. Lo and behold, he had a friendly interview about the book with Jacobin, where for some reason they didn't ask him, "Hey, if communism was a reprehensible form of tyranny, what do you call a system that, absent a countervailing power on the other side of the world, insists on making conditions worse for the vast majority of its population?"

[–] AFineWayToDie@hexbear.net 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've read more than one book which contained insightful analysis, deep research, or other fascinating material in regards to socialism and/or the USSR, which then went on to dismiss AES countries as "authoritarian" or other such nonsense.

Sometimes you gotta put up with some liberal propaganda. But it can be worth it.

[–] Wertheimer@hexbear.net 23 points 1 week ago

Yeah, I know (but I still appreciate the reminder, as I have to remind myself of this with some frequency). Par for the course for non-Marxist scholarship. I'll keep reading. Just need to treat my whiplash first.

Lately I've been having trouble with just about any book on U.S. history. There's always this tacit acceptance of American exceptionalism.

[–] hotcouchguy@hexbear.net 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What's that quote? About the compulsion to genuflect before anticommunism to prove you're not outside the acceptable bounds of liberal discourse? I think it was from Parenti or something but now I can't find it.

Anyway assuming I'm remembering it correctly just imagine I replied with that instead of with this.

[–] Wertheimer@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago

It's funny - he implicitly addresses this in the previous paragraph. Here's the full quote. Pages 11-12:

Putting the fall of communism at the center of the story of neoliberalism's rise requires an understanding of the role of communism in shaping the politics of the United States in the sixty years prior the to 1990s that is different from what is offered in many histories. In these accounts, fear of communism is treated as a limiting force on progressive politics. Countless progressive movements, it has been argued, trimmed their political sails rather than risk being tagged with the kiss-of-death label, "soft on communism." But the threat of communism, I argue, actually worked in a quite different direction: It inclined capitalist elites to compromise so as to avert the worst. American labor was strongest when the threat of communism was greatest. The apogee of America's welfare state, with all its limitations, was coterminous with the height of the Cold War. The dismantling of the welfare state and the labor movement, meanwhile, marched in tandem with communism's collapse.

To argue for communism's importance is not meant to rehabilitate it as a political movement. Communism was an indefensible system of tyranny. Rather, it is meant to help up to understand the role that communism played in the century when it was a feared force, and then to call on us to reckon with the effects of its sudden and complete disappearance from international and national affairs . . .