Do people in the East want the free market? Opinion polls taken in late 1993 in Russia showed only 27 percent of all respondents supported a market economy. By large majorities, people believed that state control over prices and 1/4 over private business is "useful," and that "the state should provide everyone with a job and never tolerate unemployment." In Poland, 92 percent wanted to keep the state welfare system, and lopsided majorities wanted to retain subsidized 2/4

What distinguishes fascism from ordinary right-wing patriarchal autocracies is the way it attempts to cultivate a revolutionary aura. Fascism offers a beguiling mix of revolutionary-sounding mass appeals and reactionary class politics. The Nazi party's full 1/4 name was the National Socialist German Workers Party, a left-sounding name. As already noted, the SA storm troopers had a militant share-the-wealth strain in their ranks that was suppressed by Hitler after he took state power. Both the Italian fascists and 2/4

Once the capitalist restorationists in Eastern Europe and the for-mer Soviet Union took state power, they worked hard to make sure that the new order of corporate plunder, individual greed, low wages, mindless pop culture, and 1/4 limited electoral democracy would take hold. They set about dismantling public ownership of production and the entire network of social programs that once served the public. They integrated the erstwhile communist countries into 2/4

What happened to the U.S. businesses that collaborated with fascism ? The Rockefeller family's Chase National Bank used its Paris office in Vichy France to help launder German money to facilitate Nazi international trade during the war, and did so with 1/4 complete impunity. Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 2/4

Much production in East Germany was dismantled to prevent competition with West German firms. This was especially evident when collective agriculture was broken up to protect the heavily sub-sidized and less productive private farms 1/4 of West Germany.8 Without making compensation, West German capitalists grabbed almost all the socialized property in the GDR, including factories, mills, farms, apartments and other real estate, and the medical care system— assets 2/4

Since the overthrow of communism, free-market right-wing forces in the various Eastern European countries enjoyed significant financial and organizational assistance from U.S.-financed agencies, such as the National Endowment for 1/5 Democracy, the AFL-CIO s Free Trade Union Institute (a group intimately linked to the CIA), and the Free Congress Foundation, an organization with an anticommunist and conservative religious ideology.4 Communists and other Marxists 2/5

Third World revolutionaries are branded as the enemies of stabil-ity. "Stability" is a code word for a society in which privileged social relations are securely entrenched. When popular forces mobilize against privilege and wealth, this causes "instability," 1/4 which is judged to be undesirable by U.S. policymakers and their faithful flacks in the U.S. corporate media. Here we have a deceptive state of affairs. What poses as a U.S. commitment to peaceful nonviolent change is really a commitment to the violent 2/4

What happened to the U.S. businesses that collaborated with fascism ? The Rockefeller family's Chase National Bank used its Paris office in Vichy France to help launder German money to facilitate Nazi international trade during the war, and did so with 1/4 complete impunity. Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 2/4

The former communist nations are being recolonized by Western capital. Most of their foreign trade is now controlled by multinational corporations. Like Third World countries, they are increasingly deprived of each other s 1/5 markets. The once heavy and mutually beneficial commerce between them has been reduced to a trickle, as their economies get tied into the investment and extractive needs of global capitalism. Instead of mutual development, they are now 2/5

Do people in the East want the free market? Opinion polls taken in late 1993 in Russia showed only 27 percent of all respondents supported a market economy. By large majorities, people believed that state control over prices and 1/4 over private business is "useful," and that "the state should provide everyone with a job and never tolerate unemployment." In Poland, 92 percent wanted to keep the state welfare system, and lopsided majorities wanted to retain subsidized 2/4

We hear a great deal about the crimes of communism but almost nothing about its achievements. The communist govern-ments inherited societies burdened with an age-old legacy of eco-nomic exploitation and maldevelopment. Much of precommunist Eastern Europe, as 1/4 with prerevolutionary Russia and China, was in effect a Third World region with widespread poverty and almost nonexistent capital formation. Most rural transportation was still by horse and wagon. The devastation of World War II added another heavy layer of 2/4

Third World revolutionaries are branded as the enemies of stabil-ity. "Stability" is a code word for a society in which privileged social relations are securely entrenched. When popular forces mobilize against privilege and wealth, this causes "instability," 1/4 which is judged to be undesirable by U.S. policymakers and their faithful flacks in the U.S. corporate media. Here we have a deceptive state of affairs. What poses as a U.S. commitment to peaceful nonviolent change is really a commitment to the violent 2/4

The overthrow of Eastern European and Soviet communist gov-ernments was cheered by many left intellectuals. Now democracy would have its day. The people would be free from the yoke of communism and the U.S. Left would be free from 1/8 the albatross of existing communism, or as left theorist Richard Lichtman put it, "liberated from the incubus of the Soviet Union and the succubus of Communist China." In fact, the capitalist restoration in Eastern 2/8

Much production in East Germany was dismantled to prevent competition with West German firms. This was especially evident when collective agriculture was broken up to protect the heavily sub-sidized and less productive private farms 1/4 of West Germany.8 Without making compensation, West German capitalists grabbed almost all the socialized property in the GDR, including factories, mills, farms, apartments and other real estate, and the medical care system— assets 2/4

Conservatives in the Western nations utilize diluted forms of the fascist mass appeal. In the USA, they propagate populist-sounding appeals to the "ordinary Middle American" while quietly pressing for measures that serve the interests of the wealthiest 1/4 individuals and corporations. In 1996, right-wing Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, while proffering a new rollback agenda that supposedly would revitalize all of society, announced "I am a genuine revolutionary." Whether in Italy, 2/4

Throughout Eastern Europe and the former USSR, many people grudgingly admitted that conditions were better under communism (New York Times, 3/30/95). Pro-capitalist Angela Stent, of George-town University, allows that "most people 1/5 are worse off than they were under Communism .... The quality of life has deteriorated with the spread of crime and the disappearance of the social safety net" (New York Times, 12/20/93). An East German steelworker is 2/5

We hear a great deal about the crimes of communism but almost nothing about its achievements. The communist govern-ments inherited societies burdened with an age-old legacy of eco-nomic exploitation and maldevelopment. Much of precommunist Eastern Europe, as 1/4 with prerevolutionary Russia and China, was in effect a Third World region with widespread poverty and almost nonexistent capital formation. Most rural transportation was still by horse and wagon. The devastation of World War II added another heavy layer of 2/4

The former communist nations are being recolonized by Western capital. Most of their foreign trade is now controlled by multinational corporations. Like Third World countries, they are increasingly deprived of each other s 1/5 markets. The once heavy and mutually beneficial commerce between them has been reduced to a trickle, as their economies get tied into the investment and extractive needs of global capitalism. Instead of mutual development, they are now 2/5

In pursuit of counterrevolution and in the name of freedom, U.S. forces or U.S.-supported surrogate forces slaughtered 2,000,000 North Koreans in a three-year war; 3,000,000 Vietnamese; over 500,000 in aerial wars over Laos and Cambodia; over 1,500,000 in 1/4 Angola; over 1,000,000 in Mozambique; over 500,000 in Afghanistan; 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia; 200,000 in East Timor; 100,000 in Nicaragua (combining the Somoza and Reagan eras); over 100,000 in Guatemala (plus an additional 40,000 disappeared); over 2/4

When he was head of the State Department policy planning staff during the early years of the cold war, the noted author George Kennan revealed the ruthless realpolitik mentality of those dedicated to social inequality within and between nations. Kennan 1/6 maintained that a wealthy United States facing an impoverished world could not afford "the luxury of altruism and world benefaction" and should cease talking about "vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and 2/6

Third World revolutionaries are branded as the enemies of stabil-ity. "Stability" is a code word for a society in which privileged social relations are securely entrenched. When popular forces mobilize against privilege and wealth, this causes "instability," 1/4 which is judged to be undesirable by U.S. policymakers and their faithful flacks in the U.S. corporate media. Here we have a deceptive state of affairs. What poses as a U.S. commitment to peaceful nonviolent change is really a commitment to the violent 2/4