Some good quotes:

PARENTI COMBO:

(on "left" anti-communists)

“The pure (libertarian) socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.” - Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds, emphasis mine.

"Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism”. - Parenti, Left AntiCommunism: The Unkindest Cut

(in response to "COMMUNISM DOESN'T WORK" smug wankery)

[Socialist movements] in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, brought land reform, and human services; a dramatic bettering of the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or never since witnessed in human history[.] [Socialist movements] transformed desperately poor countries into societies in which everyone had adequate food, shelter, medical care, and education… and some of us who come from poor families, who carry around the hidden injuries of class, are very impressed—are very, very impressed by these achievements, and are not willing to dismiss them as ‘economistic’. To say that socialism doesn’t ‘work’ is to overlook the fact that it did work and that it worked for hundreds of millions of people. —Michael Parenti (paraphrased),

(for stoking the flame when people are feeling the inhumanity of the ruling class)

"Throughout history there has been only one thing that ruling classes have ever wanted – and that is everything: all the choice lands, forests, game, herds, harvests, mineral deposits and precious metals of the earth; all the wealth, riches, and profitable returns; all the productive facilities, gainful inventiveness, and technologies; all the surplus value produced by human labor; all the control positions of the state and other major institutions; all public supports and subsidies, privileges and immunities; all the protections of the law with none of its constraints; all the services, comforts, luxuries, and advantages of civil society with none of the taxes and costs. Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens." -Parenti

AMARTYA SEN COMBO (on development of China under communism):

"India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame." - Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action: Studies in Development Economics

"Because of its radical commitment to the elimination of poverty and to improving living conditions — a commitment in which Maoist as well as Marxist ideas and ideals played an important part — China did achieve many things that the Indian leadership failed to press for and pursue with any vigor. The elimination of widespread hunger, illiteracy, and ill health falls solidly in this category. When state action operates in the right direction, the results can be quite remarkable, as is illustrated by the social achievements of the pre-reform period."
—Amartya Sen, [30]

"We argue, in particular, that the accomplishments relating to education, healthcare, land reforms, and social change in the pre-reform period made significantly positive contributions to the achievements of the post-reform period. This is so not only in terms of their role in sustained high life expectancy and related achievements, but also in providing firm support for economic expansion based on market reforms."
—Amartya Sen, [30]

"The casual processes through which the reduction of undernourishment was achieved involved extensive state action including redistributive policies, nutritional support, and of course health care (since undernourishment is frequently caused by parasitic diseases and other illnesses)."
—Amartya Sen, [30]

"China’s achievements in the field of health during the pre-reform period include a dramatic reduction of infant and child mortality and a remarkable expansion of longevity."
—Amartya Sen, [30]

CHARACTERIZATION OF AMERICA'S RIVALS OVER TIME:

"But this part of the history is difficult for Americans to remember, because at the end of the Cold War, the popular image of the Soviet Union switched from terrifyingly bold rival to pathetic basket case—the exemplar of a society that could not work. Back in the fifties, in fact, many United States planners suspected the Soviet system worked better. Certainly, they recalled the fact that in the thirties, while the United States had been mired in depression, the Soviet Union had maintained almost unprecedented economic growth rates of 10 percent to 12 percent a year—an achievement quickly followed by the production of tank armies that defeated Nazi Germany, then by the launching of Sputnik in 1957, then by the first manned spacecraft, the Vostok, in 1961.

It’s often said the Apollo moon landing was the greatest historical achievement of Soviet communism. Surely, the United States would never have contemplated such a feat had it not been for the cosmic ambitions of the Soviet Politburo. We are used to thinking of the Politburo as a group of unimaginative gray bureaucrats, but they were bureaucrats who dared to dream astounding dreams. The dream of world revolution was only the first. It’s also true that most of them—changing the course of mighty rivers, this sort of thing—either turned out to be ecologically and socially disastrous, or, like Joseph Stalin’s one-hundred-story Palace of the Soviets or a twenty-story statue of Vladimir Lenin, never got off the ground.

After the initial successes of the Soviet space program, few of these schemes were realized, but the leadership never ceased coming up with new ones. Even in the eighties, when the United States was attempting its own last, grandiose scheme, Star Wars, the Soviets were planning to transform the world through creative uses of technology. Few outside of Russia remember most of these projects, but great resources were devoted to them. It’s also worth noting that unlike the Star Wars project, which was designed to sink the Soviet Union, most were not military in nature: as, for instance, the attempt to solve the world hunger problem by harvesting lakes and oceans with an edible bacteria called spirulina, or to solve the world energy problem by launching hundreds of gigantic solar-power platforms into orbit and beaming the electricity back to earth."

• David Graeber, On Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit

STATE MEDIA, U.S. AND ABROAD

"Keep in mind that virtually every state-media outlet claims editorial independence, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. For example, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, Open Technology Fund, Voice of America, Current Time TV, Alhurra, Radio Sawa, and Radio Televisión Martí are all part of the US Agency for Global Media (formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors), which requires its outlets through its top broadcasting standards to be

“consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States” along with its broadcasting principle of “The capability to provide a surge capacity to support United States foreign policy objectives during crises abroad”.

USAGM’s CEO is appointed by the U.S. President. The current CEO is Kelu Chao, who was appointed by Biden and has been reinstalling many of the USAGM executives at Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe that were purged by the former CEO Michael Pack (Trump’s appointee)."

https://web.archive.org/web/20210109232313/https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/oversight/legislation/standards-principles/