Marxists of all types have spent the past hundred years critiquing the Soviet Union from every angle imaginable, sometimes with good data and on-the-ground information, often with bad data and completely made up cold warrior nonsense. While Parenti was pro-Soviet throughout his life, he was nevertheless a fish swimming in that river, being pulled by those currents. I would suggest bearing Parenti’s thoughts in mind as you continue reading about Soviet history and synthesize his views with those of other Marxists who also criticized the same system.

One thing I also want to point out: Stalin himself argues in Economic Problems of the USSR that many aspects of capitalist economics cannot simply be abolished, but must be learned and taught like physical laws so that the socialist economy can use them to its advantage. Mostly he’s talking about commodity production and the law of value, but I think it’s fair to extrapolate this framework to other things such as perverse incentives, alienation of labor, etc. From the point of view of the worker, what difference does it make if the assembly line is state owned or capitalist owned? You’re still a cog in the machine - until the means to completely automate this type of drudgery away have been invented, the best a socialist economy can do is give their workers incentives to do good work, something that every economy objectively struggles with (see both America’s “quiet quitting” and China’s “lay flat” movements).