Controversial Vermont 'Marxist,' Ex-Congressional Candidate Michael Parenti, Dead At 92

By Ted Cohen

An outspoken, radical New York politician who effectively got canned from his UVM professorship in the 1970s has died.

Michael Parenti, 92, passed away at an assisted-living center on January 24 in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Born into an Italian-American working class family in East Harlem, he received a bachelor of arts from the City College of New York.

Parenti was awarded a teaching fellowship at Brown University, where he earned a masters in history in 1957.

He completed his doctorate in political science at Yale University.

Parenti taught political science at several institutions including the University of Illinois and then, later, at the University of Vermont.

UVM denied Parenti tenure due to his having been convicted of assaulting a state trooper during a student-led protest in 1970 at Kent State.

Despite effectively getting fired from UVM in 1971, he battled for reinstatement during the next year, however unsuccessfully.

Parenti said he had trouble getting hired to another professorship after the UVM experience because he was considered damaged goods.

In 1974, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House from Vermont as the candidate of the socialist Liberty Union Party.

During his years in Vermont, Parenti became good friends with Bernie Sanders, another so-called socialist Vermont transplant from Brooklyn.

While Sanders figured out when and when not to use anti-capitalist rhetoric to advance his political fortunes, Parenti never did.

Imagine someone claiming to be more leftist around the edges than Bernie Sanders.

Parenti was that guy, always a square peg in a round hole.

He was actually even more than a socialist, he was a pure, dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, in speech, anyway.

Parenti “was an outspoken critic of capitalism, imperialism and class inequities, his intellectual works celebrated around the world,” claims Democracy Now.

“One of the functions of a capitalist state is to defend capitalism from itself, to defend capitalism from the capitalists,” he once said. “Marx said one capitalist will kill many other capitalists, that the system begins to consume itself.

“The free market does not work,” Parenti argued. “It’s not free. It’s not really a market; it’s a plunder. And it has to be done away with.”

Of course there was conflict within his own claims, whether he acknowledged it or not.

For instance, Parenti drew a teaching salary in true capitalist tradition from public universities partly funded with taxpayer money.

That Parenti had much in common with Sanders - he hated capitalism except perhaps when it was paying his bills.

Considering the fact that Parenti wanted tenure at UVM - meaning he wanted a lifetime appointment - suggests that in reality he wasn't a Marxist at all but just an everyday capitalist wanting to popularize his rhetoric, much in the mold of Bernie Sanders, the alleged socialist who owns three houses.

Tenure and home ownership aren't born of Marxism and socialism. They define capitalism.

Moreover, Parenti and Bernie wrote dozens of books espousing their politics, the capitalist-based profits of which didn't go into your pocket.