Archive for May, 2021

• COMMODITIES & CAPITALISM—
  AND THE TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS SYSTEM
  A Basic Explanation

  by Bob Avakian May 24, 2021 In a number of works, including Breakthroughs1 and The New Communism,2 I have examined the basic contradictions of the capitalist economy (mode of production) and the terrible consequences of the fact that the system of capitalism-imperialism continues to dominate the world. Here I want to offer a more brief, basic explanation of the contradictions inherent in (built into) this mode of production and how this leads to these terrible consequences. Capitalism is the system where commodity production and exchange is generalized. A commodity is anything that is produced to be exchanged (sold). This is different than when someone produces something for […]

   

• BOB AVAKIAN ON THE LAW, JUSTICE, AND ENDING OPPRESSION AND EXPLOITATION

  Bob Avakian grew up in Berkeley, California in the 1950s at a time when segregation was being challenged in the courts and in the streets, and the issues of inequality and racial discrimination were being debated throughout society.  His father was a lawyer and later a Superior Court judge, and Bob Avakian was raised in a family where discussions of legal cases, constitutional rights, and the judicial process were a staple of dinner time conversation. Not only did this upbringing shape his early political awareness and passion for social justice, but this informal legal training gave him a keen appreciation […]

   
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  ^{Special Episode of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show}
  BOB AVAKIAN FOR THE LIBERATION OF BLACK PEOPLE AND THE EMANCIPATION OF ALL HUMANITY

  (Text reposted from revcom.us) One of the things that comes through most powerfully in Bob Avakian’s memoir1 is that a profound hatred for the oppression of Black people has been a defining part of Bob Avakian’s life from the time, as a teenager, he learned about the lives of the Black people with whom he developed deep ties of friendship. Never feeling that, because he is white, “it is not his place” to be involved in the struggle against this oppression—but, on the contrary, determined to contribute whatever he could to this struggle—Bob Avakian (BA), from the time he worked closely […]

   

• Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds”

  May 10, 2021 See also: Supplementary excerpts from Bob Avakian Further Supplementary Excerpts A number of years ago, drawing from the title of a book by Benjamin Barber, I referred to one of the main confrontations taking place in the world as Jihad vs. McWorld/McCrusade. (“Jihad” here refers to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, and “McWorld/McCrusade” to increasingly globalized western imperialism, infused with a poisonous sense of “the superiority of Western Christian Civilization.”) As I wrote then: What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and […]

   
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