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Part 1: FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES, CRITICAL JUNCTURES, DECISIVE LEADERSHIP
GROWING UP IN BERKELEY
Bob Avakian was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Berkeley, California. His father, Spurgeon "Sparky" Avakian, the son of Armenian immigrants, was a lawyer and then an Alameda County judge in Oakland, California and a member of the Berkeley School Board. His mother, Ruth, was a teacher.
In his memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, BA talks about how, as a young person, he had passion for music, sports, poetry and literature, and these intersected with his life growing up in the 1950s and ’60s in Berkeley, a university town with a racially diverse population, which would become a center of intellectual, cultural and political ferment that would have a major impact on the whole country. Growing up and going to school with Black friends, singing in doo-wop groups and playing sports, Avakian experienced up close and personal the prevailing segregation and racism in society and the ways it affected his Black friends. As a young person, Avakian came to hate racism and would brook no tolerance for white people who were racist or did not uncompromisingly oppose racism. He was the quarterback of his high school football team at Berkeley High. In his memoir he recounts the experience of a late night bus ride after a game:
On the way back after the game I was sitting with some Black friends of mine on the football team, and we got into this whole deep conversation about why is there so much racism in this country, why is there so much prejudice and where does it come from, and can it ever change, and how could it change? This was mainly them talking and me listening. And I remember that very, very deeply—I learned a lot more in that one hour than I learned in hours of classroom time, even from some of the better teachers.
His early passion for sports in general, but especially basketball, could have led his life in an entirely different direction. As he explains in his memoir:
I always thought that if I hadn’t ended up being a communist, maybe I would have been a high school basketball coach—but I was feeling that my life should be about something more than sports, as much as I still had real passion about that. I felt that there were so many big things going on in the world, I wanted to do something with my life that would mean something or, to use the phrase of the time, be relevant and not just be a personal passion for me.
Even in high school, along with his passion for sports, BA was drawn to intellectual discovery and exploration. In his memoir he speaks to part of the process which led to his not believing in the existence of god:
Getting into philosophy, starting to study history as well as literature, and so on—led me to see from a lot of different directions that religion and the idea of god were human inventions. All these different cultures had different ideas of god that conflicted with and contradicted each other. We studied Greek mythology with Ms. Bentley and you could see that different people in different ages believed in all different kinds of gods, and that some of these had passed out of convention and weren’t widely believed in any more....
As for my friends, today there’s all this nonsense about how Black people are just inherently religious—and that’s a whole thing that gets me pissed off, it’s just bullshit. These are socially conditioned things. A lot of my Black friends and a lot of people who influenced me later in life, like the Panthers, were going through the same thing I’d gone through, and recognized that these religious ideas and institutions are human inventions—and not very good ones. So some of my friends were still religious, but many of them were going through the same general kind of emancipating experience that I was in casting off religion.
BA entered the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 1961, intending to pursue a wide range of academic interests and try out for the freshman football team, but that plan was cut short by a life-threatening illness that required months of hospitalization and years of intensive treatment.
EARLY POLITICAL LIFE
Even as he was recovering from his illness and beginning to recover his energy, BA resumed his studies at UC Berkeley. His entrance into campus life coincided with an important point in U.S. history where Berkeley was leading the way in cracking open the conservatism of the 1950s, as students broke out in social protest and intellectual challenges to the status quo—most notably expressed in the early ’60s by the Free Speech Movement. This movement challenged the university’s ban of campus organizing around off-campus issues, in particular students protesting against the racial discrimination in hiring as was being practiced by local businesses. Avakian became an active participant in the Free Speech Movement from its beginning stages in September 1964. He was one of the 800 arrested in the mass sit-in in the campus administration building, which was the decisive turning point for the Free Speech Movement in winning its demands.
These were times when people across the country were waking up, challenging “the way things are” in all aspects of U.S. society, going up against the culture, institutions, and political rule of the system—and BA was in the midst of all of this as a strategist and organizer, a writer and speaker, and he was putting his body on the front lines of resistance to the crimes of U.S. imperialism.
From early on, Avakian was active in the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), which organized some of the earliest teach-ins and demonstrations in the U.S. against the Vietnam War, beginning in 1965.
In 1967, BA was one of the originators and organizers of Stop the Draft Week, which aimed to raise the level of resistance to the Vietnam War by staging sit-ins to shut down the Army Induction Center in Oakland, California. This led to a massive and brutal police assault on the demonstrators, which gave rise to street fighting as the protesters defended themselves against repeated police attacks.
Avakian worked as a researcher and writer for Ramparts magazine, contributing many articles opposing the Vietnam War and racism and in support of Black power. BA was instrumental in arranging for the article in Ramparts featuring Donald Duncan, a sergeant in the U.S. Army who was one of the first U.S. soldiers to turn against and publicly denounce the Vietnam War. BA continued, over the following years, to carry out discussion and struggle to convince soldiers and veterans of the U.S. military to come out in opposition to the Vietnam War; and he actively organized to build support for them in doing so.
In the late ’60s, out of the civil rights movement there emerged a more radical struggle for Black Liberation. BA began working closely with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (which later became the Black Panther Party), from its early days when it consisted of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Hutton and a small number of others. Beginning in the latter part of 1967, BA worked tirelessly to organize political defense and support for Huey Newton, who was arrested and charged with murder as a result of a shoot-out in Oakland in which Newton was wounded and a policeman was killed.
Toward the end of 1967, people in California—outraged over the Vietnam War and U.S. foreign policy overall, as well as the savage inequalities within U.S. society itself—launched a petition campaign to put the Peace and Freedom Party on the ballot for the 1968 elections, as a radical alternative to the Democratic as well as the Republican Party. At the urging of Eldridge Cleaver, BA joined with these efforts—going on a tour across California (together with members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the newly emerging band Santana) which played a significant part in rallying the necessary numbers of people to get the Peace and Freedom Party on the ballot. During the course of this tour, BA was arrested twice: once as a result of an impromptu protest against ROTC at a high school in Los Angeles; and another time while joining in an antiwar rally at San Jose State that was violently attacked by the police. BA was instrumental in convincing the Peace and Freedom Party to align itself with the Black Panther Party and to take up the defense of Huey Newton. By the summer of 1968, the Peace and Freedom Party had developed as a national party, and BA played a major role in the successful effort to have Eldridge Cleaver nominated as its presidential candidate.
THE JOURNEY TO BECOMING A COMMUNIST—AND A COMMUNIST LEADER
By the end of 1967, Avakian had moved to Richmond, California, in order to take revolutionary politics—including, as a key part of that, support for the Black Panther Party and the fight against racism—to poor whites and other poor people in that city, while continuing to be active organizing in the student movement and in the community against the Vietnam War.
It was in this period that BA and others began to more seriously study some of the “classics” of Marxism, including the writings of Mao, as part of engaging and exploring a theoretical framework for their developing revolutionary inclinations. This study, along with the debates and ferment of the times, led him to view Marxism as the theoretical framework that most scientifically synthesized an understanding of the dynamic underpinnings of the capitalist-imperialist system and why it continually gives rise to exploitation and oppression in many forms.
In 1968 Avakian played a central role in uniting a number of revolutionary collectives into the Bay Area Revolutionary Union, with the view that this would be one organization among many (such as the Black Panther Party as well as other organizations and collectives) which at some point would build ideological and political unity as the basis for a new multi-national communist party.
In the summer of 1970, BA was part of a group of leading members of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union who traveled from its founding base in the Bay Area across the U.S. to reach out to and carry out investigation, discussion and struggle with collectives throughout the country. Through this process, in which BA played a decisive role, the Bay Area Revolutionary Union developed as a national organization in 1970 and changed its name to the Revolutionary Union (RU). BA was elected as a member of the Central Committee of the national RU and was increasingly recognized as its leading member.
Into the 1970s, various revolutionary collectives and organizations continued to develop their positions on important questions related to revolution and communism, questions such as: If you are going to be for revolution, what are the objectives of such a revolution? How can you make that revolution? What kind of leadership do you need? What should be your program? What forces do you need to mobilize and unite for revolution?
During the period of 1968-1974, BA wrote much of Red Papers (1-7), the journal of the Revolutionary Union, including major theoretical articles and polemics in Red Papers 4, 5, and 6. Through his writings in Red Papers, Avakian began to develop a scientific method and approach from which he explored a number of critical questions related to summing up the experience of the world communist movement, as well as speaking to the big and contended political and ideological issues of the day, in many different dimensions, including the fundamental question concerning the nature of the Soviet Union—whether it was still a socialist country, or whether (as Avakian argued) Mao’s analysis was correct, that capitalism had been restored there. Avakian continued to focus attention on the theoretical and practical problems of uprooting the oppression of Black people in the U.S. and to emphasize the crucial relation of this to the overall strategy for revolution. As he later stated:
There will never be a revolutionary movement in this country that doesn’t fully unleash and give expression to the sometimes openly expressed, sometimes expressed in partial ways, sometimes expressed in wrong ways, but deeply, deeply felt desire to be rid of these long centuries of oppression [of Black people]. There’s never gonna be a revolution in this country, and there never should be, that doesn’t make that one key foundation of what it’s all about.
During this same period, Avakian was actively involved in building support for striking oil workers in Richmond and in forging links between those striking workers and movements of students, including “Third World” student strikes on the campuses of San Francisco State and UC Berkeley. During the oil workers’ strike, BA was arrested as a result of a confrontation with company “goons” who attacked the workers’ picket lines and were attempting to break the strike.
BA led the Revolutionary Union in relating to the struggle in Berkeley around People’s Park and took part in a number of demonstrations that were part of resisting the imposition of virtual martial law in the city of Berkeley in the context of this struggle.
BA continued to be involved in the movement against the Vietnam War and in support of the liberation of Black people, Chicanos and other oppressed nationalities. He spoke at a rally of thousands in San Francisco, sponsored by the Black Panther Party, on May Day 1969. Later that year—a year in which police murdered Fred Hampton, head of the Chicago Chapter of the Black Panther Party, and waged massive armed assaults on the Black Panther Party and its offices in a number of cities—BA was instrumental in organizing a squad of people to join with others to defend and help prevent an attack on the Black Panther Party’s national office.
BA played an active role in national conventions of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in the spring and summer of 1969, where he put forward the position of the Revolutionary Union on revolution and the role of students and youth, and upheld the struggles of Black people, Chicanos, and other oppressed peoples within the U.S.—engaging in sharp struggle with representatives of various opportunist trends.
As one of the main leaders of the Revolutionary Union, BA played a key role in reviving the celebration of International Women’s Day as a revolutionary holiday in the U.S. During the course of the 1970s, BA was a featured speaker in IWD rallies and demonstrations in many different cities. In his memoir BA speaks to various influences of the time that led him to more deeply understand the essential relationship of the oppression of women to revolution:
I think what was most essential within all this was a communist understanding of the oppression of women and the pivotal role this played in the development of class divisions and oppressive society overall, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the pivotal role that abolishing all that and completely emancipating women played in the overall struggle to end all oppression and establish a society, a world, without class divisions and without oppressive relations.
When a split occurred in the Revolutionary Union, as a result of some of its members in the Bay Area adopting a line of infantile posturing and acts, which would have led to the destruction of the RU and a serious setback for the revolutionary movement, BA led the struggle against this and rallied the majority of the RU to the fundamentally correct line of approaching revolution in a serious and scientific way, with the orientation that the communist revolution that is needed to seize power and build a new society must not be the act of a small number of radicals divorced from the masses of people but must ultimately involve millions of people in order to have a possibility of defeating the repressive force of the existing system and its state power.
In this period, May Day, historically celebrated internationally as a revolutionary holiday, was revived in the U.S. by the Revolutionary Union under BA’s leadership, and BA spoke at a number of May Day rallies, in various cities in the U.S., over the course of the 1970s.
In the fall of 1971, BA headed a delegation to then socialist China, where he gained a deepened understanding of the achievements in building socialism there and what the character and goals were of the Cultural Revolution in China and engaged in discussion about the communist movement historically and internationally.
BA visited China again in the latter part of 1974, when the Cultural Revolution was intensifying, in what became the last great battle of Mao and those who were fighting for the revolutionary line that Mao represented against the revisionists within the Chinese Communist Party—communists in name who were in fact seeking to restore capitalism in China and were gaining strength within the Party, and who were finally able to seize power and brutally repress the revolutionary forces after Mao’s death in 1976. During this 1974 visit to China, BA engaged in lively discussion and struggle with various representatives of the Chinese Communist Party about the continuation of the revolution within socialist society and the relation between that and the international role and revolutionary responsibilities of a socialist state such as China.
THE STRUGGLE TO BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY, USA
During the first half of the 1970s, a protracted process of theoretical debate and ideological struggle was carried out broadly among forces that had come forward through the upsurge of the 1960s and were grappling with the question of how to carry forward the revolutionary impulse of that time and give it an ongoing organized expression. Theoretical debate, at times heated, was waged around the critical issues of what kind of revolution is needed, issues of revolutionary strategy, and very closely linked to these issues, the question of what comprises revolutionary leadership. Through this period of intense and complex theoretical debate and ideological struggle, Avakian played a key role in the development of a new communist party in the U.S.
Avakian led a struggle within the Revolutionary Union (RU)—which also involved a split between the RU on the one side and the Black Workers Congress and the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization (formerly the Young Lords Party) on the other—over the theoretical and political basis of the new revolutionary party that needed to be formed. The split centered on whether this new party should be based on what amounted to nationalism and suffocating dogmatism or whether, as Avakian insisted, it must be based on internationalism and an orientation and application of living scientific communism. This struggle resulted in a deepening of the scientific foundation of the RU overall, but secondarily was also accompanied by developing tendencies within the RU toward economism—toward reducing the work of communists to merely being the best fighters for the day-to-day economic struggle of the workers, rather than representatives of the fundamental revolutionary interests of the proletariat, in striving for the end to all exploitation and oppression throughout the world.
BA went on a national speaking tour in 1974 to help strengthen the basis for the formation of the new, revolutionary communist party that the Revolutionary Union was working to bring into being.
In 1975, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP, USA) was formed. At its founding congress, BA was elected chairman of its leading body, the Party’s Central Committee. He has continued to hold this position to this day.
Avakian’s role as a revolutionary leader did not go unnoticed by the powers that be. In the early 1970s, a top FBI official noted to subordinates that “This is the kind of extremist I want to go after HARD and with innovation.” In fact, FBI surveillance files from 1975 detail, minute by minute, the movements of Avakian and his associates, and include drawings of his residence.
RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM IN CHINA
In 1976, shortly after the death of Mao, Mao’s closest circle (known as the “Gang of Four”) were arrested and denounced by those in the Chinese Communist Party, headed ultimately by Deng Xiaoping, who were determined to take China down a counterrevolutionary path—the path to capitalism. This was in fact a major crossroads in the international communist movement, posing an historic challenge to revolutionaries around the world who had looked to Mao and socialist China as an inspiration. Among communist parties and forces worldwide, there developed profoundly different understandings of what had happened in China.
Within the RCP, USA, different positions emerged within the leadership over what was represented by the overthrow of the “Gang of Four” and the coming to power of the camp led by Deng Xiaoping.
Stepping back, BA recognized that this was an important turning point not only for the RCP but for the international communist movement. He felt compelled to develop an approach and method to systematically and scientifically study and analyze these critical events in China and their world-historic and worldwide impact and importance—a process that was carried out over the course of a year.
At the same time, he was developing principled means to deal with the resistance and organizational sabotage of those within the RCP who were working to undermine this approach and to use factional means to gain support for their position of supporting the revisionist coup in China and fighting for an economist/revisionist line within the RCP itself.
The issue came to a head in a meeting of the RCP’s Central Committee, where a majority of the leadership, led by Avakian, came to the conclusion that what happened in China was a coup that overthrew socialism and was in the process of unleashing capitalism in China. This led to a major split in the RCP with a significant minority who supported the new leaders in China leaving the Party, and before long giving up all pretense of being communists and working for revolution.
On the basis of the clarity that had been achieved, through this struggle within the RCP about the monumental events in China, and the opposition between revolutionary communism and revisionism overall, the RCP organized the Mao Tsetung Memorials, on the East Coast and on the West Coast, to share these lessons with a broader public. At these Memorials, each of which was attended by more than a thousand people, BA gave the historic speech, “The Loss in China and the Revolutionary Legacy of Mao Tsetung.”
GOVERNMENT ATTACKS AGAINST BA; GOING INTO EXILE
In January 1979, a demonstration was held in Washington, DC on the occasion of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the U.S. for a meeting with then U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Deng Xiaoping was the leader of the process of overthrowing socialism and restoring capitalism in China. The RCP organized a demonstration in Washington, DC in opposition to this, denouncing and exposing what was represented by Deng Xiaoping and his meeting with Carter. This demonstration was viciously attacked by the police, seriously injuring some of the 500 demonstrators and arresting dozens, including Avakian. The authorities in DC ended up charging BA and about a dozen others with multiple felonies that carried a maximum sentence of 241 years.
In response, the RCP rallied hundreds of supporters to go to DC itself and organized political support around the country for what came to be known as the Mao Tsetung Defendants. In connection with this, BA went on a speaking tour in a number of major cities across the U.S. that reached thousands of people.
Owing to the political support that was rallied, and to the work of the legal team representing the Mao Tsetung Defendants, the charges against BA and the other Mao Tsetung Defendants were temporarily dismissed, although it was clear that the government could, and very possibly would, work to reinstate these charges. At the same time, in connection with BA’s appearance in Los Angeles as part of his national speaking tour, an article appeared in the Los Angeles Times which distorted things to make it seem that BA had threatened the president of the United States. Even though the Los Angeles Times was forced to print a partial retraction, agents of the Secret Service came to BA’s residence seeking to “question” him about this alleged threat to President Carter.
In 1980, the RCP faced many arrests and other repression. Damián García, who was closely associated with the RCP and who was known for having raised a red flag on top of the Alamo a few weeks earlier as part of building for RCP-sponsored demonstrations on May Day 1980, was murdered in Los Angeles. In this same period there were growing reports of death threats against Avakian from various quarters.
Noting the developing pattern of repression directed against BA—and looking at this in light of the historical experience of how the ruling class of the U.S. and its state has dealt with revolutionaries (such as the political assassinations of revolutionaries like Malcolm X and Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton) and even dissidents who represent serious opposition—the decision was made that BA should leave the U.S. in order to disrupt what were clearly mounting attempts by the powers that be to move against him. In 1981, BA applied for political refugee status in France. During this period, the charges against the Mao Tsetung Defendants, including BA, were in fact reinstated. BA’s application for political refugee status was denied—this application had been a definite embarrassment not only to the U.S. imperialists and their posture as the world’s greatest democracy and “leader of the free world,” but also to the French and UN authorities, who try to act as if there is not, and could not possibly be, political repression in a country like the U.S.
Only through a continuing campaign to rally political support, along with fighting this in the legal arena, was a successful resolution achieved in the case of the Mao Tsetung Defendants, with no defendants having to serve jail time and all the charges against BA completely dropped.
CONTINUING LEADERSHIP OF BOB AVAKIAN
Over the course of the several decades since then, in spite of the difficulties of his situation, and whatever his particular circumstances have been, BA has continued to provide crucial leadership to the RCP, as its chairman, and to wage continuing struggle for not only the RCP but the international communist movement as a whole to be firmly based on a systematic scientific method and approach to the many crucial dimensions of the struggle to radically transform the world toward the goal of communism. In the theoretical realm, he has continued to make breakthroughs and to further deepen and develop the new synthesis of communism.
The breadth and depth of such revolutionary leadership is very complex and nuanced, carried out on a number of levels. This is spoken to in depth by Avakian in THE NEW COMMUNISM—The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation and by Ardea Skybreak, in SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION: On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian (a wide-ranging interview with Skybreak conducted by Revolution newspaper).
In describing the leadership of BA, Skybreak makes the point:
When it comes to leading the revolution, BA is both a very developed and visionary theoretician and a very sharp and experienced down-on-the-ground practical leader. He is very much both things—that’s the point I am trying to get across. And yes, that combination really is very rare, and it is also very important, and very precious.
Again, this is something I think people often don’t understand—that if you’re the leader of a revolutionary party and you are a key leading theoretician who is bringing into being a new theoretical framework for the revolutionary process and for the building of a new society, that doesn’t mean you’re just kind of “out in the clouds” somewhere with some abstract thinking, even some good abstract thinking, but without any connection to the development in practice of the day-to-day struggles. Quite the contrary. My understanding as a scientist of the process involved, and what is evident in BA’s writings, which I do study carefully, is that he is very, very much integrally involved in every aspect of the development of the revolutionary movement of today on all these key fronts. These are not fronts that are being led just by other people. There are of course other leading people who are taking on very important and critical responsibilities vis-à-vis these fronts, but they are not doing this in isolation and separately from the leadership, the overall strategic leadership, that is being provided by BA and by the central leadership of the RCP to all of it, to the entire ensemble of work in this period.
The overall approach to this is captured in the formulation “Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution.” This involves mobilizing people to fight around the “5 Stops,” key fault line contradictions of this system—the oppression of people of color; of women and of LGBT people; the persecution of immigrants; wars of empire, armies of occupation and crimes against humanity; and the devastation of the environment by capitalism-imperialism—and to do all this in such a way as to build for the revolution that is needed to ultimately put an end to all this unnecessary suffering and destruction.
Cultural Revolution within the RCP
In 2003, Bob Avakian initiated and led a Cultural Revolution right within the Revolutionary Communist Party, as a means and method for dealing with seriously revisionist lines and tendencies that were threatening to take the Party fundamentally off track, in the direction of economism, reformism and accommodation to the imperialist system. “Revisionism” is phony communism that cuts out or revises the revolutionary heart of communism, and whose actual program and method is limited to trying to reform the existing system of capitalism-imperialism.
This took place in the context of a world situation marked by serious setbacks for the communist revolution and the remaining, and in some ways heightened, power of imperialism, and in particular the continuing effects of the reversal of the revolution and the restoration of capitalism in China (as well as the fact that what had been the revisionist Soviet Union, and states aligned with it, had broken down into a number of openly capitalist states).
Recognizing the very real danger that the RCP could be transformed from a revolutionary party into a revisionist shell, betraying the masses of people for whom communist revolution is the only way forward out of their desperate conditions of oppression and exploitation and the only hope for dealing with the looming destruction of the environment—BA launched the Cultural Revolution within the RCP, with the aim of achieving a radical reconstitution and strengthening of the Party as a force worthy of the name of Revolutionary... Communist... Party and capable of acting as a vanguard force of the communist revolution that corresponds to the fundamental interests of the masses of oppressed people, and ultimately humanity as a whole. This Cultural Revolution has prevented the triumph of revisionism within the RCP, and it is continuing to further uproot revisionist influences and strengthen the revolutionary communist character and vanguard role of the Party.
To this day, through his talks and writings, and his overall political, ideological, and methodological leadership, Bob Avakian has continued to guide the RCP, USA in its fundamental orientation and strategic approach of working for revolution in the U.S. itself and contributing all it can to revolution and the ultimate goal of communism in the world as a whole.
Public Appearances
Since around 2003 BA has made several public and semi-public appearances.
In 2003, a film was released of a talk BA had given to audiences in New York City and Los Angeles, Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian.
In the fall of 2012, Bob Avakian gave a series of talks in different cities. Out of this came the film, BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live.
On November 15, 2014, 1900 people witnessed an historic dialogue at Riverside Church in New York City between Cornel West and Bob Avakian entitled Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion. Taking place in the charged atmosphere of upsurges breaking out around the country in response to the police murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, this Dialogue brought out people from all sections of society, from Ferguson, Missouri to Hawai‘i, and was viewed via simulcast in cities throughout the U.S. as well as in Mexico and Europe.
In October, 2017, at a crucial point in time when the Trump/Pence regime was attempting to consolidate fascism, a film was released of a talk by Bob Avakian titled:
THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!
In The Name of Humanity
We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America
A Better World Is Possible
In the summer of 2018, Bob Avakian gave a two-part speech in New York and Los Angeles, Why We Need an Actual Revolution and How We Can Really Make Revolution. This was followed by a Q&A in both cities. The video and text can be found here.
In the fall of 2022, The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube conducted an extensive wide ranging three-part interview with Bob Avakian titled The Bob Avakian Interviews: Up Close and Personal with Bob Avakian, Heart and Soul & Hard-Core for Revolution.
Body of Work
The scope and content of BA’s leadership is reflected in his extensive body of work which includes more than a hundred articles, books, films and audio recordings. BA’s collected works are available at at www.revcom.us/avakian and through The Bob Avakian Institute, TheBobAvakianInstitute.org.
For more information about Bob Avakian’s life, see his autobiography:
Avakian, Bob. From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, A Memoir by Bob Avakian (Chicago: Insight Press, 2005).
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Part 2: THE NEW SYNTHESIS OF COMMUNISM
As explained in the introduction:
Bob Avakian (BA) is the architect of a whole new framework of human emancipation, the new synthesis of communism, which is popularly referred to as the “new communism.” The goal of the new communism is a total revolution—the most radical revolution in human history that aims at nothing less than overcoming all forms of oppression and exploitation all over the world, a society where humanity could truly flourish. The new synthesis of communism is based on more than five decades of revolutionary work that BA has done critically analyzing and drawing from past revolutionary experience and theory, and a broad range of human activity and thought. It is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed. It provides the basis—the science, the strategy, and the leadership—for an actual revolution and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation.
The new synthesis of communism is a theoretical framework for a whole new stage of communist revolution, not just in this country but in the world as a whole.
Fundamental and essential to this new synthesis of communism is its emphasis on applying a thoroughly and consistently scientific method and approach to understanding the dynamics of society and to charting pathways for its revolutionary transformation. By breaking with aspects of communism that have run counter to its scientific method and approach, Bob Avakian has qualitatively advanced communism as a science.
The new synthesis of communism covers a vast scope of major issues: philosophical/epistemological; internationalism and an internationalist approach to revolution; important analysis, strategy and policies in relation to making revolution; and how to build a socialist society as a transition to a communist world.
This summary cannot speak to all the elements of the new synthesis, but will provide some historical context for the new synthesis of communism and speak to what is most fundamental in the new communism. See the section “Key Works” for a listing of some key reference works that are essential to understanding the new synthesis of communism.
The First Wave of Socialist Revolutions
Situating the new synthesis of communism in historical context, an editorial in Demarcations: A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic explains:
The first wave of socialist revolutions and societies began with the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871, the first attempt to overthrow and replace bourgeois rule. It took a leap with the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, and went further and took yet another leap with the Chinese revolution of 1949, in particular the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976. This first wave came to an end in 1976 with the overthrow of proletarian power and restoration of capitalist rule in China.
This first wave of socialist societies in the Soviet Union (1917-1956) and China (1949-1976) constituted an unprecedented and inspiring breakthrough in liberation for humanity. At the same time, and not surprisingly, this first wave was secondarily marked by shortcomings and mistakes; and while not the cause of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union and China, these shortcomings did nonetheless play a role in the defeats of these revolutions.
With the end of this first stage, communists have been confronted with the objective responsibility of scientifically summing up the lessons and legacy of these revolutions and the rich experience of exercising state power towards the transition to communism, in order to forge the theoretical framework for going forward.
Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, has risen to that challenge and in the process qualitatively advanced communist theory. He has developed a theoretical framework for the new stage of communist revolutions, a new synthesis.
On why BA uses the term the “new synthesis of communism,” Ardea Skybreak explains:
Look, one of the things the new synthesis has done is that it hasn't just limited itself to sorting out and distinguishing the positives and what was correct in the past experience of socialist revolutions, from the negatives and the errors that were made. It has done that, but it's done a lot more than that. It's not just some kind of cobbling together of these things. It's not just a deeper and more scientific analysis of the past, it's a new synthesis, one that is based on that deeper analysis, of how to better go forward in making revolution and building a new socialist society on a better foundation and with better methods than at any time in the past. It's actually breaking new ground in terms of sorting out and recasting the experience of the earlier wave of socialist revolution, basically from the century and Marx's early development, up through the reversal of the Chinese revolution in the 1970s. Again, that’s what is meant by “the first wave,” and there's been a lot of deep analysis of what was correct in all these different experiences, what does or doesn't help things move forward in the direction of communism, what is actually, objectively, in the interest of the vast majority of humanity....
A Scientific Approach to Society, and Changing the World—Establishing Communism On a Firmer and More Consistent Scientific Basis
In speaking to the question of what is new in the new synthesis of communism, Skybreak comments:
A hallmark of the new synthesis is that, compared to any previous theoretical development of the science of communism, it is much more thoroughly and consistently scientific in its method and approach to everything. It puts a lot of emphasis on critical thinking and on really boldly confronting errors and shortcomings, while not denying or throwing away the actual successes and accomplishments of previous incarnations of the socialist revolution.... It gets back to what we were talking about in terms of truth and the understanding of what truth is. What is true is what actually corresponds to material reality. That’s what truth is. It’s not just an idea, it’s not just what you might think or what I might think. Does something correspond to the way things actually are in material reality, or does it not? What does the evidence show? You often have to be willing to dig, to explore more deeply, to uncover the evidence and get at the patterns. You generally can’t just answer a question like that in two seconds. You have to be willing to look for patterns and concrete evidence that actually exist in reality. You also have to look for evidence over a period of time: You want to examine repeated examples, not just one example. You don’t just want to go on very partial or limited experience, you don’t just want to say, “Oh, well, this happened the other day, so obviously that’s truth, or obviously that’s a significant thing.” Well, I don’t know. Is it part of a recurrent pattern, or is it just something that occurs every now and then? I mean, what is the actual significance? You have to dig more deeply to get at the bigger lessons of life and the bigger patterns of reality.
Skybreak underlines how BA has more deeply rooted communism in an evidence-based quest for truth, following the evidence wherever it leads:
And one of the things that Avakian has done is to actually promote that kind of method. He basically tells people: Look, no matter how much you might want a better world and no matter how much you might want revolution, and you might want communism, you just can’t try to twist things to fit your expectations or come out the way you’d like them to. You have to actually look for the truth of things, based on concrete evidence, even if it turns out to be an uncomfortable or inconvenient truth, and even if ends up revealing your own errors or shortcomings. If you really want to go in the right direction, you have to be able to face up to that....
In his book THE NEW COMMUNISM—The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Avakian distills the essence of the process and development, and the significance, of the new synthesis of communism this way:
To put this in a concentrated way, what is embodied in this new synthesis is a further revolution in human thought—a further revolution which proceeds from the fundamental scientific basis of communism, since its founding by Marx (together with Engels), and is, in an overall sense, within the same fundamental framework, but at the same time involves a qualitative leap in the development of communism. Of course, as I have stressed many times, there will remain the ongoing need, as there is with all sciences, to continue to learn more and further develop communism, through the dialectical back-and-forth between work in the theoretical realm and further developments in the world, including the development of a revolutionary struggle whose ultimate aim is a communist world. But what is crucial to grasp at this point is the reality that the new synthesis represents and embodies a qualitative resolution of a critical contradiction that has existed within communism in its development up to this point, between its fundamentally scientific method and approach, and aspects of communism which have run counter to this. This new synthesis has, most decisively, established communism on a firmer and more consistent scientific basis.
This scientific method and approach is key to the breakthroughs of the new communism which include: deepening the understanding of internationalism; repudiating the poisonous notion that “the ends justify the means”; developing new insights into both a strategic framework and practical approach to revolution which reveals the actual possibility of making revolution, including in a country like the U.S.; and re-envisioning how to go forward in the struggle to create a radically new—and truly emancipatory—society.
“Solid Core with a Lot of Elasticity Based on the Solid Core”
The relationship between solid core, and lots of elasticity on the basis of that solid core, is a hallmark of the new communism. There are a number of dimensions to this and this biography will touch on some basics.
The Preamble of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (which was authored by Avakian and adopted by the Central Committee of the RCP) explains:
As the new synthesis brought forward by Bob Avakian has given emphasis to, the process of making revolution, and then continuing the revolution in the new socialist state toward the final goal of communism, must involve the active participation of broad ranks of the people, of different strata, and will proceed through many different “channels,” involving many diverse forces among the people in many different spheres of human endeavor, not only those more directly political or relating more directly, at any given time, to the functioning and objectives of the leadership of the revolution and the new socialist state; and the orientation and aim, consciously taken up by growing numbers of the people, must be to work so as to enable all this to contribute, in the final analysis, to the struggle to further transform society in the direction of communism.
In keeping with this orientation and these objectives, the principle of “solid core, with a lot of elasticity” must be applied. This means that, on the one hand, there must be a continually expanding force in society, with the revolutionary communist party as its leading element, which is firmly convinced of the need to advance to communism and deeply committed to carrying forward this struggle, through all the difficulties and obstacles; and, on the basis of and at the same time as continually strengthening this “solid core,” there must be provision and scope for a wide diversity of thinking and activity, among people throughout society, “going off in many different directions,” grappling and experimenting with many diverse ideas and programs and fields of endeavor–and once again all this must be “embraced” by the vanguard party and the “solid core” in an overall sense and enabled to contribute, through many divergent paths, to the advance along a broad road toward the goal of communism. This orientation and approach is embodied in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.
Ardea Skybreak further breaks this down:
The real reason that you need to build in and allow for some genuine elasticity, on the basis of the solid core, is because society needs it, the process needs it. The revolutionary process itself needs to breathe, the revolutionary society needs to breathe, or it won't be any good. Both the process of getting to the revolutionary seizure of power, and then the process of building the new society needs to breathe. And if you try to control it all too tightly and too rigidly—even if you happen to be right in what you're doing at any given time, if you're too tight and controlling, it's just going to be discouraging and demoralizing to people, and people are not going to be given the scientific tools to figure it out enough themselves, and you're going to end up with a repressive society, a rigid society and a rigid process.
And Bob Avakian really understands that, because he's a good enough scientist to understand the material tension that exists, objectively, between what's called the solid core, the certitude, the elements that you can actually be confident of, in terms of what's wrong with the current society and what's needed in a future society to benefit humanity, while at the same time understanding the need to sort of shepherd the process in such a way that it can encompass and incorporate the widest possible diversity of views and approaches from among the different strata of the masses in society.
Internationalism
Avakian has extensively addressed the question of proletarian internationalism, advancing an understanding that the proletarian world revolution must be viewed as a single integrated world process, made of many diverse processes in different countries, in which the international arena is overall principal; that socialism in a particular country must in the first place be built as a base area for the world revolution; and that in their approach to revolution, communists must proceed from an understanding of what will advance revolution on a world scale. Avakian contends that as long as capitalist-imperialist relations of exploitation and production and an oppressive capitalist state still have a foothold in the world, there is the basis for these relations to recreate themselves and spread elsewhere; and that in fact, it is quite likely that socialism in particular countries will be reversed unless further advances are made in the world proletarian revolution. Further, Avakian argues that in an ultimate and overall sense, the development of a revolutionary situation in a particular country is more determined by developments in the world as a whole than by developments in that country—and emphasizes that this understanding must be incorporated into the approach to revolution, in particular countries as well as on a world scale.
It is in the spirit of internationalism that BA has put forward and popularized as slogans “Internationalism—The Whole World Comes First” and “American Lives Are Not More Important Than Other People’s Lives.”
An expression of the internationalism, which is foundational to the new synthesis of communism, is the concept of emancipating humanity. Ardea Skybreak explains:
One of the things you get from Bob Avakian [BA] which I really appreciate is that he’s promoted this concept that we need “emancipators of humanity” and that we need to move in the direction of making this world, this entire planet, a good place to live in and function for all of humanity, where we can get away from the idea that some groups of people, and some categories of people, or some whole countries, are lording it over others, and exploiting and dominating and oppressing others. That’s the whole idea of this revolutionary communism, and one of the things you really get from BA is the need to always think and proceed back from the need to emancipate all of humanity.
The Relationship Between Overcoming the Oppression of Women and the Emancipation of Humanity
BA has continually exposed the horrific nature of the oppression of women and the relationship of the struggle against this oppression to the emancipation of all humanity.
BA has written, “There have been economist and nationalist tendencies, even in the name of communism at times, which have downgraded the importance of the struggle for the emancipation of women. And with the new communism, one of its key pillars is recognizing the pivotal and essential role of the struggle to emancipate women and its interconnection with and its decisive role in the overall process of abolishing all oppression and exploitation. Closely interconnected with this is the radical break that the new communism has made with the previous history of the communist movement in regard to sexual orientation and traditional gender relations,” a history of not supporting, and in significant ways opposing the rights—and the struggle against the oppression—of LGBT people. (BREAKTHROUGHS, The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism. A Basic Summary)
Making Revolution on the Right Basis—A Revolution for the Emancipation of ALL Humanity
BA has written that the “new communism thoroughly repudiates and is determined to root out of the communist movement the poisonous notion, and practice, that ‘the ends justifies the means.’ It is a bedrock principle of the new communism that the ‘means’ of this movement must flow from and be consistent with the fundamental ‘ends’ of abolishing all exploitation and oppression through revolution led on a scientific basis.” (BREAKTHROUGHS)
Furthermore, BA has repeatedly analyzed where revolutions have gone off track. In his writings, including BREAKTHROUGHS, he has emphasized that the goal of revolution is not revenge and the reversal of the positions of oppressed and oppressor (where “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last”). Rather, its goal must be the emancipation of humanity—the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, and the corresponding antagonisms among human beings, and the uprooting of the soil out of which they arise, with the achievement of communism, throughout the world.
Critically looking at all social phenomena scientifically and from the viewpoint of the emancipation of all humanity, Bob Avakian has waged a sharp polemic against the framework of “woke identity politics” and cancel culture. Avakian has shown that as an ideology, “woke identity politics” is anti-scientific in that it denies objective truth and instead argues that truth is relative—that is, there are different truths for different “identities.”
Even where “identity politics” seeks to establish unity between different “identities,” it does this on the basis of the “intersection” of these “identities,” rather than basing this unity on what people who are oppressed under this system most fundamentally have in common—the fact that they are all oppressed as a result of the basic nature and dynamics of the system of capitalism-imperialism. As Avakian has emphasized, only unity based on that understanding will make it possible to fully overcome the divisions that exist spontaneously and are constantly fostered by the workings of the system objectively and by the conscious actions of its representatives of various kinds. The ruling class repeatedly seeks to pit different sections of the people against each other and, contrary to the illusions of “intersectionality,” the ruling class has many powerful ways to do that if you’re not proceeding from the point of view of the emancipation of humanity as a whole.
Avakian has also stressed that unity among people in struggles whose goal is short of revolution is definitely important, and should be fostered and developed in such struggles, but that the unity that is necessary to actually put an end to all this oppression can only be developed and sustained on the basis of the deeper understanding that it is this system of capitalism-imperialism that is the fundamental cause and source of this oppression, and that it is necessary to carry out a revolution, to overthrow this system, in order to finally uproot all the relations of exploitation and oppression that it embodies and enforces.
Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America
This landmark document, authored by Bob Avakian and adopted by the Central Committee of the RCP, is a visionary and concrete application of the new synthesis of communism. It provides a sweeping vision and a concrete blueprint for the day after a revolution has established a socialist state. This is a constitution for a future society that, as BA has emphasized, people would really want to live in. According to its “Introductory Explanation”:
[This Constitution] set[s] forth a basic model, and fundamental principles and guidelines, for the nature and functioning of a vastly different society and government than now exists: the New Socialist Republic in North America, a socialist state which would embody, institutionalize and promote radically different relations and values among people; a socialist state whose final and fundamental aim would be to achieve, together with the revolutionary struggle throughout the world, the emancipation of humanity as a whole and the opening of a whole new epoch in human history–communism—with the final abolition of all exploitative and oppressive relations among human beings and the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise.
As BA has written,
It is a fact that, nowhere else, in any actual or proposed founding or guiding document of any government, is there anything like not only the protection but the provision for dissent and intellectual and cultural ferment that is embodied in this Constitution, while this has, as its solid core, a grounding in the socialist transformation of the economy, with the goal of abolishing all exploitation, and the corresponding transformation of the social relations and political institutions, to uproot all oppression, and the promotion, through the educational system and in society as a whole, of an approach that will “enable people to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, and in this way to continually learn about the world and be better able to contribute to changing it in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity."
This Constitution reflects a deeper and broader understanding of the fundamental needs of the masses of people, and ultimately all of humanity, as compared to previous understandings within the international communist movement. Ardea Skybreak speaks to this deepened insight brought forward by BA:
But one of the things that needs to be understood more, and BA is very much a proponent of this, is that people need much more, the oppressed need much more, than just the material requirements of life narrowly defined. They also need science and art and culture, they need expansive atmospheres, they need room to breathe, they need room for dissent and ferment, they need room to think, they need room to do nothing. [laughs] It's a much more lively and broad understanding of what it means to correctly identify what are the objective needs of the people, even the people who are the most oppressed. Yes, they need food and health care and shelter, but they need a lot more than that. And in the past experience of the communist revolution, that hasn't always been understood well enough....
It needs to meet basic economic needs, but it also has to meet the cultural needs, the scientific and artistic needs, of people broadly and in all their diversity. It obviously needs to be able to encompass and meet the needs of the most oppressed and exploited, but it needs to do even more than that. It needs to encompass very broad swaths of humanity, in all its variations and diversity.
The New Synthesis of Communism—A Point of Controversy and Contention
After the loss of socialism in China, BA stood out among communists worldwide for his work developing a thorough and scientific analysis of what had happened in China and why capitalism had been restored there.
Over decades of theoretical study and analysis, BA forged a deeper and new understanding of the process needed to advance revolution to establish socialism with the final goal of communism. But all of this has been and continues to be very contested in the world today.
The basic premise that communism is a science has historically been a major point of contention, opposed and attacked by liberal thinkers such as Karl Popper, and even some communists in the international communist movement, and for a long time, even within the RCP.
In the international communist movement, there are those who argue that the previous socialist experiences have principally been flawed and that consequently it is necessary to revert back to variations of the principles of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions; and on the flip side of this, there are those who argue it is in essence “heresy” to critically evaluate and recast and re-envision the road to socialism and communism—a position which ends up reducing communism to a dead and ossified dogma. BA has polemicized against both of these trends and has developed and put forward the new synthesis of communism as the theoretical framework for the advance of the communist movement.
A FINAL NOTE
A basic and distinguishing aspect of Avakian’s body of work, and the new synthesis of communism—the new communism—that he has brought forward, is the deepening recognition that communism is not only a revolutionary political movement and a goal of future society, but also a scientific approach and method to understand and change the world. BA has spoken of “the importance of the unity between grasping and applying Marxism as a way to engage all of reality, on the one hand, and its particular application to the problems of making revolution, on the other hand.”
At the same time, Avakian has attached great importance to imagination, maintaining that “there is a unity between a systematic and comprehensive scientific method and outlook for comprehending and transforming reality, and giving flight to the imagination and giving expression to the ‘need to be amazed.’” His body of work and the new communism itself reflects this understanding. As he has written, “If you don't have a poetic spirit—or at least a poetic side—it is very dangerous for you to lead a Marxist movement or be the leader of a socialist state.”
* * *
Part 3: KEY WORKS OF BOB AVAKIAN
The scope and content of BA’s leadership is reflected in his extensive body of work which includes more than a hundred articles, books, films and audio recordings. BA’s collected works are available at www.revcom.us/avakian and through The Bob Avakian Institute, TheBobAvakianInstitute.org.
The following are a few key works that provide an introduction to the body of work of BA and a deeper understanding of the core elements of the new synthesis of communism:
BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian
(Chicago: RCP Publications, 2011).
Available as a free e-book at revcom.us.
THE NEW COMMUNISM—The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation (Chicago: Insight Press, 2016 ) Insight-press.com. Available as a PDF at revcom.us and TheBobAvakianInstitute.org.
Written by Bob Avakian, this work is described by the publisher as ‟a masterwork and a master class—it is a living laboratory of the new synthesis of communism developed by Bob Avakian. It is also striking in its ability to combine high level revolutionary communist theory and modeling of revolutionary leadership with a visceral, colloquial and passionate style that will resonate with and be accessible to a wide variety of readers.ˮ
Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America
(Draft Proposal) Authored by Bob Avakian, and adopted by the Central Committee of the RCP (Chicago: RCP Publications, 2010) Available as a PDF at revcom.us and TheBobAvakianInstitute.org.
The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America is a visionary and concrete application of the new synthesis of communism. It provides a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for the day after a revolution has established a socialist state.
BREAKTHROUGHS, The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism. A Basic Summary (Chicago: Insight Press, 2021) Insight-press.com. Published as an eBook and in PDF. Available as a PDF at revcom.us and at TheBobAvakianInstitute.org
BREAKTHROUGHS is a distilled discussion of the theory, strategic orientation and objectives of the communist movement as this was developed from the time of Marx and with its further development and synthesis with the new communism. It is a “basic summary,” rather than an attempt at a complete and final summary, because the development of the new communism is a work in progress, an important part of which is continuing to learn from and further synthesize what has come before, in the first great wave of communist revolution, beginning with the historic breakthrough by Marx.
The Bob Avakian Interviews: Up Close and Personal With Bob Avakian, Heart and Soul & Hard-Core For Revolution (2022). Available at YouTube.com/TheRevComs, revcom.us and TheBobAvakianInstitute.org
“SOMETHING TERRIBLE,
OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING:
Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions,
The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—
And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed
A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution” (2021)
Available at revcom.us and at TheBobAvakianInstitute.org
“REVOLUTION: A REAL CHANCE TO WIN” (2023)
A five part series of articles:
Part 1: We Are Serious
Part 2: A Scientifically Based Strategy
Part 3: Civil War and Revolution
Part 4: Hard Core Youth and the Revolution
Part 5: Winning and Winning
Available at revcom.us and TheBobAvakianInstitute.org.
BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live.
Film of a talk given in 2012. For more on this film, to order the DVD set or to watch it online, go to revcom.us.
From Ike to Mao and Beyond
My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist: A Memoir by Bob Avakian
(Chicago: Insight Press, 2006). insight-press.com.
"The New Synthesis of Communism: Fundamental Orientation, Method and Approach, and Core Elements—An Outline"
Available at revcom.us and TheBobAvakianInstitute.org.
This outline, written by BA in 2015, provides a basic sense of the scope, and of the essential scientific method and approach and strategic orientation and core elements, that mark the new synthesis as a further, qualitative development of communism. The outline is divided into four sections. Each section has core elements with a brief description, along with key works that can be studied to gain a deep understanding of the new synthesis. The main points of this outline are:
• Method and Approach: Communism as a Science—Further Development of Dialectical Materialism
• Internationalism
• The Strategic Approach to Revolution, Particularly in Imperialist Countries Such as the U.S.—But with Implications More Generally
• Building the New Society, Advancing to a New World
Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World
(Chicago: Insight Press, 2008) insight-press.com
Follow Bob Avakian on social media @BobAvakianOfficial
SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION: On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak (Chicago: Insight Press, 2015) insight-press.com
Read a PDF online at revcom.us or TheBobAvakianInstitute.org
In the early part of 2015, over a number of days, Revolution [website/newspaper] conducted a wide-ranging interview with Ardea Skybreak, a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology. Skybreak, a critical thinker with curiosity about the world and heart for humanity, is someone who based on her scientific and political inclinations developed a deep appreciation for BA and became a follower of BA. In this interview Skybreak brings alive what is most fundamental and pivotal in the new synthesis of communism—the scientific method and approach of BA. Skybreak also explores and argues for other key elements of the new synthesis. In accessible language and with revolutionary élan this interview makes the argument for why the new synthesis of communism and the leadership of BA matters to the future of humanity.