OVERALL READINGS:

*  THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation by Bob Avakian (Download as PDF or order from Insight-Press.com)

* 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 (Download as PDF or order from Insight-Press.com)

* The New Synthesis of Communism: Fundamental Orientation, Method and Approach, and Core Elements by Bob Avakian

READINGS FOR PROGRAM TOPICS

Readings for First Topic: At a Time When the Very Notion of Objective Truth Is Under Attack from Both Right and Post-modern “Left”… How Do We Know What Is True and Why Does It Matter?

•  THIS STATEMENT on the relation between necessity and accident, and between underlying material conditions and conscious human activity—which is cited by Ardea Skybreak in Of Primeval Steps and Future Leaps, and discussed in the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!

Neither the emergence of the human species nor the development of human society to the present was predetermined or followed predetermined pathways. There is no transcendent will or agent which has conceived and shaped all such development, and nature and history should not be treated as such—as Nature and History. Rather, such development occurs through the dialectical interplay between necessity and accident and in the case of human history between underlying material forces and the conscious activity and struggle of people.

•  The follow quotes from BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian:

For humanity to advance beyond a state in which “might makes right”—and where things ultimately come down to raw power relations—will require, as a fundamental element in this advance, an approach to understanding things (an epistemology) which recognizes that reality and truth are objective and do not vary in accordance with, nor depend on, different “narratives” and how much “authority” an idea (or “narrative”) may have behind it, or how much power and force can be wielded on behalf of any particular idea or “narrative,” at any given point. 

—BAsics, 4:10

What people think is part of objective reality, but objective reality is not determined by what people think.

—BAsics 4:11

There is a place where epistemology and morality meet. There is a place where you have to stand and say: It is not acceptable to refuse to look at something—or to refuse to believe something—because it makes you uncomfortable. And: It is not acceptable to believe something just because it makes you feel comfortable.

—BAsics 5:11 

• THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, “Part 1: Method and Approach, Communism as a Science.”  (Download as PDF or order book from Insight-Press.com)

•  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. (Download as PDF or order from Insight-Press.com)

Especially the sections:

* “A Scientific Approach to Society, and Changing the World”

* “A Scientific Outlook, A Boundless Curiosity About the World”

* “The New Synthesis of Communism, Solid Core and Elasticity”

•  “Part 1: Beyond The Narrow Horizon Of Bourgeois Right” from MAKING REVOLUTION AND EMANCIPATING HUMANITY, Bob Avakian (2007)

•  “Ajith – A Portrait of the Residue of the Past,” Ishak Baran and K.J.A., Demarcations, A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic, Issue Number 4, Winter 2015

•  “‘Crises in Physics,’ Crises in Philosophy and Politics,” Bob Avakian, Demarcations, A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic, Issue Number 1, Summer/Fall 2009

Readings for other sections to be posted soon.

 

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