Bob Avakian

[MarxistLeninistMaoist]

I was recently told of a site called revolution talk where bob avakian, chairman of the Maoist Communist party has a full spech in 4 parts lasting quite a few hours, he goes through everything from how we must build revolution to dialectics, its was a great speech and it seemed like this guy has got more charisma than any of the current communist leaders who reside in capitalist countries.
What do you think of this guy and his party and what difference if any in the heart of the most imperialist nation on earth.
Also, i have heard of a sort of cult around him, is this true.

[scarletghoul]

Avakian is pretty cool. He's a great speaker and I really enjoy his talks and writings. He's certainly one of the best commie leaders in the first world right now.
As for the cult, there is a kind of "cult of appreciation" around him in the RCP. If you look on the RCP's website for example, you will see countless references to Bob Avakian and how he is a genius who "brings Marxism to a new level" etc etc. Though he certainly is good (and every communist should read/hear his work), the RCP's glorification of him as their Great Leader is quite annoying, and it seems also counterproductive as it alienates the party from the people. A lot of people are just thinking "who are these crazy cult guys with their avakian man "

Having said that, its just as annoying when leftists completely reject anything Avakian has to offer just because of the cult

[Jimmie Higgins]

There's already a thread about the RCP - you can read it here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/all-communists-do-t119792/index.html?t=119792&highlight=Revolutionary+communist+party).

[MarxistLeninistMaoist]

yeah the others have been sabotaged by idiots.

[which doctor]

Avakian is pretty cool. He's a great speaker and I really enjoy his talks and writings. He's certainly one of the best commie leaders in the first world right now.
How exactly is Bob Avakian any sort of communist leader? I was under the impression that all he does nowadays is sip coffee at left bank cafes in 'exile' in paris

[MarxistLeninistMaoist]

I heard he was in self imposed exile, does anyone know why?

[BobKKKindle$]

How exactly is Bob Avakian any sort of communist leader? I was under the impression that all he does nowadays is sip coffee at left bank cafes in 'exile' in paris

That's fucking awesome, I should set up my own party so I can do the same thing.

[BOZG]

I heard he was in self imposed exile, does anyone know why?

Nah, it's not self-imposed. The evil AmeriKKKan state is out to get him!

Now back to reality, all charges have been dropped against him. He's just convinced himself that he's such a threat to the United States and that world revolution hinges us on his every word, speech and shit that he feels that he has to hide away in France.

In reality, he's just useless and too afraid to actually build an organisation.

[MarxistLeninistMaoist]

Why do so many communists hate this guy, is he really that bad.
He seemed very enlightened comrade, and was good at relaying his theory in working class terms, instead of sounding like a middle/upper class self loving harpal dinosaur

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Haven't delved into much of his stuff to be honest. Seen a couple of videos and bits of his writings. Seems that he is a more than capable theorist. But when we already have such an abundance of theory from past scholars such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosembourg, Mao, Trotsky...the list can really go on into the dozens..., do we need a theorist who is clearly incapable of translating his actions into words, or indeed inspiring others to translate his theorising into a practical workers' movement towards revolution?

My feeling is that Marxism, although it should always be added to and modernised, is a full enough body of theoretical concepts at this moment in time. What the Socialist movement needs is a leader - a Fidel or a Lenin - to be able to translate Socialism into workers' class consciousness.

[BOZG]

Why do so many communists hate this guy, is he really that bad.
He seemed very enlightened comrade, and was good at relaying his theory in working class terms, instead of sounding like a middle/upper class self loving harpal dinosaur

Because he has developed a cult around himself and sent himself into a self-imposed exile because of his own sense of self-importance.

[MarxistLeninistMaoist]

people say stalin had a cult, maybe the people just loved him and maybe the communists in the usa admire avakian

[LeninistKing]

Because the US left and the world left is too sectarian, too perfectionist, too rational, too academic. And withat such sectarian mentality the USA left is dead. Even Bob Avakian himself is sectarian, he doesn't support the Cuban Revolution, the Venezuelan Revolution, and the left-leaning governments in Latin America.

Many dogmatic leftists think everybody is a clone. Many socialists out there even hate Hugo Chavez, because Hugo Chavez is not like them. I know that we have reasons to hate Stalin, Pol Pot and other socialist killers. But Bob Avakian hasn't killed anybody.

Another thing is that the word "cult" is used in USA to put down anybody. In USA people use labels, slanders, and categories to destroy the reputation of people.

.


Why do so many communists hate this guy, is he really that bad.
He seemed very enlightened comrade, and was good at relaying his theory in working class terms, instead of sounding like a middle/upper class self loving harpal dinosaur

[Kassad]

The issue with Bob Avakian is really simple, to be honest. Bob Avakian writes some decent theory, though I think he's just as much of an anti-communist as Mike Ely when he talks about Cuba. His party is very active and does pretty well in promoting their party. However, they have a very key flaw. They are convinced that communist revolution cannot come without Bob Avakian.

That's the core of it. I've heard Revolutionary Communist Party members say that "communism is hanging by a thread, that thread is Bob Avakian." Basically, that means that without engaging and subscribing to Avakian's line of thought, the United States will never bring about revolution. This is, of course, ridiculous. The proletariat in the first world could use Avakian's theories to promote revolution and they can critically engage with them and possibly become a part of the communist movement, but the proletariat does not need Bob Avakian.

And that's about what it comes to. Despite the positive aspects of Avakian and his party, they have completely lost touch with the labor movement and I think they're experiencing significantly less growth than other revolutionary socialist parties because of their flaws. Their cult of Avakian is criticized, in my opinion, too much on the fact that it is a "cult." Really, I see nothing wrong with promoting revolutionary leaders, unless you start assuming the proletariat needs those leaders. In fact, I would spend more time criticizing the RCP's rather horrid political line on some issues than I would the cult.

[h0m0revolutionary]

.. though I think he's just as much of an anti-communist as Mike Ely when he talks about Cuba.


What's RCP line? Can't find anything on it :).

[Jimmie Higgins]

yeah the others have been sabotaged by idiots.I can already tell this thread is going to be so much deeper than all the other ones:rolleyes:.

He's awesome... he's a cult leader... thoes people are idiots... no, those people are idiots.

Can we have some politics in the Politics forum please?

I don't know why people want to discuss Bob Avakian as a person or a revolutionary figure in general... other than RCPers trying to raise his profile.

Imagine if there were posts about Marx like this... "what do you think about Marx, he has some good ideas and these pamphlets and this multi-part volume about capitalism he wrote that seem interesting... you should check it out." Or "hey guys, have you heard of Rosa Luxembourg? The capitalist press tells lies about her, but she sounds reasonable to me".

I'm fine if people want to discuss some particular political point or line that the RCP has because then there can be a discussion, but why do people start all these threads about Avakian in general? Tell us one political point or idea of the RCP or Avakian and what you think of it and then there can be a useful political discussion.

[MarxistLeninistMaoist]

Why does he not support cuba?

[Kassad]

Why does he not support cuba?

Bob Avakian, his party and Mike Ely consider Cuba 'state capitalist', which is ironic because they claim to be anti-revisionists, yet they uphold the same belief as opportunists, Trotskyists and the like. They claim that because Cuba became reliant on the Soviet Union for trade after the revolution, such as through their trade of sugar, it is revisionist. It is thus upheld that 1) the Soviet Union was imperialist for making Cuba relient on them for trade to sustain their economy and that it was using Cuba's government for strategic gains against the United States 2) Cuba is not socialist because its economy was not centrally planned enough or was not independent from world capital to the extent that it could be independent.

This whole argument goes completely out the window after 1991, as the Cuban Revolution still lives on in the form of the Communist Party of Cuba and the planned economy that has made Cuba probably the most revolutionary state on the planet right now. It is a tiny island that is isolated due to an immoral blockade, yet it still managed to provide universal healthcare and education, whilst putting an end to malnutrition and homelessness, all the while sending doctors annually to other Latin American countries that require medical assistance. Cuba is the definition of a revolutionary socialist and internationalist state.

I could really go off on a nice tangent about the absurdity of the Soviet Union being imperialist, but simply, the notion that the Soviet Union was imperialist and Cuba is revisionist because they collaborated and traded together is ridiculous, as it sought to promote friendly ties and continue the stride for international revolution. What was needed at the time was a united socialist bloc, but malinformed and often times illogical leadership in some socialist countries made that impossible.

What people like Mike Ely and Bob Avakian promote is a form of anti-communism veiled in anti-revisionism. They take on the same arguments that the bourgeois media and even some ultra-leftist forces promote in attacking Cuba, while claiming to be at its defense. What is needed is a revolutionary defense of Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution and the current Cuban state, not attacks on Cuba for its trade policies. Cuba has become a model of what is possible in the most backwards, oppressed and isolated countries when it comes to socialist development. Anti-communist attacks on it should be opposed.

[the last donut of the night]

people say stalin had a cult, maybe the people just loved him and maybe the communists in the usa admire avakian

No, in the USSR, if you spoke against Stalin you would either be silenced or killed. So much for 'love'.

[MarxistLeninistMaoist]

state capitalism is a bad thing though no?
i support cuba, but also am against state capitalism, but prefer cuba to a capitalist bourgesie country.

[Kassad]

state capitalism is a bad thing though no?
i support cuba, but also am against state capitalism, but prefer cuba to a capitalist bourgesie country.

I don't subscribe to the theory of state capitalism, whether promoted by Tony Cliff supporting Trotskyists or those who uphold Mao Zedong, so I really can't answer that.

[Revy]

Bob Avakian is not relevant to the American far-left, neither is his party. If you were a brainwashed Avakianite RCP'er, you'd think he was the Messiah (and of course, the natural leader of the US). Best to steer clear from these kind of cults.

[ellipsis]

I'm fine if people want to discuss some particular political point or line that the RCP has because then there can be a discussion, but why do people start all these threads about Avakian in general? Tell us one political point or idea of the RCP or Avakian and what you think of it and then there can be a useful political discussion.

I know what you mean, besides the one you linked, there was another recently. "So eh what do people people think of these guys? r they realy a cult."

[Jimmie Higgins]

state capitalism is a bad thing though no?
i support cuba, but also am against state capitalism, but prefer cuba to a capitalist bourgesie country.

Well I view Cuba as state-capitalist and I wouldn't say state-capitalism "good" or "bad" compared to other existing systems - just that it's not socialism because workers do not control the means of production. Obviously Cuba is a much more attractive version of state-capitalism than say North Korea, but neither country has real worker's power. However neither should be invaded by the US or imperialist backed coup or whatnot.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I know what you mean, besides the one you linked, there was another recently. "So eh what do people people think of these guys? r they realy a cult."

Yeah, I guess this discussion moved a little beyond that point and began discussing some particular political issues, so I might have been too hasty. But I hope in the future RCP topics could be more like: "the RCP states X because of Y, what do people think of that?"

[MarxistLeninistMaoist]

What do you think of the RCP organisational skills, do they get into the communities of the working class or do they parade pictures of mao?

[RED DAVE]

What do you think of the RCP organisational skills, do they get into the communities of the working class or do they parade pictures of mao?They seem to never have gotten beyond the loudmouth tactics of the Weathermen. In other words, their ability to reach the working class seems nil. I've been in four unions since they came in existence, and I have never detected any presence of theirs either inside or outside those or any other union in New York.

Their bookstore, Revolution Books, used to be a couple of blocks from wher my wife and I live, but they moved about 7 blocks north. Neither their old neighborhood nor their new is a working class area.

By the way, to pick up a theme that seems to be active around here: the point is not to get into "communities of the working class," but into "organizations of the working class," which means, primarily, unions.

RED DAVE

[chegitz guevara]

What do you think of the RCP organisational skills, do they get into the communities of the working class or do they parade pictures of mao?

Given that in the past two years, the RCP has imploded, largely as a result of Avakian declaring himself the alpha and omega of communism, I'd have to say I'm fairly unimpressed by his organizing skills, though he's done wonders for my other group, Kasama, which is largely composed of ex-RCPers (though not all are--me, for example).

Avakian is supposedly a good speaker. He had a few flashes of brilliance in the 60s (he's one of the founders of American Maoism and the New Communist Movement), but now he's fairly mediocre, and as a writer, he's just unreadable.

He claims to have made a qualitative leap in Marxist thinking, on the level of a Lenin or a Mao, but it's a self-referential leap. Like PHP = PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, the great leap in Avakian's thinking is that he has made a great leap. Whether you are a communist or not depends on whether or not you accept that Avakian has made a great leap. If you ask any of these people what the great leap is, they cannot explain, but he made it alright.

Thirty five years ago the RCP was deeply embedded in the working class, but around 1980, the drew the wrong lessons of their decade long efforts. They had assumed that they would be embraced by the worker class when they began colonizing in the early 70s, thinking that a new revolutionary upheaval, even bigger than the 60s, was just around the corner. The looked at the 1960s as America's 1905, and just assumed that America's 1917 was around the corner. Then Reagan rained on their party, and they withdrew from the worker class, looking for communities that were even more oppressed, and thus more open to revolutionary politics: the urban lumpen classes.

The RCP never really understood that starting in 1977, we entered a period of reaction, a prolonged period it turns out. Rather than trying to figure out what that means, and how we as revolutionary communists relate to those facts, they instead bolted from project to project. When they weren't getting the unrealistic results they had imagined before starting the project, they blamed members of the party, purged them, and moved on, rather then trying to engage reality. They even abandoned some projects that were beginning to show real results, because it wasn't happening fast enough, such as organizing in the projects.

Invariably, failure was never Bob's fault. He was always let down by the Party. So, after his long self-imposed exile, he decided to return to America (he's here now, but "underground") and take charge personally.

Avakian is a farce, and no one seriously interested in being a communist should pay him anything more than historical attention.

[RED DAVE]

Thirty five years ago the RCP was deeply embedded in the working class ... .Can you document this: where and when? I would like to see what unions they were involved in, what struggles, or, alternatively, what community actions, movements, etc.

RED DAVE

[btpound]

I personally have mixed views on the RCP

First I would like to say don't listen to anyone who says "Don't bother looking into them/it." If you want to be dialectical, that is all-sided in your view, you should investigate things from every perspective. That would include the perspective of those who agree and oppose a subject. This is how you gain a real perspective on a thing and really learn what is true.

On Bob Avakian, I have listened to almost every audio lecture he has put out, and I have found them incredibly insightful. He has some really awesome views on some things that have greatly helped my view on communism and the road to socialist construction.

That being said, I do not like his position in the party nor how the party is going about their "revolutionary" program. As has been stated here (ad nauseam), the RCP has developed sort of a cult of personality around Avakian. They put out things like "The fight for communism is hanging on by a thread, that thread is Bob Avakian." Avakian is not the revolution, the people are. if I was in that party I would stand up and say "I don't work for Bob Avakian, Bob Avakian works for me! And he's late for work" I feel like he is trying to set himself up as the next lenin or mao. Mighty and superiour above the people. Again, what he says in words and what he says in acts are completly diffrent. His talks are great, if only he practiced what he preached.

As for that "Revolution" video, I sorta liked it. I think it is directed toward more beginners in communism. I don't know what average worker would watch that and NOT think they were totatly crazy, or even understand it. I thought that in the last section, the Q & A, it felt like they had specific people ask questions, like there was a couple of black guys and a hispanic women who didn't speak english who asked questions. I feel like this was contrived to make them seem like they have this large oppressed working class base, when in reality I think it is more like upper-lower/lower-middle class people in the party. Probably a lot of students.

They seem to focus more on propoganda than action. From reading their publications, and looking at the sort of action they are involed in, it seems like they would rather tell the people what they should be fighting and where than going to the people asking what they want to fight for and helping them in that capacity. They seem like less of a vangard party and more like a moise machine

Though Maoism is not top-down, the RCP certainly is.

[Intelligitimate]

It should also be noted that RCP-USA members are, in my experience, pretty hostile to other groups. It's not like they just say "Well, we can disagree on Cuba, but would you like to help us do X, Y, Z?" If you are tabling at an event with them, you can expect them to react to you with a lot of hostility (I had a friend called a revisionist by them, lol).

Yes, they are a cult. Walking into any one of their bookstores will make that clear. I've been to the Chicago one several times, and had some interesting discussions with them. They are most definitely ultra-Leftists.

Worse than anything to me is their political line. Kassad touched on their rejection of Cuba, but it generally goes beyond that to incorporate all socialist countries. They don't support even highly progressive leaders like Chavez who are trying to make their country socialist.

If you traded the Maoism in for Trotsky, they'd be almost exactly like the ISO, except the ISO-cult is less pronounced and only visible once you're somewhat in the organization. This is why a lot of people refer to RCP as crypto-Trotskyist in only a half-joking way.

[chegitz guevara]

Can you document this: where and when? I would like to see what unions they were involved in, what struggles, or, alternatively, what community actions, movements, etc.

RED DAVE

This is a great story (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/ambush-at-keystone-1inside-the-coalminers-gas-protest/) from Mike Ely on his work in the coal fields of West Virginia.

I also recommend the Nine Letters to Our Comrades (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/pamphlets/9-letters/).

[RED DAVE]

Thirty five years ago the RCP was deeply embedded in the working class ... .
Can you document this: where and when? I would like to see what unions they were involved in, what struggles, or, alternatively, what community actions, movements, etc.
This is a great story from Mike Ely on his work in the coal fields of West Virginia.

I also recommend the Nine Letters to Our Comrades.The stuff on West Virginia is interesting and bears a close reading, which I don't have time now. It certainly shows a principled involvement that I was not aware of. I would, however, point out that it's only one case. The group that I was involved in in the 70s had ab active presence in Post Office, Telephone, Auto, AFT and Teamsters, some of which influences are important to this day.

The second seems to be an honest analysis of the RCP if, in my political opinion, granting far too much to maoist ideology than it's worth.

RED DAVE

[redasheville]

The stuff on West Virginia is interesting and bears a close reading, which I don't have time now. It certainly shows a principled involvement that I was not aware of. I would, however, point out that it's only one case. The group that I was involved in in the 70s had ab active presence in Post Office, Telephone, Auto, AFT and Teamsters, some of which influences are important to this day.

The second seems to be an honest analysis of the RCP if, in my political opinion, granting far too much to maoist ideology than it's worth.

RED DAVE

In North Carolina (my home state) the RCP would get in fist fights outside plant gates with other Maoist sects like the defunct CWP.

The RCP's predecessor organization played a role in the Richmond CA oil strike, and linking them up with the student strikers in the Bay Area in 68.