Happy New Year! Good luck in your life and in your activism in 2014.
Thanks for the info. "From Ike and Mao" is on my (very long) reading list and I will check put "Away With All Gods". Yeah, I'll give BAsics a pass.
The issue with Avakians books is that they are good for finding trivia and useful factoids, and that is all. There is nothing there that is really actionable as far as class politics is concerned. But if you want to store some little fun facts from the history of various working class movements around the world, you can usually pick a few choice selections from Avakians speeches and writings.
re: Avakian books, 'Away with all Gods' is one of the more useful ones. Most of the rest is pretty hit and miss. Some parts of " Ike to Mao" are insightful on the history of the new left in the United States. From what excerpts I've heard from " Preaching from a pulpit of bones" and "For a Harvest of Dragons," there is some useful snippets there as well (as far as chronicling history is concerned; they are very dated). Most of my Avakian books are actually from the 80's and 90's. I acquired them ( and a random assortment of other interntational new left materials, circa the 60's-90's,) from some old Canadian Maoist who liquidated his collection, so it doesn't really represent the current thought material of the RCP-USA. I've never read the BAsics, but I do have "Bullets" ( the little silver book), which is pretty much the 80's-90's precursor of BAsics, I think.
Good post, re: the black bloc.
Not sure if this is a MIM revival or just Henry Park updating his blog. Its updated to April, 2011. http://www.mimdown.org/whatsnew.html I used to read their paper at a cafe near a place I worked, early 2000s. My initial impression was "WTF" but I've had a morbid fascination w/MIM ever since. BTW your Ke$ha spoof was hilarious. I meant the theory section. The articles are good, the ones on Veblen and Gaddaffi.I would have disagreements with some of the history articles.
No worries. "Philosophy section"? Also, when did MIM come back.
I meant to say thanks for the link. The site is interesting. I like the philosophy section and the film reviews. MIM is back, apparently, but they're as bonkers as ever.
If you like film reviews, you should follow the APL's main commentary and analysis site the Red Phoenix. http://theredphoenixapl.org/reviews/