Bob Avakian

Bob Avakian is Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which he has led since its formation in 1975. He is a veteran of the Free Speech Movement and the Left of the 1960s and early 1970s, and was closely associated with the Black Panther Party. He has continually published writing on Marxism for 25 years.

Life

Avakian was born on March 7, 1943 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Berkeley, California. The grandchild of Armenian immigrants who settled in Fresno, California to farm, he was a football player for his high school. His father was Spurgeon "Sparky" Avakian (1913-2002), an Alameda County judge in Oakland, California, and member of the Berkeley School Board. Bob attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he became involved in radical politics. He participated in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California—Berkeley that was led by Mario Savio. His political activities continued and he became spokesman for the Peace and Freedom Party, and an active supporter of the Black Panthers.

Bob Avakian was active in Students for a Democratic Society and was a leading figure in the Revolutionary Youth Movement II. In the Bay Area he worked to form the Bay Area Revolutionary Union. BARU expanded nationally by absorbing other Marxist-Leninist collectives coming out of the SDS. It became the Revolutionary Union.

Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Union, along with others such as C. Clark Kissinger and Carl Dix, led the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1975. When Deng Xiaoping went to the United States to visit Jimmy Carter, the RCP led protests at sites throughout Washington, D.C. Avakian and other participants in the march became engaged in a conflict with the police. Avakian and others arrested for the incident were charged with several counts of assault on a police officer. After a court granted Avakian and the other arrestees' request to be charged and tried together, the total punishment exposure (the most severe possible sentence) for the seventeen defendants was over 241 years ("U. S. v. Schiller", 424 A.2d 51 [D.C., 1980] ). As a result, Avakian went to France in 1981. All charges against him were dropped in 1982 [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/01/27/free_bob_avakian?mode=PF] .

Bob Avakian's current whereabouts are kept secret. His last appearances caught on video were two speaking engagements (on the East and West Coasts of the United States). These were recorded for the DVD "REVOLUTION: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About". The recordings were the first publicly available images of Avakian since 1981.

Views

Bob Avakian is an outspoken atheist and proclaims that humanity needs "liberation without gods". He is a proponent of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

As chairman of the RCP, and as a writer, Avakian supports the Leninist concept of the vanguard party as a necessary leading component of a revolutionary movement. The role of the vanguard party, as explained by Avakian, continues once regime change has been effected, as class struggle continues under socialism (as it did in the Soviet Union and China, where Avakian argues that "capitalist roaders" within the communist parties themselves "restored" capitalism under state auspices). In Maoist literature, these are widely agreed upon ideas developed from Mao's fight against the "Modern Revisionism" of the former Soviet Union, and within the Communist Party of China, as expressed in Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

He has argued against the idea that "spontaneous" rebellion will achieve political revolution without leadership bodies based on a dialectical materialist methodology and practical unity of action. This and other positions he has held have tended toward Avakian something of a polarizing figure among activists of a more "movementist" politics.

Avakian holds that while the United States contains "oppressed nations," a disputed idea in the communist movement, that the working class's struggle is of a "multi-national proletariat" for political power, not a series of separated, concurrent "issues." He sees the main strategic orientation as uniting the fight of that multi-national proletariat with the revolutionary struggle of oppressed nationalities, African-Americans and Chicanos in particular. Avakian and the RCP oppose identity politics as an incorrect "post-modern" and anti-Marxist idea, that there are separate and discrete "truths" particular to who holds them.

Avakian argues that the Democratic Party is not the party of the people, but serves one sector of the capitalist ruling class. He believes in the necessity of a communist party to lead a total regime change based on the uprising of millions, within the United States and around the world.

Avakian holds that "there is nothing sacred" about the current national borders, particularly since they were formed by a process of conquest and dispossession. The economic and state development of different societies must entail different forms of struggle accordingly.

Works

He writes for the newspaper of his party, " [http://revcom.us Revolution] " (formerly titled "Revolutionary Worker"), and has written several books including:

Books

*"Away With All Gods: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World" (2008)
*"Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History, and Politics" co-authored with Bill Martin (2005)
*"From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist" ISBN 0-9760236-2-8, A memoir. (2005)
*"Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy" (2005)
*"Preaching From a Pulpit of Bones: We Need Morality but not "Traditional" Morality" (1999)
*"Phony Communism is Dead... Long Live Real Communism!" - A response to claims of the "Death of Communism". (1992)
*"Could We Really Win?" - A talk about how revolution could be possible in a country like the U.S.
*"Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That?" (1986)
*"For a Harvest of Dragons: On the "Crisis of Marxism" and the Power of Marxism – Now More than Ever: An Essay Marking the 100th Anniversary of Marx's Death"
*"The Immortal Contributions of Mao Tse-Tung" (1979)
*"A Horrible End, or an End to the Horror?" (1984)
*"Bullets: From the Writings Speeches and Interviews of Bob Avakian" - A collection of quotes.

Printed Talks

*Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity, [http://revcom.us/avakian/makingrevolution/index.html Part 1: Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Right] and [http://revcom.us/avakian/makingrevolution2/index.html Part 2: Everything We're Doing is About Revolution]
* [http://revcom.us/avakian/anotherway/index.htm Bringing Forward Another Way]
* [http://www.revcom.us/blackhistorymonth/ The Oppression of Black People and the Revolutionary Struggle to End All Oppression]
* [http://www.revcom.us/avakian/avakian-works.html#democracyspeech Dictatorship and Democracy, and the Socialist Transition to Communism]
* [http://www.revcom.us/avakian/Avakianviewson.html Views on Socialism and Communism: A Radically New Kind of State, A Radically Different and Far Greater Vision of Freedom]
* [http://www.revcom.us/avakian/basis-goals-methods/index.html The Basis. the Goals, and the Methods of the Communist Revolution]
* [http://www.revcom.us/avakian/Avakian-coming-civil-war.html The Coming Civil War and Repolarizing for Revolution in the Present Era]
* [http://www.revcom.us/a/1262/avakian-epistemology.htm On Truth... On Knowing, and Changing, the World: A Discussion with Comrades on Epistemology]

Audio

* [http://www.bobavakian.net/audio.html Seven Talks] , includes question and answer session
* [http://revcom.us/s/cd-e.htm "Bob Avakian Speaks Out"] On War and Revolution, On Being a Revolutionary and Changing the World, interviewed by Carl Dix vol. 1 and 2, CD.

Video

* [http://threeqvideo.com "Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, and What It's All About"] , Three Q Productions DVD

References

External links

* [http://www.revcom.us/avakian Writings of Bob Avakian]
* [http://www.bobavakian.net/ Bob Avakian Speaks]
* [http://www.insight-press.com Insight Press]
* [http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs02052005.html A book review of "From Ike to Mao"] ,
* [http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/29/EBGBICCPDC1.DTL Berkeley: Memoir follows author's road to Communism] from SFGate.
* [http://www.archive.org/details/RCPpublicationsHowCanWeApologizeforTakingHistoryintoOurHands "How Can We Apologize for Taking History into Our Hands" by Bob Avakian at archive.org]
*

Critical opinions

* Ely, Mike. [http://mikeely.wordpress.com/9-letters/ Nine Letters to Our Comrades: Getting Beyond Avakian's New Synthesis] . December 2007. ( [http://www.revcom.us/a/polemics/NineLettersResponse.pdf RCP response] )
* Gordon, Eric. [http://home.flash.net/~comvoice/36cCult.html The Maoist cultism of the RCP is anti-Marxist] . Communist Voice Organization, September 2005.
* Punkerslut. [http://www.punkerslut.com/critiques/avakian/mlm.html MLM vs. Anarchism]
* Oppenheimer, Mark. “ [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/01/27/free_bob_avakian?mode=PF Free Bob Avakian!] ”. "The Boston Globe", 27 January 2008. ( [http://revcom.us/a/120/boston-globe-response-en.html RCP Response] )