“The ‘voting trap’ under capitalism”
Bob Avakian on the elections: no matter who wins, we lose.
The REVOLUTION is real! Watch it. Spread it.
New and Breaking News... Cornel West Interviews Bob Avakian: Get the Word Out, Spread the Link All Over, Organize Listening Parties
This weekend and in the coming week, the revolution will be crackling on the airwaves. The Smiley & West radio show on PRI (Public Radio International) will be airing an interview that Cornel West recently conducted with Bob Avakian. And an online podcast is now available.
This interview is sharp and wide-ranging, challenging and inspiring. Cornel West, a prominent public intellectual, engages with Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution in this country. The importance of this exchange getting out broadly into society should not be underestimated–and in fact, the reach and impact of this interview must be maximized in a thousand ways.
Right away:
*People should get the word out to contacts, friends, co-workers, and e-lists.
*People should be posting links to the interview on blogs, FaceBook pages, and use Twitter and other social media to extend the reach and impact of this interview.
*People can organize listening sessions of the on line podcast of the interview when it is aired in local areas. A version is also being aired on hundreds of stations across the country. (Get Station schedules here.) Get together in neighborhoods, in dorms, elsewhere.
THERE IS NO “PERMANENT NECESSITY” FOR THINGS TO BE THIS WAY A RADICALLY DIFFERENT AND BETTER WORLD CAN BE BROUGHT INTO BEING THROUGH REVOLUTION
*During this “election season,” the title of this article keeps coming to mind.
Reposted from Revolution #194, March 7, 2010
Editors’ Note: The following are points made by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, in a recent exchange with other comrades. This has been edited for publication here.
One of the more important statements in the Manifesto from our Party (Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage) is the quote from Marx: “Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their collapse in practice.” This is not just a matter of abstract theory—it has a broader effect. That belief weighs heavily on people who don’t like the way things are—they are weighed down by a belief in the “permanent necessity of existing conditions.” Over and over we are confronted by the fact that people can’t see beyond the way things are now.
This has to do with the importance of constantly wrangling with what a revolutionary situation would look like and how a revolution could actually be made. There is a point in “Out Into the World—As A Vanguard of the Future” on grappling with what a revolutionary situation would look like.1 We need to give people a really living sense of what we mean by “hastening while awaiting” the emergence of a revolutionary situation. And this is linked to the point that what we’re doing is building a movement for revolution and letting people know what we think that revolution would look like.
Announcing: New BA Everywhere DVDs!
These DVDs will include three videos: “BAsics Bus Tour, Atlanta to Sanford, FL… and Beyond…”, “BA Speaks — 1969, 1979, 2003”, and “Bob Avakian, ‘No More Generations of our Youth…’.” These ought to be gotten out very broadly to introduce people to BA and BA Everywhere, and would be very good for fundraising.
Stop by your local Revolution Books to pick up a few copies, and make plans to distribute these on campuses, in neighborhoods, at events, give them to potential donors, and make sure everyone who needs to know about Bob Avakian, the BAsics Bus Tour, and BA Everywhere sees these videos.
The “voting trap” under capitalism - clip from “Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian” given in 2003 in the United States. Bob Avakian is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. This talk, followed by questions and answers, is a wide-ranging revolutionary journey, covering many topics. It breaks down the very nature of the society we live in and how humanity has come to a time where a radically different society is possible. It is full of heart and soul, humor and seriousness; it will challenge you and set your heart and mind to flight. Watch the entire film online at www.revolutiontalk.net
“You Can’t Break All the Chains Except One. Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution.” A talk by Sunsara Taylor at Revolution Books on August 9, 2012, on a quotation from Bob Avakian’s book BAsics. This talk was part of “TAKE PATRIARCHY BY STORM!”, ten days of activism in New York City against patriarchy and pornography.
You cannot break all the chains, except one. You cannot say you want to be free of exploitation and oppression, except you want to keep the oppression of women by men. You can’t say you want to liberate humanity yet keep one half of the people enslaved to the other half. The oppression of women is completely bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited, and the ending of all such conditions is impossible without the complete liberation of women. All this is why women have a tremendous role to play not only in making revolution but in making sure there is all-the-way revolution. The fury of women can and must be fully unleashed as a mighty force for proletarian revolution.
BAsics 3:22
Spread the word about the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal)
The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) is nothing less than the framework for a whole new society: a new political system in which the will of the people will be expressed… and a new economic system that will actually be geared to meeting people’s material needs, as well as taking care of the environment and contributing to the revolutionary international process of eliminating all exploitation. Even more fundamentally, this is a framework to advance to a communist world—a world in which exploitation and oppression will be things to read about in history books and people will no longer be divided into antagonistic social groups but will instead live and work together as a freely associating community of human beings, all over the planet.
This isn’t a pipe dream. It’s based first of all on 40 years of deeply summing up the experience of the two main previous genuine socialist revolutions—the Soviet Union, from 1917 until the mid-1950s, when a counter-revolutionary, state-capitalist system was consolidated… and China, from 1949 until 1976, when a coup d’etat overthrew the revolutionaries who wanted to keep the revolution going forward. What were the accomplishments of these revolutions? What were the shortcomings, and errors? Why were they defeated? And what can we, and must we, learn?
It’s based also on digging more deeply into, summing up and taking further the method and approach, and the content, of the science of communism—particularly in the realms of internationalism, method and philosophy, the socialist transition to communism, and the strategy for revolutionary struggle. Bob Avakian’s body of work in these spheres has formed the basis for a new synthesis of communist theory—the foundation of the Revolutionary Communist Party’s understanding, and the groundwork for this Constitution.
Read and download the Constitution here. Get out the word about the Constitution.
Hear Bob Avakian read from his memoir
From Ike to Mao… and Beyond:
My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist
Chapter Four: High School
93 minutes / 43.9 meg (mp3)
Available at bobavakian.net
