Bob Avakian
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Robert Bruce "Bob" Avakian (Born Washington, D.C., March 7, 1943) is best known as the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, the largest Maoist group in the United States.
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[edit] Life
Avakian 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 others participants in the march were attacked by 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, their punishment exposure (the most severe possible sentence) was over 241 years. As a result, Avakian went to France in 1981 in a "self-imposed" exile.
Bob Avakian's current whereabouts are kept secret. His last public appearances 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.
[edit] 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. For this outspoken advocacy of the Leninist vanguard party, Avakian has been derided by anarchists and social-democrats.
Avakian has been criticized by followers of competing ideologies and tendencies as an apologist for repressive characteristics of the pre-Khrushchev Soviet Union and People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong. Conversely, he has been criticized by still others for taking a critical approach to "real existing socialism" of the 20th Century, particularly in the ways that Stalin subordinated the international communist movement to the national-state needs of the Soviet Union, and in the ways that class struggle was at times conducted by decree, not through widespread popular mobilization.
Avakian holds that while the United States contains "oppressed nations," a disputed idea in the communist movement, that the working classes 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.
Subsequent to the period of the Deng demonstration trial and exile, critics have argued that Avakian has a personality cult, citing the RCP's widespread "promotion and popularization of the body of work of Chairman [Avakian] and the development of a culture of appreciation for his work and his role," [1] often manifest in the Party publications, internal functions, and public events.
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. Avakian upholds the People's War model of insurgency in what are commonly called "third-world" countries, while seeing a protracted struggle to "create public opinion, seize power" in societies like the USA and Europe.
[edit] Works
He writes for the newspaper of his party, Revolution (formerly titled The Revolutionary Worker), and has written several books including:
- Preaching From a Pulpit of Bones - Two essays on morality.
- Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? - An analysis of what democracy is and means.
- A Horrible End, or an End to the Horror?
- Could We Really Win? - A talk about how revolution could be possible in a country like the U.S.
- Phony Communism is Dead; Long Live Real Communism - A response to claims of the "Death of Communism".
- The Immortal Contributions of Mao Tse-Tung - Articles summing up the importance of Mao Tse-Tung.
- Bullets From the Writings Speeches and Interviews of Bob Avakian (Little Silver Book) - A collection of quotes.
- For a Harvest of Dragons - A collection of essays.
- From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist ISBN 0-9760236-2-8, An autobiography.
- Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy - Essays on the listed topics.
- Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History, and Politics
He released an audio recording in 2001 entitled "Bob Avakian Speaks Out", which is available in two segments.-Source
He also released a film, "Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, and What It's All About", which records a speech he gave in 2003.
