Political activities
As a young man,Avakian became involved with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Berkeley,the Free Speech Movement [5] and the Black Panther Party. [3] In 1968,he wrote articles for the Peace and Freedom Party's publications [8] and in July 1969,he spoke at the Black Panther conference in Oakland,California. [9] By the time that the SDS split into three factions in the summer of 1969,Avakian was a leading member of the Revolutionary Youth Movement II faction,and was their candidate for National Secretary. Although defeated for the top position by Mark Rudd of the faction soon known as the Weather Underground,Avakian was elected to the National Interim Committee. [10] During that period,Avakian was a leading member of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union [11] alongside Leibel Bergman. [12] : 101
In the early 1970s,Avakian served a prison sentence for desecrating the American flag during a demonstration. [5] He was charged with assaulting a police officer in January 1979 at a demonstration in Washington,D.C. to protest Deng Xiaoping's meeting with Jimmy Carter. [3] [13] [14] After receiving an arrest warrant,Avakian went to France and applied for political refugee status. [1] In 1980,he gave a speech to 200 protestors in downtown Oakland [15] and his police assault charges were dropped a few years later. [1] [3]
In 2005,Avakian published an autobiography,From Ike to Mao and Beyond:My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist. [1] [16] He has been the Revolutionary Communist Party's central committee chairman and national leader since 1979. [15] [17] In 2016,the RCP USA and others helped form the organization Refuse Fascism,which called for the removal of Donald Trump. [18]
In August 2020,Avakian released a statement about the rise of fascism in America,calling on supporters to use "every appropriate means of non-violent action" to remove Trump,including voting for Joe Biden for President of the United States,while continuing to organize for revolution. [19]
Mao Zedong was a Chinese politician, Marxist theorist, military strategist, poet, and revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He led the country from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976, while also serving as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party during that time. His theories, military strategies and policies are known as Maoism.
Maoism, also known as Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung is a book of statements from speeches and writings by Mao Zedong, the former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, published from 1964 to 1979 and widely distributed during the Cultural Revolution.
The Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (RCYB) was the former youth group of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
The New Communist movement (NCM) was a diverse left-wing political movement during the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The NCM were a movement of the New Left that represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution. The movement, according to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.
In political ideology, a deviationist is a person who expresses a deviation: an abnormality or departure. In Stalinist ideology and practice, deviationism is an expressed belief which does not accord with official party doctrine for the time and area. Accusations of deviationism often led to purges. Forms of deviationism included revisionism, dogmatism, and bourgeois nationalism.
The League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist–Leninist) was a Marxist–Leninist[1] movement in the United States formed in 1978 by merging communist organizations. It was dissolved by the organization's leadership in 1990.
Kommunist, named Bolshevik (Большевик) until 1952, was a Soviet journal. The journal was started in 1924. The founders were Nikolai Bukharin, Georgy Pyatakov, and Yevgenia Bosch. It was the official theoretical and political organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art was a May 1942 forum held in the Yan'an Soviet and a significant event in the Yan'an Rectification Movement. It is most notable for the speeches given by Mao Zedong, later edited and published as Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art which dealt with the role of literature and art in the country. The two main points were that (1) all art should reflect the life of the working class and consider them as an audience, and (2) that art should serve politics, and specifically the advancement of socialism. The excesses of the latter point during the Cultural Revolution led to current Chinese Communist Party policy rejecting that point, but retaining Mao's encouragement of peasant-focused art and literature.
Siraj Sikder was a Bangladeshi revolutionary politician.
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that originates in the works of 19th century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism analyzes and critiques the development of class society and especially of capitalism as well as the role of class struggles in systemic, economic, social and political change. It frames capitalism through a paradigm of exploitation and analyzes class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development – materialist in the sense that the politics and ideas of an epoch are determined by the way in which material production is carried on.
In Maoism, a capitalist roader is a person or group who demonstrates a marked tendency to bow to pressure from bourgeois forces and subsequently attempts to pull the Chinese Communist Revolution in a capitalist direction. If allowed to do so, these forces would eventually restore the political and economic rule of capitalism; in other words, these forces would lead a society down a "capitalist road".
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA is a new communist party in the United States founded in 1975 and led by its chairman, Bob Avakian. The party organizes for a revolution to overthrow the system of capitalism and replace it with a socialist state, with the final aim of world communism. The RCP is frequently described as a cult around Avakian.
Marxism–Leninism–Maoism (MLM) is a political philosophy that synthesizes and builds upon Marxism–Leninism and the thought of Mao Zedong. Marxism–Leninism–Maoism was first formalized by the Shining Path in 1982.
Revolution is an American newspaper and official organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and has been published continuously since 1979.
"To the Rear of the Enemy", also translated as "To Go Behind Enemy Lines", is a Chinese patriotic song written in 1938 by Zhao Qihai. The song was a popular melody during the Second Sino-Japanese War, where it was used by numerous guerilla groups and gained popularity as a resistance song against the Japanese.
Criticism and self-criticism is a philosophical and political concept developed within the ideology of Marxism–Leninism and Maoism. The concept would be a major component of the political philosophy of Chinese Marxist leader Mao Zedong.
Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan or Inquiry into the Peasant Movement of Hunan of March 1927, often called the Hunan Report, is one of Mao Zedong's most famous and influential essays. The Report is based on a several month visit to his home countryside around Changsha, capital of Hunan in early 1927. The Report endorses the violence that had broken out spontaneously in the wake of the Northern Expedition, makes a class analysis of the struggle, and enthusiastically reports the "Fourteen Great Achievements" of the peasant associations (农民协会).
The Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, is a five volume collection of the written works of Mao Zedong ranging from the years 1926–1957. The collection was first published by the People's Publishing House in 1951, and was later translated into English by the state-owned Foreign Languages Press. A fifth volume, which included the works of Chairman Mao from 1949 to 1957, was released during the leadership of Hua Guofeng, but subsequently withdrawn from circulation for its perceived ideological errors. There has never been an official "Complete Works of Mao Zedong" collecting all his known publications. A number of unauthorized volumes of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung have been released, such as Volumes 6–9 which were published in India by the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights is a U.S. based abortion rights coalition founded by Merle Hoffman, Lori Sokol, Sunsara Taylor and other initiators in January, 2022, aimed at preventing the U.S. Supreme Court from overturning Roe V. Wade and "decimating" abortion rights in the United States.
