Jan. 30

The New York Review of (Little Red) Books

Late last year, The New York Review of Books ran a full-page advertisement fairly glowing with the warmth of the enthusiasm it projected for work of Bob Avakian. In case that name does not ring a bell, Bob Avakian is Chairman of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Once upon a time, Avakian was a student of Stanley Fish at the University of California at Berkeley; but amidst all the excitement of the late 1960s, the poetry of Milton could not compete with the slogans coming out of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, and so a leader of the American masses emerged, even if the masses themselves didn’t notice.

The NYRB ad praised Avakian’s combination of “an unsparing critique of the history and current direction of American society with a sweeping view of world history and the potential for humanity.” It called upon readers to “engage” with his work. As it happens, I was once in a punk rock band with a former Avakianite. (This was back when one of the party’s slogans was “Revolution in the ‘80s – Go For It!”) Having thus already had the opportunity to (as they say) “engage” with Avakian’s work, I will testify that he is, at the very least, prolific and capable of extensive discourse. Nearly all of his writings are based on speeches to the party, and they do go on a bit.

In any case, the content of the full-page proclamation was much less interesting, all in all, than the list of people endorsing it. Among them were a few prominent academics. Cornel West was one of them. Members of the Harvard faculty were among the signatories. Ubiquitous cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek has recently added his name to an online version. The list also includes famous entertainers such as Public Enemy rapper Chuck D and Ricky Lee Jones, the folk-rock chanteuse. (The text and the most recently updated set of signatories can now be found here.)

Without quite endorsing the RCP slogan “Mao More Than Ever,” all of them had “come away from encounters with Avakian provoked and enriched in our own thinking.” Or so the text of the ad put it.

In the weeks since it appeared, a few friends who knew of my longstanding fascination with the Chairman Bob phenomenon asked about the New York Review ad. They were surprised to see it, and wondered whether all these people had actually taken up the cause of Avakianism.

My best guess, rather, was that very few of the signatories had read much Avakian. The abundance and verbosity of his pamphlets would exceed the stamina of any but the most disciplined of revolutionary intellectuals. What probably happened, I surmised, was that party cadres had pointed out various anti-Bush statements by Avakian in order to harvest a bunch of signatures from people who were angered by the course of recent history.

At the same time, it was easy to imagine how other people would probably understand the ad. They would look at it and conclude that the signatories were, in fact, hardcore militants looking to Avakian for leadership in establishing a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.

The belief that academia contains literally tens of thousands of such people has, of course, no basis in reality. But it is evidently quite profitable. There is an audience for such claims (the rate of propagation of suckers-per-minute having intensified since P.T. Barnum’s day) and it constitutes a more robust market than the one for Marxist-Leninist pamphlets. One pictures right-wing interns stuffing envelopes with reprinted copies of the NYRB advertisement and sending it to the hinterlands – and humming “We’re in the Money” all the while.

Well, not that it will slow down the fund-raising campaign one bit, but an article that ran on Sunday in the Ideas section of The Boston Globe helps clarify the motive of some of those who lent their signatures. Mark Oppenheimer, the editor of a new journal called The New Haven Review of Books, contacted some of the professors who endorsed the ad. He reports that they were much more interested in upholding Avakian’s right to free speech than they were in the content of his revolutionary doctrine.

There also may be a little nostalgia going on. Avakian is “a living link to the ’60s,” writes Oppenheimer, “an era when American campus radicalism reached its apogee of influence. And he was an outspoken atheist back in the day, too, before Christopher Hitchens and others found bestsellerdom in unbelief; one professor told me he admired Avakian’s stand against religious fundamentalism. But above all the Avakian narrative allows civil libertarians to register a vote for free speech, even if they have to ignore the fact that Avakian’s speech is in no danger of being suppressed. Rightly concerned about Guantanamo and the Patriot Act, they figure that Avakian is a good proxy fight, or good enough.”

This strikes me as a judicious estimate. But while for the most part concurring with the article (for which Oppenheimer interviewed me about my own sad misadventure of trying to arrange an interview with Chairman Bob), I think there is a little more going in with that manifesto than meets the eye.

Buying a full-page in America’s premier journal of public-intellectual commentary is an expensive proposition for a small group on the far left. And it is not necessarily the most obvious use of resources for revolutionaries who have otherwise spent much of their energy trying to build “base areas” (as Maoist theory puts it) in ghetto areas.

To understand what was really happening, we might take a quick glance at what might look like a very different sort of cultural artifact. I mean the recently leaked video clip of Tom Cruise speaking about Scientology, which recently showed up on YouTube. Here’s a link, for as long as it may be good.

A couple of weeks ago, a researcher for one of the television networks asked me if I might be willing to discuss the clip on one of the prime-time news programs. As with being interviewed for the Boston Globe article, this was a delayed side-effect of having once been in a punk-rock band – for another members of the group was a Scientologist. (A career as armchair subcultural anthropologist and the loss of hearing in my right ear seem to be closely related.)

It seemed as if a much better guest for the program might be Roy Wallis, whose excellent book The Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological Analysis of Scientology was published by Columbia University Press in 1976. But Wallis is now teaching in Belfast, while I live about two blocks from one of the network’s studios. Gore Vidal is said to have remarked that one should never turn down an opportunity either to have sex or go on TV. That seems like incredibly bad advice from the standpoint of hygiene, literal or spiritual. Still, I agreed to take a look at the clip to see if there were anything interesting to say about it.

And indeed there was. The video shows the famously enthusiastic actor discussing the miraculous powers he has gained from his years in the Church. The clip also demonstrates that Cruise can speak advanced Scientology jargon with a certain fluency.

Some commentary about his performance has been remarkably off-base — treating it simply as a kind of recruitment film starring an extremely prominent celebrity. In fact, most of what Cruse says would be utterly incomprehensible to any potential recruit. You have to know the code, the inner lingo of the movement, to understand the implications of the points he was making.

Having studied Wallis’s monograph, I was able to follow the message almost like a native speaker. And that message was aimed strictly at anyone in the Church inclined to doubt its leadership. Cruse was pretty clearly warning members that their only hope lay in the authority of its established hierarchy.

So I explained in a short memorandum for the TV people – who thanked me, then decided another talking head wasn’t required for their program, after all. Gore Vidal might be unhappy, but I was slightly relieved. (Getting the Scientologists mad at you is no picnic. We’re talking about a church for which litigation is practically a sacrament.)

With hindsight, I think the general point of my analysis also applies to that full-page ad, as well. Whatever the intention of Cornel West or Slavoj Zizek in signing the appeal from the Committee to Project and Protect the Voice of Bob Avakian, the most important audience for its message was not the public-intellectual world served by The New York Review of Books.

The force of the discourse was, in important respects, centripetal. Its real audience is the party faithful. Or rather, those supporters who, at certain moments, feel doubt about whether Chairman Bob Avakian Thought actually can change the world. (The Chairman himself thinks that failure to appreciate his contributions is a major weakness among his followers, according to recent discussion among people formerly close to the party.)

There is nothing like a full-page ad in NYRB – endorsed by celebrities, no less – to make the road forward look that much brighter for the rank-and-file. It must also lift the Chairman’s own spirits. After all, the job of providing Maoist leadership in the world’s most highly developed country, with not a peasant in sight, has to get kind of depressing, at times.

Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week. He also blogs at Quick Study.

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Comments

Thinking About Packing It In

I am pushing 71 (give me three more months), and, at the moment, I am teaching mostly statistics to very young social scientists at one of the so-called elites ... and where the students are pretty damned sharp. I am constantly struck by the fact that I know all of this stuff (history ... world, national, and local affairs ... sports ... literature ... even pop culture) that inspires my students to say, “Oh, I didn’t know that” or otherwise look somewhat foolish by pretending to know something they don’t. It drives me crazy — although I do take some pride in the fact — that my students seem to have real difficulty distinguishing between my serious and ironic modes.

Anyway, sometimes when I read Scott’s essays I feel really old. I happened to have already seen both the NYRB ad and the YouTube video ... and I got a big laugh from both. I’m so dense, I thought that was the point. Really now, if you take that stuff seriously, it will drive you nuts. I’d put the President’s State of the Union speech in the same category except there are waaay too many serious consequences of buying into his worldview.

In any event, I admit I didn’t spend much time with the ad because I don’t think I have ever read more than two consecutive paragraphs written by Chairman Bob, but, having enjoyed at least 80% of the movies of Tom Cruise, I felt compelled to watch the entire ten minutes or so of the YouTube “lecture.” It was hilarious.

Then it occurred to me, “Omigod, that’s the problem my students have with me. It all seems so bizarre, they can’t tell if I’m really serious about statistics (a.k.a. scientology) or am just being ironic.” Perhaps it’s time to pack it in after all.

Frizbane Manley, at 8:00 am EST on January 30, 2008

Coming next...

I’m stoked. Where do I sign up for the Adjuncts for Lyn Marcus ad?

Abbott Katz, at 8:25 am EST on January 30, 2008

So, Scott, let me get this straight. The “right-wingers” are to be gently mocked for imagining (in their fevered paranoia) that the celebrity signatories actually agree with the content of Chairman Bob’s thought. No, no, they’re merely defending his right to free speech and responding like Pavlov’s dogs to some anti-Bush comments he made. But your conclusion is that the “real” audience is the party’s inner faithful, for a Chairman Bob message for which the celebs are serving as willing tools.

So a conservative only has to choose between two interpretations. Either they knew what they were doing (so everything conservatives believe about campus leftism is true); or they threw their brains out the window to enable a party hack to impress his core cadres (so everything conservatives believe about campus leftism is true).

Gypsy Boots, Yes and No?, at 10:15 am EST on January 30, 2008

McLemee and Avakian

Mr McLemee writes:

“I was once in a punk rock band with a former Avakianite.”

In the interest of full disclosure — of informing his readership of his own biases as they may affect his journalism —

Mr McLemee should have mentioned that he has long had a web page on his own website devoted to Bob Avakian himself.

Here it is:

http://www.mclemee.com/id67.html

Mr McLemee’s words on this page attest to a fascination — devotion to, admiration for, passionate involvement with — with Bob Avakian.

It’s the kind of thing a journalist should inform his readers about.

By the same token, failure to disclose this fascination to his readers suggests an attempt to hide it.

And any reader might wonder: Why?

Grover Furr, at 10:30 am EST on January 30, 2008

Freedom of speech for a man who speaks freely?

Anyone who wants to can hear Bob Avakian voice his opinions on bobavakian.net. I just did. I note that a DVD of his speeches is also for sale to the public (both Mastercard and Visa accepted) including a Spanish language version. Six of his books are for sale, some through Amazon.com. Why would anyone feel the need to defend the freedom of speech of a man whose speech is freely available to anybody who wants to hear it?

Jack Olson, at 11:00 am EST on January 30, 2008

WHAT THOSE WHO HAVE SIGNED HAVE TO SAY

If people would like to see for themselves what those who have signed the Engage statement have to say, go to http://www.engagewithbobavakian.org/comment.htm

anonymous, at 11:30 am EST on January 30, 2008

Disclosure

Must Scott McLemee state everything else he’s ever written on a topic? Or can one assume that when, in the column, he alludes to his longstanding interest in the subject of Chairman Bob he has disclosed it fairly?

Actually, Grover Furr, maybe it’s you who should disclose that you are the last known human defender of Stalin, someone who admires the show trials as a model of juridical integrity, who thinks reports of famine and purges in the 1930s are figments of the bourgeois imagination, and who generally regurgitates the dogmas of the Soviet Union at its most dogmatic and inexcusable. Maybe *that* is something readers of IHE deserve to know when considering whether to take seriously anything you write.

Truth Seeker, at 5:30 pm EST on January 30, 2008

Scott McLemee’s and Mark Oppenheimer’s pieces share several things in common: refusal to reckon with Bob Avakian’s ideas; sneering incredulity that anyone could conceive of revolution in this society; and distress over the fact that, while they believe these ideas are inconsequential, over 250 intellectuals, artists, people from social movements, and others have signed the statement from the Engage Committee to Project and Protect the Voice of Bob Avakian. Particularly disturbing, both McLemee and Oppenheimer trivialize the whole history of attacks on revolutionaries and radicals in the U.S. and the dangers of the current political climate where anyone’s home can be searched without a warrant, or anyone can be snatched away for indefinite detention without trial.

In terms of the content of Avakian’s work, at a time of human history when half the planet subsists on less than $2 a day; when the U.S. is waging unjust, brutal, and endless war in the Middle East; and when global warming threatens ecocide – Avakian is applying himself to nothing less than the challenge of how to transform the world in a liberating way.

By making the ludicrous claim that the Engage statement is directed at the “party faithful,” McLemee imposes his own world-weary cynicism and suggests that few in the “public-intellectual world” would be interested in new thinking about socialism.Avakian has been bringing forward a vision of socialism in which those now on the bottom of society, the great majority of humanity, would have the right and ability to explore scientific and intellectual questions – while professional intellectuals would be able to work, create, venture in all kinds of directions, and contribute to the advance of knowledge free of the constraints of profit and empire. He believes dissent, even dissent opposed to socialism, must be defining of the very fabric of socialist society. And Avakian has been grappling with how the next wave of socialism has to better handle the relationship between putting the needs of the great majority of society first while fostering individual initiative and protecting individual rights.

I encourage readers to visit www.insight-press.com to see some of the breadth of Avakian’s work and commentary it has provoked.

Raymond Lotta, at 6:40 pm EST on January 30, 2008

Glad to Hear It

I think it is really neat that we’ll all get to have our own opinions and everything.

Scott McLemee, columnist at Inside Higher Ed, at 8:25 pm EST on January 30, 2008

Avakian and Intellectuals

Well if it’s simply an issue of defending Bob Avakian’s right of free speech, I can’t really object. But I know that many of the signatories cannot possibly be supporters who agree with the ideas of Avakian. In particular, Cornel West is clearly not an “Avakian” or Maoist. For Maoism hardly coincides with the philosophical outlook revealed by West’s books. I once met Avakian as an undergraduate. I’ve met members of the Revolutionary Communist Party. While the militance of Avakian the RCP may have a certain appeal, a certain ideological rigidity is bound to be off-putting for those who cherish intellectual creativity and free thinking.And for those who, like myself, seek an open and democratically cooperative society in the place of a rapacious capitalism, Maoist authoritarianism is decidedly unappealing (to put it mildly)

Professor RB, at 10:00 pm EST on January 30, 2008

Grover Furr’s outraged response to a mention of Bob Avakian reveals that even in 2008, the enmity both Stalinists and Trotskyists have for Very Late Capitalism is trumped by the enmity they have for each other. This gives me a certain warm fuzzy feeling inside, as if I was again a youth listening to my grandmother reminisce about fellow-traveling and the American Labor Party. (True story BTW.) However, nostalgia should not be confused with an actual desire for a resumption of old-line CPUSA or RCP politics.

Similarly, I suspect that many people signing a petition in support of Bob Avakian’s right to free speech could be motivated by that warm fuzzy feeling one gets while nostalgic for browsing the old RCP bookstore in the basement in Harvard Square. That doesn’t mean we were into buying all those books about how great Shining Path was — a truly bad idea. (In the marketplace of ideas, I support Bob Avakian’s right to take his rightful place — at the remainder table. Anyone actually scared of Bob Avakian is still checking under the bed for monsters, I expect.)

Ass’t Research Cynic, Enormous State University, at 5:35 pm EST on January 31, 2008

So the author’s response to Lotta’s post is a snide one sentence? Pretty off-putting and telling.

Furr’s pointing out of the author’s intentional and dishonest lack of information is met with “yeah but you’re like the ONLY guy that talks about Stalin in a positive light.” Fun stuff.

Anon, at 2:10 pm EST on February 1, 2008

When is this guy going to die?

Bob Avakian is a blowhard and a demagogue who, via his quickly aging “army” of loyalists from the 60’s, preys on young, disaffected college students. As a sutent-activist, I’ve seen it first-hand. RCP youth might as well be goose-stepping around America’s campuses becuase the individuals in these groups have NO independent thought. The communes, the bookstores, the newpapers — its an all-inclusive culture that borders on cultist. In terms of free speech, more power to them. But the RCP itself is a fascist organization from top to bottom and their ideas are frankly delusional (but don’t take my word for it, check it out yourself). Furhtermore, the RCP has a long history of co-opting other organizations and attempting to gain access to power positions in more “mainstream” groups; thereby having an outlet for propogating their message (best example, the SDS was destroyed from the inside out by an attempted Maoist takeover). They also are known to use front groups for the same purpose- example, the “World Can’t Wait” Campaign (perhaps how some of the NYRB signators came to be affiliated with this nutjob). Bob Avakian and friends admire both the authoritarian philosophies and tactics of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.Parents, teach your children well. Teach them to think for themselves, and for God’s sake, avoid the RCP, Lyndon LaRouche, and any other group that offers them a full-time job peddling newspapers.

Steven Pieragastini, at 5:40 am EST on February 4, 2008

regarding the above rant

The buzz words are all here: “fascist, authoritarian, cultist, front-group.” It’s hard to figure out if this is just the litany of liberal anti-communism or parental warnings of “don’t go there,” along with an utterly perverted mindset that would wish death on someone who is taking responsibility for making revolution in today’s world.

For anyone genuinely interested in Bob Avakian as a leader and what happened from the 60s to today, take a look at his memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond. You can read the SF Chronicle review here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art...file=/c/a/2005/04/29/EBGBICCPDC1.DTL

anon, at 2:00 pm EST on February 7, 2008

Nine Letters: “Getting Beyond Avakian’s Synthesis”

Before I comment, I do have to say that “amusing” is the word for my experiences with academic marxo-leftism as a communist youth organizer. Anemic, self-satisfied, irrelevant. Not to a person, hardly. But in it’s broad puffy outlines it seemed like a retirement home for good intentions.

That’s youthful fanaticism for you. If you actually intended to make a change in the world – particularly through bringing ideas and radical political engagement to the kind of people not exactly reading peer-reviewed journals... you could always be assured of a pat on the head, some snide recognition and self-satisfied assurances that youth fades.

Well, end results of decades spent as critical critics has done its damage – with snarky strangling clever and cynical chic the new gray.

With all that said, there is some life in the Old Mole yet. A former editor of the RCP’s party press has broken with Avakian – and among those not exactly seeing deliverance from the depth of our problems in an Obama presidency – Mike Ely’s Nine Letters to Our Comrades: Getting Beyon Avakian’s Synthesis is causing a stir.

Here’s the link:http://mikeely.wordpress.com/9-letters/

Uncharacteristically, the RCP issued a clumsy rebuttal filled with classic sectarian boiler-plate.

———

In other words: it is the passivity and impotence of leftist discourse, among other things, that has fed the existence of sectarian leftism. If at the end of the day it’s really about “discourse” to the thousands of academic leftists pursuing official intellectual certification and career – then people who find themselves resisting as best they can will be drawn to groups more inwardly focused than what their rhetoric might otherwise imply.

You rarely get caught in the traps you see coming.

the burningman, Taking Avakian seriously... at Big Character Design, at 5:35 pm EST on February 16, 2008

In addition to the many problems with a lot of the anti-Avakian commentary above (much of which was spoken to by other comments)I have to note a real current of anti-intellectualism. I.e., a dumbstruck incomprehension that serious non-communist intellectuals like Cornell West might truly be “engaged” and “provoked” by the writings of people who they don’t agree with. What do these commentators think intellectual life should consist of — people who agree patting each other on the back, and hurling insults at people they don’t agree with? This is completely sterile and won’t advance humanity one inch closer to understanding the complexities of the society, much less the universe.

By contrast, Avakian is speaking seriously to crucial questions facing humanity, and this is a part of what makes him “appealing” to many, and dangerous to this system. And folks should not let bad-mouthing from MSM (or anyone else) keep them from checking Avakian out; if nothing else he almost certainly make you think differently about some things, and that cannot be a bad thing!

A great opportunity for this is coming up — around the country there will be major presentations of Avakian’s New Synthesis (the deeper understanding he has developed about the nature of revolution, socialism and communism) followed by what should be wild discussion. The New York Event is announced below:

Sunday, March 9th — 4:00 p.m. Revolution Books presents: “Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism: WHAT IS BOB AVAKIAN’S NEW SYNTHESIS?”

Presentation Followed By Discussion.

Agonizing about the direction of society? The world? Think communism is dead, but hope that another world is possible? You need to hear this. Presentation followed by discussion of how Bob Avakian has re-envisioned socialism which is both visionary and viable. How he has tackled a whole realm of questions, including how a new revolutionary power could maintain power and maintain it as a power worth keeping.

St. Paul & St. Andrew Church Corner of West 86th St & West End Ave 1 train to 86th Street, walk 1 block west to West End Ave $10 sliding scale Further info: 212-691-3345www.revolutionbooksnyc.org

www.bobavakian.net

Reenvisioning Socialism, What Is Bob Avakian’s New Synthesis, at 4:30 am EST on March 3, 2008

Bob Avakian is a almost comical blowhard who is a symbol of the sad state of the radical left in the United States. I am very far left(I lean in the direction of Leon Trotsky myself), but Avakian is worse then useless to revolutionary socialists trying to figure out how to move forward into the 21st century.I have read Avakian’s memoir, I have forced myself to listen to his talks, which can be seen as a sort of masochism. He is a terrible writer and shallow thinker who covers up the fact that he really doesn’t have much to say by using lots of fancy and pretentious words and Marxist phrases. Quite frankly, if his average essay had all the “contradictions” and “dialectical relations"taken out of them, it would be little more then a pamphlet. As an anarchist friend of mine put it, Avakian’s work is about 20% content and the rest is useless reiteration and clarification. His evidence for his points is mostly worthless, his citations largely coming from his own talks.

He also doesn’t have a serious view of why the two major socialist revolutions in Russia and China failed, and continues to uphold monsters like Stalin and Mao. He brushes off the murder of millions of people as “mistakes” that Stalin made, flying in the face of the overwhelming evidence that has been released from the Soviet archives since 1991. This is not only deeply insulting to Stalin’s many victims, some of whom are still alive, but it also undermines the moral integrity of the entire revolutionary socialist movement. How can Avakian get all upset over Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo, while he doesn’t say one word to condemn the gulag? How can he be say he wants the academic freedom of people like Norman Finkelstien and Ward Churchill, while he longs for the days of the Cultural Revolution?

My main concern for Avakian, however, is that he undermines everyone else who, in the wake of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, is thoroughly disgusted with our rotten corporate-capitalist system and wants a new revolutionary direction for the United States and the world. Avakian’s supporters, small in numbers but all too loud, draw people in with their revolutionary posturing at demonstrations and usually push people right back out, frightening and disgusting them with their dogmatism and creepy cult of personality(oh I’m sorry “culture of appreciation") around Avakian. This not just a tragedy, it is a crime, because dedicated radical activists are so badly needed in this terrible time. Thats my two cents, I’d be happy to get a response.

Sam, DePaul, at 7:55 pm EST on March 3, 2008

Cornel West, et al

“Re-Envisioning” writes that Cornel West and others have “engaged” the work of Bob Avakian.

I’ve read several books by Cornel West and seen him speak on two occassions. Aside from the blurb he offered for Avakian’s memoir, and rumors that the public intellectuals of the left are (notoriously) promiscuous in their support for a wide array of activists and other leftists...

Could you include a list of citations of Avakian speaking on any topic whatsoever?

Could you post a link to what Cornel West thinks of Bob Avakian’s construction of a truly “Constantinian” cult of personality around himself? Maybe one from Zinn that wasn’t solicited as part of the book’s marketing?

Can you refer us to any published commentary on the intellectual merits of Bob Avakian’s lifework?

I have read and engaged Bob Avakian. Some of the questsions he points to are indeed important. But you know what: his real “contribution” is to construct the parody of a cult of personality around himself, to demand that other communists in and around the RCP tow that line and to employ sophistry in defense of this defining indefensibility.

It has wasted the last serious attempt to build a communist party in this country, and now that they’ve settled on the Bob Avakian Show as first principle, the last guests are exiting the hall...

———-

Who here is hostile to intellectuals? We’re commenting on the “Inside Higher Ed” blog about the “New York Review of Books". LOL.

If “Re-Envisioning” was talking about me, I was rather speaking about the scholasticizing of academic Marxism (and left thought in general)... but no doubt those defending Avakian’s cult of personality feel the need to change the subject... since they obviously have no support here (or anywhere on earth) for that position.

————

And don’t forget to catch Zizek opening this year’s Left Forum on March 11 at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC. All the cool anti-intellectuals are heading over...

the burningman, at 4:00 pm EST on March 7, 2008

Re-Envisioning Socialism said, “What do these commentators think intellectual life should consist of — people who agree patting each other on the back, and hurling insults at people they don’t agree with? This is completely sterile and won’t advance humanity one inch closer to understanding the complexities of the society, much less the universe.”

That’s pretty funny since I was not allowed to attend this Avakian event tonight in NYC promoting what they call his “New Synthesis” because I think the cult of personality around Avakian sabotages any attempt to build a revolutionary party with legs.

They wouldn’t let me in. Because of what I think, and what they apparently feared I might say.

Just thought I’d mention it.

For anyone interested in the effect Avakian’s ramped up claims of super-specialness are having on the RCP and it’s orbit – check out the lively and ongoing commentary on KASAMA:

http://mikeely.wordpress.com

Jed, Talk about a closed cipher at People’s Republic of Brooklyn, at 4:30 am EDT on March 10, 2008