Revolution #200, May 1, 2010
The Raymond Lotta Campus Tour:
Everything You’ve Been Told
About Communism Is Wrong
CAPITALISM IS A FAILURE
REVOLUTION
IS THE SOLUTION
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Most students today know little about communism—and most of what they know is wrong. The national campus tour by Raymond Lotta has begun to break open the “communism debate”—and this is a crucial part of the whole campaign: The Revolution We Need… The Leadership We Have.
Hundreds of students, intellectuals and others have heard Lotta at major universities—at UC Berkeley, NYU, UCLA, University of Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard. With facts and analysis, Lotta punctures the lies and distortions behind the official verdict that the first wave of socialist revolutions in the 20th century was a “failure.” And Lotta introduces people to Bob Avakian’s vibrant and emancipatory vision of communism. The Q&As have involved serious and lively exchange and debate, over the first wave of socialist societies and a wide range of issues, like “human nature” and how a new socialist society would deal with the environmental emergency.
In a series of hard-hitting open letters to major proponents of the “official story,” Lotta challenged the institutionalized verdicts and intellectual discourse on communism—whether a radically different world is needed, desirable, or possible.
A letter by two students in the Columbia Daily Spectator said, “This is our world, our generation, our responsibility to examine different viewpoints and perspectives. We’re figuring out what we think and believe, and we think that the things Raymond Lotta and the other communists are saying should be a part of that process. Because they break the box and compel imaginings.”
This whole offensive against the official story was and is new, very new—and it is just beginning to get going.
- For Tour Information: revcom.us/lottatour
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