Phony Communism Is Dead... Long Live Real Communism! 2nd Edition by Bob Avakian (2004-10-01)

by Bob Avakian

A bold and challenging book that cuts right to the debate of our times. Is capitalism the best of all possible worlds? Avakian contrasts the brutal realities of the free market to the claims of its... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898511224
• ISBN13: 9780898511222
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: RCP Publications
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Re-Envisioning Revolution and Communism

Through three decades of work ruthlessly interrogating the first wave of Socialist revolutions, Avakian gives us a deep analysis, and points a way forward with his 'new synthesis'- that has made radical ruptures with trends in the International Communist Movement - in the areas of philosophy, politics, and strategy for Revolution! This book is especially helpful in concisely explaining what it is we must uphold from the "Three Milestones" of Communist theory- Marx, Lenin, and Mao - while also examining what must be discarded...(and most importantly...why) A great book that will challenge you to rethink "conventional wisdom" about Socialism/Communism.

Interesting

Interesting read from the RCP take...he correctly asserts that the USSR was not a communist state, could not have been in the Marxian sense of the word.... for Marx, advance Capitalism was a precondition to establishing a communist society and we all know that pre-Leninist Russia was hardly that! The great leap forward from backwardness to communism alas could not have been achieved without (as Marx stated) first passing through the Capitalist phase of development. It is here where the USSR failed and the Chinese are beginning to correct...but who knows...although international political economies should not be looked at in binary terms...i.e. you're either communist or capitalist...but rather in transitions..even in the US 1/3 of GDP comes from government spending...this will increase as it becomes impossible to provide adequate healthcare, and social services while retaining capitalism, either the social services will have to go because of cost (causing civil unrest...i.e. the Great Depression, and the New Deal) or the system will have to fundamentally change...slowly transitioning to socialism...and decades, decades, decades later perhaps the ideal...communism. Avakian is a bit of a nut for me but still interesting to read from an IPE perspective.

Classless society is a real and realizable goal!

Perhaps, in light of the leap in public consciousness of the lies of the government and mainstream media, it is time to deconstruct one of the most pervasive lies of our time: that capitalism is the only viable (and desirable) system and that the implosion of the Soviet Union was proof. Maybe it is time to really dig into the contributions of Marx, Lenin and Mao, look deeply and critically into the experiences of the Paris Commune, the Russian and Chinese revolutions, and think hard about the future. Well, it's been done! Bob Avakian's book not only vigorously defends Marx's basic analysis of production, class society, and vision of classless society but he expands on it, by analyzing the practice and probing the questions posed by the revolutions so far. Phony Communism is Dead is fundamentally optimistic about the possibilities ahead, and while not resorting to formulaic pat answers, Avakian argues that struggling for the communist goal is THE way to get to a world we would all want to live in.

There was a deep need for this book to be written

This is probebly one of the most controversial pieces, to say not only are you a communist yourself, but that Communism did not "fail". The very title of this books needs to be seen in more places, in these times where our generation doesn't know what it was like to have a socialist country in the world to look to, and the older generation have had their memories and hopes beaten out of them with the "communism is dead" mantra. We're all told that our dreams of something better are unreal, because communism is dead, it failed and was never any good anyway. The very purpose of this book is to refute that, and its refreshingly upapologetic in doing so, backed up with historical perspective and understanding of the heart of socialism, and the differnece between "Failure" and defeat.

an important ideological refutation of communism's "death"

This is a short, important book for anyone who wants to know what communism's really about and how it's not dead but phony USSR commmusim is dead. This book shows that communism is far from dead.. it's barely begun to grow