Setting the Record Straight on Communism and Socialist Revolution

by Raymond Lotta

The revolutions in Paris in 1871, in Russia in 1917 (to mid-1950s), and in China in 1949 (to 1976)--were all great historic breakthroughs. Hundreds of millions rose up and gained precious experience as to what it would take to get to a world without exploitation, without oppression, without destructive violent clashes among humans, without enforced ignorance and superstition. These first attempts to emancipate humanity were defeated.

History is being written by the victors--the imperialists. The oppressors issue endless lies on what "the wretched of the earth" were trying to do, what brutal forces lined up against these heroic attempts, and why there were limitations and even secondary errors in their theory and practice.

Bob Avakian (BA) has not only defended these pathbreaking experiences, and shown a way to truly understand them, but most importantly, he has developed a new communism based on a much deeper and more scientific view of what is involved in emancipating ALL humanity. The new communism of BA breaks with and is a leap beyond the previous understanding of communist revolution and represents and embodies a qualitative resolution of a critical contradiction that has existed within communism in its development up to this point, between its fundamentally scientific method and approach, and aspects of communism which have run counter to this." (From Resolution 1 of Six Resolutions of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, January 1, 2016)

Along with bringing out the positive achievements of socialism and communist revolutions, and critiquing these previous revolutions through the prism of the new synthesis--how to do better next time around--there is a real need to boldly challenge the flow of lies, slanders, distortions, and phony representations of this history that has lowered sights and shut down discussions over how the world should/could be radically different. The lies serve to reinforce the rotten status quo and its conformist wisdom that the best we can do is adjust or reduce the misery in today's capitalist world order. This series aims to answer the most widespread lies about communist revolution.

Raymond Lotta is an advocate for Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism. He is a political economist and author of America in Decline and You Don't Know What You Think You "Know" About... The Communist Revolution and the Real Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future. He writes for Revolution/revcom.us and is a spokesperson for The Bob Avakian Institute. He has written extensively on China during and after the Cultural Revolution and has, through the "Set the Record Straight Project," which he leads, fought to spread the truth--and refute the lies--about the experience of the communist revolution in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1956 and China between 1949 and 1976.