Communism Falls

FROM RUSSIA to Cuba to Harvard Square, the forces of capitalism have shaken the foundations of communism, spelling probable doom for the movement worldwide.

Harvard Square?

Revolution Books, Cambridge's best (and last) bastion of communist ideology, is in danger of succumbing to that most dreaded of capitalist institutions: the sales tax.

A "Keep Revolution Books Open!" flier on the door of the JFK St. store explains its dilemma: "We need $8000 to pay off fines from an overdue tax bill."

Curious, I slunk into Revolution Books armed with my reporter's notebook, my power pen and my stoic journalist expression, prepared for a smooth and meaningless statement from a slick, faceless spokesperson. I waited nervously in line behind some clean-cut first-years buying Expos books and an Eliot House resident buying Maoist literature to talk to Rachael Adler, a senior staff member of Revolution Books.

"Hi, I'm from The Crimson. Can you tell me why Revolution Books might close down?" I said, expecting a sharp "No comment" or, with some luck, a "The Council does not respond to imperialistic propaganda."

But Adler was quick with her answer. Revolution Books had failed to pay its taxes.

Wow, I thought. Standing up to Uncle Sam, refusing to support a bourgeois capitalist state. True revolutionaries. Or so I thought.

"We didn't know how to deal with sales tax," Adler explained. "We never got around to giving it to the state. We were really busy."

Revolutionary communism, destroyed by the lack of popular support in Moscow, had been crippled by the lack of an accountant in Cambridge.

BUT REVOLUTION BOOKS never bought into Soviet communism, anyway. "It's been phony communism since Krushchev," Adler says. The store was founded by members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which subscribes to Mao's version of the doctrine. These people welcomed the collapse of the recent Soviet coup--the hard-liners were "phony" Communists, anyway. The only "real" Communists around are the boldly ideological patriarchs in Beijing and Peru's violent Shining Path guerrillas.

Revolution Books' next battle will not be fought in the Andean hinterlands but in the corridors of the American legal system. The store has hired an attorney, Adler says, and is trying to negotiate payment terms with the state.

The store is also appealing to its faithful for financial help. About $1200 has already been raised from a pool of left-leaning New England intellectuals like former Law School Professor Derrick A. Bell, who ditched Harvard for New York University last year to protest the lack of tenured Black women professors at the Law School. Adler says Bell donated his record collection for a used book sale before he left.

Sales taxes, lawyers, fundraising--all constructs of capitalism. How does Revolution Books feel about living and dying by the very instruments it is dedicated to destroying?

"We do try not to live by capitalist rules. There is a tension there," Adler said.

In the Soviet Union, there are more than a few old men in grey suits who know exactly what she means.