Bookends: An American Communist in Berkeley

Few people today identify as revolutionary communists. Even fewer unabashedly and excitedly espouse the political ideology of Chinese dictator Mao Zedong.

But that’s just what Bob Avakian does in his memoir “From Ike to Mao and Beyond.” As you may have deduced from the title, the book traces Avakian’s transformation from an unenlightened bourgeois child—a product of those stiflingly conformist ’50s—to a revolutionary Maoist.

And it seems as though Avakian had the right pedigree to become a modern revolutionary. Like the big man himself, Karl Marx, Avakian was the son of a lawyer and grew up in a decidedly bourgeois household—family vacations and all. Raised in Berkeley during the ’50s and ’60s, Avakian grew out of a culture where subversive was the new chic.

I originally thought this was going to be the quaint memoir of an aging hippie–the lyrical, Dylan-inspired ramblings of someone who longed for a return of those heady, hedonistic, and hopeful days. And Avakian’s prose is so repetitive that it seemed as though he had suffered some short-term memory damage.

But then I read Avakian’s take on the necessity of violent revolution and realized that this guy wasn’t your average graying nostalgic hippie new-ageist. He is a full-on communist ideologue.

I guess I should have been tipped off by the titles of the scores of other books Avakian has penned. He is the author of “Conquer the World? The International Proletariat Must and Will,” “Democracy: Can’t We Do Better Than That?,” and, my personal favorite, “Radical Ruptures, or, Yes, Mao More Than Ever” (I’m just a sucker for political word play). Clearly we are a long way from a youthful, ebullient, Kerouacian musings.

Avakian confesses that, like Mao, he believes that “not having a correct political, and ideological line is like having no soul.” The perceived soullessness on the part of the ideologically misinformed caused Avakian to break ties with his family.

It even influenced the nature of his romantic attachments. “The direction...relationships have taken and whether or not they’ve continued,” Avakian writes, “has largely been influenced by the political and ideological direction and content of my life and of the other person’s life.” The concept of a loving soul mate has no meaning, I suppose, when the presence of the partner’s soul is in doubt.

I can write this behavior off as closed-minded, but essentially benign. It is, after all, hardly different than the opinion held by those in the facebook group “I Don’t Hook up with Republicans.”

But what is truly disturbing about Avakian’s philosophy was his advocacy of violence and his ability to whitewash violence enacted by his heroes, Mao and Stalin.

Avakian rejects the idea that meaningful social change can be achieved through peaceful means. He also rejects the kind of liberal reformism that has allowed for real material gains for the poor and downtrodden.

The only thing that suits him is a total overhaul of the system. To try to make changes, even meaningful ones, within the confines of capitalism and democracy is to prop up the system itself.

Avakian joined the Panthers and started carrying a gun. Of course “we didn’t bring them along to shoot anybody,” Avakian writes, “but we did feel like we needed to defend ourselves in case we were attacked.” It seems a bit disingenuous, and a bit like hindsight, for a man who openly espoused violence to renounce violent intent in carrying a loaded weapon.

Indeed, Avakian’s long-term memory seems to be gone as well. The 40 million murdered by Stalin have slipped his mind entirely.

Though he recognizes that his position on Stalin is controversial, and he acknowledges that “many mistakes were made under Stalin’s leadership in the Soviet Union,” he never gets more specific on the nature of Stalin’s evil.

While he gingerly excuses Stalin’s murderousness, he vociferously praises Mao and the Cultural Revolution for enacting a scientifically “correct” view of Marxism.

Avakian’s dogmatism prevents him from questioning the decency of a movement that killed millions and suppressed an entire nation’s cultural history.

And it is this same dogmatism that makes Avakian immune and unresponsive to criticism. Handily, practitioners of Marxism can dismiss critics with the “b word.” Oppositional views certainly cease to matter when they can be cast aside as simply bourgeois or a product of false consciousness.

—Reviewer Sarah E. F. Milov can be reached at milov@fas.harvard.edu.

From Ike to Mao and Beyond
By Bob Avakian
Insight Press, Inc.
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