Capitalism Is a Failure
Revolution Is The Solution
In a world of planetwide horror and environmental catastrophe, you yearn for a different one. You think about justice and human possibility, of how to live a life that matters, that can contribute. You have come to the university to find out about everything – including whether such a world could really be brought into being, and what your role might be in bringing that about.
But you have been lied to – systematically and pervasively – about the actual possibility and path to getting such a world.
You have been lied to about the real history of revolution, and the actual promise of communism. And we can prove it.
Raymond Lotta has the facts on what actually has been accomplished – and he also has an understanding to share of where these revolutions fell short and erred, and how humanity can do better...the next time around.
Raymond Lotta will speak here, at ___, on ____ at _____.
His speech will cover four main points:
He will show how the conventional wisdom as well as the “state-of-the-art” scholarship about the experience of the socialist revolutions in the 20th century is full of lies... and how this constrains and mutilates the discourse of what is possible...
He will define what socialism and communism actually are – and are not...
He will examine the most important revolutionary experience thus far – the Cultural Revolution in China – illuminating its purposes and accomplishments, and analyzing its shortcomings.
And he will lay out a way in which humanity could go further and do better in the socialist revolution – the new synthesis of Bob Avakian.
All this matters a great deal. If what Lotta is saying is right, then everything changes in terms of what actually is possible for humanity. In order to be true to your own aspirations and principles, you need to at minimum acquaint yourself with what this unique speaker has to say, and grapple with the challenges he is raising.
Lotta will take on all comers in the questions and answers. On October 26, he spoke to an audience of over 200 hundred people at NYU. All the questions which followed his presentation are included here to give you an idea of the character of the debate. And you are encouraged to bring your own toughest questions to this event.
- Does communism subsume women’s liberation and racism? Or does it only open the way to solving these questions?
- Isn’t greed part of human nature? Greed and war have been part of societies from the beginning of time. Greed has been a mainstay of everyone's culture. And wasn’t greed responsible for the overthrow of communism?
- I'm interested in poverty and the eradication of poverty. Jeffrey Sachs and Fareed Zakaria cite capitalist economic reforms as the solution- these are academics who pursue no imperialist agenda. Haven't 100 million people in China moved out of poverty thanks to the economic reforms? And how would communism actually lift people out of poverty.
- Didn’t the Cultural Revolution under Mao kill a million people in Tibet and destroy 6000 monasteries? And you can give this lecture about communism at a university in the U.S., but what do you think would be the result if you gave a talk about democracy in Beijing?
- I’m a white, heterosexual male born into an affluent household. I also know that the clothes I wear contribute to exploitation, and the same with the food I eat. And that it is not acceptable to do nothing about all that. Further, when people say that there is no value whatsoever in communism, that strikes me as wrong. But when you dismiss capitalism out of hand, aren’t you doing the same thing?
- How would the revolution you are talking about deal with religion?
- You say that you want debate – but would people be allowed to not just debate, but to overthrow communism in a revolutionary society?
Who is Raymond Lotta?
Raymond Lotta is a revolutionary intellectual. He takes as his foundation Bob Avakian’s new synthesis and has written extensively on China during and after the Cultural Revolution and played a major role in elucidating the actual thinking of Mao and the so-called Gang of Four that supported Mao. He also played a major role in working to expose the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and China, including through written work and mass public debate. He has, through the Setting 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. Most recently, he co-authored “Alain Badiou’s ‘Politics of Emancipation’: A Communism Locked Within the Confines of the Bourgeois World” (demarcations-journal.org).
Lotta has also done major work on political economy, including America in Decline (Banner Press, 1984) and “Shifts and Faultlines in the World Economy and Great Power Rivalry,” a four-part series published in this newspaper in July and August 2008. A recent speech—“Understanding the Global Economic Crisis: System Failure and the Need for Revolution”—can be heard at revolutionbooksnyc.org/Lotta4-23-09.mp3.
