Part I of six-week salon on the new talk from Bob Avakian, "RUMINATIONS AND WRANGLINGS: On the Importance of Marxist Materialism, Communism as a Science, Meaningful Revolutionary Work, and a Life with Meaning." Part I will focus on INDIVIDUALS AND SOCIAL RELATIONS and LIFE WITH A PURPOSE (Different Views, and Fundamentally Different World Outlooks).
READINGS FROM "RUMINATIONS AND WRANGLINGS":
Individuals and Social Relations and
Life with a Purpose (including "Human life is finite, but revolution is infinite")
Bring your questions. Some to consider:
How are we to understand the contradictions bound up with the fact that people exist as individuals, while their existence is a social existence (as part of social groups and in class society as members of a class)? What is the reality of the capitalist theory that if each individual pursues her/his own individual interest, the greater societal good will be served?
What about the charges made against communism that it seeks to reduce everyone to the same indistinguishable mass? What are the differences between individualism and individuality (and diversity) and what are the implications of the latter for socialist society and ultimately communism?
"[It] is necessary to recognize that while death is universal for human beings-all human beings die, sooner or later-there is not one common viewpoint about death: people in different social conditions have different experiences with and different viewpoints on all kinds of phenomena, including death."
What are the moral and psychological dimensions to the finiteness of human life and what individuals do in their lifetimes? "The content of people's lives-the quality of those lives, what they are dedicated and devoted to, and ultimately what they've been lived about, whether their death comes sooner or later-is the most important thing and gives meaning, one way or another, to people's lives, short as they are in relation to the infinite existence of matter in motion."
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A REVOLUTION IN IDEAS FOR A RADICALLY NEW WORLD - A WEEKLY SALON
Dear friends of Revolution Books,
We invite you to join our weekly discussion on Sunday afternoons from 4 - 6pm at Revolution Books. Every week you will be stimulated and challenged.
Even as the memo has gone out that the parameters of "hope" and "change" are defined by a new face atop the empire, people all over the world seethe with discontent, anger and a feeling that there must be a better way that human society could be organized - that another world is, and must be, possible.
Anyone wanting to bring into being that new world immediately confronts two things. One is the repressive force of the authorities brought to bear against those who seriously challenge the powers-that-be. Second is the confrontation in the realm of ideas: morality, science, religion and world-outlook. Complicity versus resistance; whether the oppression of Black people has been transcended or morphed into new dangerous forms; over how to evaluate the first stage of the Communist revolution in the Soviet Union and China.
Today, the most important struggle in the realm of ideas focuses on the KIND of change we need, the THEORY that can guide that change, and the leadership that we have to carry forward that radical transformation.
We state clearly: we need a revolution and none will be possible if it is not grounded in the work being done by and the leadership provided by Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
If you haven't read Bob Avakian, NOW is the time. Let yourself be challenged by it. If you are someone who finds the current world intolerable and sees the need for a radically different one, then you cannot be true to your own principles without seriously checking out and engaging with Bob Avakian.
These are sessions for all - beginners & veterans; truth seekers of different persuasions; anyone desirous of a better world.
We urge you to join us in this urgently needed collective exploration and conversation around cutting-edge communist theory. The next round of discussions, beginning at the end of May are drawn from a provocative new work by Bob Avakian, "Ruminations and Wranglings; On the Importance of Marxist Materialism, Communism as a Science, Meaningful Revolutionary Work, and a Life with Meaning". The full text is available online at revcom.us.
