There is nothing more revolutionary than Marxism-Leninism-Bob Avakian Thought

I readily admit that I read pamphlets of this kind mostly as a kind of guilty pleasure. Bob Avakian is the Chairman of the RCP-USA, a small but surprisingly well-known Maoist (sic) group in the United States. Years ago, the RCP were notorious for supporting the Gang of Four in China, the Sendero Luminoso in Peru and for having a personality cult of Avakian. I'm not sure what their "line" is at the moment, but the personality cult seems to linger on pretty much as before. Or worse. The entry on Avakian at Wikipedia must have been written by himself!

"Bob Avakian on Anarchism" is a short critique of anarchism by the Chairman, subtitled "There's nothing more revolutionary than Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought" (note the revisionist spelling. Surely, it should be Mao Zedong?). Apparently, the RCP's publication Revolutionary Worker had received a confused letter from a person or group calling himself/itself Anarchist Eclectic. The letter *is* rather silly, madly swinging from left to right, almost like the classical "hysterical petty bourgeois", and Avakian uses it for good effect. His actual criticism of anarchism paints it as at bottom an individualist and right-wing philosophy, unable to actually transcend a confused "rebellion" against the status quo. He attacks homosexuality, Sartre and one Jean Genet. Overall, however, the pamphlet is relatively uninteresting, since most of the criticisms levelled against the unfortunate Eclectic are Marxist-Leninist commonplaces.

My edition of the pamphlet is bilingual, and contains exactly the same text in Spanish as well. Even the expletives of the Eclectic have been translated to colloquial Spanish, apparently quite correctly. The original price was $ 2,25.

OK, I really should be reading something more serious, but I just couldn't help myself. Next week: Long live L.D. Trotsky, the great leader of the world proletariat! :P