Lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living

What’s the deal with the RCP?

Bob Avakian looks the part of a revolutionary leader, admittedly. I’ve been hanging out recently with a woman from the Revolutionary Communist Party, who has the endearing quality common to recent recruits to Leninist organizations – an enthusiasm born of half-digested Marxism and vaguely remembered liberal pieties. There’s a lot to like about the RCP’s theory: their recognition of the importance of Black liberation to revolutionary struggle in the US; the way they call any theoretical work “science” (presumably an indirect 5%-er influence); their emphasis on class struggle after the revolution; and Avakian writes quite well. Which makes their evident madness all the more strange, as what they do is so out of line with what they say. If they’re really interested in raising the consciousness and leadership of the masses, why are they so fixated on Chairman Bob? If they’re so interested in class struggle, why are they never involved in political confrontations? Read more↴

It’s wrong to wish on space hardware

 Is it? These Soviet space program matchboxes (linked to by owen) suggest not.

Dancing communist pirates on a train = revolution

 Discussing the question of when the Russian Revolution changed from revolution to counter-revolution, a friend of mine gave, I think, the only unassailable answer: in 1920, when Trotsky stopped fighting the civil war by traveling around on a train with a brass band.

I was reminded of this when &catherine posted something about the tATu best of, which I wasn’t aware of but which is pretty good. Apart from most of the tracks from Dangerous and Moving, the album includes the closest tATu have yet come to dubstep, a pleasingly eerie remix of “Cosmos,” and a “Bollywood” version of “Craving.” Which works surprisingly well, but more importantly served to remind me of a great film I saw a while back (with, coincidentally, the same friend who so wisely analyzed the Russian Revolution), Bhagam Bhag. Read more↴