Bob Avakian

Avakian was born on March 7, 1943, in Washington, D.C., to Ruth and Spurgeon Avakian. His father was a prominent Armenian American lawyer, civil rights activist, and later judge on the Alameda County, California superior court.^[1][5][6] After spending his first three years in the Washington metropolitan area, he spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence in Berkeley, California.^[1][7]

As a young man, Avakian became involved with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement^[5] and the Black Panther Party.^[3] In 1968, he wrote articles for the Peace and Freedom Party's publications^[8] and in July 1969, he spoke at the Black Panther conference in Oakland, California.^[9] By the time that the SDS split into three factions in the summer of 1969, Avakian was a leading member of the Revolutionary Youth Movement II faction, and was their candidate for National Secretary. Although defeated for the top position by Mark Rudd of the faction soon known as the Weather Underground, Avakian was elected to the National Interim Committee.^[10] During that period, Avakian was a leading member of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union^[11] alongside Leibel Bergman.^[12]: 101

In the early 1970s, Avakian served a prison sentence for desecrating the American flag during a demonstration.^[5] He was charged with assaulting a police officer in January 1979 at a demonstration in Washington, D.C. to protest Deng Xiaoping's meeting with Jimmy Carter.^[3][13][14] After receiving an arrest warrant, Avakian went to France and applied for political refugee status.^[1] In 1980, he gave a speech to 200 protestors in downtown Oakland^[15] and his police assault charges were dropped a few years later.^[1][3]

In 2005, Avakian published an autobiography, From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist.^[1][16] He has been the Revolutionary Communist Party's central committee chairman and national leader since 1979.^[15][17] In 2016, the RCP USA and others helped form the organization Refuse Fascism, which called for the removal of Donald Trump.^[18]

In August 2020, Avakian released a statement about the rise of fascism in America, calling on supporters to use "every appropriate means of non-violent action" to remove Trump, including voting for Joe Biden for President of the United States, while continuing to organize for revolution.^[19]

Avakian is a controversial figure. He is viewed by supporters as a revolutionary leader whose body of work has advanced communist theory and represents a "pathway to human emancipation" from the capitalist system.^[20][21] He is criticized by detractors for an alleged cult of personality around him,^[22][23] which the party has called "lies and slander."^[24]

Books

• The Loss in China and the Revolutionary Legacy of Mao Tse-tung (1979)
• Mao Tse-tung’s Immortal Contributions (1979)
• Conquer The World? The International Proletariat Must and Will (1981)
• For a Harvest of Dragons (1983)
• A Horrible End, or an End to the Horror? (1984)
• Bullets: From the Writings, Speeches, and Interviews of Bob Avakian (1985)
• Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? (1986)
• Phony Communism is Dead—Long Live Real Communism (1992)
• Preaching from a Pulpit of Bones: We Need Morality But Not Traditional Morality (1999)
• Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy (2005)
• From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist: A Memoir (2005)
• Away with All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World (2008)
• Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy (2008)
• Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon (2010)
• BAsics, from the Talks and Writings of Bob Avakian (2011)
• What Humanity Needs: Revolution and the New Synthesis of Communism (2012)
• Constitution, Law, and Rights in Capitalist Society and in the Future Socialist Society (2015)
• The New Communism: The Science, the Strategy, the Leadership for an Actual Revolution, and a Radically New Society on the Road to Real Emancipation (2016)
• Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism (2019)
• Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis: Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism (2019)

Films

• Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About (2003)
• Revolution—Nothing Less! (2012)
• Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between Cornel West & Bob Avakian (2015)
• The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible (2017)
• Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution (2018)
• Three Interviews with Bob Avakian: Up Close and Personal with Bob Avakian - Heart and Soul & Hard-Core for Revolution (2023) (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)

James LeGros portrays Avakian in the 1995 Mario Van Peebles film Panther.

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