Phony Communism Is Dead Long Live Real Communism [Paperback]

Bob Avakian (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Rcp Pubns (April 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898511127
• ISBN-13: 978-0898511123
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,387,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There was a deep need for this book to be written, December 2, 2004

By 

Vira Sana - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phony Communism Is Dead Long Live Real Communism (Paperback)

This is probebly one of the most controversial pieces, to say not only are you a communist yourself, but that Communism did not "fail". The very title of this books needs to be seen in more places, in these times where our generation doesn't know what it was like to have a socialist country in the world to look to, and the older generation have had their memories and hopes beaten out of them with the "communism is dead" mantra. We're all told that our dreams of something better are unreal, because communism is dead, it failed and was never any good anyway. The very purpose of this book is to refute that, and its refreshingly upapologetic in doing so, backed up with historical perspective and understanding of the heart of socialism, and the differnece between "Failure" and defeat.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, January 30, 2006

By 

Me (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phony Communism Is Dead Long Live Real Communism (Paperback)

Interesting read from the RCP take...he correctly asserts that the USSR was not a communist state, could not have been in the Marxian sense of the word.... for Marx, advance Capitalism was a precondition to establishing a communist society and we all know that pre-Leninist Russia was hardly that! The great leap forward from backwardness to communism alas could not have been achieved without (as Marx stated) first passing through the Capitalist phase of development. It is here where the USSR failed and the Chinese are beginning to correct...but who knows...although international political economies should not be looked at in binary terms...i.e. you're either communist or capitalist...but rather in transitions..even in the US 1/3 of GDP comes from government spending...this will increase as it becomes impossible to provide adequate healthcare, and social services while retaining capitalism, either the social services will have to go because of cost (causing civil unrest...i.e. the Great Depression, and the New Deal) or the system will have to fundamentally change...slowly transitioning to socialism...and decades, decades, decades later perhaps the ideal...communism. Avakian is a bit of a nut for me but still interesting to read from an IPE perspective.

13 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No News From this Book, May 27, 2001

By 

Charlie Brackett - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phony Communism Is Dead Long Live Real Communism (Paperback)

In PHONY COMMUNISM IS DEAD, LONG LIVE REAL COMMUNISM!, Bob Avakian does his best to advance the Revolutionary Communist Party line that the Soviet Union was not socialist. That way, the RCP does not have to learn anything from the collapse of the CPSU. Avakian's beliefs are poorly substantiated and circular. Often times, the book is contradictory. Although he says that what existed in the USSR was not socialism, he later says that the fall of Eastern Bloc socialism is a "defeat" for socialism. So, what's his view? I still don't really know. His logic is poor and often rambling. He makes no effort, for example, to address the fact that the Eastern Bloc nations were not revolutionary states but rather the result of invasion and imposed rule by the USSR, which would go a long way toward explaining why socialism was rejected by the Eastern Bloc. Since he, like Mao, is a Stalinist, he does not attack the USSR's imperialism under Stalin--which included the seizures of Latvia, Lithuania and the other former Soviet Socialist Republics. He also does not attempt to address the issues of slave labor or repression under Stalin. This is a major departure from most leftist intellectuals, who believe that it is Stalin's legacy that led to the collapse of the USSR....