Where else, I ask you, would a publisher hold a reception for an author celebrating his "road to Communism" in a new memoir?

Bob Avakian has devoted his life to the one ideology that he believes holds the promise of massively releasing human freedom and dignity. The ideology is communism.

Berkeley—bred Avakian's new memoir, "From Ike to Mao and Beyond," leaves a breathtaking impression. Having deepened and purified his convictions over 40 years of personal and political struggle, Avakian sounds a high, sustained cry for complete social transformation almost as if he were the trumpet of Lenin himself.

It's as if democratic capitalism's triumph in the 20th century was history's biggest mistake, a tragic wrong turn from the revolutionary road marked out by Lenin in the Russia of 1917 after the writings of Marx and by Mao in the China of the 1950s and 60s. Unswervingly, Avakian holds that road and is esteemed by fellow revolutionaries as the marathon man of the international anti—imperialist struggle.

Avakian won't be attending, because he says he is fearful of persecution, and remains safely abroad. I'll just bet he isn't in Poland or the Czech Republic. Has this bozo never heard of the Black Book of Communism? Do the scores of millions killed in the name "releasing human dignity" mean nothing to him? How about his Mao Tse—tung, the biggest butcher in history, who also liked to sleep with young girls, infecting many of them with venereal diseases, according to his doctor's memoir?

Texas is looking better every day.

Thomas Lifson   5 01 05