Set the Record Straight
Mission
Statement
From a thousand different directions, we are bombarded with the message that communism was a “nightmare” and “failure.” Go into a bookstore and look at the current titles on Mao, the Cultural Revolution, or socialism in the Soviet Union. Take a listen when commentators on TV and radio say something about communism. Leaf through a standard textbook on political theory or modern history. There’s a highly distorted narrative of socialism in the 20th century, and it goes largely unanswered.
The truth is that the first socialist revolutions—in the Soviet Union from 1917 until the defeat of that revolution in 1956, and in China from 1949 until the defeat of socialism in 1976—marked a break-through for humanity. These were the first attempts in modern history to build societies free from exploitation and oppression. And they accomplished extraordinary things against enormous obstacles.
The mission of Set the Record Straight is to factually refute the lies spread in the media, mass-market books, and mainstream scholarship about the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, and to bring to light the overwhelming achievements of these revolutions as well as their real problems and shortcomings. Our mission is to reveal the actual history and experience of these revolutions, to open up a two-sided debate about socialism and communism, and to promote a conversation about why a radically different and liberating world is possible.
In all of this, we are bringing forward Bob Avakian’s exciting vision of a vibrant communism for the 21st century.
At a time of continuing imperial wars, massive global hunger, planetary environmental emergency—and at a time of new stirrings of resistance and questioning, from Egypt to Occupy—the intellectual landscape needs to change. A new generation of students and scholars needs to engage the question of communism’s past and communism’s future in a whole new way.
Set the Record Straight seeks to challenge the paralyzing conventional wisdom about communism that has seeped so deeply into popular understanding and to raise people’s sights to a far better future for humanity.
You’ve Been Lied To...
and We Are Setting the Record Straight
on Socialism and Communism
Do you agonize over the state of the world and worry about the future of the planet?
Are you looking for alternatives to capitalism?
Are critical thinking and learning about the first attempts to build socialist societies important to you?
Have you wanted to hear fact-based and substantive responses to the charges routinely leveled against communism?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you have come to the right place. This website will give you the tools to challenge the paralyzing conventional wisdom about communism that has seeped so deeply into popular understanding.
Featured Resources
Nat Turner or Thomas Jefferson?
A QUESTION SHARPLY POSED
Slave rebellion or slave master? Do you support the oppressed rising up against the oppressive system and seeking a radically different way, even with certain errors and excesses—or do you support the oppressors, and the leaders and guardians of an outmoded oppressive order, who may talk about “inalienable rights” but bring down wanton brutality and very real terror, on masses of people, to enforce and perpetuate their system of oppression? Read on...
Žižek—Lotta Debate Postponed Until Fall
Slavoj Žižek has announced that, owing to unforeseen circumstances, he has had to cancel his entire trip to the United States and all public appearances until October. This includes the April 15 event: The Slavoj Žižek—Raymond Lotta Debate: On the History and Prospects for Communist Revolution. Go to Revolution Books NYC and Revolution newspaper for information on rescheduling and other issues related to the debate.
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•How the current intellectual and academic atmosphere constrains and mutilates the discourse of what is possible in the world.
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•What socialism and communism actually are—and are not.
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•How the conventional wisdom, as well as the “state-of-the-art” scholarship, about the experience of socialist revolutions of the 20th century is shot through with distortions and lies…and how this robs people of understanding.
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•A look at the most important revolutionary experience thus far, the Cultural Revolution of China: its purposes, its achievements, and its shortcomings.
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•How Bob Avakian’s new synthesis enables humanity to go further and do better in making socialist revolution in today's world.
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•Contradictions, and challenges, of the socialist road in China
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•Breaking with, going beyond the Soviet model
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•The Cultural Revolution: its aims, its methods, its contradictions
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•Mass upheavals, revolutionary struggles, excesses, and the larger view
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•Questions of art and culture, matters of viewpoint and method
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•The role of art, and the artist, and their relation to the state
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•Revolution, leadership, state power, the goal of communism, and the importance of dissent and ferment—solid core and elasticity
Socialism Is Much Better than Capitalism, and Communism Will Be a Far Better World
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•Confronts the lies about communism
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•Analyzes the real experience and breakthroughs of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917-1956 and the Chinese revolution of 1949-1976
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•Brings forward Bob Avakian’s vibrant re-envisioning of the communist project
Red Guards visit a factory in China, January, 1967.
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