The Bob Avakian Interviews 2025, PART 2
The New Communism: A Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System
The Bob Avakian Interviews, 2025: Humanity Does Not Have to Live This Way!
Part 2: The New Communism: A Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System
QUESTIONS
1. Why should somebody who is not a communist care that there is a new communism? 0:20
2. How is genuine communism different than what people’s misconceptions? What’s new and surprising to people about the new communism? 1:31
3. Could you speak to the actual differences between China today and China during the revolutionary period, when Mao was leading it? 8:10
4. In our first interview, you talked about how when you first came to political life, you learned from leaders in the Free Speech Movement and the Black Panther Party, as well as Marx, Lenin and Mao. But you also spoke about coming to see the need to go further. Can you give a sense of what that process was like, in particular in relation to developing what’s new in the new communism? 12:20
5. What is different and new in the new communism? 19:49
6. You have said that never before in any proposed or actually existing founding document of a government has there been anything close to the level, not only of provision for dissent, protest, disagreement and ferment as is written into the Constitution that you authored. While also being oriented to meeting people’s basic needs and overcoming oppression. Can you give an example of how this is built into the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic? 31:23
7. How do you deal with the millions of fascists that will still be in this country after a revolution? 39:04
8. In the new socialist republic, how do you apply the point you’ve made that “Internationalism—The Whole World Comes First”? 46:33
9. How would an artist like Bob Dylan be related to with the new communism that’s maybe different than a lot of the ways that he has been related to by political figures in different ways? 54:40
10. You have said “If you don’t have a poetic spirit—or at least a poetic side—it is very dangerous for you to lead a Marxist movement or be the leader of a socialist state.” Why is that so? 1:01:00
11. Why is it so important to you personally, and to the revolution that you’re fighting for, to consistently tell people the truth -- even when people don’t want to hear it? 1:03:25
12. What is communist leadership, and why should people follow your leadership? 1:09:45
13. You did a series on your social media titled, “The Profound Fight for the Soul of Black People: A Defeated People OR a Revolutionary People.” Can you speak about why you did that, and why this is so important in this time in particular? 1:21:28
14. In the last year as a whole you’ve been putting out social media messages on @BobAvakianOfficial. Can you talk about the broader role of these social media messages—what you are thinking about in crafting them, and what difference it would make if they really were listened to by millions? 1:26:28
15. How could it really be real that tens of millions could come forward to defeat this fascism? And how does that relate to being in a time when revolution is more possible? 1:30:30
16. Can you speak to those who think they can’t have an impact on society? 1:36:45
Watch Part 1: Fascism, Capitalism and the Way Out of the Madness.
Watch this important message: 2025: A New Year—Profound New Challenges— And a Profoundly Positive Way Forward in the Face of Very Real Horror