Basics from the Talks and Writings of Bob Avakian

"You can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics."

BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian is a book of quotations and short essays that speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation.

BAsics concentrates more than 30 years of Avakian's work. BAsics can not only introduce many more people to the thinking of the author who has put communism back on the agenda as a vital and viable force— it can play a major role in bringing forward and forging a new wave of revolutionaries. To look at the table of contents...is to look at the key questions that present themselves to someone agonizing over the question of whether and how they can actually change the world in a fundamental and meaningful way.

What people are saying about BAsics. From a prisoner:

"I wanted to congratulate everyone on the upcoming publication of BAsics. In today's world the need for the independent press and works by the people and for the people is needed more than ever at this crucial time especially here in the heart of the imperialist beast.

Although I am unable to be there with you all to celebrate just knowing that the people will be out there enjoying the Revolutionary Culture brings a smile and upraised fist to the cage I am held in. Yes I said cage, but I tell you this not to bring down the people's spirit by telling you I am one of the 2+ million held in the Koncentration camps across America rather I tell you this because it is within these dungeons that are being intended to destroy one's will to resist that the people are waking up and using these dungeons as schools of liberation!! Prisoners in America are drawn to revolutionary ideas, it is only through publications like we will find in BAsics that prisoners will taste that most elusive ideal of "equality" that the prisoner in America grows up exempt from in the barrios and ghettos nationwide."

Bob Avakian has dedicated his life since the 1960's to the cause of revolution and communism. While providing practical leadership to the revolutionary movement as Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, he has deeply studied and summed up the world historical experience of the communist revolution and the socialist societies it has brought into being---the great achievements and the serious problems and errors---and has studied many other fields of human experience and knowledge. He has advanced the science of communism and made decisive breakthroughs in the theory, method, and strategy of revolution and the final goal of communism throughout the world.

Cornel West describes Avakian as someone who "is a long distance runner in the freedom struggle against imperialism, racism and capitalism" in his comment about Avakian's memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond, My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist.