Raymond Lotta engages in a discussion with students and faculty after his presentation in Kent Hall on Wednesday evening. / Darren Leow (Click image to enlarge)
In a talk that was part history and part Sosc class, scholar and activist Raymond Lotta spoke to a packed room in Kent Hall Wednesday, advocating the return of communism to the intellectual agenda.
Lotta, on a “Setting the Record Straight” tour organized by Revolution Books, criticized current scholarship on revolutions in Russia and China, and presented a favorable analysis of Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.
The tour is meant to “challenge the conventional wisdom that communism is a failed project,” said Sunsara Tayor, a writer for Revolution newspapers and the talk’s moderator.
“Some of you want to stop the imminent environment emergency, teach in an inner city school, create art,” Lotta said. “But no matter your passions and convictions, you cannot escape a capitalist logic that shapes everything around us.”
He added, “We need a different system—a total revolution. Exactly at a time when capitalism is in crisis, at this moment we are told we can’t go beyond capitalism but can only tinker around the edges. It’s as if there is a warning label affixed to the discourse on human possibility.”
Lotta said he wanted to “clear away confusion” about socialism and communism. “It’s amazing what passes for intellectual rigor on communism,” he said.
In one paper Lotta presented, Mao was quoted as saying that in order to modernize China, “half of China would have to die.” Lotta traced the quotation back to Mao’s original speech, claiming Mao was making an argument for slowing the pace of industrial projects in China in order to preserve life.
Lotta chose to speak at to University of Chicago because it’s a place where questions of capitalism are openly debated, Taylor said.
In the question-and-answer session, audience members interrupted Lotta to respond to him. According to Taylor, the question-and-answer session here was the most heated of Lotta’s campus tour.
“The University of Chicago is right in the thick of it,” she said.
In response to a question about people emigration under Mao, Lotta said, “Compulsion is not a bad thing.”
“There is a positive side to compulsion in social policy,” Lotta said, citing the end of segregation. “This is what a society needs to function.”
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Discussion
CR
November 13th 2009 at 10:24 AM
This event was pretty incredible. Students here all read some Marx, but still have never heard what Lotta was discussing in terms of the actual history of applying Marx to change the world in the Soviet and Chinese revolutions.
ROBERT
November 13th 2009 at 11:40 AM
What and idiot! He should read Plato's Republic, playing close attention to Books 8 and 9, and realize that communism always leads to tyranny. Marx, at best, was a second rate academic. I can't believe anyone pays any attention to him anymore.
JOHN S.
November 13th 2009 at 06:25 PM
Huge disappointment. Was hoping to catch a glimpse of Liotta, maybe get an autograph or two, but realized halfway through the event that this wasn't the guy from Goodfellas. Must be some kind of pathetic Ray Liotta impersonator.
C.M.
November 14th 2009 at 02:52 AM
As if this man and his "Revolutionary Communist Party" has anything to do with Karl Marx.
RRLEDFORD
November 14th 2009 at 01:32 PM
Robert, mr Lotta is not an idiot, and had you attended you would not make such an assertion.
Perhaps it would me more accurate to state that successful leadership accrues power, which power then leads to tyranny. Why is the mission of those who gain power always to maintain and expand it?
C.M.
November 14th 2009 at 08:54 PM
So it was Mao's "successful leadership" that allowed him to accrue power ad becme a tyrant? And what is the character of Mao* "success?" Is it that he "successfully" routed the GMD armies and seized power? Sure. But it's not like he was "successful" at making China a better place to live.
I attended Lotta's lecture and found it idiotic. Anyone who claims that "the Soviet Union was the only country in Eastern Europe to combat anti-Semitism in the 1930's" is sorely lacking in basic historical knowledge (Stalin signed a pact with Hitler - enabling him to capture Europe's largest Jewish population in Poland - and also forbade teaching or writing in Hebrew, destroyed Hebrew books, purged the top party ranks of Jews in the late 30's, suspended anti-Nazi propaganda, and made synagogue attendance grounds for expulsion from the Communist Party).
HASAN HILMI
November 20th 2009 at 02:38 AM
I was very disappointed with the talk. All Lotta was doing was trying to defend Mao and Stalin. I'm a leftist and I still couldn't agree with the things he was saying. Nothing about Marx was discussed, instead it seemed like Lotta was a Bob Avakian cultist. The only thing missing was the Kool-Aid.
Communism isn't a bad idea. Its just that its implementation has been absolutely horrible. I was looking to get a new perspective on how to apply the idea but I was sorely disappointed.