I want to take this opportunity to share some reflections about the significance of The BA Institute, whose mission is “to preserve, project, and promote the works and vision of Bob Avakian with the aim of reaching the broadest possible audience.” This mission takes on even greater urgency and import at such a pivotal moment in history.

A Revolution in Human Thought

BA is, as the Official Biography says, the most important political thinker and leader in the world today. This is said with no hyperbole or hype. There really is no one else in the world who has developed a scientific framework for human emancipation—the new communism, and strategic approach to making revolution. And no one else who is continuing to apply this to put an end to all the needless suffering, madness and horror wrought by this system of capitalism-imperialism.

What difference could it make if this work, if BA’s voice, and if these questions were being seriously debated and engaged?

Take some time to look through this Official Biography. Bob Avakian stands out as unique.

• unique in summing up the first stage of communist revolution and developing a new communism, rescuing the whole understanding of the need and potential for a communist world on a scientific foundation.
• unique in authoring a Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, a visionary document that concretizes this new communism into a blueprint for a society that’s fit for humanity.
• unique in advancing on the revolutionary road coming off the 1960s, a time when people actually raised their sights to the need for revolution but without a coherent strategy to take that all the way to revolution and a new society.
• unique in recognizing not just the extreme danger of the moment we’re in, but the actual possibility that exists to wrest a revolutionary opening from what seems on the surface a bleak situation. 

And this is just some of what could be said about the unique breakthroughs BA has made, and leadership he is providing.

Where would humanity be if it weren’t for the work BA has done for decades, and continues to do now? 

Up against the most fraught crisis humanity has ever faced, it would be without hope—or at least any real hope, rooted in understanding and transforming the world on a scientific foundation and not wishes, prayers and empty schemes.

BA has put himself to the biggest and hardest questions of what it will take to get to a whole new way to live, rooted in a far different and better political and economic system. He has developed, and finds many ways to popularize, a scientific method that masses of people from all backgrounds can take up and apply themselves to navigate the complex process of making revolution. He has forged the methods, means and morality required for a revolutionary struggle that doesn’t recreate the very oppression people are fighting against, devolving into revenge or “the ends justify the means,” but aiming for the emancipation of all of humanity. He recognizes that the struggle to end oppression cannot come “at the cost of” constricting the space for intellectual inquiry, debate, creativity and the search for the truth, but on the contrary, requires all that.

And he struggles hard with the ways that have people thinking and acting on the terms of the very system that is the source of their suffering—from the slavish outlook of religion, the paralyzing philosophical relativism of identity politics to the “aspirations of democracy” which do not see beyond the narrow horizons of “rights” as confined by the capitalist mode of production.

BA’s work represents nothing less than a revolution in human thought, a pathbreaking understanding that opens up whole new paths of inquiry and struggle. It needs to be known and engaged here and all around the world. And what would that change?

In an important interview with Ardea Skybreak, Science and Revolution: On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, Skybreak—a scientist, follower of Bob Avakian, and advocate for the new communism—talks about this:

[W]e’ve seen it in previous periods of revolutionary upsurge. The people get better. The people get smarter. The people get more lofty. They dream bigger and they act in accordance with these bigger dreams. It’s a beautiful sight. And that’s a lot of what BA is actually giving us the tools to accomplish.

This is where The BA Institute comes in! The BA Institute’s mission is to fight for this engagement, and the existence of an Institute is commensurate with what the work represents. Work that is bigger than revolution in any one country, and even bigger than this moment—as important as this moment is to whether humanity has a future. This work is on the level of what Darwin did for biology or what Einstein did for physics—building on what came before but with ruptures and breakthroughs that led to a qualitatively new understanding and approach in their fields which demarcate a before and after.

Urgently Transforming the Debate

The Bob Avakian Institute aims to play a role in making BA’s work a point of reference in society, a focus of discussion and debate in academia and broader intellectual circles, percolating in the culture and in society more broadly. We are aiming to transform the intellectual landscape from the dismal state of lowered sights that most people are locked into.

Just think about where things are at: the deep and widespread hopelessness and cynicism, the knee-jerk and ignorant anti-communism, the mean-spirited cancel culture, narrow individualism or heralding of a “resistance” that is revenge fueled and doesn’t imagine things beyond switching places between oppressor and oppressed. Even among those who are putting something on the line to stand up against “the empire,” there is a real lack of intellectual courage when it comes to seriously interrogating the need and potential for fundamental revolutionary system change.

Beyond that, there are too many who are afraid of and work actively to shut down this debate because they have a vested interest in this system. There are some who would tell you they are fighting this system, but in fact are fighting for a place within it. Bob Avakian’s insistence on “revolution, nothing less” is the source of so much of the hate and venom directed at BA—the slander, lies, attacks and distortions. 

But there are many, many people seriously looking for answers, or who can be won to look for answers. There are people who aren’t afraid of being challenged. People who can recognize the positive impact of BA’s work on society, who can recognize the importance of this kind of fearless debate and discussion marked by the principles that BA fights for: “a largeness of mind and generosity of spirit.”

In a recent social media message, Revolution #58, Communism, the new communism and the challenge to “progressive” intellectuals, BA talks about the real source of the widespread refusal to engage his work from “progressive” intellectuals who should be “dancing in the streets”—excited and thrilled—to dig into the new communism. And he poses a sharp and open-armed challenge:

For those intellectuals who can recognize that whatever “goodies” they get from this system are not nearly as important as the tremendous suffering and destruction caused by this system, worldwide—and the very real threat it poses to the future, and the very existence, of humanity—and for those who are not so “invested” in this system, there is the very positive challenge of seriously engaging and actively taking up the new communism and the emancipating and uplifting revolutionary transformation of the world that it illuminates and embodies.

The BA Institute’s Urgent Mission

The BA Institute is actively working to pose this challenge, and the fact that we are a formal, serious Institute provides an important platform for this. We are working to get BA’s works in front of people throughout society—through the distribution of materials on the street, online to mass email campaigns and more. In the next weeks and months, we want to organize discussions and debate via Zooms, and sponsor in-person events—discussions and debates that increasingly penetrate into the discourse. You can sign up for our newsletter (sent periodically) here.

Another aspect of The BA Institute’s work is that we aim for our outreach to reach the broadest array of people who should know about BA’s work. Because BA’s work is so wide-ranging, speaking to the burning questions of the day, and involving a wide breadth of human understanding and spheres of human life, there are many kinds of people—from those in the inner cities to the suburbs, to those working in the sciences, the arts, culture, sports, medicine, law, academia and so on—who need to be introduced to BA’s work. Part of our mission is to reach out to all these kinds of people and more, inviting serious engagement, discussion and debate. 

If you care about the future, make a donation to our work! If you have ideas or would like to volunteer for any of this, please write to The BA Institute. If you’d like a speaker from The Institute to come talk with your friends or community group, write to us. 

Join us in our vital and urgent mission, spoken to beautifully here by BA himself:

There is an urgent need for this new synthesis [of communism] to be taken up, broadly, in this society and in the world as a whole: everywhere people are questioning why things are the way they are, and whether a different world is possible; everywhere people are talking about “revolution” but have no real understanding of what revolution means, no scientific approach to analyzing and dealing with what they are up against and what needs to be done; everywhere people are rising up in rebellion but are hemmed in, let down and left to the mercy of murderous oppressors, or misled onto paths which only reinforce, often with barbaric brutality, the enslaving chains of tradition; everywhere people need a way out of their desperate conditions, but do not see the source of their suffering and the path forward out of the darkness.