Recently in discussions over BA's interview with A. Brooks, What Humanity Needs, the New Synthesis of Revolution and Communism, we discussed how the new synthesis goes at the profound contradiction (under socialism) of meeting the peoples' material needs and giving room for art, culture, intellectual ferment. It was a struggle to understand why this is a contradiction, and it is not just an automatic that you will have both. There were examples of what if an artist like Cristo wanted to wrap cloth around the South Bronx, but the people in the South Bronx needed cloth for clothing...not an easy decision when you want to bring into being a different kind of world.  The discussion provoked a lot of new thinking on these questions, and it really made you appreciate the new synthesis in a new way.

A couple of days later Yoko Ono made a call for people to come out to Times Square at 11:57pm to sing "Imagine" by John Lennon and watch her movie "Imagine Peace," showing on 25 different screens in Time Square.  It was a cold night, and I had many things to do... but seeing how Imagine is my favorite song, and I was leaving NYC the next day, I went to check it out.   It was beautiful!  On every other day in Time Square you are bombarded with images of woman half naked, products you are supposed to need even if you can't afford them, investment banks, you name it, everything you can buy under capitalism.  It's the image of buy, buy, buy.... everything is for sale, everything is a commodity!!! But on Dec. 21 (and throughout the rest of the month) for three minutes you see the world! Over blue skies you see in 24 languages Imagine Peace.... And on this special night there was a gathering of thousands of people singing "Imagine" by John Lennon.  

Standing there in the crossroads of the world, watching the images of different languages, singing the lyrics (at the top of my lungs)...  

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

For 3 minutes you had that feeling of living there! A world with no heaven or hell, no countries or borders.... It was a feeling that cannot be described, but you were there for three minutes...And you were not alone, there were hundreds and thousands of people with you there and you felt the people of the world. After the three minutes, the time square commercial images come back like you are being rudely awakened .... But those three minutes are known in your being, that you felt another world, and see a possibility of how the world can be different. 

I spent the next couple of hours talking to people around me, handing out the BA card "American lives are not more important that other peoples' lives", and " Internationalism: the whole world comes first."  The cards with quotes from BA and what we had just experienced provoked some deep thinking about the state of the world.  We talked about drones that kill thousand of people being dropped in our names, could you imagine a world without borders, why is the world so violent today, or has it been like this for a long time? What causes wars, is it  people, government, religion? Can you really have a happy holidays, knowing the world is suffering?  

When I woke up the next morning I had a fucking cold, I was congested, had a cough, and body aches.... But it was so worth having this experience... and I thought back to the discussion of  the new synthesis, and what a profound contradiction it answers, when you think about a new socialist society, where people's basic needs are met, and there is a flourishing of art, culture and intellectual ferment.  That would be a society fit for all of humanity!

“What impressed me about Bob’s work was an openness and a non-doctrinaire attitude. He always talks about a firm center and elasticity, and the fact that he talks about how revolutionaries have to have a poetic spirit. So I think freeing imagination is one reason we go into music, poetry, dance or whatever, and I really feel that the way he approaches things leaves a lot of things open for all kinds of possible syntheses and things to happen that you can’t maybe pinpoint, but if we have a situation where people’s imaginations can be unleashed, lord knows how things can evolve and come into being.”

—Matthew Shipp, musician and
participant in April 11

“Let’s imagine if we had a whole different art and culture. Come on, enough of this ‘bitches and ho’s’ and SWAT teams kicking down doors. Enough of this ‘get low’ bullshit. And how come it’s always the women that have to get low? We already have a situation where the masses of women and the masses of people are pushed down and held down low enough already. It’s time for us to get up and get on up.

“Imagine if we had a society where there was culture—yes it was lively and full of creativity and energy and yes rhythm and excitement, but at the same time, instead of degrading people, lifted us up. Imagine if it gave us a vision and a reality of what it means to make a whole different society and a whole different kind of world...”

—Excerpt from BAsics 2:8

We need a revolution to make the full vision in BAsics 2:8 real, but we won’t make a revolution if this isn’t being fostered today. BA Everywhere has pulsed with the participation of student poets and rappers to professional musicians... from the parks and street corners to the theaters and jazz clubs.

Imagine in 2013 BA Everywhere open mics fostering a “culture of revolt against this revolting culture,” theatrical readings of letters from prisoners engaging BA’s voice and the BA film project going to a major new level including new ways of documenting the special connection between Avakian and the voices of those cast on the bottom of society engaging the biggest questions of the revolution. Imagine the people inspired... and Imagine the new kinds of culture and cultural scenes that begin to emerge modeling and projecting a different way to think, feel and be.

“I hope he gets number one Amazon.com. We need to get this kind of word, this kind of conversation out—it needs to be disseminated, it needs to be in the mainstream more. We got to stop thinking that this kind of stuff just belongs at the very, very fringe of society...”

—Erin Aubry Kaplan, journalist and author

Bob Avakian
BAsics 6:11

Why am I—why is my body of work, and method and approach—important? Because this is bringing forward an advanced understanding, a heightened understanding, of what revolution and communism are all about and how to move toward the objective of revolution and communism, as well as a method for engaging and struggling through the contradictions that are inevitably going to be encountered in that process....

If we are in fact being guided by the scientific understanding that human society needs to, and can, advance to communism, that the struggle to achieve this objective must be the conscious act of masses of people, on the one hand, while at the same time this must have, and has no prospect of being realized without, leadership—leadership that, in relation to this goal, embodies the most advanced understanding and methodology—and that what is concentrated in this person, yes, but most fundamentally in the body of work and method and approach of Bob Avakian represents that leadership; then what flows naturally from that is the recognition that this is something the masses of people must be made aware of and acquainted with, and must take up as their own, with the understanding of how crucial it is, in terms of their own fundamental interests and ultimately the highest interests of humanity as a whole. As a document of our Party on the question of revolutionary leadership emphasizes:

"the fact that certain individual revolutionaries emerge as a concentration of this process, and themselves become a concentrated expression of the best qualities of revolutionary leadership—including a selfless dedication to the revolutionary cause and deep love of the masses, as well as a strong grasp of the scientific methodology needed to unleash the masses and chart the path of revolution in line with their objective interests—then the existence of such an individual leader or leaders is not something to lament but something to welcome and celebrate! It is part of the people’s strength."