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ABOUT RAYMOND LOTTA | RESOURCES | POINT/COUNTERPOINT | SOCIALIST EXPERIENCE | COMMUNISM'S FUTURE ABOUT RAYMOND LOTTA (en Español) Raymond Lotta is a Maoist political economist. He has written extensively about trends in the global economy, conditions in the Third World, and the experience of socialist revolution in the 20th century. His book America in Decline is a wide-ranging study of the economics and politics of empire. His essays in Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism survey socialist economic development under Mao and explore the character of what Lotta calls “a visionary and viable socialism.” Raymond Lotta’s books have been reviewed in such journals as Foreign Affairs and China Quarterly. He is a contributing writer to Revolution newspaper. An activist-scholar, Raymond Lotta participated in antiglobalization conferences and protests in India, the Philippines, and Canada in the mid-1990s. He was a featured speaker at antiwar teach-ins in the early 2000s. He has been involved in initiatives to defend dissent and critical thinking in academia. In 2005, Raymond Lotta helped initiate the Set the Record Straight project to take on the distortions and misrepresentations about socialism and communism. His ongoing campus tour to Columbia, Harvard, and other universities in the U.S. and abroad has challenged and inspired a new generation of students and scholars. Lotta was a major organizer of the unprecedented three-day symposium “Rediscovering China’s Cultural Revolution: Art and Politics, Lived Experience, Legacies of Liberation” held at New York University in December 2008. With the eruption of the most serious economic crisis of world capitalism since the 1930s, Lotta has been providing in-depth commentary and analysis and arguing the case: “we don’t need to save capitalism, we don’t need another FDR; we need to get rid of capitalism through revolution.” Lotta has appeared on Book TV and has been interviewed on the BBC, Pacifica radio, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Agence France Presse. Raymond Lotta is an engaging speaker who brings an informed and provocative perspective to the discussion of the state of capitalism, communism’s past and communism’s future, and why another world is possible. SOME COMMENTS ON RAYMOND LOTTA’S AMERICA IN DECLINE “An ambitious and often interesting attempt at Marxist interpretation of world developments in the 20th century.” —Foreign Affairs “The most important aspect of Lotta’s work is its ability to stimulate consideration of basic issues.” —Journal of Economic Issues “A provocative reinterpretation of Marx and Lenin from a viewpoint opposed to capitalism and imperialism and also opposed to what it calls the ‘social imperialism’ of the Soviet Union. It is therefore worth reading as an unusual point of view, rigorously presented.” —Howard Zinn SELECTED BOOKS AND ARTICLES BY RAYMOND LOTTA And Mao Makes Five (Chicago: Banner Press, 1978). The Soviet Union: Socialist or Social-Imperialist (Chicago: RCP Publications, 1983). America in Decline (Chicago: Banner Press, 1984). “The Political Economy of Apartheid and the Strategic Stakes of Imperialism,” Race and Class, Autumn, 1985. “Inequality and Class Conflict: A Political Economist’s Global View,” in M. Dobkowski and I. Walliman, eds., Research in Inequality and Social Conflict (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1989). Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism (Chicago: Banner Press, 1994). “The Chinese Revolution: More Relevant Than Ever,” Chicago Defender, October 5, 1999. “Dissecting the Bush Doctrine: The U.S. Quest for One World Empire,” Revolutionary Worker, February 16, 2003. “Preface.” Bob Avakian and Bill Martin, Marxism and the Call of the Future (Chicago: Open Court, 2005). “Hunger Crisis in Niger: Starvation by the Market,” State of Nature 2, Winter 2006. “A Jagged, Unjust, and Obsolete World: A Critique of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat,” Revolution, September 10, 2006. “Critical Thinking and the Search for the Truth: Today and in Socialist Society,” part of a special supplement: “WARNING: The Nazification of the American University,” Revolution, March 11, 2007. Also excerpted in “Dissent and Protest Necessary for a Socialist Society,” Columbia Daily Spectator, April 25, 2007. “Hugo Chavez Has an Oil Strategy...But Can This Lead to Liberation?” Revolution, July 1, 2007. “‘Now We Know Too Much’…Or Do We? The New Yorker, Mao, and Twisting the Numbers,” Revolution #109, November 18, 2007. “Shifts and Faultlines in the World Economy and Great Power Rivalry: What Is Happening and What It Might Mean,” CounterCurrents.org, August 2008. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. “Financial Hurricane Batters World Capitalism: System Failure and the Need for Revolution,” GlobalResearch.ca, October 15, 2008. “China’s Rise in the World Economy,” Economic & Political Weekly, February 21, 2009. RECENT LECTURES “A Critical Response to Mao: The Unknown Story—Mao: Fairy Tale Monster, or Greatest Liberator of the Mid-20th Century?” University of Chicago, Sociology Department and Center for East Asian Studies, September 2006. “The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A Maoist Appreciation and Critical Evaluation,” University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Department of Asian Studies, March 2008. “Financial Meltdown and the Madness of Imperialism,” Revolution Books, New York, October 2008. “The International Impact and Historical Significance of the Cultural Revolution,” panel at symposium “Rediscovering China’s Cultural Revolution: Art and Politics, Lived Experience, Legacies of Liberation,” New York City, December 2008. Set the Record Straight is a program of the International Humanities Center, a nonprofit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. |
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