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ABOUT RAYMOND LOTTA | RESOURCES | 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. Since 2005, Raymond Lotta has been speaking on campuses as part of the Set the Record Straight project, taking on the distortions and misrepresentations about socialism and communism. This tour has taken him to Columbia, Harvard, and other universities in the U.S., as well as to universities in Mexico and London. Lotta has appeared on Book TV and has been interviewed on the BBC, Pacifica radio, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Raymond Lotta is an engaging speaker who brings an informed and provocative perspective to the discussion of communism’s past and communism’s future. 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. “Socialist Planning or ‘Market Socialism’,” Revolutionary Worker, September 15, 22, 29, 2002. “Dissecting the Bush Doctrine: The U.S. Quest for One World Empire,” Revolutionary Worker, February 16, 2003 (read article) “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 (read article) “A Jagged, Unjust, and Obsolete World: A Critique of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat,” Revolution, September 10, 2006 (read article) “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 (read article). 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. (read article) “‘Now We Know Too Much’…Or Do We? The New Yorker, Mao, and Twisting the Numbers,” Revolution #109, November 18, 2007. (read article) SELECTED LECTURES AND TALKS “The Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Implosion of State Capitalism and the Real Lessons of Communist Revolution,” Talk at DePaul University, 1991. “Imperialist Globalization and the Fight for a Different Future,” Talk at the World Peasant Summit, Manila, Philippines, November 1996. “Socialist Planning in a Creative and Dynamic Context: The Maoist Experience,” Paper presented at the Allied Social Sciences Association, Union for Radical Political Economics, 1998. “The Imperial Geopolitics Guiding the Bush Doctrine,” Interview on KPFK (Los Angeles), February 2003. “Socialism Is Much Better than Capitalism, and Communism Will Be a Far Better World,” Talk sponsored by departments of African-American Studies and Chicano Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, October 2005. “Lessons of the Cultural Revolution and Challenges of Going Further and Doing Better in the Next Wave of Revolution,” Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Benemerita Universidad Autónoma, Puebla, Mexico, May 2006. “Mao: Fairy-Tale Monster or Greatest Liberator of the Mid-20th Century: A Critical Response to Mao: The Unknown Story,” Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago, October 2006. “Marxism and the Call of the Future,” exchange with philosopher Bill Martin, sponsored by Barnes & Noble Bookstore, Columbia University, New York, May 2007. “Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution: Prospects and Problems,” debate with Caracas-based sociologist Gregory Wilpert, U.S. Social Forum, Atlanta, July 2007. PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS Union for Radical Political Economics National Writers Union 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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