Raymond Lotta Tour Comes to Harvard
To the editors:
On the evening of April 14th, the Raymond Lotta tour, “Everything You’ve Been Told About Communism is Wrong: Capitalism Is a Failure, Revolution Is The Solution” came to Harvard University. After weeks of controversy swirling around the campus, 135 people, over 100 of them students came out to listen to, engage with and debate Raymond Lotta in an animated and often intense program and discussion that went on for over 3 hours and ended only after campus security locked the building up for the night.
The intensity of the evening was reflected in the sea of hands that shot up after Lotta finished his presentation. The questions and comments ran a complete spectrum of thought, from students who came to defend capitalism as the best possible way society could be organized, to others who seriously questioned Lotta about how a socialist society could avoid falling victim to a new set of exploiters. Others questioned whether or not oppressive social relations like the patriarchy could be blamed on capitalism or ended by socialism and communism. And still others raised questions of human nature—did the uplifting vision of communism presented run counter to basic human nature. As promised, Lotta took on all comers in a no holds barred discussion that saw students with laptops intensely scouring Wikipedia fact-checking the back and forth engagement.
Stepping back, the scene was quite remarkable. Dozens of students, the majority of them in their first or second year, at arguably the most prestigious university in the world, intensely engaging with revolutionary communism as the pathway to the emancipation of all humanity—something few would have even thought about only weeks before. Yet here they were being presented with the uplifting new synthesis of the communist project that has been brought forward by Bob Avakian and the unnerving understanding that they have been prevented from even having the opportunity to engage with any of this through the imposition of an official verdict on communism and revolution—an official verdict buttressed by lies, misrepresentations and distortions of the actual history of communist revolution and socialism. This was what Raymond Lotta challenged them with. This is what they dug into.
As one student from the Harvard School of Public Health said later “I knew there had to be more. We are always being told that our concern for people’s health had to be measured in dollars and cents. This has just never seemed right. That we had to be ‘realistic’ in our goals. How could something as basic as people’s health be treated as nothing more than a commodity. I have always felt this was wrong and I knew that had to be more. This (presentation) was it. People need to hear this.”
A Chinese student who had challenged Lotta on the question of modern-day China , asking if it wasn’t true that the current Chinese government had been responsible for lifting one hundred million Chinese out of poverty and then listened intently to Lotta’s response. On the way out he stopped to fill out a questionnaire and wrote “you were flyering outside the Science Center. I refused a flyer but came anyway.” And he commented “I disagree that communism can guarantee that resource allocation can be successfully planned or corruption prevented. ‘For profits’ have a hard enough time allocating resources efficiently for themselves. How would you have a committee do it better? How do you successfully implement resource allocation?” Others commented on being surprised by the back and forth in the Q&A and by the combination of passion and facts that marked the presentation.
The program was all the more remarkable in light of the concerted efforts to prevent students from actually getting the facts about how they have been lied to and the stakes involved. This took the form of institutionalized censorship and official intimidation. Two weeks prior to the event, Raymond Lotta issued an open challenge to Roderick MacFarquhar, Harvard professor and China scholar to debate the truth of Communism and the lies and distortions MacFarquhar has promoted about the Cultural Revolution in China. Days later, the Harvard Crimson, refused to publish the challenge as a paid advertisement. It was conveyed to tour organizers that the President of the Crimson considered the ad to be “too controversial”.
In response of this blatant act effort to censor any serious engagement about the truth of communist revolution, organizers together with students sympathetic to the tour, covered the campus with a flyer with “CENSORED” blazoned across the top. The flyer included the open challenge and an explanation of the Crimson’s actions. The flyer was posted throughout the campus and made its way into every first year dorm, where many stayed up through the 14th. This kind of challenge to the status quo at Harvard is extremely rare and most students were drawn to the flyer like a magnet.
At the same time, the Crimson refused to print or even acknowledge the letters and calls of protesting their decision. One student called the paper challenged the Crimson’s president to explain how an open challenge to a Harvard professor containing point-by-point examples of shoddy scholarship could be more controversial than the full page ads appearing in the paper purporting to explain how the miracles in the Bible were based in fact. “What could be more controversial that to claim that the Bible represents reality?” The Harvard Crimson president had “no comment.”
As the program neared the debate heated up. The Crimson refused to publish a second paid ad, this one including a letter protesting the Crimson’s decision from Dr. Dennis Loo, a Harvard alumnus and former photography editor on the Crimson. This time the President responded to questioning by simply saying that the Crimson didn’t have to provide a reason for its refusal. A tour organizer was arrested and charged with trespassing by Harvard police while putting up a flyer for the program (taking place at Harvard!) And when confronted with a delegation leafleting the “Censored” flyer outside the Crimson offices, including to staff interns unaware of the debate, some enraged senior staffers opened up a second floor window and started loudly playing Toby Keith’s reactionary “Proud to be an American” and the “Star Spangled Banner.” Meanwhile, thousands of flyers, posters and handouts circulated around the campus.
In the final days leading up to the event, the controversy spread beyond Harvard. A front page article appeared on the day of the event in the nearby Tufts University Daily Paper, “Crimson Refuses To Publish Open Letter by Marxist speaker Lotta.”
Throughout of this, the question was still sharply posed as to whether or not a significant section of students from Harvard would be able to break through this enforced censorship being imposed on the event. While the turnout was less than organizers were targeting, the answer was yes—the students came, they stayed and they engaged—they brought their toughest questions desire for a better world.
Raymond Lotta’s open challenge to Roderick MacFarquhar played a critical role in breaking this open. While most students were not that familiar with MacFarquhar, one recurring response to why they came was to find out more about this controversy. Students at Harvard are led to believe that they are getting access to the best education possible. The idea that they have been systematically lied to and misled around any issue, let alone one as seemingly settled as communism and revolution did not sit well. A number commented that even as they disagreed with Lotta’s overall arguments, they found his point by point dissection of some of the critical points in MacFarquhar’s book Mao’s Last Revolution very compelling. Most were visably moved as Lotta described the most egregious examples of shoddy scholarship.
The Raymond Lotta tour cracked open the debate around communism and revolution at Harvard but the big question is where do we go from here? In the days following the program, students came by Revolution Books to go more deeply into this question. Some wanted to jump back right back into the debate itself on the spot. Others were more focused on how to make what Raymond Lotta is bringing forward more accessible to other students. Still others are more thinking about learning more about the underpinnings of Lotta’s arguments—especially the understanding and analysis brought forward by Bob Avakian. Throughout all of this, it is clear that things can’t go back to the way they were before the tour came to town. That is the challenge in going forward.
