Nine Letters to Our Comrades. Getting Beyond Avakian’s New Synthesis

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Standing at a lectern, young Omar looks into the camera.

The crisis in the communist movement, he says, “has given us the right to make a precise accounting of what we possess, to call by their correct names both our riches and our predicament, to think and argue out loud about our problems, and to engage in the rigors of real research.”

This moment has, Omar continues, “allowed us to emerge from our theoretical provincialism, to recognize and engage with the existence of others outside ourselves. And on connecting with this outer world, to begin to see ourselves better. It has allowed us to develop an honest self-appraisal by laying bare where we stand in regard to the knowledge and ignorance of Marxism.”

Omar scans his comrades scattered across the room and adds: “Any questions?”[1]

Seeking politics and philosophy.

Photo: J.B. Connors

For more than ten years Charles Darwin said nothing publicly about (what he called) his “very presumptuous work.” He wrote that talking about natural selection (even to friends) was “like confessing a murder.”[2] There were reasons for Darwin’s reluctance. He worried about possible errors in his analysis. He feared open debate might have unexpected consequences. But Darwin’s delay had to end and did.[3]

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