Another perspective on communism

Protests and fringe groups are nothing new on NYU's campus. But for the past couple weeks, students have seen one particular group quite a lot.

Representatives from Revolution Books, a bookstore specializing in radical literature, have been on campus distributing fliers to students. The flyers champion: "Everything You've Been Told About Communism Is Wrong!" The representatives have also been testing students' knowledge about communism with eight-question quizzes about the history of the ideology. According to Annie Day, a representative from Revolution Books, the mean score of the quiz was 54.

"This result shows how stunning it is how little people know about communism," Day said. "To hear what these people think about communism is like hearing people talk about reconstruction after the Civil War and only knowing what they know from watching 'Gone with the Wind.' "

Last night, Revolution Books held an event at NYU's Cantor Film Center called "Everything You've Been Told About Communism Is Wrong, Capitalism Is a Failure, Revolution Is the Solution." The event featured Raymond Lotta, a communist author and theorist who is currently visiting colleges across the nation and speaking to students about what he calls the "misconceptions" and "false information" about communism.

Lotta discussed his belief that communism is not given an equal footing in discussions about political policies and decisions.

"Exactly at a time where world capitalism is in crisis, we're told, 'You can't go beyond capitalism, we can only tinker around the edges,' " Lotta said.

Throughout his speech, Lotta tried to show misconceptions of Mao Zedong's reign of China (for instance, the widely held belief that Mao's policies directly contributed to the death of at least 50 million people in China) to bolster his stance that communism does not deserve the negative reputation it has in society.

Lotta said that during Mao's reign, "life expectancy doubled from 32 to 65," and "middle school enrollment went from 15 million to 50 million."

He said: "You have now finally been told something about communism that is not wrong. Let's go."

Myles Tanzer is a staff writer.