Book Marx

The question was innocent enough. Having noticed the signage for Revolution Books/Libros Revolución while shopping, the slight, brownskinned man stepped inside to ask about the shop’s selection, looking about him as though recently orphaned.

“Excuse me. Do you have any books by Barack Obama?” “No,” the clerk replied.

“No? What about Hillary Clinton?” he asked.

“No,” the clerk told him. He struggled to explain, without insulting the man, why this small bookstore with a clear political bent did not stock anything by the Democrats who are generating such fervor among Americans—and the rest of the world. “What we carry are radical, progressive... We have a lot of books on China, basically, that are out of print...” He went on trying to describe the shop’s broad catalog of revolutionary—not “liberal”—reading.

The man, polite but quite apparently confused, thanked him and left the store.

The activist community that whirls around Revolution Books, located at 146 W. 26th Street, reminds us that “revolution”—like “love,” “hate” or “I’m starving”—is a grossly overused phrase.

They make what passes for progressive politics in America seem weak, malleable, confused. Something about healthcare? It’s healthcare this year, right? Revolution Books has a proud and unambiguous agenda: the replacement of the political and economic system that currently dominates the world—i.e., America’s—with transnational communism.

Barack Obama, says the staff, is nothing but the system’s attempt to unite what was becoming an increasingly volatile populace behind the same old engine of empire. In the run-up to and afterglow of the inauguration, the shop has been selling plastic bottles of “Obamalade” for $1 apiece. Ingredients include “Massacre in Gaza,” “Rick Warren,” “Hillary Clinton” and “escalation of Afghan war.” The bookstore’s ideological arsenal includes literature and documentaries on revisionist history (The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village), counter-creationism (The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism), revolutionary life and anything capable of empowering oppressed peoples to restructure their societies (Chuck D’s Fight the Power). At the heart of the bookstore is author Bob Avakian, chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party of America. His titles, like From Ike to Mao and Beyond and Away With All Gods: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, get their own display. In the fiction section, communist relevance is proved by either class-based themes and authors or by perspectives from the disempowered lower hemisphere.

Children’s literature feeds young minds with themes of family and community. Revolution Books has been in New York for nearly three decades. Like its peers at Hue Man Bookstore in Harlem or the fem-powered Bluestockings on the Lower East Side, Revolution hosts frequent readings and discussions. But only lately has it been, as manager Travis Morales puts it, “getting out in society in a big way with revolution and communism.” That means organizing and hosting such events as the “Rediscovering China’s Cultural Revolution” discussion at NYU, or the recent town hall meeting about Israel’s war on the Gaza strip. There, luminaries like Chris Hedges and Vanessa Redgrave decried what they considered the terrorization and oppression of the Palestinian people.

While the American political Left usually calls for mere temperance from Israel when criticizing the state, speakers at the town-hall meeting questioned Israel’s very existence. When audience members applauded, you could almost see them nervously glancing over their shoulders.

“What we’ve done here is illustrative of the whole ethos of Revolution Books,” moderator Andy Zee told the crowd of 500. “We say what hasn’t been said, we do what others counsel not to do.” Revolution Books’ agenda for change is not to work within the system, it’s to prepare people with the tools of communism so that they’ll be ready when the system collapses. They accept no aspect of the status quo, and that means they’re facing down a leviathan. Their attitude is understandably grim, even a little wary. For example, when I visited the store to express my interest in writing a profile, I was greeted with trepidation. The all-volunteer staff—an older crowd, but unassuming, like neighbors you might see gathered at a book club—was busy shelving and preparing displays that skewered Israel or Obama. Shortly after insisting that no one but Morales, the closest thing to a manager of the co-op, could speak to the press, one clerk made a comment about rampant anti-communism. And later, at a pro-Gaza event at Grand Central Station, Zee told me that radical political groups must look out for infiltrators who pose as journalists. It’s not just paranoia: Right before the town hall meeting, the rightwing Jewish Defense Organization posted threatening leaflets on the bookstore’s window.

Eventually, though, I sit down with Morales. He leads me through the shop—past sections of African and Latin American literature, past counter-creationism texts—and down a stairway into the basement. This is a distribution center for Revolution, voice of the Communist Party. We navigate packing materials, heat pipes and boxes of old newspapers to occupy two chairs behind a half-wall.

The pony-tailed Morales, behind his droopy goatee and eye-dwarfing glasses, has the look of a sojourner—slightly dazed and yet protective of something. He is a Texan and a self-described Chicano. He says the theft of Texas and the discrimination against Mexican-Americans—among all people of color in the United States, up to Oscar Grant—were factors in his political development; as were the war in Southeast Asia and the organized resistance of blacks in the 1960s. He’s proud to say that Revolution Books, with items like Eduardo Galeano’s Memoria del Fuego or Noam Chomsky’s translated Poder y Terror, provides inspiration for radicals visiting from Latin America.

“A man came in here from the Dominican Republic,” Morales explains, “and bought $200 worth of revolutionary literature to take back home and set up a little library in his village.”

The bookstore, he says, is a Petri dish for ideological ferment and revolutionary thought. More and more frequently the shop hosts evening salons on religion and politics. “You come into this bookstore, and you have highlevel discussions between people who during the day are putting food on the shelves at the grocery, along with tenured professors,” he says. I ask Morales what he thinks about Barack Obama. He turns his head, and I see that he is wearing little red-star earrings, which I later learn are sold at the bookstore. The man, he says, is simply a national pacifier. “He can bridge those divisions [in politics],” says Morales, “He can get people who hate the war in Iraq to go along with it. He can convince blacks to be OK with their oppression.” He can convince them, Morales continues, “to play the role of Buffalo soldiers—to go out and kill other oppressed people.”

We climb out of the basement and back onto the sales floor. At the back of the shop, wearing a Yankees cap and oversized jacket, a half-smiling Hispanic kid browses the Spanish-language section. At the couch in front, some older guys with long hair and spectacles, vintage academic types, joke with the clerk. Morales perks up, gestures around him as if to indicate the veracity of his claim about professors and workingmen.

“If you come to the bookstore most nights,” he tells me, “you can get an idea of what a revolutionary society is going to look like.”

Revolution Books 146 W. 26th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-691-3345, www.revolutionbooksnyc.org