Fifteen Minutes: Barnes & Noble: Red Section

“I used to be a white American, but I gave it up in the interest of humanity.”

So says a black T-shirt pinned to the wall of Revolution Books, just down Mass. Ave. towards Central Square. This haven of Commie propaganda would be McCarthy’s nightmare.

A motherlode of Communist literature, neatly sorted on shelves into categories like international, environmental and even feminist theory greets the visitor. The walls of the store are adorned with portraits of Lenin, Marx, Mao and a few pictures of China’s 1949 revolution. Plus, if reading isn’t your thing, there are buttons and T-shirts.

For a tiny store, Revolution Books is overwhelming. Small, hastily constructed pamphlets lauding the Shining Path in Peru and the unfair imprisonment of Abimael Gúzman are two shelves away from a book more likely found at the Coop, on research into the effects of globalization and international for-profit companies. Nevertheless, pure Marxist theory prevails. The most popular book, according to George Bryant, a Revolution employee, is Karl Marx’s Das Capital.

Nowhere better is this spectrum of views represented than within the pages of the Revolutionary Worker. The Revolutionary Communist Party’s (RCP) weekly newspaper, the Revolutionary Worker’s latest three editions lie prominently on a table in the bookstore. The latest issue contains a scathing attack on the NYPD—“If You Haven’t Been Arrested…You Haven’t Been to New York”—right after an article joyously describing the U.S. defeat in Vietnam.

Revolution Books has been painting the town red since 1980. “High school students are probably the largest group of people coming in here,” Bryant says, “and then college students.” Youth makes his job interesting because “it’s a challenge to try to connect with people of a different generation, to help the search and not just accept the accepted philosophy.”

Appropriately, a main target of the RCP of the USA is youth. An insert the Revolutionary Worker describes the RCP’s new “Party Programme.” The Party Programme declares that “youth…are crucial forces for a successful revolution and key successors to the revolutionary cause of the international proletariat.”

Oh, and if you can’t make it over to Revolution Books to pick up your copy of Revolutionary Worker, it is sometimes offered in Harvard Square during the weekends. Make sure you have your wallet; it’s $1.

—K.S. WEAVER