Meet the Leftists too Radical for the DSA

GONZO

The “scientific” communism of the Revcoms

By Joe Garza · September 8, 2026 · 10 min read

One evening, while taking my dog for a walk in Highland Park, I noticed a poster stapled to a telephone pole. “WE NEED TO GET BEYOND CAPITALISM – AND BEYOND MAMDANI-STYLE ‘DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM,’” it read. Wondering what wacky socioeconomic system existed beyond Mamdani-style socialism, I saved the date and made plans to attend a meeting of the Revcoms.

The Democratic Socialists of America, or the DSA, has all-but taken control of the Democratic Party. Much to the chagrin of the capital-owning class, Mamdani smashed the Overton Window and gave rise to a slew of Muslim-Hispanic comrades armed with cutesy selfie videos couching their plans for mass redistribution of wealth. But once a political pole is smashed, another instantly arises to take its place. To the Revcoms (the Revolutionary Communist Party) whose meeting I infiltrated, the DSA and Mamdani are far too moderate. They will settle for nothing less than complete Soviet-style seizure of the entire American economy.

I arrived at the venue on the second floor of a strip mall in West Adams. An elderly woman told me to put any metallic items I had onto a folding table next to her, to stand on painter’s tape as she waved a Garrett Super Scanner V around my body.

“Do you have any weapons or anything that can be used for self-defense on you?” she asked.

“No,” I told her.

The room was small and packed full of about 20 attendees; the ambiance of an afternoon daycare center: light blue walls, hardwood floors, and a clear plastic wall organizer filled with markers, glue, and staplers.

This particular group of Revcoms was founded by Bob Avakian, their Man on the Holy Mountain. Avakian, an activist and writer, was a product of the New Left movement of the 1960s and 1970s. No surprise that he went to school at UC Berkeley and hung around far-left groups like Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Panther Party.

I seated myself in the back of the room, right in front of the small balcony, which had a large red flag that read “REVOLUTION NOTHING LESS.” I expected a younger whiter crowd, like the NYC DSA. No, mostly middle-aged whites and Hispanics. There was one attendee, however, who lived up to the stereotype: a typical SoCal Dude with baggy denim shorts, flip-flops, late-90s spiky hair, casually sporting a hammer & sickle shirt. An upbeat mariachi band blasted directly into the meeting space from a parking lot across the street.

The main speaker was Revcom activist and writer Sunsara Taylor, with some support from Revcom spokesman Rafael Kadaris.

Taylor blasted both Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani’s 4th of July speeches commemorating America’s 250th birthday.

“Both of them were pushing the big lie that the founding of this country, its documents, its values, its structures, and its so-called promise are something to believe in and rededicate ourselves to, something to uphold and strive for, and that not recommitting ourselves on this anniversary to realizing these values is to somehow betray the sacrifice and struggle of all those who’ve come before us. So, in a word, bullshit!”

I feigned wide-eyed agreement. Tell it like it is girl.

“Taxing billionaires isn’t enough! Corporations need to be completely seized by the socialist state. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon…” She looked around the room, seizing up on a water bottle, “and Arrowhead!”

Of course, the Revcoms have nothing but hatred for Trump, but I noticed they spent far more time denouncing figures on the left.

“In some ways, Mamdani’s worse,” said Taylor.

For the Revcoms, the DSA and the Democratic Party are actually the real enemy—a similar sort of positioning as Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson on the far right, who point to the GOP as the real problem. The Dems are the managed opposition that sucks up all the well-meaning egalitarians and diverts their revolutionary energy.

“In his speech at Mount Rushmore, the day before the Fourth of July,” Taylor continued, “Trump called for exiling communists; he doubled down on his war crimes; he sharpened his fascist vision and determination. So instead of trying to reclaim–”

It was then that the Latin music from across the street somehow got even louder. Taylor did her darnedest to compete.

“Instead of trying to reclaim this country and this vision of America, we’re going to be talking about getting beyond capitalism!” she shouted.

She couldn’t overpower the invasive Mariachi, so she gestured to a staffer to close the balcony doors, cutting us off from the much-needed breeze on this 90-degree day. The air conditioner was broken, leaving us to enjoy the “warmth of collectivism.”

“We’ll be hot together, but it will be a better collective experience,” Taylor said.

And then, right on cue, just as Taylor was talking about tearing down the current system, a pile of pamphlets and zines toppled over as if the ghost of Lenin had pushed them over the edge.

“Yes! Tear it all down!” she said, laughing.

Throughout her talk, Taylor deployed many of the usual far-left buzzwords including “oppression,” “systemic,” “fascism,” “patriarchal,” “rape culture” (haven’t heard that one in a while), and “liberation,” among others. But where the Revcoms really try to differentiate their branding is with the use of the word “scientific.” They use it as often as possible, in all of their speeches and literature.

“People will rise up. But if we don’t have a scientific understanding of the source of the oppression, and what it will take to get beyond it, then even the most heroic resistance can get channeled back into the terms of the system, and the oppression goes on and on.”

“…And this New Communism encompasses a scientific understanding of the problem humanity faces, the solution to this problem, and the means and methods to make this solution real.”

“This is what Bob Avakian does. In fact, the most important thing about Bob Avakian, why I follow him and why you should too, is that he brings a thoroughly scientific approach to understanding the problems humanity faces today, and how they can be resolved.”

In their view, the Marxism espoused by the DSA uses catchy slogans to capitalize on the growing resentment of the proletariat. A ploy to get fake radicals into office, only for them to say “yea” to the next war and to grant tax subsidies for rent-seeking conglomerates. The Marxism they espouse was, I guess, created in a lab with top scientists, published in multiple peer-reviewed journals, and approved by the FDA. They had the terrifying certitude of believing their radical ideas were just simple math.

Another differentiation they constantly hammered was the distinction between old communism and “New Communism,” a variant invented by their founder Bob Avakian. During the Q&A session, I raised my hand to receive the microphone; before asking my question, I thanked Taylor profusely, then asked her what the difference was between New Communism and past communist movements.

Taylor then launched into a long-winded, buzzword-crammed explanation that, of course, featured plenty of uses of “scientific,” only to conclude that New Communism has learned from the successes and failures of every communist movement that preceded it. In other words, New Communism has never been tried.

“Practical Lenin didn’t live up to theoretical Lenin,” she rambled.

“Revolution is not just a big movement or big change in attitudes,” Taylor stated with the force of a theater kid doing an impression of MLK. “It’s not playing around with a few changes that leaves the system intact! …A revolution means the force of millions drawn from many different parts of society and organized for an all-out fight to overthrow this system…To defeat and abolish its armed force of oppression.”

And there Taylor answered my real question, which was about the means necessary to make this happen. No doubt, defeating the “armed force of oppression” included not only individual assassinations of opposing leaders, but also street-level executions of anyone who stood in the way.

On their Instagram, the Revcoms have a post outlining the differences between woke identity politics and revolutionary communism: Woke identity politics believes the problem is individuals with more privilege, whereas Revolutionary Communism believes the problem is the system of capitalism-imperialism. Woke identity politics follows leaders based on their marginalized identity (BIPOC leadership, etc.), while revolutionary communism’s leadership is based on scientific understanding of the real problem & solution. Woke identity politics is all about changing words, but revolutionary communism is all about changing the world.

“Yes, the economy needs to be completely remade, but so do people,” Taylor said with melodramatic gravitas.

As anticapitalist as the Revcoms are, they’re still not afraid to get all laissez-faire to hawk the works of their main man, Bob Avakian, at every opportunity, promoting books from Basics from the Talks and Writings of Bob Avakian to his autobiography, From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist. Housing, education, food, and everything to support all of your basic needs will be free under our system, but you’ll still have to buy the course-mandated books.

And then there was the slightly religious component at the end of the talk when a staffer walked around with a collection plate. I put a dollar in just to keep up the appearance of an eager, impressionable mind. Forgive me, Thomas Sowell, for I have sinned.

There’s not much room for errant thought among the ranks of the Revcoms. Avakian is their prophet, their deliverer, and to question him is to question reality itself. The constant dropping of his name felt cultish, and after a little digging, it turns out I’m hardly the first one to notice this. In fact, Avakian himself took it upon himself to publish a statement on the Revolutionary Communist Party website writing, “We Are Applying a Scientific Method and Approach to Understanding, and Transforming, the World To Emancipate Humanity,” (the word “science” and its variations would show up another 19 times in the statement). So yeah, basically it’s a cult.

And like any good cult, Revcom issues a doomsday prophecy. The website declares, using eerily Info Wars-esque Web 1.0 graphic design overlays, “A WHOLE NEW FRAMEWORK FOR HUMAN EMANCIPATION” and “HUMANITY ON THE BRINK” complete with low-res dissolving Earth jpeg and abundant shots of Bob himself.

Whatever their deal is, we’re living through something of a Marxist moment, and the Revcoms are determined to push it as far as it can go. The DSA can have its rent freezes, shade trees, free buses, city-run grocery stores, and electoral victories. The Revcoms are thinking bigger. Totally ridiculous, yes, but it wasn’t too long ago that the DSA was almost as ridiculous.

As I headed for the door, one of the organizers approached me and asked if I wanted to hear about upcoming programs. I enthusiastically said yes. She handed me some posters and asked how I’d found out about the event. I told her I’d seen one of their flyers in Highland Park. Still committed to my role as Comrade Joe, I decided to take things one step further.

“Actually, if you want, I can take some posters with me and put them up around my neighborhood!”

Her face lit up, as though it were the first time someone had offered without having to be asked. She handed me enough to cover most of the state.

I walked downstairs and back into capitalist-imperialist Los Angeles, dehydrated, a dollar poorer, and lugging enough pinko propaganda to put me on Joseph McCarthy’s Christmas card list. The revolution had failed to seize the means of production that afternoon, but it had successfully seized the means of perspiration. I tossed the posters into the trash while mariachi blared in the background. From each according to his printer, to each according to his wastebasket.