I’ve been enjoying reading Krupskaya’s works on education and how to study (e.g. How Lenin Studied Marx). I’m wondering if there’s anything similar in the Marxist canon (or just worth reading for Marxists in general) on the subject of study and self-education. I’ll try to compile the Krupskaya I’ve been reading in an edit.
edit:
The Organization of Self Education
General Rules for Independent Study
Unfortunately that’s all I could find online
5/7: Guides
Marx and Engels, The German Ideology presents a kind of summary of how they analyse and understand history. This may be useful for you to read.
Michael Parenti, History as Mystery. The whole book is great and talks directly to what you’re asking. You might find the prologue and chapter 1 especially helpful. This would also be a good example to analyse to see how Parenti deals with sources. Read chapter 1 and just be aware of the referencing (use of endnote numbers). Then read the endnotes and see what kinds of sources Parenti relies on.
Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy. A good Marxist example of the research process. Marx takes a quote from e.g. Proudhon, then spends a few pages taking it apart (describing, criticising, analysing, etc). Then he takes another quote, etc, until he feels that he has understood and criticised the literature enough to come to his own conclusion. Just skim it to see the structure for now.
Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied. Furr is very honest about how he is using his sources. He explains this in the intro. If you read this, you might get a better idea of how other writers misuse their sources. Through the rest of the book, Furr quotes, in full, each claim made by Khrushchev, then Furr describes the main point in the quote, analyses the quote to find its constituent parts, then presents counter-arguments and counter-evidence to dispute each part of each of Khrushchev’s claims. The second half of the book, about 200 pages, are quotes from the sources that Furr relies on to dispute Khrushchev. (Usually there might be a bibliography to say what sources were relied on, but Furr knows English-speakers might struggle to access his sources, so he includes them in the appendices.)
Booth, Colomb, and Williams, The Craft of Research (PDF of the 3rd edition can be found online). This goes into more detail on some of what I wrote above. You would not need to read the whole thing, just the sections that look the most useful.
Bryan Greetham, How to Write Better Essays (PDF available online). Have a look at the section on research.
6/7: Reading: Part One
As for school and studying do not see these as separate to reading. The school system encourages that view, but reading will make study easier.
Planning reading
A good way to manage your reading list is to follow a plan. The plan can change over time. Work out what new ideas are most important to you, and start with the most helpful text on that topic, then move to the next text, and so on. It takes as long as it takes to get through the materials that you have chosen.
Usually, I am a polygamous reader, working through a pile of books and articles at any one time. Sometimes, I will focus on one text from start to finish – this is probably the most productive approach. But if I get distracted by life, I just pick up the nearest book and forget about the previous one. Later, I will remember the other book I started and go back to it. Reading groups and book discussion clubs help, because they require you to focus on finishing the selected text.
Attention span
It takes twenty minutes for your mind to focus on a task. After 50 minutes, your mind will likely lose focus. So reading should be in 20–50 minute bursts. Turn your phone on aeroplane mode for this time – you don’t need the distraction.
As soon as you realise that your mind has wandered and that you were not paying attention, decide how important this part of the text is. If it’s important, go back and read it again. After 20 minutes, you will find it much easier to stay focussed.
It’s almost impossible to read and fully process more than 10,000 words at once, even for advanced readers. The less familiar the reader is with the subject, the smaller this number. For example, if I were to read a book about physics, I would struggle reading more than 1,000 words at a time (unless it was written very simply). Chapters in modern books tend to be 10,000 words or less for this reason. If a book includes longer chapters, it will be helpful to divide them up yourself and take a break at a suitable point.
You can only hold around five items of information in your head at any given time. Each of these five ‘items’ can be a ‘chunk’ of information.
So the first time someone reads Marx and reads ‘bourgeois’, ‘proletariat’, ‘commodity’, ‘exchange value’, and ‘use value’ that’s it – five new items – their brain is full.
But the next time, ‘bourgeois and proletariat’ are one item, and ‘commodity, exchange value, and use value’ are one item. That’s only two items in total. So they can add three more items, such as ‘class struggle’, ‘mode of production’ and ‘means of production’. Eventually, these all become one item, perhaps ‘capitalism’, to which the reader can add another four single items and keep all that information in their mind at the same time.
So the more familiar the topic, the easier it is to read new and difficult texts talking about the same issue(s). Reading slowly and in short bursts allows you to create new ‘chunks’ out of items.
It takes practice to be able to read continuously, even for 15 minutes. The more difficult the text, the slower you will read, and the harder it is to stay focussed. It will get easier.
Still, I often get distracted, or my mind just wanders. It’s normal.
It is possible to get into a ‘flow state’ (an idea of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s). This is the holy grail. You may have felt it before. Once I am in a flow state, I can read (or type) for hours on end. I forget to eat and drink. It’s hard to plan for a flow state. It just happens. It is easy for other people and distractions to pull you out of a flow state. Once they pull you out, you’ve lost it :(
You can encourage a flow state: you need to get rid of distractions and start small. Create a low pressure environment. You’re not trying to see how many pages you can read. Focus on understanding and enjoying one page at a time. Be careful if you can do this because you will be oblivious to the time: set alarms for appointments/classes/etc that you cannot miss.
7/7: Reading: Part Two
Read slowly
I read as slowly as a I need to and I am a slow reader in general.
Better to spend twenty minutes reading a page and understanding it than getting through 10 pages in the same time and forgetting the content or not fully understanding it.
IMO, don’t bother speed reading. I taught myself how to speed-read. Then I practised until I could read four (substantial) novels in an evening. This takes most of the enjoyment out of fiction, so it’s pointless. I was also told that I would need to learn to speed read to get through university – otherwise, there’s too much to get through. I tried that, and got nowhere because almost nothing goes in when speed-reading non-fiction. If it does go in your memory, it does not stay there.
Spending 3–4 hours reading each day is enough to be in the top of the class at university, even if you read ‘slower’ than your peers. The difference is in reading consistently. However ‘fast’ others might read, it’s a waste of time if it is inconsistent, unfocussed, and careless. Better to read carefully.
You do not have to read in the ‘right order’
It is okay to read just one chapter in a book, whether it is chapter 1 or chapter 12 – pick the chapter that interests you. When I first read Capital, I started with the chapter on bloody legislation, then a month later read the chapter on the working day, then a month later read other chapters on primitive accumulation.
Some time later (6 months?), I started at the beginning and read it from cover to cover. Having read the other chapters and some other Marxists in the meantime, I needed to know how Marx and Marxists gained their insights. From that point, you couldn’t have torn the book from my hands. I’m not suggesting this reading order; I’m just showing you that there is no ‘right way’ to read a text.
This is not a systematic approach, but it is how I read most things. It relies on reading enough material – over as long a time as it takes – to become interested in the subject. The more you learn about a subject, the more interesting it becomes, the more questions you have, and the more you want to know. The easier it gets to enter the flow state.
Knowing which parts of a text to read
There are some useful techniques for reading faster. Skim-reading (for the ‘gist’) and skipping paragraphs or sections as soon as you realise that you know the content already. Through practice and familiarity, you will learn that most (good!) writing will follow a certain structure.
Good writers tend to start by telling you what other people have said; only then do they tell you why the others are wrong, and finally they tell you the solution. If you already know the field and the arguments, you only need to read a few lines of the earlier sections. The important sections are where the writer tells you what they are adding to the subject. They summarise this in the introduction and explain its implications in the conclusion.
Some writers do this section my section (modern published academic papers tend to do this). Some writers may do this point-by-point (essays, books ‘for the public’, and older texts tend to do this).
In example 1 or 2, once you know the area, you can jump to the text on ‘the new way of looking at the field’, whether that is all together in one section, or spread out at the end of several sections. You can skim the rest for keywords, just to see if anything jumps out at you.
When reading any text, start with the chapter and section headings to get an overview. If there is an abstract, read this next. Then read the introduction and the conclusion. (You could read the conclusion first.) Then read either the whole book or a selected chapter from start to finish. This way, it is easier to hold the pieces of the argument in your mind as you encounter each idea in the text, and you start with the overall argument as one ‘chunk/item’, to which you can slowly add the details.
It’s practically impossible to learn everything in a text the first time you read it. Fully understanding a text requires reading it 2–3+ times. Once to understand what the author is saying. Twice to understand how they are saying it. Third to understand whether they are persuasive and to decide what you think.
You do not need to fully understand everything you read. Often, it is enough to know the broad argument. And if that is all you need to know, you can often work this out from the introduction and conclusion, then move on to something more interesting and important.
Okay this is really good, thanks
You’re welcome. Happy self-studies!