Read one Marxist Leninist essay by the end of sunday, then post your analysis if you finish. You can also post what essays you want to read, then edit the comment to include your analysis. They can be from any Marxist Leninist, and you can do a book if you want. Theory only though, not a history book. This is laid back, but some regular challenges to encourage more theory reading is always okay. If you find the Essay you read too short, then you can read multiple!

I’m going to read “Guerrilla Warfare” by Lenin, and “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” also by lenin.

    • Catradora-Stalinism☭OPM
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      92 years ago

      I wanted to get some more theory posting along the usual stuff. Radicalization never ends!

  • @PolandIsAStateOfMind
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    2 years ago

    Atm just reading “Materialism and Empiriocriticism” by Lenin, but it is somewhat hard reading since i’m not into philosophy.

    But bloody hell, i’m absolutely stunned by the fact that grown intelligent people could seriously think such impossible colossal rotted nonsense like Berkeley and his epigons. It does confirm my previous suspicion that 90% of philosophy is just a hot air.

    EDIT: Just read that hilarious quote from the Feuerbach there:

    “Does this mean that we must deal with questions of food and drink when examining the problem of the ideality or reality of the world?—exclaims the indignant idealist. How vile! What an offence against good manners soundly to berate materialism in the scientific sense from the chair of philosophy and the pulpit of theology, only to practise materialism with all one’s heart and soul in the crudest form at the table d’h™te” (p. 195). And Feuerbach exclaims that to identify subjective sensation with the objective world “is to identify pollution with procreation” (p. 198). A comment not of the politest order, but it hits the vital spot of those philosophers who teach that sense-perception is the reality existing outside us.

    Feuerbach and Lenin literally called idealist philosophy “masturbation” XD

    • Catradora-Stalinism☭OPM
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      72 years ago

      Yay! I will put that book on my list. Most philosophy is shit, its repetition.

    • @Idliketothinkimsmart
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      32 years ago

      Someone here actually informed me about the CIA actually sponsored a number of western philosophers :O. People like Foucault, for example, were too busy circle jerking over the nature of power (Oooooo) or whatever as opposed to concrete instances of Imperialism of his own country. Dude even has multiple entries in a CIA document stating his usefullnes in “reminding philosophers of the “bloody” conse- quences that have flowed from the rationalist social theory of the 18th-century Enlightenment and the Revolutionary era.”

      The CIA - Philosophy pipeline is D E E P

      • @PolandIsAStateOfMind
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        22 years ago

        Figures. Philosophy was employed very often in the service of the ruling classes.

    • Catradora-Stalinism☭OPM
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      2 years ago

      thats sorta what I’m doing, getting some good reading done, even the basics too

  • @xanthespark
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    2 years ago

    I’m gonna read “The Foundations of Leninism” by Stalin

    Edit: I’m glad you’ve posted this. It gives me a little push to read. I am just weirdly specific about stuff and get this weird feeling when considering reading new theory, like I can’t move on to reading a different author until I’m well versed in the author whose work I’m currently reading. Just need to put that perfectionism aside and jump right in, screw it, I’ve never read Stalin’s work but I’ll never start to if I never just do it, regardless of I feel like it’s a bit out of my depth

    • Catradora-Stalinism☭OPM
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      2 years ago

      yes they do! just remember to analyze what you hear. Write it down. Not everyone can sit down and read something for hours. This guy has a great selection of audiobooks from the marxist leninists of the world.

      they even have a few from Xi Jinping!

  • @kamraten
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    52 years ago

    I read On Practice by Mao. I am a pretty slow reader and occasionally become dejected when reading works that are more on the philisophical or metaphysical side, however this work was very straight forward in its message. Mao eloquently uses examples and traditional Chinese’s sayings to further his criticism of the old school of philosophies of rationalism and empiricism, but also to clarify the scientific approach of dialectial materialism to understand how to participate and go about in the class struggle. This work really made me understand how theory is purposeless without taking part in practice and vice versa, i.e. how rational knowledge is dependent on perceptual knowledge.

  • Lenin enjoyer🏳️‍⚧️
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    42 years ago

    I haven’t read in too long and this should ease me back in (hopefully) I need to finish like 3 books lol

  • @Idliketothinkimsmart
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    42 years ago

    uhuhuh I have returned! I kinda cheated because I had started tasks of the proletariat in our revolution by Len-dog some weeks ago and was able to finish today. I don’t remember what the beginning of the book was about, but where i picked up, there seemed to be a very strong insistence that the proletariat of the time were to be staunch internationalists regardless of whether they were in the dominant global position. Having views that you actually stood by and could correctly convey is much better than having to twist them so they can be perverted by social democrats.

    The understanding that I had listening to the audiobook was that the soviets were in a time of conflict and there was a pressing need to not stray from Internationalism. He talks about Kautskyites and “Zimmerwald left”, which I’m guessing are just social democrats and centrists at the end of the day. I’m not really sure what they did exactly, but L- dog does not seem to like them. He likes Liebnickt though, he even got the fraternal stamp of approval from Lenin himself: *It is better to remain with one friend only, like Liebknecht, and that means remaining with the revolutionary proletariat, than to entertain even for a moment any thought of amalgamation with the party of the Organising Committee, with Chkheidze and Tsereteli, who can tolerate a bloc with Potresov in Rabochaya Gazeta, who voted for the loan in the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies,[50] and who have sunk to “defencism”. Defencism referring to those who adopted the chauvinist line of defense of their Tsarist government against Germany and others…i think

    The labelling of people as Kautskyites and Zimmerwaldists is interesting because it establishes sorta models of things to look for. I don’t know the full extent of what they did, again, but Lenin does talk about how the Zimmerwald International was unwillingly to adopt revolutionary sentiment against it’s own bourgeoisie government and instead opted for social pacifism.

    I can’t wait till I get to hear “buttegieg-ians” and “AOCist’s” in a few decades.

    Alot of this would probably make more sense with alot more historical context, but I think some of the most important takeaways would

    • it is important to be able to clearly establish what your views are and not allow them to be subordinated to social democrats. This is definitely something I need to be better about IRL.

    • the class of the proletariat is far more important than questions of national identity (patsocs r cringe, lenin said so; internationalism above all else)

  • Catraism-Stalinism
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    22 years ago

    Guerrilla Warfare was interesting. It reminded me of the very important goals of such warfare, one which is to gain money by stealing from banks or general thievery. His last parts highlight the general need for guerrilla warfare needing a party or collective behind it. Guerrilla warfare without organization is just terrorism, not bad necessarily, but it will have the backhand of discouraging the populace against such action. A Fighting party is most important! It is also necessary due to the fact it gives the warfare in question the crucial ability to respond. New dangers will arise, creating the need for plans and schemes to combat this, while growing socialist spirit. Guerrilla warfare also is not the only method, but it cannot be dismissed at all. It is unmarxist to dismiss any methods of resistance, especially ones that do material damage to the enemy (there is an extent to that though, as in using unnecessary and inhumane means. There is also an important critique of Social Democracy throughout the writings. He mentions several about the impractical and dumb decisions the social democrats made, while proposing far better solutions and ways to combat future inevitables. I’ll quote one here:

    And without this latter condition, all, positively all, methods of struggle in bourgeois society bring the proletariat into close association with the various non-proletarian strata above and below it and, if left to the spontaneous course of events, become frayed, corrupted and prostituted. Strikes, if left to the spontaneous course of events, become corrupted into “alliances”—agreements between the workers and the masters against the consumers. Parliament becomes corrupted into a brothel, where a gang of bourgeois politicians barter wholesale and retail “national freedom”, “liberalism”, “democracy”, republicanism, anti-clericalism, socialism and all other wares in demand. A newspaper becomes corrupted into a public pimp, into a means of corrupting the masses, of pandering to the low instincts of the mob, and so on and so forth. Social-Democracy knows of no universal methods of struggle, such as would shut off the proletariat by a Chinese wall from the strata standing slightly above or slightly below it. At different periods Social-Democracy applies different methods, always qualifying the choice of them by strictly defined ideological and organisational conditions.

    On another note, its stunning how literally nothing has changed for so much in the past many years. Lenin is again on point.

    I have yet to finish the other essay, but perhaps I will have time before next friday! Life is a removed and so is my adhd, but I got this!