Its still hard for me to understand how dialectical and historical materialism works,how does one can understand the functioning of history using dialectics ?
Hello, I have been reading Capital by Karl Marx and the density of the material makes it much easier to comprehend if I take notes. My notes are mostly paraphrasing in the moment im reading when I feel that what I am reading is important, and I feel like I take as much time taking notes as much as I read. What are you methods of taking notes? How often do you take them? Thanks
Ok so this is my first time on here. I saw "Self education, however, can bring fruitful results only if one knows what to read, how to read, and how best to organize one's studies." - Nadezhda Krupskaya on the banner. I'm studying for an exam and just feeling behind on my personal studies so this was something that had been on my mind.
How do you read? How does one best organzie ones studies? Any thoughts and resources would be greatly appreciated.
I came across communizers and dauve recently, and I'm looking for any MLM texts that can help refute their positions
I often see his books recommended online, but having reading Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend and Western Marxism, a few things stuck out to me. Firstly, Stalin seems to be more of a discussion of how the common narrative given is misleading, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the discussion itself will answer all questions. As a matter of fact, I recall that on the question of the Katyn Massacre, he addressed it by comparison to a separate event rather than going into the details of the event itself and I also recall that Grover Furr had questioned the validity of the narrative of that event, though I haven't read that book yet.
In his book on Western Marxism, he discusses how the Frankfurt School and the works of Slavoj Zizek and Hannah Arendt are misleading, but he seemed to put a lot of focus in his discussion on colonial violence without much discussion on the economic base, and he also had a chapter on how, in his view, Chinese culture is more revolutionary because it is not influenced by Christianity. I also recall him saying something about the adaptation of Buddhism to Chinese culture. Would I be right in thinking that his writing style is misleading, especially in the case of the latter work?
While reading through some histories of the Russian revolution, I remember seeing some communist authors (can’t remember which, maybe Stalin?) speaking of “military science” -- e.g. the progeny of Clausewitz, a "systematic" approach to combat, with unified doctrine and training, deliberate maneuvers, standardized drills and tactics, and industrialized logistics, rather than a purely political look at war and a “meh” approach to the organization of the armies themselves -- and advocating its implementation in the revolution. There was a quote along the lines of "of course the revolution will have to conform to the objective laws of military science". Obviously this type of science is necessarily political, and in the 1910s this referred to the adoption of the tactics of armies of Moltke, Brusilov, and Ludendorff in order to confront those bourgeois states’ armies head-on and succeed. Since then, the Soviet Union and other communist states have emerged, triumphed over fascist invasion, and declined due to the internal contradictions of their military-industrial complex. This, together with over a century of experience with guerrilla war has produced a lot of new perspective on what the supposedly objective “military science” looks like. Even the western sources acknowledge some kind of fundamental split in the “Soviet thinking” and “Western thinking”. But I want to understand this conflict from a communist perspective. Does anyone know of any good explicitly communist sources on "military science"? Does such theory even exist or is it contradictory to the aims of a communist?
I have already read quite a bit about military theory over the last few years from a lot of different sources, but most of them were works of the post cold war u$-led NATO military-industrial complex. For example, I’ve seen field manuals and training documents from the u$, uk, ukraine, as well as books by authors associated with the military industrial complex from the u$, germany, i$rael, and china. I’ve also used Wikipedia as a source for info about u$ doctrine (it usually cites the field manuals and MIC authors). I think I have a decent understanding of the basic concepts of tactics, strategy, and logistics as put into practice by these hyper-industrialized armies. I don’t want to see any more explanations of the standard bourgeois military theory, I’m interested in seeing an outline of a communist military theory that can be as in-depth as the bourgeois ones.
I have read some documents about “Redfor” exercises conducted by the u$ army, where they attempt to “roleplay” an insurgent communist force and emulate their tactics and strategy. Most of these are idealist nonsense, not borne out by the u$ army’s practical experience in any way, with the unspoken requirement to turn the result of the exercise into either a propagandizable one-sided victory or a request for more funding making the exercises meaningless. I think these things, like the Counterinsurgency field manual, are interesting only in what they reveal about what the u$ army thinks communists think. I know similar exercises were done by the USSR and China, but I have not read any details.
As for explicitly communist sources I have seen so far, I have read Mao’s writings on guerrilla war and a few PCP essays, and a few other books about the history of various communist revolutionary wars. I have also read a couple of pamphlets and essays by various south american communist and anarchist groups giving practical advice on guerrilla tactics, such as “Minimanual do Guerrilheiro Urbano”by Carlos Marighella. I’ve seen one essay BY Tukhachevsky reproduced on marxists.org. Most of the info online about Tukhachevsky is explicitly anticommunist, most of it driven by the u$ army during the Cold War in their drive to “understand” the Red Army doctrine of the mid 1920s-early 1950s, or even outright “sovietology” misinfo, and then the pop-history fallout of that research. Most of what I know about Tukhachevsky’s “operational” doctrine (aka “deep battle” theory) is gleaned from modern military documents, especially russian/ukrainian army documents translated into english, but also german and amerikkkan secondary sources (e.g. David Glantz, army university press, the various US army think tanks).
Finally, I recently started reading Clausewitz’s On War as I started actively seeking out more military theory, and I knew Tukhachevsky adapted heavily from Clausewitz. I finished the 1st book, which seems to be where a lot of the interesting sociopolitical claims are made, but a lot of the information was stuff I had already seen in a simplified form in other sources. I do appreciate seeing a “dialectical” perspective on this familiar theory, even if it is a bit tedious. I also came across Lenin’s notebooks on On War. Super interesting to see, and it but not exactly what I had in mind. By the way, I have read hardly any Trotsky or Gramsci.
I am interested if there are any sources which directly criticize and deconstruct the military theory of imperialist armies, explaining in detail where and when they fail and what methods cause them to fail, with examples if possible. The guerrilla pamphlets are more like what I was looking for, because they give concrete examples of problems and solutions taken directly from practical experience as well as general criticism about the social role of war - also I would consider Blood In My Eye by George Jackson to be in this category, not just in the suggestions for guerrilla war, but the general style of criticism of bourgeois military and policing institutions. Secondly, I’d like to ask if anyone knows of some historical Soviet, Chinese, North Korean, etc military documents giving a general overview of army doctrine or tactics, preferably from before the 1960s. Something like the u$ army field manual "FM 3-0 Operations" or the russian tactical manual "ОБЩАЯ ТАКТИКА", but with an explicitly communist perspective. I can’t read Russian but I would appreciate if someone can at least give me a starting point. I’ve heard there are some translated lectures from the 1970s from the Voroshilov Academy, anyone know if they are any good? What about the 1936 “Provisional field regulations for the Red Army”? I have looked at that briefly, it looked pretty good, but it lacks information about guerrilla operations, and I was especially concerned because it was a u$ army produced source. Again, I am particularly interested in detailed analysis of actual combat operations, complete with maps, logistical information, etc, not just general info about the role of the army in society.
Thanks in advance. Reposted because reddit did not like my link to a russian army website.