I’m slowly making my way through Roland Boer’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners” and I’m about halfway through. To me it’s the same feeling as when I read State and Revolution for the first time; when I first read S&R as a little radlib and I learned about how the working class needs to use the tools of the state to suppress the bourgeoisie, or even the basics of class conflict, it just clicked as something so practical and obvious. Likewise when I learn about Mao’s developments on primary and secondary contradictions, or the broader Chinese Marxist developments on the purpose of market institutional forms, it just seems so obvious.
Some Marxist (and honestly some political, sociological, psychological, etc.) books are just “read once and you’re done and it doesn’t even leave any impression.”
But other books really affect you.
The euphoria I get each of those experiences is a bit indescribable.
It isn’t even that the first group does nothing, but rather it lays the foundation, the slow accumulation of a quantity until it reaches a point where a transformation in quality occurs, that leap in awareness and understanding, that couldn’t have happened without a foundation to stand on when making it. You need decades where (seemingly) “nothing” happens in order to reach weeks where “decades” happen, so to speak.
Edit: that said, there are definitely books that really hit the Marx (badum tiss), and liberal works which use many words to say very little as they are hiding just how little they have to say.
Your description of this also helped explain quantitative vs qualitative change in a way that made me feel like I understand it much more now. Brilliantly put!
I’m slowly making my way through Roland Boer’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners” and I’m about halfway through. To me it’s the same feeling as when I read State and Revolution for the first time; when I first read S&R as a little radlib and I learned about how the working class needs to use the tools of the state to suppress the bourgeoisie, or even the basics of class conflict, it just clicked as something so practical and obvious. Likewise when I learn about Mao’s developments on primary and secondary contradictions, or the broader Chinese Marxist developments on the purpose of market institutional forms, it just seems so obvious.
Some Marxist (and honestly some political, sociological, psychological, etc.) books are just “read once and you’re done and it doesn’t even leave any impression.”
But other books really affect you.
The euphoria I get each of those experiences is a bit indescribable.
It isn’t even that the first group does nothing, but rather it lays the foundation, the slow accumulation of a quantity until it reaches a point where a transformation in quality occurs, that leap in awareness and understanding, that couldn’t have happened without a foundation to stand on when making it. You need decades where (seemingly) “nothing” happens in order to reach weeks where “decades” happen, so to speak.
Edit: that said, there are definitely books that really hit the Marx (badum tiss), and liberal works which use many words to say very little as they are hiding just how little they have to say.
Your description of this also helped explain quantitative vs qualitative change in a way that made me feel like I understand it much more now. Brilliantly put!
Oh this is true
In my opinion:
Nothing is a waste anymore.
Frankly, just this realization alone has cured my anhedonia.
maozedoll is a good username
ty i’m pretty proud of it lol