"Read theory."
We say this all the time. It's basically an expression, isn't it? It can be advise, bragging, scorn, mockery. It's all become a bit ephemeral.
That's not to say that people shouldn't read theory. Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. Even so, isn't it a bit silly to suggest, even implicitly, that being a Marxist or communist boils down to a familiarity with the source material? If that's not book worship, I don't know what is.
I understand that this is, on some level, an accusation. I am suggesting that many of our communities are caught up in a somewhat liberal, idealist mindset. We all have an ideology, a set of opinions about the world which we express and propagate at the expense of our competitors. Can we seriously deny this is what we are doing?
If Marxism-Leninism is a science, there must be some technical aspect. What are we supposed to do in the world? How do we do it? And how do we know if it's working?
Gotta read history in tandem with theory. We don't have time to reinvent the wheel for every movement. Learning about the nitty gritty details of past experiments is one of the first steps towards building our own experiments. I think a lot of the problems on the left stem from consuming abstract theory without understanding the material conditions from which the theory was refined.