Book Description:“In order to build socialism, first and foremost, we need to have socialist people who understand socialist ideology and have socialist...
It’s available for free (officially) at the link. We can have a weekly discussion for a section/chapter/part etc.
I've read the intro, so here are my random thoughts:
The annotations are too unwieldy, so what I did was first read the chapter ignoring the annotations before going back to read just the annotations. The annotations actually have pretty good info and give much historical context. However, I think reading the text straight through completely destroys the flow of the original text, which is why I've settled on original text only->annotations only.
Besides that, it just gives a general overview of how Marxism-Leninism was developed. Karl Marx used the philosophy of British classical economists like Adam Smith, the political experience of French utopians like Fourier, and Hegel's dialectics to develop Marxism. Lenin would then take this Marxism and, through further development of the philosophy in the age of imperialism, develop it into Marxism-Leninism.
The original text isn't very Vietnam-centric. It's only the last view sections where they start mention Ho Chi Minh thought.
I think Luna and EJ tailored the translation so that someone who has never read a single Marxist text could at least follow what the text is saying. This is why the annotations are thorough to the point of being excessive. They basically took a Vietnamese college textbook and added a bunch of stuff that presumably would've been covered in a Vietnamese secondary school textbook.
Edit: Here's a video where they discuss parts of the intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJzaCUicwCw&t=3240s
That’s a great tip. I managed to read about half the intro + annotations. I think you’re spot on. It feels like they added every possible annotation they could think of (worldview, viewpoint etc) which feels excessive. But I appreciated the ones about Vietnam and their history etc. There’s also a lot of repetition! But I’ve been enjoying it so far.
I've read the intro, so here are my random thoughts:
The annotations are too unwieldy, so what I did was first read the chapter ignoring the annotations before going back to read just the annotations. The annotations actually have pretty good info and give much historical context. However, I think reading the text straight through completely destroys the flow of the original text, which is why I've settled on original text only->annotations only.
Besides that, it just gives a general overview of how Marxism-Leninism was developed. Karl Marx used the philosophy of British classical economists like Adam Smith, the political experience of French utopians like Fourier, and Hegel's dialectics to develop Marxism. Lenin would then take this Marxism and, through further development of the philosophy in the age of imperialism, develop it into Marxism-Leninism.
The original text isn't very Vietnam-centric. It's only the last view sections where they start mention Ho Chi Minh thought.
I think Luna and EJ tailored the translation so that someone who has never read a single Marxist text could at least follow what the text is saying. This is why the annotations are thorough to the point of being excessive. They basically took a Vietnamese college textbook and added a bunch of stuff that presumably would've been covered in a Vietnamese secondary school textbook.
Edit: Here's a video where they discuss parts of the intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJzaCUicwCw&t=3240s
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That’s a great tip. I managed to read about half the intro + annotations. I think you’re spot on. It feels like they added every possible annotation they could think of (worldview, viewpoint etc) which feels excessive. But I appreciated the ones about Vietnam and their history etc. There’s also a lot of repetition! But I’ve been enjoying it so far.