• Text here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/index.htm – about 27,000 words, so about 100 minutes to read

  • Audio here, British female AI speaker, 2h41m21s: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=aeGlxpDvoqc&listen=1

  • Audio here, American human male speaker: https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjoZVLIJX6CLKGC9Vz6Gwv9kI&listen=1

It is nine chapters, so one chapter per day for nine days seems the obvious way to go.

Liu Shaoqi is an admirable figure, Chairman from 1959 to 1968, a pragmatist who came into conflict with the worst tendencies of Mao and the Gang of Four, praised by Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping. I'm getting more and more interested in the pragmatic Chinese Marxists who actually succeeded and built something with a strong eye to pragmatism, not idealism.

  • PKMKII [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Thoughts on chapter one: seems like relatively standard but useful praxis theory in terms of revolutionary mindset and party behavior. The bit about “carries with him the remnants of the various ideologies of that society (including its prejudices, habits and traditions)” resonated with me as I see a lot of leftists where, even though they recognize that the results produced by the current institutions are rotten, there’s still an instinct in them to crouch their theory and practice in line with the acceptable precepts of those institutions. We need to be vigilant in finding the fine line between genuflecting to the old order and being contrarian for contrarianism’s sake.

    Otherwise, the observations about not letting the traps prior revolutions fell into, avoiding the emergence of new hierarchies, pretty bread and butter stuff. Looking forward to what he has to say on the more practical applications of this mindset.