• 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

    A bit late but some final thoughts: this clearly meant to be theory in a practical, good membership of an organization way rather than direct analysis of political economy and/or philosophy. There, it just gives standard “read the Marxist-Leninist literature” advice. So a lot of it feels less like socialist-specific guidance and more guidance that would be available applicable to most members of an institution.

    So the value I got out of it was seeing how this reflected what the problems were that the CPC was having in the late 30’s and what seemed of the moment and what is timeless:

    • The problem with careerists in the party, opportunistic membership based on the assumption that the CPC would become more powerful. Suggests that many in China saw the national government’s position as weakened at the time, but not so much an issue in current revolutionary Western parties.
    • People not putting in enough effort or only wanting to contribute in certain ways. Really a problem in any organization with voluntary structures.
    • The struggle addicts. Obviously, this was a prevalent issue in the party, probably aimed at those higher up than him. The one issue that resonates the most in modern leftist organizations, where too many join to satisfy their own sense of self-righteousness rather than accomplish things.
    • Can tell that foreign incursions played a large role in the rise of the communist party. The combination of British imperialism and the Japanese invasion must’ve destroyed the sense of the government being able to keep China from falling into colonial status, which made Marxist-Leninism look attractive as an alternative that could prevent that.