every time you think about these sorts of things, or theory in general really, you chip away at it, it becomes more accessible the more you work at it, even if it only really clicks way down the line from now, good on you for engaging with something challenging either way
Just be comfortable not knowing sometimes, keep plowing thru it and keep asking questions. It is through exposure that one learns. I’ve read whole books and then realized afterwards that in order to truly understand it i must now read it again. This happened to me with Kant and with Marx. It’s a long road but it can be traveled.
Marxists typically write in a dialectical style which can seem very strange to people like us, reared as we are on Platonic idealism, an ideology which serves private property. Listening to theory podcasts like Why Theory, Red Library, Cosmopod, and Revolutionary Left can help. I also use VoiceDreamReader to read texts to me while I do chores or walk. It helps a LOT.
On Contradiction is literally about dialectical materialism though, that’s what Marxism is. Red Menace had an episode on it, maybe give it a listen.
The Jonah Jameson meme where he realizes he should have appreciated Spiderman but it's the realization that Marx was a far better writer than everyone after him.
i found On Contradiction made a lot more sense after reading the Tao Te Ching.
Everybody on earth knowing
that beauty is beautiful
makes ugliness.
Everybody knowing
that goodness is good
makes wickedness.
For being and nonbeing
arise together;
hard and easy
complete each other;
long and short
shape each other;
high and low
depend on each other;
note and voice
make the music together;
before and after
follow each other.
A core idea Mao and Laozi are trying to get at is that things aren't defined by platonic ideals. There's no perfect abstraction that describes reality. There's only reality itself, constantly changing and contradictory.
Concrete things, which we feel we can grab onto, are really only temporary eddies in the current. They're defined only by contrast with the things around them, and by their internal structure. Also, our understanding of the world can be confused -- our senses sometimes don't line up with reality, and our ideas usually don't line up with reality.
Different philosophers react in different ways to this insight. The Buddha says we should try to totally let go of ideas. Laozi says we should just vibe. Mao says that we should try to sharpen our ideas, by bringing them into contact with reality. "Ideas are tested by experiment", basically.
Many comrades do not see the importance of, or are not good at, drawing together the activists to form a nucleus of leadership, and they do not see the importance of, or are not good at, linking this nucleus of leadership closely with the masses, and so their leadership becomes bureaucratic and divorced from the masses. Many comrades do not see the importance of, or are not good at, summing up the experience of mass struggles, but fancying themselves clever, are fond of voicing their subjectivist ideas, and so their ideas become empty and impractical. Many comrades rest content with making a general call with regard to a task and do not see the importance of, or are not good at, following it up immediately with particular and concrete guidance, and so their call remains on their lips, or on paper or in the conference room, and their leadership becomes bureaucratic.
-- Mao, Some Questions Concerning methods of LeadershipMao also talks about how things are defined by their internal conflicts, the forces within them moving with and against each other. That's Marx's insight into economics, but imo it shows up all over the sciences. Like, I think it's not actually a bad description of how modern physicists think about "symmetries".
...that's my understanding anyway, lol