Leftist Reading

Episode 89:

This week we’re starting Russia in Revolution An Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928 by S. A. Smith

[Part 1 - This Week]
Introduction - 1:01

[Part 2 - 4?]
1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905

[Part 5 - 7?]
2. From Reform to War, 1906–1917

[Part 8 - 10?]
3. From February to October 1917

[Part 11 - 14?]
4. Civil War and Bolshevik Power

[Part 15 - 17?]
5. War Communism

[Part 18 - 20?]
6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy

[Part 21 - 24?]
7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture

[Part 25?]
Conclusion

Footnotes:
1) 3:23
François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1.

2) 16:51
Arno Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 3.

3) 16:40
Compare Simon Schama on the French Revolution: ‘In some depressing unavoidable sense, violence was the revolution.’ Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (London: Viking, 1989), xv.

Episode 87:

This week we’re finishing On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - 6]
4. On Contradiction

[Part 6]
5. Combat Liberalism
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 7]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 8]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People
Section 1-2
[Part 9]
Section 3-8
[Part 10]
Section 9-12
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?

[Part 11]
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

[Part 12 - This Week]
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy
Second Reading - 00:22
Discussion - 24:55

Footnotes:
27) 00:34
Ai Ssu-chti (c. 1910–66) was, at the time of his death, Vice-President of the Higher Party School. He was one of the Party’s leading philosophical spokesmen, who had translated works on dialectical materialism from the Russian, and written many books and articles which aimed to make Marxism accessible to the masses. On 1 November 1964 he published an article in People’s Daily attacking Yang Hsien-chen, the ‘bourgeois’ philosopher Mao refers to earlier in this talk in connection with the principle of ‘two combining into one’.

28) 03:54
The metaphor of ‘dissecting a sparrow’ is an applied theory and a work method to acquire knowledge and sum up experiences. Instead of attempting to generalize about a vast number of repetitions of a phenomenon, this work method advocates the in-depth analysis, thorough study and investigation of a prototype, and a summing-up experience through such analysis. The slogan is derived from the common saying, ‘while a sparrow is small, it contains all the vital organs’. Here, Mao makes the point that, in the broader international context, China as a whole is a microcosm of the problems of revolution in the world today.

29) 05:27
Leng Tzu-hsing discourses on the mansion of the Duke of Jung-kuo in chapter 2 of The Story of the Stone. The ‘Talisman for Officials’ was a list of the rich and influential families in the area which the former novice from the Bottle-Gourd Temple said every official should carry in order to avoid offending them and thereby wrecking his career.

30) 06:33
For Comrade Mao’s criticisms on this matter see ‘Letter Concerning the Dream of the Red Chamber’ (Selected Works, vol. V, pp. 150–51), ‘On Criticising Longloumeng yuanjia’ (Selected Works, vol. V, pp. 293–94). For Mao’s criticism of Yü P’ing-po see ‘Letter Concerning the Study of the Dream of the Red Chamber’, 16 October 1954, Selected Works, vol. V. Wang K’un-lun was Vice-Mayor of Peking in the 1950s.

31) 06:36
Ho Ch’i-fang (1911—), a lyric poet and powerful figure in the literary world, had defended Yü P’ing-po up to a point at the time of the campaign against him in 1954, saying that Yü was wrong in his interpretation of the Dream of the Red Chamber, but politically loyal. He himself came under attack at the time of the Great Leap Forward.

32) 06:41
Wu Shih-ch’ang’s work on this subject has been translated into English: On ‘The Red Chamber Dream’, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961.

33) 07:01
Mao’s statement here concords with the views of Lu Hsün.

34) 07:55
The figures Mao gives here, as he shifts to the present and calls to mind the final showdown with the Kuomintang, are those at the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War rather than those at the beginning of the renewed civil war in 1946, when the People’s Liberation Army had grown to at least half a million men.

35) 09:28
In January 1949, General Fu Tso-i, commanding the nationalist garrison in Peiping (as it was then called), surrendered the city without a fight to avoid useless destruction. He subsequently became Minister of Water Conservancy in the Peking government.

36) 11:05
The legendary Emperor Shen Nung is said to have taught the art of agriculture in the third millennium BC, and in particular to have discovered the medicinal properties of plants.

37) 14:30
The Lung Shan and Yang Shao cultures, located respectively in northeastern and north-western China, were the two most remarkable cultures of the neolithic period. As Mao indicates, they are particularly noted for their pottery.

38) 16:18
The book called the Chuang-tzu, which was probably composed only in part by the man of the same name who lived in the second half of the fourth century BC, is not only one of the classic texts of Taoism (with the Lao-tzu and the Book of Changes), but one of the greatest literary masterpieces in the history of China.

39) 22:23
Sakata Shiyouchi, a Japanese physicist from the University of Nagoya, holds that ‘elementary particles are a single, material, differentiated and limitless category which make up the natural order’. An article by him expounding these views was published in Red Flag in June 1965.

40) 22:55
Mao is apparently referring to a collection of essays published by Jen Chi-yü in 1963, and reprinted in 1973: Han Tang fo-chiao ssu-hsiang lun chi (Collected Essays on Buddhist Thought in the Han and T’ang Dynasties). In these studies, he quotes from Lenin at considerable length regarding dialectics.

41) 23:06
T’ang Yung-t’ung (1892–1964), whom Jen Chi-yü acknowledges as his teacher, was the leading historian of Buddhism, who had written on Chinese Buddhism under the Han, Wei, Chin, and Northern and Southern dynasties, on the history of Indian thought, etc. He was Dean of the Humanities at Peking University from 1948 until he fell ill in 1954.

42) 23:24
Under the influence of Ch’an Buddhism (better known under its Japanese name of Zen), Chinese philosophers of the Sung and Ming dynasties, of whom Chu Hsi (1130–1200) is the most famous, developed a synthesis between Confucianism and Buddhism in which a central role is played by the concept li (principle or reason), commonly known as Neo-Confucianism. For a Chinese view of the relations between these schools basically similar to Mao’s, see Hou Wai-lu, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1959, pp. 33–51. For an interpretation by a Western specialist, see H. G. Creel, Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao Zedong, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, and London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1953, Ch. 10.

43) 24:06
Han Yü and Liu Tsung-yüan. Han Yü sought to recreate the simplicity of the classical period, while avoiding excessive archaism. The slogan about ‘learning from their ideas’ quoted by Mao refers to this aim of seeking inspiration from the ancient Confucian sages, while avoiding outmoded forms of expression. He adopted a critical attitude towards Buddhism, but nonetheless borrowed some ideas from it. Liu Tsung-yüan, whom Mao calls here by his literary name of Liu Tzu-hou, was a close friend of Han Yü.

44) 24:17
Liu Tsung-yüan’s essay T’ien Tui (Heaven Answers) undertook to answer the questions about the origin and nature of the universe raised by Ch’ü Yüan in his poem T’ien Wen (Heaven Asks). The latter is translated under the title ‘The Riddles’ in Li Sao and Other Poems of Chu Yuan. It is, as Mao says, suggestive but extremely obscure.

Episode 87:

This week we’re continuing with On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - 6]
4. On Contradiction

[Part 6]
5. Combat Liberalism
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 7]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 8]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People
Section 1-2
[Part 9]
Section 3-8
[Part 10]
Section 9-12
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?

[Part 11 - This Week]
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy
First Reading - 00:19

[Part 12]
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Footnotes:
1) 1:09
In other words (1) Marxist philosophy, that is, dialectical materialism and historical materialism, which deals with the general law of development of the contradictions existing in nature, human society and man’s thought; (2) Marxist political economy which elucidates the law governing the development of society’s economy and exposes how the capitalist class exploits the working class (the theory of surplus-value); and (3) scientific socialism which shows that capitalist society is bound to develop to a higher stage of society and that the proletariat is the grave-digger of the capitalist system. (For details see Lenin’s ‘The Three Sources and the Three Component Parts of Marxism’.)

2) 3:46
Peking University, jointly descended from the old Peking University which launched the 4 May Movement in 1919, and from the American-endowed Yenching University, has continued since 1949 to enjoy the highest prestige in China for general intellectual excellence. People’s University (Jen-min ta-hsüeh), also located in Peking, was specially set up to provide courses more accessible to students from worker and peasant backgrounds.

3) 3:59
Among the Confucian classics, the Four Books represent the core studied by beginners, the Five Classics a somewhat larger corpus.

4) 4:32
Among his varied educational experiences, Mao Zedong has long singled out the six months he spent reading in the Hunan Provincial Library, in the winter of 1912–13, as one of the most valuable.

5) 5:45
The first sentence is from the Doctrine of the Mean, the second is from Mencius, book IV.

6) 6:19
The quotation is from the Confucian Analects. The incident in which the people of K’uang detained Confucius and wanted to kill him is referred to in the Analects.

7) 6:44
Mao’s reasoning is apparently that, whether or not he went there, Confucius had nothing against Ch’in (a state which existed in the first millennium BC in present-day Shensi, whose ruler ultimately conquered the whole of China and founded the Ch’in dynasty in 221 BC), since he included in the Book of Odes, which he is supposed to have edited, a number of poems from that area, including the two mentioned by Mao.

8) 6:48
Ssu-ma Chien (145–90 BC) was China’s first great historian, who compiled shih-chi (Historical Records) relating the history of China from the origins to his own day.

9) 7:37
The translation of the above poem, and of the titles of the two mentioned previously, are taken from Legge’s version of the Book of Odes.

10) 8:02
Love poems have traditionally been interpreted by Chinese critics as an allegory for the relations between an official and his prince; Chu Hsi held that they should be taken at face value. Mao puts the commonsense view that they should sometimes be taken literally, and sometimes not.

11) 8:24
Wei Chuang (c. 858–910) was an eminent poet of the late T’ang (618–906) and early Five (907–960) Dynasties. Mao is arguing that the same principles of interpretation should be applied to the Book of Odes and to all classical poetry.

12) 9:16
The ‘Socialist Education Movement’, launched by Comrade Mao after the Tenth Plenum in the autumn of 1962, was known as the ‘four clean-ups’ in the countryside, and as the ‘five antis’ (wu-fan) in the cities. The four cleanups were: socialist rectification in the fields of politics, ideology, organization and economy.

13) 10:20
Kuang-ming jih-pao, organ of the China Democratic League, took the lead in criticisms of the Party in April 1957, when the ‘blooming and contending’ was in full flood. The Wen-hui pao, published in Shanghai, was a non-Party organ which had been criticized by Mao for its bourgeois tendencies in 1957. In November 1965, it was to serve as the channel for the opening shot in the Cultural Revolution.

14) 10:43
Chou Ku-ch’eng was the author of numerous works on Chinese and world history. Since 1950 he had been a professor at Futan University in Shanghai. In 1962 he published an article on history and art, in which he expressed ideas on the Zeitgeist which were said to be an expression in the realm of aesthetics of Yang Hsien-chen’s philosophical theories (see below, note 19).]

15) 10:49
Sun Yeh-fang was at this time Director of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Science; he was dismissed in 1966. As K’ang Sheng’s remark indicates, he had adopted the ideas of some Soviet and Eastern European economists with whom he had been in professional contact about the role of the profit motive in a socialist economy.

16) 11:41
In the summer of 1955, just before Mao’s speech of 31 July gave a new impetus to the formation of agricultural producers’ cooperatives, the Party’s Rural Work Department (at the instigation of Liu Shao-ch’i) had disbanded a number of cooperatives which were said to have been hastily and prematurely formed.

17) 12:12
Teng Tzu-hui (1895–1972) had been head of the Rural Work Department since 1952, though his influence had declined since the late 1950s, because of his share of responsibility for the ‘disbanding’ or ‘weeding-out’ of cooperatives in 1955. It would appear, however that he still possessed sufficient status to put his views energetically in opposition to those of Mao when, in the early 1960s, the policies enumerated here by Mao were a subject of dispute within the Party. Both the Rural Work Department and Teng Tzu-hui were severely criticized by Comrade Mao during a debate on cooperative transformation. [For more details see Selected Works, vol. V, pp. 224–25.
As a symbol to cover this whole spectrum of policies, emphasizing the role of material incentives, private plotting, etc., the expression ‘four great freedoms’ is less common, in documents published since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, than ‘Sanzi yibao’ (‘three freedoms and one fix, or guarantee’). On this concept, which is supposed to sum up the reactionary line of Liu Shao-ch’i and his sympathizers in the countryside, see the article ‘Struggle between Two Roads in China’s Countryside’, Peking Review, No. 49 (1967), pp. 11–19.

18) 12:21
A Right opportunist view advocated by Liu Shao-chi’ and others. In this connection see Comrade Mao’s speech at the Political Bureau meeting of the Central Committee of the CPC ‘Refute the Right Deviationist Views that Depart from General Line’, Selected Works, vol. V, pp. 93–94.

19) 14:00
The view that ‘two combine into one’ was put forward in the early 1960s by Yang Hsien-chen, who had been, since 1955, President of the Higher Party School. Beginning in July 1964 this formulation was violently attacked in the press on the grounds that it minimized the importance of struggle and contradiction, and contrasted with Mao’s view that ‘one divides into two’, i.e. that struggle, and in particular class struggle, constantly re-emerges, even when particular contradictions have been resolved. The ‘outline of an article’ referred to in the stenographer’s note was presumably a summary of one of the forthcoming attacks on Yang, submitted to the Chairman in advance for his approval.

20) 18:11
The defence of Madrid, starting in October 1936, lasted for two years and five months. In 1936, fascist Germany and Italy made use of the Spanish fascist warlord Franco to launch a war of aggression against Spain. The Spanish people, led by the Popular Front Government, heroically defended democracy against aggression. The battle of Madrid, the capital of Spain, was the bitterest in the whole war. Madrid fell in March 1939 because Britain, France and other imperialist countries assisted the aggressors by their hypocritical policy of ‘non-intervention’ and because divisions arose within the Popular Front. The point of this criticism is obviously not that the Spanish Republicans fought to the end, but that they failed to grasp the axiom that territorial strong points are not in themselves decisive.

21) 18:44
See ‘Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party’ adopted on 20 April 1945, Selected Works, vol. III, pp. 177–225 (1965 edn).

22) 19:37
Mao began his activity at this institute in 1925, but it was in 1926 that he actually served as principal and made his main contribution.

23) 23:10
The quotation is from Mencius, book VI, part A, ch. 15.

24) 24:31
This is presumably a reference to Chang Ping-lin’s celebrated article, published in 1903, entitled ‘A Refutation of K’ang Yu-wei’s Letter on Revolution’. In this article, Chang sharply attacked K’ang not only on the issue of revolution versus gradual reform, but on the importance of racial differences between the Chinese and the Manchus, which K’ang tended to minimize. The Manchus, Chang argued, were an alien and decadent race, totally unfit to rule China. It was in this context that he discussed evolution, indicating that the existing racial differences were the product of history.

25) 25:24
Fu Ying is apparently a Chinese scientist who was alive in 1964, since Mao says he wants to look him up.

26) 25:45
Lu P’ing was President of Peking University at this time; he was removed and ‘struggled against’ in June 1966.

Episode 86:

This week we’re continuing with On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - 6]
4. On Contradiction

[Part 6]
5. Combat Liberalism
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 7]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 8]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People
Section 1-2
[Part 9]
Section 3-8

[Part 10 - This Week]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People
Section 9 - 00:15
Section 10 - 05:03
Section 11 - 09:56
Section 12 - 14:12
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From? - 20:22

[Part 11-12?]
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Footnotes:
1) 07:16
Lao Tzu, chapter LVIII.

Episode 85:

This week we’re continuing with On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - 6]
4. On Contradiction

[Part 6]
5. Combat Liberalism
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 7]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 8]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People
Section 1-2

[Part 9 - This Week]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People
Section 3 - 0:34
Section 4 - 9:20
Section 5 - 14:04
Section 6 - 19:54
Section 7 - 22:08
Section 8 - 25:04

[Part 10]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?

[Part 11-12?]
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Episode 84:

This week we’re continuing with On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - 6]
4. On Contradiction

[Part 6]
5. Combat Liberalism
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 7]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 8 - This Week]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People - 00:27
Section 1 - 00:50
Section 2 - 33:50

[Part 9-10?]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People

[Part 11?]
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Episode 83:

This week we’re continuing with On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - 6]
4. On Contradiction

[Part 6]
5. Combat Liberalism
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 7 - This Week]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR - 0:48
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR - 13:18
[1-7] - 15:58
[8-13] - 20:46
[14-18] - 28:31
[19-23] - 31:13
[24-27] - 36:51

[Part 8-10?]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People

[Part 11?]
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Footnotes:
Chapter 8
1 - 0:58
The book at issue in this critique is Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR by J. V. Stalin, Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1972 (1st edn).
The date for this document in the 1967 edition of Selected Works, volume VI, is 1959. The 1969 edition dates it 1958. There was no Ch’engchou (Chengzhou) Conference in November 1959, but there was one in November 1958. The document almost certainly dates from this earlier time.]

2 - 3:21
[Reply to Comrades A. V. Sanina and V. G. Venzher, included in Economic Problems.]

3 - 6:51
[A catty is 1.1 pounds.]

4 - 8:06
[Recipient of Stalin’s second letter, included in Economic Problems.]

5 - 8:45
[The wage system established in 1953 emphasized predominantly short-term individual material incentives. It established an eight-grade wage point system ranging from 139 to 390 wage points per month. Similar work in different regions would receive an equal number of work points, but the value of work points varied according to regional costs of living. By 1956, the wage point system had been replaced by a wage system, but the eight-grade structure was retained.]

6 - 9:16
[Experimental fields sought to develop new and advanced techniques, such as close planting, early planting, deep ploughing, etc. If successful in increasing output, the techniques would be popularized throughout China. By increasing production and thus the total wage fund, the experimental field concept could help undermine the ideological base of the graded wage system by demonstrating that specialists could learn from the peasants.]

7 - 9:46
[This is identical, in Chinese, to ownership by the whole people.]

Chapter 9

1 - 13:45
[Reply to Comrades A. V. Sanina and V. G. Venzher.]

2 - 15:56
[These first four paragraphs comment critically on the entire text. There follows a series of comments criticizing specific sections. Before each comment Stalin’s original text is given, as translated for Jen min ch’u pan she, 3rd edn, January 1958. (English edition: Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1972.)]

3 - 19:11
[Mao is here talking about the excessive purchase of grain at the end of 1954 and the consequent rural grain shortages in the spring of 1955. Subsequently, the quota for state purchases was reduced by 7 billion catties and tension in the countryside eased. These occurrences, however, took place in the spring of 1955, not at the end of that year, which was characterized by the continuing high tide of collectivization in China’s countryside.]

4 - 27:59
[Material in brackets added from Stalin’s text to clarify the point.]

5 - 33:52
[Ch’in Shih Huang Ti (Qin Shi Huangdi), the first emperor, was a king of the state of Ch’in who, between 230 and 221 BC, conquered the neighbouring states and unified China. Under his rule, a feudal system was established, weights and measures and coinage were standardized. The legalist philosophy was the philosophical basis of the Ch’in. The first emperor is remembered for his burning of all non-utilitarian, ‘subversive’ literature in 213 BC].

6 - 33:55
[Ts’ao Ts’ao (Cao Cao) was a famous general and chancellor of the latter Han dynasty (AD 25–220) who played a significant role in the wars which finally toppled the Han and led to the epoch of divided empire called the three kingdoms.]

7 - 34:02
[Mencius. Mao seems to mean ‘Let’s not make a stock villain out of commodity production pedantically’.]

Episode 82:

This week we’re starting On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - 5]
4. On Contradiction
Section [i]
Section [ii]
Section [iii]
Section [iv]
Section [v]

[Part 6 - This Week]
4. On Contradiction
Section [vi] - 00:33
Section [vii] - 06:28
5. Combat Liberalism - 8:58
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb - 15:39
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger - 19:23

[Part 7]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 8-10?]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People

[Part 11?]
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Footnotes:
25) 6:14
V. I. Lenin, ‘Remarks on N. I. Bukharin’s Economics of the Transitional Period’, Selected Works, Russian edition, Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, vol. XI, p. 357.

Episode 81:

This week we’re starting On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - 4]
4. On Contradiction
Section [i]
Section [ii]
Section [iii]

[Part 5 - This Week]
4. On Contradiction
Section [iv] - 01:00
Section [v] - 18:58

[Part 6?]
4. On Contradiction
Section [vi] - [vii]
5. Combat Liberalism

[Part 7?]
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 8?]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 9-11?]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People

[Part 12?]
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Footnotes:
15) 16:24
V. I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done?, Collected Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961, vol. V, p. 369.

16) 20:26
Lenin, ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic’, Collected Works, vol. xxxviii, pp. 97–98.

17) 29:43
[Shan Hai Ching (Book of Mountains and Seas) was written in the era of the Warring States (403–221 BC). In one of its fables Kua Fu, a superman, pursued and overtook the sun. But he died of thirst, whereupon his staff was transformed into the forest of Teng.]

18) 29:50
[Yi is one of the legendary heroes of ancient China, famous for his archery. According to a legend in Huai Nan Tzu, compiled in the second century BC, there were ten suns in the sky in the days of Emperor Yao. To put an end to the damage to vegetation caused by these scorching suns, Emperor Yao ordered Yi to shoot them down. In another legend recorded by Wang Yi (second century AD), the archer is said to have shot down nine of the ten suns.]

19) 29:58
[Hsi Yu Chi (Pilgrimage to the West) is a sixteenth-century novel, the hero of which is the monkey god Sun Wu-kung. He could miraculously change at will into seventy-two different shapes, such as a bird, a tree and a stone.]

20) 30:07
[The Strange Tales of Liao Chai, written by Pu Sung-ling in the seventeenth century, is a well-known collection of 431 tales, mostly about ghosts and fox spirits.]

21) 30:42
Karl Marx, ‘Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy’, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Chicago, 1904, pp. 310–11.

22) 33:24
Lenin, ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, p. 358.

23) 36:44
[The saying ‘Things that oppose each other also complement each other’ first appeared in the History of the Earlier Han Dynasty by Pan Ku, a celebrated historian in the first century AD. It has long been a popular saying.]

24) 37:28
Lenin, ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, p. 358.

Episode 80:

This week we’re starting On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3]
4. On Contradiction
Section [i]
Section [ii]

[Part 4 - This Week]
4. On Contradiction
Section [iii] - 00:49

[Part 5?]
4. On Contradiction

[Part 6]
5. Combat Liberalism
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 7]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 8-10?]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People

[Part 11?]
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Footnotes:
10) 11:52
[See ‘Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War’, Selected Works, vol. I, p. 251, n. 10.]

11) 13:53
[See ibid., p. 249 n.]

12) 13:59
[Wei Cheng (AD 580–643) was a statesman and historian of the Tang dynasty.]

13) 14:24
[Shui Hu Chuan (Heroes of the Marshes), a famous fourteenth-century Chinese novel, describes a peasant war towards the end of the Northern Sung dynasty. Chu Village was in the vicinity of Liangshanpo, where Sung Chiang, leader of the peasant uprising and hero of the novel, established his base. Chu Chao-feng, the head of this village, was a despotic landlord.]

14) 15:21
V. I. Lenin, ‘Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Present Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin’, Selected Works, New York, International Publishers, 1943, vol. IX, p. 66.