Leftist Reading

Episode 79:

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 - This Week]
4. On Contradiction - 00:26
Section [i] - 02:27
Section [ii] - 14:07

[Part 4-5?]
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:
1) 01:11
V. I. Lenin, ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy’, Collected Works, Russian edition, Moscow, 1958, vol. XXXVIII, p. 249.

2) 01:20
[In his essay ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, Lenin said: ‘The splitting in two of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts (see the quotation from Philo on Heraclitus at the beginning of Section 3 ‘On Cognition’ in Lassalle’s book on Heraclitus) is the essence (one of the “essentials”, one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics’ (Collected Works, Russian edition, Moscow, 1958, vol. XXXVIII, p. 357). In his ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic’, he said: ‘In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This grasps the kernel of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development’ (p. 215).]

3) 03:12
Lenin, ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, p. 358.

4) 06:25
[A saying of Tung Chung-shu (179–104 BC), a well-known exponent of Confucianism in the Han dynasty.]

5) 16:07
Friedrich Engels, ‘Dialectics. Quantity and Quality’, Anti-Dühring, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959, p. 166.

6) 16:23
6Lenin, ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, pp. 357–58.

7) 18:23
Engels, Anti-Dühring pp. 166–67.

8) 18:51
Lenin, ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, p. 357.

9) 24:18
Ibid., pp. 358–59.

Episode 78:

This week we’re continuing 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 - This Week]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing - 00:36

[Part 3-5?]
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:
1) 07:14
V. I. Lenin, ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic’, Collected Works, Russian edition, Moscow, 1958, vol. XXXVIII, p. 205.

2) 08:03
See Karl Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958, vol. II, p. 403, and V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1952, pp. 134–36.

3) 10:19
[San Kuo Yen Yi (Tales of the Three Kingdoms) is a famous Chinese historical novel by Lo Kuan-chung (written between the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries).]

4) 13:05
Lenin, ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic’, p. 161.

5) 25:14
‘In order to understand, it is necessary empirically to begin understanding, study, to rise from empiricism to the universal’ (Lenin, ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic’, p. 197).

6) 28:33
V. I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done?, in Collected Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961, vol. V, p. 369.

7) 31:07
Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 141.

8) 31:23
J. V. Stalin, ‘The Foundations of Leninism’, in Problems of Leninism, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954, p. 31.

9) 37:38
See Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, pp. 129–36.

Episode 77:

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

[Part 1 - This Week]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire - 01:40

[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

[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:
1) 05:17
Comrade Fang Chih-min, a native of Yiyang, Kiangsi Province, and a member of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was the founder of the Red area in north-eastern Kiangsi and of the Tenth Red Army. In 1934 he led the vanguard detachment of the Red Army in marching north to resist the Japanese invaders. In January 1935 he was captured in the battle against the counter-revolutionary Kuomintang troops and in July he died a martyr’s death in Nanchang, Kiangsi.

2) 06:34
The subjective forces of the revolution: organized forces of the revolution.

3) 09:36
Lu Ti-ping, a Kuomintang warlord, was the Kuomintang governor of Hunan Province in 1928.

4) 09:53
The war of March—April 1929 between Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang warlord in Nanking, and Li Tsung-jen and Pai Chung-hsi, the Kuomintang warlords in Kwangsi Province.

5) 09:58
The third invasion of the Red Army’s base area in the Chingkang Mountains by the Kuomintang warlords in Hunan and Kiangsi lasting from the end of 1928 to the beginning of 1929.

6) 16:12
The quotation is from Mencius, who compared a tyrant who drove his people into seeking a benevolent ruler to the otter which ‘drives the fish into deep waters’.

7) 16:35
The Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in July 1928. It pointed out that after the defeat in 1927, China’s revolution remained bourgeois-democratic in nature, i.e., anti-imperialist and anti-feudal, and that since the inevitable new high tide in the revolution was not yet imminent, the general line for the revolution should be to win over the masses. The Sixth Congress liquidated the 1927 Right capitulationism of Chen Tu-hsiu and also repudiated the ‘Left’ putschism which occurred in the Party at the end of 1927 and the beginning of 1928.

8) 16:46
The statement in brackets was added by the author of the letter.

9) 20:44
The regime set up in western Fukien came into being in 1929, when the Red Army in the Chingkang Mountains sallied eastward to build a new revolutionary base area and established the people’s revolutionary political power in the counties of Lungyen, Yungting and Shanghang in the western part of that province.

10) 21:44
Stable base areas were the relatively stable revolutionary base areas established by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.

11) 25:47
Chiang Po-cheng was then the commander of the Kuomintang peace preservation corps in Chekiang Province.

12) 26:02
Chen Kuo-hui and Lu Hsing-pang were two notorious Fukien bandits whose forces had been incorporated into the Kuomintang army.

13) 26:15
Chang Chen was a divisional commander of the Kuomintang army.

14) 26:37
Chu Pei-teh, a Kuomintang warlord, was then the Kuomintang governor of Kiangsi Province.

15) 26:40
Hsiung Shih-hui was then a divisional commander of the Kuomintang army in Kiangsi Province.

Episode 76:

Content Warnings this episode for:
Mental health, trauma, eugenics.

This week we’re finishing The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
The full book is available online here:
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Fanon_Frantz_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth_1963.pdf

[Part 1-5]
Concerning Violence

[Part 6]
Violence in the International Context

[Part 7 - 9]
Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness

[Part 10 - 14]
The Pitfalls of National Consciousness

[Part 15-17]
On National Culture
-Poem
-Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom

[Part 18]
Colonial War and Mental Disorders
Series A
[Part 19]
Series B
Series C
[Part 20]
Series D - First Reading

[Part 21 - This Week]
Series D - Second Reading - 00:58
Conclusion - 12:29
Brief discussion - 22:30

Footnotes:

1) 02:18
It is moreover clear that this identification with the image pic­ture produced by the European was very ambivalent. In fact the European seemed to be paying homage—an equally ambivalent homage—to the violent, passionate, brutal, jealous, proud, arrogant Algerian who stakes his life on a detail or on a word. We should point out in passing that in their dealings with the French of France, the Europeans of Algeria tend to identify themselves more and more with this image of the Algerian in opposition to the French.

2) 08:14
Mountain village in Algeria.—Trans.

Episode 75:

Content Warnings this episode for:
Mental health, trauma, eugenics.

This week we’re continuing with The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
The full book is available online here:
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Fanon_Frantz_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth_1963.pdf

[Part 1-5]
Concerning Violence

[Part 6]
Violence in the International Context

[Part 7 - 9]
Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness

[Part 10 - 14]
The Pitfalls of National Consciousness

[Part 15-17]
On National Culture
-Poem
-Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom

[Part 18]
Colonial War and Mental Disorders
Series A
[Part 19]
Series B
Series C

[Part 20 - This week]
Series D - First Reading - 00:24

[Part 21]
Series D - Second Reading
Conclusion

Footnotes:

1) 01:21
This nomenclature which expresses an idealist conception is less and less frequently used. In fact the terminology "cortico-visceral" inherited from Soviet research work—especially that of Pavlov—has at least the advantage that it puts the brain back in its place, that is to say it considers the brain as the matrix where, precisely, the psychism is elaborated.

2) 03:25
The higher a person is on the neurological plane, the less he is extra-pyramidal. As we see, everything tallies.

3) 07:01
It is hardly necessary to add that there is no question here of hysterical contraction.

4) 15:26
In fact we know that Islam forbids its followers to eat meat unless they are sure that the animal has been drained of its blood. This is why the animals' throats are cut.

5) 21:41
Professor A. Porot, Medico-psychological Annals.

6) 22:37
In the mouth of the doyen of the judges of a court in Algeria, this aggressivity on the part of the Algerian is expressed by his love of the "fantastic." "We are wrong," he stated in 1955, "in believing this whole revolt to be political. From time to time that love of a scrimmage that they have has to come out!" For the ethnologist, the establishment of a series of tests and projective games which would have canalized the global aggressive instincts of the native would have had in 1955-56 the power to bring the revolution in Aurès to an end.

7) 25:56
A. Carothers, "Normal and Pathological Psychology of the African," Ethno-psychiatric Studies ( Ed. Masson).

8) 26:20
Op. cit., p. 176.

9) 27:34
Op. cit., p. 178.

Episode 74:

Content Warnings this episode for:
Mental health, trauma, child violence, child murder, torture, violence, body violation, medical malpractice, involuntary drugging, gaslighting, brainwashing.
See below for timestamps indicating some specific CWs.

This week we’re continuing with The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
The full book is available online here:
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Fanon_Frantz_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth_1963.pdf

[Part 1-5]
Concerning Violence

[Part 6]
Violence in the International Context

[Part 7 - 9]
Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness

[Part 10 - 14]
The Pitfalls of National Consciousness

[Part 15-17]
On National Culture
-Poem
-Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom

[Part 18]
Colonial War and Mental Disorders
Series A

[Part 19 - This Week]
Series B - 1:17
Case 1 [CW Child violence and murder] - 01:31
Case 2 - 05:27
Case 3 [CW Torture] - 10:58
Case 4 - 15:18
Case 5 - 16:39
Series C [CW Torture] - 19:37
Category 1 [CW Violence, body violation] - 20:08
Category 2 - 24:42
Category 3 [CW Medical malpractice, involuntary drugging and gaslighting] - 25:49
Category 4 [CW Brainwashing and gaslighting] - 29:27

[Part 20?]
Series D

[Part 22?]
Conclusion

Footnotes:

1) 4:29
Rivet is a village which since a certain day in the year 1956 has become celebrated in the region around Algiers. For on that evening the village was invaded by the militia who dragged forty men from their beds and afterward murdered them.

2) 10:56
During the year 1955, cases of this type were very numerous in Algeria. Unfortunately not all the patients had the good fortune to be sent to a hospital.

3) 21:07

This type of torture is the cause of a very large number of deaths. After these enemas given at high pressure, the mucous mem­brane of the intestine becomes in fact the seat of numerous lesions which provoke minute perforations of the intestine. Gaseous em­bolisms and cases of peritonitis are thus very frequently caused.

4) 22:09
We are here speaking of course of those Algerians who, know­ing something, have not confessed under torture; for it is well known that an Algerian who confesses is killed immediately afterward.

5) 23:28
The medical attendants are obliged to sit by the patient night and day working to explain matters to him. We can understand that the formula of "treating him a bit rough" is of no possible value here.

6) 24:19
This preventive torture becomes in certain districts "preventive repression." Thus at Rivet, though peace reigned, the settlers did not want to be taken unawares (the neighboring districts were beginning to stir) and decided purely and simply to do away with all eventual members of the FLN. Over forty Algerians were killed in a single day.

7) 26:25
In fact, it is not "foreign" at all. A conflict is only the result of the dynamic evolution of the personality, and here there can be no "foreign body." We ought rather to say that the problem is one of a "badly integrated body."

8) 27:31
We can cite in the same way the case of psychiatrists who were prime movers in "Presence frangaise," who when they were called in to give an expert opinion on a prisoner had the habit from the very first of proclaiming their great friendship with the defending lawyer, and of assuring the prisoner that the two of them (the bar­rister and the psychiatrist) would get him out of there. All the prisoners who had the benefit of expert opinions were guillotined. These psychiatrists boasted in front of us of their elegant method of overcoming "resistance."

9) 30:00
We know that in the United States of America a trend toward psycho-sociology has developed. Supporters of this school think that the tragedy of the contemporary individual is contained in the fact that he has no longer any part to play, and that present-day social conditions force him to exist only as a cog in the machine. From this comes the proposal of a therapeutic which will allow a man to take various roles in a veritable game of activity. Anyone can play any role; it even happens that in a single day a person's role may be changed; symbolically you may put yourself in the place of anyone you please. The factory psychiatrists in the United States are, it seems, making huge strides in group psychotherapy among workers. The latter are in fact able to identify themselves with heroes. Strained relations between employers and workers are considerably diminished.

Episode 72:

This week we’re continuing with The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
The full book is available online here:
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Fanon_Frantz_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth_1963.pdf

[Part 1-5]
Concerning Violence

[Part 6]
Violence in the International Context

[Part 7 - 9]
Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness

[Part 10 - 14]
The Pitfalls of National Consciousness

[Part 15-17]
On National Culture
-Poem
-Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom

[Part 18 - This Week]
Colonial War and Mental Disorders - 01:35
Series A - 09:57
Case 1 [CW Sexual Assault, Animal death] - 10:07
Case 2 [CW Violence and Violent Impulses] - 20:04
Case 3 [CW Suicide] - 25:10
Case 4 [CW Torture] - 30:57
Case 5 [CW Spousal abuse, child abuse, torture] - 36:14

[Part 19?]
Series B

[Part 20?]
Series C

[Part 21?]
Series D

[Part 22?]
Conclusion

Footnotes:

1) 6:57
In the unpublished introduction to the first two editions of L’an V de la Revolution Algerienne, we have already pointed out that a whole generation of Algerians, steeped in wanton, generalized homi­cide with all the psycho-affective consequences that this entails, will be the human legacy of France in Algeria. Frenchmen who condemn the torture in Algeria constantly adopt a point of view which is strictly French. We do not reproach them for this; we merely point it out: they wish to protect the consciences of the actual torturers who today have full power to cany on their wort; they wish at the same time to try to avoid the moral contamination of the young people of France. As far as we are concerned we are totally in accord with this attitude. Certain notes here brought together, especially in Cases 4 and 5 in Series A, are sad illustrations and justifications for this obsession which haunts French believers in democracy. But our purpose is in any case to show that torture, as might well be ex­pected, upsets most profoundly the personality of the person who is tortured.

2) 9:17
The circumstances surrounding the appearance of these disorders are interesting for several reasons. Some months after his country's independence was declared, he had made the acquaintance of certain nationals of the former colonial power, and he had found them very likeable. These men and women greeted the new independent state warmly and paid tribute to the courage of the patriots who had fought in the struggle for national freedom. The former militant therefore had what might be called an attack of vertigo. He won­dered with a feeling of anguish whether among the victims of the bomb there had been people like his new acquaintances. It was true that the café that it was aimed at was a meeting place for notorious racists; but there was nothing to prevent a quite ordinary passer-by from going in and having a drink. From the first day that he suf­fered from vertigo the man tried to avoid thinking of these former occurrences. But paradoxically, a few days before-the crucial date, the first symptoms made their appearance. After that, they reap­peared with great regularity.

In other words, we are forever pursued by our actions. Their order­ing, their circumstances, and their motivation may perfectly well come to be profoundly modified a posteriori. This is merely one of the snares that history and its various influences sets for us. But can we escape becoming dizzy? And who can affirm that vertigo does not haunt the whole of existence?

3) 29:26
After considering the medico-legal experts' report which empha­sized the pathological character of the action, the legal proceedings which had been set in motion by the General Staff were closed.

4) 41:36
With these observations we find ourselves in the presence of a coherent system which leaves nothing intact. The executioner who loves birds and enjoys the peace of listening to a symphony or a sonata is simply one stage in the process. Further on in it we may well find a whole existence which enters into complete and absolute sadism.

Episode 72:

This week we’re continuing with The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
The full book is available online here:
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Fanon_Frantz_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth_1963.pdf

[Part 1-5]
Concerning Violence

[Part 6]
Violence in the International Context

[Part 7 - 9]
Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness

[Part 10 - 14]
The Pitfalls of National Consciousness

[Part 15-16]
On National Culture
-Poem

[Part 17 - This week]
On National Culture
-Third Reading - 0:41
-Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom - 06:41

[Part 17?]
On National Culture

[Part 18?]
Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom

[Part 19?]
Colonial War and Mental Disorders

[Part 20?]
Series A

[Part 21?]
Series B

[Part 22?]
Series C

[Part 23?]
Series D

[Part 24?]
Conclusion

Footnotes:

1) 4:14
At the last school prize giving in Dakar, the president of the Senegalese Republic, Leopold Senghor, decided to include the study of the idea of ncgriludc in the curriculum. If this decision was due to a desire to studv historical causes, no one can criticize it. But if on the other hand it was taken in order to create black self-consious-ness, it is simply a turning of his back upon history which has al­ready taken cognizance of the disappearance of the majority of Negroes.

Episode 71:

This week we’re continuing with The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
The full book is available online here:
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Fanon_Frantz_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth_1963.pdf

[Part 1-5]
Concerning Violence

[Part 6]
Violence in the International Context

[Part 7 - 9]
Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness

[Part 10 - 14]
The Pitfalls of National Consciousness

[Part 15]
On National Culture

[Part 16 - This week]
On National Culture
-Second reading - 01:37
-Poem - 23:01
-Reading continues - 31:54

[Part 17?]
On National Culture

[Part 18?]
Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom

[Part 19?]
Colonial War and Mental Disorders

[Part 20?]
Series A

[Part 21?]
Series B

[Part 22?]
Series C

[Part 23?]
Series D

[Part 24?]
Conclusion

Footnotes:

1) 20:16
Rend Depestre: "Face a la Nuit."

2) 20:55
Rene Char, Partage Formel.

Episode 70:

This week we’re continuing with The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
The full book is available online here:
https://monoskop.org/images/6/6b/Fanon_Frantz_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth_1963.pdf

[Part 1-5]
Concerning Violence

[Part 6]
Violence in the International Context

[Part 7 - 9]
Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness

[Part 10 - 14]
The Pitfalls of National Consciousness

[Part 15 - This week]
On National Culture
-First reading - 00:16

[Part 16-17?]
On National Culture

[Part 18?]
Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom

[Part 19?]
Colonial War and Mental Disorders

[Part 20?]
Series A

[Part 21?]
Series B

[Part 22?]
Series C

[Part 23?]
Series D

[Part 24?]
Conclusion

Footnotes:

1) 1:04
”The political leader as the representative of a culture." Address to the second Congress of Black Writers and Artists, Rome, 1959.