askchapo

Ultimately, the purpose of studying theory is in informing practice. Studying to become a capable revolutionary is like studying to become any professional worker, practice and theory sharpen and inform each other. Theory gets tested in real life by real practice, and is affirmed or denied, then this new theory is advanced and carries onward. The lessons past revolutionaries have taught us from their successes and failures make us more effective.

As an example, in Marxism-Leninism, we find coherent analysis of imperialism. Without properly understanding how imperialism functions, we are blind to why the US Empire is declining while countries like the PRC are rising. When we understand how imperialism functions, we learn how we can kill it. Party structure is another good example, as well as dialectical materialism as a methodology for achieving positive change.

Correct analysis is the basis of correct revolutionary tactics.

As comrade @StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net already posted, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list if you want to dip your toes into theory! The manifesto is a good read, but doesn't really go in-depth anywhere.

There is no revolutionary practice without revolutionary theory

"yeah, I agree with the class stuff, they have us arguing about cultural issues instead of uniting"

"What I imagine is some kind of worker owned business that's going to outcompete the old way of doing business"

"I give them bonus points for not being capitalists, but these authoritarians do not have people's best interests at heart"

If you don't know what you're talking about and you have a disorganized, unfocused base then you're going to have a very silly, inaccurate movement laden with the same problems as ever. You'd need to be theory disciplined if you want to be effectual. The same way you can draw something okay from imagination but you need to learn form, perspective, and anatomy if you want to progress to a certain level of competency

Why reading college science books and science papers if you can just watch Veritasium and QuantumFracture?

Where do you think places like the Deprogram are cribbing their ideas, and why do you have an inherent trust that a bunch of podcasting yucks (though good for podcasting yucks) will present those ideas well and correctly?

0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov fucked him over personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world.

The marxist-leninist revolutions succeeded while the other branches of marxism almost all failed. Deeper understanding is required to replicate success instead of failure.

it gives you a clear and structured way of how to explain these things to other people. also it can fill in gaps in knowledge, some concepts may be obvious to you but others may not be

For me it's most about my own understanding and agency and building those. If we just follow others framings of a thing we risk falling for things like idealism, utopistic framings etc. Reading theory ourselves (with a broad scope) gives us the actual nuance of what has happened in history, what is happening now and most importantly how we can change things.

Things like dialectic materialism, idealism versus materialism, what the troskyists are about, what anarchist are saying and why and why did the Soviets do what they did and so much more is an evolving understanding. It takes a lifetime, but it does make a commie more and more bulletproof to various brainworms of which there are plenty.

It takes reading theory to come to a place where you can spot the difference between different thinkers or content creators. It takes time to develop this understanding. I don't think the manifesto alone is enough for that. It's also just as important to read the lib thinkers a bit to understand the histories of these things. Reading on feminism, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and anti-racist works is also just as important.

Understanding the differences of idealism and materialism alone makes everything a lot more clear, but to get there, some learning is needed. We are all (in the West at least) indoctrinated on liberalism so deeply that is is very difficult to see past that. Things that come along with it are white supremacy, pathriarchy and others that are parts of the superstructure and hard to analyze as they are so normalized. To do this analysis an understanding of it is necessary imo.

Edit. I'll add a great reading list that was made by comrade @Cowbee@hexbear.net, in case you would want something curated that isn't too time consuming and covers a lot of the things I tried to mention in my reply.

The reading list is here.

https://redsails.org/why-marxism/

I'm going to say there is a difference between "learning ML theory" and "reading the source ML material" though. When I've tried to read the source material, I have a hard time sifting through the ... potentially... irrelevant stuff to get to the actual concepts. Marx's shorter works are okay and don't get me lost in difficult to parse grammar/paragraph structure but Das Kapital is physically hard to read for me. I do wonder how much of it is that Marx didn't write in English and it was others who handled the translations, maybe they wanted to keep more of Marx's personality in the works and chose to use a very light hand when editing?

The few works of Lenin that I've read, spend so much time mentioning (but not explaining) People, Places, Pamphlets, Articles that I lose track of whatever point he was trying to make. It very much feels like Lenin was not specifically writing for future readers.

The few items of Mao I've read, on the other hand, feel like they were written for future readers. Less name dropping with the assumption that you will just know who these people are and why they were important and more focused on encapsulating the concepts in the work you are currently reading.

So I'm kinda stuck trying to find explainers for things or skimming through the book club posts' comment sections. Which, while not great, is something.

Learning the concepts and history is important to keep from making mistakes that were solved in the past and being able to identify patterns of events to correctly anticipate outcomes.

An example we can look at: Right Libertarians when they do absolutely anything.

In every case where a recent right libertarian started a project, it winds up having to "reinvent" all the things they advocate against. 100% free speech zone online? "Oh shit, we've gotta start moderating/censoring content when things get posted that cause problems!" 100% freedom to do whatever you want on a large boat/city floating in international waters? "Oh shit, before you get settled in, you can't use all the potable water or set fires everywhere!"

what's the real point of studying Marxism-Leninism more deeply

i am new on the journey, but there is something that fidel and che would say about these things

This tells us one thing: simply, that Marxism is a living science, a developing science. We have to study everything that Marx taught, but at the same time we have to study everything that Lenin taught, we have to study the entire experience derived from the building of the first communist society. - Fidel

in that stain of thought of marxism as a science

The advances in social and political science, as in other fields, belong to a long historical process whose links are connecting, adding up, moulding and constantly perfecting themselves. - Che

harper o'connor is some new influencer who does the kind of agitprop for improving oneself talks about the need for theory

but basically reading deeply help build your knowledge on the subject, give you the insight of all those that came before you, you create within yourself a long familial linage of knowledge which connects you to the past. also when a person ask you question, and you answer "i don't know", it kind of make the person internally think "why am i listening to this person?"

like with mathematics, the more you study and practice - the more effectively you can apply to the different problems you will inccur.

edit. i think it was some roman/greek philosopher that said something like, reading/study firmly establishes you into one of the "great houses", the extensive study of marxist leninism - make you a family member of this house, their predecessors live on in their students and continue to be developed by the students in this house. (though this may seem to come into a slight conflict with the science analogy, this is not a dogma, it is the application of a science)

It's one thing to understand an idea, and another to put it into practice. However waiting for workers to do the reading themselves individually is Waiting for Godot. Podcasts don't spread themselves. We must be the vanguard for these ideas. Antionio Gramsci :gramsci-heh: advocated for the creation of Popular universities where people would educate their fellows for this reason. We must make the ideas presented as self-evident in others as it does in ourselves. Podcasts/Breadtube/etc can be useful here because they can condense a complex idea into an easily digestible nugget. I keep a couple of playlists full of them so I can out-of-pocket share one that is relevant to some discussion I'm having in the real world. By design media is not a dialectic; people cannot converse with the author directly. Through study we can embody these ideas and bring them into a full conversation, a dialectic, with others.

In order to teach, you must gain both an understanding of the material and the honest good-faith questions/objections raised. It will also educate you on the bad-faith and wrecker arguments so you aren't hijacked. At the same time the powers-that-be won't simply give up power, so we must be educated in how they respond to the growing sentiment. I can personally attest that studying the materials instantly outs the bullshit arguments and bad-faith commentators. How would we know if a particular Podcaster or YouTuber isn't :fedposting: unless we also have an understanding of the theory?

Finally big reason for theory is to learn what others did historically. If somebody wrote an instruction booklet for a successful Revolution wouldn't you want to read it? At the same time a (depressing, demoralizing) number of people are dead going down the wrong path, and we the living would like to avoid that fate. There is also just as many paths that go in circles, to the exhaustion of workers and delight of the ruling class, that we want to avoid. The ultimate purpose of theory is to motivate us into a correct action; aka Praxis.

Let me rephrase your post as a reference to a show:

What do I need to learn to read for? TVs just as good and twice as fast!

Jokes aside, literacy (not just having the ability to actually read words on a page, but having the ability to seek out primary sources and understand their contents) is a human tool so powerful that teaching everyone how to read and understand ideas was one of the first goals of every communist movement and government ever.

A person who doesn’t have the capacity to understand ideas will be swayed by forceful figures one way or the other, get high on their own supply believing their success or failure has ontological meaning, or a bunch of other dumb guy behaviors.

If that wasn’t enough, we’re currently living through history! Understanding the circumstances and possibilities of our present requires that we constantly evaluate new developments and refine our ideas.

It's pretty important to read what revolutionary leaders have written about their strategies and their methods of organizing because some of them succeeded, while we haven't (except the 2 Chinese posters on this site I guess, but I don't think they were around in 1949). You can learn about the problems they identified with the organizations they had: opportunism, infiltration, dogmatism, tailism, liberalism, ultraleftism, etc. If you join an org today you'll see all the same things, it's pretty much a 100% guarantee. So figuring out how to navigate those things productively and build power, instead of just constantly hoping for your enemies to make mistakes and for people to spontaneously organize into socialism, is your best shot at building something positive.

A lot of theory has to do with broad questions of history and political economy that might not seem to be as practically minded as texts such as On Guerilla Warfare or What is to be Done, but those pieces of theory are also important for informing a revolutionary movement's overall strategy and figuring out how to define a correct political line. Generally, it's a good idea to decide on a solid foundation of how a movement sees its place in history and what its goals are; if you avoid backtracking from those goals for the sake of gaining more popularity (i.e. opportunism) and remain steadfast in that correct political line, your organization will be solid and will outlast others, so the masses will join you. That's been the pattern with the most successful ML revolutionary organizations. Not to mention that fully understanding the nature of the system you're trying to overthrow is helpful for various reasons; you don't want to end up reinforcing the system by failing to understand some of its characteristics (e.g. anti-identitarian socialists who reject anti-racism who, if they were successful, would end up reinforcing class society across racial lines) or fail to identify cracks in its armor (e.g. understanding the mechanisms behind the boom and bust cycle allows a revolutionary labor movement to strike when it will hurt capitalists the most).

The most valuable content creators are the ones who have done the reading and studying. It’s not just history, understanding materialism, dialectics, how revolutions come about is key fundamentals to being a useful communist propagandist