So, I’m currently reading On Contradiction, just got done with Chapter 3
And I came across this banger “The dogmatists do not observe this principle; they do not understand that conditions differ in different kinds of revolution and so do not understand that different methods should be used to resolve different contradictions; on the contrary, they invariably adopt what they imagine to be an unalterable formula and arbitrarily apply it everywhere, which only causes setbacks to the revolution or makes a sorry mess of what was originally well done.”
Mao Zedong in On Contradiction, Ch. 3, par. 8
Mao Zedong would have completely been against modern-day MLMs and saying stuff like “China is capitalist because they don’t do XYZ”
Exactly, books provide you with a foundation of knowledge, but they’re not instruction guides. The knowledge has to then be applied to solving problems within the current circumstances one finds themselves in. Furthermore, our understanding evolves over time. The whole idea of dialectics is that it’s a dynamic, living process. People who insist on some absolute truths lack fundamental understanding of what Marxism is.
The Ultras that spend thousands of hours studying every paragraph of the economic aspects of Marxism but ignore or misunderstand Dialectical Materialism are the most guilty of this dogmatism and rigid mechanical thinking, in my experience.
Exactly, it’s intellectual laziness where they just want a paint by numbers set of instructions instead of actually having to think for themselves.
Essentially, they fail to apply Marxist theory to Marxism :D
they’re just LARPers :)
One of the reasons, for sure