I read "On Practice" by Mao for the first time earlier today and I'm chewing on it right now
I think this might be the simplest writing about dialectical-materialism that is? at least that I know of, I have tried to approach Marxist dialectics in the past and...wasn't successful
well I'm not sure but I don't think this is the entirety of the concept of Marxist dialectics but focused on theory/knowledge vs practice
the plan is to read "On Contradiction" next, that one is longer and is more about dialectics
@packetcat i love these essays, i’m happy to see somebody else looking at them
@packetcat the palestine book my dsa chapter’s book club has just started reading was written by trots; their introduction vaguely alleges that various arab communists had engaged in a vulgar nationalism that refused to address internal contradictions within the nation, and i guess the trots were just too trot to acknowledge that maoist dialectics addresses this exact issue
@packetcat like mao openly championed advancing an anticolonial revolution alongside those in the national bourgeoisie who were invested in national liberation, in service of a bourgeois democratic revolution, with the explicit and open intent of later turning against the bourgeoisie in order to build socialism
@aescling I'm not familiar with Trotsky or Trotskyism so I can't comment on that specifically
but..I do remember later Marxists like Fanon talking about the need to move past "national consciousness" because its only the first step and you cannot get stuck there etc.
@packetcat i’m not too familiar but given trotsky’s opposition to stalin i’m not terribly surpurrised that modern day trots wouldn't care fur the thoughts of mao, who was explicitly a stalinist (though not at all uncriticial)
@aescling I did notice that Mao occasionally quotes Stalin in the essay about contradictions, but he also quotes Lenin and Marx/Engels
but yeah I've only read 3 essays from Mao so far (On Practice, On Contradiction, and US Imperialism is a Paper Tiger)
@packetcat yeah i mean he explicitly advised all the time to study marx, engels, lenin, and stalin; which is really what i mean when i call him a stalinist. usually i don’t really use the word because it is thrown out as a vague or incoherent pejorative, but when we’re talking mao i think it is literally accurate
Lady, EVOLVED 
@aescling @packetcat « Mao Zedong famously declared that Stalin was 70% good and 30% bad. Maoists criticized Stalin chiefly for his view that bourgeois influence within the Soviet Union was primarily a result of external forces, to the almost complete exclusion of internal forces, and his view that class contradictions ended after the basic construction of socialism. Mao also criticized Stalin's cult of personality and the excesses of the great purge. But Maoists praised Stalin for leading the Soviet Union and the international proletariat, defeating fascism in Germany, and his anti-revisionism. » (Wikipedia)
this tracks with my understanding; Stalin fell prey to blaming “outside agitators” for the contradictions within the Communist Party; Mao instead correctly recognized that there were plenty of internal contradictions even within a nominally successful communist state
@aescling @packetcat which is to say i’m not sure stalinists would have a better take here; they would just blame the CIA and start executing people lol
