Fifteen, Daily Record
The diary genre mainly has two types:
One is personal diary, mainly recording one’s thoughts and actual life, written for oneself. The content, form, and methods of this type of diary are relatively free; narration, description, discussion, and lyricism are all possible. As long as one considers it meaningful in the context of the three major revolutionary struggles, in daily work, study, and life, various techniques can be used for recording. Many proletarian hero models have diligently written red diaries. Combining diary writing with reading, studying, and examining for errors and counterrevolutionary tendencies turns this genre into a powerful weapon for continuing the revolution and consciously defending and implementing Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line.
The other type is when the author, according to needs, adopts the diary form to narrate events and reflect thoughts. It does not necessarily involve writing about oneself; for example, Mr. Lu Xun’s novel “A Madman’s Diary” is such a genre. Additionally, there are types like chronicle or memorandum-style diaries, which Mr. Lu Xun also wrote many of.
Below, we briefly introduce the writing of personal diaries.
Persistently writing diaries is one of the methods of learning Chairman Mao’s theory relating to practical application. It allows for timely recording of insights gained from studying Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, checking one’s awareness of class struggle and line struggle at any time, and enhancing the consciousness of executing Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line.
Writing diaries is a continuous writing activity and is an excellent exercise to improve writing skills.
When writing a diary, one must use Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought to examine and measure one’s thoughts, studies, work, and labor for the day.
A diary should not be a superficial record or a running account from morning to night. It should focus on matters with significant educational meaning and deep personal insights. Although diaries are written for oneself, they must adhere to the principles of seeking truth from facts and conforming to reality;虚构 (fictitious content),浮夸 (exaggeration), and self-promotion or虚假 (falsehood) are not allowed. In this regard, the diaries of proletarian hero figures serve as exemplary models for us to learn from.
Diaries generally adopt narrative writing, but poetry and concise sentences can also be used to express boundless love for the Party and Chairman Mao, and to convey the determination to dedicate oneself to the revolution!
When writing a diary, it is common to write the date on the first line, and the weather conditions of the day can also be included. Then start a new line for the main text.
— “Knowledge of Common Literary Styles” (1973)
12:30
- Today, read the section on currency in “Fundamental Knowledge of Political Economy”:
① What is the specific process of inflation, and is capital exploitation intensified because nominal wages decrease?
② Why is the dollar still the world currency after decoupling from gold? - The old, notorious teacher again scolds us for having a poor attitude towards homework, which is really absurd! She speaks in a pastor-like tone, saying she knows we are very busy, and also says that Chinese homework is already enough and not done. Students have mountains of homework from nine subjects every day, how can there be time for memorization or written Chinese homework? From a speculative perspective, Chinese relies on daily accumulation, and score improvement is slow, so fewer people are willing to spend time on it. Regarding the heavy memorization homework, she blames Kuang Rumin (a reactionary Confucian scholar and chief editor of the Chinese textbook). Indeed, the book is full of Confucian garbage, and he is the one who added it. Why did he add it? Isn’t it just to follow the wishes of his reactionary master? Because they want to instill reactionary Confucian doctrines of Kong and Mencius into students from a young age, aiming to cultivate students into capital’s “obedient and capable slaves” (Lenin’s words). I haven’t memorized these articles recently. So, how should I deal with my family’s attacks if my academic performance is poor? What should I do if I am not prepared to run away from home?
- The reactionary National Security checks educational background and lowers the standards, meaning if someone enters a factory with real educational credentials, they will be marked and monitored by reactionary police. What to do afterward?
- The reactionaries are getting more and more corrupt! They even did what was mentioned in point 3. They are on the verge of extinction, but the more they insert tubes into their own diseased bodies, the more it shows they are not long for this world. The demise of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable! Fight for a life of personal liberation after the revolution, struggle for the liberation of all humanity—beautiful life is right in front of us, and revolutionary struggle is the way.
You can look at the glossary of terms in the overview, page 76.
Political Economy Glossary (Xu He et al. (Ed.)) (Z-Library).pdf (17.5 MB)
Okay, thank you, comrade. By the way, comrade, do you know which books are good for systematically studying Marxist theories of women’s liberation?
Latest section of the guide to ideological struggle of the association, Engels’ “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, and Bebel’s “Women and Socialism”
The specific process of inflation can be seen in this post:
https://www.jfdzlt.com/t/topic/1570
Revolution Diary 12.31
- Read “Basic Knowledge of Political Economy” and identified two questions about the three parts of the law of value:
(1) How to understand that the commodity exchange ratio reflects the law of equal exchange with the change of supply and demand?
(2) How to understand that “hype” behaviors make the commodity prices several times or even dozens of times higher than their value? - A classmate nearby saw me reading “On the Nature, Object, Tasks, and Future of the Socialist Revolution” and said that revolution is impossible now, “The weapons of the army are all in the hands of the ruling class, going for revolution is just sending oneself to death.” How should I refute this?
- Reading “Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin on Women” from August 1978, I feel it is not enough for studying women’s liberation theory. Because it is just a compilation of related articles rather than a systematic exposition, I need materials that systematically discuss women’s liberation theory. Use women’s liberation theory to arm the mind and resist the fleeting attacks of patriarchal ideas.
- Reading Engels’ “Speech at North Fête,” which mainly discusses the organization of communist production and life, through the rational allocation and organization of labor resources, “bring the greatest benefit to all people.” The preceding part of this excerpt criticizes the waste of labor and means of production in capitalist society. Engels then uses the example of Owen’s communist village experiment, mentioning collective canteens and so on. This article was selected because collective institutions like canteens can, on one hand, maximize the use of chefs and ingredients to provide better food for residents, and on the other hand, pull women out of the mud of unpaid domestic labor that society does not recognize. However, since this is an article from 1845, when discussing how to realize communism, Engels’ first point is to reform education, so that the state provides universal education for the proletariat.
Actually, your classmate’s question is also easy to answer; in fact, they are using “weaponism” to question you. You can directly counter them with a very simple example: during the Qin Dynasty, peasant uprisings involved wooden sticks and iron tools against iron armor. In the Yuan Dynasty, only a few families had a piece of iron, but in the end, they drove people away… Ultimately, the main body of history is the working people, and people’s war is invincible. Those who wield weapons are also people. Wasn’t Xu Qin from 8964 the one who initially refused to send troops?
Ok, but what he said before was that it was cold weapons, and ordinary people could also prepare them. Now it’s hot weapons, all in the hands of the military. I plan to explain that the absence of a revolution caused by widespread gun ownership in the United States is primarily due to human factors.
Old-fashioned cold weapons also had significant gaps. Ordinary laboring people in ancient China were unable to produce sharp spears and halberds like the feudal armies because they were very poor, working long hours every day with no materials, money, or time to make such weapons. When peasant uprisings first started, most farmers directly used tools or simple bamboo and wooden sticks. For example, a stone carving depicting the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom uprising shows such scenes, with most of the weapons used by the insurgent farmers being very backward, and some farmers not even having shoes. The revolutionaries did not defeat the ruling exploitative classes purely through military suppression, but relied on the wisdom and support of the people to oppose the decayed reactionary exploitative classes without people’s support. Even if the exploitative classes had the most advanced weapons, they could not defeat the majority of working people in society. Weapons need people to operate them. Some ruling classes, due to their extreme reactionism, even caused their own armies to defect; for example, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, soldiers’ pay was heavily deducted, and Li Zicheng was a Ming soldier. If contemporary imperialist countries only use hot weapons to slaughter progressive masses, the masses will not retreat as the bourgeoisie expects, but will instead become even more strongly opposed to capitalism. The bourgeoisie cannot kill all the people, and large-scale weapons of mass destruction like nuclear bombs and hydrogen bombs cannot be dropped on their own land. This would cause the basic conditions for capitalist production to be lost.
1.01
(1) Reading the first part of the preface of “Basic Issues in Marxist Literary Theory” — Principles for Writing “Basic Issues in Marxist Literary Theory”
It clarifies that Marxist literary theory is a tool for the proletariat to carry out class struggle, especially in the ideological sphere, and that socialist new literature and art serve the proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship.
Then it discusses the history of the development of modern and contemporary Chinese literary and artistic textbooks, criticizing a type of revisionist literary route represented by Zhou Yang, pointing out that these routes depart from Marxist class theory and materialist reflection theory, and promote bourgeois humanism and idealist apriorism.
It also criticizes the literary poison of ancient exploitative classes, especially the Confucian and Mencian doctrines, which they promote.
It finds errors in the literary theories of the exploitative classes from the original works of Confucius and Mencius, for example — “Three hundred poems, in a word, say: ‘Thoughts without evil’”, which needs no further interpretation; they themselves say that these literary black theories serve their political line.
Then it explains what it means to truly learn Marxist literary theory — to observe literary phenomena using the basic views of revolutionary mentors on literature and art, analyze literary issues, uphold the reflection theory of dialectical materialism, criticize the apriorism of idealist metaphysics, adhere to historical materialism, and criticize idealist historiography. It also mentions that for opinions still under debate, full discussion should be conducted, contradictions should be fully exposed, in order to develop the truth.
The third line from the bottom on page 8 — “基础与上层建筑” — was missing two characters in the printing; it should be “经济基础与上层建筑”.