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/lit/ - Literature


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9490897 No.9490897 [Reply] [Original]

So was he correct?

>> No.9490921

>>9490897
"No."
~t. George Orwell

>> No.9490927

>>9490897
It is if you live in a commie country

>> No.9490949

>>9490897
Yes. You need to find a nice balance; reading too much is just as bad as reading too little.

>> No.9490953

>>9490897
if you control what your people read, then no

if you can't, then yes

>> No.9491015

Read Don Quixote

>> No.9491052

>>9490897
Of course it is, read to many books and you remove the time and energy needed to reflect and act on them.

>>9490921
"Yes"
~t. Schopenhauer

>> No.9491058

>>9490897
He was to smart too read

>> No.9491059
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9491059

Dree. Dree. Dree. Dree. Dree. Dree. Dree. Dree.

>> No.9491060

>>9490897
Not as harmful as famine.

>> No.9491067
File: 101 KB, 1151x787, marx-engels.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
9491067

>>9490897
What did he mean by this? Marx read literally thousands of books.

>> No.9491068

>>9491060
>2017
>Not being a Neo-Maoist
Sad!

>> No.9491070
File: 134 KB, 728x546, 1492806710598.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
9491070

>>9490897
"To read too many bad books is harmful."
Fixed that for you

>> No.9491078
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9491078

>>9490897
Virtue is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency

>> No.9491079

>>9490897

considering the fact that he fucked up Chinese literature to the point that the only good writers left are living in exile from their home country, nobody on /lit/ except immigrants from /pol/ and philosophy posters who should have left /lit/ for /his/ by now should agree with Mao

>> No.9491110

>>9491079
It was inevitable in the face of modernization; to rely too heavily on old superstition would be to subject China to the whims of the imperialist powers. The communists proved themselves the most capable of salvaging China after the collapse of the Qing dynasty and later the ineffectual republic. Mao won his legitimacy against multitudes of regional warlords - not to mention Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists - by appealing to and mobilizing the peasant classes.

>> No.9491117
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9491117

So was he correct?

>> No.9491127

>>9491117
Is that about combating liberalism or using liberalism for combat?

>> No.9491131

>>9491079
He did promote the immortal Lu Xun posthumously, though later admitted that if he had still been alive for much longer he might have become a problem

>> No.9491134

>>9491127
Both.

Fight fire with fire

>> No.9491145

>>9490897
This is taken out of context. He was saying this in reference to a tendency in China to hold academic education higher than the work of the peasant class. Mao was confronting the stuffy bourgeois intellectuals who couldn't relate to the working class or to the poor and used their sophistry to legitimize exploitative systems like capitalism and imperialism.

Rather than live their lives reading too many books and isolating themselves from the real world, academics should interact proactively with the world around them, learn from experience, and work alongside the working class and the peasantry.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't read books at all, only that we shouldn't be obsessed with books, hold it in higher esteem than other types of labor, or get lost in abstract rhetoric and philosophy.

>> No.9491148

>>9491145
t. a fucking commie

>> No.9491153

>>9491060
No government can control the weather.

>> No.9491155

>>9491153
>implying the deep state doesn't have weather control devices

>> No.9491157

>>9491117
It's about combating liberalism. Communism stands against Liberalism and Fascism.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm

>> No.9491161

>>9490897
Yes, you should spend your life rereading Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes and the Bible and ignore the rest of literature as thrash.

>> No.9491163

>>9491155
China didn't have this technology during the 1960s and 70s.

>> No.9491172
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9491172

>>9491153
>No government can control the weather.

>> No.9491182

>>9491157

Wtf I'm a maoist now

>> No.9491183

>>9491148
t. burger

>> No.9491213

>>9491052
schopenhauer only advised against not thinking for yourself

>> No.9491443

>>9491067
How else would you convince a massive nation to follow your every command? Hint it isn't by reading.

>> No.9491445

>>9490897
>To read any book that isn't the Little Red Book is harmful to you.

t. real quote

>> No.9491450

>>9491067
He meant he wanted to turn his nation into a giant cult of personality devoted to him.

>> No.9491452

>>9491145
That's not a harmful moral in and of itself.

>> No.9491459

To the anons in this thread saying that you can indeed read too much by consuming at such a rate that almost nothing is assimilated: this doesn't need to be said. No one does this.

>> No.9491466

>>9491459
Poser.

>> No.9491481

>>9491153
If you're implying that the privations that flowed from from the retarded failures of the great leap forward are entirely derived from the drought you're fucked. Don't try to trick these anons with your oversimplistic ideas.

The communist government sent food to gorged urbanites and t-shirts to starving farmers whilst everybody pretended the yields were more and more spectacular.

>> No.9491515
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9491515

>>9491145

Anyone can dig in the fields. In fact, most farm laborers have been replaced by machines. Being an academic takes actual skill and intelligence.

Face it commie, the intellectual class is superior.

>> No.9491529

>>9490949
Explain

>> No.9491737

>>9491515
Digging in the fields takes hard work and dedication and it is a valuable work that the whole of society depends on. Agricultural work should be appreciated and the workers who do this work should be treated much better than they are now. They help provide food--the most essential thing aside from water. As a society we're going to disparage them and give them peasant-wages? Mao saw this and he was disgusted.

If this type of labor is to be replaced with machines, then this isn't to say that we never needed farmers or that these farmers should now get unemployed and forced into poverty. That's insane. Automation doesn't mean that workers are out of a job--it means that workers are FREE from work and that people can enjoy their leisure time with decent housing, food, etc. without having to work as hard in such gruesome conditions.

The intellectual class isn't in itself bad, but when they isolate themselves from the real world and think of themselves as superior, they're simply being political opportunists who are using fancy terminology to make the system bend towards their advantage. There's nothing intellectual about that, in the long-term.

>> No.9491742

>>9491067
>mao was a marxist
oh sweet summer child

>> No.9491750

>>9491481
There were certain mistakes made, but it wasn't some intentional genocide or anything.

People had been starving from famines in China all throughout Chinese history. Where was the outrage all those times the Chinese royal family did nothing to help the peasantry starving in the countryside? The peasants were expected to move to better regions and fend for themselves. It would be laughable to suggest that the Chinese royal family had an obligation to their people. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, this was the LAST Chinese famine, and there hasn't been a single one for almost 60 years now.

>> No.9491756

>>9491742
mao was a leninist

>> No.9491933

Is this why China has nearly zero creative output compared to the USSR or does it run deeper than that?

>> No.9491943

>>9491015
>>9490949
>>9490897

maybe if you read too many chivalric romance novels, or this day in age: too many sci-fi, YA, or fantasy novels, instead of literature. Just imagine anyone you know who watches anime.

But about literature, you can't read too much, although it would be preferable to read deeper rather than broader, and of course if you can do both that's superior. As long as you go outside and socialize and work, or write, then you're fine.

>> No.9491945

he meant that gay ass nerds who sit around on coffee shops posing with marxist texts are never going to lead to anything revolutionary

>> No.9492662

>>9491737

>Digging in the fields takes hard work and dedication and it is a valuable work that the whole of society depends on

But it can be done by literally any able-bodied male. There's no shortage of drudges to work in the fields and they get paid a shitty wage because their work requires no skill. The industry is important but that doesn't mean the workers are.

>Automation doesn't mean that workers are out of a job--it means that workers are FREE from work and that people can enjoy their leisure time with decent housing, food, etc. without having to work as hard in such gruesome conditions.

Yeah and we'll all ride on unicorns in a rainbow forest and I'll get a blowjob from the Queen of Jordan.

>> No.9492685

>>9491157
That's why I posted it.

>> No.9492841

>>9490897
To do "too" much of anything is bad. So yes he's right.

>> No.9492856

>>9492662
>the fields and they get paid a shitty wage because their work requires no skill

This isn't true. You've obviously never worked a hard day in your life. It doesn't take education. But physical labouring tasks often do require skills, and it can often take a while to build them up.

Go to a construction site and watch how hopeless the young labourers are compared to the older people.

>> No.9493218

>>9492662
You could argue that the fact anyone has the ability to work the fields is what makes it so admirable. People with skill and talent are born with it, and while they must put work into that talent, one could argue that it is very much a personal urge to satisfy oneself and their abilities. When it comes to working the fields, a job anyone can do, a labourer putting time into a job anyone can do and doing his piece for his community shows his dedication to those around him and the country he is living in. Communism is about everybody working as one to keep the community stable, after all.

>> No.9493304

>>9491737
I prefer to just take in immigrants to do the jobs. They don't complain about pay or working conditions like native burgers do.

>> No.9493456

Reading, or any type of hobby for the matter at hand, is what makes the suffering of life bearable, so reading doesn't hurt in the slightest.

>> No.9493484

>>9491515

when im done farming potatoes and im swole as fuck, i'll come over to cuckold your wife jim

no problem jim

>> No.9493523

>>9491756
If this is a contest for saying the biggest stupidity you won.