Leftist Reading: On Practice and Contradiction Part 3

Leftist Reading

Episode 79:

This week we’re starting On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - This Week]
4. On Contradiction - 00:26
Section [i] - 02:27
Section [ii] - 14:07

[Part 4-5?]
4. On Contradiction

[Part 6]
5. Combat Liberalism
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 7]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 8-10?]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People

[Part 11?]
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Footnotes:
1) 01:11
V. I. Lenin, ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy’, Collected Works, Russian edition, Moscow, 1958, vol. XXXVIII, p. 249.

2) 01:20
[In his essay ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, Lenin said: ‘The splitting in two of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts (see the quotation from Philo on Heraclitus at the beginning of Section 3 ‘On Cognition’ in Lassalle’s book on Heraclitus) is the essence (one of the “essentials”, one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics’ (Collected Works, Russian edition, Moscow, 1958, vol. XXXVIII, p. 357). In his ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic’, he said: ‘In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This grasps the kernel of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development’ (p. 215).]

3) 03:12
Lenin, ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, p. 358.

4) 06:25
[A saying of Tung Chung-shu (179–104 BC), a well-known exponent of Confucianism in the Han dynasty.]

5) 16:07
Friedrich Engels, ‘Dialectics. Quantity and Quality’, Anti-Dühring, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959, p. 166.

6) 16:23
6Lenin, ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, pp. 357–58.

7) 18:23
Engels, Anti-Dühring pp. 166–67.

8) 18:51
Lenin, ‘On the Question of Dialectics’, p. 357.

9) 24:18
Ibid., pp. 358–59.