The word «education» comes from the word «image» (English readers may not understand the transition from word education to word image, it’s because the etymology of these words in Russian and English are different. In Russian, the word: «образование» — education, comes from the word: «образ» — image). In the meaning of the assimilation of knowledge, learning, and enlightenment, literally, education means “to create an image”, that is, to create an image of objective reality. Therefore, self-education is a process of independent comprehension of the surrounding reality. However, it should be borne in mind that the external world is reflected, at least in a sufficiently developed consciousness, not only in a series of phenomena of nature and social life that a person encounters directly, but in the most significant way for his life, but also in the totality of all phenomena in general, that is, in their entirety. It is clear that the human brain, neither through the organs of perception nor through the power of abstraction, is capable of reflecting the entire universe in general in its entirety in all its diversity of particulars. Because it is infinite. However, the world is not the sum of individual things, but their totality in all connections and mediations, which thus means that each phenomenon has the most general properties of being itself: every phenomenon is material, exists in time, moves in space, changes, has quality, it is inherent in quantitative certainty, it is a part of something and has constituent elements in its structure, and so on. Hence it follows that each individual element of being, and even more so in the system of elements of being, which is a general picture of the perception of the external world by any person, contains an expression of the most general laws of the universe. This creates the possibility of reflection in a separate consciousness of the world as a whole.

Consequently, it is unacceptable to exclude the philosophical and methodological foundation from the process of self-education: the resolution of the question of what the world is like in its essence, and a clear vision of the principles of approach to the phenomena of reality. Omissions of this kind will turn self-education into fruitless attempts to solve particular issues without resolving general ones, which thus violates the universal objective law “the general prevails over the particular” and is fraught with the inability to link together many specific scientific truths, the comprehension of which is the result of study.

As you know, the editorial board of the journal Proryv put forward the slogan for the development of Marxist theory and especially methodology, the slogan for the priority of the theoretical form of the class struggle. What does this mean? Prorivists, relying on the experience of the victories and defeats of Bolshevism, connect the productivity of the communist movement with the organizational viability of the Party as the guiding and guiding force of the labor movement. In turn, the organizational viability of the Marxist Party depends mainly on the scientific and theoretical competence of its members, which is confirmed by practical victories and the growth of authority among the workers and intelligentsia, and ultimately expressed in the organization of the proletarian masses into the working class in accordance with program goals, outlined by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto.

The breakthrough slogan is designed to gather around the journal the most healthy, sane elements from the environment of the left movement, the intelligentsia, the proletariat and serve as a factor in forging the cadres of the future Party of Scientific Centralism.
At the same time, it is self-education that serves as the main means for the growth of the scientific and political education of the journal’s activists and the supporters gathered around it:

«The vast majority of the publications of the Proryv magazine emphasize and actively promote the urgent need for people of communist convictions to improve their Marxist literacy, master the skills of the dialectical-materialist method and enrich their social science baggage with scientific knowledge. This idea is one of the main, key ideas that fundamentally distinguish both our program provisions and practical activities from all other «left» organizations, which, at best, declare their commitment to Marxism, but do nothing for Marxist education or themselves. , nor its supporters. The basis for considering this thesis so important for us is the fundamental position of dialectical materialism that no practice is possible in principle without a preliminary formulation of a theory. This position is precisely the stumbling block that causes particular difficulties for the ignorant followers of «direct action». The essence of human activity lies in the fact that theory and practice are so interconnected that the primacy of theory does not seem so obvious: many, on the contrary, believe that before thinking, something must be done, and only after receiving the results of activity, we get an object, about which we begin to think. However, this is relatively true only in the abstract — when we imagine a person as «tabula rasa», i.e. a person who has no prior basis of knowledge, which in practice he never is.

… Instead of calling for “organization of studies,” we call on all our readers to organize themselves, first of all, to independently study Marxism, to improve their knowledge in various fields of social science, to accustom themselves to research work, to grow out of themselves not distributors of leaflets, but scholars who are able, even if they are cut off from their comrades, to be able to solve all the theoretical problems that arise and, on the basis of this knowledge, to organize a victorious revolutionary practice.»

Therefore, it is proposed to speculate on how to organize self-education, the primacy of which, as a result of the magazine’s tireless propaganda, is increasingly being challenged even by the most backward groups participating in the left movement.

In order for self-education to fulfill the tasks assigned to it, it is necessary to know what to read, how to read, and how, in general, to organize study in the best possible way.

What to read? What is the purpose of reading?

Among people who claim to know Marxism, a special sports discipline flourishes, until the truth is recognized by the International Paralympic Committee, and consists in compiling lists of literature for the study of Marxist theory. The invariable principle of the formation of all these numerous registers is the Sisyphean search for the most feasible works of the classics, from which alone one should begin the study of Marxism.

There is nothing more erroneous than, with the current general literacy, to look for Marxist works, the study of which would allow one to experience no difficulties or to experience them to a lesser extent than, for example, studying the first volume of Capital. Marxism is a monolithic system of knowledge, as if poured from one piece of high-strength Bolshevik steel, therefore, each position of each work of brilliant classics requires the utmost exertion of intellectual forces.

The assimilation of Marxism is the result of great diligence shown in the study, study, correlation of the works of the classics of Marxism, and the study of the concrete historical conditions in which certain provisions of Marxist theory and politics were put forward. Fortunately, in the collected works of Marx-Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, substantiations for almost all the theses and principles set forth are expressed with utmost clarity, it is repeated many times which specific fundamental conclusions of Marxism underlie the worldview as a whole, and which particular conclusions are the result of a historical compromise or specificity situations.

Therefore, regardless of the subjective goals that are set by those who comprehend Marxism, the objective task dictated by the very essence of Marxism, if, of course, it really “materializes” in the mind of an adept, is to learn to look at Marxism dialectically, that is, as a holistic scientific worldview in development, in the inseparable unity of all.
Roughly speaking, Marxist science was created by the classics and conserved for the most part in the collections of their works. It must be known and understood as Newton’s three laws in their interconnection. And only this knowledge, as it is mastered, gives and more and more expands the ability of the subject to work in a Marxist way, if, of course, at the same time he has a highly developed conscience.

Thus, Proriv’s slogan, which is a concise formulation of the goal of the communist struggle at this stage, by itself gives the goal of self-education — to become a Marxist in order to deserve the title of communist.

What does it mean to be a Marxist and to work in a Marxist way from the point of view of Proriv?

«Being a Marxist means, at least, firstly, mastering the dialectical method of thinking, i.e. to become a dialectician; to become a materialist; become a practical revolutionary.
Without mastering dialectical thinking, it is impossible to comprehend the meaning of life in its continuous dynamics, in all the variety of forms of its manifestation and development, it is impossible to somehow reliably influence the ongoing processes, since the dialectical method, still misunderstood and underestimated by the bulk of mankind, is the only scientific method bringing the «mechanism» of human thinking and action in full compliance with the objective laws of the development of nature and society.

… At present, in order to become a communist, it is necessary to master not only Marxism but also Leninism.

Unlike Marxism, which had three sources of its origin, Leninism has two sources: the first is theoretical, i.e. Marxism itself, and the second — is the practical experience of the struggle of the Narodniks and the three Russian revolutions of the era of capitalism, in which the hegemon was the proletariat, which managed to independently find a new form of the dictatorship of the proletariat — Soviet power. In the words of Stalin, Leninism is Marxism developed by Lenin in relation to the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. Leninism is the first absolutely successful attempt to combine the revolutionary struggle of the proletarian masses with the highest achievements of human thought in the field of social science.

The next outstanding stage in the development of the communist worldview was the Stalinist stage. In turn, Stalinism is Marxism-Leninism of the era of the victorious building of a communist society in one single country, the collapse of the classical colonial slavery of bourgeois democracies, and the spread of communism as a world social system.
“When a Marxist is looking for an answer to a question that has arisen, he is obliged to laboriously, creatively, without fear of fatigue, work out an answer, mobilizing all the theoretical wealth that has been created by Marxism as a whole and verified by the social practice of the development of mankind. Those. the answer to the question posed by history is given not by the mobilization of a dozen quotations drawn from Marxism, and even more so from “Marxism” subjectively understood by Novikov, but by the ability to draw a modern conclusion on the basis of the existing holistic theory and social practice, which, as a rule, in its content gradually goes beyond the framework of an already existing theory and requires from the communists no longer a quotation, but a creative theoretical and practical approach to the analysis of new, actual practice.»

Lunacharsky, in our opinion, quite successfully called Marxism the highest stage of knowledge

«Marxism is not only a theory of society in its true scientific version, it is the highest stage of knowledge. Marx and Engels found that the basic method of human thinking that coincides with the objective laws of development, which is called the dialectical method. And the bourgeoisie was forced, overturning, rejecting Marxism, to reject its basis — the materialist worldview and its method — the dialectical method. Instead of fertilizing the sciences of inorganic and organic nature with the achievements of science in the field of social science, bringing a materialistic foundation under the exact and biological sciences, the bourgeoisie, through hostile silencing of Marxism and slander against it, led to the fact that the natural sciences and biological sciences remained partially untouched by Marxist methodology, thus they turned out to be insufficiently based on an objective materialistic view.»

Further, what does it mean to become a communist from the point of view of Proriv?

«Firstly, a person who calls himself a Marxist is obliged, without making any allowance for fatigue, to study all that knowledge of which made Lenin and Stalin victorious communists. If this fails, then do not rush to appropriate the name of a communist, which presupposes, first of all, the mastery of science. As a last resort, let your comrades call you a Marxist, if they are sure of it.

Secondly, every person who recognizes himself as a Marxist is obliged to have on his account opportunists who have been put to shame in the theoretical form of the class struggle, as well as research, propaganda, and agitation works published in one way or another. If this is not the case, learn to defeat or re-educate opportunists, write yourself, and take your time teaching others.

Thirdly, every person who is recognized as a Marxist among his comrades-in-arms is obliged to organize, in person or in absentia, the studies of applicants for the title of communist. If it doesn’t work out, learn to teach so that in the end you will be addressed as a teacher.
Fourth, every Marxist must be able to work in a team and with a team, be able to organize people to achieve strategic goals. If it doesn’t work out, learn from someone who is already doing it, don’t compete, but, selflessly helping him, learn.

Fifth, never think about a career, about fame, about gratitude, about material gain. All this makes becoming a Marxist impossible. If all the things, generated by stupidity and envy, are not indifferent to you, and occupies you, dear reader, know that you, for the time being, have nothing to do with Marxism, regardless of what you have read and written.

You will work for communism, simply, sparing no effort, overcoming fatigue, it will fall on your shoulders and what only empty, conceited, and greedy people dream of — fame, recognition by the majority, and with them gigantic responsibility, hatred, envy, lies, intrigues of outright enemies and competitors who “adore” you.

Today, however, all those who trail behind the proletarian movement call themselves communists and are only capable of assenting to the leaders of the trade union-strike form of resistance to the tyranny of the entrepreneurs. The struggle for communism has been sacrificed by the modern left to the helpless babble about the need to help the proletariat in its Sisyphean struggle for the “swamp penny.”»

Strictly speaking, mastering Marxism is impossible without self-education.

Many people who sympathize with communism sincerely want to understand the surrounding situation and ongoing events, follow the news, complain about the weakness of the communist movement, and scold capitalism and its particular manifestations. However, knowledge of individual events, accusatory agitation and propaganda materials, and even oratorical talent can only give a certain impetus to thought in a certain direction. To really objectively understand the essence of the situation, capitalism, the regime, and the path of the communist struggle, a thorough and independent study of Marxism is necessary.

Anyone who wants to understand socio-political reality must at least study the capitalist system, its entire economic structure, the identity of the opposites of base and superstructure, the connection between economy and ideology, understand the internal contradictions of capitalism, and, finally, comprehend the mechanics of those forces that, emerging in its bowels, eventually it will be destroyed.

However, it does not follow from what has been said that without becoming a strong Marxist one cannot freely take one step in the communist movement. On the contrary, becoming a Marxist means being useful right now, which means doing practical work both in the field of propaganda and providing the necessary technical assistance. It is only in practical matters that theoretical growth really argues.

As already mentioned in the newspaper, after the initial acquaintance with the famous books and brochures of the classics, the stage of practical work must begin:

«Without practical propaganda work, and preferably in a literary form, the further development of Marxism seems, generally speaking, extremely unlikely. In addition, only if the propaganda is based on a careful, already slow, and thoughtful study, mainly of Capital, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, all the main works of Lenin and most of the works of the 13-volume collected works of Stalin. And tireless digging into major, minor, and smallest issues in the works of the classics as an urgent requirement of propaganda practice, with the obligatory resolution of issues at least in the first approximation, will gradually create a stable system of relatively strong basic knowledge, which is already qualitatively different from the intracranial vinaigrette of the overwhelming mass of leftists. At the same time, a good habit is being developed on every “subtle” issue of checking with the classics, as if “consulting” with a book.“»

In the propaganda work of a novice Marxist, both simplifications and mistakes, sometimes even gross ones, are possible. But the main thing is not at all in mistakes, but in whether a person remains on the basis of a sincere search for objective truth or clings to his beliefs because they are “his”. If a person is conscientious, then no mistakes in such a situation are terrible and will certainly be corrected.

In addition, it should be noted that, as practice shows, successful self-education is absolutely impossible without a certain orientation of thought, an orientation towards the search for the truth in a certain initial range of questions. The content of any Marxist work for its successful assimilation must be somehow connected with the thoughts of a person, with the need to expand the stock of knowledge, with life experience. Otherwise, 99% of the enterprise is doomed to failure. However, one should not forget that the modern average level of culture, the quality of social consciousness, has all the makings for even the spontaneous formation in the life of the majority of physically mature individuals of the corresponding factors of the identified needs. Therefore, by the way, nine-year-old composers and chess players happen, but there cannot be a nine-year-old Marxist.
As a rule, this need is formed by a well-known set of interests inherent in an individual at first glance by a random coincidence. Quantitative and qualitative diversity of this complex of interests acts in the form of normal human curiosity and is an excellent tool for self-education and fruitful development of the individual as a whole. In this case, it remains to raise normal curiosity to the level of scientific, and an unflagging interest in the search for objective truths is guaranteed.

Less often, the need for self-education arises on the basis of a mature, conscious attitude to life. The concept of an individual’s consciousness is not limited to the degree of scientificity of his worldview but also includes such a characteristic as thoughtfulness and logical consistency of views. This kind of holistic worldview is usually associated with worldly wisdom. It is not necessarily scientific, but it has the potential for scientific education, including Marxist education. At the same time, people wise by life experience tend to preserve their views, to reject the new, while naturally losing the possibility of productive practice, both professional and at home. If a person has the desire to work out his views and rethink his position, then the indicated tendency to self-education must manifest itself.
In addition, the interests of a person allow him to focus his attention with the least volitional effort on the topic that directly echoes them. Often, however, interests, having arisen relatively by chance, are more of a familiar field of knowledge than the subject of special spiritual experiences. Interests can serve as a good help only at the initial stage of self-education, in the future, the productive expansion of the horizon of knowledge, and the assimilation of diamatic methodology increases the power of the mind to the possibility of maintaining long-term attention to the subject being studied. In the future, perseverance, thoroughness, and thoroughness gradually become a habit of scientific and theoretical work.
Diamatics will have to complete the process of filling consciousness with concrete absolute truths, spontaneously initiated by mathematics and physics, thus saving mankind, first of all, from mysticism, the so-called trial and error method, and the Russian “maybe”, which in the 20th century was given the pretentious name “risk theory”. Diamatics, after social «emancipation» by the revolutionary process of building communism, will gradually turn into the only indisputable method of forming an absolutely adequate individual and social consciousness.

Today, in the specific case of the self-education of a supporter of communism, we must have an example of just such a formation of consciousness, filling it with positive content and ousting nonsense from it, which, it would be appropriate to say, enriches life with both satisfaction and pleasure. Here is the conclusion on the topic that Valery Alekseevich Podguzov makes:

«Naturally, the first algorithmic step of any brilliant thinking is the assimilation of the axiom of diamatics: matter is primary, consciousness is secondary. But even this truth is absolute only within the limits of the fundamental question of philosophy. Beyond its borders, living diamatics begins, consisting in the fact that all human activity in the material world is preceded by a mental act of will, the highest form of which is the consciousness of one degree or another of adequacy. Therefore, depending on the level of development of consciousness, in the same historical context, some individuals experience tragedies, while others prosper, the most developed of them prosper at the level of happiness, and certainly brilliant — at the level of pleasures and permanent bliss.

Many of my contemporaries, but not all, will rush to prove that permanent bliss is impossible, especially for everyone since some recognized geniuses ended their days on the fires of the Inquisition. But this only means that many of my peers are so confused by the market economy that they no longer fly in their dreams, but run away from tax inspectors, collectors, and killers. Moreover, with the modern structure of society, bliss, and enjoyment of life are not available to anyone, neither the Nobel Prize winner, nor the oligarch, nor his wife, nor the Pope. Few people today will understand Marx’s words that happiness is a struggle, since many today, like Solzhenitsyn, understand only the butting of a calf with an oak as a struggle.

The tragic existence of the majority of the world’s population over the millennia is due, in many respects, to the fact that the mass public consciousness was formed by the persistent application to individuals, first, of children, for the most part, idiotic bedtime stories, in the manner of Baba Yaga or Harry Potter, then, with the help of children’s fairy tales for adults, elevated to the rank of God’s «laws», economic, nationalist and racial theories, novels by Babel, Solzhenitsyn, Pomerants, Erofeevs …

But, with the strengthening of the USSR and, accordingly, the collapse of the European world colonial system, by the middle of the twentieth century, the reading skills of the majority of the population of many countries in Asia, Africa, and even the United States rose significantly higher compared to Russia in 1917, when its proletarian masses Marxism was perceived in the trenches of the First World War only by ear, only in the form of slogans, and only on faith.

Therefore, in modern conditions, the proletarians, primarily intellectual laborers, have great chances, if they wish, on their own, without shepherds and prophets such as Solzhenitsyn, Pozner, and Svanidze, to understand the logical constructions of Hegel, especially Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. This desire will grow faster, and the larger the religion and the liberal government, in order to save the budget, will oust opportunistic and collaborationist departments of the humanities, all kinds of Dugins, from modern universities. The process of increasing the economic efficiency of teaching in universities, i.e. the reduction of humanities teachers in Russia, despite the loyal or empty content of their lectures, is gaining momentum. Consequently, not only in the proletarian collectives but also among the students, in the near future, the propagandists of Marxism, if they really prepare themselves, will have practically no competitors. With a proper creative attitude towards self-education and propaganda, modern creative Marxists, united in the party of scientific centralism, can form the only center of scientific social science knowledge and no theological or official liberal professors can compete with them due to their partisanship, dogmatism, speculation, and tailism «knowledge».»

Krupskaya, being the largest Marxist theorist and practitioner of education, wrote that nothing gives such pleasure to a person as the ability to link the new with the old, to meet a new phenomenon that boldly violates established ideas and exposes its mystery.

How to read?

The word «education» besides meaning education, which is, the creation, around the main fund of knowledge and human ideas, of new layers of knowledge, firmly connected with this main fund. And the book here is of capital importance. This means that for productive self-education it is vital to learn how to work with a book, to develop the habit of reading a lot, and with concentration. There is nothing more stupid than reading quickly, in the sense of «swallowing books.» This kind of «self-education» is a waste of time. In the process of comprehension of solid scientific literature, Lenin’s ingenious formula «better less, but better» has absolute power.

Foolish disregard for mental work has long been rooted in the public mind. It is recognized as indisputable that in order to achieve a relatively tolerable skill in, say, classical dance, a person needs years of daily exhausting training. To learn how to perform at least one arabesque tolerably in terms of expressiveness and technique, both strong general choreographic training and thousands of repetitions of the pose itself are necessary. In order, say, to become a decent master in plumbing, you need to successfully wield a plumbing tool for a couple of years. However, at the same time, such mental work as mastering Marxism is imagined by the vast majority of people as a cakewalk — I read Capital once and became a Marxist. The same applies to the organization of work on the propaganda of Marxism — sat down, wrote an article about this and that, without re-reading, without thinking, without thinking through every word, without checking every thought with the classics, and you’re done. It is not surprising that such frivolity leads to continuous failures and disappointments, including on the basis of high expectations from a single reading of the classics and the first results after the release of propaganda materials.

One should be aware that between the reading of a Marxist work and its understanding, assimilation, lies the process of repeated re-reading, repeated reference to the text, comparison, reflection, and study. The capacity of the brilliant works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin is such that even a twenty-fold appeal to an individual of them reveals something new, previously unnoticed and not taken into account. The thing is that the heuristic power of a truly Marxist text lies not only in the theoretical depth of the narrative itself but also in how certain thoughts and positions are linked in the mind of the reader in connection with the operation of Marxism as a holistic doctrine. In other words, in the course of a person’s growth, as a Marxist, previously read works are assimilated again with a certain new depth and freshness, and the author’s train of thought and the objective factors reflected in it become more and more clear.

The most effective means of mastering the works of the classics are the following. First, thinking through the author’s reasoning, thinking about whether it is possible to talk about the subject in some other way. Secondly, retelling the provisions of the work to another person in the order of exchanging impressions or getting to know Marxism. Thirdly, and finally, the processing of the Marxist position into an independent note or article, that is, a presentation of what was read and understood, an abstract.

It is known how the classics themselves worked with literature: they made extracts, compiled notes, and formulated critical remarks. Krupskaya, for example, recommends compiling notebooks with concise, clearly written visual notes that reflect the thesis of the work and what you need and want to remember.

However, to assimilate a work does not always mean to fully master the system of objective truths set forth in it. The fact is that an important role in the formation of scientific and theoretical consciousness is played by the stock of personal observations, the life experience of a person, in particular the experience of operating knowledge. As mentioned above, without applying Marxism in practice, including in research work, professional activities, and even in the practice of personal life, it is, in fact, impossible to master it in a full sense.

Therefore, the “refined” reading of the classics characteristic of some intellectuals, reading for the sake of reading, reading for the sake of self-admiration of a know-it-all, has nothing in common with Marxist self-education and the communist movement.

That is why it is extremely important that the self-educator tries to apply and verify the acquired knowledge through personal observation and labor processing.

The pace of self-education varies within the limits allowed by objective conditions. Today the situation is such that the decisive role is played by the degree of the educational process, the maximum possible emphasis on quality, and not on speed. The feverishness often preached by hotheads is only hurting today. Today we need a library, not a «r-revolutionary» farce.
It is through the activation of the process of self-education, the affirmation of the spirit of self-education and self-education among the supporters of the «Breakthrough» that the necessary state is achieved, which disposes to solve the most important strategic task: «to complete the creation and mass development of a full-fledged theory of building communism on the basis of objective prerequisites born by the development of modern productive forces».

A. Redin, A. Borovoykh
19/11/2017

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Postscript

In addition, it should be said about the relationship between the assimilation of scientific knowledge in general and Marxist self-education, since this issue turns out to be quite relevant during the discussion of the article.

There is not and cannot be any knowledge confirmed by practice that would hinder the formation of a Marxist. Moreover, we, unlike most leftists, consider the process of becoming a diamatist not as a process of assimilating the professorial dictionary version of the Soviet or anti-Soviet «diamat», but as an element of general learning. And when we call for the study of diamatics, this does not mean reading «textbooks», it does not mean reading only the «Science of Logic» or even only the «Science of Logic» and the works of the classics.
The struggle for general education is the most important component of the struggle for diamatic education, that is, for Marxist self-education. Mathematics is a special case of dialectics. Physics, chemistry, biology, and other more particular sciences are the application of diamatics to the study of various forms of motion of matter, the discovery of objective laws according to which living and inanimate nature exists. Although the elements of diamatic thinking in the discoveries of the great naturalists manifested themselves only within the framework of their spontaneously materialistic worldview.

In the same way that by mastering «Capital», we actually comprehend historical materialism using the example of one of the modes of production, having studied higher mathematics, mechanics, thermodynamics, optics, electrodynamics, organic and inorganic chemistry, and so on — we partially learn at least dialectics and in rare cases diamatics.

It is proposed to move from the simple to the complex, from general education to diamatics, and from wide erudition to Marxism.

At the same time, the comprehension of any particular knowledge naturally causes the need to turn to methodology, that is, to the philosophy of Marxism, to the provisions of diamatics. Thus, there is a harmonious relationship between the process of comprehension of private knowledge and the process of mastering diamatics. And thus, diamatics is assimilated, among other things, on the material of private sciences, and not by lifeless philosophical schemes from dusty, emasculated textbooks.

Engels, answering the question of how to learn to think, said that mankind has not developed a better way than studying the history of philosophy. Note: not memorizing the laws of dialectics, but an appeal to the philosophical concepts of the past. It should be clarified that the most fruitful study will be directly diamatics and its sources in the person of G.W.F. Hegel and L. Feuerbach. It should also be added what has already been said above, that the conscientious study of the particular sciences is second in importance, and it should be noted that diamatics is also assimilated on the basis of personal observations, on rich life experience, which, of course, is approached in a balanced and self-critical manner.

In this regard, Comrade Lbov, moving from the question “the main thing is to be able to think creatively” to revealing the essence of teaching diamatic thinking, wrote:

«For Stalin, the question of the universal interconnection in philosophical views was absolutely not in vain one of the key ones, because dialectical knowledge is knowledge of all the properties of an object, that is, dialectical thinking, as the initial stage of knowledge, initially involves studying precisely as a mechanical process of observation (in a broad philosophical sense), for which the method of obtaining knowledge about these properties is completely unimportant, whether it is the result of independent study or memorization. One of the elements of the properties of an object is its interrelationships, which expand the scope of these properties. The more complex the subject, the greater the volume of these properties and relationships, respectively, more and more unreal and unreal becomes direct study, it becomes more and more necessary to abstract the properties of the subject in the form of ready-made laws and concepts, respectively, thinking itself acts for the most part as a systematizer of ready-made knowledge and to a lesser extent, as a producer of new knowledge.

… Marxists see the process of learning dialectical thinking as an element of general learning. If you study dialectics but do not study the world around you, then dialectics will not help you to derive any correct ideas from nothing. It is impossible to be an ignoramus with “correct thinking” — thinking must be built on some knowledge base… When Proryv calls to study dialectics, we assume by default that our readers and supporters are engaged in self-education in social science without this — they study history, economics, read statistical collections, analytical articles and scientific papers on social science issues of interest, collect data on their own from various sources. And this purely mechanical process is no less complex and difficult than the actual study of mastered material by dialectical methods. Dialectics fertilizes knowledge, synthesizes it, and gives it dynamics but not replaces it. Applied to the phenomena of reality reflected in the consciousness, dialectical logic ensures the adequacy of this reflection, that is, the correspondence of the laws of thinking to the objective laws of being, but in itself does not replace the reflection itself.

We, the «Prorivists», worked for many years, focusing our propaganda on the most advanced part of the intelligentsia and the proletariat, on cadres for whom calls for the extensive acquisition of a mass of knowledge in various issues were simply unnecessary — the most difficult issue was the methodological part of the analysis of this knowledge. However, the expansion of propaganda, and contact with certain groups of proletarians with a lower level of development, cause a clash with the Makhaevian tendencies among the irresponsible proletarians, which consist in denying the role of the revolutionary intelligentsia in the formation of the working class, reducing the intelligentsia to the role of «servants», which can be ignored, since, according to the views of the neo-Machaeans, “they do not live by labor” and their knowledge is easily compensated by everyday “reason”, or the so-called. «ability to think».»

One can see, among other things, the most important political component in choosing the principles of self-education.

Keep a scientific approach to self-education and you will be on the right political line in this most important issue for the development of each individual and the formation of a practical revolutionary.

And the final remark is directly about the study of Marxism. Our experience of working in a newspaper shows that a real deep understanding of any question of the theory of Marxism occurs exclusively or almost exclusively in the course of its elaboration for publication in the printed word. Only by instilling a taste for printed propaganda, on the one hand, and cultivating the author’s high responsibility to readers, on the other hand, is it possible to ensure productive personnel forging, from our point of view.