seriously. it’s not that big a deal. if people in gaza are still standing up to their oppressors every day then you likely have zero excuse for not doing more IRL shit (political reading and writing at home are good, but don’t mean anything if you’re not applying that theory as practice and then assessing the results and adjusting your practice accordingly).
I mean wasn’t Russian literacy super fucking low pre-Lenin? Many of the greatest revolutions ever done were done by illiterate people. Reading theory is good, but some people here treat it as far too important.
Those trying to build up the socialist movement early on were all heavy readers though. They need to be. Most of us live in a country where the movement is in the infantile stages
If a revolution does ever come to America, 99% of participants will have never read a single communist book, yea
Just because people were illiterate or had low literacy levels doesn’t mean they didn’t engage in theory though. This is also why vanguardism was so important to historical revolutions.
But you only need one comrade who can read for a classroom sized group of people (or larger) to be able to learn and discuss theory.
Part of what Mao did so successfully was to convey complex ideas in theory in very simple to understand language. In fact, he was so effective in doing this that most of his writings manage to cross a vast linguistic gap in a very nimble way.
Theory isn’t the be-all and end-all, of course. But a party or the masses without theory is like a ship without a rudder.