Strong advice for learners and novices

[CatsAttack]

1. Please learn languages. This is one of the most basic and elementary things you should do. The benefits are incalculable. While the importance of languages is obvious to most (I hope!) there are still many that think it is not important, that "all works are translated to English," "it takes too much time" etc.

I'll give some examples, from some shocking things I have seen on this very site.

A. "Mao couldn't read Das Kapital cause it probably wasn't translated to Chinese!" While every Chinese speaking Marxist knows about the widely circulated, and famous 1938 publication of all 3 volumes in Chinese"

B. Truly shocking post I saw the other day "Mao's books are heavily censored in China and the marxists.org were being blocked when they were translating Mao's works to Chinese"

Amazing! they were translating Mao Zedong's works into Chinese? Wonderful news for the Chinese masses, they can finally know what Mao wrote.

Again, a google search, a brief inquiry, would show that Mao's books are widely sold, uncensored and in their entirety in most major bookstores all over China. Trotsky's books are sold in Chinese on the Chinese site taobao.com.

Why does this person outright lie? He is ignorant that's why, and ignorance in a dangerous thing.

2. Many, MANY, books of extreme value are NOT translated or widely avialble in English

Have any major Marixst works come out of Japan? The world second richest and second most advanced nation? Not in English! In fact there is a real treasure of material on Marxian political economy available only in Japanese.

What about Trotskyism? In the west it's entire history is limited to the squabbles in London and New York. What about the great Chinese Trotskyists? Only in Chinese my dear friends!

Anyways, you get the idea, Engles knew dozens of languages, Lenin and Trotsky were all obsessed with language acquisition. Some like Mao and Che were not so lucky, not as intelligent and that shows in their works and their lack of input.

Today you have the power of the internet and a multi-cultural world. It's never been easier to learn languages. No excuses!

[helot]

Native English speakers are a bit spoilt imo as there's less pressure to become fluent in another language due to the prevelance of English. But knowing multiple languages can have political importance. For example, i'm currently looking for a tutor to teach me Polish as there's becoming a sizeable Polish community in my city. I think it'd be a great boon to my organising.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Native English speakers are a bit spoilt imo as there's less pressure to become fluent in another language due to the prevelance of English. But knowing multiple languages can have political importance. For example, i'm currently looking for a tutor to teach me Polish as there's becoming a sizeable Polish community in my city. I think it'd be a great boon to my organising.

Or, if in the u.s., public education only requires a year or so of forign language (your choice of French or Spanish for the most part), and English as a second language classes have been eliminated.

[Tim Cornelis]

Yeah but to learn an entire language just to read some obscure Marxist theorist's work is a bit ineffective. I'd like to read some more Bordiga though, not everything of his is available in English.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Or, if in the u.s., public education only requires a year or so of forign language (your choice of French or Spanish for the most part), and English as a second language classes have been eliminated.

No more ESL? What's happening to students who can't speak English, then?

There were a bunch of kids like that, mostly from central America, when I was in grade school.

[AnSyn Blackflag]

This article would be best titled as simply relating your view on language IMO.


1. Please learn languages. This is one of the most basic and elementary things you should do. The benefits are incalculable. While the importance of languages is obvious to most (I hope!) there are still many that think it is not important, that "all works are translated to English," "it takes too much time" etc.


I agree with you very strongly. It is a strong skill to have and should never be discouraged. There is some implication here however that IT MUST be done or (judging by the title of this post) you are not a true or at least a lesser revolutionary. I have to dispute this because, even though I agree with the value of Bilinguals, some people (like my self) are not very good at learning other languages. I have tried and it is simply not there.

You shouldn't demand that such a specific issue be such a strong point for the broad goals of this web site.


Many, MANY, books of extreme value are NOT translated or widely avialble in English

This is something that should be remedied to be sure. A group of gifted individuals who are bi lingual should take the initiative to root out these books of value and get them translated in whatever languages they possibly can. I know I would certainly appreciate the increase of learning material.

[MarxSchmarx]

One group that I think has managed to overcome some of these linguistic barriers and whom we can learn from are the Nepali maoists.

In Nepal, over 100 different languages are spoken by different communities. What the maoist movement figured out early on is that having a few people who were fluent in their community language but also in the common language (Nepali or English) was much more valuable than have a centralized authority trying to be competent in 100+ languages.

Indeed, I think it is immensely valuable to attain fluency in two maybe three languages than have fluency in one and competence in 6.

Another point is that a lot of Marxist communication revolves around a surprisingly small number of languages, but this hardly means it doesn't get translated into other languages. Again, the example of Nepal is instructive - there are a large number of local languages that are not mutually intelligible, but the lingua franca status of Nepali and, to a lesser extent, English, ensure that most literature finds its way from one end of the language spectrum to the other in three easy steps (e.g., Awadhi -> Nepali -> Tharuhati). In such a situation, better to have two people who know local language A and Nepali and local language B and Nepali quite intimately than have someone conversant in all 3 but be a native speaker of a fourth language (say, Chinese) do the translating.

[Rooiakker]

In high school I was a liberal, then I read Das Kapital in German. I became both an advanced German student and a leftist all from one summer's literary struggle. If it wasn't for my interest in other languages, I'd never have learned how horrifically restrictive American political discussions are.

[Teacher]

I just got back from China and the little red book is in practically every gift shop and in multiple languages.