In this series, to be published in the lead up to Red Books Day 2025, comrades from Red Ant were invited to write a short reflection on a book that radicalised them.

On Contradiction, Mao Zedong
Review by AK.

On Contradiction (1937) is a tiny book, slender even for a pamphlet. I read it as one part of a Selected Works of Mao. The essay is a direct theoretical engagement with the dialectics that powers Mao’s political work and analysis. For its length, and the simple, jargon-free language, it is incredibly conceptually rich, and rewards many re-readings.

Mao’s relationship to dialectics is interesting as a Chinese writer. Rather than Leibniz’ monism, or other Western forms of unitary metaphysics, he orients himself in opposition to the Chinese tradition of hsuan-hsueh. This is a world outlook that conceptualises things as ‘isolated, static and one-sided… [regarding] all things in the universe, their forms and their species, as eternally isolated from one another and immutable’ (p. 134 in my copy). In contrast, Mao presents a dialectical analysis – one that is indebted not only to Engels, Lenin and similar, but also to currents of thought that exist in Chinese traditions. Dialectics sees both the unity and contradiction that exist in all things, a dual tension and coherence that together energise the constant movement that constitutes existence in the universe.

Elegantly enough, the concept of contradiction is itself dialectical, with each contradiction embodying both universality and particularity, and each aspect of the contradiction possessing both identity and struggle with the other. Life itself, Mao writes, is the originating and resolving of contradictions. From these resolved contradictions emerges the next dialectic, and so all living things are in a constant moving process of struggle and integration.

The essay locates dialectics first as an ontology, then in the physical sciences, and then in the later parts of the essay Mao writes in brief detail about the function of contradictions in the pursuit of revolution in the Chinese context. Here he is as brilliant, clear-sighted and decisive as ever, and to read his decision-making process is to be both awed and inspired.

On Contradiction is a beautiful, potent and lively text and, in my view, the most accessible and vibrant articulation of the crucial communist concept of dialectics. As a true dialectician, Mao wrote this essay immediately after the also wonderful On Practice, and the two essays act in productive tension with one another. To understand dialectics – to understand the world – read Mao’s On Contradiction; in fact, read it once per year.

The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Review by Andrew Martin

The Communist Manifesto is the book that radicalised me. Since breaking from being a Jehovah’s Witness, I was looking for answers to explain the injustice of the world. I was also in a personal struggle for survival.

My radicalisation centred on the pain and suffering humans felt. The political environment in Australia was tumultuous with a reactionary government inflicting pain on the most vulnerable. It was the Howard years, and they were painful if you got the wrong end of the stick, and I got the wrong end of the stick.

Indigenous people and the public service were the first to face attack, followed by refugees and trade unions. Racism against Asian people was severe, stoked up by Pauline Hanson and shock-jocks like John Laws, Alan Jones and Ray Hadley. I was exposed to a lot of it in the blue-collar environments I worked in. Although, I wasn’t the subject of it, I found it deeply corrosive.

Incidentally, where I did my apprenticeship, CSIRO, came under attack. The hysteria around a “bloated” public-service led to cuts. At the same time wharfies came under attack. The dismissal and violent removal of 1500 waterside workers from Patricks was reminiscent of the coal miners’ strike in the UK in the mid-80s. The treatment of refugees is what I found most disgusting of the Howard government. I thought the demonization of refugees was like how Nazi Germany treated Jewish people.

But what to think about all this? I didn’t know. I couldn’t find the answers in a workshop environment. Being young, I was reviled. Every mistake I made was a nightmare. I’d left home when I was sixteen with my twin brother; I found life hard going.

My grandfather on my mother’s side, Bill Gibson, was a socialist. He seemed to be the most moral and principled person I knew—maybe there was something in his beliefs. Socialists also, were very compelling, culturally speaking. There was a student youth group Resistance that was visible, flouting Che Guevara regalia. Who was that guy?!

Unhappy in my trade, I left it and started studying a diploma in mechanical engineering at Ultimo TAFE in Sydney. At this time, I started to buy Green Left Weekly. It was of a much higher standard than anything else on the left, more honest (particularly in respect to the ALP whom I had no illusions in) and less sectarian.

I’m not sure how I came into possession of the Communist Manifesto, but I remember its impact. It burned a bright flame from within. Its prose captured a hold on my imagination!

I felt I was changing as I was reading it. This! This is the answer. It was a radicalisation that seized me. It formed for me, an all-encompassing explanation for the evils of the world.

At the same time, I was trying to learn the history of the labour movement and understand why things were getting worse. As much as I hated the Howard government, the neoliberal period was led by the ALP and was only at its beginning. I was beginning to see a mass erosion of hope and deep loss of class-consciousness. Blue collar workers hated both parties, their unions and all the institutions of society. Social decay was beginning.

I thought the Communist Manifesto was remarkable in how it perfectly described the contradictions of contemporary capitalism. Its condemnation of the whole system touched a chord – I’d always been taught to hate it, that it was demonic. But now the “system” appeared before me with a clarity I’d never felt before.

After reading it I understood why it was considered history’s most important document. I also understood why it was hated by the powers that be, why the Nazis burned it and why it wasn’t taught in schools. It was such a compelling damnation of capitalism and all its ruling institutions, but it was also a call to action – to break all the chains that keep us bound to servility.

I understood that reform or appeals to power could not wind the clock back and rejuvenate social democracy. The age of capitalist stability was replaced with a new savageness, a new level of parasitism, because capital accumulates for its own sake, more powerful than regulation or good will–”Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social power.”

Marx’s addition to the manifesto was based on writings and the astute observations Engels had already made. It is Marx that drew it all together giving it completeness. Both Marx and Engels captured the essential features of capitalism.

The alienation I felt as a fitter/machinist made perfect sense. That the worker is merely a commodity and an appendage to the machine is exactly how I felt. My work had involved literally standing at a machine for eight hours a day; it was nerve wracking and demanded a lot of concentration. Mistakes could undo hours of work, destroy materials or potentially destroy the machine you were operating.

I witnessed firsthand the revolutionising of the means of production. There was a big push in the 90s to move from manually operated machines to CNC machine centres—which ate jobs that were already diminishing due to a decline in manufacturing.

I liked these words: “Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.” And further: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere.”

The analogy Marx uses of the master’s apprentice unleashing forces he couldn’t control vividly described the forces of production that were ruining the earth. The solution was to abolish capitalism. It was revolutionary.

Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution, Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy
Review by Andy G.

In 1996, I was a newly minted socialist. I had spent my previous 24 years being thoroughly uneducated about the things that matter most to me now. Suddenly I was interested in socialism, after having met my first socialist activist who had helped to remove the block to further thinking about socialist ideas.

From knowing nothing about Cuba in 1996, nearly 30 years in the Cuban solidarity movement, including a visit for two weeks in 2010, has cultivated a great love for everything Cuban, but especially the story of the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

The very first book I read about that momentous event was by Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy called Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution. The edition I read was published in 1960 (a second edition was published in 1961). The point in history at which the book stops means that the reader is not burdened with any of the events that are to come to cloud understanding of the fledgling socialist state. It helps to focus on what the revolution was about, and especially how it succeeded, rather than the twists and turns that are yet to come.

A quote by Walter Lippmann is included in the preface of the 1961 edition: “What is going on in Cuba today is no mere palace revolution at the top, in which one oligarchy has ousted another. This is a social revolution involving the masses of the Cuban people, and its aim is not to install a new set of rulers but to work out a new social order.”

This was simply the best book to read for someone completely unaware of the main features of Cuba. I didn’t know who Che Guevara was, I had no idea of what Fidel Castro was really like, I was your typical ignorant worker for capital who only knew about Cuba from what the corporate press wants people to know.

The book is separated into three sections: Background of the Revolution; Making the Revolution; and The Revolution in Power. There are no substantive changes between the first and second editions of the book. The authors, however, admit they made two major misjudgements: that the oil companies would not refuse to refine Cuban oil and that the United States government would not cut the Cuban sugar quota. These misjudgements “have been allowed to remain undisturbed because of what seems to us to be their considerable educational value. They testify to a lingering belief in the rationality of those who make U.S. foreign policy. We would like others to learn from our mistakes, as we hope we have.”

As you would expect from Marxists scholars, the story begins in 1492 when Columbus discovered Cuba on Sunday, October 28, 1492. He was so struck with its charm that he called it “the most beautiful land human eyes had ever seen.”

But Cuba was rich as well. Extremely fertile soil, and with level ground (three-fifths of the island is either flat or gently rolling), it also had iron, nickel, manganese and copper. With a population of 6.4 million in 1957, this was less than the population of New York City in an area larger than Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands combined. You would think that the people were well off. But they weren’t, most were desperately poor.

In rural areas, large numbers of children would get infected with parasitic worms, suffer miserably, and then die a painful death. The book recounts eye-witnesses from the U.S. observing what happened to these children, making the point that nothing had been done for years about a widely known problem.

The people who ran the island didn’t worry about social development for the vast majority. The reason? It was, in reality, a colony of the United States. As long as profits continued to flow from the sugar plantations, why bother? There was no thought given to diversification of the economy, which meant that the country’s ‘normal’ unemployment rate was 25 percent.

The sugar industry is a seasonal one: the zafra is the period when cane is harvested and brought to the mills, hundreds of thousands of field workers cut down the cane stalks, trim off the leaves, and throw the stalks into piles which are loaded into carts to be carried to the mills. The zafra is a period of great activity—but it lasts only three or four months. Then comes the dead season, when the field workers and most of the mill hands are idle, and hungry.

The workers in the sugar industry, which in 1953 accounted for 23 percent of the total labour force, had a miserable life whereas the mill owners made huge overall profits (they had good and not-so-good years but in the long term did very well).

So great was the subordination of the entire national economy to the production of sugar that Cuba, one of the richest agricultural countries in the world, was not able to feed itself. Attention of the people with capital to invest was so focused on sugar that opportunities for making money in other ways were neglected. Thus, the country had a severe lop-sided development.

All of these facts of life, along-side many others too numerous to list in this book review, meant that conditions for a revolutionary transformation of society were ripe.

The actual story of how the Cuban revolutionaries came to power to begin this transformation has been recounted many times, so no need to go over that again. Except to say that the complete story is absolutely amazing, inspiring, and thoroughly educational.

The end impression I received from reading Anatomy was profound. Here was a story that Hollywood could only dream of coming up with, and yet this was a living history. The struggle of the Cubans to defeat their United States-backed dictatorship is one of the most inspiring stories of the socialist movement. Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution is still a great starting point for understanding the significance of the great and ongoing Cuban Revolution.