A short book that gives an overview of how the 1917 October Revolution shaped the ideologies and trajectory of the global south.

This book falls victim to many of the pitfalls of anti-capitalist and anti-communist theory. The author wholly dismisses Marxism as Eurocentric, as colonial. This ignores that much of Marxist thought post-Lenin has been developed outside of Europe and has been essential for decolonial thought. Yang also provides some admittedly valid criticisms of Marx, but then uses those criticisms to wholesale dismiss it, as if Marxism is a dogmatic adherence to what Karl Marx specifically wrote and isn't open for critique.

There is also an irony to Yang's rejection of Marx as they cite many other decolonial authors who are Marxists or at least are heavily influenced by Marxism. It feels weird to frame decolonization as necessarily breaking from Marx when so many of these decolonial organizations and scholars find Marx to be important.

Additionally, this anti-Marxist perspective hinders the books argument in major ways. When describing the Third University the author is basically forced to use analogies to Black Cinema rather than directly describing it. To me, it felt there were so many examples of actually educational institutions that they could've drawn from instead. Yet, these examples cannot be cited because most are affiliated with a Communist Party or are closely tied with Marxism. For example, when describing how Third Universities can exist within First and Second Universities, the Communist Party of China felt like such an obvious example. Yet that couldn't be given as an example as the author had already claimed that China was settler-colonial (no citation or elaboration on why though).

I also just found the motivation for developing a Third University to be lacking. Yes, we can theoretically build them but we should really be asking if that is worth our time at the present moment? Could our time be better spent developing other institutions or organizations? Yang doesn't answer that which feels like a big missing point. Especially when one of the few concrete examples of a Third University is Cuban Medical School, yet these schools only came into being because of the Cuban Revolution, which to me seems to imply that maybe other institutions should be developed to allow a Third University to exist. The failure to ask these questions makes me feel that there is a “there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, therefore do whatever you want” kind of conclusion in the book that I doubt was intended.

All that being said, there still is value in Yang's analysis in how universities are embedded and support settler-colonialism in ways that might not be obvious. It is just seems like an unforced error to needlessly reject/refute Marxism when Marxists don't even really disagree with what was being said.

A great read and an essetential contribution to Marxist-Feminism. More of my thoughts can be found here. While I specifically read the 2025 English translation of the full book, the introduction and the pamphlet on marxists.org might also be a great resource for getting a summary of her arguments.

An older work which discusses how Soviet policy shaped the policies and priorities of the West.

I don't think therefore I don't am. Checkmate idealists.

Lenin has failed to consider that one last big reform will fix everything this time we promise.

Lenin has failed to consider that imperialism is actually when big country.

To be honest I should re-read but I thought it was an interesting exploration of the dialectics and contradictions of education.

Essential for doing any sort of intersectional analysis.

As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things

Okay so the world is a system of objects and relations between them...

If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure and properties of the atom, you must make physical and chemical experiments to change the state of the atom.

So if we want to understand an object, we must understand its relations to other objects...

The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence.

So an object is necessarily defined by its relation to other objects. In other words... an object $X$ is isomorphic to it's relation to other objects, i.e. $X\cong \mathrm{Hom}(-,X)$. Motherfucker... Well I guess that explains why he said this:

Lenin illustrated the universality of contradiction as follows:

In mathematics: + and - . Differential and integral.
In mechanics: action and reaction.
In physics: positive and negative electricity.
In chemistry: the combination and dissociation of atoms.
In social science: the class struggle.

In programming languages, mutability and immutability, product and sum, eager and lazy are all mutually contradictory phenomena. One cannot exist without the other. The two aspects are at once in conflict and in interdependence, and this constitutes the totality of a programming, pushes its development forward and solves its problems.