BOOK: Historical Materialism

Book Description:

“We have to build up a completely new society unknown in our history. We have radically to change thousand-year-old customs and habits, ways of thinking, and prejudices. We have to change old relationships in production, abolish the exploiting classes, and establish new relationships without exploitation and oppression.”

This is the revolutionary mandate of Ho Chi Minh, who helped guide Vietnam through decades of revolution against French colonialism, Japanese fascism, and American imperialism. These words reverberate today in the classrooms of Vietnamese high schools and colleges, where students study the historical development of human society rooted in a theoretical foundation of the Marxist-Leninist methodology of Historical Materialism.

Now, for the first time, the materials used to train Vietnamese students in the socio-economic analysis of the development of human society is available to the English speaking world through Luna Nguyen’s groundbreaking translation of Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism, Part 2: Historical Materialism.

This text, originally produced by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training for use in universities, fully explains the analytical methodology of Historical Materialism. This first English edition is brought to you by Banyan House Publishing. We have done our best to deliver a textbook which is highly optimized for collective training as well as self-study and for use as a companion piece for further reading.

The book includes a full glossary and appendices. It is richly annotated and features illustrations by Emerican Johnson as well as an original introduction by Gerald Horne and Anthony Ballas.