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The worker need not necessarily gain when the capitalist does, but he necessarily loses when the latter loses.

There are three constituent parts of price: profit, ground-rent, and wages. Profit is how much surplus value the capitalist finds feasible to seize within the constraints of current supply/demand. The other two parts are cost-based, making them negatives balanced with the positive of profit. So, price in itself is built and maintained through a "resolution" of such negative/positive contradiction -- the Aufhebung.

The capitalist can live longer without the worker than can the worker without the capitalist.

This is true, but more on an individual/macro scale. Ultimately, if there are no workers for the capitalist to steal surplus value from, he becomes nothing. There is no production as there is no labor.

Jung Chang accuses Mao of killing x = a x b x c number of people, where a = 'China's prison and labour camp population', b = 'annual death rate', and c = the years of his rule. She does not explain why a = 10 million.

Jung Chang does not show why Mao was responsible. Apparently she simply blames Mao for every Chinese death of whatever kind.

Self-interests are indeed primary
for human beings, but it does not stop here. It is also our nature to extend this to helping others ... so working for the interests of others is in my own self-interest'.

The Great Leap Forward, on the other hand,
was designed to accelerate China's industrialization and farm production. Chang and Halliday show no understanding of the dilemma Chinese communists faced in the late 1950s, as a result of China's severe international isolation and the military blockade.

Healthy rebellion is an active exercise of free choice. It enhances personal growth and individuality. Self-defeating rebellion is a reaction against a controlling parent, an exercise in which the means attempt to justify an unsatisfactory end. This is rarely in our best interests.

What makes a controlling parent so insidious is that the domination usually comes in the guise of concern. Phrases such as, “this is for your own good,” “I’m only doing this for you,” and, “only because I love you so much,” all mean the same thing: “I’m doing this because I’m so afraid of losing you that I’m willing to make you miserable.”

A strange read for me since I've never been into self-help type books, but I figured I've give this one a shot. If there's a chance it could help me out, especially in terms of my parental relationships, I'd ought to take it.

"Leninism teaches that the world revolution can only succeed if the proletariat of the capitalist countries supports the struggle for liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples..."
The proletariat of capitalist countries is better off than the proletariat under colonial/semi-colonial control, but they are part of the proletariat nonetheless, and not de-facto part of the "labor aristocracy."

To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and peasants is lighter than a feather.

Wherever there is struggle there is sacrifice, and death is a common occurrence.

All men must die, but death can vary in its significance.

all the new books i've gotten in the past week :"D

The fewer comforts the guerrilla fighter has, the more he is initiated into the rigors of nature, the more he feels himself at home; his morale is higher, his sense of security greater. At the same time, he has learned to risk his life in every circumstance that might arise, to trust it to luck, like a tossed coin ... it matters little to the individual guerrilla whether or not he survives.

They understood also that the fight would have to be a long one and that it would need vast campesino participation. At this point, the campesinos entered the guerrilla war for the first time.
- I was unaware that the agricultural peasantry apparently played such a large role in the Cuban revolution, and that as a result they were highly valued, just as in the Chinese revolution.

[T]he world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.

"In fact, the Cuban Revolution must be separated into two absolutely distinct stages: that of the armed action up to January 1, 1959, and the political, economic and social transformations since then."
- The first stage seemed to be a revolution led by the proletariat, but not necessarily Marxist in motive.

"It is clear that if the leaders have an adequate theoretical knowledge prior to the action, they can avoid trial and error whenever the adopted theory corresponds to the reality."
- However, doesn't the need for "trial and error" arise from differing material conditions? In that case, original theory is not needed, but the ability to adapt such theory is.

Furthermore, the one and only purpose of the proletariat in knowing the world is to change it. Often, correct knowledge can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, that is, leading from practice to knowledge and then back to practice.

In social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect, but because, in the balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later.

Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world. In their social practice, men engage in various kinds of struggle and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their failures.

Only in our socialist society which treats man as the most precious being is this true. A capitalist society, which regards man as the object of exploitation and as a producer of surplus value, cannot provide the working people with stable jobs. Capitalists use unemployment as a lever for speed-up and for exploiting the labour force at a lower cost.

Through his labour man creates the material and cultural wealth he needs in his life and, in the course of this, trains himself into a more powerful being. The right to labour is one of the basic rights a man should enjoy as the master of society...

"As long as there is a class struggle, democracy assumes a class character and is linked with dictatorship."
"Bourgeois democracy, ... can never be true democracy. The imperialists and reactionaries are advertising the bourgeois parliamentary/multi-party system as "democracy". However, in such systems big monopolists are the real behind-the-scenes manipulators of politics."