Ask Lemmygrad

I've been meaning to try my hand at some kind of "primer". This is as good a reason as any, so I went and tried to cover some of what I think are the most important concepts. I'm not sure if this is more digestible than already existing material, but based on the material I've encountered in the past, I tried to condense and simplify without losing the heart of the meaning. Ideally, this would at most be an intro to someone doing deeper learning about it. (Also, if there's anything I'm oversimplifying, i.e. losing important meaning in the process of trying to simplify, I'm open to correction.)

Diamat: Short for dialectical materialism. Also applied to history as historical materialism. The prevailing scientific theory of change. Things have internal contradictions. Big changes come from buildup of quantitative to qualitative (ex: water reaching boiling point). Base and superstructure both matter (base: concrete conditions, such as access to house and food, superstructure: belief/tradition layer, such as religion, culture, and media). People both change belief and are changed by it. People both change the concrete and are changed by it. Means of production (such as land, factories) and distribution (such as telecommunications and roads) shape and reshape how a society functions. Over time, the way people are positioned in relation to these can bring about a boiling point and create the conditions for dramatic change from one system to another.

Communist: Communists are part scientist, but they are not passive observers. They are active participants in working toward a particular kind of change. In the abstract, communists believe in a stateless, classless, moneyless society; the elimination of class and caste stratification, and dominating power structures. In practice, liberation effort requires transition (see: diamat and dynamics of change). However, this does not mean trying to reform a repressive system from within.

Means of production and distribution: Who controls these controls the direction of a society. Should a factory build bombs or medicine? Should the airways tout the virtues of capitalism or socialism? Should elected officials be able to enrich themselves or be considered as public servants, dedicated to the people's needs over all else? If an exploiting class, such as the capitalist class, controls these, can you reform it from within? No. You need to have control over it. But who?

Vanguard party: A disciplined, militant, and scientific socialist vanguard of the people has been proven multiple times to be an effective means of acquiring and managing control over the means of production and distribution. The reaction to a change in power, at home and/or abroad, will be violent in various forms. It may come as direct war, or as attempts at assassination, color revolution, economic embargo, sanctions. The vanguard is necessary to ensure the revolution both stays in power and stays on a disciplined scientific socialist path through difficult times of transition from the previous system to a new, more humane one.

Color revolution: A form of "fake" revolution, where an outside force seizes on real discontent and/or tries to manufacture discontent, and then tries to take control of the resulting movements and direct them toward changing the hands of power. This is a common tactic of imperialism, historically, in order to subvert sovereign powers and replace their leadership with someone who is subservient to the empire; someone who will, in essence, sell out their own people to the highest bidder.

Imperialism: Capitalism's parasitic nature develops beyond internal feeding to external feeding. Nations become resources to be targeted for exploitation. Land, labor, and natural resources are turned toward the enrichment of the imperial capitalists, with conscious intent to make these countries more dependent on imports and their imperial masters. Not to be confused with infrastructure investment in another country, inherently (see: China's non-predatory efforts to help other countries with infrastructure).

Actually Existing Socialism (AES / AES state): A term for countries that are led by a communist vanguard party. These countries have not all taken the same path because their conditions were not and are not identical, nor were the cultures and systems of belief that they arose out of. However, they share a commonality of being heavily vilified by the empire, relentlessly targeted with attempts at color revolution, and in spite of this, tend to have astounding track records for advancing the quality of life of their people in relatively short periods of time. Note: This does not mean their people all live in pure luxury. They do well with the conditions they have to work with. Their conditions are often a worse starting point than ruling empire states.