Ask Lemmygrad

With my past experience of trying to get people to read the most basic, short, easy and lib-friendly texts and 10-20 minute articles, I wouldn't go for the approach of dropping a reading list on them unless they are the types who read encyclopedias for fun, or they actually ask you for reading material. And I wouldn't go straight to communist theory with proletariat and classes and scary German philosophers and Russian revolutionaires either.

Theory is essential but you need to ease people into it. Make sure that you are up to date yourself with literature that deals with issues relevant to your friends, and that isn't just straight up Marx or Lenin because libs are primed to be hostile towards those. In the case of US aggression, I would recommend stuff like Washington Bullets, Killing Hope, Against Empire, or The Jakarta Method. Then, since you mentioned these are people close to you that you interact with on a regular basis, spend time with them, listen to them, and capitalize on every opportunity to drop more of your leftist analysis while pointing at the resources that you used to build it. Essentially, you have to market reading to them by being well informed on topics they care about and showing the work that got you here.

I know a few people similar to your friends who are starting to question the official narrative on countries like Iran and the DPRK. One of them asked me for a link to Killing Hope, but this was after he brought up North Korea himself in light of recent events and we spent some time talking about the Korean War, its many associated US crimes against humanity, as well as how this pattern of US aggression repeated throughout the post WW2 world. I have no idea if the guy will actually read it, but if he does it will be easier to build on that and pitch Lenin to him.

We are fighting against a wall of heavily reinforced anticommunist narratives and liberal civil religion, which is why I prefer the cautious approach. Marxist-Leninist reading lists are for people who have broken through and decided they want to make sense of the world after the liberal narrative has collapsed. You need to work with your friends at their own pace and drill at the cracks that form organically until they get to that point.

Show them reporting from Liberation News and Fight Back News, for a start. Also the Abby Martin documentaries, and Yellow Parenti. I think there's a whole Parenti Lecture podcast made by an user from here. Those are all good for broader anti-imperialism.

For Marxism specifically, Engels already perfected the introduction with Principles of Communism. Vijay Prashad's videos and interviews are fairly accessible to broad audiences. And if they get too curious, you can feed the Wage Labour and Capital, and Value, Price and Profit but at that point you're better off just making a joint commitment to join some party together.

But most importantly, try to approach other active communists and socialists. If there are protests nearby, try to find out if the left acronyms (FRSO/PSL/CPUSA/DSA/etc/etc) are gonna be there and hang around together with them. It's way easier when it's humans talking to each other.

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.

Americans do not have brains 🧠⛔ for you that is. They will listen to Sam Altman. I recently explained over the phone after being informed of how smart he was in a documentary that he

& for years his family has persisted in tormenting her in poverty despite their lavish wealth etc, I won't belabor it we know all these people are psychopaths. But I want to highlight this is the exact kind of abuse story these people do engage with over stories from the global south. Yet the response was literally "how old were they" [explanation] [shocked silence] "I don't know why you have to be so negative ... this doc was made by a guy with a shed in his backyard“ (I didn't bother to explain what having a backyard means in the states) etc etc, these people are just disconnected from reality, suffering does not urge them, their self-interest does not correlate to their lifespan because they are unrealistic about getting into the asset market. I hope the current crisis gets much worse. I want them to listen to chill Indian guys not Elon Musk's dad if presented right with high production value.

Anyways I know that's a dumb anecdotal example & we're supposed to brainstorm how to reach those people. Maybe it's my disconnection. I only care about the Vietnamese petrochemical industry now. I could be misjudging how close people are there to freaking out like I did. But IMO make extreme life changes in a concerted effort to be safe & happy. Do not buy into the asset market. Before I left the US I didn't realize the apartment I last lived in never informed me it was in a flood zone, because legally they got rid of the requirement... insanr. You CAN be Hurricane Katrina'd before the economy Officially Collapses. Free yourself & do something good while there is still time