Glossary
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This glossary includes definitions of terms, concepts, historical events, as well as the names of individuals, organizations, and schools of thought, that will be referenced throughout our 2023 Revolutionary Summer School: Pan Africanism and the Struggle for Our Future. The glossary is organized into three categories: terms, organizations, and people. To fully understand the content within all the courses of our summer school, it is essential that we familiarize ourselves with important terms for understanding history, political economy, and the leaders and ideas that have shaped the present.
This is a working document with definitions that have been developed through discussion, debate, and study, and that will continue to be revised and added to as we continue learning from the experience of this course and others.
Definitions are an important starting point for revolutionary study, that help us build and deepen our understanding of history, theory and political economy. We hope this glossary is a tool to begin this study!
| Term | Definition | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Abahlali baseMjondolo | Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM),or the Shack Dwellers Movement, is a grassroots movement in South Africa that organizes land occupations, builds communes, and campaigns against evictions and for land sovereignty and dignity. The group has faced severe repression in South Africa, citing that over 20 activists have been murdered in the past 10 years. Despite this, AbM recently won a significant court case that ruled forced evictions from their eKhenana Commune as illegal. | Organization |
| Abolitionism | Abolitionism, throughout history, has been the movement against inequality, oppression, exploitation, and class distinction. In the US, Europe, and the Western hemisphere, abolition was first used widely to define the movement to abolish the system of chattel slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and the plantation economy. Since slavery of non-convicted criminals was formally ended with the 13th Amendment, abolition has been used to define the movement to dismantle the police, prisons, the military, and the courts in the US. More broadly, abolition means the overthrow of core institutions of the capitalist state and the end to private property. | Term |
| African Blood Brotherhood | The African Blood Brotherhood was a radical Black liberation organization with ties to the Communist Party, with around 3,000 estimated members. Founded by Cyril Briggs in 1919, members of A.B.B. went on to be early, key Black cadre of the Communist Party, enabling them to recruit thousands of Black members in the 1930s and 1940s, and to lead a militant struggle for Black liberation in those decades. | Organization |
| African National Congress | The African National Congress (ANC) has been South Africa’s ruling political party since its first democratic elections in 1994. Originally formed in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) to fight for the rights of Black South Africans, the ANC was forced underground after the establishment of the apartheid government and began a prolonged armed resistance struggle alongside the South African Communist Party. (Source) | Organization |
| African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC) | The African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC),was first formed as the African Party for Independence (PAI) in 1956 by Guinean revolutionary Amilcar Cabral to unify the two countries under one independence movement against Portuguese colonialization. | Organization |
| Amilcar Cabral | Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973) was born in Portuguese-ruled Guinea and fought his entire life for the liberation of his country. Cabral was one of the founders and Secretary-General of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC). In 1963, the struggle had advanced to outright war with the Portuguese military and, in 1972, Cabral established the Guinean People’s National Assembly to consolidate the political power and the land regions that had been won over by the PAIGC. In 1973, Cabral was assassinated outside his home, one year before Guinea-Bissau won full independence. | People |
| Antonio Maceo | Antonio Maceo (1845-1896),the “Titan of Bronze,” was a military leader in the Cuban struggle for independence. Known for his heroic will and military acumen, Maceo rose to second-in-command in the Cuban army of independence. In a meeting with Spanish General Martínez-Campos, known as the protest at Baragua, he refused to accept any terms ending the 1878 Ten Years War against Spain without the inclusion of the complete abolition of slavery in Cuba and true independence from colonizers. | People |
| Apartheid | A system of racialized political and economic domination. In South Africa, it was a form of colonialism through extreme measures of racial segregation in order not only to limit the social life and political rights of Black people but, most significantly, to ensure to maximaise labour exploitation by cheap labour through the subordination of a racialised working-class majority. Though it was constructed over decades in th elate 19th century and early 20th century, it reached its height following the 1948 electoral victory of the right-wing white Afrikaner National Party, whose leaders, such as John Vorster, had direct connections to German fascism. | Term |
| Base | The base refers to the economy, or the realm of production, distribution, and how people relate to one another and property in production. The base is the foundation on which the superstructure is built but the superstructure also reacts to and upon the base, influencing its development. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Battle of Ideas | The term 'battle of ideas' was first coined by Fidel Castro in a speech he gave in 1999 and he used this term to describe the ideological struggle to defend socialism at a time when the socialist bloc was weakend with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The battle of ideas is a multidimensional struggle that continues to this day and is an essential part of any process of revolution. (Source) | Term |
| bell hooks | Gloria Jean Watkins (1952-2021),who adopted the pseudonym of bell hooks, is a writer of many and important influential texts, such as Killing Rage (1995),Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981),All About Love (2000),and others. bell hooks wrote about an expansive and intersectional feminism from a Black, working-class perspective in resistance to a mainstream focus on only the perspectives of white affluent women. (Source) | People |
| Bernice Johnson Reagon | Bernice Johnson Reagon (1942- ) was a singer, songwriter, civil rights activist, and militant organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Having already been involved in Albany’s NAACP Youth Council, Johnson was already embedded in the civil rights movement but quickly recognized her talent for singing and performing could be tools for lifelong struggle. In 1962 she joined SNCC’s newly formed Freedom Singers and she would eventually go on to found other radical music formations, including Harambee Singers and Sweet Honey in the Rock, known for the popularization of music that uplifted working class struggles and Black liberation. (Source) | People |
| Black Panther Party | Started out of a program of principled self-defense in Black communities in Oakland, California, chapters of the Black Panther Party formed all across the country and soon became one of the largest mass organizations of its time. The Panthers organized a number of different kinds of programs across regions, including breakfast programs for children in local communities, political education courses and schools, actions and rallies around local campaigns, and others. The organization came under severe persecution by the United States government through the FBI-created COINTELPRO surveillance and infiltration program, which led to the state-sponsored murder of Fred Hampton and arrest of many other Panther members. (Source) | Organization |
| Bourgeoisie | The bourgeoisie is the modern capitalist class, the ruling class of capitalist society. This class is the owners of the means of production and employ members of the proletariat as wage laborers. The term originated to describe a section of the landowning class under feudalism who played an intermediary role between the lords and the serfs. As production and society evolved, primarily due to the Industrial Revolution in Europe, this emerging capitalist class took political power over the falling feudal class. | Term |
| C.L.R. James | Cyril Lionel Robert James (1901-1989),historian, artist, and author, was an influential Marxist of the 20th century born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. James reported and wrote on current struggles and the history of Black liberation and independence movements in the Caribbean, arguing that enslaved people waged some of the earliest pre-industrial class struggles. One of his earliest books, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, is renowned as a landmark study of the slave revolts that led to the independence of Haiti. | People |
| Capital | Capital consists of the means of subsistence, instruments of labor, and raw materials, not only as material products; it consists also of exchange values. However, these things alone do not make capital. Capital is historically the bourgeois ownership of the means of production, the appropriation of the surplus product, and conversion of money into money-capital. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Capitalist crisis | Capitalist crisis is the result of capitalist private property, which periodically plunges society into mass unemployment, poverty, and destitution. More specifically, crises evolve from the inherent nature of capitalism to overproduce – the act of producing blindly and irrationally without regard for the consuming capacity of the working class. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Carlota | Carlota (c. 1844),an enslaved African woman of Yoruba heritage, planned and led an uprising in 1843 of enslaved Africans at the Triumvirato sugar mill in Matanzas Province of Cuba. Her name was given to Cuba’s “Black Carlota'' operation in South Africa in 1980, which culminated into a battle that defeated the South African pro-apartheid forces. | People |
| Cedric Robinson | Cedric Robinson (1940-2017) was a political theorist and anthropologist. Robinson is commonly referred to as "the father of the Black Radical Tradition," defining it in his most prominent work, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983) as the long history of resistance and rebllion by black and enslaved people from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century. In this text, he also pushes the limits of and challenges Marx's traditional definitions of class and class-based society, arguing that race distinction existed before the rise of capitalism and informed its the very foundation. | People |
| Cheikh Anta Diop | Cheikh Anta Diop was a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and African culture. He was a pioneer in the decolonisation of history and the revaluation of the African historical narrative. | People |
| Chris Hani | Hani was a leader of the South African Communist Party and Umkontho We Sizwe (MK, military wing of the ANC). He was an important figure of National Liberation Marxism. He was assasinated in April 1993. Hani's death came at a critical time for South Africa. The SACP was on the brink of gaining significant status as an independent political party. It now found itself bereft of funds (due to collapse in Europe) and without a strong leader. | People |
| Civil Rights Congress | The Civil Rights Congress (CRC) arose from three other organizations: the International Labor Defense (ILD),the National Negro Congress, and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. Led by William L. Patterson, CRC focused on mass movements and education through the legal defense and freedom campaigns. Some of its more noteworthy cases include the cases of Willie McGee, the Martinsville Seven, the Trenton Six, Rosa Lee Graham, and the role it played in publicizing the lynching of Emmett Till. CRC also lead the We Charge Genocide campaign, which connected the U.N. definition of "genocide" to build a case of genocide against Black people within the United States and brought these charges to an international audience. | Organization |
| Civil Rights Movement | The civil rights movement of the 1960s was characterized by the great galvanization and mobilization of Black people in the United States to fight against Jim Crow and achieve formal democratic rights. Although the civil rights movement was a nationwide movement, the leadership and energy of the struggle was concentrated in the U.S. South. Although the legacy of the movement has been largely blunted of its radical edge in the mainstream historical record, the civil rights movement contained many revolutionary currents for its time and sparked the creation of a number of organizations that would go on to embrace Black national liberation and Marxist ideas. | Term |
| Class struggle | Class struggle is the rising and subsiding manifestations of antagonisms between two classes in a class-based society. Under capitalism, the ruling (capitalist) class has the ultimate goal of increasing profits, which it does, amongst other methods, through keeping the costs of labor low. Workers, who must earn a wage to survive, are forced to purchase every single thing they need for their existence. Therefore, their interests are in direct opposition and this conflict is the foundation of class struggle. (Source) | Term |
| Claudia Jones | Claudia Jones (1915-1964) was a Trinidadian activist and writer who became involved with the Communist Party USA through the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys and was a leader in some of their anti-racist organizing campaigns. An ardent internationalist, she traveled to both the Soviet Union and China after its revolution in 1949. She was heavily persecuted by the United States government and, in 1955, she was deported to England. While there, she was heavily involved in organizing Afro-Caribbean communities and played a leading role in establishing the Notting Hill Carnival. (Source) | People |
| Combahee River Collective | Based out of Boston, the Combahee River Collective brought together a group of Black socialist, feminist leaders whose legacy of critically addressing patriarchy within the fight for Black liberation is still celebrated today. In their groundbreaking 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement, the collective put forward an analysis that identified the three pillars of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy as interwoven forces of oppression. In this statement, they also developed the concept of ‘intersectionality’ – the idea that multiple forces of oppression can interlock and combine to create unique experiences of suffering. (Source) | Organization |
| Communist Party of Kenya | The Communist Party of Kenya (CPK) was established in 1992 as the Social Democratic Party and in 2019 publicly adopted a Marxist-Leninist ideology and the new name of the organization. The CPK identifies itself as part of the continuation of the social and national liberation struggle that brought about independence from British colonialism in 1963. (Source) | Organization |
| Communist Party of South Africa | The South African Communist Party (SACP) was first established in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) but changed its name after being forced underground in 1953 by the apartheid government. The SACP was a leading organization, along with the African National Congress, in the armed struggle to free South Africa from apartheid. Both the SACP and the ANC remained banned until 1990. (Source) | Organization |
| Communist Party USA | The Communist Party USA was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution in 1917. The CPUSA reached its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, yet suffered severe decline and isolation due to the anti-communist persecution of the McCarthy Period. At its height, the CPUSA had influence in many different struggles across the nation and distinguished itself from other radical groups and parties by putting antiracism at the forefront of its national organizing. A number of noteworthy organizers and celebrities were once members or associated with the Communist Party, including Louise Thompson, Claudia Jones, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Angela Davis, and others. | Organization |
| Contradiction | Contradiction refers to the natural phenomenon of struggle and unity between opposites. In all levels of existence, from the molecular to the social, the basis of development is the movement, struggle, and temporary resolution between two opposing forces. For example, the capitalist and proletariat classes make up the foundation of capitalist economy and society and their unity drives capitalist production. On the other hand, they have inherently opposite motivating forces and the power struggle between them is driving force of history. | Term |
| Culture | To define what culture is and means to our struggle, we take from revolutionary militant Amilcar Cabral who said, “culture is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s history and a determinant of history, by the positive or negative influence which it exerts on the revolution of relationships between man and his environment, among men or groups of men within a society, as well as among different societies.” | Term |
| Democratic Way Worker's Party | The Democratic Way (DW) was a mass organization in Morocco that was dedicated to anti-imperialism and the working class struggle in its country. In July of 2022, the Democratic Way held their fifth national congress and announced the formation of the Democratic Way Workers’ Party with a socialist and anti-imperialist ideology. (Source) | Organization |
| Dialectics | Dialectics is a philosophical understanding of the world that recognizes that movement, change, continuity, and most of all the unity of opposites are central to understanding something. Contradiction, and the universality of contradiction, are the foundation of dialectics – dialectical thinking, or a dialectical understanding of something, recognizes that everything is made up of opposing, contradictory forces that drive its existence. | Term |
| Dictatorship of the proletariat | Just as capitalist society is a dictatorship of the capitalist ruling class, dictatorship of the proletariat is society organized with workers and the poor as the ruling class. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a political state with laws that prevent one dividual or social group from converting wealth, authority, or ownership of things into ownership and control of the socially necessary means of production. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Eslanda Robeson | Eslanda Goode Robeson (1895-1965) was a journalist, anthropologist, and activist who openly connected her anti-imperialis views to the struggle against racism in the United States. She visited the African continent in the 1930s and China a few months after their revolution. She was married to prominent actor, athlete, and activist Paul Robeson and the two visited and wrote about their experience in the Soviet Union, founded the Council on African Affairs, and stood trial courageously before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. | People |
| Esteban Morales | Esteban Morales Domínguez (1942-2022) was a Cuban author, economist, and social scientist. As a member of the student militant movement, he participated in the overthrow of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship and was a member of the Communist Party of Cuba. Since then, he became a leading intellectual on the question of race and racism in Cuba and how a socialist society can continue to overcome a history of colonization and slavery. | People |
| Eurocentrism | An attitude, conceptual apparatus, or set of empirical beliefs that frame Europe as the primary engine and architect of world history, the bearer of universal values and reason, and the model of progress and development. Eurocentrisim and its formation are intimately tied to a history of colonial and imperial encounters. (Source) | Term |
| Fascism | Marxist theorist R. Palme Dutt defines fascism as "a movement of mixed elements... financed and directed by by finance capital, by big industrialists, landlords and financiers, to defeat working-class revolution and smash working-class organizations." Fascism maintains capitalism in the face of crisis or revolutionary upheaval, typically using overt violence and illegal repression. (Fascism and Social Revolution by R. Palme Dutt) | Term |
| Fidel Castro | Fidel Castro (1926-2016) was a Cuban revolutionary, political theorist, humanist, and leader of the country after the 1959 Cuban Revolution until his death. After a failed attempt to overthrow the then-dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1953, Castro helped to form the 26th of July Movement with his brother, Raúl, while in exile in Mexico. After the different forces of the 26th of July Movement succeeded in overthrowing Batista, Fidel Castro and other revolutionary leaders established a new government, immediately implementing a nationwide agrarian reform, literacy campaign, housing redistribution, and exproporiating privately owned entities. Fidel's leadership, thought, and acts of internationalism have been evoked and celebrated by revolutionary movements across the global south. | People |
| Frances M. Beal | As a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),Frances M. Beal (1940- ) co-founded the Black Women’s Liberation Committee of SNCC, which later evolved into the Third World Women’s Alliance. In 1969, Beal authored the influential text, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” which discusses the interlocking oppressions of capitalism and racism, misogyny, and white supremacy. | People |
| Garveyism | A body of thought, organizational activities, and sector of Black nationalism that refers to the economic, racial and political policies of Universal Negro Improvement Association-ACL founder Marcus Garvey. It was a Black nationalist perspective seeking separate self-development of African-Americans and called for an independent Black economy within the framework of capitalism. | Term |
| General Baker | General Gordon Baker Jr. (1941-2014),whose father was an autoworker, grew up in a union household in Detroit, Michigan. As one of the founders of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW),General Baker championed an anti-capitalist and Marxist approach to Black self-determination and understood the importance of targeting large corporations at their source – the assembly line. His leadership and the movement he led inspired revolutionary union movements (RUMs) in different factories and towns. | People |
| George Jackson | George Lester Jackson (1941-1971) was a prison revolutionary who organized in San Quentin State Prison in California. He had spent 11 years in prison by the time of his killing and 7 of those years in isolation due to his organizing and outspoken critique of the capitalist state. While inside, Jackson developed a structure for his own political education and radicalization, motivated by his search for a clear understanding of the historical and contemporary reality in which he and his fellow inmates fit. His two books Soledad Brothers and Blood in My Eye (published posthumously) catalogue his thinking and the struggles he undertook in San Quentin. (Source) | People |
| Harriet Tubman | Harriet Tubman (c. 1820-1913) was a radical abolitionist and the conductor of the famous Underground Railroad that allowed hundreds of enslaved people to reach freedom in the Civil War era. In the perilous organizing of the Underground Railroad and her time as a spy in Confederate territory, Tubman was militant and disciplined in her dedication to freedom and liberation for all people. In later years, she would continue to struggle for equal rights of women and maintained a persistent revolutionary optimism until her death. (Source) | People |
| Harry Haywood | Harry Haywood (1898-1985) was a member of the Communist Party USA and served on the Central Committee from 1927 to 1938 and on the Politburo from 1931 to 1938. He was the leading proponent and developer of the theory that African Americans make up an oppressed nation in the Black Belt region of the South, where they have the right to self-determination. While living in the Soviet Union, he helped to author the 1928 and 1930 Comintern Resolutions on the African American National Question. Haywood also became a leader of the New Communist Movement of the 1960s and 70s. | People |
| Hugo Chavez | Hugo Chavez (1954-2013) was the former President of Venezuela and leader of the Bolivarian Revolution. In 1992, Chavez was arrested, along with a small group of other military officers, for attempting a coup against then-president Carlos Andres Perez. While he was in jail, Chavez garnered immense popular support for his critique against the neoliberal policies forced upon Venezuelans. During his time as president, he directed and consolidated the Venezuelan socialist project through nationalizing key industries, redistributing oil revenues for social programs for the poor, and passing important reforms in the fields of health, housing and education. | People |
| Hybrid warfare | Hybrid warfare is a military doctrine that emerged after a series of U.S. military defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan that guides U.S. policy on how to win and wage war in conditions in which one population is unwilling to take casualties and support aggressive war and the other has figured out ways to resist through popular armed struggle. Some forms of hybrid war inlclude what is colloquially known as "lawfare" and takes the form of constitutional coups; the use of economic coercion and sanctions; manipulation of media and culture, and the use of private or non-governmental organizations for intelligence or influence. | Term |
| Idealism | Idealism is the philosophical doctrine that holds that consciousness, thought, and spirit are primary and fundamental in reality, while matter, nature, and the physical are secondary, derived from and dependent upon consciousness for existence. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Imperialism | Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism where the world order is based on the exploitation of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations and corporate multinational elites, whose ability to subordinate the world's peoples and exploit their labour comes from their monopoly control over financial systems, science and technology, access to resources, communications and weaponry. Imperialism is a product of capitalism's inherent drive for expansion and accumulation. | Term |
| International Monetary Fund | The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international financial institution headquartered in Washington D.C. The IMF was formed out of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which ultimately solidified the United States as the leader of the new global economy coming out of World War II. Through offering and negotiating loan agreements with member countries, the IMF is one of the premier instruments of maintaining US imperialism and the underdevelopment and subordination of countries in the Global South to debt and neoliberal policies. | Organization |
| Internationalism | The essence of internationalism is summed up in this quote by Che Guevara in his 1967 "Message to the Tricontinental," discussing the Vietnamese national liberation struggle against French and US forces: "It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory." Internationalism arises from an understanding that the system of capitalism is global, with the imperialist US at its head, and therefore, the international working class is united under one strategy against one enemy. (Source) | Term |
| Jack O’Dell | Once the fundraiser for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and a close aide to Martin Luther King Jr., Jack O’Dell (1923-2019) was both a leader in the early Civil Rights Movement as well as a former member of the Communist Party USA. After President John F. Kennedy pressured King to ask O’Dell to leave the SCLC, he responded warning the Civil Rights Movement leadership about the risks of capitulating to anti-communist hysteria. He later went on to be an associate editor of the journal Freedomways and served on the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam. (Source) | People |
| James Baldwin | James Baldwin (1924-1987) was one of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance and a influential fiction writer, poet, playwright, and essayist. He wrote about the love, struggle, spirituality, and all dimensions of the Black experience in famous novels like Giovanni’s Room (1956),Another Country (1962),If Beale Street Could Talk (1974),and others. Although known primarily for his fiction writing, his writing, interviews, and actions influenced and were influenced by socialist thought, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism. | People |
| Josina Mutemba | Josina Mutemba Machel (1975-1971) was a revolutionary Mozambican fighter for Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO). Along with being a fierce fighter against colonialism (in her context, the Portuguese colonial system),she pushed for full women's participation in the revolution and established a number of spaces within the organization and in Tanzinia, where she was largely based, where women's leadership could be developed. | People |
| Julius Nyerere | Julius Nyerere (1922-1999) was a philosopher and political leader born in Tanganyika under British mandate. Nyerere played a leading role in winning Tanganyika’s independence in 1961, after it was transferred to a United Nations trusteeship, and then its subsequent transition to the United Republic of Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar) in 1964. He served as president of both Tanganyika and Tanzania until 1985. Nyerere systematized the theory of ujamaa, which means “fraternity” but is described as being a theory of African socialism or a collective way of living. | People |
| Karl Marx | Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, who, starting as a student of Hegelian thought, developed the foremost and advanced criticism of capitalism of its time. Marx wrote, oftentimes in collaborative partnership with a longtime friend, Frederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848),Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867),Critique of the Gotha Program (1891),and other critical texts that develop this school of thought. Since then, many other intellectuals and revolutionaries have continued to advance the tenets of Marxism in different contemporary contexts. | People |
| Kwame Nkrumah | Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) was one of the most influential leaders on the African continent as a political leader, socialist theorist, and Pan-Africanist. Nkrumah became Prime Minister in Ghana’s first general elections in 1952 and struggled towards full independence for the country, which was achieved in 1957. He was then elected the first African-born President of Ghana. Nkrumah systematized the concept of neocolonialism, which brought strong reaction from the West, and his own philosophy known as “consciencism,” a historical and uniquely African philosophy for society. | People |
| Labor power | Labor power is labor ability – the ability to work, the sum total of the mental, physical, and spiritual forces of the human, from which material wealth is produced. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Langston Hughes | Langston Hughes (1901-1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri, who was active in the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote profoundly on the experience of being Black in America and his literary body of work has been lauded as historically influential. However, few people know about his association and support for the communist struggle in the United States and the international solidarity work he undertook. In 1931 he traveled to the South to condemn the case against the Scottsboro Boys, he traveled to the Soviet Union and Haiti on a number of solidarity trips, and reported on the Spanish Civil War. | People |
| League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) | The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) was established in 1969 as a Marxist-Leninist organization that saw frontline auto workers in Detroit, Michigan, as the lynchpin to disrupting production for the Big Three major automotive corporations, General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford. The LRBW organized for a militant Black working-class vision of liberation and incorporated concrete displays of international solidarity with revolutionary movements around the world. (Source) | Organization |
| Liberalism | Liberalism is the philosophical doctrine that holds that the freedom for humans to pursue their individual needs will unintentionally serve the interests of society as a whole. It also holds that individual autonomy should be prioritized over sacrifices made for or priorities of the communal good. | Term |
| Louise Thompson Patterson | Louise Alone Thompson Patterson (1901-1999) was a prominent Marxist activist. She taught at a number of universities before moving to New York, where she became closely connected to literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. In 1932, she founded the Harlem chapter of the Friends of the Soviet Union and was tasked by the CPUSA to film a movie in the USSR about the Black experience in the U.S. Maintaining a long life of activism, she also prominently led the Free Angela Davis Committee in New York in the 1960s. (Source) | People |
| Martin Luther King, Jr. | Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) was an American Baptist minister and prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement. While his mainstream legacy has been reduced to the struggle for progressive legal reforms or his tactic of nonviolence, King’s radical critique of the U.S. economic system, U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, and his vision of revolutionary movements are integral to an understanding of his life and his work. While King was a dedicated fighter against racism, he grounded his antiracism and organizing in the uplift of the poor and working class. (Source) | People |
| Marxism | Marxism refers to the socio-political and economic theoretical tradition initially developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 19th century. Using a method known as dialectical and historical materialism, Marxism aims to understand and intervene in reality by investigating the concrete conditions of the material world and its history, including the social, political, and economic relations it generates, in order to transform existing social and economic structures. | Term |
| Marxism-Leninism | The discussion of what constitutes Marxism-Leninism is an ongoing one. It is both a political ideology and a practice that draws upon the work of Lenin as an extension and development of the ideas of Karl Marx. Typically, Marxist-Leninist groups and individuals are characterized as upholding the principles of the vanguard party, democratic centralism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. | Term |
| Means of production | Means of production are one of the indispensible components of productive forces an embrace the nonhuman resources required for production, including land, raw materials, tools, machinery, energy source, and technology in production. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Mestizo | Mestizo is a term used in Latin America and the Caribbean to describe someone of a mixed racial background. While it is a term used colloquially in the region today, mestizo is a colonial term that comes from the violent and exploitative context of European colonizers mixing with indigenous and enslaved Africans. Since different colonial regimes created different racial categories across the Americas, mestizo has different political connotations in different periods of time and in different contexts. | Term |
| Mode of production | Mode of production is the predominant way society reproduces the things needed for its existence, growth, and development. The mode of production of any historical period is determined by that period's productive forces and social relations of labor. For example, the capitalist mode of production is characterized by private ownership of the means of production and socialized production by the vast majority of the population. | Term |
| Nat Turner | Nathaniel “Nat” Turner (c. 1800-1831) was born into slavery in Southampton County, Virginia, and led one of the largest slave uprisings in American history. Taught to read by one of the sons of a former slave owner, Nat Turner studied Christianity and saw clearly the unnatural and cruel nature of slavery as an institution. Following the uprising, he was pursued and executed by state militia in a matter of weeks but Nat Turner’s uprising displayed the true extent to which enslaved peoples were willing to resist the horrendous nature of their conditions. | People |
| National Liberation | A world-wide movement which began between the first two World Wars, growing to massive proportions after 1945, in favour of national self-determination for the colonies of the imperialist powers. National Liberation movements may differ from the workers' movement in that it leaves open the question as to which class will lead the national struggle - the working class or the national bourgeoisie. In fighting the common enemy - imperialism - national liberation has frequently found common cause with the workers movement and strong links with socialism. National liberation has been a theme within Marxism, and especially after the influence of anti-imperialism and self-determination of all peoples became prevalent in communist movements, especially in advocating freedom from colonial rule in the Third World. National liberation has been promoted by Marxists out of an international-socialist perspective rather than a bourgeois nationalist perspective. Nevertheless, the national liberation movement may also include repression of the workers' movement, where the national bourgeoisie is in the ascendancy, and may reinstate forms of oppression such as religious discrimination, oppression of women, minorities, etc. | Term |
| National Network of Farmers’ Groups in Tanzania (MVIWATA) | MVIWATA is a network of smallholder farmers and groups in Tanzania to collectively develop their capacity, advocate for, and defend their interests. MVIWATA grounds their work in the belief that land development should center the welfare of smallholder farmers. (Source) | Organization |
| National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) | The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) was formed in 1987 by the unification of four labor unions: the Metal and Allied Workers Union (MAWU),the Motor Industry Combined Workers Union (MICWU),the National Automobile and Allied Workers Union (NAAWU),and the United Metal, Mining and Allied Workers of South Africa (UMMAWOSA). It is the largest trade union in South Africa, comprising over 400,000 members. Although originally aligned with the African National Congress and the South Africa Communist Party in what was called the Tripartite Alliance, NUMSA broke from the Alliance in 2013. (Source) | Organization |
| Nationalism | Nationalism is an ideology that defines collective identity based on ethnicity, religion, race, or geographical boundaries. Modern nationalism grew out of the bourgeoisie's historical rise to political power and the desires to establish capitalist states. Nationalism is distinct from national liberation in that it is still compatible with exploitation of the poor and oppressed by colonial or capitalist powers, whereas national liberation arises exactly from the resistance against such forces. | Term |
| Negritudé | Négritude (translates closely to "Blackness") is an anti-colonial literary movement which sought to raise Black consciousness across the African diaspora. Négritude was born as a response to the French colonial structure in particular, but had a profound effect on national liberation struggles around the world. The founders of the movement include Paulette and Jeanne Nerdal of Martinique, Aimé Césaire of Martinique, President Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, Léon Damas of French Guiana, and Abdoulaye Sadji of Senegal. Négritude's opposition to the Eurocentric and white supremacist frameworks which dominated colonial academia provided a framework for further movements across Africa and the African diaspora. | Term |
| Nelson Mandela | Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader and philanthropist who spent his life fighting apartheid in South Africa. The South African government imprisoned him for 27 years, but Mandela persevered. During his imprisonment, Mandela became a hero to people around the world and a symbol of the injustice of apartheid. After his release from prison in 1990, he became the President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. | People |
| Neocolonialism | According to Kwame Nkrumah, who published the first extended analysis on the concept of neocolonialism, it is a form of domination at a certain stage in the development of imperialism and when the imposition of a colonial government from one country onto another is no longer possible. He writes, "The essence of neo-colonialism is that the state which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside." (Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah) | Term |
| Neoliberalism | The dominant ideology of modern capitalism over the last three decades, involving state non-intervention in the economy, widespread privatization, and the set of state policies that go with it. Emerging out of the debt crisis of the 1980’s, it has, on a global scale, “pushed social and economic life from public to private hands, weakening national sovereignty in the defense against imperialism.” (Source) | Term |
| Non Aligned Movement | The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) emerged during the massive wave of decolonization and national liberation struggles that succeeded across Asia, Africa, and Latin America after World War II. The 1955 Bandung Asian-African Conference is considered the antecedent to the Non-Aligned Movement where developing countries met to consolidate a uniquely Global South perspective to assessing world issues and pursuing joint policies in international relations. | Organization |
| Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL) | The Organization of Solidarity with Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAAL) was established in Havana, Cuba, after the Tricontinental Conference of 1966. OSPAAAL contributed to the international solidarity movement of the time with its magazine, also called Tricontinental, which intervened in the Battle of Ideas, the art and culture it produced, and with its initiatives to transform the global political economy. (Source) | Organization |
| Pan Africanism | Pan Africanism can be considered both an ideology and a movement that grew out of the common struggles of those of African descent both in Africa and in the African diaspora against enslavement, colonial rule and the accompanying racism and various forms of Eurocentrism. It describes the ways of thinking, of relating, and of building organizations and ties of solidarity, that are united in the common purpose of liberation for all African peoples and their descendents, and has taken various forms throughout periods of history, influenced by communism, Black liberation struggles, and independence movements throughout the African continent and diaspora. (Source) | Term |
| Patriarchy | Patriarchy is a hierarchical social system generated from the emergence of class society that is meant to justify the oppression of women and undervalue their labor. By asserting a hegemonic definition of "gender" that is best suited for furthering inequality and deepening exploitation, patriarchy is also the system that creates LGBTQ+ oppression and gender violence. | Term |
| Patrice Lumumba | Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961) was born under Belgian rule of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. When the DRC won independence in 1960, Lumumba formed the first government and served as the first prime minister. Before that, he was heavily involved in a number trade unions and national liberation organizations and was invited by Kwame Nkrumah to the first All-African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana. Although Belgian authorities claim they had nothing to do with his imprisonment, torture, and assassination, the Belgian government returned Lumumba’s gold tooth to his family and the DRC in 2022. (Source) | People |
| Paul Robeson | Paul Robeson (1898-1976) was an American bass baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, athlete, author and political activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances supporting working class, international movements. Robeson was also one of the principle contributors to the 1951 We Charge Genocide petition and had his passport seized before he could deliver it to the U.N. assembly in Paris. In the 1940s, Robeson was heavily targeted by the McCarthyist anti-communist campaign and blacklisted from performing, removed from invitations, and forced to testify in front of the House of Un-American Activities (HUAC). (Source) | People |
| Paulo Freire | One of the most cited and influential educators and philosophers, Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and wrote a number of noteworthy texts, such as Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and Pedagogy of Freedom (1996). In 1946, he was made director of the Pernambuco Department of Education and Culture and worked to improve literacy amongst Brazil’s poor and working class. His systemization of this experience, as well as experiences with different working class pedagogies and liberation theology movements across Latin America, formed his ideas of education that ran counter to the education models put forth by capitalism. | People |
| People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) | The People's United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) was founded in 1983 in Swaziland, the only remaining monarchy on the African continent. It is the largest opposition party in the country and advocates for total liberation, which they define to mean constitutional multi-party democracy, a transparent and accountable government, an environment conducive to the economic growth and empowerment and the development of a culturally vibrant and tolerant society, based on maximum participation and the respect of the will of the people. (Source) | Organization |
| Primitive accumulation | Primitive accumulation of capital is a past historical phase in the formation of the capitalist system. Marx defines it as the "historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production." Colonial dispossession of land and extraction of resources, enslaved labor, and the subjugation of women were all essential elements of primitive accumulation. | Term |
| Private property | Private property is the private (distinct from public or personal) ownership of socially necessary means of production, the products of labor and all the things that dominate productive life of the individual and classes. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Productive forces | The productive forces are the division of labor, energy sources, technologies, and the skills and knowledge to use the means of production in society during a distinct period of time. More generally, it is the comination of human labor power and the means of production of a given society | Term |
| Productive labor | Productive labor is the act of directly transforming one material thing into a product that can be used. | Term |
| Proletariat | The proletariat is the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor-power in order to live. Essentially, the proletariat makes up the vast majority of people in the world who must work to survive. (Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) | Term |
| Race and racism | Race is a socially constructed belief that states that humanity is comprised of distinct and separate groups based on physical and biological differences. The ideology of racism justifies exploitation and class-based inquality in society. It states that phyiscal, cultural, and ethical differences between people are the reason for the division of humanity into classes, superior and inferior, ruling and ruled, oppressing and oppressed peoples. | Term |
| Reproductive labor | Reproductive labor is the work of daily and generational survival. It is the work that keeps us healthy, fed, dressed, clean, etc. Under capitalism, this work is unwaged and devalued and categorized through patriarchy as "women's work," which erods the value of women as waged workers. | Term |
| Samora Machel | Samora Machel (1933-1986) was a fighter and political leader with the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO). In 1969 he became the Commander-in-Chief of FRELIMO army and then elected to a three-man presidency council of the organization after the assassination of its founder, Eduardo Mondlane. When Mozambique won its freedom in 1975, Machel served as its first president until he died in a plane crash in 1989. At the time and persisting today, there was widespread suspicion that the South African apartheid regime had some involvement with the crash. (Source) | People |
| Sanctions | Sanctions, as definied by Brookings Institute, are the introduction of penalties aimed at a state or other entity engaging in specific economic activity for the purpose of altering its behavior. The penalities for violating sanctions can result in massive fines and/or criminal proceedings. Sanctions were commonly seen as a complement to military strategy up to recent times, with their more extreme form being that of siege warfare. Thus, their consequences on civilian populations were both understood and intended. In the aftermath of World War I, imperialist powers began conceptualizing sanctions as a possible alternative to military action. The effectiveness of sanctions as a tool of US imperialist warfare relies heavily on dollar hegemony in the global economy. | Term |
| Settler colonialism | A system of colonialism in which settlers violently established colonial societies while expelling or killing indigenous communities. In today’s United States, this process also involved forced migration of enslaved Africans to serve as the primary labor force. Other modern states considered to have been established through settler colonialism include Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Israel. (The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism by Gerald Horne) | Term |
| Social relations of production | The social relations of production are the connections between people and between people and property in the process of production. Under capitalism the foundational social relations are that a small minority of capitalists own the means of production and workers sell their labor power as a commodity to be bought and sold. | Term |
| Socialism | Socialism is the organization of society where economic activity is based on fulfilling people’s needs, not producing profit. Socialism is a process that can only be made out of a socialist revolution and by the working class seizing political and economic power from the capitalist class. | Term |
| Socialist Movement of Ghana | During the summer of 2021, the Congress of the Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) was held and its transformation into the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG) was unanimously approved. The SFG was first born in 1993 as a Marxist study group and has over three thousand members across the country. The transition to the SMG signifies the level of development the SFG had reached in Ghana and an advance in working class organization. (Source) | Organization |
| Socialist Party of Zambia | The Socialist Party of Zambia was founded by journalist Fred M’membe and officially established in 2017. The Socialist Party emerged as a third, socialist alternative to the ruling Patriotic Front and the opposition United Party for National Development. (Source) | Organization |
| State | The state is an organization of violence in the hands of a ruling class. It is the military, police, judiciary, intelligence, prisons, and other coercive machinery bound up with governance. The state is the primary institution by which class rule is maintained. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Structural Adjustment Programs | Since the 1980s, the US has been the principal force in imposing Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) on most countries of the Global South. Formulated as loan conditions by Western governments and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs),such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF),SAPs mandate macroeconomic policy changes that obligate recipient nations to liberalize their trade and investment policies and open their markets to competition from US companies. SAPs are based on a short-term, profit-maximization model that perpetuates poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation. (Source) | Term |
| Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) | Founded through the student-led sit-in movement in North Carolina and Tennessee that sought to desegregate lunch counters, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led the student section of the civil rights struggle and produced a number of historically significant Black revolutionaries. SNCC also played a leading role in organizing the registration and mobilization of Black people in the South. Eventually, SNCC pivoted from the mainstream civil rights movement and started to articulate views based on anti-imperialism, Marxism and revolutionary Black nationalism. (Source) | Organization |
| Superstructure | The superstructure is the totality of institutions, the ideological relations and views built upon an economic base and that upholds the social order, which includes law and the state, and morality religion, philosophy, art, and the political and legal forms of consciousness and all institutions that correspond to the base. The base is the foundation on which the superstructure is built but the superstructure also reacts to and upon the base, influencing its development. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Surplus value | Under capitalism, wage laborers create a surplus of value that is more than the value paid to them in wages. The difference betweem the value paid to the workers as wages and the greater value the workers create is the source of surplus value, which is appropriated by the capitalists as profit. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA) | The Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA) came out of the Black Women’s Liberation Committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Some of the leaders who developed this organization include Frances M. Beal, Mae Jackson, and Gwendolyn Patton. The TWWA centered their work around highlighting the intersectional nature of capitalist, racist, and sexist oppression faced by women of color, particularly Black women, and internationalist solidarity with movements abroad. They published essential texts such as the pamphlet “Black Women’s Manifesto” and the newspaper Triple Jeopardy. (Source) | Organization |
| Tricontinental | From January 3rd to 18th, 1966, over 500 leaders of revolutionary movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America attended the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba. For the first time, countries of the Global South were united to focus on issues of anti–colonialism and anti–imperialism. The conference attendees connected over their shared struggles for liberation in the context of the global wave of decolonization movements. It was radical in its approach of rejecting capitalism and the interference of the United States in communist nations, as well as in its message of international revolution with socialist motivations. Many African and Asian countries had recently gained independence or were still fighting against their colonizers, while many Latin American countries experienced changing governments and new political movements. | Organization |
| United Democratic Front | The United Democratic Front (UDF) was a coalition of over 400 anti-apartheid trade unions, student unions, and organizations that was active from 1983 to 1991 in South Africa. The UDF operated by organizing boycotts, school protests, and worker stay-aways, as well as international actions of solidarity. In 1987 the South African apartheid government banned the organization and had, by then, imprisoned many of its leading activists. The coalition disbanded when the apartheid government was defeated. (Source) | Organization |
| Vladimir Lenin | Vladimir I. Lenin (1870-1924) was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He played a leading role in the Boshevik Revolution in 1917 and served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Lenin made significant advancements in the theory of Marxism, particularly on the national right to self-determination, arguing that the center of global class struggle lay in the colonized countries, and the systemization of the definition of imperialism. | People |
| W.E.B. Du Bois | W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963),who came to be known as the father of modern sociology, was an author and activist. He is known for many essential texts, such as Souls of Black Folk (1903),where he elaborates on his concept of the “color line” and Black Reconstruction in America (1935),which is considered the foremost historical survey on the post-Civil War American South. After helping to found the NAACP in his early life, he spent much of his later life traveling the globe, meeting revolutionaries such as Kwame Nkrumah and Mao Zedong, and participating in international anti-colonial activities such as the Pan-African Congresses. In 1961, a few years before his death, he applied to join the Communist Party USA. | People |
| Walter Rodney | Walter Rodney (1942-1980) was a Guyanese writer, professor, and activist who theorized and wrote about the Black diaspora and Guyanese national liberation. He authored a number of influential works on neo-colonialism and imperialism, such as The Groundings with My Brothers (1969) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). After working at a number of academic institutions, Rodney made his way to Guyana where he established the political organization, Working People’s Alliance (WPA). In 1980, Rodney was assassinated by state-sponsored counterrevolutionary forces. (Source) | People |
| White supremacy | White supremacy is a system of cooperation and unity between classes based on "whiteness," a concept which has be redefined throughout history. It is a system that was engineered by the capitalist class by which white people dominated nonwhite people and relegated nonwhite people to the bottom of the economic, social, and political system. White supremacy is material and ideological. (Marxist Glossary - Expanded Edition: 3.0 by Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell) | Term |
| William Patterson | William Lorenzo Patterson (1891-1980) was a Marxist lawyer, activist, and writer. He is best known for his leadership in the Communist Party USA, where he served as a national leader, and in the International Labor Defense (ILD) and its succeeding organization, the Congress of Civil Rights. He also led the legal campaign to free the Scottsboro Nine and two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. In 1951, William Patterson traveled to Paris to deliver the historic "We Charge Genocide” petition to a meeting of U.N. members. (Source) | People |
| World Bank | The World Bank is the collective name for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Development Association (IDA),two of five international organizations owned by the World Bank Group. It was established along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. The World Bank essentially acts like a giant bank whose customers are countries. It loans countries money for big infrastructure projects like hydroelectric dams, coal-fired power plants, transportation systems, and industrial agriculture technology. World Bank and IMF loans are unique in that they make policy prescriptions to poor governments, which it ensures are adopted by making them “conditions” for lending. See "Structural Adjustment Programs" for more. (Source) | Organization |