Marxist Glossary grew out of the organizing for the 2010 Detroit Social Forum, followed by Occupy in 2011, after which there was an increased demand for Marxist education. In my weekly unit meeting we discussed putting together some educational material and wrote a list of 10 words on the back of an envelope. That list eventually grew into Glossary. Thus, this book grew out of a movement which went on to include young Occupiers and older veterans of struggles, such as Marian Kramer Baker, John Williams, Maureen Taylor, General G. Baker Jr., William Mitchell, Johnny Wright, Daymon Hartley and a core of older revolutionaries, educated in Marxism (the science of society). These comrades each had at least 40 years of experience in the spontaneous social movement of the US proletariat.
When this project began I had one foot in industrialism and one foot in robotics. As I was a child of industrial Detroit, and second generation autoworker, and Robin has lived in Silicon Valley, we brought two very different perspectives and experiences to bear on Marxism and the changing world, which seemed to be increasing its velocity change. Robin and I discovered that we had something in common with Marx and Engels that offered us an advantage in deciphering much of the dialectical logic of their writings.
Marx and Engels literally watched the feudal system ending and what Marx called the factory system beginning. Robin and I had the dizzying experience of living a similar transition from one mode of production to the beginning of another. Today, seven years later, Glossary has both feet firmly planted in robotics, while summarizing the historic use of Marxist terms. Marxist Glossary 3.0 continues the work of preserving the science of society, as it passed through each stage of the industrial revolution and began transition to robotics.
The capitalist economy as described by Marx is going out of existence. The imperialism of which Lenin wrote has been superseded by globalism, which develops on the basis of the destruction of the old European based colonial system.
It is very strange to write a book about word whose content has shifted and changed, or that no longer apply to our current reality. During this period of change the philosophy of Marx and Engels, dialectical materialism, remains a guide to illuminate the path forward. Today, we cannot rely upon old doctrines of combat appropriate to the industrial epoch.
Glossary with its massive bibliography can serve as a bridge from the era of breakdown of feudal society to the rise, peaking and passing over from the industrial revolution, with its electro-mechanical production, to robotics.
Then there is the presidential victory of Donald J. Trump. President Trump is an outright fascist. Trumps presidential campaign began with fascist attacks against Mexican immigrants, Mexicans and the country of Mexico. Trump consciously sought to harness the US’s long history of white supremacy and anti-immigrant hate to unite the most violent and reactionary people of the US into his political base of support.
Trump ignores the constitutional authority of the three branches of government and replaces the rule of law and constitutionally protected political liberties with one-person rule, reminiscent of the Old Russian czar and the modern Russian oligarchy. Trump has moved with breakneck speed to further dismantle the bourgeois democratic aspects of the state. The rule of law is being changed from “innocent until proven guilty,” to “guilty until proven innocent,” while criminalizing immigrants and subjecting the general population to extra-legal violence and surveillance.
The Trump administration is furthering the criminalization of the poor and homeless, which began under Bush W. administration and was carried further under the Obama regime. This fascist criminalization of US society is directed at the new class of proletarians being rendered unemployed and unemployable by robotics.
This growing mass of poverty stricken proletarians cast outside of the system of bourgeois productive relation has no choice but to confront the state and demand to have its survival needs met. Uniting this new class, the bottom of society, to fight for its existence as a class force, is the noble task of revolutionaries and all people of good will. The fight of the new proletariat for a government and state dedicated to the proposition that the needs of the bottom, the lowest class in society, is the compass by which we judge our efforts to advance humanity at this juncture of human history.
Marxist Glossary 3.0 was written for the new proletariat, as it struggles to find its voice and consolidates as a fighting force. Glossary 3.0 aspires to capture the essence of the Marxism, the science of society, since the time of Marx and Engels and attempts to foresee the path to the new society.
Proletarians of the World, Unite!
Darryl “Waistline” Mitchell
June 2017
