What is Marxist Glossary for the 21st Century
As huge numbers of people are suddenly wanting to talk about Marxism and socialism, communism, fascism, etc., the discussion has been impeded by not having a common agreement on the meaning of these words. How can we talk when even those of us who consider ourselves Marxists don’t speak the same political language? When we say “fascism” or “communism,” we may well mean very different things.
The last major Marxist Glossary issued in English was written by the Australian L. Harry Gould in 1946—in the age of industrialism. Once computers and robotics began changing the world, the old definitions, which had been superb in their day, no longer sufficed. Darryl “Waistline” Mitchell and his editor, Robin Yeamans, took up the task of applying Marxism to the new world’s political economy.
In 1867, Marx published vol. 1 of “Capital.” He and his co-writer, Friedrich Engels, had literally watched the birth of capitalism as it shoved feudalism out of the way. They created a way of analyzing events which still applies today in the sunset of capitalism. Not only their political-economic ideas but their philosophy of dialectical materialism is broken down into clear terms in Glossary.
As the world changes before our eyes, as it did before Marx’s eyes, this world outlook remains the most powerful weapon to oppose capitalism and all its horrors. Marxism needs to be applied to our new world.
MARXIST GLOSSARY 3.O
Marxist
Glossary
Expanded Edition
3.0
21st Century United States North American Narrative
by Darryl “Waistline” Mitchell
editor Robin Yeamans
© June 2017
Line publishing, Detroit, Michigan
By Darryl Mitchell
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 1499145500
ISBN: 9781499145502
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014907061
LCCN Imprint Name: City and State (If applicable)
Dedicated to memory and spirit of General Gordon Baker, Jr.
September 6, 1941 – May 18, 2014
Marx in 1848 hurled a challenge at the capitalist class:
“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.”
(Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Introduction
The day after the women’s march TV pundits were asking questions like: How can the women’s march be made into a movement? Duh. It IS part of a movement, one which has been visible since at least 2010.
Dec. 7, 2010, Wikileaks released a group of cables, and this release included cables about the extreme wealth of the Ben Ali ruling family in Tunisia. Dec. 17, a young man in Tunisia self-immolated. He died Jan. 4. Ten days later Ben Ali and his family fled to Saudi Arabia. While this was not a “revolution” in the sense of a different class taking power, it also was not nothing. It was followed by the Egyptian uprising, which was the first uprising coordinated by social media. Luddites want to deny the significance of this. The “Arab spring” went on until mid 2012. Feb. 14-June 16, 2011, the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin was occupied. Sept. 2011 Occupy Wall Street broke out. It was like a string of dominoes from the Wikileaks release to Occupy.
In 2013, Black Lives Matter burst into the open with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The fight continued with demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of Michael Brown (which resulted in the Ferguson uprising) and Eric Garner in New York City. The disappearance-murder of 43 Mexican students in 2014 in Ayotzinapa, Mexico called forth similar protests.
Then came Bernie’s campaign, designed to corral people within the Democratic Party, and which was partly effective in the Nov. 2016 elections. On Jan. 21, 2017, millions of women marched all over the world. Not limited to being a “women’s” march, it included not only men but also LGBTQ and every section of US society interested in political liberty and equality.
All of this is part of a worldwide upsurge. It IS a movement, and it won’t/can’t go away.
Dialectics teaches us to look at what’s arising. A new movement is arising, and it needs the ideas in Marxist Glossary 3.0, and discussion of these ideas has burst out everywhere. These ideas help us build on the past and keep us from repeating the same old errors. Glossary is a book to guide action and develop intellectual capacity.
It is undeniable that social media will be important in galvanizing all this, as it did with all the events referred to above. We don’t know what’s coming next, but this movement has no choice but to grow and develop.
Robin Yeamans
May 2017
Preface
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
Abolitionism:
Abolitionism is an ideological-social trend to end inequality, oppression, all forms of slavery, exploitation and class distinction. As the underlying essence of the historic human striving, abolitionism is the oldest and most powerful spontaneous impulse against subjugation in human history. Abolitionism is the ideological foundation of all movements against exploitation and inequality in every form of society rooted in private property.
The first abolitionist impulse arose in response to the overthrow of the matriarchal framework of society. The establishment of a social division of labor in society, the rise of a surplus product and the appropriation of the surplus product by a narrow layer of society heralded the establishment of private property and divided society into economic classes. Overthrowing mother right and appropriating the surplus product lead to the formation of private property, classes and the state. Abolitionism arose opposing private property and the state.
Today, abolitionism needs a militant program that seeks destruction of the wage system and abolition of private property. Communists today are abolitionists on the side of the proletariat born of the robotic economy.
Abstract labor: (See, Concrete and abstract labor.)
Abundance:
Abundance is a stage of development of productive forces, where robotic systems of production begin the emancipation of human species activity from its enslaving subordination to the division of labor. Robotic technology simultaneously kicks human labor out of production and begins destruction of the division of labor, in a radical way that distinguishes it from labor saving devices and the old industrial reserve army. In the era of robotics, the fallen proletariat is discarded, rather than displaced, and made permanently destitute rather than being treated as a reserve of industry which had been sustained by social programs in order to be employed later.
Abundance is a stage of human development where it becomes practical to emancipate the working class as a class and to abolish the bourgeois form of private property relations. Marx referred to this stage of development as ending “the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor.”
In the past abundance referred only to the availability of commodities, capital and natural resources. The modern meaning of abundance is bound up with freeing the individual from the compulsory demand to produce commodities and subordinate themselves to the division of labor. Abundance makes possible communist society — from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
(See, Exploitation, Necessary labor and surplus labor, Scarcity, Society of abundance, Surplus.)
Accumulation of capital:
The accumulation of capital, the result of capitalist reproduction, leads to the ever greater concentration and centralization of wealth in ever fewer capitalist hands. It is a) the reproduction of capital and capitalist relations of production on an expanded scale; b) the polarization between wealth and poverty, between capitalists and the proletariat, centralization and concentration of capital and the wiping out of the small-scale producers and c) the destruction of actual private ownership of means of production in the framework of capitalist property as preparation for the societal leap to a new mode of production.
At the time of Marx and Engels, unlike today, capital accumulation meant more jobs, an increase in the number of proletarians. Of course, in the era of robotics, this has changed.
- As capital accumulates in capitalist hands, the proletariat grows.
Here it is first shown that the capitalist mode of production, i.e. that inaugurated by capitalists on the one hand and wage-workers on the other, not only continually regenerates capital for the capitalist, but at the same time also continually produces the poverty of the workers; . . . . But capital does not merely reproduce itself: it is continually increased and multiplied—and thereby its power over the propertyless class of workers. And just as it itself is reproduced on an ever greater scale, so the modern capitalist mode of production reproduces the class of propertyless workers also on an ever greater scale, in even greater numbers. . . . Accumulation of capital reproduces the capital-relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, more wage-workers at that. . . . Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat.
(Reviews of Capital by F. Engels, Review of Vol. I of Capital for the Demokratisches Wochenblatt, 1868.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/reviews-capital/dwochenblatt.htm
- General Law of capitalist accumulation.
Since, however, owing to the progress of machinery, owing to improved agriculture, etc., fewer and fewer workers are necessary in order to produce the same quantity of products, since this perfecting, that is, this making the workers superfluous, is more rapid than even the growth of capital, what becomes of this ever-increasing number of workers? They form an industrial reserve army, which, when business is bad or middling, is paid below the value of its labor and is irregularly employed or is left to be cared for by public charity, but which is indispensable to the capitalist class at times when business is especially lively, as is palpably evident in England—but which under all circumstances serves to break the power of resistance of the regularly employed workers and to keep their wages down. ‘The greater the social wealth … the greater is the relative surplus-population, or industrial-reserve-army. But the greater this reserve-army in proportion to the active (regularly employed) labor-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated (permanent) surplus-population, or strata of workers, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labor. The more extensive, finally, the Lazarus-layers of the working class, and the industrial reserve-army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.’
(Reviews of Capital by F. Engels, Review of Vol. I of Capital for the Demokratisches Wochenblatt, 1868.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/reviews-capital/dwochenblatt.htm
- Historical tendency of capitalist accumulation.
As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labor process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.
(K. Marx. Capital Vol. I, Chapter 32: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Marx had envisioned masses of workers “disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself” overthrowing capital, and that was a valid view at the time. Today, as robots replace workers, more and more the masses of destitute proletarians are not within the process of capitalist production, and the social revolution will take a different form than anticipated in 1867. However, capitalist accumulation continues, as capital now accumulates in fewer and fewer hands at an exponential rate.
In its compulsion to accumulate or die, capital wipes out the small-scale producer as a social force, tightens the chains of exploitation of the laborer and shrinks the laborers’ portion of the social wealth, while increasing the portion that goes to the capitalist class. Accumulation of capital creates a mass of unemployed, underemployed and unemployable members of society who constitute a vast sea of the surplus population shut out of the civic society of the capitalist. The compulsion to accumulate and expand or die drives capital to revolutionize the means of production with labor-replacing machinery (computers, robotics, biogenetics), and in doing so, opens a new epoch of social revolution. (See, Concentration and centralization of capital.)
Agent provocateur:
An agent provocateur (French for “inciting agent”) is an undercover agent who acts to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act. An agent provocateur may be acting out of their own sense of nationalism/duty or may be employed by the police or other entity to discredit or harm another group (e.g., peaceful protest or demonstration) by provoking them to commit a crime — thus, undermining the protest or demonstration as whole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur
While some police agents only gather information, agents provocateurs provoke people into actions.
Agitation: (See, Propaganda and agitation.)
Agnosticism:
Derived from two words that mean “without” and “knowledge,” agnosticism originally was the doctrine that people cannot know for certain whether or not there is a God. Referring to philosophy, agnosticism is the doctrine that humans are incapable of perceiving and knowing the essence of any reality. Marxist philosophy opposes agnosticism and holds that the world is knowable, and our knowledge of it grows and advances with developing science.
To paraphrase Engels in his introduction to Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, what is an agnostic but an embarrassed materialist?
The agnostic’s conception of Nature is materialistic throughout. The entire natural world is governed by law, and absolutely excludes the intervention of action from without. But, he adds, we have no means either of ascertaining or of disproving the existence of some Supreme Being beyond the known universe. . . .
Again, our agnostic admits that all our knowledge is based upon the information imparted to us by our senses. But, he adds, how do we know that our senses give us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? . . . .
From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perception. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But, if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is proof positive that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.
(F. Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1892 English Edition.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/int-mat.htm
People are most familiar with the term “agnostic” in the context of the issue of whether there is a God. In philosophy the word “agnostic” has a different meaning. It still means a denial of the ability to know reality. It is the denial of the existence of philosophical laws that describe and predict the real world. Current day agnostics deny that there is any such thing as a philosophical law that actually describes and predicts reality.
Agrarian epoch: (See, Mode of production, agrarian epoch.)
Alienation of labor:
Marx’s concept of alienation refers to social alienation of people from aspects of their own humanity (species-essence) due to living in class society. More than a general feeling of rejection, modern alienation of labor is the social process where capitalists own the means of production, own the commodities created by the laborers and appropriate the surplus products.
What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor?
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another.
(K. Marx, Estranged Labor. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm
Alinskyism:
An anti-class theory and practice of organization created by Saul Alinsky (1909-1972). His works stress the need for pragmatic compromise, achieved by people sitting down together and working out their differences. He used a strategy that targeted a particular government official who could give one what they wanted. Alinskyism stresses having an “organizer” who is trained and funded in these methods. Negotiations are fine in the proper context. However, no individual government official can solve crises of the capitalist system or meet the proletariat’s needs as a class. Use of Alinsky’s method guarantees that class efforts and class demands are blunted and defeated. Alinskyism is a form of reformism.
Alinskyism arose during a period in which reform of the system was possible. With change from one qualitative state of productive forces to another, this doctrine of reform loses its validity.
The two most well known current Alinskyites are Hillary Clinton (who wrote a thesis on Alinsky) and Barack Obama (who was part of a long tradition of Alinskyism in Chicago before becoming president).
American exceptionalism:
American exceptionalism is the belief that US society, its government and state are qualitatively different from all the governments, states, countries and peoples on earth and will play a special role in the world, due to moral superiority, which is ordained by God and history. This special role includes defining what is right for the people of the earth, defining the specific laws of commerce, morality and always being justified in applying military force against countries, classes and peoples who oppose the American ideology. This American ideology is a peculiar brand of fascist ideology and national egoism buttressed by white supremacy.
The philosophical foundation of American exceptionalism is pragmatism and the big lie. The big lie states America’s economic strength and role in the world are due to democratic tradition and cultural superiority rather than to genocide of the Native Americans, enslavement of the Africans, theft of half of Mexico’s territory and the fact that both world wars were fought in Europe.
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin coined the term “American exceptionalism” when chastising the American Communist Party. Jay Lovestone, national secretary of the Communist Party USA in 1927 and later an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), maintained that the US was an exception to Karl Marx’s law of social revolution and cyclical crises of overproduction. Lovestone maintained that American capitalism had become so strong and dynamic it would not be subject to capitalism’s cyclical crises of overproduction. The Great Depression of 1929 disproved this theory.
American populism: (See, Populism.)
American Revolution 1776:
The American Revolution of 1776 was a new thing in history, an anti-colonial national democratic revolution that brought an agrarian bourgeoisie to power. The revolution opened a new epoch in world history with its war of national liberation against British imperialism.
The American Revolution was driven by competing visions. One vision was “all men are created equal,” which not only negated the divine right of kings but also included the rights of all to be citizens and not to be reduced to serfs, subjects or slaves. The other vision sought independence as the means to preserve slavery against the anti-slavery tide that was sweeping Europe.
The revolution simultaneously preserved chattel slavery and established the political category of the citizen as state doctrine, rooted in the economic theory of the equality of owners of capital, separation of Church and State and the division of government into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. To establish the society of “citizens,” rather than a land of “subjects” ruled by monarchy, the revolution had to overthrow the power and authority of the British Empire.
The inspiration for the Revolutionary War was independence, which expressed the desires of various classes, including slave owners, driven by new ideas and a new vision: political rights of the citizen and liberation from British imperialism. The Declaration of Independence stated the vision as: “All men are created equal,” which did not refer to the slaves, but instead was a militant rebuttal to the current political theory of that day, the “Divine Right of Kings.”
And it is significant of the specifically bourgeois character of these human rights that the American constitution, the first to recognize the rights of man, in the same breath confirms the slavery of the colored races existing in America: class privileges are proscribed, race privileges sanctified.
(F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch08.htm
To say that the revolution of 1776 was a bourgeois democratic revolution is not enough, because the US was founded as a state of conquering settlers. The revolution was an agrarian bourgeois revolution, supported by a slave oligarchy, in a country of small-scale property holders, whose land was taken from the indigenous inhabitants through genocidal warfare. The democratic revolution, that is to say, the national democratic bourgeois revolution could only be completed with the overthrow of slavery. The overthrow of slavery would become possible after the foundations of the industrial bourgeoisie were completed, and when the industrial ruling class was able to establish its political hegemony over society.
The noble ideas and vision of 1776 were momentarily lost and buried under land-grabbing and slaveholding interests, only to be partially won decades later as the dialectic of cause and vision played itself out. In this sense, the Second American Revolution (the Civil War) was a continuation of the First Revolution.
(See, Bourgeois revolution.)
American Revolution 2.0: Civil War (1861–1865)
The Civil War, American Revolution 2.0, overthrew the system of chattel slavery, emancipated the slave, and gave birth to Wall Street imperialism, which set the stage for the US to ascend to leadership of world capitalist-imperialism. As the first large-scale war fought on the basis of the industrial revolution, the Civil War was the deadliest and bloodiest war in human history when it took place.
Every generation of US revolutionaries has had to answer anew the question of the cause of the Civil War. Slavery and the slave system were the causes of the Civil War. Karl Marx disclosed in unmistakable terms the cause of the Civil War.
The question of the principle of the American Civil War is answered by the battle slogan with which the South broke the peace. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, declared in the Secession Congress that what distinguished the Constitution newly hatched at Montgomery from the Constitution of Washington and Jefferson was that now for the first time slavery was recognized as an institution good and as the foundation of the whole state edifice, whereas the revolutionary fathers, men steeped in the prejudices of the eighteenth century, had treated slavery as an evil imported from England and to be eliminated.
(K. Marx, Writings on the North American Civil War, 1861; bold added.)
The Constitution of the Confederate States of America, adopted on March 11, 1862, which remained in effect through the conclusion of the Civil War, recognized slavery as the primary and permanent economic foundation and property relation of its society. The fundamental difference between the United States Constitution and the Confederate Constitution is that in the latter Negro slavery is written into law, as the primary property relation. In contrast, the US Constitution, while institutionalizing slavery, did not view it as a primary property relation and foundation of its economy. Article IV Section 3(3) of the Confederate Constitution provided:
In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states. (Bold added.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Constitution
Introduction: from colonial America to the United States
Colonial America became the United States of America through two centuries of genocidal wars against the Native peoples and through winning independence from Britain. The War of Independence in 1776, inaugurated a continuum of revolutions that swept the planet, overthrew old categories of slave, serf and subject and ushered in the epoch of capitalist democracy, the bourgeois democratic republic and the universal rights of the citizen. This epochal wave of revolution spanned the period from 1776-1976, and closed with victory of the Vietnamese revolution and Vietnam’s unification.
The leader of the American Revolution, George Washington, was at the same time the richest man and the largest slaveholder in America. From the beginnings of this agrarian bourgeois republic until the outbreak of the Civil War, the US was essentially a Southern country, dependent upon slavery and a political-ideological superstructure that upheld and perpetuated chattel (slave) property relations. Washington was the first of slaveholding presidents, and Southerners dominated the Supreme Court and the Congress. This antagonism between wage labor and chattel labor, both of which produced for capitalist profits, was at the very core of the American experience that made the Civil War necessary.
The inspiration of the first American Revolution was independence, but independence was driven by two different visions. One vision sought independence as the means to preserve slavery against the anti-slavery tide that was sweeping Europe. The competing vision was “all men are created equal.”
Independence was won in 1776, but the vision, “all men are created equal,” could not be won due to the economic and political logic of slavery and Native American conquest. The southern based Slave Power, the budding class of northern manufacturers, the financial supporters of the slave trade and plantation economy (who would become Wall Street), and all classes of European settlers were united, to one degree or another, on the policy of annihilation of the Native peoples, the taking of their land and conversion of it into private property. Thus, the American Revolutionary War was essentially two parallel wars. At the same time as the American colonists fought against British imperialism, the colonists also fought to seize the lands of the Native peoples.
The Civil War was the means to continue the struggle to realize the bourgeois democratic vision of 1776, but now under conditions of the emergence of the factory system in the North with a growing economy based on wage labor.
While both South and North agreed on unrelenting wars of conquest of more Native lands, the aim of the Southern slave oligarchy was to establish an independent republic-empire based on slave labor, without “liberty for all.” The ruling classes North and South, rooted in bourgeois private property, were united in their policy of genocidal wars against the Native peoples. The aim of Northern capital was to establish a bourgeois democratic republic without slavery and with “liberty for all,” meaning that all would share the status of being a citizen rather than a slave. The northern ruling class sought to subordinate the Slave Power to the fundamental economic interests and political direction of industrial capital.
Out of this irrepressible conflict between ruling classes arose a third political party, the Republican Party.
Importance of slavery:
Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies which have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Consequently, prior to the slave trade, the colonies sent very few products to the Old World, and did not noticeably change the face of the world. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. Without slavery, North America, the most progressive nation, would he transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete decay of trade and modern civilization. But to do away with slavery would be to wipe America off the map. Being an economic category, slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world. All that modern nations have achieved is to disguise slavery at home and import it openly into the New World.
(Letter from Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, 1846.)
https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htm
Slavery as an institution, conquest of the Native peoples, taking their land, and its conversion into private property were at the heart of formation of the American state. Southern plantation slavery was a hybrid system, which combined the horrors of ancient slavery with those of modern capitalism. The slaves were slaves in the worst sense of the word. Their masters were bourgeois –- capitalists. Slavery as the form of labor that produced commodities for the market, was capitalist production, which condemned the slave to horrific exploitation for surplus value.
Sharpening of tensions
The interests of the Southern slave-owning class, as property owners, were protected in the very fabric of the US Constitution, although slavery is not explicitly mentioned. Southern slaveholders controlled the presidency of the United States for 41 of the first 50 years, with 12 of the first 16 presidents being slave owners. Eighteen of 31 Supreme Court justices were slaveholders in those years.
The Civil War was the military phase of the struggle for political supremacy between Northern industrial capital (the North) and the Slave Power (the South). The South and the North shared an identity of interest based in private property and capitalistic commodity production: cotton and tobacco in the South, industrial products servicing the South and finance in the North.
What drove them apart was their antagonistic productive relations. Production relations are the laws defining property and the relations of people to property in production. In the North, these relations were free-labor capitalism, the wage system. Southern productive relations were based on slave labor and the status of human beings as slaves. Southern capitalistic plantation slavery was a system of commodity production, a value producing system, as was the North. The difference between wage labor deployed in modern industry and slave labor deployed using primitive instruments of production was the source of antagonism. This antagonism was expressed politically as different demands on government and paved the road to war.
Developing giant industrial enterprises and a new concentration of money called into question the political dictatorship of 300,000 men — the Slave Power. Industrialism, more productive than manufacture, and more productive than slave production based on preindustrial means of production, permitted the North to break its economic dependence upon, and come into political antagonism with the South. The Northern states, which manufactured the necessities for the slave system, originally had developed as an economic appendage to the plantation South. As the US grew and its population increased, the North entered a social-economic revolution from manufacturing to industry and developed its own agricultural production to feed a growing class of industrial workers. Social-economic revolution called forth the inevitable political revolution to change society to conform to new means of production.
The Southern political establishment had a stranglehold on political power in the entire country. It became “the Slave Power” through the constitutional provision that nonvoting slaves counted as three-fifths of a person for apportioning representation in Congress. The North, more populous in free, voting-age males, was constantly out-voted in Congress by the slave-owning South and its Northern supporters.
The US Senate was dominated by Southern interests because some Northern Senators represented businesses that were dependent upon the slave economy, such as ship builders and other enterprises that supplied goods and financing to the South. The Southern-dominated Senate, Supreme Court, and presidency refused to pass harbor, railroad, canal appropriations or tariffs vital to industrial growth. Such legislation was necessary to the growth of industrial capital in the North but was not in the interests of the Southern ruling class. Government could serve only one master.
Republican Party sparked secession
Anti-slavery activists founded the Republican Party in the Northern states in 1854. Abraham Lincoln, a railroad attorney, campaigned against expanding slavery beyond the states in which it already existed. Lincoln was the party’s presidential candidate in 1860, and won the election by a minority vote of about four out of every ten ballots cast. Opposing presidential candidate John Breckenridge split the votes cast against Lincoln, and this split allowed for Lincoln’s election as president. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president was the trigger for the breakup of the Union.
Immediately after Lincoln’s election, the South began the process of secession and the formation of a separate country, which they called the Confederate States of America (Confederacy).
In 1860, war began with the South’s attack on Fort Sumter. In the Civil War, the Northern army became an army of liberation, and the war became a revolutionary war of emancipation. The Civil War and its aftermath remain the most traumatic events in US history, and still affect US politics domestically and preserve the color line.
Lincoln’s anti-slavery stance as a state senator and congressional representative was known by the slave oligarchy. The slave owners hated Lincoln. There is no record of him receiving a single vote in the South. Even before his inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven slave states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America (Confederacy). The first six to secede had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, almost fifty percent.
The Confederate States of America (Confederacy) was formed in February 1861 in Montgomery, Alabama. The Confederate Constitution was adopted a month later, on March 11, 1861. Thirty days later, (April 12–13, 1861) the Confederacy attacked the Union (Northern) Army in the Battle of Fort Sumter, and this was the spark that ignited the Civil War. Eleven Southern slave states eventually seceded from the United States. The fundamental cause of the Civil War was slavery, pure and simple. The Confederacy was formed to preserve and perpetuate the slave system, outside the Union framework.
Political-economic dynamics of the Civil War: causes and effects
Commercial production of cotton and tobacco depleted the soil, which created a burning need to expand slavery into fresh territory and new land. Because of depleted soil Southern slavery had to expand into fresh land or die. It was this need that was one impetus for annexing Texas as a slave holding state in 1845 and the Mexican American War, which resulted in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. With Lincoln’s election, the slave holding South seceded from the Union to preserve its existence as an economic, social, and political institution.
Resolution of the conflict between the industrial North and the agrarian slave holding South required military defeat of the Confederacy. The Confederacy would not peacefully surrender, even though the cause of capitalistic slavery was hopeless. The industrial revolution would eventually replace small-scale agricultural production, including slave labor, with tractors, mechanized agricultural production and gigantic agri-business. The Confederacy would not and did not compromise. Through war and a horrific defeat, the Confederacy lost in five years what it would have lost 50-80 years later, due to technological change.
The North did not enter the Civil War with the demand to emancipate the slaves. The North entered the war demanding restoration of the Union and return of the Southern states to the Union. Emancipation was not the catalyst for the Civil War. It arose from the struggle to preserve the Union and defeat the slaveholders’ rebellion. Defeat of the Confederacy required emancipation of the slaves.
The goal of the Confederate States of America was to reorganize the entire country, and eventually the entire hemisphere, to be based on slave labor. The North responded with a war to whip the South back into the Union. The initial Northern aim was to defeat the Slave Power, bring the South back into the Union and make the South a dependency of industry, with or without slavery.
The Northern political establishment began to mobilize the people to defeat the Slave Power without emancipation of the slave. Lincoln faced significant opposition to his anti-slavery policies from collaborators of the slave system in government, in the judicial and military structure of the state and from the Northern working class, his political base of support.
What Lincoln faced and did
Lincoln’s actions cannot be properly understood by analyzing them with the ideological concepts of race and racism, and whether or not he believed blacks, Natives and Mexicans were equal to whites. What Lincoln possessed was a profound grasp of the thinking of the entire country, the white majority, and a sense of what was possible at any given moment. Defeating the Confederacy would require emancipation of the slaves. To emancipate the slaves required the support of the Northern working class and defeat of the Confederacy. The Northern working class hated slavery rather than the slave system. This was expressed as hatred of the slaves and slave labor, rather than hatred of the wealthy slave oligarchy. Northern labor could not compete with slave labor. Further, the idea of having to compete with 4 million former slave laborers was not a happy prospect.
Lincoln faced a dilemma
The Border States held the balance of power. The Border States were slave states that did not secede from the Union. To their north they bordered Free states, and to their south they bordered slave states. By advocating gradual emancipation and advocating sending the slaves to Africa (“colonization”), Lincoln gradually won the North and some in the Border States over to emancipation, as the only way to save the Union. Any miscalculation by Lincoln could have pushed the Border States into the camp of the Confederacy and lost the support of the Northern working class.
Military necessity, including slaves leaving the plantations en masse as the Northern army advanced into slave states, made emancipation an immediate issue. The shortest route to defeating the Slave Power was to strike at its economic and labor base — slavery. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln announced that he would issue a formal emancipation of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. None returned to the Union.
On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declared the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation’s four million slaves and immediately freed fifty thousand, with the rest freed as Union armies advanced. The Emancipation Proclamation changed the political dynamics of the war and transformed the Northern Army into an army of emancipation. Emancipation kicked the economic legs from under the Southern economy and sped up the South’s defeat. However, Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the Border States.
Of the states exempted from the Proclamation, slavery was outlawed as follows in the Border States: Maryland (1864), Missouri (1865), Tennessee (1865), and West Virginia (1865). However, in Delaware and Kentucky, slavery continued to be legal (affecting about 40,000 slaves) until December 1865, when the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution that ended slavery except for prisoners was ratified.
Civil War destroyed the slave oligarchy
The American Revolution 2.0 destroyed the Confederacy as a political institution, brought the reactionary secessionists back into the Union, destroyed slavery as a social system, and destroyed the two primary classes which previously underlay the Southern plantation economy. The passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution blocked the return of chattel slavery and its political institutions.
Then American Revolution 2.0 began Reconstruction of the plantation South, based on the bourgeois democratic republic, and the first ten amendments to the US Constitution. The bourgeois democratic republic is a form of the state that upholds the category of citizen, rather than serf, subject or slave. The Civil War and Reconstruction ushered in the political state of the citizen in the former slave-owning South.
Lincoln advanced the revolutionary goal of the First American Revolution to its next stage: “all men are created equal.” Lincoln articulated a new vision and morality for the country: a nation—not a union of settler states—conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
The politics of reconstruction were defeated by the counterrevolution
Having suffered catastrophic military defeat, the Confederate commander, General Lee, surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, and President Lincoln was assassinated six days later. After the defeat of the Confederate States of America, the “irrepressible conflict” shifted to the political arena. The war ended with proslavery President Andrew Johnson in office and all the Southern legislators who had resigned their seats showing up to claim them. The old South was trying to win politically what they had lost on the battlefield.
Opposing them, the radical wing of the Republicans looked frantically to preserve the victory of the Civil War and reconstruct the US on a new anti-slavery basis. Northern voters could not affect Southern elections for representatives. The freeman had to be enfranchised to vote to oust the Southern fascists and reactionaries.
The aim of Reconstruction was, on the one hand, politically to crush the old Southern elite, and on the other hand, to contain the revolutionary forces unleashed by the Civil War. By 1875, both of these goals had been accomplished, and Reconstruction ended. Between 1875 and 1890, the political scene was remapped. Wall Street financial imperialism moved to dictate the politics of the post-Reconstruction era.
Wall Street controlled the South, and the South controlled the country.
The interests of the Southern elite to some degree merged with those of the financial-industrial oligarchy, and they accepted the domination of Wall Street imperialism. The result was counter-revolution in the core South, the conversion of the Black Belt South into the first US colony and the world’s first fascist form of state power.
The counter-revolution in the South was the open terroristic dictatorship of finance-industrial capital, Wall Street imperialism. The US birthed fascism, a political form of state power that supported and buttressed the changing forms of private property. In the South the changing form of private property was from capitalist-slavery to peonage and the sharecropping system with generous portions of neo-slavery –- slavery by another name.
This political force, constructed and funded by finance capital, which overthrew, and/or nullified a legal bourgeois democratic government—the Reconstruction governments—and substituted in their place a form of rule that was the open terroristic dictatorship of finance capital was fascism. The political state that existed in the South after the overthrow of the Reconstruction governments is properly called fascist.
American Revolution 2.5: Civil Rights Movement
The US Civil Rights Movement began in the post-World War II period and sought to destroy Jim Crow segregation (US apartheid), so blacks could live as equals alongside their white counterparts. The Civil Rights Movement is here called American Revolution 2.5 because it sought to complete both the visions of the American Revolution and the Civil War (a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal).
The foundation of the Civil Rights Movement was an all-class movement of blacks. The interests of the black community intersected with those of domestic white capitalists and US imperialism in their quest to established world hegemony through support of the right wing of the national liberation movements worldwide. Wall Street imperialism and a dominant section of US national capital pushed to bring US blacks into the post-war economy and reap the profits from rebuilding war-torn Europe and Japan, while they strategically sought to defeat the Soviet Union in the ideological battle for the hearts and minds of the colonial masses.
This movement for civil rights was energized by black soldiers returning from the war, trained to kill the fascist enemy of democracy and unwilling to accept the homegrown fascists, second class citizenship status and societal treatment beneath the dignity of honorable men and women. The movement for civil rights broke into open mass protest on December 4, 1955, with the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott and was part of the worldwide decolonization movement of this period.
Background
The passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution created the constitutional framework to implement the military victory over the Confederate States of America, and bring the former slaves into US society as equals. During the period of Reconstruction between 1865 and 1875, tremendous progress was made in shattering the political power of the Southern planter class. Two different political choices faced the post-Civil War South: either a land of small-scale farmers based on the bourgeois republican aspects of Jeffersonian democracy or a land of peons, semi-serfs and sharecroppers who languished under the boot of the former slave oligarchy that was transformed by its horrific defeat in war into a new landlord planter class.
After the Hayes-Tilden Agreement of 1877, which took federal troops out of the South, the Reconstruction governments were overthrown, a fascist form of state was implemented, and Wall Street ruled the core plantation South through the fascist planter class and a mass of white Southerners who had been spoon fed on centuries of white supremacy. From 1890 until the end of World War II, very little changed in the deep poverty and fascist terror of the plantation South.
Around 1940, things began to change, when a new stage in the industrial revolution was marked by the mechanization of agriculture. Mechanization, especially the tractor, destroyed much of the need for black and white labor in Southern agriculture. This ended the system of sharecropping and peonage with chain gangs and armed bodies of men dedicated to keeping the tillers of the soil chained to the land.
“[S]lavery, real slavery, didn’t end until 1945” when mechanization destroyed the sharecropping system by reducing labor in production and rendered the primitive tools of the sharecropper obsolete. (Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, 2008, page 402.)
Revolutionary changes in the means of production fueled the movement for civil rights
Ultimately, mechanization began the break-up of the Southern land tenure system and forced eleven million laborers (five million black) off the land. Mechanization of agriculture set the condition to challenge all the fascistic laws designed to keep blacks on the land, prevent their escape to the North and enforce segregation throughout the North.
The Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) signaled that legal segregation was to be dismantled throughout the country. Under President Eisenhower federal troops were sent to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 to force school desegregation. With this encouragement, the Civil Rights Movement surged with popular efforts to desegregate public facilities.
The push for entry by blacks into the system was met by the pull of Northern industry, whose employment needs expanded after World War II. With support from sections of the capitalist class, the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The Fair Housing Act, affirmative action, penalties against businesses that refused to end segregation, lawsuits against police departments and finally massive protests to open the political system to blacks followed passage of these acts.
In the post-World War II period the capitalist class had a class interest in ending legal segregation so as to expand US production worldwide. This need was fulfilled. The US has always been deeply anti-communist, and anti-communism was always merged with white supremacy, sustained by an ideological superstructure based on legal segregation. During all phases of the Civil Rights Movement, the ruling class was careful to limit the struggle to one for equality and not the emancipation of labor.
By the 1970s, the dominant section of capital had more or less completed its plans to decolonize, and the capitalists unleashed the full fury of the state on the more radical and militant sections of the Civil Rights Movement. Facing violent suppression, assassination of political leaders and having accomplished the integration of blacks into the system, the Civil Rights Movement based in the industrial revolution, peaked and began its decline.
American (US) Revolution 3.0:
The Third US Revolution is to overthrow and dismantle all property relations, to eradicate war from society, end all private property based inequality and emancipate humanity.
Anarchism:
From the Greek words meaning, “lack of authority” and “without government,” anarchism is an ideology and doctrine that arose in the middle of the nineteenth century (the 1800s). Anarchism advocates immediate abolition of government, the state, and all hierarchical structures as the condition for full social and political liberty. It contends that the state can be abolished in a single stroke by mass action and that a cooperative society can be organized that is based on autonomous democratic organizations of the masses.
The class origins of anarchism were the small property owner (petty bourgeoisie) and intelligentsia of the 1800s and 1900s. Anarchism was a protest against the rising bourgeois state with its juridical and moral platitudes that justify the ruin of the small producer by large-scale industry. Mikhail Bakunin has been called the father of anarchism.
Anarchists are generally opposed to all organizational structures. Anarchism believes that the masses on their own will come to adequate political conclusions based on practical experience and common sense.
(See, State, withering away of the state.)
Anarcho-syndicalism:
Anarcho-syndicalism is the theory of anarchism applied to the industrial trade union movement. Syndicalism views the trade unions and workers’ councils as the primary instruments for overthrowing capital and reconstructing the economy. Syndicalism’s final goal and vision are the control of society by federated bodies of industrial workers. Anarcho-syndicalism was a 20th-century ideology of industrialism.
Anarchism advocates for abolition of government and state as the practical solution to crisis of capitalism. Anarchism is the doctrine urging the abolition of governmental restraints or of the government itself as the condition for full social and political liberty. In the USNA, anarchism arose from the petty bourgeoisie in its struggle against the robber barons. Early on, it united with syndicalism from the immigrant European workers to become anarcho-syndicalism.
Syndicalism is a form of trade unionism with the aim of workers owning the means of production and distribution. Its final goal is the control of society by federated bodies of industrial workers. The major weapon of syndicalism is the general strike.
(N. Peery, Entering an Epoch of Social Revolution, 1993.)
http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf
Anarcho-syndicalist ideology believes every struggle between workers and bosses is transformative and contains the seeds of social and political revolution. Its vision is workers’ councils as the medium for the overthrow of bourgeois property relations and the building of economic socialism on a democratic basis. Its strategy is the general strike as the highest form of class struggle. Anarcho-syndicalist advocates identify themselves as “council communists.” The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) remains the most famous example of this trend in America.
As a revolutionary organization, anarcho-syndicalism advocated for a loosely federated group of revolutionaries as the key to leading the masses. When transferred outside the bounds of the trade union movement, anarcho-syndicalism merged with identity politics.
Anarcho-syndicalism arose in an old economic and social context, which was a stage of development of industrialism. The electronic revolution and the rise of the robotic economy destroy the industrial configuration of society, destroy the economic-material basis of anarcho-syndicalist outlook and demand a new vision of a new kind of society.
(See, Identity politics.)
Anarchy of capitalist production:
Anarchy of capitalist production is the result of bourgeois private property — private ownership of the socialized means of production, combined with private appropriation of the collectively created products. Each capitalist enterprise produces commodities, in competition with one another, without regard to the total consuming capacity of the masses and not knowing whose products will be sold. The result is cyclical crises of overproduction. Anarchy of production flows from commodity production based on private ownership of means of production. Cyclical crises of overproduction flow from bourgeois property relations.
We have seen that the capitalistic mode of production thrust its way into a society of commodity-producers, of individual producers, whose social bond was the exchange of their products. But every society based upon the production of commodities has this peculiarity: that the producers have lost control over their own social inter-relations. Each man produces for himself with such means of production as he may happen to have, and for such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remaining wants. No one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the market, nor how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his costs of production or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized production.
(F. Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
(See, Crisis theory, Overproduction.)
Antagonism (class society):
In class society, which is founded on private property relations, antagonism is a mode of destruction of an old social and economic order by the new classes and new productive relations that arise and develop based on qualitatively new means of production. Due to the existence of private property and classes, the antagonistic form of development is necessary to overthrow the old form of state power and to uproot the old institutions of the superstructure that represented and protected the old classes and old productive relations. Private property is the social power of an economic class to own the means of production as well as means of creation of wealth and the right to appropriate the surplus product.
Qualitatively new productive forces create new classes and a new social organization of labor, tear society from its mooring in the old social order and compel society to reorganize around new production relations. Momentarily, two sets of primary contradictions coexist, as new productive relations collide with old productive relations. In the 1938 Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, this process is called the “double contradiction.”
The new contradiction, which expresses new productive forces, develops in external collision and destroys the old form of property and the old classes. The rise to dominance of a new form of class and property, based on new productive forces, in the past achieved hegemony over society based on destruction of the old primary form of property and classes at the base of the old productive relations. This process is how society moves in class antagonism.
(See, Leap.)
Antagonism, (philosophy):
In Marxist philosophy, antagonism is one of the two basic modes of change, and contradiction is the other. Antagonism and contradiction are not the same. Antagonism is a mode of destruction. Contradiction is the unity and struggle of opposites internal to a process that serves as the basis of development. At a certain stage, under definite conditions, antagonism replaces and destroys contradiction.
As used in philosophy, antagonism and violence are not the same. Violence can happen during any form of change in society, whether motivated by contradiction or antagonism. The two poles of a class contradiction (slave and slave master, nobility and serf, capitalist and proletariat) sometimes collide violently with one another, but this is not antagonism. In class society antagonism is a mode of destruction bound up with the rise of new classes that develop in external collision with the classes and institutions of the old society. Antagonism is a mode of destruction, resolution and transition to a new quality. Antagonism replaces and destroys contradiction.
The incremental addition of qualitatively new means of production into society causes society to begin transition to a new social organization of labor. This new quality is incompatible with the old way of doing things and disrupts the law system governing the old system of production and draws people outside the old productive relations and into new productive relations that express the qualitatively new productive forces. As the leap – transition – develops quantitatively, it passes from disruption to increased destruction of the old series of connections that constituted the material bond that held the old system and old class contradiction together. This process is antagonism.
Society moves in class antagonism.
(See, Contradiction, Leap.)
Appearance:
Appearance is what we perceive. When we first become acquainted with things by means of the sense organs, we perceive only certain of their immediately apparent features, only the external relations between them, and their appearance. We see only what meets the eye. In other words, we perceive only the world of appearances. Science and practice show that all things and processes have two sides: an internal one, hidden from us, and an external one, we can perceive.
Essence is concealed from the human eye, while [appearance] lies on the surface. Essence is therefore something hidden, something deep-lying, concealed in things and their inner connections, something that controls things; it is the basis of all the forms of their external manifestation.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
(See, Essence.)
Appropriation:
Appropriation is a social act, where a ruling class owns the surplus products created by the laboring classes. The surplus products are all the products created over and above those needed to maintain the life of the producers. The surplus products are the source of the wealth of the ruling class and maintain the non-laboring classes in society. Every society founded on classes has been based on the ruling class’ ownership of the means of production and appropriation of the surplus products.
Appropriation and expropriation are not the same. Appropriation is ownership of the surplus product. Appropriation results from relations which allow a class to take, own and dispose of the surplus product. The ruling class does not “expropriate” the surplus product of the working class. Rather, the surplus product is “appropriated.” Expropriation deals with changes in private property and seizing property with or without compensation. Expropriation does not involve ownership of the surplus product.
(See, Expropriation, Surplus labor, Surplus product, Working class.)
Automation:
The highest stage of mechanization is the automation of production, which is the use of self-regulating automatic machines. Automation and computerization are not the same. Derived from the word automaton, the root meaning of automation is “acting of one’s own will.” The automaton was an ancient self-operating machine, designed to follow a repeating predetermined sequence of mechanical motion (operations.)
With the rise of the industrial revolution and socialized production, automatons became part of a new system of production. In this new system the automatons were integrated into the production process and developed into automated production systems. Automation resulted from the industrial revolution.
In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation
Industrial automation changed the workers’ labor and made them an appendage of machine processes. The more extensively automation was used, the more manual labor approximated that of the technician.
Automation that resulted from the industrial revolution was precipitated by the invention of the steam engine. Computerization and automation are not the same. Computerization occurred much later, precipitated by the invention of the microchip. Computerization refers to a technology based on the microchip and is at the foundation of the electronics revolution and robotic economy. Computerization reconfigures labor processes based on the microchip, while automation is the system that brings together machinery into a seamless, automatic production process. Means of production based on the microchip — robotic production processes — take automation to a qualitatively new level. Robotics renders human labor superfluous in production of commodities by using machines that replicate the labor, thinking, sensory perceptions and actions of human beings.
Bakunin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich:
Russian revolutionary (1814-1876) is sometimes called the father of anarchism.
. . . . Bakunin’s anarchist views took final shape during his life in Italy, partly on the basis of his study of Proudhon. His views were disseminated in a number of Western countries and in Russia.
According to Bakunin, [t]he society of the future will be an order in which there are no limitations on freedom, man will be independent of all authority, and all his capacities will develop fully.
. . . . Mistakenly regarding the state as the basic source of the oppression of the masses, of all social evils, Bakunin opposed state organization in any form. He also sharply opposed any use of the state by the working class and rejected the Marxist doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Defending the slogan of a ‘free federation’ of agricultural and factory-craft associations, Bakunin and his followers rejected participation in political struggle within the limits of existing states, the use of electoral agitation, parliaments, and so on. Bakunin dreamed of social revolution without understanding its real content, its economic and political conditions, or the true historical mission of the working class. He placed his main hopes on the peasantry and the semiproletarian craft strata of the cities, on the lumpen proletariat. Objectively, Bakuninist anarchism and spontaneous revolutionism were reflections of the discontent and protest of petit bourgeois masses ruined by capitalism. . . . Calling himself a proponent of the materialist conception of history, Bakunin treated Marxism in the spirit of ‘economic materialism.’ At the end of 1864, he joined the International Workingmen’s Association. However, in fact he worked against the International, establishing the International Brotherhood, which was anarchist in nature. In 1868 he founded the anarchist organization International Alliance of Socialist Democracy . . . in Switzerland, seeking its admission to the International as an independent international organization. Rebuffed, Bakunin and his followers announced the dissolution of the alliance; in fact, they maintained their secret union and through it attempted in every way possible to take over leadership in the International. The systematic divisive campaign waged by Bakunin against the International’s General Council, led by K. Marx, inflicted serious damage on the international workers’ movement and threatened the very existence of the International. At the Hague congress (1872), Bakunin was expelled from the International.
. . . . K. Marx and F. Engels struggled persistently against the anarchist views of Bakunin and his disruptive activity in the European workers’ movement. G. V. Plekhanov criticized the main principles of Bakunin’s world view and demonstrated the Utopian nature of his views of Russia’s socioeconomic structure. V. I. Lenin struggled against anarchism in all its forms, considering it—and Bakuninism in particular—the product of despair, the world view of a petit bourgeois. . . .
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Mikhail+Bakunin
(See, Anarchism.)
Bank:
Banks serve as safe havens for money and act as middlemen in making loans (credit) and payments of all kinds. Banks became the financing agency of capitalism and established a credit system that made possible a wider circulation, purchase and sale of commodities. This activity provides an essential service to the functioning of capitalism.
Computers make possible a new nonbank financial system and alter the role and function of banks. This new system is an interlocking and interactive infrastructure made possible by the electronic revolution. The new financial system is not rooted in commodity production, where capitalists appropriate surplus products as the source of profits from production. The new non-banking financial system creates wealth and operates outside the production of value.
In this new financial architecture, the new form of finance capital becomes speculative finance. These financial institutions exist outside of value production and evolve in antagonism with labor-capital relations.
Base and superstructure:
Base refers to the economy, the foundation upon which is built a system of institutions — the superstructure. The economy is production, distribution and how people relate to one another and property in production.
Superstructure refers to something above, built upon, and reacting to a foundation, to the base. The superstructure arises in response to the base and reacts to and upon the base, influencing its development. The superstructure is the totality of institutions, the ideological relations and views built upon an economic base and that upholds the social order. The superstructure 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.
On an economic base arise a political state (an organization of violence that is the product of the irreconcilability of class conflict), a legal system, social institutions and definite ideas about the existing society and humanity’s relationship to nature. These elements make up the superstructure, which exists in correspondence with the economic base, reacting to its development, assisting one moment and acting as a drag at another moment. This dialectical relationship of political, ideological and social institutions to the economy is called “base and superstructure.”
Being:
Being is a philosophic category that speaks of things which exist.
In the broadest sense, being is an all-embracing reality, the most general concept of existence, of that which is in general. Being is all that exists: material things, processes, properties, connections, and relations. Even the fruits of the most unbridled fantasy, the fairytales and the myths, even a sick man’s ravings, exist as realities. It follows that being covers both the material and the spiritual. It is, in fact, something really existing.
Being is one of the oldest philosophical categories. All the theories of antiquity contained being as a focal category. The totality of natural elements and the Logos, the energy principle of all that is, were both seen as concrete manifestations of being. It is a different matter that being could be interpreted in various ways: it could be regarded as something primary and determinant or as something reflecting a different existential essence inaccessible to direct perception; that is to say, the interpretations varied, in fact, from the directly perceptible by the sense organs to abstract essences or principles organizing the visible being of the world and cognizable in varying degree or, on the contrary, inaccessible to knowledge.
(A Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
(See, Social being.)
Bolsheviks and Bolshevism:
Bolshevik is Russian for “majority,” and Menshevik means “minority.” Supporters of V. I. Lenin at the 1903 Second Congress of Russian Social Democratic Labor Party were in the majority and called themselves “Bolsheviks,” and the party split into two wings: Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks began as a political trend in 1903, with V. I. Lenin as its central leader and primary political architect of the doctrine later to be called “Bolshevism.” In 1912 the Bolsheviks constituted themselves as a separate political party.
After the death of V. I. Lenin, Bolshevism came to be referred to as Leninism. Today, Leninism can be described as a Marxist doctrine of class struggle that originated during the era of the final transition from agriculture to industry. Bolshevism was the doctrine of the “party of a new type,” during the period of the domination of finance capitalism and imperialist wars for redivision of the colonial world with bribery of the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. Bolshevism was the strategy and tactics of founding and consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The benchmark historical text, by which every book on the history of Bolshevism can be judged, is History of the Communist Party Soviet Union (Bolshevik) 1939. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/index.htm
(See, Leninism.)
Bourgeois and bourgeoisie:
The bourgeoisie is the capitalist class, the ruling class of capitalist society.
By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, 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.
(Note by F. Engels, 1888 English edition, Manifesto of the Communist Party.)
http://www.marx2mao.com/M&E/CM47.html
This French term originally described a class of property owners under feudalism. It initially described a class of freemen and intermediaries that existed as a middle class between the feudal lord and the serf. As society changed qualitatively, this section of this middle class under feudalism became the ruling capitalist class.
The present situation of society — this is now pretty generally, conceded — is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the feudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon individuals, entire social ranks and local corporations, as well as with the hereditary ties of subordination which constituted the framework of its social organization. The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward, the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom.
(F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
Bourgeois mode of commodity production:
The bourgeois mode of commodity production is the technical name for capitalism. It is the highest stage of commodity production based on private ownership of the means of production and socialized productive forces created by the industrial revolution. It is the last mode of production based on private property in means of production. Post-industrial productive forces begin the destruction of the division of labor, eject labor from the production of commodities and destroy the foundation for the exchange of products based on human labor. (See, Capitalism.)
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
(K. Marx, F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Bourgeois revolution:
The bourgeois revolution is called that because it transferred political power from the nobility to the new moneyed class, the bourgeoisie, who sought to destroy the old feudal superstructure and established a new superstructure to support the growth and development of capitalist private property relations as the foundation for the new mode of production.
The bourgeoisie created a political state and superstructure based on its class rule and destroyed the feudal social pattern, its daily practices for making a living and system of privileges.
At a certain stage in development of the material power of production, the bourgeois revolution was necessary to clear the path for further development of concrete capitalist production relations. The first successful bourgeois revolution was the revolt in the Netherlands against Spain (1566-1609). England, France and the Netherlands led the breakup of feudalism and the establishment of the bourgeois, capitalist mode of commodity production as the new dominant productive relation. The revolutionizing of production in England’s manufactories during and after the mid-1750s with the substitution of mechanized labor for manual labor and the advancing division of labor provided the essential conditions for the bourgeois revolutions of this period.
The American Revolution of 1774-1783 was an agrarian bourgeois democratic revolution, fought out as a revolutionary war for national independence. The thirteen colonies freed themselves from colonial England, established the separation of the church from the state, confiscated royal lands, began abolition of slavery in the Northern states, nationalized land in the West in 1787 and nationalized the post office and army.
No matter what its form, monarchy or republic, the political state of the bourgeoisie is a state of an exploiting class which seeks to enrich itself at the expense of the laboring masses. The optimum political form of the state for the rising bourgeoisie was the democratic state, which abolished the status of serf, subject and slave and created a system of political liberty consistent with “free enterprise” and equality before the law of all owners of capital.
Bureaucracy:
Bureaucracy is a system of class rule based on specialized knowledge that creates a repetitive routine with regulations and formalism, used to administer people, things and social processes. Its origin lies in a stage of development of the division of labor, where private property has made its appearance and has become entrenched. Bureaucracy, especially as part of government, state, and corporations, divides work into specific categories to be carried out by special departments of workers trained in specialized functions.
The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. . . . The general spirit of the bureaucracy is the secret, the mystery, preserved inwardly by means of the hierarchy and externally as a closed corporation. To make public the mind and the disposition of the state appears therefore to the bureaucracy as a betrayal of its mystery. Accordingly, authority is the principle of its knowledge and being, and the deification of authority is its mentality. . . . As far as the individual bureaucrat is concerned, the end of the state becomes his private end: a pursuit of higher posts, the building of a career.
(K. Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1843.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ch03.htm/
Bureaucracy means that the machinery of power is independent of its executors and that initiative in the various parts of the organization is suppressed. The conditions of bureaucratic organization create specific personality types, the main psychological and moral features of which are political, ideological, and moral conformity, an orientation to the performance of formal obligations, and the standardization of needs and interests. Bureaucracy is a specific degeneracy of social organization.
(The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979.)
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Bureacracy
Computers and robotics lay the basis for the destruction of bureaucracy.
Cadre:
A cadre is a group of specially-trained people prepared to lead or train others. Examples could be a military core group, a nucleus of scientists, or a band of insurgents, or simply any group of specialized, core workers.
http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/cadre
During the era of the Third Communist International, L. Harry Gould defined cadre:
Cadres are those members on whom the Communist party, throughout its various units of organization, can mainly depend to carry forward its policy; they are a living framework which must be constantly renewed and strengthened -– a process that that will be successful to the degree that the Party fulfils its vanguard role. Cadres are the new forces that must be developed and fitted for positions of responsibility and leadership.
(Marxist Glossary by L. Harry Gould page 17, 1946. Reprinted by Proletarian Publishers, 1974.)
Capital:
Capital is a historically evolved social power, which is a bourgeois productive relation.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.
(K. Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Capital is a social power and relationship between people and classes based on bourgeois private property and wage labor. It is bourgeois ownership of the means of production, bourgeois appropriation of the surplus product and conversion of money into money-capital. Capital embeds itself into an existing social organization of labor and uses every form of labor to reproduce the capital relation.
Capital also is a social relation of production. It is a bourgeois relation of production, a relation of production of bourgeois society. The means of subsistence, the instruments of labor, the raw materials, of which capital consists – have they not been produced and accumulated under given social conditions, within definite special relations? Are they not employed for new production, under given special conditions, within definite social relations? And does not just the definite social character stamp the products which serve for new production as capital?
Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labor, and raw materials, not only as material products; it consists just as much of exchange values. All products of which it consists are commodities. Capital, consequently, is not only a sum of material products, it is a sum of commodities, of exchange values, of social magnitudes.
. . . . But though every capital is a sum of commodities -– i.e., of exchange values — it does not follow that every sum of commodities, of exchange values, is capital.
. . . . The existence of a class which possesses nothing but the ability to work is a necessary presupposition of capital.
It is only the dominion of past, accumulated, materialized labor over immediate living labor that stamps the accumulated labor with the character of capital.
Capital does not consist in the fact that accumulated labor serves living labor as a means for new production. It consists in the fact that living labor serves accumulated labor as the means of preserving and multiplying its exchange value.
(K. Marx, Wage Labor and Capital, 1847.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labor /ch05.htm
Capitalism:
The bourgeois mode of commodity production, capitalism, is commodity production based on socialized means of production, the factory system and bourgeois private property, that is, the buying and selling of labor-power. Capitalism is competition between capitalists for customers, anarchy of production and competition between the laborers for wages. It is commodity production at its highest stage of development, where labor-power appears on the market as a commodity, bought and sold alongside every other commodity.
Two conditions are necessary for capitalist production: firstly, the concentration of the basic means of production as the private property of capitalists, and, secondly, the absence of means of production among the majority, or a considerable portion, of the members of society. This compels those who possess nothing but their capacity to work to become wageworkers in capitalist enterprises in order to keep starvation from their door.
(Fundamentals of Marxism Leninism Manual, 1963, edited by Clemens Dutt.)
Bourgeois private property is the power of the capitalist class to appropriate the surplus products created by the working class. It is through this appropriation that surplus value (which bourgeois economists call “profit”) is realized from the unpaid labor of the working class. At each stage of growth of the capitalist system, a “surplus” population and industrial reserve army are created as a condition for capital’s development. Capitalism rests exclusively on competition between the laborers for wages. Having no means of production of their own, the laborers as a class of wage earners, must sell their labor-power to the owners of means of production for wages or starve.
The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers.
(K. Marx, F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
The capitalist mode of production arose and achieved dominance on the basis of the industrial revolution and the factory system. As is the case with all modes of production, the bourgeois mode of commodity production (capitalism) comes to its historical end based on the emergence of qualitatively new productive forces. Computers and robotics are such productive forces.
(See, Anarchy of production, Base and Superstructure, Bourgeois mode of commodity production, Capital, Factory system, Falling rate of profit.)
Capitalist class: (See, Bourgeois, Bourgeoisie.)
Category:
In philosophy, categories are extremely general, fundamental concepts reflecting the most essential, law-governed connections and relationships of reality. Categories are the forms and stable organizing principles of the thought process and, as such, they reproduce the properties and relations of existence in global and most concentrated form.
Categories are the result of generalization, of the intellectual synthesis of the achievements of science and socio-historical practice and are, therefore, the key points of cognition, the moments when thought grasps the essence of things. This is the starting-point for the analysis of the diversity (individual and particular, part and whole, form and content, etc.).
The categories are universal and lasting because they reflect what is most stable in the universe. Moreover, in the process of history the content, role and status of the categories change and new categories (system, structure, for example) arise.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02.html#ch02-s01
Causality:
Causality is the connections and interaction between one event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event results from the first. In materialist dialectics, cause and effect describe a sequence in time, where cause comes before effect.
From the standpoint of dialectics, causality does not mean a mechanical cause and effect, with one body acting upon another. Cause and effect are not mechanical but instead merge, interpenetrate. Effect becomes (is also) cause, and cause becomes (is also) effect. That is to say, every cause is actually the effect of something happening and “cause-effect.” Every effect is “effect-cause,” in a world where the environment of one thing merges with and impacts the environment of other things. The effect becomes the cause for something else. In addition, one cause may have multiple effects, and effects may result from multiple interacting causes (which is the general rule).
Causality is at the heart of philosophic materialism. It is the understanding there is a cause for everything, every cause becomes an effect, and every effect becomes a cause.
And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.
(F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/introduction.htm
Causality describes how things change from one quality to another. Causality allows one to understand the process of history.
Causality teaches us that certain developments make things possible and make other things impossible. But that does not guarantee that anything in particular is going to happen. Conditions set the stage for various things to happen, but it is the interventions of human beings that make things happen in a particular way. It is the ability of human beings to grapple with the world as it is presented to them and to have a goal within all this possibility that makes things happen.
In this question of causality and everything in human activity, it is the human mind and the human will that is the determining factor. That does not mean that human beings can do anything they want under any circumstances. The parameters are laid out by cause and effect. Within those parameters, what happens depends on what human beings think and what they are prepared to sacrifice and struggle for.
(“Causality and Human Will,” Rally, Comrades! May 2012.)
http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/causality-and-human-will/
(See, Social revolution.)
Change: (See, Causality, Dialectics, Leap, Qualitative change, Quantitative change.)
Chauvinism:
Chauvinism declared that one nation, state or people were superior to everyone else, ordained by God, biological necessity, heredity, skin color or chance to rule and control the wealth of society and earth as rulers over the peoples of earth. Chauvinism does away with class outlook and class interest, and instead substitutes the bourgeois imperialist outlook as a worldview. Chauvinism masquerades as patriotism and is used to stir up pro-war feelings.
Chauvinism, national chauvinism, has been the national idea — loyalty to one’s “own” bourgeoisie — and bourgeois patriotism. Chauvinist ideology justifies oppression and exploitation by one nation, by oppressing peoples or by one political state over non-sovereign peoples, nations and defeated political states.
American exceptionalism is the ideological foundation of US national chauvinism and white chauvinism.
(See, American exceptionalism, White chauvinism, White supremacy.)
Civil Rights Movement: (See, American Revolution 2.5.)
Civil War, US: (See, American Revolution 2.0.)
Class:
Class is a group of people that are economically, and consequently socially, created by specific productive relations. The property relations and the social organization of labor define the system. Classes are groups with a common economic interest that can act politically to achieve change beneficial to their interest. A class for itself strives to capture political power to structure society in its interest.
In US culture, the broadest definition of class is “the haves” and “have nots,” with most people placing themselves in between the two extremes. However, in class society the defining characteristic of class is its property relations, not amount of income.
Economic-social classes arose thousands of years ago during a certain stage in the development of the division of labor, the emergence of the surplus product, defeat of mother-right and the passing of guardianship of the surplus product and the animal kingdom into ownership by individuals.
Throughout history there has been a working class which held different names such as slave or serf or worker. Since the destruction of primitive communism, there has always been a ruling class. The name or designation of that ruling class has always been closely associated with the means of production. For example, the bow and arrow is associated with a chief. The ox and wooden plow and the sword is associated with the nobility. Manufacturing and industrial means are associated with a bourgeoisie. It is also clear that the specific designation of the working class in any particular time is even more tightly associated with the means of production. For example, a plow creates a class of plowman, a machine creates a class of operators or mechanics. There are sub groups within the working class that are even more tightly tied to the means of production.
(N. Peery, The Future Is Up To Us, 2001.) https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/future.pdf
In a society moving in class antagonism, qualitatively changes in the productive forces created new classes and new forms of class.
As the means of production improved and such surpluses were created, different groups related to tools in different ways. Some owned tools and did no work. Some owned tools and worked with them. The majority owned no tools and had to work with tools belonging to others. The first and most fundamental of divisions in society was along these lines. Consequently, modern societies are made up of economic classes of people. (N. Peery, The Future Is Up To Us, 2001.) https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/future.pdf
Lenin’s classic definition of class captures the essence of this social phenomenon.
Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labor of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy.
(V. I. Lenin, A Great Beginning, 1919.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/28.htm
The world has qualitatively changed since the time of Lenin. Class has a historically concrete form based on the configuration of the productive forces. The industrial revolution created an industrial form of the working class. Robotics created a post-industrial electronic form of the working class.
Today we have a new social grouping in society created as a byproduct of robotics. This new form of the proletariat, or new class, is increasingly pushed out of production and finds it increasingly impossible to live in a society where jobs are unavailable. Without wages the new class cannot consume the necessities of life As we enter the 21st century, we are on the verge of a revolution that will change a society composed of exploited and exploiting classes into a society of practical, economic communism. Classes, as such, will come to an end. In a communist society there will be divisions of socially necessary labor but none will create privilege.
(N. Peery, The Future Is Up To Us, 2001.) https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/future.pdf
Class consciousness:
Class consciousness is an understanding by a class that it is a social power and exists in relations with other classes. For the proletariat this means being a single class globally and that transfer of political power to it is the only way to resolve its social and economic problems. It is an understanding that only by the proletariat becoming the new ruling class in society and abolishing private property can society and the earth can be restored to health.
Reform ideology and an awareness of the need for change is not class consciousness. Reform ideology arises spontaneously and calls for fighting within the system, for better conditions of servitude under capitalism. Spontaneous awareness is social consciousness and includes an embryonic sense of group identity and common interests of the enemy, such as the 99% vs. the 1%.
Class consciousness, is counterpoised to reform ideology which is spontaneous awareness. V. I. Lenin made the definitive statement on class consciousness, reform ideology and spontaneous awareness in 1901with his publication of What Is To Be Done?
(V. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, 1901.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/
(See, Spontaneity.)
Class struggle (historical):
While it is true that the “history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” this does not mean that class struggle is the engine and motive force of history. Class struggle is not the engine and motive force of history. Class struggle is a social force. It is the midwife of every society pregnant with the new. Property relations underlie and impel the class struggle. Classes arise from and express property relations.
Thus all collisions in history have their origin, according to our view, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the form of intercourse [that is, relations of production]. Incidentally, to lead to collisions in a country, this contradiction need not necessarily have reached its extreme limit in this particular country.
(K. Marx, F. Engels, German Ideology, 1845, first published 1932; emphasis added.)
https://www.marxists.org/…/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf
There are two primary forms of “the history of class struggles”: the struggle between the two basic classes at the foundation of a mode of production and the struggle of new sets of classes against old sets of classes. The unity and struggles of the two basic classes of a mode of production drives the system that they constitute through all the system’s quantitative stages of development. In addition to this class struggle internal to the system, there is the struggle of new classes created by new means of production, against the old classes and old productive relations. The struggle of the new class(es) against the old is to reorganize society around the qualitatively new productive forces, represented by the new classes.
The first form of class struggle referred to above is the ongoing struggle between the two basic classes of the old social order. This struggle reforms the system as the mode of production passes through all its stages of growth.
The second form of class struggle involves new classes created by new means of production that enter into external collision with the old classes at the base of the old relations of production. This struggle is social revolution and calls forth political revolution against the old classes.
The struggle of the new classes that arise on the basis of qualitatively new means of production is simultaneously an internal struggle between exploiter and exploited and external collision with the old classes and old property relations connected to the old mode of production. The external collision between old and new sets of classes is antagonism and results in destruction of the old set of classes, the old productive relations and superstructure, which had blocked the new classes and new productive forces.
(See, Antagonism, Contradiction, Mode of production.)
Class struggle: (political)
Class struggle is the struggle for political power. It is ultimately the struggle to obtain and/or retain political power. It is a conscious assertion of will by the fighting section of a class and its foremost political representatives to win and hold state power. Rather than a struggle for wages and improvement in the conditions of labor, class struggle is the political struggle for state authority to restructure society in the image of the revolutionary class.
We are all agreed that our task is that of the organization of the proletarian class struggle. But what is this class struggle? When the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No, this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognizes the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle. ‘Every class struggle is a political struggle’ — these famous words of Marx are not to be understood to mean that any struggle of workers against employers must always be a political struggle. They must be understood to mean that the struggle of the workers against, the capitalists inevitably becomes a political struggle insofar as it becomes a class struggle. It is the task of the [Communists], by organizing the workers, by conducting propaganda and agitation among them, to turn their spontaneous struggle against their oppressors into the struggle of the whole class, into the struggle of a definite political party for definite political and socialist ideals. This is something that cannot be achieved by local activity alone.
(V. I. Lenin, Our Immediate Task, 1899.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/articles/arg3oit.htm
Class: Marx’s “class for itself.”
Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance – combination. Thus combination always has a double aim, that of stopping competition among the workers, so that they can carry on general competition with the capitalist. If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages, combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in the face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than that of wages. This is so true that English economists are amazed to see the workers sacrifice a good part of their wages in favor of associations, which, in the eyes of these economists, are established solely in favor of wages. In this struggle – a veritable civil war – all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character.
Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
In the bourgeoisie we have two phases to distinguish: that in which it constituted itself as a class under the regime of feudalism and absolute monarchy, and that in which, already constituted as a class, it overthrew feudalism and monarchy to make society into a bourgeois society. The first of these phases was the longer and necessitated the greater efforts. This too began by partial combinations against the feudal lords.
Much research has been carried out to trace the different historical phases that the bourgeoisie has passed through, from the commune up to its constitution as a class.
But when it is a question of making a precise study of strikes, combinations and other forms in which the proletarians carry out before our eyes their organization as a class, some are seized with real fear and others display a transcendental disdain.
An oppressed class is the vital condition for every society founded on the antagonism of classes. The emancipation of the oppressed class thus implies necessarily the creation of a new society. For the oppressed class to be able to emancipate itself, it is necessary that the productive powers already acquired and the existing social relations should no longer be capable of existing side by side. Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself. The organization of revolutionary elements as a class supposes the existence of all the productive forces which could be engendered in the bosom of the old society.
Does this mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a new political power? No.
The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of every class, just as the condition for the liberation of the third estate, of the bourgeois order, was the abolition of all estates and all orders.
The working class, in the course of its development will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.
Meanwhile the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle which carried to its highest expression is a total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in brutal contradiction, the shock of body against body, as its final denouement?
Do not say that social movement excludes political movement. There is never a political movement which is not at the same time social. It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions. Till then, on the eve of every general reshuffling of society, the last word of social science will always be:
“Le combat ou la mort; la lutte sanguinaire ou le neant. C’est ainsi que la quéstion est invinciblement posée.”
[From the novel Jean Siska by George Sand: ‘Combat or Death: bloody struggle or extinction. It is thus that the question is inexorably put.’]
(K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/hist-mat/pov-phil/ch02.htm
Colony:
A colony is a geographical area and its peoples brought under the direct economic and political control of a foreign state. It is an area, country, nation and/or non-sovereign people economically subjugated, politically ruled and governed by direct state intervention of an imperialist state.
The export of commodities into the colonized area, the establishment and enlargement of the money economy alongside destruction of the natural economy, the stationing of the army of imperial aggression in the subjugated area and the reduction of the non-sovereign peoples to slaves, peons and permanent “second-class citizens,” defined the colony in the epoch of rising capitalism.
While a handful of colonies still exists, the world is no longer based on the old colonial system. Asia, Africa and Latin American have been objectively decolonized. The terms “colony,” “neocolony” and “semicolony” are each bound up with specific stages of development of the industrial revolution and capitalism outlined in V. I. Lenin’s, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. “Colony,” “neocolony,” and “semicolony” do not describe the new reality of a globalized world market, based on the mega-corporate state led by Empire America.
Neocolony:
When a former direct colony threw off the foreign ruler, gained independence, control of its state and political institutions, it became a neocolony. This word comes in part from the Greek word “neo,” which means “new.” The neocolony remained financially dependent upon the former direct colonizer.
The neocolony was the last stage of imperial bondage of non-sovereign peoples and nations based on monopoly capital and the industrial revolution. In the 1970s, the development of a new non-banking financial architecture set the foundation for globalism and the domination of speculative finance. In the new globalized market, the neocolony left the exclusive political and economic orbit of its historical colonizer and became open to world speculative finance.
Semicolony:
A semicolony was a country that broke the direct colonial relationship with it imperial master, and domestic democratic forces gained at least partial control of the state. It was a semicolony because the country remained dependent and locked into the system of finance capital. In the past century, a semicolony either left the capitalist system or lapsed back into a neocolonial status. The Chilean government of Salvador Allende is the classic example of the semicolony of the post-World War II era.
(See, Globalization.)
Color line, color factor:
The color line, color factor in US history is a component of a global phenomenon that is the privileged social position of white people, built into the architecture of global capitalist productive relations. The roots of the color line go back to the post-15th century African slave trade, New World conquest and plantation slavery in the western hemisphere. During the rise of financial imperialism and the partitioning of Africa by the European colonial powers, the color line and color factor were institutionalized as a colonial relation of exploitation and plunder of the conquered peoples. In the US, the privileged social position of white people was developed on the basis of Native American genocide, conquest of Mexico, black chattel slavery and legal segregation.
(See, Racism, White supremacy.)
Comintern (Third Communist International): (See, International, 3rd.)
Commodity:
A commodity is a product created to be sold rather than consumed by the producer. The sum total of society’s products becomes commodities when different producers tied together through a division of labor, produce for exchange, to satisfy each other’s needs. A commodity has a use value and an exchange value. It is a use value because its utility satisfies a human want and an exchange value because it can be exchanged for other commodities. Exchange value (for which the shortened expression is “value”) is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor in a commodity.
To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange. Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labor contained in it; the labor does not count as labor, and therefore creates no value.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
(See, Value, Use value.)
Commodity fetishism:
Fetishism refers to the belief that things possess mysterious and magical power and control over people. Commodity fetishism is the seemingly “mystical and magical power” people face when buying and selling commodities, including the commodity labor-power.
Commodities are sold with a price and bought with money or on credit. The seller never knows if all of their products will be sold, and the consumer is never sure if they can afford the prices of all the products they need. People are baffled at prices and where prices come from. Prices appear as if by magic and seem to be an independent, mystical and even an oppressive social power, especially when the individual can’t afford the things they want. To acquire money, the laboring class must sell their labor power for wages. No one knows if the millions upon millions of acts of buying and selling that drive the system of capitalist production will occur so that people can live in a society based on buying and selling of commodities.
In the development of commodity production, commodities were created by people working in a social division of labor where different people created the different products needed. Capitalist private property masks this relationship between people, which is experienced in the market place as a relation between things with a price. This experience of a relationship between things instead of people is called commodity fetishism because the actual relationship between people is now disguised.
In a communal robotic economy, private property in the means of production will be done away with, and socially necessary means of life will be distributed based on needs. The products of consumption will appear directly as objects of human need with no mysterious power of price or value. Economic communism will do away with the fetish that attaches itself to commodity production. (See, Fetishism: “the fetishism of commodities and the secret thereof.”)
Communism (economy):
Communist economy is a mode of production where private ownership of the means of production is abolished, and distribution of the means to sustain and develop human life is based on needs rather than on accumulation of private wealth. Communist economy is production and distribution based on the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”
Most of humanity over the long eons of its existence lived under a primitive mode of communism with its low level of production and the need for everyone to pull together for survival in nature, without a social division of labor. Today, in our time, robotics and microchip-driven production have given humanity the ability to produce far beyond our collective human needs and deploy less and less labor in production. This lays the basis for a return to classless communism on a higher level.
Communist economy differs from socialist economy. In the past century Marxism defined socialism as the first stage of communism. In the former socialist countries, their economy was not a communist mode of production, but an economy where means of production were owned by the state rather than by individuals and corporations. A slogan of Soviet socialism was, “He who does not work, neither shall he eat,” with the state providing work for everyone.
Marx’s call for communism is: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Today a communist economy is attainable.
Communism (movement):
The communist movement began as an ideological movement and sought to do away with class privilege, exploitation, political oppression and inequality on the basis of private property rights. Communism is also a goal, belief, and vision about how the world ought to be without the strife that results from private property and class antagonism. Communism today is a real-time spontaneous social movement that demands socially necessary means of life for the individual, even if they have neither money nor the means to labor.
Communism is ancient. Since the overthrow of matriarchy and the rise of private property and the state, sections of all societies have espoused a communist ideology and striven to attain a communal (communist) way of life that lessens and does away with privation and class conflict. Most deeply rooted in US culture are the religious teachings that embrace communism as the realization of a faith. They draw on statements such as the following in the Bible, Leviticus 25:35–38: “If one [. . . ] becomes poor [. . . ] help him [. . . ] so he can continue to live among you. Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God [. . . ] You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit,” and from St. Gertrude: “Property: the more common it is, the holier it is.”
All ideological trends within communism hold a vision of a world of peace, justice, equality, sisterhood/brotherhood and goodwill.
Communism and Marxism are different. Communism is a striving and goal for society. Marxism is a social science which describes why society transitions from one mode of production to the next. Marxism is also a philosophy based on materialism and dialectics. Nor are communism and socialism the same. The socialist countries of the 20th century were not communist, although state power was held by ideological communists. Soviet socialism was an industrial economy where bourgeois private property was abolished in everything fundamental to industrial production. For Marxists, socialism is an economic system between capitalism and communism.
(See, Socialism.)
Communist International: (See, International communist organizations.)
Communist Manifesto:
The Manifesto of the Communist Party is the greatest statement of scientific communism ever written. Authored in 1848 by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, affectionately called “the Manifesto,” it is the first published general view of what Marx and Engels called the “science of society.” Chapter I is summarized here.
Frederick Engels explained the origin of the name “Communist Manifesto,” in the 1888 preface to the English edition.
[W]hen it was written, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand the adherents of the various Utopian systems . . . . Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of total social change, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working class to produce the Utopian communism of Cabet in France, and of Weitling in Germany. Thus, in1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the [European] Continent at least, ‘respectable’; communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that ‘the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,’ there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it. (Bold emphasis added.)
Marx and Engels were eyewitnesses to and participants in a social and political revolution from agricultural-feudal society to industrial-capitalist society. The social revolution would be called the industrial revolution. The political revolutions and changes in the property relations would be called the bourgeois democratic revolutions, which ushered in the capitalist mode of production as dominant. Marx and Engels discovered the law of social revolution.
The basic thought running through the Manifesto — that economic production, and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of the primeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles — this basic thought belongs solely and exclusively to Marx.
(Communist Manifesto, preface to the 1883 German Edition.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm
During 20 years of developing large-scale industry and growth of the industrial working class, seven prefaces, which themselves are worthy of study, were added to the Manifesto. Marx and Engels observed the rise of new classes created by the industrial revolution. These new classes constituted the foundation of a new industrial mode of production: the bourgeois mode of commodity production, capitalism.
Chapter One: Bourgeois and Proletarians1
In the 1888 English edition, Engels added definitions of these hugely important terms.
Fn 1. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, 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. (Engels, 1888 English edition.)
The Manifesto’s most famous line opens the narrative, “The history of all hitherto existing society2 is the history of class struggles.” Also in the 1888 English edition, Engels added this footnote.
Fn 2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organization existing previous to recorded history, was all but unknown. . . . With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. (Engels, 1888 English Edition . . . .; ital. in orig.)
Since the rise of the social division of labor, private property and division of society into economic classes, oppressor and oppressed have been locked in fierce combat with each other. The contending classes have fought over shares of the social product, political liberty and on what basis to deploy labor in production.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
While the struggle between classes drives society from one stage to another, the motive force driving the compulsion for humanity to enter the path of progressive development and for history itself to emerge as a stable and coherent framework of development is the contradiction between the productive forces and the emergent productive relations. The contradiction between the productive forces and productive relations is the engine of society’s transformation and human history, before the rise of classes and after economic classes have been wiped from the landscape of history. (See, Class struggle, historical.)
The growth of exchange, trade and the money economy created the early cracks in the system of feudal economy — feudalism — by slowly changing the primary form of wealth from land and landed property to movable wealth – gold and currency. Then came invention. The steam engine, industrial technology, industrial relations and a new industrial social organization of labor, in a few words, new productive forces, came into contradiction and then antagonism with the old productive relations of agriculture, agrarian relations and the manual labor system upon which the old world of feudalism stood.
Invention and improvement of the steam engine accelerated the social revolution, increased the productivity of labor and created new industrial classes, which resulted in new forms of class struggle. These new industrial classes – bourgeoisie and proletariat — were birthed into antagonism, a life and death struggle, with the old feudal classes of feudal society. Feudal society expressed old private property relations based on serf and lord, while the new industrial classes, connected with the new means of production, were birthed in antagonism with the old social order.
Antagonism is a mode of destruction. The destruction of the old classes of agrarian society, with their old means of production, old social organization of labor, old hereditary rights and privileges and old system of governance was caused by new developments in the means of production which throw classes into motion.
The bourgeoisie and proletariat expressed new property relations and qualitatively new means of production.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. (Bold added.)
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable ‘third estate’ of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
Marx describes the initially revolutionary part played by the bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”.
. . . . The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, . . . .
Even as the bourgeoisie played a revolutionary role, its system of production caused the cyclical crises of the capitalist system, which lead to depression, unemployment, starvation and destitution for millions of proletarians.
Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
Marx and Engels also described the physical and intellectual progression of the proletariat.
This organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, and mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.
Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
The proletariat remains the “special and essential product” of bourgeois society. Today, however, qualitatively new means of production create a new form of the proletariat increasingly shut out of capitalistic relations of production.
The Manifesto described the basis for internationalism:
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
Finally, Chapter One outlines the general progression of the bourgeois mode of commodity production, which leads the system to a point where it can no longer ensure the existence of its wage laborers.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
(K. Marx, F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
The ceaseless development of modern industry, and then the emergence of qualitatively new means of production, dig the grave of the bourgeoisie. Only new classes born of new means of production can bring an old mode of production, its old property relations and old social organization of labor to an end. Hence, when Marx states that the “development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products,” he described the new world created by the industrial revolution and today’s process of development of the robotic economy.
The victory of the proletariat remains inevitable!
Concentration and centralization of capital:
Concentration and centralization of capital result from the general law of capitalist accumulation. This means the concentrating of wealth in the hands of one-percent of the one-percent — the concentration of wealth at one extreme which causes poverty and destitution for the vast majority of humanity at the other.
The concentration of capital means the growth in the size of capital as a result of the accumulation of surplus-value obtained in the given enterprise. The capitalist becomes, through investing in his enterprise part of the surplus value which he has appropriated, the owner of an ever larger capital.
The centralization of capital means the growth in the size of capital as a result of fusing several capitals into one larger capital. In the competitive struggle large capital ruins and devours smaller and medium capitalist enterprises which cannot stand up to competition. By buying up the enterprises of his ruined competitor at low prices, or annexing them to his own by some other method (e.g., by means of loans), the large-scale factory-owner increases the amount of capital in his possession. The union of many capitals into one is effected also by the forming of joint-stock companies, etc.
(Political Economy, A Textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of sciences of the USSR, 1957.)
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
(See, Accumulation of capital.)
Concession:
A concession is the winning of a temporary benefit.
(See, Reform, Reformism.)
Concrete and abstract labor:
Concrete labor is the specific skill, art and knowledge that go into production of a commodity. Abstract labor is the human labor embodied in a commodity, without regard to the concrete skills, art or knowledge required for its production. Commodities are products created to be exchanged, rather than consumed by the producer.
Each commodity embodies both concrete labor and abstract human labor. The concrete labor makes the commodity a use value, something of utility. The abstract labor makes the commodity an exchange value, exchangeable for any other commodity that embodies the same socially necessary labor time.
If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labor. . . . If we make abstraction from its use value, . . . we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing, . . . . [W]e put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labor embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labor; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labor, human labor in the abstract.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
(See, Commodity, Use value, Value.)
Connection:
Connection is usually defined as a deep-seated attributive property of matter, consisting in the fact that all objects and phenomena are linked by infinitely varied interdependence and various relations with each other. In other words, connection is a general expression of dependence among phenomena, a reflection of the interdependence of their existence and development. As for relation, it is mostly defined as one of the forms of, or an element in, the universal interconnection of objects and processes. Indeed, everything exists in two hypostases, as it were: as being “by itself and as being “for others”, in relation to these others.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Consciousness:
Consciousness is the ability to create ideas and gain mental awareness of reality through sense perception, engagement and interaction with one’s environment. The depth of consciousness and accuracy of mental awareness are affirmed through experience, practice. An incorrect mental reflection ultimately runs counter to the law system of the phenomenon one is engaging and does not produce the desired result.
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appears at this stage as the direct [result] of their material behavior. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. — real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process.
(K. Marx, The German Ideology, 1845.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
Consciousness (class):
Class consciousness is an awareness of economic classes in society, their material interests and the role they play in production and distribution of the social products, as property owners and non-owners and how class interest is realized in government and state power. Communist class consciousness in the age of the robotic economy is an understanding of the historical significance of the new fallen and destitute proletariat formed on the basis of electronics. It is the understanding that the proletariat is a single class globally and that its social and economic problems can be solved only by transferring political power to it and becoming the new ruling class in society. As ruling class, the proletariat abolishes private property and reorganizes the economy to distribute socially necessary production based on needs rather than profits and lays the basis to eliminate all classes.
Content:
Content in its philosophic meaning is the determining quality of a thing, as it exists in its interactivity and interrelatedness with other things in its environment.
The content of an object is very concrete, it embraces the entire ensemble of its elements (i.e. the material, energy, information, statistical, and dynamic elements), as well as all the real connections and relations within the framework of that object. In complex objects content is many-sided, effectually passing into infinity, for the properties of the object pertaining to its content are infinite: they are variously manifested depending on the other objects with which the given one interacts. Content comprises the essential and the secondary, the law-governed and the accidental, the possible and the real, the external and the internal, the old and the new. So how is content to be defined in view of all this?
Content is the identity of all the elements and moments of the whole with the whole itself; it is the composition of all the elements of the object in their qualitative definiteness, interaction, and functioning; the unity of the objects properties, processes, relations, contradictions and trends of development. It is not all that the object ‘contains’ that constitutes its content. For instance, it would be meaningless to include under the heading of content of an organism the atoms that form the molecules which in their turn form the cells. You will never know what a dove is if you thoroughly study each cell of its organism under an electronic microscope, . . .
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; ital. in orig.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Contradiction:
Contradiction refers to the unity and struggle of opposites within phenomena in nature and society. Every phenomenon in nature is a contradiction, a unity of opposites. Contradiction is an internal process and the basis of all development. Development or motion comes about through the struggle and unity of opposites. Internal contradiction sets matter in motion and impels it forward. The relationship between the two sides of a contradiction is polarity. When considering a thing or specific process in its environment, motion, change, and interconnection, one is confronted with contradiction.
Contradiction is not just any conflict. Each side of a contradiction depends upon its opposite for its very existence. Capitalists and proletarians together are the basic classes that develop in contradiction at the foundation of capitalist society. Both poles in the capitalist system drive capitalist productive relations through all its stages of development. Their unity and struggle are absolute, quantitative and ongoing. The “identity of contradiction,” which arises on the basis of bourgeois private property and is bourgeois and proletariat, consists in both sides being united through property and the market and together they constitute the driving force of capitalist production. Without both poles of the contradiction capitalist production cannot take place.
All processes develop in stages. The relationship between the two poles of a contradiction becomes more contradictory at each stage and forces the emergence of a new quantitative stage. Quantitative change and the new quantitative stage create the conditions for qualitative change to occur.
By a dialectical contradiction Marxism understands the presence in a phenomenon or process of opposite, mutually exclusive aspects which, at the same time, presuppose each other and within the framework of the given phenomenon exist only in mutual connection.
. . . .
Development as the Struggle of Opposites:
The concept of contradiction is of crucial importance in analyzing the process of development. In nature, social life and human thought, development proceeds in such a way that opposite, mutually exclusive sides or tendencies reveal themselves in an object; they enter into a ‘struggle,’ which culminates in the destruction of the old forms and the emergence of new ones. Such is the law of development. ‘Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites,’ wrote Lenin.
. . . .
The division of a unity into opposites and the mutual counteraction or ‘struggle’ of these opposites is the most fundamental and universal law of dialectics. As Lenin emphasizes the division of unity and the cognition of its contradictory parts is one of the most fundamental features of dialectics, it is indeed ‘the essence of dialectics.’
All development, whether the evolution of the stars, the growth of a plant, the life of a man or the history of society, is contradictory in its essence. In fact, development in its most general sense signifies that at any given moment a thing retains its identity and at the same time ceases to retain it. Its definiteness remains, but at the same time it changes and becomes different.
‘There is a contradiction in a thing remaining the same and yet constantly changing, being possessed of the antithesis of ‘inertness’ and ‘change,’ ‘ Engels wrote. A developing thing has within it the embryo of something else. It contains within itself its own antithesis, a ‘negating’ element which prevents it from remaining inert and immutable. It contains an objective contradiction; opposite tendencies operate within it and a mutual counteraction or ‘struggle’ of opposite forces or sides takes place, leading eventually to the resolution of the contradiction, to a radical, qualitative change of the thing.
(O. Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism 1961, pages 93-95; ital. in orig.)
Corporation and mega-corporation:
The word “corporation” derives from corpus, the Latin word for body, or a “body of people.” While ancient, the corporation’s defining character is being a body of people organized on the basis of commerce and ownership of property. A corporation expresses private property and is designed to survive longer than the lives of any member and can exist in perpetuity.
The modern corporation came into existence and developed as an expression of the monopoly stage of capitalism, which was the period of the rise of financial-industrial capitalism. In the US, the emergence of the modern corporation was driven by financing both sides of the Civil War, and this enormous growth of finance was at the foundation of transition to the monopoly stage of capitalism. The corporation became a monopoly combination and expressed the increasing domination of banking capital over industrial capital. Standard Oil Company, founded in 1870, was a template for the modern corporation. The birth of the modern corporation has also been bookmarked by the Supreme Court ruling, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) 118 U.S. 394.
A gigantic increase in concentration and accumulation of capital, combined with qualitatively new means of production, computers and robotics, created the condition for the mega-corporation and megacorporate state. Google by 2015 was capitalized at a staggering $400 billion, Apple at $700 billion, with both racing towards $1 trillion. These are mega-corporations.
The pursuit of money on such a scale requires huge conglomerates, mega-corporations, state and cross state involvement, managing a bewildering array of local governments, and protecting projects against widespread violence and warfare. Great networks of financial institutions must be mobilized and trillions of dollars invested. Mechanisms are needed to coordinate the various aspects, navigating and negotiating the overall process, protecting the interests of all involved politically, as well as, militarily, not only nationally, but globally.
(Rally, Comrades! On the Edge of History, July 2008; bold added.)
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v18ed4art4.html
Crisis theory of capitalism:
The Marxist theory of crisis of capitalism refers to the breakdown and dislocation between production and consumption that result in crises of overproduction. These crises affect the financial markets, such as the housing crisis of 2008. Capitalist crisis is the result of capitalist private property which periodically plunges society into mass unemployment, poverty and destitution and takes two forms
One form of crisis is the cyclical crisis of overproduction which is the result of capitalist private property and its resultant anarchy of production. Cyclical crises are internal to capitalist production and express the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist private appropriation of the social product.
Cyclical crises of overproduction, such as the US Great Depression that commenced in 1929 and 2008, are an expression of anarchy of capitalist production. The act of producing blindly, without regard to the consuming capacity of the working class, results in wars between capitalist states for new markets as well as crises of overproduction, called depression and recession by bourgeois economists. Since 1825, cyclical crises of overproduction have been the typical form of structural crisis of capitalist production.
The second form of capitalist crisis arises on the basis of the antagonism that results from qualitatively new means of production being applied to the production process. Just as the steam engine was the symbol of the industrial revolution, which brought feudal society and all agrarian societies as primary to an end, robotics causes a similar social revolution that brings society to crisis.
Marx and Engels discovered the law of social revolution. The introduction of qualitatively new means of production into an existing system of production creates new forms of classes and brings society to this second form of crisis and antagonism. The second form of crisis results in transition from one mode of production to another.
(See, Antagonism, General crisis of capitalism, Overproduction, Social revolution.)
Criticism and self-criticism:
Criticism and self-criticism are methods for correcting mistakes. Criticism should not be an attack, even if a major political error has been made. It should be done constructively and in a comradely way and help move the work forward. “What’s wrong,” rather than “Who’s wrong” is the correct approach. Criticism and self-criticism must be objective and positive. Not only condemning what is wrong, but indicating how to do what is right.
. . . [T]he main task of criticism is to point out political and organizational mistakes. As to personal shortcomings, unless they are related to political and organizational mistakes, there is no need to be overcritical or the comrades concerned will be at a loss as to what to do. Moreover, once such criticism develops, there is the great danger that within the Party attention will be concentrated exclusively on minor faults, and everyone will become timid and overcautious and forget the Party’s political tasks.
(Mao Tse-tung, On Correcting Mistaken Ideas In The Party, 1929.)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/CMI29.html
No revolutionary organization can survive without criticism and self-criticism.
Culture:
Culture is a way of life for a community, class, occupation, country and virtually any group of people that acts together in a way that produces a common behavior based on a shared experience. Culture is behavior, beliefs, moral values, ethics and symbols, which groups of people accept and pass along from one generation to the next. In its broad meaning, culture is learned cultivated behavior communicated socially.
An ensemble of material and non-material values and of methods of creating them, and the ability to use them for the advancement of mankind and to transmit them from generation to generation, constitute culture. The starting point and the source of the development of culture is human labor, the forms of its realization, and its results. Material culture includes, above all, the means of production and the objects of labor drawn into the circle of social being. It is an indication of man’s practical mastery over nature. Non-material culture incorporates science and the extent to which science is applied in production and everyday life; the state of education, enlightenment, health services, art; the moral norms of the behavior of the members of society; and the level of people’s needs and interests.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Cultural hegemony:
Cultural hegemony is the domination of the ideological, political and intellectual life of society by the outlook, striving and ideology of the ruling class. The foundation of cultural domination is the ruling class’ domination of the material conditions and social relations of production. Society’s social being determines its general social consciousness.
The materialist conception of cultural hegemony was stated by Marx and Engels.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an ‘eternal law.’
The division of labour, which we already saw above as one of the chief forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in the ruling class as the division of mental and material labour, so that inside this class one part appears as the thinkers of the class (its active, conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood), while the others’ attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive and receptive, because they are in reality the active members of this class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves. Within this class this cleavage can even develop into a certain opposition and hostility between the two parts, which, however, in the case of a practical collision, in which the class itself is endangered, automatically comes to nothing, in which case there also vanishes the semblance that the ruling ideas were not the ideas of the ruling class and had a power distinct from the power of this class. The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class; about the premises for the latter sufficient has already been said above.
If now in considering the course of history we detach the ideas of the ruling class from the ruling class itself and attribute to them an independent existence, if we confine ourselves to saying that these or those ideas were dominant at a given time, without bothering ourselves about the conditions of production and the producers of these ideas, if we thus ignore the individuals and world conditions which are the source of the ideas, we can say, for instance, that during the time that the aristocracy was dominant, the concepts honour, loyalty, etc. were dominant, during the dominance of the bourgeoisie the concepts freedom, equality, etc. The ruling class itself on the whole imagines this to be so. This conception of history, which is common to all historians, particularly since the eighteenth century, will necessarily come up against the phenomenon that increasingly abstract ideas hold sway, i.e. ideas which increasingly take on the form of universality. For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. The class making a revolution appears from the very start, if only because it is opposed to a class, not as a class but as the representative of the whole of society; it appears as the whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class.
(K. Marx, F. Engels, The German Ideology, 1845.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm
(See, Base, Culture, Productive Relations and Superstructure.)
Cultural hegemony: Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony referred to the domination of bourgeois ideas and ideology in creating consent and legitimization on the part of the masses. Gramsci wrote of the need of communists to wage a sustained educational struggle to to win the workers away from bourgeois ideology over to a proletarian ideology of class interests. Gramsci posed the following question in his writings: of what should communist activity consist under conditions when there is no revolutionary crisis, and the question of state power is not on the agenda?
Bourgeois cultural hegemony justified and legitimized capitalist production relations, and Gramsci wrote about a conscious fight against this. Gramsci called for creation of “organic intellectuals,” cultural workers, to win the masses over to the culture and morality of the masses. Gramsci outlined his ideas based on what he called the “war of position” and the “war of maneuver.”
The “war of position,” according to Gramsci, meant the battle for education during periods of reform, when it was not possible to overthrow the bourgeois state and bourgeois private property. Gramsci’s “war of maneuver” meant the direct struggle to take political power through insurrection. The example Gramsci used of war of maneuver was the fight of Lenin and the Bolshevik party to carry out the insurrection and establish the new Soviet government.
Gramsci proposed a transition from Lenin’s “war of maneuver” — the direct fight for state power — to educational activity and developing organic intellectuals in a process called the “war of position.”
After his death in 1937, Gramsci’s writings and ideas almost entirely disappeared from the revolutionary movement. The revisionist regime of Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union popularized Gramsci’s ideas by publishing a three-volume set of his writings between 1957 and 1959, and these writings became part of the foundation for Eurocommunism, according to E. J. Hobsbawm, “Introduction” to The Gramsci Reader, Selected Writings 1916-1935. Hobsbawm gives further information on how the birth of Gramsci-ism took place.
For two decades it [Gramsci-ism] was part of the attempt by the international communist movement to emancipate itself from the heritage both of Stalin and the Communist International. Within the ‘socialist camp’ this was reflected in the almost immediate official acknowledgement of Gramsci as a political thinker as well as a martyr – as witness the publication of a three-volume selection from his works in the USSR in 1957-1959, the Soviet presence at the first Gramsci Convegno [translates as: convention] in 1958 and the substantial and implicitly reformist Soviet delegation to the second (1967). Eventually, of course, Gramsci was to make his way into the academic literature.
(E. J. Hobsbawm, “Introduction” to The Gramsci Reader, Selected Writings 1916-1935.)
http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/gramsci-reader.pdf
Cyclical crisis: (See, Anarchy of capitalist production, Crisis Theory; Overproduction, Production.)
Dead and living labor:
All the material objects that human labor produces contain congealed, “dead” labor. Shoes, automobiles, houses, airplanes and baked apple pies each contain a certain amount of dead labor. Money expresses dead labor. Labor in the act of production is living labor. In capitalist society the individual confronts dead labor in commodities that require money in order to purchase them. Under capitalism dead labor, including all forms of bourgeois wealth, dominates living labor, reproduces the property relations and converts living labor into the slave of dead labor.
Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. The time during which the laborer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labor-power he has purchased of him.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S1
Democracy:
Within the context of class society and the state, democracy means the subordination of the minority of the ruling class to the majority of the ruling class. Democracy is often defined in non-class terms as the “rule of the people.” The root of the word democracy is the Greek word “demos,” which means “the people.” However, all democracies are political forms of private property and protect the right of the ruling class to deploy labor in production and appropriate the surplus products created by laborers.
. . . . Democracy is a historical phenomenon. Democracy in general does not exist — there are only concrete types and forms of democracy whose content is determined by a given mode of production. . . .
. . . . Class dictatorship has been variously exercised in the framework of one and the same type of state. Thus slave-owning society went through diverse forms of government: monarchy, or autocratic power; republic, or elected power; democracy, or the power of the majority. Despite these differences, however, the state of that epoch was a slave-owning state. A similar picture is observed in feudal society. The most widespread form of the feudal state was monarchy. But there were also republics — self-governing cities which freed themselves from the power of feudal lords and were run by elected organs. Different types of exploiting state can also have similar forms of government: there were republics both in the slave-owning formation and under capitalism.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; bold added.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Democracy (bourgeois):
Bourgeois democracy is a political form of the state and government, based on equality before the law of all owners of capital. The bourgeois democratic republic is a class system with elected representatives, based on the political category of the citizen. Citizens are a group of individuals recognized by a particular country as being entitled to participate in the political life of that country.
The bourgeois democratic state instituted the status of citizen and abolished the political status of slave, subject and serf, which existed under ancient slavery and feudalism. Feudal society enforced a political status on the masses as serfs and subjects of lords and masters. Even in a bourgeois democratic state with a monarchy (such as England) representative democracy prevails as the abolition of the political-economic categories of serf, slave with people remaining “subjects” in name only.
The economic foundation of American bourgeois democracy and its democratic republic was property owners — small family farms, small capitalist enterprises, slave property, merchant capitalists, independent laborers who owned their own tools and various forms of home ownership based on land grants and squatting. With the overthrow of chattel slavery, destruction of the family farm, conversion of the population into propertyless proletarians, growth of financial imperialism and emergence of speculative finance, the economic basis of the bourgeois democratic republic has been eroded and replaced with a new political-economic reality.
The new mega-corporation and the mega-corporate state rule by means of the national security-surveillance state, called American fascism by many revolutionaries. US fascism (the national security-surveillance state) governs based on the domination of public life by the police state, private armies (mercenaries), private security firms (commercial and residential) and private intelligence and armed security forces attached to corporations. While preserving the historic bourgeois democratic form (the citizen in contradistinction to serf, subject and slave) the national security-surveillance state (mega-corporate state, fascist state) destroys political liberty and reduces all citizens to consumers with no rights before the state and subject to the rule of the mega-corporations.
Democratic centralism:
Democratic centralism was the organizational form of revolutionary organizations/parties in the industrial era. Under democratic centralism, democracy meant collective discussion and decision making, while centralism was individual responsibility to carry out the decisions. It is a principle of organization pioneered by Vladimir Lenin and constituted the foundation of his “party of a new type.” These principles were used by Communist parties of the Third Communist International.
(See, J. Peters, A Manual on Organization, 1935.)
http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1935/07/organisers-manual/ch02.htm
During the period of Lenin and the Third International, democracy within a communist party was realized with the National Congress or national convention as the highest authority of the organization. The period leading to the Convention was a period of extraordinarily broad democracy. During this period all members discussed and debated the program, political resolutions and policy to guide the organization between national gatherings. Once program and policy were discussed and debated and leading bodies elected, centralism was realized in that the decisions of the Congress were binding on all members, including those that might disagree. Lenin described democratic centralism as “freedom of discussion, unity of action.”
(V. I. Lenin, Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., 1906.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm
Developed during the transition from agriculture to industry, democratic centralism was conceived and its principles applied on the basis of the logic of industrial mechanics, social life organized around the factory system and hierarchal organization structures based on industrial time frames. Today, in the national security state and universal surveillance, based on robotics, computers and people-to-people platforms, old industrial forms of existence, including democratic centralism, are obsolete.
(See, International, 3rd.)
Destitute proletariat: (See, Precariat, Proletariat.)
Development:
Development is the stage-by-stage movement through which a phenomenon passes, which constitutes its internally driven self-movement (contradiction). There are two basic kinds of development: quantitative and qualitative change.
Quantitative change is stage-by-stage development of the basic contradiction of a thing based on its polarity -– the unity and struggle of opposites. A new stage is a new quantitative level in a quality that comes about as the result of cumulative quantitative changes. The new level (the increased polarity) represented by the new stage is development. Development is the stage-by-stage movement through which a contradiction (phenomenon) must pass. This movement is expressed as polarization and reform of the basic contradiction (the two poles) as it strives to complete its process.
Dialectics:
In Marxist philosophy dialectics is the actual process of spontaneous self-movement of matter, development and change found in all material reality and human thought. The self-movement of matter and change occurs in a certain way, impelled by contradictory forces within a thing and passes through quantitative stages of growth and leaps from one quality to another. The summation of the basic laws of this self-movement and change is the law system of dialectics.
Dialectical motion and change are explained by causality (a coherent law of connectedness and connections), wherein every cause results from an effect and every effect results from a cause. Philosophy long ago put forth the notion that everything is in constant motion and change. Change and development take place as ebb and flow, backsliding, pauses, quantitative stages of growth and leaps forward – not in a straight line. Marx’s dialectic contends that, in society and human thought, something is always arising and developing, and something is always disintegrating and dying away. In any process the thing that is arising is of vital importance.
The universal motion of change and transformation, in the heavens and on earth, existed before the birth of humanity and human consciousness. This law system of motion is objective dialectics. It is called objective dialectics because the system of change is not dependent upon human consciousness and operates independently of human consciousness. The reflection of objective dialectics in the human mind, human awareness of these laws and the study of this law system of change is subjective dialectics.
Engels wrote about “the general nature of dialectics to be developed as the science of interconnections, in contrast to metaphysics.” He called dialectics
the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself. And indeed they can be reduced in the main to three:
The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa;
The law of the interpenetration of opposites;
The law of the negation of the negation.
. . . . We are not concerned here with writing a handbook of dialectics, but only with showing that the dialectical laws are really laws of development of nature, and therefore are valid also for theoretical natural science. Hence, we cannot go into the inner interconnection of these laws with one another.
. . . . The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).
All qualitative differences in nature rest on differences of chemical composition or on different quantities or forms of motion (energy) or, as is almost always the case, on both. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned. In this form, therefore, Hegel’s mysterious principle appears not only quite rational but even rather obvious.
(F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1883.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch02.htm
Some features of Marx’s dialectics are:
1) Nature, society, earth and the heavens are an integrated whole, in continuous motion, connected and interactive, where a thing is bound up with other things in an interactive environment – condition, place and time.
2) Nature, society, earth and the heavens are in a state of constant change, development, disintegration, dying away and rebirth. History is not static things following one another; events are caused by what precedes them. What is arising is of the greatest significance.
3) Contradiction is the internal compulsion inherent to all things. The process of development and change includes polarity and polarization. Antagonism in class society is a mode of destruction.
4) Changes are from lower to higher order and from less complex to more complex systems. Thought and human understanding follow this law of “from lower to higher.” Change occurs by negation, sublation and negation of the negation, in an upward spiral type of motion.
5) Quantitative changes are the definite and indispensable stages of development of a quality. The passing from one stage to another entails crossing a nodal point in development. Qualitative change begins with the quantitative, incremental introduction of a new quality into a process, and the change occurs as a leap. The leap is an abrupt break in continuity and signals transition and the emergence of a new qualitative state.
(See, Causality, Contradiction, Negation and Negation of the negation.)
Dialectical materialism:
Dialectical materialism is a philosophic outlook created by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and was born of the generalization of scientific achievement and of humankind’s historical experience, which showed that social life and human consciousness arise from material relations, and like nature itself, are in a state of motion, change, transformation, and development, punctuated by leaps from one qualitative state to another.
It is called dialectical materialism because its approach to the phenomena of nature, its method of studying and apprehending them, is dialectical, while its interpretation of the phenomena of nature, its conception of these phenomena, its theory, is materialistic.
(J. V. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, 1938; ital. in orig.) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics are used interchangeably and define Marxist philosophy. Marxism is the science of society, while Marxist philosophy explores the law system of universal interconnections — causality. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were the founders of this philosophy. By developing materialist dialectics, Marx and Engels caused a revolutionary upheaval in philosophy. Their philosophy differs from all the philosophies that existed before them.
(See, Contradiction, Dialectics, Law system, Materialism, Philosophy, Science.)
Dictatorship of the proletariat:
The dictatorship of the proletariat is the proletariat organized as the ruling class in society. Capitalist society is the dictatorship of the capitalist class and its state (mega-corporate state), capitalist government and political liberty designed to enhance the rule of capital. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the destitute proletariat under communal property relations, the proletarian state (anti-corporate state), proletarian government and political liberty designed to enhance the rule of the proletarian masses. Dictatorship of the proletariat is a political state with laws that prevent any one individual or social group from converting wealth, authority or ownership of things into ownership and control of socially necessary means of production.
[N]ow as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle, and bourgeois economists the economic economy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production . . ., (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society .
(Abstract from Letter from Marx to J. Weydemeyer, 1852; ital. in orig.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05-ab.htm
Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
(K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875; ital in orig.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
Digital revolution:
Digital revolution and electronic revolution are used interchangeability thought this text.
(See, Electronic revolution.)
Division of labor:
The social division of labor is the separation of the labor process into different tasks and spheres of work in the production of things, not only on a personal-biological level but on a broader social level. The initial spontaneous division of labor was natural, based on the division of labor between in childbearing and age groups, young and old. In primitive society productive activity was based on a natural division of labor and simple cooperation.
Simple cooperation involves each member of a community doing the same thing to accomplish a goal, which would have been unattainable and unthinkable for a single person who was, say, hunting a large animal or building a home. In primitive communities, communal life prevailed that corresponded to the natural division of labor and simple cooperation.
A certain stage in development of the productive forces brought forth the first agricultural revolution and created a new division of labor, the social division of labor
With the advance to cattle-breeding and agriculture there arose the social division of labor, that is, the division of labor under which at first different communities, and then individual members of communities as well, began to engage in differing forms of productive activity. The separation of the pastoral tribes was the first great social division of labor. The pastoral tribes engaged in breeding cattle achieved substantial successes. They learned to care for the cattle in such a way that they received more meat, wool and milk. This first big social division of labor already led to what was for that age a noticeable rise in the productivity of labor. . . .
(Political Economy, A Textbook, 1957.)
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
Changes in the productive forces create the condition for, and cause changes in, the social and technical division of labor. The rise of manufacture involved a new division of labor that divided production into separate tasks, each carried out under one roof by separate workers. With development of the industrial revolution and industrial machinery, a new technical division of labor and new social organization of labor developed.
Computers and robotics begin destruction of the social and technical division of labor by kicking human labor out of the sphere of commodity production and by doing that free humankind from their ancient enslaving subordination to a division of labor.
(See, Manufacture.)
Division of labor (destruction of):
Robotic production will eventually eliminate human labor as the primary component in production of material value, and by doing that begin destruction of the division of labor.
Robotic production is qualitatively different from industrial production. Industrialism increased the division of labor. Robotics gradually destroys more and more of the division of labor. This means that entire categories of jobs are wiped out forever, as the invention of the electric refrigerator in the past destroyed the job of bringing ice for “ice boxes” to individual homes.
Industrialism augmented human labor in production. Robotics replaces human labor in production. Industrialism decreased value (human labor time) in commodities. Robotics destroys value in commodities. Commodities created by robots force identical commodities created by human labor off the market because the robot produces better, faster and more cheaply.
Robots and computers can process information and knowledge, a function once limited to human beings. Robots reproduce the skills and labor of the workers in the workers’ absence and destroy the division of labor. Even occupations that seemed secure, because they involve immediate interpersonal interactions (surgeon, teacher, waiter, fast-food worker) are being eliminated.
Stage by stage robotics destroys the division of labor and the social organization of labor that sustained capitalist commodity production. Under capitalism, robotics creates a greater mass of commodities and poverty-stricken moneyless proletarians that cannot buy these products, because they are increasingly kicked out of the social division of labor and have no money.
Robots and computers impel the social revolution that destroys the society that was built up on the basis of the industrial revolution. Robotics brings the system of capitalist production to its historical end. As robotics destroys the division of labor, and society is brought to political revolution, different classes fight to reorganize the new economy in their favor.
(See, Social revolution.)
Dogmatism:
Dogmatism is the mechanical application of general laws to a concrete situation. Dogmatism denies the relativity of knowledge, the connection of knowledge to changing material relations of production, changing and different experiences, and the growth of understanding. One form of dogmatism clings to propositions that were appropriate in a previous stage of development and insists that the old propositions remain valid for all times.
Contrary to dogmatism, Marxist philosophy allows its adherents to change their thinking and conclusions and brings them into alignment with changes in the productive forces and the advance of science. Several propositions from the eras of Marx and Lenin may be clung to as dogma, even when admittedly the conditions that gave rise to these propositions have qualitatively changed.
Economic determinism:
Anti-Marxists charge Marxists today with believing in “economic determinism” which supposedly holds that all events in society result directly from the economy, economic activity and technological development in a direct mechanical way. More often than not, those charging Karl Marx and Frederick Engels with economic determinism have not studied or read their writings, or are outright enemies of Marx’s law of social revolution.
Engels clarifies Marx’s approach.
According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary.
(F. Engels, Letter to J. Bloch, 1895.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm
While economic determinism, if it existed, would be hostile to the science of society, determinism is the basic principle of all genuinely scientific thinking. Determinism, in its philosophic essence, asserts that everything in existence is governed by law systems. It is only by knowing the causes of phenomena that one can scientifically explain their origin, and only by knowing the laws governing phenomena that their further development can be predicted. Marxism supports dialectical determinism as a form of dialectical materialism.
(See, Politics.)
Economy:
The economy is the foundation of society and has two basic parts: production and distribution. Production takes place based on knowledge, tools, machines, skills, and sources of energy. An industrial economy combines human labor and power-driven machines. The foundation of the past century’s economy was industrial, but it is changing to one of robotics.
The other side of the economy is distribution.
Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor-power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one.
(K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
The capitalists own all socially necessary means of production. The workers sell their ability to work for wages and use their wages to buy necessaries of life. This system of production and distribution is a capitalist economy.
(See, Communism (economy), Political economy.)
Egalitarianism:
Egalitarianism is a utopian philosophy that advocates equal shares of everything for everyone. Egalitarianism advocates universal leveling of everyone in society as the means to achieve equality, with everyone receiving the same thing in society, regardless of differences between individuals, families and communities. Egalitarianism is opposed to communism, which is distribution of socially necessary means of life based on needs, even if the individual has no money. Egalitarianism and equalitarianism are used interchangeably.
Equalitarianism owes its origin to the individual peasant type of mentality, the psychology of share and share alike, the psychology of primitive peasant ‘communism.’ Equalitarianism has nothing in common with Marxist socialism. Only people who are unacquainted with Marxism can have the primitive notion that the Russian Bolsheviks want to pool all wealth and then share it out equally. That is the notion of people who have nothing in common with Marxism. That is how such people as the primitive ‘Communists’ of the time of Cromwell and the French Revolution pictured communism to themselves. But Marxism and the Russian Bolsheviks have nothing in common with such equalitarian ‘Communists.’
(J. V. Stalin, Talk With the German Author Emil Ludwig, 1931.) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/dec/13.htm
K. Marx and F. Engels considered the principles of universal asceticism and crude leveling, which were characteristic of early communist literature, to be reactionary elements. The reactionary features of egalitarianism found particularly vivid expression in ‘barracks communism,’ which reduced people’s capabilities and needs to one level. Under conditions in which the proletariat has not yet taken shape as a class, the advancement of the principle of egalitarianism against the exploiting classes is, as Engels said, ‘a necessary stage of transition’ from plebeian and petit bourgeois revolutionism to proletarian revolutionism. In modern times, however, egalitarianism is a reactionary principle that is in opposition to the revolutionary ideals and the principle of equality advanced by the working class. (Egalitarianism) http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/egalitarianism
Electronic revolution:
The electronic revolution is one of the names given to the new means of production, instruments, tools and processes built up on the basis of the microchip. Electronic revolution, robotics revolution, super-industrialism, information revolution, digital revolution and second machine age describe the dislocation and destruction of the societies that were built up on the basis of the industrial revolution. Society worldwide is being restructured on the basis of the microchip, computers, robotics and biogenetics.
Computers and robotics are qualitatively new kinds of machines. Robots incorporate the knowledge, skills and efforts of previous generations of laborers and produce things without the laborer. This new quality of production is revolutionary. It differs from all previous systems of production because it renders human labor superfluous in production and breaks the circuit of buying and selling as the foundation of capitalist private property relations. Workers shut out of production cannot buy commodities created by employed workers. Robotics reduces the employment-to-population ratio in a system based on wage labor being able to sell its labor power and consume products created by wage slaves. Robotics is machinery that has the ability to process information and knowledge outside the human brain.
The more robotics renders human labor superfluous and reduces the employment-to-population ratio, the more the system becomes wageless production and appears incapable of meeting the needs of the world proletariat. Machines are not paid wages and cannot consume commodities. Introducing laborless production into a system which depends on wages to circulate commodities constitutes an assault upon the economic base of capitalist society. These qualitatively new means of production are incompatible with the wage labor system and stand in antagonism with capitalist property relations.
Emancipation:
Emancipation is being liberated from private property relations and its law systems that enslave classes and social groups. Individuals may escape one class position and enter another, but classes cannot escape the property relations and division of labor that casts them as working class, ruling class, and all the economic layers between these two poles.
Classes are fully emancipated by being kicked out of the property relations and division of labor that casts each group as a specific form of the working class or ruling class. Qualitative changes in the means of production create the conditions for the emancipation of a class, by destroying the old social division of labor and property relations that corresponded to the old means of production. Slaves, serfs and proletarians, as economic classes, cannot be emancipated until their human energy is replaced by a more efficient form of energy. A plow creates more sustenance and wealth than a bow and arrow, so humanity took up the plow. Mechanized labor is more efficient than manual labor, so humanity took up industrialism.
. . . . [I]t is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. ‘Liberation’ is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse. . . .
(K. Marx, F. Engels, The German Ideology, 1845.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm
Electronic production is more efficient than industrial production. Over the past 30 years, the industrial form of the working class has been sublated and replaced by an electronic form of the working class, created based on qualitatively new means of production. If robotics allows, say, two billion people to produce all the socially necessary means of life continuously required by 7-10 billion people, then the majority have been kicked out of (emancipated from) the social division of labor.
The problem is that the capitalist system blocks and prevents the world proletariat from creating a system of production and distribution based on need. Either the people eke out a wretched existence, starve in poverty and destitution, or the proletariat takes up the cause of political revolution to overthrow the capitalist system, and replaces it with a new system of production and distribution of the social product.
(See, Division of labor, destruction.)
Emancipation of women:
A determined, immediate and continuous struggle for the full and final emancipation of women is not only morally correct but is a precondition for the emancipation of all of society. Women were the first oppressed social group. Their final emancipation will be based on productive forces powerful enough to destroy the need to appropriate the unpaid labor of any social group in society.
The dialectic of emancipation is such that an oppressed and exploited class, and/or an oppressed grouping, such as women, can only be emancipated when their labor is replaced by a more efficient form of energy. Around the world, having to haul water home daily is a task which falls on women, and using new technology to remove this task will make a major difference for the women of the world.
In the US machines such as the washing machine, vacuum cleaner, microwave oven, etc. will be followed by others which will further significantly lighten housework. The point isn’t fighting with a significant other over who will do what chores but how to come up with solutions to reduce/eliminate housework. In fact, under capitalism various tasks that were part of housekeeping have been almost entirely removed from the home, such as meal preparation. The question now isn’t, “What shall we eat for dinner?” but, “Where shall we go to pick up dinner?”
The oppression of women can be abolished only when private property, classes and the state are eliminated. Even when capitalism is ended, there will remain a struggle for the full and final emancipation of women. While the end of capitalism is a necessary condition for the emancipation of women, women’s final emancipation requires the destruction of value, destruction of the social division of labor and abolition of classes.
Engels wrote of women’s future emancipation.
What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual – and that will be the end of it.
(F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-
family
With increased use of machines, computers and robots, the need for workers to have upper body strength, indeed, strength at all, has been removed from the workplace. This eliminates most of the material basis for unequal treatment of women as employees. However, as the material basis for women’s unequal societal position has been eliminated, those who benefit from paying women less—capitalists—now work harder and harder to maintain the ideological belief in women’s inequality. While technological changes have laid the basis for women’s emancipation, the struggle of men and women together is necessary to overthrow capital and institute a fair system.
(See, Feminist ideology, Woman question.)
Emergence:
Emergence is the coming into being, actualization, of the new. The study of emergence deals with the problem of change, how and when new things come into being. Coming into being occurs at a certain stage of development where a qualitatively new phenomenon begins. The qualitatively new phenomenon is characterized by its own new law system.
Any object emerges, develops, functions and disappears only in connection with other objects. The birth of a thing does not mean birth out of an absolute nothing but its emergence out of another thing, just as destruction only signifies its transformation into another thing. In all these transformations, births and destructions, material substance remains immutable, it neither comes into being nor does it disappear. Matter changes only in connection with its conservation, and conservation is manifested only in the changes of its forms. . . .
The task of scientific cognition is to identify the cause of the emergence of a given phenomenon, to establish its essential properties and a law-governed connection between them. Of particular significance for the advancement of scientific cognition is the discovery of new facts.
(Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Emergence is of particular interest now that the world is changing from the industrial epoch to the new robotic epoch.
Empiricism:
A philosophic outlook that states that sensory experience is the sole source of knowledge, empiricism originated in England in the seventeenth century. It was a mode of thinking of the rising bourgeoisie. Religion had been the dominant mode of thought. But as the capitalist and worker struggled against the old feudal classes, bourgeois thought swung to the other extreme, becoming overly impressed with the value of experience. Empiricism is opposed to a scientific, historical outlook.
Today, through its control of the media and other means of influencing ideas, the capitalist class has made empiricism the dominant mode of thought in the United States. Empiricism is an anti-philosophy philosophy that denies the need to study and master the dialectical laws of causality. Dialectics have to be studied. Empiricism disables those who practice it.
(See, Dogmatism.)
Engels, Frederick (1820-1895):
Frederick Engels, cofounder with Marx of scientific socialism, was born on November 28, 1820, at Barmen, Germany, the son of a textile manufacturer. In 1841 he joined the circle of ‘Left-Hegelians,’ radically inclined students of the philosophy of Hegel. In March, 1842, appeared Engels’ brochure, Schelling and Revelation, in which he subjected to a devastating critique the reactionary and mystical doctrines of Schelling, which attempted to ‘reconcile religion with science.’ By the end of 1842 Engels had definitely turned to communism. In 1844 he joined Karl Marx in writing The Holy Family, directed against the Left-Hegelians. In 1845 he published in Germany his famous Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, the materials for which he had painstakingly gathered while working in his father’s textile mill in Manchester.
In the spring of 1845 Engels went to Brussels, where Marx was staying. Here they prepared their joint work, The German Ideology, in which they criticized the shortcomings of the philosophy of Feuerbach, the views of the Left-Hegelians and so-called ‘true socialism’ which denied the class struggle and preached universal reconciliation. Like Marx, Engels combined his scientific pursuits with practical activity among the workers, and, like him, participated in the work of the secret German Communist League, doing extensive work in preparation for its second congress, for which it was necessary to set up a program. Engels wrote Principles of Communism as a rough draft of this program and then, together with Marx, wrote the world famous Manifesto of the Communist Party (Communist Manifesto).
From 1864, the time of the founding of the First International . . . , Engels together with Marx carried on a struggle against the Proudhonists, Bakuninists, and all the other enemies of the International. In the autumn of 1870, Engels moved from Manchester to London where he served in the General Council of the International. After this organization terminated its existence, Marx and Engels continued to lead the socialist movement, and the burden of the struggle against anti Marxian tendencies fell upon Engels’ shoulders, since Marx was doing his most intensive work on Capital. At this time Engels wrote his articles in opposition to Eugen Dühring from which the celebrated work Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Dühring) was composed. During this period Engels also devoted himself to a profound study of natural science and mathematics, the results of which can be seen in his important but unfinished work, Dialectics of Nature.
After the death of Marx, Engels turned to the work of editing and preparing for publication the second and third volumes of Capital, which Marx had not completed. In 1885 Engels published the second volume, and in 1894 the third. In this work on Capital Engels set up a lasting monument to his great friend, a monument on which he involuntarily inscribed his own name. To this period also belongs the classic, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which Lenin called, one ‘of the fundamental works of modern socialism.’ In 1888 appeared Engels’ work, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy, which, together with his Anti Dühring, equipped generations of Marxists with the fundamental principles of dialectical and historical materialism.
Engels died on August 5, 1895.
No better and more correct statement on the relations of Engels to Marx in the creation of Marxism can be given than that which Engels himself gave. He wrote: ‘I cannot deny that both before and during my forty years’ collaboration with Marx I had a certain independent share in laying the formulations, and more particularly in elaborating the theory. But the greater part of its leading basic principles, particularly in the realm of economics and history, and, above all, its final, clear formulation, belong to Marx. What I contributed — at any rate with the exception of a few special studies — Marx could very well have done without me. What Marx accomplished I would not have achieved. Marx stood higher, saw farther, and took a wider and quicker view than all the rest of us. Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented. Without him the theory would not be what it is today. It therefore rightly bears his name.’
(Ludwig Feuerbach, p. 52, note.)
(H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, Proletarian Publishers, 1949, pages 37-38.)
Equalitarianism: (See, Egalitarianism.)
Equality:
As is well known, however, from the moment when the bourgeoisie emerged from feudal burgherdom, when this estate of the Middle Ages developed into a modern class, it was always and inevitably accompanied by its shadow, the proletariat. And in the same way bourgeois demands for equality were accompanied by proletarian demands for equality. From the moment when the bourgeois demand for the abolition of class privileges was put forward, alongside it appeared the proletarian demand for the abolition of the classes themselves — at first in religious form, leaning towards primitive Christianity, and later drawing support from the bourgeois equalitarian theories themselves. The proletarians took the bourgeoisie at its word: equality must not be merely apparent, must not apply merely to the sphere of the state, but must also be real, must also be extended to the social, economic sphere. And especially since the French bourgeoisie, from the great revolution on, brought civil equality to the forefront, the French proletariat has answered blow for blow with the demand for social, economic equality, and equality has become the battle-cry particularly of the French proletariat.
The demand for equality in the mouth of the proletariat has therefore a double meaning. It is either — as was the case especially at the very start, for example in the Peasant War [see Engels’ work Peasant War in Germany] — the spontaneous reaction against the crying social inequalities, against the contrast between rich and poor, the feudal lords and their serfs, the surfeiters and the starving; as such it is simply an expression of the revolutionary instinct, and finds its justification in that, and in that only. Or, on the other hand, this demand has arisen as a reaction against the bourgeois demand for equality, drawing more or less correct and more far-reaching demands from this bourgeois demand, and serving as an agitational means in order to stir up the workers against the capitalists with the aid of the capitalists’ own assertions; and in this case it stands or falls with bourgeois equality itself. In both cases the real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity. We have given examples of this, and shall find enough additional ones when we come to Herr Dühring’s fantasies of the future.
The idea of equality, both in its bourgeois and in its proletarian form, is therefore itself a historical product, the creation of which required definite historical conditions that in turn themselves presuppose a long previous history. It is therefore anything but an eternal truth. And if today it is taken for granted by the general public — in one sense or another — if, as Marx says, it “already possesses the fixity of a popular prejudice”, this is not the effect of its axiomatic truth, but the effect of the general diffusion and the continued appropriateness of the ideas of the eighteenth century.
(F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/
Error:
Error is an idea or a combination of ideas and images that arise in the mind of the individual or society and do not correspond to reality but are regarded as true. This definition of error follows logically from that of cognition as the reflection of reality. Error is honest untruth. Unlike error, falsehood or deception is dishonest untruth. A person knows that a certain idea is untrue but for some reason or other he presents it as true. The person who makes a mistake leads others into error because he himself has erred. The liar, on the other hand, while deceiving others, is not himself deceived. Falsehood speaks of something that exists as non-existent and of the non-existent as existing. But truth has a force that the lie lacks: the latter is usually exposed in the long run. Someone has said that a lie is rather like spitting against the wind; the spit is bound to fly in the liar’s face. Error should be distinguished from the mistake that is the result of incorrect practical or mental activity, evoked by purely accidental, personal causes. It is commonly believed that errors are annoying accidents. But they have relentlessly pursued knowledge throughout history, they are a kind of penalty that humanity has to pay for its daring attempts to know more than is permitted by the level of practice and the scope of theoretical thought. The ancients saw the source of error either in the natural imperfection of our cognitive abilities, in the limitations of sensuous and rational knowledge, in lack of education, or a combination of all these factors.
(A. Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism, 1983.)
http://marxists.catbull.com/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch04-s03.html
(See, Truth.)
Essence:
To bring out the essence of something means to penetrate into the core of a thing, into its basic properties; it means to establish the cause of its emergence and the laws of its functioning, as well as the tendencies of development.
. . . . Essence is concealed from the human eye, while phenomenon lies on the surface. Essence is therefore something hidden, something deep-lying concealed in things and their inner connections, something that controls things; it is the basis of all the forms of their external manifestation. Essence is conceived both on a global scale, as the ultimate foundation of the universe, and in the limits of definite classes of all that is, e.g., minerals, plants, animals, or man.
The very concept of essence is comprehensive and cumulative: it contains the integral unity of all the most profound, fundamentally connected elements of the content of an object in their cause-and-effect relations, in their inception, development, and tendencies of future evolution. It contains the cause and the law, the principal contradictions and the structure, and that which determines all the properties of the object. Essence is in this sense something internal, a certain organizing principle of the object’s existence in the forms of its external expression.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
(See, Appearance.)
Exchange value:
Exchange value is the amount of socially necessary labor in a commodity. It expresses the rate at which two different products of human labor can be exchanged for each other. Value (shorthand for exchange value) exists in human society where people are organized with a division of labor for the production and distribution of goods and services.
Commodities of different kinds have only one characteristic in common which makes it possible to compare them for purposes of exchange, and it is that they are all products of labour. Underlying the equivalence of two commodities which are exchanged against each other is the social labour expended in producing them. When a commodity producer brings an axe to market in order to exchange it he finds that for his axe he can get 20 kilograms of grain. This means that the axe is worth the same amount of social labour as 20 kilograms of grain are worth. Value is the social labour of commodity producers embodied in a commodity.
(Political Economy, A Textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1957.)
http://www.marx.be/Prime/ENG/Books/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf 3
(See, Commodity, Value.)
Exploitation and Oppression:
Exploitation and oppression are two sides of subjugation in class society. Exploitation is economic in its essence, and oppression is political. Exploitation is when one section of society owns the means of production, deploys labor in production and appropriates the surplus product. Exploitation can be measured, as Marx explained. The rate of surplus value expresses exploitation of labor by capital. Government and state, which carry out the will of the ruling class, are instruments of oppression.
Exploitation is impossible without oppression. Oppression is political subjugation and military domination of the exploited classes and strata in society. Exploitation and oppression refer to human relations and not machines. Robots cannot be exploited or politically oppressed.
The new destitute proletariat, born of robotics, more or less shut out of the capitalist production of commodities, cannot rise “high enough” to enter the labor force and be consistently exploited. Yet this proletariat is oppressed and needs to overthrow capitalism to feed itself.
Expropriation:
Expropriation is the act of depriving an individual, class or enterprise of its property and property rights, including the transfer of property from one individual to another and from one class to another. After the rise of the division of labor and private property, each transition from one mode of production to the next, witnessed the expropriation of one form of private property by another and its sublation. Negation refers to an old form of private property being destroyed, while sublation refers to a new form of private property.
Early in its history, the bourgeoisie expropriated the small-scale producers’ means of production including land and became owners of gigantic means of production in the factory system. In England this was called the Clearing of the Lands. To acquire the necessaries of life, the masses of humanity were now compelled to sell their labor ability to the new owners of the means of production.
Marx describes how new productive forces set the stage for the dissolution of an old form of private property and how new social forces expropriate the old property owners.
From that moment new forces [new means of production] and new passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organization fetters them and keeps them down. It must be annihilated; it is annihilated. Its annihilation, the transformation of the individualized and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy property of the many into the huge property of the few, the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labor, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises a series of forcible methods, of which we have passed in review only those that have been epoch-making as methods of the primitive accumulation of capital. The expropriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with merciless Vandalism, and under the stimulus of passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly odious. Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent laboring individual with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labor of others, i.e., on wage labor.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Expropriation deals with negation of one form of private property by another and seizing property with or without compensation. Appropriation refers to taking possession of a thing that is the product of the labor of another person or class. The ruling class appropriates the surplus product of the producers. Under capitalism, groups of laborers working together create the social products and services, which are taken – appropriated – by the corporations and owners of the business and sold on the market.
Faction:
A political faction within a communist organization is an independent organization within the organization. A faction is organized around its own leaders, program, policy, propaganda apparatus and fundraising capability. It fights to establish itself as a competing center of authority. Differences of opinion are normal for any organization or group of individuals. When differences cross a threshold and become a faction, the organization will either split over the factional program or purge the faction.
(See, Fraction.)
Factory system:
The factory system consists of gigantic machinery and a division of labor based on socialized production, where groups of people working in common, subordinate themselves to the motion of the machinery to create a product. The factory system was first adopted in Britain at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century and later spread around the world.
When the machinery, as a whole, forms a system of manifold machines, working simultaneously and in concert, the co-operation based upon it, requires the distribution of various groups of workmen among the different kinds of machines. But the employment of machinery does away with the necessity of crystallising this distribution after the manner of Manufacture, by the constant annexation of a particular man to a particular function. Since the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place at any time without an interruption of the work.
. . . . In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.
(K. Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S4
Because of the high capital cost of machinery and factory buildings, factories were owned by capitalists who employed wage labor and appropriated the social product as their private property.
Falling rate of profit:
Falling rate of profit refers to the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, as a law inherent to capitalist production. Under capitalist productive relations the rate of profit tends to fall due to reducing human labor in commodities.
The progressive tendency of the general rate of profit to fall is, therefore, just an expression peculiar to the capitalist mode of production of the progressive development of the social productivity of labor. This does not mean to say that the rate of profit may not fall temporarily for other reasons. But proceeding from the capitalist mode of production, it is proved logical necessity that in its development the general average rate of surplus-value must express itself in a falling general rate of profit. Since the mass of the employed living labor is continually on the decline as compared to the mass of materialized labor set in motion by it, i.e., to the productively consumed means of production, the portion of living labor, unpaid and congealed in surplus-value, must also be continually on the decrease compared to the value represented by the invested total capital. Since the ratio of the mass of surplus-value to the value of the invested total capital forms the rate of profit, this rate must constantly fall.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. III, 1894.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm
During the industrial-capitalist era, technological advances lowered the amount of socially necessary labor in commodities, and at the same time relatively increased the portion of total capital invested in the physical plant or factory. Reduced labor in production resulted in lowered value, which ultimately means less surplus value per commodity. Reduced surplus value due to the elimination of a mass of labor in production creates the tendency of the general rate of profit to fall.
From its earliest beginnings to its domination of the global society, capitalists have been, and are, driven by competition to maximize their profit in competition with other capitalists. In competition each capitalist drives down the cost of production to increase profits through greater exploitation of labor and introduces new technology to cut labor costs and increase productivity.
The introduction of new technology gives a competitive edge to the capitalist who first introduces the technology. But as the new technology is adopted by competitors, and the increased productivity and lower labor costs spread across the whole product line, the price falls in accord with the lower value and less surplus value is [appropriated] in the process of production. Thus, the rate of profit falls for all.
Capital’s drive for maximum profits has led to the introduction of a revolutionary new means of production, thus opening up an era of social revolution. Previous technological advances were labor-saving. Electronic technology in production replaces labor.
(Rally, Comrades!, Destruction of Value Marks Capitalism’s End, 2009.)
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v19ed1art3.html
The law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall operates during all stages of the capitalist mode of production. It reflects capitalist productive relations.
(See, Organic composition of capital.)
Fascism (historical, Europe):
Fascism is a form of state power that originates in capitalist private property, and whose class basis is the capitalist class. Fascism in power was the nullification and overthrow of a country’s bourgeois democratic norms and openly placed financial-industrial-corporate interests, not simply generalized bourgeois property interests, as the goal of the state and country. In Europe, fascism’s ascendancy to power occurred in combat with a section of the working class in a state of unrest that was open to revolutionary ideas.
In the past century, Europe was completing the final stage of transition from agrarian to industrial society, in an environment where the Soviet Revolution of 1917 had brought the proletariat and poorest peasants to power and pulled the Soviet Union outside the capitalist system. Beginning in Italy, fascism arose as bourgeois Europe’s response to the 1917 October Russian socialist revolution, whose proclaimed goal was the overthrow of bourgeois property relations.
Marxist literature of that era identified fascism with the most reactionary elements of 1930s financial-industrial capital.
Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.
(G. Dimitrov, The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism, 1935; bold added.)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm
This definition expressed the essence of 1930s European fascism. Fascism is a political form of state power that corresponds to various forms of bourgeois private property. European fascism expressed the political agenda of a sector of finance capital: the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist sector that sought colonies and new markets for its industrial production.
Fascism (present, US):
Twenty-first century fascism in power is the open terroristic dictatorship of the mega-corporate state. The mega-corporate state is the merger of the social, economic and political power of the mega-corporations with government and state. Fascism is state power, hence political, and can be defeated based on political will. Fascism is militarization of the police and state intervention in every aspect of the economy and society to protect the rule of private property.
The purpose of fascism in power, in the past as well as in the new robotic economy, is domination and perpetuation of three interrelated aspects of productive relations: private property, private wealth and privilege. Today fascism thrives in an economy increasingly torn from its historical foundation in human labor.
Twenty-first century fascism consolidates and evolves as society is undergoing social revolution. The social revolution is transition from the industrial system to the robotic economy.
Fatalism:
Fatalism is a bourgeois world outlook of predestination. It negates the possibility of people acting on the environment to effect change. It says that people change nothing. Fatalism is harmful because it disarms the proletariat and renders everyone who believes in it passive and inactive.
[F]atalism regards each human act as an inevitable realization of some initial predestination excluding any free choice. However, the view of man as an active creative being rules out a purely mechanistic interpretation of absolute dependence of his actions on external circumstances . . . .
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Feminist ideology:
Feminism as an ideology is a non-class outlook, which views the fundamental contradiction, the cause of inequality, in society as between men and women and based on socially dictated gender roles, rather than the contradiction between owners of capital and finance versus all the rest of society.
Feminist ideology focuses on battling men, including making individual lifestyle changes such as learning self-defense and defeating the features of inequality, rather than destroying the foundation of inequality. Broadly defined, feminism is advocacy for the sociopolitical rights and enfranchisement of women and full gender equality, and Marxists do advocate and support these goals.
However, feminist ideology does not focus on bourgeois private property relations and the existence of class society, which have condemned generations of women to second-class status. Instead, it focuses on limiting or eradicating gender inequality within the bounds of capitalist society. Feminist ideology detached from Marxism is reformism, pure and simple and a call to make woman an equal exploiter alongside man and to limit struggle to personal issues.
Because the key obstacle to women’s emancipation is capitalist property relations and the existence of classes, and feminist ideology points instead at every man as the enemy, it disarms the women’s movement. While women’s yearnings for equality must be fulfilled, the struggle is held back by the non-class outlook of feminist ideology.
(See, Emancipation of women, Identity politics, Woman question.)
Fetishism: “the fetishism of commodities and the secret thereof”
A fetish is a belief that things possess mysterious and magical power. In a society where the individual works for someone else, the producer loses control of their product to the owner of the means of production. The commodity created by the producer faces the producer as an alien power and object that can only be acquired with money. To acquire money, the non-owning laboring class must be paid wages. People are baffled at prices and where they come from; they may have a vague idea of supply and demand, but beyond that prices appear as if by magic and as being entirely unpredictable.
By means of the fetish that attaches itself to products created to be exchanged, rather than consumed by the producer, the social relations between individuals in the society of commodity producers appear in real life as relations between things being exchanged.
In a communal robotic economy, private property in the means of production will be done away with, and socially necessary means of life will be distributed on the basis of need, and the products of consumption will appear directly as objects of human development with no mysterious power of price and value.
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labor appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labor; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labor. This is the reason the products of labor become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labor which stamps them as commodities, has absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising there from. There it is a definite social relation between men, which assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor, as soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.
This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labor that produces them.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4
(See, Commodity fetishism.)
Feudalism: (See, Mode of production, Handicraft/manufacture mode of production, feudal productive relations.)
Feudal private property:
The production relations of the feudal society were based on landownership by the landlord class and their almost complete control of serfs. The landlord owned most of the land. The peasants and serfs owned little or no land. They had to depend on farming the landlord’s land for a living. This way, they were fettered by the feudal land system. They lost their personal freedom and were subject to the landlord’s cruel exploitation and oppression.
The chief means by which the landlord exploited the peasants was through the collection of feudal rent from land rented to them.
(China Book Project, Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited with an introduction by George C. Wang, 1977.)
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/fundamentals.pdf
Thus the chief form of property during the feudal epoch consisted on the one hand of landed property with serf labor chained to it, and on the other of the labor of the individual with small capital commanding the labor of journeymen. The organization of both was determined by the restricted conditions of production – the small-scale and primitive cultivation of the land, and the craft type of industry. There was little division of labor in the heyday of feudalism. Each country bore in itself the antithesis of town and country; the division into estates was certainly strongly marked; but apart from the differentiation of princes, nobility, clergy and peasants in the country, and masters, journeymen, apprentices and soon also the rabble of casual laborers in the towns, no division of importance took place. In agriculture it was rendered difficult by the strip-system, beside which the cottage industry of the peasants themselves emerged. In industry there was no division of labor at all in the individual trades themselves, and very little between them. The separation of industry and commerce was found already in existence in older towns; in the newer it only developed later, when the towns entered into mutual relations.
The grouping of larger territories into feudal kingdoms was a necessity for the landed nobility as for the towns. The organization of the ruling class, the nobility, had, therefore, everywhere a monarch at its head.
(K. Marx, The German Ideology, 1845.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
(See, Mode of production.)
Finance capital:
Finance capital of the past century meant financial-industrial capital. It reflected increased monopolization of capital and productive forces, based on merging banking and industrial capital, dominated by banking institutions. Financial-industrial imperialism exported not only commodities but finance capital as its defining characteristic.
The export of productive capital was comprised of investments in industry, transport, trade, etc. The export of loan capital occurred in government loans and private credit to buy up land and natural resources, invest in production of commodities and infrastructure projects and to militarize the economy. Financial imperialism led to the division of the world among imperialist countries.
Today, financial-industrial capital is dominated by speculative finance and flows around the world rapidly as transnational finance. Speculative finance transformed a small group of the biggest financial magnates into a new financial oligarchy. This new financial oligarchy rules society based on its own interests, which are furthered by the mega-corporate state.
First International: (See, International communist organizations.)
Form and Content:
Form is the appearance of a thing and the structural connection of a thing. The appearance (external) and structural connection of a thing (internal) are two meanings of form.
Content is the defining quality of a phenomenon, which distinguishes it from other things. Content defines a thing.
. . . . Having thus defined content as the identity of the components of the whole with the whole itself, let us now pass on to form. What is form?
When we perceive, and conceive, a certain object, we separate it from the surrounding background, thus fixing in our mind its external form. In the sense of external shape the form of an object is expressed in the category of boundary. The boundary, indicating the difference of given content as a whole from everything else, is precisely the external form of the object. It expresses the given object’s connection with others. Besides, the category of form is also used in the sense of mode of content’s expression and existence. Here we are dealing with internal rather than external form. Internal form is connected with the object’s qualitative definiteness, the latter being interpreted here not as a material substratum (stone, metal, wood, etc.) but as a certain meaningful formedness pointing to a mode of operation involving the object and determining the mode of its perception and incorporation in a system of a given intellectual and practical sphere.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; bold added.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
In the Europe of the old handicraft and manufacturing period, the political form of society was feudalism. Changes in the technology of society set the stage for the dying away of the old classes, serf and nobility, and gave rise to new classes connected to new industrial means of production. The form of class and private property changed, based on new means of production. The content that was private property did not change. The form of private property changed.
(See, Appearance, Essence.)
Fraction:
A fraction is a form of communist organization that groups together the communists working in the same mass organization, conference or on-going area of work. The fraction is not the primary organization of the party, where dues and internal documents are distributed. The fraction is simply a mechanism to coordinate revolutionary work in a union, organization or event.
(See, Faction.)
Freedom, necessity, and law:
Freedom is the recognition of one’s own limits and the laws governing phenomena around them, so that one can move freely within these limits and in recognition of those laws. Freedom does not consist in any dreamed-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of those laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically using them to achieve definite goals.
This is entirely different from the bourgeois definition of freedom which means having no limits. That is a denial of the actual nature of freedom.
What is, generally speaking, the freedom of the will? The freedom of the will is man’s ability to take decisions and perform actions in accordance with his interests, goals, evaluations and ideals, expressed in his selective activity based on his knowledge of the objective properties and relations of things, law-governed links between phenomena and events of the objective world. Each of man’s free actions is a fusion of freedom and necessity. It follows from this that the freedom of an individual, a collective, a class or society as a whole does not consist in an illusory independence from objective laws but in the ability to choose or take decisions on the basis of a sound knowledge of the circumstances.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; ital. in orig.)
https://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Marxist philosophy combines freedom, necessity, and law into a harmonious worldview. Freedom for Marxism is one side of a process, and necessity is the other. Necessity is the compulsion demanding that something happen. Things happen and express a system of laws. Based on the law of gravity, water runs downstream.
The recognition of law systems that operate in society, the heavens, and on the earth gives one the freedom to move freely within the constraints of those laws.
The attempt to operate in freedom from the law system of nature, by ignoring natural laws leads to destruction of the environment. Everyone has certain limitations and faces laws of nature that operate as necessity, such as gravity. One is not free to ignore the law of gravity, and there is no point in wishing it would go away. What is important is to recognize laws of nature, the environment, and motion, and learn their operations and move freely within them.
This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves — two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man’s judgment is in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined; while the uncertainty, founded on ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among many different and conflicting possible decisions, shows precisely by this that it is not free, that it is controlled by the very object it should itself control. Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development.
(F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877; ital. in orig.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch09.htm
General crisis of capitalism:
‘It means, first of all, that the imperialist war and its aftermath intensified the decay of capitalism and upset its equilibrium, that we are now living in an epoch of wars and revolutions, that capitalism has already ceased to be the sole and all-embracing system of world economy, that side by side with the capitalist system of economy there is the socialist system, which is growing, thriving, which stands opposed to the capitalist system and by its very existence demonstrates the decaying state of capitalism and shakes its foundations.’ . . .
. . . . The general crisis of capitalism began in the period of the first world war and developed especially as a result of the falling away of the Soviet Union from the capitalist system. This was the first stage of the general crisis of capitalism. In the period of the Second World War the second stage of the general crisis of capitalism developed, especially after the falling away from the capitalist system of the People’s Democracies in Europe and Asia.
(Political Economy, A Textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1957.)
http://www.marx.be/Prime/ENG/Books/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch21.htm
In the 20th century, Soviet power existed in external collision with worldwide bourgeois private property. With collapse of the socialist states and destruction of the socialist community’s socialist property relations, the general crisis of capitalism has been superseded by an antagonism internal to capitalist production. Caused by qualitatively new productive forces and a new form of classes, capitalism has entered its death spiral. Each new revolution in the means of production shrinks the working class as a percentage of the world population. The general crisis of capitalism has ended and been superseded by a new type of crisis.
(See, Antagonism.)
General law of capitalist accumulation: (See, Accumulation of capital.)
Globalization (Globalism):
Globalization is capitalism in the age of the electronic revolution, the robot economy and the mega-corporation. Globalization describes the process of integration and connections based on a new technological regime. Regional economies, societies, and cultures have become more integrated worldwide through communication, transportation, and trade based on revolutionary new means of production.
Globalization supersedes the old form of financial-industrial imperialism described by Lenin.
. . . . [G]lobalization is a qualitatively new transnational stage in the on-going evolution of world capitalism . . . . four things in particular . . . .
The first of that is the rise of truly transnational capital. We are seeing the rise of an integrated global production and financial system, . . . Secondly, we have a new class group . . . . the hegemony fraction at a world level . . . . It is distinguished by being a class group that is grounded in new global markets and circuits of accumulation rather than the previous national markets and circuits. The third novel aspect of our epoch is the rise of what I refer to as a transnational state apparatus. What I mean by this is a loose coalition of institutions which is comprised of all super-national, transnational and international institutions. This does not mean that the nation state disappears, but rather that the nation state itself is in the process of being transnationalized, it’s in the process of being penetrated and transformed by transnational social and political forces and synchronized with a larger emerging transnational institutional structure. Fourth, we’re seeing the appearance of novel relations of power and inequality in global society. Social inequality is not new, but we’re seeing new forms of global inequality that cut across the old north-south and nation state lines that group new types of transnational social inequality.
(W. I. Robinson, Understanding Global Capitalism, 2008.)
https://www.trentu.ca/globalpolitics/documents/Discussion082Robinson.pdf
(See, Imperialism.)
Government:
Government functions as the executive committee for the ruling class and carryies out day-to-day policy and administration of civic functions at a local, regional, state and federal level.
. . . . [T]he bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
(K. Marx, F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
The three branches of the US government are executive, legislative and judicial. Numerous government agencies exist, from the Social Security Administration to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The government is not the “state” in the Marxist meaning of the state. The state is the organization of violence—chiefly the military, police, and penal system—in the hands of the ruling class. The Pentagon, army and courts are part of the state.
(See, State.)
Great Man Theory of History: (See, History, Role of the individual.)
Handicraft:
Handicraft was a stage of development of the productive forces, the division of labor and the social organization of labor, where the individual laborer created an entire product using elementary tools and instruments, and human energy as the primary motive power. From the standpoint of stages of development of the material power of productive forces, handicraft preceded manufacture, which in turn precedesd industrial production and the industrial revolution.
(See, Division of labor; Industrial revolution; Mode of Production, Handicraft, Slave productive relations.)
Hegel, Hegelian system:
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and creator of a school of German philosophy, which established a modern category of philosophic principles. These principles outlined and articulated a general law system of motion, development and change, which explained the general behavior of reality.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831), German philosopher, idealist and dialectician. According to Hegel’s system of objective (or absolute) idealism, the world depends for its being on some sort of ‘absolute idea’ which existed before the advent of nature and man. The dialectical nature of the idea manifests itself in its impulse toward actualization and self- knowledge. The ‘absolute idea’ contains contradictions within itself: it moves and changes, alienates itself and passes over into its opposite. In the process of its dialectical self-movement, by means of transformation into its opposite (negation) and further negation (negation of the negation) the ‘absolute idea’ passes through three fundamental stages.
In the first stage the idea is found in its pure form in the realm of pure thought, then it transforms itself into its opposite (negates itself), manifesting itself in the realm of natural phenomena; finally, it once more negates itself, and, on a higher level of development, returns to the realm of thought, but this time to human thought. In this stage individual consciousness occupies a certain level while social consciousness, wherein the idea in the form of religion, art, and philosophy carries self-knowledge to its consummation, occupies a higher level. Hegel pronounced philosophy to be ‘absolute knowledge’ and considered his own philosophy the final stage in the self-development of the idea.
The valuable and progressive element in the Hegelian dialectical philosophy is its penetrating dialectical method — the conception that evolution proceeds on the basis of dialectical contradictions that in evolution there takes place — transformation of quantitative into qualitative changes, that truth is concrete, that the process of evolution of human society is one wholly governed by scientifically ascertainable laws and not by the arbitrary force of personalities.
However, Hegel’s dialectics is not separated from the idealistic system, but is on the contrary an integral part of it. Hence, there arose in the Hegelian philosophy a deep and decisive contradiction between method and system. The dialectical method asserts that the development of knowledge is an endless process, but the idealistic system led Hegel to consider his philosophy as the culmination of all intellectual evolution, the final and complete truth. The dialectical method asserts that everything evolves dialectically, but the idealistic system depicts nature as the negation of dialectics.
Hegel was an ideological representative of the German bourgeoisie of the early nineteenth century, a bourgeoisie progressive in relation to the problems which it posed for itself but at the same time inconsistent, half-hearted and cowardly, seeking compromises with feudalism. In spite of his dialectics, Hegel pronounced the Prussian landed bourgeois monarchy the last and highest stage in the evolution of human society. Likewise he regarded the ‘national soul’ of the Prussian monarchical state as the embodiment of absolute spirit. Contemporary reactionaries utilize this part of Hegel’s philosophy in order to argue the finality and unchangeability of reactionary bourgeois states in the contemporary world. . . .
Marx and Engels, in constructing their philosophy — dialectical materialism — could not accept dialectics in the form worked out by Hegel, but reconstructed it, placing it upon a firm foundation — as Marx once said, standing it on its feet instead of allowing it to remain on its head. . . .
‘When describing their dialectical method, Marx and Engels usually refer to Hegel as the philosopher who formulated the main features of dialectics. This, however, does not mean that the dialectics of Marx and Engels is identical with the dialectics of Hegel. As a matter of fact Marx and Engels took from the Hegelian dialectics only its ‘rational kernel,’ casting aside its idealistic shell, and developed it further so as to lend it a modern scientific form.’ (Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, p. 5.)
‘My dialectical method,’ said Marx, ‘is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.’
(H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, 1949, pages 48-49.)
Historical error:
An historical error is a proposition proven to be wrong after society changes, when knowledge has advanced to a new stage of development and understanding. It is an “error of history,” because no one can see beyond the limits of their stage of development.
Knowledge is relative, deepening as it evolves from a lower to a higher understanding of the world.
Historical materialism:
Used as a term by Frederick Engels in an 1890 letter to Bloch, historical materialism is the science that studies not one particular people or one particular country but human society and the universal laws governing society’s development. The historical materialist method embodies the principles of dialectical materialism applied to the study of social life and development of human society. Historical materialism discloses and establishes the general law systems that govern the formation and development of society. Engels stressed the importance of this method of inquiry.
I would furthermore ask you to study this theory from its original sources and not at second-hand; it is really much easier. Marx hardly wrote anything in which it did not play a part. But especially The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a most excellent example of its application. There are also many allusions to it in Capital. Then may I also direct you to my writings: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in which I have given the most detailed account of historical materialism which, as far as I know, exists. [The German Ideology was not published in Marx or Engels lifetime]
(F. Engels, Letter to J. Bloch, 1890.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21a.htm
Historical materialism does not focus on only separate aspects of social life such as literature or music, but examines the general laws and driving forces of developing society — the laws of the rise and decline of society based on changes in the mode of production.
(See, Materialist conception of history.)
History:
History is nothing but the succession of the separate generations, each of which exploits the materials, the capital funds, the productive forces handed down to it by all preceding generations, and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in completely changed circumstances and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changed activity.
(K. Marx, German Ideology, 1845.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm
The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus, the first fact to be established is the physical organization of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. . . . The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases. . . .
Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.
The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.
(Karl Marx, The German Ideology, 1845.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a2
Metaphysics views history as one unconnected event after another. Materialist dialectics views events of history in their interrelation, with an understanding of causality. In the process of history, the development of the productive forces, which can be identified with forms of motive power. These general forms: manual, mechanical (or industrial), and electronic are the foundation of the forms of history; the more familiar categories and stages have been named after their property relations: communal, slave, feudal, capitalist, socialist and communist society. Different forms of property relations correspond to a specific historical content: slavery and feudalism belong to the period of manual labor; and capitalism and socialism correspond to the period of industrialism.
The future communist society will have an absence of private property relations.
In communist society, both in its past, primitive form and in its future, advanced form, the motive force of human history is the contradiction between productive forces and productive relations, rather than the narrow concept of classes as the motive force (engine) of history.
(See, Materialist conception of history.)
History, Role of the individual:
The role of the individual defines the place of the individual within the objective, material processes going on in the world, a country, and the individual’s community and identifies his or her active role in change. People, the masses, make history, and its shape is the outcome of human will applied to objective processes in nature and society. Human will as the conscious will and desire of the masses shapes the outcome of history, and within this process there is room for the role of the individual, including great individual leaders.
Opposed to the Marxist concept of the role of the individual is the capitalist ideology of individualism known as the Great Man Theory of History.
The Marxist position is that individuals will rise to the occasion and the challenge of their time.
. . . . That such and such a man and precisely that man arises at that particular time in that given country is of course pure accident. But cut him out and there will be a demand for a substitute, and this substitute will be found, good or bad, but in the long run he will be found. That Napoleon, just that particular Corsican, should have been the military dictator whom the French Republic, exhausted by its own war, had rendered necessary, was an accident; but that, if a Napoleon had been lacking, another would have filled the place, is proved by the fact that the man has always been found as soon as he became necessary: Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell, etc.
(Marx-Engels Correspondence, Engels to Borgius, 1894.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm
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. It is one of the two main camps in philosophy. The other is materialism. Idealism as a philosophy differs from idealism as a noble cause and inspiring vision.
Idealism, one of the two fundamental philosophic tendencies which—in regard to the problem of the relations of mind to being—takes the mind, consciousness, spirit, as primary, denying, the materialist view that mind and thought are product, functions of matter.
(H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, 1949, page 53.)
Spirkin poses the question:
The crux of the basic question of philosophy is the recognition of two main types of reality—objective or material and subjective or ideal, one of which precedes the other and engenders it. Does matter precede consciousness, or is it the other way round?
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
He answers this question:
Materialism rejects all the unscientific interpretations of the origin and essence of the world. For its starting point, it takes the world which exists objectively and independently of the consciousness of man and of mankind. . . . Idealism holds the opposite view, insisting that the development of the world is determined by the spiritual element.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; ital. in orig.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Bourgeois society is saturated with idealism and metaphysics. Chairman Mao Zedong explained that to escape such thought and learn a different way of thinking can take hard work.
Idealism and metaphysics are the easiest things in the world, because people can talk as much nonsense as they like without basing it on objective reality or having it tested against reality. Materialism and dialectics, on the other hand, need effort. They must be based on and tested by objective reality. Unless one makes the effort one is liable to slip into idealism and metaphysics.
(M. Zedong, Introductory note to Material on the Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique, 1955.)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch22.htm
(See, Objective and Subjective.)
Identity:
Identity in philosophy refers to non-difference, sameness, and that which a group of phenomena has in common. Identity in contradiction is that which holds the conflicting aspects together. The bond — non-difference and sameness — prevents the two poles from separating. Capitalist and proletariat are the primary classes at the foundation of the capitalist mode of production. The identity of capitalist and proletariat is their existence as an historically evolved form of private property and their sameness as buyers and sellers of labor-power based in capitalist private property. The identity or stable connection between classes — the exploiter and the exploited — is based in the property relations casting capitalist as owner of means of production and proletariat as owner of labor-power. The bourgeoisie faces the market as a buyer of labor-power and seller of the commodities produced by labor. The worker faces the market as a seller of labor-power and purchaser of the necessaries of life with the wages attained from the sale of labor-power. As the robotic economy develops, the bourgeoisie-worker bond that is identity begins to unravel.
(See, Contradiction.)
Identity politics
Identity politics is political action based on a defined common non-class characteristic of a group. Identity politics seek redress and fight against an injustice and inequality committed against its group. It seeks political liberty, a greater share of the social product and political representation for its group. Identity politics seeks reform of the system, rather than revolution.
The origin of identity politics was in the rise of the capitalist mode of production and emergence of the first labor associations. The bakers organized themselves based on their baking skill and vowed to protect the wages and conditions of their members. A “certain union exclusivity,” based on one’s “hands” dominated the fight of labor. As one layer of the population after another was converted into wage laborers, based on a growing social division of labor, different groups came into existence, and fought on the basis of craft, rather than as a class. Here is the definitive origin of identity politics.
Identity politics and ideology spread beyond unions and were part of the colonial revolts, revolutions and protest of the 1960s, when the industrial revolution reached its last stage and the robotics regime began rise. Colonial status was most certainly an identity and the salient feature of the post-World War II social struggle. Various economic-class clusters and social groups fought to reform the system in their favor. The bourgeoisie fought to reform the system and bring new groups into the economy as worker-consumers — people that could be exploited. The yearning of the oppressed and marginalized to end discrimination and social inequality, not just wage inequality, temporarily coincided with the needs of the capitalists to exploit more labor.
Although the black Civil Rights Movement dominated this period, Chicano groups, Native American and nationality groups of all kinds with the women’s movement and the LGBTQ currents pressed against the system, and all sought a greater share of the social product, greater measures of security, equality, concessions and an end to their lower status in society.
While the struggle of the oppressed and marginalized and specific issues dealing with police murder, extra-legal and illegal violence, inequality based on color, women-ness, sexual orientation, wage inequality including uncompensated domestic labor and a range of humiliations and insults remain, these issues cannot and will never be won based on identity politics.
While capitalism is the material economic foundation for the split in the proletariat and socialism, identity politics and ideology widen this split and disarm the proletariat in the face of the class enemy. Identity politics today is a tool of the ruling class’ ideological and political strategy.
Identity politics is a leftover of bourgeois politics of the industrial epoch. The economic basis of the identity politics of the post-World War II period was an expanding economy and expanding employment opportunities. Robotics in production destroys labor in production. Not only do the capitalists no longer need to bring new social groups into production, but robotics is kicking millions of workers out of production. The material foundation for identity politics has been shattered by the new economy, which sets the basis for a different communist movement. While concessions are winnable, there are no more reforms left in the capitalist system.
(See, Emancipation of women, Feminist ideology, Woman question.)
Ideology:
Ideology is a set of ideas, beliefs, and ethics that expresses and defines relationships among people. It is a shared set of beliefs about how the world is and ought to be. An ideology is a set of conscious and unconscious ideas that motivate one’s goals, expectations and actions. It is a conceptual framework that forms the foundation of the way each person deals with reality. To exist a person must have an ideology.
Revolutionary ideology sustains the individual in the cause of emancipation of the proletariat. Ideological conviction allows the individual and class to translate belief into activity and fight and even die for a cause.
Imperialism:
Imperialism of the past century occurred during the monopoly stage of capitalism, when the concentration and centralization of capitalism had reached such gigantic propositions that a new form of capitalist enterprise evolved — the monopoly-based corporation.
Imperialism was characterized by colonialism and the horrific beat down of the colonized by the colonizer, which entailed the world’s peoples being forcefully dragged (as slaves, serfs and peons), into a new world order of economic and social relations that destroyed natural economy. Imperialism brought the world into capitalist productive relations. Lenin describes the imperialism of the past century.
Imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is threefold: imperialism is monopoly capitalism; parasitic or decaying capitalism; moribund capitalism. The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism. Monopoly manifests itself in five principal forms: (1) cartels, syndicates and trusts — the concentration of production has reached a degree which gives rise to these monopolistic associations of capitalists; (2) the monopolistic position of the big banks — three, four or five giant banks manipulate the whole economic life of America, France, Germany; (3) seizure of the sources of raw material by the trusts and the financial oligarchy (finance capital is monopoly industrial capital merged with bank capital); (4) the (economic) partition of the world by the international cartels has begun. There are already over one hundred such international cartels, which command the entire world market and divide it ‘amicably’ among themselves — until war re-divides it. The export of capital, as distinct from the export of commodities under non-monopoly capitalism, is a highly characteristic phenomenon and is closely linked with the economic and territorial-political partition of the world; (5) the territorial partition of the world (colonies) is completed.
Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism in America and Europe, and later in Asia, took final shape in the period 1898–1914.
(V. I. Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, 1916.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm
Imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism passed through its stages of development between the late 1800s and roughly 1976. This period included completing the destruction of feudalism, collapse of the direct colonial system and rise of the neo-colonial regimes. In the 1980s a new non-banking financial architecture based on the modern computer and computer networks arose.
Driven by the developing computer revolution and robotics, a new form of finance capital sublated the financial-industrial imperialism of the era of Lenin and birthed speculative finance and globalization.
(See, Globalization.)
Incrementalism: (See, Reformism.)
Individualism: (See, History, Role of the individual.)
Industrial reserve army:
The industrial reserve army developed as part of the “surplus” population. As feudal society gave way to capitalist production, a surplus population was formed that was comprised of people whose labor was not constantly needed in the new system of commodity production. The industrial reserve army was comprised of workers who were unemployed and underemployed during bad economic times and called into employment during economic “boom” periods.
The industrial reserve army was a “reserve” in the military usage of the word: “to serve again and again” during periods of increased production. It was also a “reserve” in the sense of a compact mass with distinct skills and knowledge, which made it employable and gave rise to various social insurance and welfare programs designed to stabilize the “reserve army” during periods of low market demand. The industrial reserve army gyrated in and out of employment and flowed from one sector of industry to the next as it was pushed out of one sector with improvement of machinery and picked up by another.
In the era of the mega-corporation and robotics, the industrial reserve army of the previous era becomes redundant labor and appears as a new class of destitute proletarians shut out of production. Robotic production requires no reserve of labor to expand and contract with production.
(See, Overcapacity, Surplus population.)
Industrial revolution:
The industrial revolution was the transition from manual labor to large mechanized production and the factory system, from about 1735 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. The industrial revolution began in England and within a few decades had spread to Western Europe and the United States, and marked the beginning of capitalist industrialization.
This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines, which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole mode of production and displaced the former workers, because the machines turned out cheaper and better commodities than the workers could produce with their inefficient spinning wheels and handlooms.
(F. Engels, The Principles of Communism, 1847.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
The industrial revolution negated handicraft, manufacture and their corresponding productive relations, as the primary modes of production and social organization of labor. While handicraft persists on earth, there no longer exists on earth a society with its primary mode of production based on handicraft and the social organization of labor based on the artisan. Industrial production is distinguished from all previous forms of production by this: the machine is the starting-point of industrial production and the factory system, while the individual worker who deployed a single tool was the starting point for handicraft and early manufacture. Industrial production and the industrial social organization of labor negated the social organization of labor based on hand labor.
The industrial revolution is “industrial” because it was a system of metal machinery that deployed mechanical motion that was driven by applying a new energy source, which displaced animal and human energy. It was a “revolution” because it introduced a qualitatively new technology that created the foundation for a new mode of production.
The industrial revolution reconfigured the labor process qualitatively and changed the social organization of labor, which had been based on handicraft and manufacture. By industrial is meant the use of electro-mechanical machine systems. Industrial was a new form of cooperation between laborers based on a new division of labor part and assembly-line production. Virtually every aspect of daily life changed and was influenced by the industrial revolution.
The foundation of an industrial system of production was heavy industry, the production of the means of production. Capitalist industrialization took place spontaneously, in response to the capitalist drive for profits, primarily in the consumer goods market. The development of large scale heavy industry under capitalism was driven forward on the basis of development of light industry, the branches that produced profitable consumer products. Thus, capitalist industrialization was a process that took many decades to develop the industrial infrastructure that would change all of society. Socialist industrial production developed in one-tenth of the time of capitalist industrialism.
Industrial revolution, post:
The April 21, 2012 Economist magazine’s front cover features the article “The third industrial revolution.” This article defined the third industrial revolution as digital, in contradistinction to industrial, manufacturing and handicraft.
Now a third revolution is underway. Manufacturing is going digital. . . . A number of technologies are converging: clever software, novel materials, more dexterous robots, new processes (notably three-dimensional printing) and a whole range of web based services.
The postindustrial or third industrial revolution, which the Economist referred to, is the leap -– transition -– from something to something. Society has gone beyond productive forces which originated with the steam engine and broad introduction of electro-mechanical production, expressed in Henry Ford’s production system. The postindustrial revolution is a new technological regime, whose building blocks are based on the microprocessor.
Computers and robotics are to our society what the steam engine was to manufacture. Actually, the microchip is more profound and comparable to the discovery of how to create, store and transport fire.
Postindustrial literally, means “after the industrial revolution.” Postindustrial does not imply the destruction of production, but rather reconfiguration of production on a new basis. Today’s electronic revolution is the foundation of social revolution. The social revolution changes all aspects of the form of society and human life, built up based on the industrial revolution. It destroys the old classes that were built up on the basis of the industrial revolution and creates new classes that deploy new means of production.
(See, Electronic revolution.)
Information revolution: (See, Electronic revolution.)
Insurrection:
Insurrection is the act of seizing political power -– the commanding heights of the state. Insurrection is called political revolution, while social revolution refers to qualitative changes in the means of production, which demand that society reorganize around the new means of production.
To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class. That is the first point. Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. That is the second point. Insurrection must rely upon that turning-point in the history of the growing revolution when the activity of the advanced ranks of the people is at its height, and when the vacillations in the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is the third point. . . .
Once these conditions exist, however, to refuse to treat insurrection as an art is a betrayal of Marxism and a betrayal of the revolution.
. . . . Of course, this is all by way of example, only to illustrate the fact that at the present moment it is impossible to remain loyal to Marxism, to remain loyal to the revolution unless insurrection is treated as an art.
(V. I. Lenin, Marxism and Insurrection, 1917.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/13.htm
The course of insurrection in modern capitalist society will not take the same form as in 1917 Russia.
Intelligentsia
[A] social stratum consisting of people professionally engaged in mental work, primarily of a complex and creative kind, and in the development and spread of culture. Introduced by the writer P. D. Boborykin in the 1860’s, the term ‘intelligentsia’ passed from Russian into other languages. At first, the term referred to educated people in general, and even today it is often used with this meaning. According to Lenin, the word ‘intelligentsia’ includes ‘in general, all educated people, the members of the liberal professions, the brain workers, as the English call them, as distinct from manual workers.’ Various groups of the intelligentsia belong to different social classes, whose interests are served, interpreted, and expressed in an ideological, political, and theoretical form by the intelligentsia.
. . . . The earliest group belonging to the intelligentsia was the priestly caste. During the Middle Ages the place of the pagan priests was taken over by the Christian clergy, whose elite members belonged to the class of feudal lords. . . . In China the service intelligentsia—educated officials—enjoyed the highest social prestige, and in Europe, as centralized states developed, intellectual retainers of the monarchs found their way into high government positions.
. . . . The history of the intelligentsia actually begins with the consolidation of capitalism. With the accelerated development of productive forces, the need for mental workers grew, as did their number. Nonetheless, even in the most developed countries, at the beginning of the 20th century the proportion of the intelligentsia among the economically active population did not exceed several percent (4 percent in the USA in 1900). Lawyers, teachers, and physicians made up the largest contingents of the intelligentsia in that period.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Intelligentsia
The development of industry, technology and culture in capitalist society results in the formation of a broad stratum, the intelligentsia, consisting of persons engaged in mental work (technical personnel, teachers, doctors, office employees, scientists, writers, etc.). The intelligentsia is not an independent class, but a special social group which exists by selling its mental labor. It is recruited from various strata of society . . . .
(0. Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, 1961, page 190; ital. in orig.)
Interaction (interactivity):
The concept of interaction. Everything that happens in the world springs from constant interaction between objects. Because of the universality of interaction, all the structural levels of being are interconnected, and the material world is unified. This interaction determines the emergence and development of the objects, their transition from one qualitative state to another. Interaction is a philosophical category reflecting the processes of reciprocal influence of objects on one another, their mutual conditioning, changes of state, mutual transition into one another, as well as and generation of one object by another. The dynamics of the cause-and-effect conditioning of motion, of change and development in nature, society and thought presupposes heterogeneity and diversity of the forms of manifestation of all that is, the incorporation of each fragment of being in the stream of universal interaction.
Interaction is objective, universal and active in character. The properties of an object can be manifested and cognized only in interaction with other objects. ‘Reciprocal action is the first thing that we encounter when we consider matter in motion. . . ‘ Underlying each form of the motion of matter are definite types of interaction, which acts in them as the integrating factor through which parts are united in a definite type of a whole.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; ital. in orig.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
International communist organizations (1848–1943):
The past international associations of communist organizations were each called an “International.” Three Internationals have existed, which corresponded to the three great quantitative stages in developing the industrial revolution and the transition from agriculture to industry. Each of these stages produced its corresponding doctrines of the class struggle, which served as the foundation of each successive Communist International.
Lenin’s history of each of the three Communist Internationals serves as an introduction.
The First International (1864–72) laid the foundation of an international organization of the workers for the preparation of their revolutionary attack on capital. The Second International (1889–1914) was an international organization of the proletarian movement whose growth proceeded in breadth, at the cost of a temporary drop in the revolutionary level, a temporary strengthening of opportunism, which in the end led to the disgraceful collapse of this International.
The Third International actually emerged in 1918, when the long years of struggle against opportunism and social-chauvinism, especially during the war, led to the formation of Communist Parties in a number of countries. Officially, the Third International was founded at its First Congress, in March 1919, in Moscow. And the most characteristic feature of this International, its mission of fulfilling, of implementing the precepts of Marxism, and of achieving the age-old ideals of socialism and the working-class movement—this most characteristic feature of the Third International has manifested itself immediately in the fact that the new, third, ‘International Working Men’s Association’ has already begun to develop, to a certain extent, into a union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The First International laid the foundation of the proletarian, international struggle for socialism.
The Second International marked a period in which the soil was prepared for the broad, mass spread of the movement in a number of countries.
The Third International has gathered the fruits of the work of the Second International, discarded its opportunist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois dross, and has begun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.
(V. I. Lenin, The Third International and Its Place in History, 1919.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/apr/15.htm
A rogue “Fourth International” was formed in 1938, and the Communist Information Bureau was formed in 1947.
The three Internationals’ history, doctrine and political-economic context:
The communist movement from the early 1800s to the 1970s was a subjective intellectual response of revolutionaries, seeking to represent the long-term goal of the proletariat during the period of transition from agriculture to industry. The industrial revolution created new classes evolving in antagonism with feudal society. The new classes (capitalist and proletariat) together constituted the foundation of the social democratic movement. Its goal was the overthrow of monarchy, czar and the political power of the nobility. Birthed as a democratic current within the social-democratic movement, a core of socialistic and communist thinkers was won over to Karl Marx’s science of society (Marxism).
(See, Rally, Comrades!, Revolutionary History and Our Tasks, 2007, http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v17ed2art2.html)
International, First:
The modern, scientific communist movement began when manufacturing with its small, scattered workshops was replaced by industry with its concentration of thousands of workers in giant factories. This development was the environment for the founding of the Communist League in 1847.
(See on the internet, Frederick Engels, On The History of the Communist League.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1885hist.htm
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were called upon to write a manifesto for the Communist League, to state its purpose and vision. The Manifesto of the Communist Party remains the greatest programmatic document of scientific communism ever written. The purpose of the Manifesto was to educate revolutionaries in all countries, make them conscious of the historical role of the proletariat as a new social class, and outline the role of the communists as leaders of the advanced class.
In Europe, a period of harsh reaction followed the widespread revolutions of 1848 and their defeat. With the sentencing of the Cologne communists in 1852, a period of the proletarian movement ended. The next stage of revolutionary activity began around fifteen years later with the founding of the First or Workingmen’s International (IWA) in 1864. Its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva.
The productive capacity of the industrial countries developed rapidly. So long as national production was more or less restricted to the national market, the struggle between the capitalists and the workers intensified year by year. The communist movement grew with strikes and uprisings by the workers. The means of production rapidly went through quantitative growth, and the struggle between the classes subsided somewhat as the capitalists expanded their markets by conquering the economically backward areas of the world, thus creating a new imperialist system. The capitalist class consciously bribed their working class, or rather upper strata of workers, into political and military support. Under these changed conditions, the First International, which was formed on the basis of a previous stage of development of capital and the industrial revolution, was dissolved.
At its peak, the IWA had 5 million members according to police reports, although the official journal reported 8 million members. The sixth Congress of the International was held in Geneva in September 1873, but was considered a failure. The International disbanded three years later, at the 1876 Philadelphia conference.
(See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_International.)
International, 2nd:
Between the 1864 founding of the First International and 1900, the world was divided into colonial spheres attached to European great powers. This system of colonialism – the direct colonial system – furthered the spread of capitalist commodity production, alongside the emergence of a new financial architecture. A new form of capital (financial-industrial capital) arose in the United States based on financing the US Civil War and created Yankee or Wall Street imperialism. With growth of the spontaneous working class movement in Europe and America and the beginning of US export of finance capital, the Second International was founded in 1899. The Second International was founded on the basis of the stage of development of the industrial revolution and capitalist productive relations, the birth of modern imperialism and the consolidation of the direct colonial system.
By 1912, the economically undeveloped world (areas of which were at varying stages of development) was conquered. Any further market expansion had to be done by one imperialist power at the expense of another. World War I became the inevitable consequence of the striving for capitalist profits at the expense of one’s competitors. Capitalist states armed themselves for the coming struggle to re-divide an already divided world. Within hours of the declaration of war, almost all the socialist and social democratic parties of the combatant states announced support for their own bourgeoisie as their “own” political states pursued war to acquire colonial possessions and market shares.
Thrown into political conflict based on each party supporting its “own” bourgeois imperialist war efforts, discredited by its support of imperial colonial policy, the Second International split and then collapsed and was formally dissolved in the middle of World War I in 1916.
International, 3rd:
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was founded March 1919 in Moscow. The Comintern was formed on the basis of the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution and the establishment of Soviet power in Russia, in the environment of emergence of US financial-industrial imperialism (monopoly capitalism) on the world stage. US imperialism sought destruction of lingering feudal relations and completion of the world transition from agriculture to industry. Wall Street imperialism fought to reshape the new world through destruction of the direct colonial system to open up the world to US finance.
The Comintern was organized to unite the world revolution in defense of Soviet power and also sought destruction of the colonial system. The Comintern sought to aid the workers’ struggle in the industrially advanced countries. Its goal was to bring the hundreds of millions of colonial slaves of imperialism into a common revolutionary front with the fighting section of the working class in the industrially advanced countries and Soviet power. The Russian communists and Soviet power inspired the formation of the Communist Party of China. Until the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1921, the Marxist trend outside of Russia was more or less limited to Europe and the Americas.
From 1922 (the birth of Italian fascism) until the opening of World War II, revolution and counter-revolution evolved in a struggle that ultimately lead to the consolidation of European fascism. The Comintern confronted European fascism as the hangman of proletarian revolution. From this point of view, war and fascism were the form the counter-revolution was taking and to which all questions were subordinated. At that time everything, including revolution in the US, was subordinated to the defense of the Soviet Union.
As late as 1930, Europe was still ruled by twelve monarchies, which drove a section of bourgeois democrats who upheld a republican form of government, into the communist movement. The Third International was a hotbed of intense political struggles, divergent class ideologies and different lines of march. Marxists and revolutionaries who were grouped around Lenin’s Bolshevism fought hostile non-Marxist ideologies, including Trotskyism and in the US various doctrines of American exceptionalism.
The Comintern had seven World Congresses between 1919 and 1935. At its last congress in 1935, 65 parties and over 3 million Communists were represented. 785,000 of these revolutionaries resided in the industrially developed countries. Over 2,200,000 Communists were outside of Europe and America.
The Comintern reflected the Leninist strategy of detaching the hundreds of millions of slaves of imperialism from their imperial masters and converting them from a reserve of reaction to a reserve of the proletarian revolution. Leninism and the Comintern broke with the patriotic petty bourgeois ideology of the Second International, for whom only white skinned people were civilized and worthy of serious consideration.
The objective basis for the disintegration of the Third Communist International was the new stage of the industrial revolution, which grew out of the Second World War. Formed on the basis of the world of 1919, the parties of the Comintern completed the mission it was formed to carry out, and it was officially dissolved in May 1943.
International, 4th or Trotskyite International:
Established in France in 1938, the Fourth International was founded and organized around the personality and political propositions of Leon Trotsky.
The Trotskyite International’s self-proclaimed purpose and goals were:
a) to overthrow the Soviet government and state;
b) to replace the Soviet government and state with a Trotskyite “workers state” and
c) to oppose the Comintern, which the Trotskyites saw as the principle enemy of the world’s working class and fundamental roadblock to world revolution.
The Trotskyite International sought to unite anyone and everyone under the banner of anti-Stalinism. They also labeled the Comintern “a stinking corpse” and the great roadblock to world revolution. The Soviet state was declared a degenerate workers’ state to be overthrown by any means necessary, including assassination of Soviet leaders and terrorist acts against property and individuals.
The majority of Marxists worldwide, in the advanced capitalist countries and the former colonies, condemned the Trotskyites and Trotskyite movement as counterrevolutionaries, part of the worldwide alliance and convergence of forces of imperialist thuggery (including intelligence agencies) who sought overthrow of the Soviet state.
International, Cominform:
With the Soviet conquest of much of Eastern Europe, a new communist network of organizations, called the Cominform, was formed politically and economically to consolidate that area. Founded in 1947, Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) was the name for what was officially referred to as the “Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties.” It was the first official forum of the international communist movement since the dissolution of the Comintern, and confirmed the new realities after World War II: the Eastern bloc. The Cominform was dissolved in 1956.
Job:
A job is employment, selling one’s labor ability to owners of means of production for wages. The society of jobs, the job form of work, is a recent creation in human history. In 1994, Fortune magazine reported:
As a way of organizing work, it [the job] is a social artifact that has outlived its usefulness. Its demise confronts everyone with unfamiliar risks—and rich opportunities. . . .
The conditions that created jobs 200 years ago—mass production and the large organization—are disappearing. Technology enables us to automate the production line, where all those job holders used to do their repetitive tasks. . . . Big firms, where most of the good jobs used to be, are unbundling activities and farming them out to little firms, which have created or taken over profitable niches. Public services privatized, and the government bureaucracy, the ultimate bastion of job security, is being thinned.
The choice is jobless capitalist society of poverty, destitution, homelessness, and misery or a jobless cooperative society where socially necessary means of life are created by laborless systems of production and distributed on the basis of need. The jobless cooperative society is communist economy. Calls for creation of jobs accept that the capitalist system will continue to exist. Communist society destroys the category of jobs and in its place has voluntary laboring. In the society of abundance, human energy will enhance life, and the old world of the job will be a relic of the past.
(See, Society of abundance.)
Labor:
Labor is a purposeful activity that transforms and adapts natural objects to satisfy human requirements. Labor is a natural necessity, an indispensable condition of human existence. Without labor, human life itself could not develop.
Machines enhance labor. Robots, which replace labor in production, replicate the outcome of the labor process. Robots can “work” but do not “labor” because labor is a purposeful human activity that transforms natural objects. Labor-power, not labor, is the sole source of value.
Labor is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. . . .
We pre-suppose labor in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labor-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
Labor aristocracy:
Labor aristocracy described the privileged stratum of trade union leaders in the imperialist countries of Europe and America, and a narrow layer of the working class. The labor aristocracy is a privileged group used to control the rest of the working class.
On a world scale and as part of the curve of capitalist development, the labor aristocracy consolidated with the rise of the monopoly stage of capitalism and exploitation of the majority of humanity by a handful of imperialist states. Every generation of Marxists has used Lenin’s writings on the labor aristocracy as the basis for discourse.
In a letter to Marx, dated October 7, 1858, Engels wrote: ‘. . . .The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.’ In a letter to Sorge, dated September 21, 1872, Engels informs him that Hales kicked up a big row in the Federal Council of the International and secured a vote of censure on Marx for saying that ‘the English labour leaders had sold themselves’. Marx wrote to Sorge on August 4, 1874: ‘As to the urban workers here [in England], it is a pity that the whole pack of leaders did not get into Parliament. This would be the surest way of getting rid of the whole lot.’ In a letter to Marx, dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks about ‘those very worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie.’ In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: ‘You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.’
On December 7, 1889, Engels wrote to Sorge: ‘The most repulsive thing here [in England] is the bourgeois ‘respectability’, which has grown deep into the bones of the workers. . . . Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the best of the lot, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the French, one realises, what a revolution is good for, after all.’ In a letter, dated April 19, 1890: ‘But under the surface the movement [of the working class in England] is going on, is embracing ever wider sections and mostly just among the hitherto stagnant lowest strata. The day is no longer far off when this mass will suddenly find itself, when it will dawn upon it that it itself is this colossal mass in motion.’ On March 4, 1891: ‘The failure of the collapsed Dockers’ Union; the ‘old’ conservative trade unions, rich and therefore cowardly, remain lone on the field. . . .’ September 14, 1891: at the Newcastle Trade Union Congress the old unionists, opponents of the eight-hour day, were defeated ‘and the bourgeois papers recognise the defeat of the bourgeois labour party’ (Engels’s italics throughout). . . .
That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an ‘aristocracy among the working class’, of a ‘privileged minority of the workers’, in contradistinction to the ‘great mass of working people’. ‘A small, privileged, protected minority’ of the working class alone was ‘permanently benefited’ by the privileged position of England in 1848–68, whereas ‘the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement’. . . . ‘With the break-down of that [England’s industrial] monopoly, the English working class will lose that privileged position. . . .’ The members of the ‘new’ unions, the unions of the unskilled workers, ‘had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entirely free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old unionists’’. . . . ‘The so-called workers’ representatives’ in England are people ‘who are forgiven their being members of the working class because they themselves would like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean of their liberalism. . . .’
We have deliberately quoted the direct statements of Marx and Engels at rather great length in order that the reader may study them as a whole. And they should be studied, they are worth carefully pondering over. For they are the pivot of the tactics in the labour movement that are dictated by the objective conditions of the imperialist era.
(V. I. Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, 1916; ital. in orig; bold added.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm
This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labor aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism.
(V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916; ital. in orig; bold added.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/pref02.htm
The labor aristocracy in Europe arose upon the political foundation of social democracy, during the era of transition from agriculture to industry, the overthrow of feudalism and the rise of the direct colonial system.
America was capitalist from its inception and hence had no basis for an aristocracy, a feudal and monarchist term. What evolved in the US were labor lieutenants of the capitalist class and privileged layers of labor, not a “labor aristocracy.”
America’s labor lieutenants of the capitalist class were the privileged stratum of trade union leaders, populist leaders of all political hues inside and outside of the trade unions — the official “house of labor.” This stratum of labor representatives merged with layers of the working class, locked into the reform struggle over shares of the social product and for greater political liberty.
Labor movement:
The labor movement of the 21st century, in our time, is the spontaneous movement of the vast majority of humanity to acquire the necessities of life. The labor movement encompasses the struggle of US society whether employed or unemployed, young or old, and regardless of color, ethnicity, gender, or immigration status.
Labor is broader than the trade union movement and trade union demands. The labor movement embraces the working class, both organized and unorganized, employed, under-employed, unemployed and permanently unemployed. Unlike in the past century, the revolutionary core of the world labor movement is the new proletariat, cast out of capitalist production by robotics.
Labor-power:
Labor-power is labor ability — the ability to work, the sum total of the mental, physical and spiritual forces of the human, thanks to which material wealth is produced.
By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description. . . .
. . . . We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity, labour-power. Like all others it has a value. How is that value determined?
The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labour of society incorporated in it. Labour-power exists only as a capacity, or power of the living individual. Its production consequently pre-supposes his existence. Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself to that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer.
(K. Marx, Capital Vol. I, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm
Labor-power, or capacity for labor, exists in all periods of human history. Under capitalism, the capacity for labor becomes a commodity, bought and sold alongside of every other commodity. The laborers sell this capacity to the capitalists for wages to buy the necessities of life. Labor-power can appear on the market only if two conditions are met. First, its possessor (the laborer) must be free to offer it for sale, and must not be a slave or a serf. If the labor ability of the individual is sold all at once, the individual becomes a slave. Second, the laborer must have no means of production or other resources on which to rely, so they are compelled to sell their labor-power to live.
The capitalist buys labor-power in order to use it; and labor-power in use is labor itself. The purchaser of labor-power consumes it by setting the seller of it to work. By working, the latter becomes actually, what before he only was potentially, labor-power in action, a laborer.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
Expended labor-power becomes labor in production. Labor-power is only capacity, and this capacity is ultimately the source of exchange-value (value) and surplus value (profits) in production. The human being at work creating commodities and services is the creator of value. Robots do not create value.
(See, Value, Value of labor-power.)
Law (jurisprudence):
Law in the juridical sense is the will of the ruling class written down. Law is rules and regulations, which guarantee the sanctity of the state and private property. Law regulates the relations between classes and individuals in such a way as to preserve the system. Law expresses political power, not morality. Marx expressed clearly in the Manifesto, that bourgeois “jurisprudence is but the will of [the capitalist] class made into a law for all.”
Civil law develops simultaneously with private property out of the disintegration of the natural community.
. . . . With modern peoples, where the feudal community was disintegrated by industry and trade, there began with the rise of private property and civil law a new phase, which was capable of further development. The very first town which carried on an extensive maritime trade in the Middle Ages, Amalfi, also developed maritime law. As soon as industry and trade developed private property further, first in Italy and later in other countries, the highly developed Roman civil law was immediately adopted again and raised, to authority. When later the bourgeoisie had acquired so much power that the princes took up its interests in order to overthrow the feudal nobility by means of the bourgeoisie, there began in all countries — in France in the sixteenth century — the real development of law, which in all countries except England proceeded on the basis of the Roman Codex. In England, too, Roman legal principles had to be introduced to further the development of civil law (especially in the case of movable property). (It must not be forgotten that law has just as little an independent history as religion.)
(K. Marx, The German Ideology, 1845.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01c.htm
Law and law system: (philosophic)
What is a law? A law is a profound, essential, stable and repeated connection or dependence of phenomena or of different sides of one and the same phenomenon. . . . Some laws establish the precise quantitative dependence of phenomena and may be expressed mathematically (e.g., the laws of mechanics). Other laws do not lend themselves to precise mathematical formulation (e.g., the law of natural selection). But all laws express the objective, necessary connection of phenomena.
(See, Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism Manual, 1961, page 77.)
http://leninist.biz/en/1963/FML734/1.2.1-The.Universal.Connection.of.Phenomena
Laws are the necessary and stable connections between things that make things what they are. In dialectics connections are a special kind of relation between things. This relation is where one thing is dependent upon another thing, and this dependence is the connection. The totality of the laws describing the connections is a “law system.” The connections making a system what it is are its dynamics. The system dynamics are its evolving connections as it passes from one stage of growth to the next. System dynamics is an approach to understanding the behavior of complex systems over time, based on their law systems.
Laws operate within a range of conditions or a field of phenomena. The law of correspondence of productive forces to productive relations operates in all modes of production. This general law is at the foundation of the self-movement of society and its transition from one mode of production to the next.
Necessity and Law.
The fact that all phenomena are necessarily subject to causality points to the existence of necessity. The inception and development of phenomena that follow from the most essential relations lying at the root of a process are called necessary. Necessary development is development that cannot fail to take place under given conditions. For example, in the history of the organic world those more adapted necessarily replace less adapted organisms.
Necessity in nature and society is most completely revealed in laws. Recognizing necessity in the origin and development of phenomena involves recognizing that they are subject to certain regularities that exist independently of people’s will or desire.
Each law is a manifestation of the necessity that governs phenomena. For example, a body raised above the surface of the earth will necessarily fall back to earth, provided some force acting in the opposite direction does not hold it up. This example illustrates the law of gravitation.
(Paraphrased.)
http://leninist.biz/en/1963/FML734/1.2.1-The.Universal.Connection.of.Phenomena
Law of correspondence of productive forces and productive relations:
This particular law of correspondence states that productive forces and productive relations exist together and operate in unity and conflict. The law of correspondence of productive forces to productive relations has operated as the fundamental law that has driven change in all modes of production. Two kinds of changes take place: quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative changes in the productive forces cause corresponding changes and reform in the productive relations. The productive forces are the more mobile element in the correspondence of productive forces to productive relations.
Qualitative changes in the productive forces, called forth by a qualitatively new technological regime, create qualitatively new productive relations, and these new productive relations enter into conflict and antagonism with the old social arrangements and cause social and political revolution.
Qualitatively new productive forces eventually compel society to reorganize itself around the new means of production. Social revolution is the process of bringing the productive relations and the new productive forces into correspondence. That is the law of correspondence of productive forces to productive relations.
Law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall: (See, Falling rate of profit.)
Leap:
Leap means transition, the motion of change from one state to another. It is a break in the gradualness of quantitative change. It is changes where an old quality is stage by stage replaced by a new quality.
The process of radical change in a given quality, the breakdown of the old and the birth of the new is a leap, a demarcation line separating one measure from another. There are different types of leaps determined both by the nature of the developing system and by the conditions under which it develops, i.e. by the external and internal factors of development. Examples of gradual leaps, or leaps extended in time, in the development of objective reality are the emergence of life on earth, the origin of man and his consciousness, the formation of new species of animals and plants, the replacement of one socioeconomic formation by another, the great landmarks in the development of science, art, etc. Along with these, there have been leaps that occurred turbulently and at a great speed, leaps attended by explosions, so to speak, of which the characteristic features are clear-cut transition boundaries, great intensity, integrity of the restructuring of the entire system, its rise to a higher level of essence at one go. What happened in the universe during the big bang may be a good illustration of such a leap. In micro-processes, such a leap may take up a billionth of a second. There are thus two types of leap: gradual leaps and instantaneous leaps, the division resting on the time factor of their realization.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
The question of leaps is closely connected to the question of social revolution. If everything in nature and society develops by decisive qualitative changes, by leaps, then capitalism too will be inevitably replaced by another social order, and this will take place by means of a leap, which can only be by social revolution.
The doctrine of the leap means that social change will not be merely incremental or reformist but must proceed by means of revolution.
With the question of leaps is closely connected the question of social revolution. If everything in nature and society develops by decisive qualitative changes, by leaps, then it must be admitted that capitalism too will be inevitably replaced by another social order in the process of the working out of scientific laws, and that this will take place by means of a leap, which under the conditions of capitalism can only be a socialist revolution.
(Leningrad Institute of Philosophy, A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, 1937.) https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/subject/left-book-club/1937/textbook/index.htm
The leap is highly chaotic and immensely unstable. It is the process of an old quality being destroyed and a new quality emerging.
All processes pass through successive stages of development. At each quantitative stage of development of a process, the contradictory sides of the process polarize with each side becoming more of what it is. However, for a leap from one quality to another to take place, something in the environment or within the contradictory poles must be added or subtracted, to begin the qualitative change.
Introducing the new quality literally halts development of the process on the old basis. Halting development on the old basis means there are no more stages of development to pass through because the path of development has been blocked and destabilized by introducing the new quality. The new quality is the foundation for development of a new contradiction. For instance, bourgeois and proletariat develop under the feudal system as a new contradiction, which grew up in the environment of handicraft and manufacture. As the industrial revolution proceeded, the new contradiction that was bourgeois and proletariat, continued to develop in antagonism with the old feudal system, which it ultimately destroyed. The new classes and new means of production began negation of the old way of production and brought all stages of the previous pre-industrial regimes to their qualitative end. With its path of development blocked, with no more stages of development open, the old fundamental contradiction of feudal society between its productive forces and productive relations, entered a mode of stagnation and destruction and was replaced by the new classes and new productive relations.
The steam engine and the technology it embodied were the new quality which excited to life the transition from the handicraft and manufacturing of agricultural society to industrial society, with its factory system. This leap from one technological regime to a new technological regime is the social revolution. The old classes and old property relations of the feudal system were destroyed and replaced by new classes based on new property relations. Class struggle is the midwife of an old society pregnant with the new.
The semiconductor and the technology it expresses are the new quality that inaugurates the leap and introduces social revolution into what was industrial society. Introducing electronics into production has begun a qualitative change – leap – in the economy. Electronics in production, that is, robotics, develops in antagonism with industrialism and the form of society that was built up on the basis of the industrial revolution. Society is drawn into social revolution. During the process of transition which is the leap, the subjective element, human will, determines the shape of the future society.
Left wing and right wing:
The left-right designation in politics dates from the seating arrangements in the French Chamber of Deputies (their Congress) after the French Revolution (1789–1799). Conservatives sat on the benches to the right of the Speaker and the radicals to the left. Hence, left wing (left bench) and right wing (right bench). Conservative meant dedicated to preserving the existing political and social order, while radical meant in revolt against the feudal establishment.
In these days of a globalized world market, left wing and right wing no longer are descriptive.
The fight of the proletariat for political power is neither left wing nor right wing but a struggle for emancipation. Calls for workers to “fight the right” lead to a fight against one grouping within capitalist politics whereas what is required for political power is a fight against the entire capitalist system.
Leninism:
Leninism is a doctrine of combat developed by Russian Marxists in their struggle against feudal despotism and for a socialist form of the industrial revolution. V. I. Lenin was the primary architect of Leninism, which took shape during the rise of monopoly capitalism, and called for a “party of a new type” to be the lead insurrectionary force in the social revolution from agriculture to industry.
Lenin’s strategy was to organize the Russian workers as the vanguard champions of democracy and the political emancipators of the oppressed and colonized, and to build a world free of exploitation and oppression. Leninism was originally called Bolshevism. After Lenin’s 1924 death, Bolshevism because part of the name and title of the Communist Party Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), and Lenin’s doctrine of Bolshevism was renamed Leninism in honor of his role in world proletarian history.
During the era of the Comintern, J. V. Stalin’s classical 1924 definition of Leninism remained in force.
‘Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular.’
(J. V. Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, 1924.) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/introduction.htm
Shaped in the context of two revolutions in Russia, Leninism resolved the paramount social questions posed by the stage of imperialism in which Lenin lived. The era of Leninism runs roughly from 1903 to the start of World War II and dissolution of the Third Communist International. By 1949 the shift in the salient feature of the world-wide class struggle from sharp clashes between proletariat and bourgeoisie in the imperialist centers to struggle between imperialism and the colonies rendered much of the Leninist doctrine outmoded in the daily struggle of the masses.
Liberty:
Liberty is the system of political rights of the individual citizen in a democratic state, bourgeois or proletarian. The system of political rights protects the inviolability of the individual and grants the individual rights and equal treatment before the law and the state power.
Far from an abstract notion of freedom, political liberty is “political” because it defines the rights of the individual in relationship to the state. In the bourgeois democratic republic, the individual becomes a “citizen” of a political state, as distinct from a subject, serf or slave. Bourgeois democracy and the old Soviet democracy abolished the designation of subject, serf and slave, extended to all individuals a system of rights embodying their status as citizens — liberty. In the US the system of liberty is embodied in the Bill of Rights and other amendments to the Constitution.
Democracy, the democratic state, and political liberty are not identical. Designating everyone as a citizen, as distinct from serf, subject and slave is the essence of the democratic state. Although the US was a democracy in the past century (with the core Southern states more or less fascist), women did not win the vote until passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. The US was a democratic republic in the 1950s and 1960s, yet blacks still faced second-class citizenship status. They suffered from restricted political liberty as compared with their white counterparts. Although women and African Americans were part of a democracy, both still lacked equal political liberty.
Line of march:
Line of march originated as a military concept of “the route along which a column of troops advances.” However, Marx and Engels used line of march in the social-political sense, meaning the path, which must be travelled. It is the path down which revolutionaries must travel and fight to make the proletariat conscious of itself as the system passes through all its stages of development. Marx wrote about the “line of march” in the Communist Manifesto.
The communists therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
(K. Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
The line of march has its objective, material dimensions. The revolutionaries do not create the path society must travel. The path down which the class and revolutionaries must travel comes into existence as the result of the contradiction between the productive forces and productive relations – the collision between old means of production and old classes with qualitatively new means of production and new classes and finally the clash of millions of wills and subjective aspirations.
The subjective dimension of the line of march is how human beings, individuals and political parties – entire classes — respond to changes in the productive forces and fight out their class interests. The subjective aspects of the path to be travelled is the strategy deployed by revolutionaries to organize and rally the masses, to imbue then with a vision and consciousness of what is possible and their role in the emancipation of humanity. Each stage of development of the productive forces requires its own concrete assessment of what is possible based on the capacity of the class and revolutionaries to carry out the fight against the class enemy.
(See, Strategy and Tactics.)
Lumpen proletariat:
A population group formed from the breakdown of classes during the decay of the feudal system. Rather than a new class formed on the basis of new industrial means of production, the lumpen proletariat was a declassed section of the surplus population created during the breakdown of the feudal social order and the rise of the capitalist mode of production.
The lumpen proletariat came from serfs, the shattered and decaying feudal military and other class fragments of the decaying feudal order. As the crisis of the feudal system advanced over decades and centuries, the serfs either ran away or were forced from their land (separated from their means of production) and entered into and grouped around growing towns to seek food, work and a new life. One section of the serfs entered employment as artisans and producers of commodities, with some able to rise to become bourgeoisie while others became modern proletarians and exchanged their labor for wages. Those unable to find a station in the new relations of capitalist production became “ragged proletarians” —criminals, prostitutes, thieves, thugs, beggars, and a loose mass of people supported by charity. The lumpen proletariat belonged to the period of crisis of the feudal system.
The electronic revolution creates a dispossessed (fallen) and destitute proletariat, which is not a lumpen proletariat.
Machine:
A machine is an apparatus (system of tools, instruments and devices) which mimics the labor activity of the human to perform an intended action. Driven by an energy source, industrial machines amplify labor in production and work in unison with other machines, which as a system constitute socialized production. Socialized production requires groups of workers who deploy machines in an automatic process to carry out simultaneous system activity to realize a finished product.
All fully developed machinery consists of three essentially different parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechanism, and finally the tool or working machine. The motor mechanism is that which puts the whole in motion. . . . The transmitting mechanism, composed of flywheels, shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps, ropes, bands, pinions, and gearing of the most varied kinds, regulates the motion . . . The tool or working machine is that part of the machinery with which the industrial revolution of the 18th century started. And to this day it constantly serves as such a starting-point, whenever a handicraft, or a manufacture, is turned into an industry carried on by machinery.
. . . .The machine proper is therefore a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly done by the workman with similar tools. Whether the motive power is derived from man, or from some other machine, makes no difference in this respect. From the moment that the tool proper is taken from man, and fitted into a mechanism, a machine takes the place of a mere implement.
(K. Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S1
Industrial machinery augmented labor in production, widened the social division of labor and increased the working class as a percentage of the population. Production became dominated by unskilled laborers, who acted as handlers of things and supervisors of machine processes.
Robotic machinery destroys labor in production, restricts and destroys the social division of labor, and shrinks the working class as a percentage of the population. Robotics ousts labor from production, replaces the workers with advanced machinery and creates products in the absence of the laborer.
(See, Robotics.)
Male supremacy:
Male supremacy is an ideology and practice that justifies the domination of men over women. The origin of male supremacy coincided with the division of society into classes. Male supremacy is built into the architecture of productive relations based on class exploitation and appropriation of the unpaid and low-paid labor of women. This ideology is used by the capitalist class to maintain its domination and ability to extract extra profit out of female labor. The ending of women’s oppression requires not only the ending of capitalism but the abolition of all classes.
The term “male supremacy” is used rather than “male chauvinism” because chauvinism is a concept linked to nations.
(See, Woman question.)
Manifesto of the Communist Party: (See, Communist Manifesto.)
Manufacture:
The term manufacture is used differently in Marxism than in everyday language. For Marxists, manufacture refers to a stage of development of the means of production that preceded the factory system and industrial revolution. Manufacture was the highest stage of the manual labor system. It divided production into separate tasks, carried out by separate workers. Manufacture brought together a group of workers within one enterprise for the production of a commodity, which formerly had been done by a single artisan but did not rise to the level of factory production.
(See, Division of labor.)
Mao Zedong Thought and Maoism:
Mao Zedong Thought and Maoism belong to different periods of history and refer to the doctrine and philosophy of Mao Zedong. Both claim that Mao Zedong qualitatively developed the science of Marxism, the philosophy of dialectical materialism and the theory of classes and class struggle under socialism.
Mao Zedong Thought
Mao Zedong Thought belongs to the era of the Comintern, the period of destruction of political feudalism and the direct European based closed colonial system. This era includes the 1920s to the 1960s, with its consolidation of the neo-colonial regimes. Mao Zedong Thought embraces the period of shift in the salient feature of the class struggle from collision between capitalist and workers in the US and Europe, including the war against fascism, to the post World War II period of struggle of a dying colonialism, imperialism and the colonies.
Born in 1893, Chairman Mao Zedong remains a leading figure in Chinese history, the Communist Party of China (CPC) and an extraordinary figure in world history. By the time of his death in 1976, Mao’s writings had been embraced by vast sectors of the revolutionary movement.
“The Thought of Mao Zedong” was a 1947 essay by Anne Louise Strong, and is probably the source of the phrase “Mao Zedong Thought.” The Thought of Mao concretely analyzed China, beginning with his 1926 “Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society,” the 1928 “Why is it that Red Political Power can exist in China?” and the 1940 “On New Democracy.” These writings define China’s agrarian-feudal character and brutal enslavement by imperialism. Mao Zedong Thought contains Mao’s doctrine of people’s war and the specifics of building a revolutionary party as the vehicle of insurrection and as the institution to take state power, with the party being virtually indistinguishable from the People’s Liberation Army.
Mao also authored controversial philosophic writings, contained in his Four Essays on Philosophy. This book contains four essays: “On Practice” 1937, “On Contradiction,” 1937, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” 1957, and the 1963 “Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?” Mao Zedong Thought, according to its followers, is an expression of Marxism-Leninism applied to the particularities of the Chinese revolution.
Mao Zedong’s Thought refers to Mao’s writings on the Chinese Revolution in the period before Nikita Khrushchev’s 1953 ascendency to power and emergence of the Sino-Soviet split which began around 1960.
Maoism
The use of the term Maoism in the 1960s was by individuals and political-ideological groups that claimed ideological affinity with the Chinese Revolution and supported Mao Zedong’s writings and doctrine. During the period of the Sino-Soviet split, Maoists worldwide united under the banner of Mao Zedong Thought. Outside of the Sino section of the split and the millions of revolutionaries worldwide who supported the China side of the split, the term Maoists was used as a pejorative term by the revisionist Khrushchev clique in the Soviet Union and the communist parties that supported the Soviet pole of the split. The Soviet revisionists labeled Maoism a petty bourgeois ideology, that glorified war, rebellion and confrontation with imperialism.
During the 1970s, doctrinal differences arose among the revolutionaries who were grouped under the banner of Mao Zedong Thought. A shift in the language of condemnation of the Soviet revisionists appeared in the pages of Peking Review in the late 1960s. The turning point came in May 1968 in an article in the Peking Review that claimed capitalism had been restored in the Soviet Union. Later in the year, a statement by Premier Chou En-lai labeled the Soviets “fascist” and called them “social-imperialists.” In March of 1969 a border clash between China and the Soviets took place. When President Nixon visited China in February 1972, the stage was set for a US-China alliance against the Soviets that further split the Mao Zedong Thought group into two camps: Mao Zedong Thought and Maoists.
The polarization of these two groupings was heightened with divergence over the approach to the so-called “Third World.” The Soviets and Chinese supported competing groupings within the colonial revolutions. Generally speaking, the Chinese Maoists tended to support the most reactionary section of the colonial revolutions in unity with US imperialism. The pursuit of the national state interest of the Chinese state in alliance with US imperialism ultimately split the Maoist movement.
During the 1980s the split within Maoism was further institutionalized. A rupture within Maoism in 1984 split that grouping into Maoists and Marxist–Leninist–Maoists (MLM). This split came out of an “International” meeting conducted by several Maoist groups. The three most notable differences between MLM and Mao Zedong Thought are that: MLM is considered by its proponents to be a higher stage of Marxism-Leninism. Mao Zedong Thought is considered by its proponents to be Marxism-Leninism applied to the particularities of China. MLM is considered by its proponents to be universally applicable (particularly the theory of protracted people’s war) while Mao Zedong Thought is not proposed as having universal solutions regardless of conditions, time and place. MLM rejects the Three Worlds Theory of Mao Zedong Thought.
Twenty-first century Maoism is based primarily in the former colonies, with sectarian supporters in Canada, England and the US. Maoism today claims to be a legitimate continuation of the science of Marxism, but it is a revision of Marxism.
(See, Marxism, Revisionism.)
Market:
The market is the totality of links that make exchange of commodities, buying and selling and the circulation of money possible. It is the system where exchange takes place. Retail stores and on-line commerce are part of the market. The market came into existence thousands of years before the capitalist mode of production. Wherever the exchange of labor equivalents (social products) takes place, there is a market relation.
In the market workers and capitalists do not face each other as individuals. Instead, each class faces the market and its institutions as buyers and sellers of labor-power. Since the market seems impersonal and not controlled by either the worker or the capitalist, the two parties seem to face each other as equals. As individuals, each is free either to reach a labor agreement or not to agree. No worker is bound to any employer, and no employer is compelled to hire any individual worker. Exploitation of the working class takes place through the market relation. Hence, the bourgeois mode of commodity production (capitalism) is called the “free market” system by capitalist propaganda.
Communist economy abolishes the market system but preserves stores and on-line networks as distribution centers. No longer will worker and capitalist face the market as worker and capitalist buying and selling labor ability. The market is abolished, and distribution of social products is based on need.
Marx, Karl:
Marx was born May 5, 1818, in Trier, Germany, the son of a lawyer. On completing his preparatory studies in Trier, he entered Bonn and then Berlin University. In Berlin Marx joined the group of revolutionary minded students of the Hegelian philosophy who were known as ‘Left-Hegelians.’ On completing his university studies Marx wrote his doctoral dissertation on ‘The Difference Between the Natural Philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus,’ in which work he still held an idealist viewpoint. During the next few years, he passed through Feuerbachian humanism to dialectical materialism.
Political reaction in Germany in 1841 having made a university position impossible, Marx became editor of a radical bourgeois newspaper at Cologne. Soon he resigned his editorship under pressure from the censors and the paper’s owners. He emigrated to Paris and became involved in communist activities there, both theoretical and practical. In 1845 he was expelled from France and went to Brussels, where he lived until 1848. Banished from Belgium after the February Revolution of 1848, Marx finally went to London, where he lived to the end of his days.
During 1845-49, with the help of Engels Marx developed the basic features of what is known as Marxism. The Holy Family and The German Ideology (both written with Engels), his Poverty of Philosophy in criticism of Proudhon, all point towards the basic document of scientific socialism, The Communist Manifesto, written with Engels and published in February, 1848, as the program of the Communist League, the first international organization of Communists. It appeared just before the outbreak of the French and German revolutions of 1848, in connection with which Marx also played an important practical organizing role.
After the political upheavals in France in 1851 Marx published The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in which he summed up the results of the revolution of 1848-1851. The years after the revolution were for Marx years of the most intense labor on his chief scientific work, Capital, the first volume of which appeared in 1867. The later years of Marx’s work on Capital were also years of extensive political and organizational activity.
With the strengthening of the labor movement at the beginning of the ‘sixties, Marx undertook the realization of his ideas concerning an association of workers of the leading European countries. In London in 1864 the International Workingmen’s Association — the First International — was founded, of which Marx was the moving spirit and intellectual leader. In 1871 Marx wrote his brilliant brochure, The Civil War in France, a profound analysis of the Paris Commune. As a result of the growth of political reaction after the fall of the Commune, the General Council of the First International was removed to America, where, in 1876, it declared the dissolution of the organization. From that time on Marx devoted himself to the completion of Capital. The exile to which he had periodically been subjected by reactionary governments, the severe needs from which he did not escape throughout his life and which were only partly mitigated by the material aid of Engels, the vigorous struggles which Marx carried on against the many non-proletarian and anti-proletarian tendencies, all undermined his strength, and he died on March 14, 1883.
Together with Engels, Marx had worked out the revolutionary world view of the proletariat — dialectical materialism. Extending and applying this world view to the field of social history, Marx created historical materialism the science of the laws of social evolution and of the class struggle. On the basis afforded by his philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism, his profound study of world history and of the economic and political life of bourgeois society, Marx was able, with the insight of genius, to discover the nature of the origin of capitalism, the laws and direction of its evolution and the conditions determining its decline and death. Marx demonstrated the historically transient character of the capitalist order, and the inevitability of the victory of the coming communist system. Proceeding from the evident irreconcilability of the class interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and from an analysis of the historical mission of the proletariat as the gravedigger of capitalism and the creator of the new communist society, Marx put forward the basic idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as an instrument in effecting the revolutionary transformation of capitalism into socialism. Marx set up the theory of scientific communism as against the variety of previously existing theories of utopian socialism. It is important to note the philosophic significance of the fact that Marx’s theories in the several fields to which he applied himself are not independent of one another but are organically connected.
(H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, Proletarian Publishers, 1949, pages 70-71.
Selsam’s internal “see” references are omitted here and in other Selsam quotes.)
Marxism:
Named after Karl Marx, Marxism is the science of society. Frederick Engels, Marx’s longtime collaborator, described Marx’s discovery.
It was precisely Marx who had first discovered the great law of motion of history, the law according to which all historical struggles, whether they proceed in the political, religious, philosophical or some other ideological domain, are in fact only the more or less clear expression of struggles of social classes, and that the existence and thereby the collisions, too, between these classes are in turn conditioned by the degree of development of their economic position, by the mode of their production and of their exchange determined by it. This law, which has the same significance for history as the law of the transformation of energy has for natural science . . .
(F. Engels, Preface to the Third German Edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1885.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/prefaces/18th-brumaire.htm
For we live not only in nature but also in human society, and this also no less than nature has its history of development and its science. It was therefore a question of bringing the science of society, that is, the sum total of the so-called historical and philosophical sciences, into harmony with the materialist foundation, and of reconstructing it thereupon.
(F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, 1886; bold emphasis added.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch02.htm
The philosophy of Marx and Engels is dialectical materialism. Marx and Engels developed the system of laws that governs how things develop and change. Application of the laws of society gave rise to a doctrine of class struggle that concluded the class rule of the proletariat is the necessary vehicle to complete the transition from capitalism to communist society.
Marxism-the-science:
The most succinct description of the science, the laws governing development of society, is laid out in the famous paragraphs from Marx’s Preface to the Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy. These laws can be grasped and utilized by revolutionaries to understand the stage of development of the class struggle, and can provide a kind of guide to action. It is the science of society. Engels’ chapter on Historical Materialism in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, outlines the materialist conception of history. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/
Marxism-the-philosophy:
The most succinct description of Marx’s and Engels’ dialectics is stated in Marx’s 1873 Afterword to Capital, vol. one, second German edition. Engels describes Marx’s dialectic in Dialectics of Nature. Materialist dialectics describes the most general laws of reality.
Marxism-the-doctrine:
is the application of Marxism-the-science at any particular stage of the development of society, and thus must evolve and change as the productive forces change, and with them, the environment of the class struggle. For instance, Leninism is a doctrine of Marxism. The Marxist doctrine must not be confused with Marxism as a science and Marx approach to materialist dialectics.
Marxism-the-science describes the laws that govern the development of societies. The most succinct description of these laws is laid out in the famous paragraph from the Preface to the Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy. These laws can be grasped and utilized by revolutionaries to understand the stage of development of the class struggle, and as such can provide a kind of guide to action. It is the science of society. The science of Marxism applies dialectics –- the understanding of how things develop and change — to societies. It solves the question of the relation between the objective and the subjective in making history. Marxist communists base their understanding of history, society and change on a scientific approach, on theories based on observation and tested in reality. Marxist communists utilize science as revolutionaries engaged with the world — that is, not just trying to “interpret the world, but to change it.”
Marxism-the-doctrine, on the other hand, describes the application of Marxism-the-science at a given stage of the development of society, and thus must evolve and change as the development of the productive forces change, and with it, the environment of the class struggle.
(Institute Resource Paper #2 Marxism as the Scientific Current Within Communism.) https://web.archive.org/web/20010411195953/http://scienceofsociety.org/inbox/inbox.home.html
In a 1913 article, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, V. I. Lenin described the philosophic foundation, theory of political economy and doctrine of class struggle that distinguished Marxism as a revolutionary science.
(V. I. Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, 1913.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
(See, Class Struggle, Social Revolution.)
Marxism-Leninism:
Marxism-Leninism is a doctrine of class struggle, which took shape during the first two decades of the past century, and became the foundation of the communist parties affiliated to the Third International. Marxism-Leninism came to be the official doctrine in the Soviet state, Communist Party and dominated the ideology and programs of all communist parties.
It is a combination of Marxism and Leninism. Marxism, named after Karl Marx, is the science of society with a philosophy of materialism and approach to understanding nature and society being dialectical. Leninism, named after V. I. Lenin, is a doctrine of class struggle that arose and consolidated during the transition from agriculture to industry.
After the death of V. I. Lenin, the most authoritative grouping within the Communist Party Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) created the designation Marxism-Leninism to distinguish themselves from Social-Democracy, the various reformist political parties and ideologies that one way or another supported the world bourgeois order.
The Marxist-Leninist ideological and political trend, founded with the rise of the Comintern, (with which we share a connection), was rendered obsolete by the forward advance of the social process. Marxism-Leninism was made obsolete by a rising objective communist movement based on robotics.
(See, Leninism, Marxism, and Revisionism.)
Mass uprising:
A mass uprising involves a multitude of people in protest and is a mass protest. A worldwide round of mass uprisings broke out in Tunisia in December 2010, then in Egypt and Libya, and in Madison, Wisconsin, February 15, 2011. They continued in the Occupy Wall Street protest of September 2011 and the uprisings against the militarized police beginning in Ferguson, MO and against the choking death of Eric Garner November 2014. This revolutionary trend continued in the Bernie Sanders campaign and still remains active in many ways, such as the women’s march of January 2017.
With social media pointing the way, the US is stumbling along the path to political revolution through mass uprisings and prolonged civil disobedience. A mass uprising is not a “political revolution.” In a political revolution, political power changes from one class to another. Nor is a mass uprising a “riot.” Mass uprisings are more focused than a riot and contain demands and a focus against government abuse of people’s rights but should not be mistaken for revolution.
(See, Revolution.)
Materialism:
Materialism is a world outlook that holds that matter, nature and being are primary in relation to consciousness, thinking, and spirit, and that the world is knowable. For philosophic materialism, consciousness is human awareness rather than otherworldly universal consciousness or what animates plants and other forms of organic life.
Although in everyday conversation materialism means the love of material things, in philosophy it has a completely different and unrelated meaning. Philosophy and terms of philosophy examine the relationship of matter and consciousness, thinking and being, nature and spirit, and determine what is primary and what is secondary in existence and human relations. The answer to “what is primary”—matter or consciousness—divides philosophy and philosophers into two basic camps: materialism and idealism.
Materialism holds that matter exists as an objective reality outside of and independently from the consciousness of the individual and existed before human beings and human consciousness.
(See, Idealism, Objective and Subjective.)
Materialist conception of history:
The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.
(F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
The materialist conception of history overturned the old historical narrative based on the “great man theory of history” which claims that one individual possessing the Wisdom of Solomon or great strength creates history. The materialist conception of history is not a key that unlocks all the mysteries of history but is a starting point and framework in which to view and understand the motion and underlying law systems of a society.
(See, Historical materialism.)
Matriarchy: (See, Mother-right.)
Matter:
Matter is objective reality in all its manifestations. It is that, which acts upon human senses and causes awareness and contemplation. Matter exists objectively, outside of and independent of human consciousness. Matter exists outside of human or any other form of consciousness and moves based on its own law system.
Matter is everything that surrounds us, that exists outside our consciousness, that does not depend on our consciousness, and that is or may be reflected directly or indirectly in consciousness. All the sciences study certain properties and relations of specific forms of matter, but not matter in its most general sense. The philosophical understanding of matter retains its significance whatever the discoveries of natural science. The concept of matter does not epistemologically mean anything except objective reality existing independently of human consciousness. Moreover, matter is the only existing objective reality: the cause, foundation, content and substance of all the diversity of the world.
. . . . Matter manifests itself in innumerable properties. The most important are objective existence, structure, indestructibility, motion, space, time, reflection and information. These are the attributes of matter, that is to say, its universal, intransient properties without which it could not exist.
(A. Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism, 1983.)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s02.html
Matter is reflected, expressed, and given to humans in sensation and finally interpreted through human experience. Knowledge of matter and its law system grows with developing science. Matter is all the infinite multiplicity of different objects that exist and move in time and space and possess an inexhaustible diversity of qualities. Human sense organs can perceive only an insignificant part of all the existing forms of matter, but thanks to construction of increasingly sophisticated instruments and measuring devices, humanity is widening the frontier of the known world and universe.
Means of production:
Means of production are one of the indispensable components of productive forces and embrace the nonhuman resources required for production, including land, raw materials, tools, machinery, energy source, and technology in production.
(See, Mode of production, Productive forces.)
Mega-corporation: (See, Corporation.)
Mega-corporate state:
The mega-corporate state results from the merger of the mega-corporation with the state. The US megacorp state today is a fascist state. Fascism in power is a political form of the state. The merger between mega-corporations and the state is manifested in megacorps acquiring an intelligence-gathering capacity, sharing the same personnel, conducting warfare on behalf of states, employing private policing agencies, designing new forms of the city, which include infrastructure based on the location’s convenience to the megacorp.
Today’s mega-corporate state differs from the “corporative state” of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. L. Harry Gould’s 1946 Marxist Glossary defines the industrial corporative state of the 1930s and 40s.
A fascist conception of society realized substantially in Italy during Mussolini’s regime; . . . . Its essential idea is the organization of the national economy through corporations covering the various industries, the managements to consist of representatives of the employers, the government and the employees — in other words, the destruction of the trade unions and all other independent working class bodies; it differs from the Nazi ‘Labor Front’ only in unessentials. (Page 30.)
L. Harry Gould’s corporative state took shape during a stage of development of the industrial revolution, imperialism and the multinational corporation. Gould’s definition reflected European fascism which took shape decades before the peaking of the industrial revolution and at a time when society was completing the transition from agriculture to industry.
Many decades of capitalist development have passed since L. Harry Gould’s definition of fascism. At a certain stage in the accumulation, concentration and centralization of capital, in the age of robotics and electronic production, the megacorp merged with the state and began the remake of the state in its own image which resulted in the mega-corporate state. The mega-corporate state is a fascist state. Not only does the state function as the executive committee of the new megacorps, but the state and mega-corporation are so merged that their “heads” are the same people, and there literally is no dividing line between them. The mega-corporate state operates in the realm of the superstructure and can be overthrown and dismantled by the people. President Donald Trump, the Trump state apparatus and the Trump administration make the mega-corporate state visible for all to see.
(See, Fascism, State.)
Metaphysics:
As a branch of philosophy, metaphysics views and understands existence and things in reality as fixed and isolated, unconnected with and separate from other things. It is a static way of thinking, reflected in the historical analysis that merely sees one event after another without causal connection. Metaphysics rejects causality and the doctrine of self-movement being motivated by the internal opposites (contradiction) in a thing. Metaphysics is the opposite of dialectics. In contrast to metaphysics, dialectics looks at things as changing and connected with other things. Dialectics analyzes things in terms of their history, motion and interconnection (interactivity) with their changing environment.
To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. . . . For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other.
And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.
(F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/introduction.htm
Metaphysics, in contradistinction to dialectics:
Dialectics emerged and developed in the struggle against the metaphysical method of thinking, or metaphysics.
Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole, in which things, phenomena are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other.
The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in nature can be understood if taken by itself, isolated from surrounding phenomena, inasmuch as any phenomenon in any realm of nature may become meaningless to us if it is not considered in connection with the surrounding conditions, but divorced from them; and that, vice versa, any phenomenon can be understood and explained if considered in its inseparable connection with surrounding phenomena, as one conditioned by surrounding phenomena.
Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that nature is not a state of rest and immobility, stagnation and immutability, but a state of continuous movement and change, of continuous renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing, and something always disintegrating and dying away.
The dialectical method therefore requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out of being.
The dialectical method regards as important primarily not that which at the given moment seems durable and yet is already beginning to die away, but that which is arising and developing, even though at the given moment it may appear to be not durable, for the dialectical method considers invincible only that which is arising and developing.
Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the process of development as a simple process of growth, where quantitative changes do not lead to qualitative changes, but as a development which passes from insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes to open ‘fundamental changes’ to qualitative changes; a development in which the qualitative changes occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another; they occur not accidentally but as the natural result of an accumulation of imperceptible and gradual quantitative changes.
The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development should be understood not as movement in a circle, not as a simple repetition of what has already occurred, but as an onward and upward movement, as a transition from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, as a development from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher:
‘Nature,’ says Engels, ‘is the test of dialectics and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that in the last analysis nature’s process is dialectical and not metaphysical, that it does not move in an eternally uniform and constantly repeated circle. but passes through a real history. Here prime mention should be made of Darwin, who dealt a severe blow to the metaphysical conception of nature by proving that the organic world of today, plants and animals, and consequently man too, is all a product of a process of development that has been in progress for millions of years.’
(J. V. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, 1938.)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
Middle Ages: (See, Feudalism.)
Middle class: (See, Class, Petty (petite) bourgeoisie.)
Military coup:
A military coup is the seizure of political power by the military, outside of constitutional means. A military coup is not a change in class power, but instead a change in personnel and the form of class rule that maintains the old ruling class in power.
A military coup differs from political revolution. Political revolution is based on and rooted in an uprising of the masses and revolutionary movement of a class and takes political power on their behalf. A revolution is a change in which class is the ruling class.
Mode of production:
Mode of production is the predominant way a society reproduces the things needed for its existence, growth and development.
In all forms of society there is one specific kind of production which predominates over the rest. . . . a general illumination which bathes all the other colors and modifies their particularity.
(K. Marx, The Grundrisse, 1857.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm
Mode of production has two general components: the productive forces and the social relations of production. The unity and struggle, contradiction, between productive forces and the social relations of production, constitute the fundamental contradiction in every mode of production without exception.
The productive forces are the division of labor, energy sources, the means of production and the skills and knowledge to use them. Marxism presuppose the existence of people and human agency. Thus, when all the elements that make up the productive forces are considered, human beings with their gray matter and cognitive ability are the most important productive force. The state of development of the productive forces determines the social organization of labor in society, the form of social production and forms of social consciousness.
To produce and sustain human development, people must form certain mutual relationships. The social relations of production (productive relations) are the connections between people and between people and property in the process of production. In class society the most important aspect of productive relations is the ownership pattern – property relations. Property relations are the basis of class relations.
Marx discovered the progressive and transient character of all modes of production, the connecting tissue that ties society together into a productive entity, and he created the language to describe the general law systems governing progress from one mode of production to the next. Human society develops from lower forms of economy to higher ones. Every mode of production reflects a definite stage in developing productive forces and productive relations.
Relics of bygone instruments of labor possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. Instruments of labor not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labor has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labor is carried on. Among the instruments of labor, those of a mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labor, . . . .
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
The dialectic of change and interaction between productive forces and production relations is that the productive forces are the more mobile and revolutionary factor in production, as compared with the productive relations.
The productive forces are the most mobile and revolutionary factor in production. The development of production begins with changes in the productive forces; first of all, with changes and development in the instruments of production, and thereafter corresponding changes also take place in the sphere of production relations. Production relations between men, which develop in dependence upon the development of the productive forces, themselves in turn actively, affect the productive forces.
(Political Economy, A Textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of sciences of the USSR, 1957)
http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PoliticalEconomy.pdf
While productive forces are the more mobile aspect of production, this does not mean the productive relations are simply passive and non-interactive. Productive relations play an important role in the development of society. Due to property relations, the interaction between productive forces and productive relations is the unity and struggle between classes. Class struggle is the midwife of every old society pregnant with new means of production social revolution.
Quantitative growth and change in the productive forces impel society forward from one stage of development to the next. Qualitative changes in the productive forces begin destruction of the old productive relations and the old social organization of labor, create an era of social revolution and cause society to transition from one mode of production to the next.
In class society qualitatively new productive forces create new forms of classes. The new classes “come into conflict with” and are antagonistic to the old social arrangements, old classes and old forms of creation of wealth. A period of social revolution unfolds to create a new superstructure to guard, protect and nurture the new productive relations and new productive forces. Society leaps from one mode of production to the next based on qualitative changes in the means of production.
(See, Social revolution, Superstructure.)
Agrarian epoch:
An agrarian society is primarily agricultural. The agrarian epoch encompasses different modes of production, including primitive communalism (in its later stages), slavery, feudalism and industrialism (in its earlier stages). Productive activity in agrarian society began as gathering and developed into farming and breeding/herding of animals.
Simple hand tools, primitive communal productive relations:
For a very long time, people lived in groups whose numbers did not exceed a few dozen persons based on deep matriarchal kinship ties because a greater number could not have provided food and protection for themselves. These groups of human beings were more of a small community than a society. Learning how to create fire through friction and then the development of stable communities were the conditions for people to invent things – tools and instruments — and create society. Society is constituted on the basis of productive forces and productive relations, which together form the basic structures of human society. The contradictory relation between productive forces and productive relations impels society through all stages of development.
The foundation for the first form of society developed under the primitive-communal system. The instruments of labor were of the most primitive kind. With only stone tools, and, later, the bow and arrow, an isolated individual could not combat the forces of nature and beasts of prey alone. To survive, gather the fruits of the forest, to catch fish and build habitation, people had to work in common — to enter into relations of production. Labor in common led to the common ownership of the means of production and of the fruits of production. Here there were no classes, exploitation or private property relations of production.
In the primitive society, all able-bodied members participated in productive labor. Primitive society was organized with a natural division of labor based on sex and age. Younger men tended to hunt, and venture further away from the home than older men, and women tended to harvest plants, manage household chores, and engage in primitive agriculture. Inheritance was through the mother. Children helped women do auxiliary labor close to the home. Girls tended to adopt the ways and division of labor of the women, and the boys adopted the ways of men. Interpersonal relations were primitive cooperative relations.
Under the conditions of clan commune ownership and collective labor, products were shared equally. Because of the low level of productive forces at that time, products obtained through labor were only sufficient to maintain a minimum level of subsistence with little left over. If distribution had not been equal [equitable, not necessarily numerically equal, Eds.] some members of the clan would have starved, or the clan might have disintegrated.
The economic substructure of the primitive society also produced its corresponding superstructure. The primitive society successively passed through the matriarchal and patriarchal clan stages. The formation of the matriarchal clan was the result of the more important positions occupied by women in productive activities.
(China Book Project, Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited with an introduction by George C. Wang, 1977.)
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/fundamentals.pdf
(1) Thanks to labor, humanity emerged from the animal world, and human society arose. The distinctive feature of human labor is the making of implements of production, used to create, stabilize and expand the surplus product. These increasingly complex implements are first conceived in the mind and then shaped by labor, marking them as uniquely human products.
(2) The productive forces of these communities were on an exceedingly low level, and the implements of production were extremely primitive. This necessitated collective labor based on non-property or rather social property in the means of production and distribution. There was no property inequality or private property in the means of production; there were no classes or exploitation of one person by another. Humanity existed in small communities more or less isolated from one another.
(3) The basic economic law of the primitive community consists in the securing of people’s vitally necessary means of subsistence with the help of primitive implements of production, on the basis of communal property in the means of production, by means of common labor and the equal distribution of the products.
(4) Working together, humanity for a long time performed uniform labor. The gradual improvement of implements of production promoted the rise of a natural division of labor, depending on sex and age. Further perfecting of the implements of production and the mode of obtaining the means of life, the development of cattle-breeding and agriculture led to the appearance of the social division of labor and exchange, of private property and property inequality, to the division of society into exploiting and exploited classes. Thus the growing forces of production entered into contradiction with the relations of production, as a result of which primitive communal society gave way to another type of relations of production — the slave owning system.
(Textbook of Political Economy, 1957, paraphrased.)
http://www.marx.be/Prime/ENG/Books/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
Handicraft, slave productive relations:
Under the slave mode of production there was no common ownership of the means of production or of the fruits of production. Communal relations were replaced by private ownership – private property relations – and the state came into existence to protect the private property relations. The slave owner appeared as the principal property owner in the full sense of the term. Slave society and the slave-owning mode of production replaced matriarchy and the society of commons and communal property.
At first slavery bore a patriarchal or domestic character. There were comparatively few slaves. Slave labor was not yet the basis of production but played a subsidiary part in the economy. The aim of the economy remained the satisfaction of the demands of the large patriarchal family, which had hardly any recourse to exchange. The master’s power over his slaves was already unlimited but the sphere of application of slave labor was limited. The further growth of productive forces, and the development of the social division of labor and of exchange, formed the basis of society’s transition to the slave-owning system. The advance from stone to metal implements of labor led to a considerable extension of the limits of human labor. The invention of the blacksmith’s bellows enabled man to make iron implements of labor of a durability not seen before. It became possible with the help of the iron axe to clear the land of forests and undergrowth for ploughing. The wooden plough with iron share made it possible to work comparatively large plots of land. Primitive Hunting economy gave place to agriculture and cattle breeding. Handicrafts appeared. In agriculture, which remained the main branch of production, methods of tillage and cattle breeding improved. New branches of agriculture arose; vine and flax growing, the growing of oil crops, and so on. The rich families’ herds increased. More and more working hands were needed to look after the cattle. Weaving, metalworking, the art of pottery and other crafts gradually improved. Formerly a craft had been a subsidiary occupation of the husbandman or herdsman. Now for many people it became an independent occupation. The separation of handicraft from agriculture took place. This was the second large-scale social division of labor. With the division of production into two large basic branches, agriculture and handicraft, there arises production directly for exchange though still in an undeveloped form. The growth in productivity of labor led to an increase in the amount of the surplus product which, with private property in the means of production, afforded the opportunity for the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a minority of society, and on this basis for the subordination of the working majority to the exploiting minority, for the conversion of laborers into slaves. Under conditions of slavery, the economy was basically a natural one.
(Political Economy, A Textbook, 1957; bold emphasis added.)
http://www.marx.be/Prime/ENG/Books/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
The foundation of the relations of production of the slave mode of production was private property in human beings, slaves, who constituted the working class. The slave oligarchy owned the slave as their private property, whom the owner could sell, purchase or kill as though the slave were an animal. The relations of cooperation and solidarity that had been characteristic of the primitive-communal matriarchy were negated by a relationship involving the domination of one section of society over the other, by relations of exploitation, oppression, and hostility. Unpaid labor and appropriation of the surplus product by a numerically small ruling class became the foundation of every society founded on private property and moving in class antagonism.
The slave mode of production negated the template of communal society and created new economic classes based on private property and handicraft technology. Private property in slaves became the method which permitted appropriation of the surplus product and unpaid labor of the many by the few. Unpaid labor was converted into private wealth and private riches for the ruling class.
The basic economic law of the slave-owning system consists in the production of surplus product to satisfy the demands of the slave-owners, by means of the rapacious exploitation of the slaves on the basis of full ownership by the slave-owners of the means of production and of the slaves themselves, by the ruining and enslaving of peasants and craftsmen, and also by conquering and enslaving the peoples of other countries.
(Textbook of Political Economy, 1957.)
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
The basic classes of the slave society were the slave-owning class and the slaves. Outside of these two classes were the free peasants and handicraftsmen. Slaves were at the bottom of the social strata and were subject to the cruelest exploitation and oppression by the slave owners. All through the whole period of slavery, there was violent class struggle between the slaves and the slave owners.
. . . . In various countries of the world, slave uprisings were the theme of many heroic epics. For example, in the Roman period, Spartacus led the biggest rebellion with 120,000 participants. This rebellion shook the whole Roman Empire to its foundation. Violent slave rebellions dealt severe blows to the political power of the slave owners and hastened the collapse of slavery. While slavery disintegrated, feudal production relations gradually matured. The newly emerging landlords representing feudal production relations used the power of the laboring people to overthrow the of the slave owners and established a government of landlords. Feudalism finally replaced slavery.
(China Book Project, Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited with an introduction by George C. Wang, 1977.)
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/fundamentals.pdf
Handicraft/manufacture mode of production, feudal productive relations:
The economic foundation of feudal society (called medievalism or the “Middle Ages” in the US) was a higher development of the means of production than under slavery. Further improvements in metal working, the spread of the iron plow and the loom, the further development of agriculture and dairying, the appearance of manufactories alongside the handicraft workshops were the characteristic features of the state of the productive forces. The new productive forces demanded that the laborer display initiative in production and an inclination for work, an interest in work.
The production relations of this system were the feudal ownership of the means of production, primarily of the land. The very concept known as “feudalism” is derived from the Latin word “feodum,” the name given to the lands distributed by the king to his vassals in return for their military allegiance.
The feudal lord owned the means of production and did not fully own the worker in production (the serf) whom the feudal lord could no longer kill, but whom he could buy and sell. Alongside feudal ownership, there existed individual ownership by the peasants and the handicraftsmen of their implements of production and their private enterprise based on their personal labor. Such relations of production, in the main, corresponded to the state of the productive forces of that period.
The feudal lord therefore discarded the slave, as a laborer who had no interest in work and was entirely without initiative. The lord preferred to deal with the serf, with his or her own implements of production, science, skill, and art of farming and a certain interest in work essential for the cultivation of the land and for the payment in kind of a part of the harvest to the feudal lord. Here, private property, firmly rooted in the ability of a section of society to appropriate the unpaid labor of another section of society, was further developed. Exploitation was nearly as severe as it was under slavery — it was only slightly mitigated. A class struggle, based on the contradiction of exploiters and exploited, drove the feudal system through all its stages of development.
The feudal mode of production negated the template of the slave society and created economic classes based on private property in land — landlords (nobility) and the landless peasants (serfs). Private property in land was the foundation upon which the nobility appropriated the surplus product of the serf. The serf worked the land and provided the nobility and clergy with a portion of the product, over and above what was consumed by the serf and his family. The surplus product was the unpaid labor of the serf converted into private wealth and private riches for the ruling class.
- Feudalism arose on the basis of the disintegration of slave-owning society and the break-up of the village community of the tribes which conquered the slave-owning States. In those countries where there had been no slave-owning system, feudalism arose on the basis of the break-up of the primitive community system. The clan aristocracy and military leaders of the tribes took into their hands a great quantity of lands and distributed them among their followers. The gradual enserfing of the peasants took place.
(2) The feudal lord’s ownership of land and incomplete ownership of the worker in production-the peasant serf-was the basis of the relations of production in feudal society. As well as feudal property there existed the individual property of the peasant and craftsman, which was based on personal labor. The labor of the peasant serfs was the source of the existence of feudal society. Serf exploitation was expressed in the fact that the peasants were compelled to perform week-work for the feudal lord, or to pay him quitrent in kind and in money. The burden that serfdom laid on the peasant was frequently little different from that of slavery. However, the serf system opened certain possibilities for the development of the productive forces since the peasant could work a certain part of the time on his own holding and had a certain interest in his labor.
(3) The basic economic law of feudalism consists in the production of surplus product to satisfy the demands of the feudal lords, by means of the exploitation of dependent peasants, on the basis of the ownership of the land by the feudal lords and their incomplete ownership of the workers in production-the serfs.
(4) Feudal society, particularly in the period of the early Middle Ages, was split into small princedoms and states. The nobility and clergy were the ruling estates of feudal society. The peasant estate had no political rights. A class struggle between peasants and feudal lords took place throughout the whole history of feudal society. The feudal State, reflecting the interests of nobility and clergy, was an active force helping them to consolidate their right of feudal ownership of the land and to intensify their exploitation of the dispossessed and oppressed peasants.
(5) In the feudal era agriculture played a predominant part, and the economy had a basically natural character. With the development of the social division of labor and exchange, the old towns which had survived the fall of the slave-owning system revived, and new towns arose. The towns were centers of handicraft and trade. The crafts were organized in guilds which strove to prevent competition. Traders united in merchant guilds.
(6) The development of commodity production, breaking down the natural economy, led to differentiation among the peasants and the craftsmen. Merchant capital hastened the decline of the crafts and promoted the birth of capitalist enterprise-the manufactories. Feudal limitations and territorial divisions acted as a brake on the growth of commodity production. In the process of further development, the national market was formed. The centralized feudal State arose in the form of absolute monarchy.
(7) Primitive accumulation of capital prepared the conditions for the rise of capitalism. Huge numbers of small producers — peasants and craftsmen — were deprived of the means of production. Great monetary wealth concentrated in the hands of large landowners, merchants and usurers was created by means of the forcible expropriation of the peasantry, colonial trade, taxes and the slave trade. Thus the formation of the basic classes of capitalist society, of wage-workers and capitalists, was accelerated. More or less complete forms of the capitalist order of society grew and ripened in the womb of feudal society.
(8) The production relations of feudalism, the low productivity of the unfree labor of the peasant serfs, and guild restrictions, hindered the further development of productive forces. Peasant serf risings shook the feudal system and led to the abolition of serfdom. The bourgeoisie took the lead in the struggle for the overthrow of feudalism. It made use of the revolutionary struggle of the peasants against the feudal lords in order to take power into its own hands. The bourgeois revolutions put an end to the feudal system and established the rule of capitalism, giving scope for the development of the forces of production.
(Textbook of Political Economy, 1957.) http://www.marx.be/Prime/ENG/Books/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
Industrial epoch: capitalist-socialist productive relations
The industrial revolution began in England and within a few decades had spread to Western Europe and the United States. The industrial revolution was the transition from manual labor to large mechanized production. Industrial production developed in such a way as to replace handicraft and manufacture at a higher level as the dominant worldwide mode of producing. The bourgeois form of property and the bourgeois mode of commodity production became the dominant mode of production worldwide based on gigantic machinery created by the industrial revolution.
Although then, technically speaking, the old system of division of labour is thrown overboard by machinery, it hangs on in the factory, as a traditional habit handed down from Manufacture, and is afterwards systematically re-moulded and established in a more hideous form by capital, as a means of exploiting labour —power. The life-long speciality of handling one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of serving one and the same machine. Machinery is put to a wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman, from his very childhood, into a part of a detail-machine. In this way, not only are the expenses of his reproduction considerably lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the capitalist, is rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we must distinguish between the increased productiveness due to the development of the social process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process. In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S4
Bourgeois private property negated feudal private property, its social ranking, and its system of privileges and its mode of appropriation of the surplus product.
The appropriation of the surplus product of the worker takes place differently under capitalism. Capitalists pay the laborers a wage that is less than the value of the commodities the laborers create. This extra value over and above the wages paid to workers is surplus value. The capitalists appropriate the surplus products, and the surplus value in them as the source of profits in production.
Capitalist production is bourgeois private ownership of means of production. The laborers are deprived of means of production and in order not to die of hunger and want, must sell their labor-power to the capitalists for wages. The basis of bourgeois relations of production is that the capitalists own the means of production, but not the wage workers in production whom the capitalist can neither kill nor sell because they are personally free. Owners of capital deploy wage labor in a system of socialized production, where hundreds and thousands of people, producing commodities, work instruments of production in common and simultaneously.
The first capitalists found, as we have said, wage-labor ready-made for them. But it was exceptional, complementary, accessory, transitory wage-labor. The agricultural laborer, though, upon occasion, he hired himself out by the day, had a few acres of his own land on which he could at all events live at a pinch. The guilds were so organized that the journeyman of today became the master of tomorrow. But all this changed, as soon as the means of production became socialized and concentrated in the hands of capitalists. The means of production, as well as and the product, of the individual producer became more and more worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turn wageworker under the capitalist. Wage-labor, aforetime the exception and accessory, now became the rule and basis of all production; aforetime complementary, it now became the sole remaining function of the worker. The wageworker for a time became a wageworker for life. The number of these permanent wageworkers was further enormously increased by the breaking-up of the feudal system that occurred at the same time, by the disbanding of the retainers of the feudal lords, the eviction of the peasants from their homesteads, etc. The separation was made complete between the means of production concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, and the producers, possessing nothing but their labor -power, on the other. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.
(F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch24.htm
The contradiction internal to capitalist production, between the socialized character of means of production and the private bourgeois character of appropriation of the surplus value, is the foundation for all the laws and principles governing the capitalist mode of commodity production. However, this contradiction does not and cannot bring the capitalist system to its historical end. The contradiction between the socialized character of industrial production and the private character of capitalist appropriation is the internal contradiction that drives the system through its stages of development and cyclical crises.
Qualitative change in the productive forces brings capitalist production and the industrial system to their historical end.
During the past century, Soviet industrial socialism was a way of producing outside the law system that defines capitalism — bourgeois commodity production.
The basis of the relations of production under the socialist system, which so far has been established only in the U.S.S.R., is the social ownership of the means of production. Here there are no longer exploiters and exploited (classes, ed.). The goods produced are distributed according to labor performed, on the principle: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.” Here the mutual relations of people in the process of production are marked by comradely cooperation and the socialist mutual assistance of workers who are free from exploitation. Here the relations of production fully correspond to the state of productive forces; for the social character of the process of production is reinforced by the social ownership of the means of production.
For this reason socialist production in the U.S.S.R. knows no periodical crises of over-production and their accompanying absurdities.
For this reason, the productive forces here develop at an accelerated pace; for the relations of production that correspond to them offer full scope for such development.
Such is the picture of the development of men’s relations of production in the course of human history.
(J. V. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, 1938.)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
What ultimately brought Soviet socialism to crisis and antagonism was qualitative change in the means of production, which appeared as the crisis of Stalinism and the need to destroy the old industrial bureaucracy that had sustained Stalinism and Soviet industrial socialism.
Qualitative changes in the productive forces brought primitive communalism, slavery, and the feudal modes of production to an historical end. Capitalism and all forms of industrialism are also brought to their historical end by qualitative changes in the productive forces — computers and robotics.
(See, Industrial revolution.)
Electronic revolution, robotic epoch:
The electronic revolution results from the new technology built on the microchip. Qualitatively new productive forces have come into existence that cause the old industrial society to leap to a new society based on robotics and additive production processes. These new productive forces are the foundation blocks of a new mode of production, which has yet to be named, which creates abundance and the society of abundance.
During past modes of production (handicraft, manufacture and industrial epoch) tools, machinery and energy sources augmented human labor in production and created a larger, stable store of surplus products. The store of surplus products sustained the non-producing sections of class-based societies. With human labor now being permanently pushed out of the production of socially necessary means of life, there is technically no longer a reason for society to have economic classes. The robots can do the toil for all of humanity, and private property can be eliminated along with all systems of exploitation of human labor. The foundation exists for a new society. What remains to be done is the conscious fight to create such a society.
Money:
Money is the universal equivalent and represents material wealth. Different commodities can function, and have functioned, as money. The main functions of money are as a medium of exchange, a unit of accounting, a store of value and a means of accumulation of capital. The money supply of a country was its currency and bank money – certificates — of all kinds.
Money came into use in history spontaneously and not by plan or agreement. Money came about as the result of a division of labor in society. It is a way to equate the labor in different products and allow exchange of commodities based on the labor in them. Money once expressed and represented values, quantities of labor in commodities. That was the situation when Marx wrote about money, which was gold or coins and paper backed up by gold. Since Marx wrote that, the situation has changed.
With robotic production money expresses less and less labor. Further, money today is super-symbolic and is being reduced to mere blips in computers.
Monopoly capitalism:
Monopoly capitalism was a stage in the capitalist form of the factory system. This stage arose on the basis of capitalist concentration and centralization. Monopoly capitalism involved the increasing domination of the economy, government and state by gigantic corporations, birthed through and in the wake of the Civil War in the US. It was domination of banking capital over industrial capital. The domination of banking capital over industrial capital is called financial-industrial capital and was the foundation of the modern corporation. The new financial-industrial oligarchy in the US was personified by J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller.
Outside of the US, the monopoly stage of capitalism arose with the economic crisis of 1873 that lead to consolidation of businesses and the universal rise of the joint stock corporation.
V. I. Lenin called imperialism the monopoly stage of capitalism and the highest stage of capitalism, by which he had to mean the highest stage reached by that time, as can readily be seen when one reads the book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism which is concretely phrased. Monopoly capitalism — imperialism — was the division of the world among imperialist states that possessed colonies, neo-colonies and spheres of influence.
Speculative finance, globalization and the rise of the mega-corporation brought to an end the period of monopoly capitalism, which had been based in the old imperial-colonial configuration of the world.
(See, Imperialism.)
Mother-right:
Mother-right described a stable community with an established and prescribed pattern of observance of societal roles, in which there were no classes, no inequality and no uncompensated, exploited labor. Mother-right was a pattern of family life based on the natural division of labor. It held sway until the breakup of the primitive communal system and transition from a tribal-family life with a natural division of labor to a society based on a growing social division of labor, establishment of private property relations and economic classes. In a community based on mother-right, women held esteemed social positions in all of society’s affairs, in contradistinction to the inferior status of women in class societies.
In all forms of the group family it is uncertain who the father of a child is, but it is certain who the mother is. Although she calls all the children of the aggregate family her children and is charged with the duties of a mother towards them, she, nevertheless, knows her natural children from the others. It is thus clear that, wherever group marriage exists, descent is traceable only on the maternal side, and thus the female line alone is recognized.
(F. Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02b.htm
The father’s role developed more and more away from the home, while the mother’s role was riveted to the home because she bore children. Under mother-right, subjugation based on class did not exist. Rather, mutual dependency and various forms of group marriage made survival of the species possible.
(See, Emancipation of women, Feminism, Woman Question.)
Motion:
The concept of motion. The unity of matter and motion.
Everything in the world is in continual motion, changing its form, being transformed, and wavering between being and nonbeing of all individual existences. The myriads of stars that we admire on a clear night merely appear to be motionless; in actual fact they move at enormous speeds. Every star is a sun with its own ring of planets. Along with the satellites revolving round them, the stars rotate round their axes and participate in the rotation of the galaxy round its axis. In its turn, our galaxy moves in relation to other galaxies. Besides, according to the latest cosmogonic hypotheses, the universe is not a mechanism with parts constantly moving along strictly determined orbits; it is an expanding universe continually moving towards ever new states. All that lives is in incessant movement: everything feeds, grows, multiplies, flourishes and dies. Innumerable inner processes occur in every living system: pulsation of energy and information, processing, assimilation of foodstuffs and ejection of waste. Everything is in an eternal state of becoming something else, and that not by coercion but of its own free nature. Since motion is an essential attribute of matter, it is, like matter, uncreatable and indestructible, absolute, unavoidable, and universal. Matter and motion are of the same essence.
Motion is the mode of existence of matter: to be means to be in motion. The question of the first cause of matter and the primary source of motion is essentially one and the same question. We know from the history of science and philosophy that the original source of universal changes, of the motion and development of all that is, just as the source of the existence of matter, was often thought of in a reference frame comprising the omnipotence of divine power and universal will. Materialism, on the other hand, especially dialectical materialism, relies on the data of science which prove that motion, just as matter, is uncreatable and indestructible, that it is not introduced from the outside but contained in the very nature of matter. Some forms of motion are transformed into other forms of motion, and not a single kind of motion emerges out of nowhere. Motion is self-motion in the sense that the tendency, the impulse towards a change of state is inherent in matter itself: it is its own cause. If the universe came into being after the big bang, the causes of that big bang must be sought for in matter itself, not in some external force.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; ital. in orig.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Nation:
A nation is primarily a community, a definite community of people. This community is not racial, nor is it tribal. . . . a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people. . . . a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people . . . . Thus, a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation. . . . A nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation. . . . Thus, a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation. . . . a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation. [A] common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation.
A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.
It goes without saying that a nation, like every historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its history, its beginning and end.
(J. V. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, 1913.) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm#s1
A nation is a specific social-economic organization of people and classes that came into existence during the epoch of the industrial revolution. The “nations” of antiquity were more often than not city-states and not modern nations. Modern nations born of the epoch of industrialism, were constituted on the basis of capitalist production relations.
A “nation” and “state” are different. Political states are much older than nations and arose after the emergence of private property and the division of society into classes. The state is an organization of violence in the hands of the ruling class. The nation is an economic formation born of the epoch of bourgeois production. The process that formed a national market and tied people together into a new economic unit based on exchange of commodities between cities and the countryside created the community of people that is a nation.
Under capitalism, two tendencies regarding nations exist: formation of nations and dispersal of nations. Under the worldwide robotic economy and globalization, nations and national markets that arose on the basis of the industrial revolution decay in the face of increasing movement of capital and people. Speculative finance is creating a worldwide corporate government (involving structures like the WTO, NAFTA, TPP, etc.) which both crosses national boundaries and rules supreme over the old nation-states. In addition, the uprooted destitute proletariat desperately seeks the means of life and is dislocated both within the boundaries of the home country and across borders.
Nationalism:
Nationalism is a bourgeois ideology that does away with class outlook and substitutes notions of collective identity based on ethnicity, religion, color, nation, or political frontiers. Nationalism arose with developing capitalism. The ideology of nationalism, the very notion of a nation, arose as an expression of the rising capitalist class’ quest to create and secure a home market. The home market is the framework and material foundation for the nation, the national idea and nationalism. With the developing home market began the ideological campaign to indoctrinate the people with nationalism.
With the division of the world into colonial spheres, a national yearning for emancipation from imperialist colonization was born in the colonies and among the oppressed. The yearning for emancipation from imperial slaughter and plunder is not nationalism. Hatred of oppression and exploitation is not nationalism. The source of nationalism in the anti-colonial revolutions is the colonial bourgeoisie. Nationalist ideology was an inescapable component of the anti-colonial revolutions. The nationalism of the colonial oppressed, including all classes, who fought the imperial invaders to the death, is an ideology whose political goal is limited to the goal of liberation and is not sufficient for the proletariat to win freedom from capital, foreign and domestic.
In the US, nationalist ideology (including black and brown bourgeois nationalism) presents the oppression and exploitation of black and brown masses as “racism” rather than capitalist exploitation, settler state legacy, imperialist enslavement and the color- line factor in history. It is also manipulated to create support for capitalist wars designed actually for profit but clothed in a nationalist disguise.
(See, Color factor, Racism.)
Nationalization:
Nationalization is the taking over of an industry or corporation by the government or the state. Some problems call for a national, federal, not local, solution. Every revolution during the industrial epoch has used some form of nationalization. The United States Postal Service was granted its nationalized status by the Constitution. After the Revolutionary War for independence, this country needed an army. The army was nationalized. A national currency was needed during the Civil War, so the currency was nationalized by Abraham Lincoln as “greenbacks.” During the Eisenhower years, the freeways were nationalized.
The economic impulse towards nationalization is concentration and centralization of capital. Both classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, fight over the issue of in whose interest nationalization will be carried out.
Many of these means of production and of distribution are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic expansion. At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a particular branch of an industry in a particular country unite in a ‘Trust,’ a union for the purpose of regulating production.
. . . . In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite — into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society. Certainly, this is so far still to the benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But, in this case, the exploitation is so palpable, that it must break down. . . .
. . . . In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into State property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.
(F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
(See, Privatization.)
National-Minority, Nationals:
National-Minority and nationals refer to the political status of peoples within the colonial system, during the industrial epoch. When a person from a colony migrated to the mother country that was the colonial power, that person was “a national minority.” When the same person migrated to a country that was not the colonial power, they were a “national.” A person from Ireland who moved to England would there be a national minority, but if they moved to the US, they would be an Irish national.
These terms developed during the rise of the industrial revolution. In the 21st century the old categories of the national and national-colonial question no longer accurately express relationships within the global market.
National question and national-colonial question:
The national question and national-colonial question occurred during different stages of the industrial revolution, the factory system and capitalism. The national question arose in Europe between the late 1700s and 1890s, before the rise of monopoly capitalism. In Europe, some peoples being formed into nations came under domination of more powerful states such as Britain, Germany, Russia, etc. The more powerful states became multinational states, which enslaved the non-sovereign peoples and nations within their political borders. This enslavement of one people by a foreign bourgeoisie and bourgeois state provoked a yearning and national movement against the imperial domination.
The national question was an issue of an oppressed nation within a multinational state and appeared as solvable by reforming relations within that one multinational state. During this period the national question appeared solvable short of the overthrow of capital.
The next period was that of the national-colonial question, which differed from the national question.
. . . . This second period was the time of the connection between the national and the colonial question. The fact is — as noted by Lenin and Stalin — that colonial oppression is the form that national oppression takes during the period of modern imperialism. It should be clear that the rise of modern – financial — imperialism, spelled the end to the oppressed nations of the former period. Imperialism quickly gobbled up the world and has fought two wars for its redivision. Under such conditions, it was not possible for an oppressed nation to remain outside of the sphere of imperialism. All formerly oppressed nations were transformed into colonies of imperialism.
(See on the internet, The Comintern position on the Negro Question by Nelson Peery; emphasis added.)
https://www.facebook.com/notes/marxist-glossary-discussion/the-comintern-position-on-the-negro-question-by-nelson-peery/334377206755613
Formerly, the national question was usually confined to a narrow circle of questions, concerning, primarily, ‘civilized’ nationalities. The Irish, the Hungarians, the Poles, the Finns, the Serbs, and several other European nationalities—that was the circle of unequal peoples in whose destinies the leaders of the Second International were interested. The scores and hundreds of millions of Asiatic and African peoples who are suffering national oppression in its most savage and cruel form usually remained outside of their field of vision. They hesitated to put white and black, ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ on the same plane. Two or three meaningless, lukewarm resolutions, which carefully evaded the question of liberating the colonies — that was all the leaders of the Second International could boast of. Now we can say that this duplicity and half-heartedness in dealing with the national question has been brought to an end. Leninism laid bare this crying incongruity, broke down the wall between whites and blacks, between European and Asiatics, between the ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ slaves of imperialism, and thus linked the national question with the question of the colonies. The national question was thereby transformed from a particular and internal state problem into a general and international problem, into a world problem of emancipating the oppressed peoples in the dependent countries and colonies from the yoke of imperialism.
(J. V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, 1924.)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm
Globalism severed the previous form of economic connection between the neocolony and the former direct colonizer and left the neocolony free to be dominated by international speculative finance and the mega-corporate state. Globalization saw the end of the era of the national-colonial question.
(See, Globalization (Globalism), Oppressed nation.)
National security state: (See, Fascism.)
Necessary labor:
Necessary labor is labor expended to produce the objects of consumption of the workers, needed to sustain the work-life and culture of the working class. It is the labor performed by the working population to maintain themselves and reproduce the next generation of workers.
The sum of the necessary labor and the surplus-labor, i.e., of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the value of his labor-power, and produces the surplus-value, this sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i.e., the working-day.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch09.htm
(See, Surplus Labor.)
Necessary products:
Necessary products are the portion of the total products consumed by the workers and their families that sustains their existence and makes continuous laboring possible. In all class societies the products created by the living laborer have two components: necessary products and surplus products. The products over and above the necessary products are surplus products. The time required to create necessary products is necessary labor time, and the labor creating these products is necessary labor. The time required to create surplus products is surplus labor time, and the labor creating these products is surplus labor.
Over the entire span of class society, the exploiting class has seized the surplus products. With a new society where production becomes predominately robotic, the categories of necessary and surplus labor are destroyed, and with their destruction the possibility for exploitation is destroyed. Robots, computerized machines, cannot be exploited. Goodbye, exploitation.
(See, Surplus labor, Surplus product.)
Needs:
Needs, as authentic human requirements, are a certain set of conditions and things without which human life cannot be sustained. They are the foundation of development from one generation to the next. Authentic human requirements which are needs differ from desires created and cultivated by different socio-economic systems. Every socio-economic system creates socially necessary needs that supplement authentic human requirements.
Socially necessary needs are the requirements one must possess to engage and participate in the physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional development of the system in a particular mode of production, during a specific era, with its historically developed culture. Today public transportation, public education including higher education, modern communication devices, computers and cell phones, and national health care are some of the social necessaries that ought to be provided to every member of society as a birthright. Socially necessary needs are based on stages of development of productive forces and distribution.
A need is nothing more than the state of an individual or social group, class, or society as a whole reflecting their dependence on the conditions of existence and acting as a motive force of life activity always directed in a particular way; it expresses a subjective query addressed to objective reality, a need for objects and conditions which would facilitate the maintenance of the system’s equilibrium necessary for its normal functioning.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Negation:
Negation describes a natural aspect of development in nature and society, where one thing ends, and another begins.
Spirkin explains
. . . . Everything is finite in this world, and that means that everything goes through its spring and summer, declines towards autumn and finally dies in the frost of winter. Such is the implacable logic of life, both of nature and of everything that is human or social. Species of plants and animals, generations of men and forms of social life emerge and disappear in the infinite succession of forms that are continually born and wither away. Without negation of the old, the birth and maturing of a higher and stronger new is impossible, and thus the process of development itself is impossible. . . . This struggle leads to negation of the old and the emergence of the new.
Negation is not contradiction. Contradiction is the unity and struggle of opposites within a thing. Negation is the ending of a thing, including a contradiction and the form the contradiction took.
Negation of the negation:
This describes a gigantic spiral motion of development. When applied to the general history of human society and the rise and fall of all forms of private property, negation of the negation means a new qualitative stage is realized as a return to the initial point of development and its primary quality, only at a higher level. This process can be visualized as an ascending spiral.
The “law of the negation of the negation,” write A. Spirkin and O. Yakhot, “states that in the course of development each higher stages negates or eliminates the previous stage by raising it a step higher while retaining all that is positive in it.” In this old Soviet presentation of negation of the negation, “all that is positive” refers to the things within the quality that continue to develop in a new form and under new conditions.
Taking human society as an example, the starting point is the establishment of society. The first society was primitive communalism with a low-level division of labor and primitive means of production. In this environment, private property did not exist.
In the ongoing gigantic transition from primitive communist economy to robotic communist economy, the first negation was of primitive communism which had no private property relations. Primitive communism was negated by the worlds of private property. The worlds of private property involved different forms of unpaid labor as society advanced through slave labor, serf labor, and then wage labor of industrial capitalist society. At each stage private property was sublated and acquired a new form. The negation of the negation now appears as a new communal society, communist economy, based on robotics. Robotic communism destroys all forms of private property and in this sense, is a return to the original starting point – at a higher level. This instance of negation of the negation, is from communism to communism (primitive communism to robotic communism).
Although during all these stages, the form of unpaid labor changed, the existence of private property remained constant and did not go through stages. The negation of the negation will obliterate private property and return humanity to a society without private property.
Karl Marx’s classical presentation of negation and the negation of the negation appears in Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 32: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Neoliberalism:
Neoliberalism was a set of 1980s and 1990s guidelines to establish new policies to express the hegemony of US speculative finance over the global market. Brought on by qualitative change in the means of production (computers and robotics), this group of policies was called “liberal” because it proposed unrestricted open trade and deregulation of all national government restraints on the world economy. “Neoliberalism” is a non-class, non-Marxist term which conceals the exploitative essence of capitalist productive relations.
The rise of speculative finance to dominator was based on the computer that made it possible to create a new real-time worldwide non-banking financial system. This system operates independently of the traditional banking system, which once financed production and birthed the modern corporation and then the multinational corporation.
Neoliberalism is hostile to all worldwide structures that inhibit the free flow of speculative finance. Speculative finance realizes profits outside value production.
As explained by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, the primary exponents of neoliberalism came from the Chicago School of Economics, under the tutelage of Milton Friedman; they were eventually called “the Chicago Boys.” Their policies, originally foisted upon many Latin American countries through manipulation of crises, had three main aspects: elimination of public government by privatizing public assets through selling them to private individuals and corporations, total lack of regulation of corporations and reducing social spending to a skeleton while continuing massive military spending.
In 1989, neoliberalism was crystallized in a policy statement called “The Washington Consensus,” which advocated that all state enterprises should be privatized. This consensus expressed the rise of speculative finance as dominator of world capital, which was restructuring world finance on the basis of financial products with no anchor in commodity production. Each financial crisis of the last 30 years brought about another round of financial integration, with massive growth and domination of the world by a handful of financial global corporations. These corporations became mega-corporations.
Neoliberal policy was the response of Washington to changes in the world economy brought on by the electronic revolution and globalism. But things have changed since then.
The world economy today is barely recognizable from even the days of the ‘Washington Consensus.’ The structure and character of capitalist production and finance is increasingly global in scope, increasingly integrated between its productive and financial aspects and between its national and international aspects.
(“Transforming World Economy Lays Foundation for World Revolution,” Rally, Comrades! June 2012.)
http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/06/transforming-world-economy-lays-foundation-for-world-revolution/
The policy of the ruling class has evolved beyond the neoliberalism of the 1990s, beyond multinational and transnational corporations and in the new century brings the world face to face with the mega-corporation.
New class:
In a society founded on private property, the application of qualitatively new means of production create new forms of economic classes. Just as the steam engine and the technology it embodied created an industrial working class that replaced the then existing manufacturing working class, the microchip creates an electronic form of working class that replaces the industrial working class. The working class of America today is an electronic working class, deploying new means of production. Corresponding to this new form of working class is a new form of ruling class. It is also electronic.
All the layers of American society deploying new means of production built upon the microchip architecture and living based on this new technology, are by definition part of the new form of classes. There exists a new form of the proletariat, which contains a section shut out of social production. The labor of this new class (real proletariat) has been rendered superfluous by robotics. Existing as the polar opposite (not as a contradiction) of the new proletariat shut out of production is a new form of the ruling class –- speculative finance — creating wealth outside the production of surplus value and appropriation of the surplus labor of the working class. Since the mid-1990s the term “new class” has been used by the newspaper Rally Comrades!.
New Communist Movement:
Formed between 1968 and 1976, the New Communist Movement (NCM) was an ideological trend whose stated goal was to build a “genuine” Communist Party in the US, able to lead the proletariat in the struggle for political power. Composed more or less of college students, the intelligentsia, and more privileged sections of the working class, the New Communist Movement conformed to the last phase of the national-colonial revolts and revolutions. A narrow layer of college students, the intelligentsia, and more privileged sections of the working class became part of the continuity of the “old communist movement” founded by Marx and Engels, and created a polarity wherein the New Communists became self-avowed Maoists, while the “old communists” were identified as orthodox Stalinists, who were an anti-revisionist, anti-Khrushchev clique.
The US New Communist Movement labelled itself as an anti-revisionist movement and adopted the theory that a new form of capitalism had been restored in the Soviet Union between 1953 and 1964. The US New Communist Movement more or less became ideological Maoists and subservient to the Communist Party of China and the Chinese state. They went on to declare Chairman Mao Zedong a god-like figure. This grouping decayed and went out of existence in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Much of the literature of the NCM is at the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line.
http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/erol.htm
(See, Maoism and Mao Zedong Thought, Revisionism.)
Nobility:
The estate of secular landowners who had hereditary privileges. The nobility and the clergy were the ruling classes in feudal society. In a number of countries the nobility retained its privileges, to one degree or another, even under capitalism. The original meanings of the Russian term dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry) and the corresponding Western European terms were not identical. Originally, the dvorianstvo in Rus’ was a military service class, in contrast to the boyars. The Russian word zhat’, or aristocracy, was the equivalent of the French noblesse, the English term ‘nobility,’ and the German A del. As all the secular feudal lords were united into one estate, these distinctions in terminology disappeared.
In feudal society, direct political supremacy belonged to the nobility. The basis of their economic and political power was feudal landed property. The nobility and the leading members of the clergy, who, as a rule, were descended from the nobility, stood in opposition to the exploited class of feudally dependent peasantry. A significant part of the product of the peasant’s labor was appropriated by the nobility in the form of feudal rents. The nobility was distinguished from the other estates by its status, privileges, education, way of life, and a particular moral code, under which the nobleman was the master in relation to any representative of the lower estates. Even in its clothing and hair styles the nobility differed from the other estates.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/nobility
The nobility and the serf constituted the primary classes at the foundation of the feudal mode of production. Private property in land was the foundation upon which the nobility based its appropriation of the surplus labor and surplus product of the serf. The serf worked the land and provided the nobility and clergy with a portion of the product, over and above what was consumed by the serf and his family. The surplus product was the unpaid labor of the serf converted into private wealth and private riches of the ruling class.
The serfs did not overthrow the nobility and clergy; classes living and developing outside feudal productive relations overthrew them. The nobility, clergy, serf and all the castes constituting the feudal political order were overthrown by new classes that developed outside feudal productive relations — the bourgeoisie and the proletariat which was the new working class, born of the industrial revolution.
Nodal line:
A nodal line demarcates the point at which change occurs. Spirkin explains that Hegel considers change in the form of a movement where development occurs as qualitative and quantitative change.
The path of development in nature, society and consciousness is by no means a straight line. Its turns and twists are the nodes of ever new laws whose ‘rights’ stretch from one node to the next: it is a nodal line of measures. The boundaries of these measures are not always clearly fixed, and sometimes they are tentative—as tentative, say, as the boundaries separating childhood from adolescence or youth from maturity, determined by anatomic, physiological, psychical, and social factors.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
In the above instance the quality isolated as being human does not change, as a person passes through stages of maturing. Maturing and growing older do not qualitatively alter our species-being or change our relationship to nature. Yet maturing and growing older are a stage-by-stage process, with “tipping points” wherein a child becomes an adult. These “tipping points,” are nodal points in the quantitative stages of becoming an adult.
(See, Leap.)
Objective and Subjective:
Objective and objective existence refer to all phenomena in nature, existing in time and space, driven by their self-contained law systems and existing outside of the human mind and human imagination.
Life, daily practice, convinces us that the world exists objectively, independently of man, his mind, senses and desires. Science has confirmed this, too, by proving that the Earth came into existence long before man or any other living organism, i.e., that the world has always existed independently of them. That is why Lenin observed that any healthy person who has never been an inmate of a lunatic asylum, or a pupil of the idealist philosophers, would never doubt that the world exists objectively. The objectivity of the world, the fact that it exists outside, beyond and independent of the mind, means that it is material (for there can be no other meaning of this word).
It is our daily practical life, or productive labour, that convinces us that the world exists objectively, and is material.
(A. Spirkin and O. Yakhot, The Basic Principles of Dialectical and Historical Materialism, 1971; ital. in orig.)
Subjective refers to the human mind, human consciousness and sense perception. The mind perceives and possesses awareness of phenomena that exist objectively in time and space, outside of consciousness and within imagination. Subjective refers to the thinking mind rather than to the object of thought.
The crux of the basic question of philosophy is the recognition of two main types of reality — objective or material and subjective or ideal, one of which precedes the other and engenders it. Does matter precede consciousness, or is it the other way round? Does matter produce, at a definite level in its development, its finest flower, reason, or does the world spirit, on the contrary, create the material world? Or do they perhaps coexist as two equal substances? These problems are the core of the basic question of philosophy, but they are only one of its aspects.
Materialism rejects all the unscientific interpretations of the origin and essence of the world. For its starting point, it takes the world which exists objectively and independently of the consciousness of man and of mankind. Explanation of the world from the world itself—such is the worldview and methodological principle of materialism. Idealism holds the opposite view, insisting the world is determined by the spiritual element. So many philosophers in the past recognized the equality of both elements, the material and the ideal. They were dualists.
The other aspect of the basic question of philosophy calls for just as fundamental a solution: is the world knowable? Can man grasp its objective laws? Those who believe that the world is in principle unknowable are called agnostics. The most striking example of agnosticism is religious philosophy, which rejects the know ability of the world in its desire to assert the primacy of faith over reason.
Why is the question of the relation of thinking to being so fundamental, despite its fairly abstract character? The reason is that the solution of this problem determines the approach to all the other problems of philosophy proper (the problem of the method of philosophy, of practice and truth, the motive forces of history, etc). and, to all the general-theoretical, worldview issues of any other sciences attempting to grasp the essence of the universe and life, of sciences that the construction of the scientific picture of the world.
- Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; ital. in orig.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
(See, Idealism, Materialism, Subject and Object.)
Oppressed nation:
The oppressed nation is a political category that described a historically evolved stable community of people, defeated in their striving to form a national state during the era of the overthrow of feudalism and rise of the capitalist mode of production. The development of the oppressed nation was bound up with the struggle against feudalism, the defeat of the national bourgeoisie and the incorporation of the oppressed people into a multinational state.
The subjugation of the oppressed and the Marxist approach to this oppression are called the national question. The national question is the question of a people, and the classes among them, who are deprived of civil rights, who are shunted aside in economic growth, who are economically subjugated. It is a question of a people deprived of equal rights — a people defeated in their struggle toward a national state.
With the division of the world by imperialist powers, the national question as such, and the oppressed nation, as such, became transformed into a question of colonies of imperialism and recast as the national-colonial question. Colonial oppression became the form of national oppression with the rise of modern financial-imperialism. Imperialism gobbled up the world and has fought two world wars for its redivision.
In the new era of globalization, the “oppressed nation,” colonies and imperialism as described by Lenin no longer exist.
(See, Colony, Globalization, Imperialism.)
Oppression: (See, Exploitation and Oppression.)
Organic composition of capital:
The organic composition of capital is how much is invested in human labor compared to how much is invested in the entire factory and all its physical aspects. According to Marx, the organic composition of capital is the relationship between human labor in production (living labor) and plant, equipment, machines and material in production (dead labor).
It is an indicator of how much must be invested into each component of production — living labor (wages or variable capital) versus dead labor (fixed cost or constant capital) — to realize surplus value, the source of capitalist profit in production. In mega-corporations the organic composition of capital is very high due to the huge physical plants and robotics.
Overcapacity:
Overcapacity is permanent excess productive capacity. In contrast to overproduction which is cyclical and temporary, overcapacity in capitalism refers to a permanent state of excess productive capacity created by the new technology, computers and robotics.
Robotic production is powerful enough to meet all the socially necessary needs of the world population, and, if fully unleashed, would fill up the world market virtually overnight. Capitalist private property relations prevent real needs from being met because capitalists demand money and profits for everything. The periodic crisis of overproduction is joined by a permanent state of overcapacity in the robotic economy.
The state of overcapacity is not cyclical but permanent and intractable. Overcapacity in the global economy is a new stage of crisis of capitalist private property and cannot be resolved through war, expansion of the market or reform of the system. The appearance of overcapacity signals the endgame of private property and all economic systems based on exploitation of labor.
Overproduction:
Overproduction refers to an unsalable buildup of goods and services resulting in the cyclical crises of capitalism, recessions, depressions, layoffs, foreclosures, lowering of wages and the driving of millions into unemployment and destitution. The source of cyclical crises of overproduction is capitalist ownership of means of production.
Engels explains the cause of crisis of overproduction.
We have seen that the ever increasing perfectibility of modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery, always to increase its productive force. The bare possibility of extending the field of production is transformed for him into a similar compulsory law. The enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared with which that of gases is mere child’s play, appears to us now as a necessity for expansion, both qualitative and quantitative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite different laws that work much less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another ‘vicious circle’.
As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every ten years. Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filters off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after break-neck leaps, ends where it began — in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877) we are going through it for the sixth time. . . .
In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange, the productive forces are in rebellion against the mode of production which they have outgrown.
(F. Engels Anti-Dühring, 1877; bold added.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch24.htm
(See, Anarchy of capitalist production.)
Party of a new type:
Pioneered by V. I. Lenin, the “party of a new type” was an organization of revolutionaries designed to unite the revolutionaries, educate the revolutionary class and carry out insurrection under conditions of the transition from agriculture to industry. The Communist Party Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) was a party of a new type that organized the fighting section of the industrial working class as the vanguard champion of democracy, in alliance with the peasants who were small-scale producers.
In the pre-revolutionary period, the period of more or less peaceful development, when the parties of the Second International were the predominant force in the working-class movement and parliamentary forms of struggle were regarded as the principal forms, under these conditions the Party neither had nor could have had that great and decisive importance which it acquired afterwards, under conditions of open revolutionary clashes. . . .
. . . . Hence the necessity for a new party, a militant party, a revolutionary party, one bold enough to lead the proletarians in the struggle for power, sufficiently experienced to find its bearings amidst the complex conditions of a revolutionary situation, and sufficiently flexible to steer clear of all submerged rocks in the path to its goal.
Without such a party it is useless even to think of overthrowing imperialism, of achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat. This new party is the party of Leninism.
(J. V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, 1924.)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch08.htm
We can only speculate on what will be the form of a party of a new type in the age of robotics.
Patriarchy:
Patri- (father) and -archy (government) refer to the history-altering overthrow of mother-right, the rise of private property and the state and the emergence of the exploitation of human labor. In a patriarchy males hold the levers of wealth-producing private property, dominate political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and the social bureaucracy to the specific exclusion of women. Historically, patriarchy was the rule of men and specifically fathers. Although patriarchy is a system of male privilege, and male privilege exists in the US, the state and government here are not a patriarchy. The US exists under capitalism where megacorps rule, although vestiges of patriarchy remain.
Patriarchy was social structures which arose during the period of the breakup of the clan system when private property relations, classes and the state came into being. Patriarchy was typified by men’s dominant role in the economy, society, and initially based on development of cattle rearing, agriculture based on irrigation systems, and metalworking. Under patriarchy inheritance passed through the male line rather than female.
According to the division of labor then prevailing in the family, the procuring of food and the implements necessary thereto, and therefore, also, the ownership of the latter, fell to the man; he took them with him in case of separation, just as the woman retained the household goods. Thus, according to the custom of society at that time, the man was also the owner of the new sources of foodstuffs — the cattle — and later, of the new instrument of labor — the slaves. According to the custom of the same society, however, his children could not inherit from him, for the position in this respect was as follows: According to mother right, that is, as long as descent was reckoned solely through the female line, and according to the original custom of inheritance in the [mother’s family group]. . . . The children of the deceased, however, belonged not to [the father’s family group] . . ., but to that of their mother. In the beginning, they inherited from their mother, along with the rest of their mother’s blood relatives, and later, perhaps, had first claim upon her property; but they could not inherit from their father, . . . On the death of the herd owner, therefore, his herds passed, first of all, to his [brothers, sisters and other relatives in his family group]. . . . His own children, however, were disinherited. . . .
. . . . Thus, as wealth increased, it, on the one hand, gave the man a more important status in the family than the woman, and, on the other hand, created a stimulus to utilise this strengthened position in order to overthrow the traditional order of inheritance in favour of his children. But this was impossible as long as descent according to mother right prevailed. This had, therefore, to be overthrown, and it was overthrown; and it was not so difficult to do this as it appears to us now.
(F. Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 1884.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02b.htm
(See, Feminism, Identity politics.)
Permanent Revolution:
Marx and Engels’ concept of permanent revolution was uninterrupted progression in the social process, based on the consciousness of the fighting section of the proletariat and its ability to safeguard the interest of the proletariat from one stage of the revolution to the next.
While the democratic petit bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible, . . . it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power.
(Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm
By “permanent,” Marx and Engels meant a lengthy revolutionary development through which the proletariat would pass, in its fight to rid society of private property relations. The era of Marx and Engels was the transition from agriculture to industry, feudal-manufacturing to industrial-capitalist society.
In contrast, Leon Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution” states that building a socialist economy is one country was impossible and therefore the overthrow of bourgeois property relations worldwide, more or less simultaneously, as a wave of continuous insurrection, was the singular task of revolutionaries worldwide.
(See, Trotskyism.)
Personal possessions:
Personal possessions are not “private property” in the Marxist meaning. Consumer items such as a coat, computer, pan, car, television, home and all possessions of the individual not used to hire labor and make a profit, are personal possessions, not bourgeois private property. A home, a boat, a vacation cottage, a luxury mobile home, one, two or three cars in a family are personal possessions, not private property. Private property is a social power that dominates an individual and class and allows an owning class to appropriate the surplus product of society. Owning a car dealership is a private property relation because the purpose of the dealership is to make money from the sales of vehicles for profit rather than for personal use.
(See, Private property.)
Petty (petite) bourgeoisie:
The petty (small) bourgeoisie is small-scale capitalists who occupy a social-economic position between the proletariat and the big capitalists. Marx and Engels refer to the petty bourgeoisie as the “middle class.”
The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
(K. Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
As used by Marx, the term “middle class” was not measured by income level but by owning small means of production. The petty bourgeoisie own their means of production and alienate, that is exchange, their products and services based on commodity exchange. This class of small-scale producers is constantly pushed lower and driven into the proletariat due to the law of concentration and centralization of capitalist production. It was a dying class, even before the era of robotics.
Petty bourgeois consciousness:
Petty bourgeois consciousness is the outlook of the small-scale producers, who seek to preserve their economic and social status in the capitalist system. The material class position of the petty bourgeoisie, between bourgeoisie and proletariat, results in vacillation and individualism.
The petty bourgeois consciousness opposes the concentration and centralization of capital, which forces the small-scale producer out of business. It opposes the big bourgeoisie’s polices that raise the cost of means of production, dump products on the market below the cost of the small-scale producers, crush the small-scale producers and push them down into the ranks of the proletariat and finally into the surplus population of unemployed. Petty bourgeois consciousness opposes monopoly and supports a form of non-monopoly free enterprise, to which society actually cannot return. Petty bourgeois consciousness and ideology advocate the anti-monopoly program, born of the populist movement of the 1890s and supports private property relations.
Any individual, group of people or political organization can possess petty bourgeois consciousness and ideology, including the poorest of workers and the wealthiest of capitalists.
Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.
(K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch03.htm
Philosophy:
Philosophy ponders, studies and examines the processes governing reality, existence, thought, principles of development, and general law systems of change.
But philosophy is not just a science. Although it is based on the thinker’s immediate experiences, it has no empirical research devices at its disposal. The truth and effectiveness of philosophical theory are verified as a rule by the entire stream of life events rather than by separate experiments and observations.
. . . . Of course, philosophy does not have the same kind of subject matter as, say, the natural sciences, not being localized within a concrete domain of knowledge and reality, as it is in biology, geography, etc. But philosophy does have its own subject matter, and the fundamental impossibility of such localization is part of its specificity. This is the area of intellectual activity underlying which is reflection on that activity itself and thus on its
meaning, purpose and forms; ultimately, reflection on the essence
of man himself as the subject of culture, i.e. on his essential relations to the world.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
As soon as each special science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous or unnecessary. That which still survives of all earlier philosophy is the science of thought and its law — formal logic and dialectics. Everything else is subsumed in the positive science of Nature and history.
(F. Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Bold added.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm
The basic questions of philosophy are the problem of the relation of social being to social consciousness and the relationship of the material to consciousness. Are the laws of social development to be found in the consciousness of the individuals or in empirical material relations?
The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being. . . . The question of the position of thinking in relation to being . . . . which is primary, spirit or nature — that question, in relation to the church, was sharpened into this: Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?
The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps.
(F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, 1886.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch02.htm
Philosophy is how human beings ponder and make sense of the laws of the universe. Contrary to popular myth, “shit” does not “just happen” without rhyme or reason. Things happen because of other things that happened, which indicates events are connected in an environment of motion and constant change. This cause and effect relationship is causality. “Shit” (a phenomenon) “happens” due to causality.
The philosophy of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, dialectical materialism, is a conscious method of cognizing and changing reality in accord with general law systems, and in this sense is a guide to action. Marxists study and strive to understand the dialectic of causality. It is the study of the laws and law systems that govern social processes, social revolution and changes in society based on the dialectic of causality.
(See, Dialectics, Idealism, Materialism.)
Polarity:
Polarity is the unity and struggle that defines contradiction. It is the unity and struggle of the two poles which are united as opposites in a contradiction. The development of contradiction from one stage to the next takes place as quantitative change, setting the condition for the second kind of change, transition to a new quality, meaning qualitative change.
The fundamental polarity in capitalist society involves two major classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. Between these two primary classes are numerous economic layers, strata, gradations. Each economic layer penetrates the next, and these connections tie all the classes together into a system of social production. All the economic and social strata between the two poles which are the capitalist and proletariat constitute the economic-political middle. All the institutions of the bourgeois superstructure, which are based on bourgeois production relations, contain the polarity that is bourgeois and proletariat and stabilize capitalist rule.
The polarity between capitalist and proletariat, the contradiction immanent to capitalist production, is not enough to bring the capitalist mode of production to its practical and historical end.
(See, Antagonism.)
Polarization:
Polarization is the process of destruction of contradiction. It refers to the poles of a contradiction being wrenched apart in an ongoing process, which ultimately destroys that which held them together and that which made the poles what they were. Polarization is the breakdown and loss of identity — the connecting tissue — glue, bond, which held the two poles together. It is the breakdown of their mutual unity (identity).
Thus, the polarity between capitalist and worker increases with quantitative development of the productive forces. When qualitatively new means of production are introduced, they change the environment of development, and polarization begins. In a capitalist economy, robotic production is antagonistic to production based on human labor. Polarization is the process of destruction of the economic-political middle, the bond, which held the system of value production together.
Once the bond holding the two sides of a contradiction together begins polarization and rupture, once the foundation of unity, that is, identity, is breached and undermined, the contradiction unravels and faces disintegration because one pole of a contradiction cannot exist without the other. This process is polarization, as distinct from the inherent polarity of contradiction. Here, polarization is the result of a qualitative change in the environment. The old environment that once supported reproduction and perpetuation of the contradiction, now blocks further development, and gives rise to a new contradiction.
As polarization increases, each pole begins separation from the other, and each pole also experiences its own internal rupture. This internal rupture does not happen all at once. The result of internal rupture is that the previously united poles begin to become independent from each other and ultimately enter external collision with each other.
Polarization is the internal rupture of both poles and is the breakdown of contradiction. It is the destruction of identity which held the two poles together. It is the philosophy of Marxism that allows revolutionaries to cognize the inevitable process of change, based on the general laws of matter in motion.
(See, Antagonism, Contradicion, Polarity.)
Politics:
Politics is the concentrated expression of economics. It is the struggle over economic interests and how people realize their survival needs. Politics is the clash between economic groups, classes and layers of classes. More than elections and juridical laws, politics is the struggle over the rules and regulations that stabilize the economy and define people’s relationship in society. War is politics by military means.
In 1920, Lenin wrote, “Politics must take precedence over economics.” For Marxists, the economic system is the foundation upon which is built daily behavior and laws and institutions. At a certain stage in developing society, private property, the state and government, the ruling class must regulate the behavior between economic classes, and these classes struggle in their own interests.
(V. I. Lenin, Once Again On The Trade Unions, 1921.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/25.htm
Political economy:
Political economy, in the widest sense, is the science of the laws governing the production and exchange of the material means of subsistence in human society. Production and exchange are two different functions. Production may occur without exchange, but exchange—being necessarily an exchange of products—cannot occur without production. Each of these two social functions is subject to the action of external influences which to a great extent are peculiar to it and for this reason each has, also to a great extent, its own special laws. But on the other hand, they constantly determine and influence each other to such an extent that they might be termed the abscissa and ordinate of the economic curve.
The conditions under which men produce and exchange vary from country to country and within each country again from generation to generation. Political economy, therefore, cannot be the same for all countries and for all historical epochs. A tremendous distance separates the bow and arrow, the stone knife and the acts of exchange among savages occurring only by way of exception, from the steam-engine of a thousand horse power, the mechanical loom, the railways and the Bank of England.
(F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch13.htm
Populism:
Populism was a US political ideology, which posed the issues of debt, poverty and destitution in society as a struggle between “the people” and some big institutions, such as the banks or Wall Street. Driven by the small-scale property holder, populism was a social response to domination by financial corporations after the Civil War. It was a movement of poor farmers, small rural businesspersons and some sections of the working class between the 1890s and the 1930s. Populist ideology spoke of a democratic vision of the US, the economy that ought to exist for the benefit of the people, not for banks and corporations.
The most important aspect of US populism was its non-class outlook. While some sections of this movement were progressive and militant in opposition to the banks, railroads, and stock exchanges, they never challenged capitalism as a system. US populism in the main was an all-class white unity movement.
Finally, possibly the most important lesson of populism was the glaring negative example it set of self-destruction by failure to address the role played by white supremacy and colonization of the South as instruments of ruling class political power. For all of its talk about ‘labor impoverished’ and the ‘plain people’, the Omaha platform was not a working class program. It condemned immigrant workers as the ‘pauper and criminal classes of the world.’
(“Lessons from American Populism,” Rally, Comrades!, June 2011.)
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v21ed3art6.html
Populism rejected and continues to reject the idea that the working class has interests hostile to those of the capitalist class. Bourgeois media and bourgeois politicians foment a certain phony populism, to deflect attention away from class interests and the need for the proletariat to raise itself to ruling class as the solution to poverty and destitution.
Possibility:
Possibility is a tendency or rather latent tendencies of the development of existing reality. If reality is the past in the present, possibility is the future in the present. Reality is the world of realized possibilities and the world of potential possibilities, and between them lies the process of the transformation of potentialities into actual reality. In terms of time, possibility precedes reality, which, being a result of development, is at the same time its starting point. Development is therefore both a process of realization and of inception of possibilities, and of transformation of one of them into reality.
The kinds of possibilities. For a possibility to become reality, two factors are necessary: the operation of a certain law and the availability of appropriate conditions.
As everything in the world, possibilities develop: some of them grow, others wither away. In nature, possibility is on the whole turned into reality objectively, independently of the subject. In social life, too, events may sometimes occur of themselves, as it were: some possibilities, which are in keeping with the fundamental laws of social being, are realized independently of us. But history is made by people. And that means that a great deal depends on their will and consciousness.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
https://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Pragmatism:
Pragmatism is a bourgeois philosophic trend and movement that claims that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that “impractical” ideas are to be rejected.
Pragmatism rejects the proposition that change in nature and society is a law-governed process that involves quantitative stages with leaps from one quality to another quality. Pragmatism rejects revolution as a practical solution to the plight of the proletariat, because pragmatism denies the existence of the law of development, which brings the capitalistic factory system to its historical end.
Pragmatism was founded in the United States shortly after the Civil War and coincided with the rise of US financial-industrial capital. Alinskyism explicitly rejects Marxist philosophy, which is dialectical materialism.
(See, Alinskyism.)
Precariat:
The term combines the words precarious and proletariat. Precariat = precarious + proletariat.
The precariat consists of three main groups — those falling out of working-class jobs and communities, those who accept insecurity because they have never had any better, and those who are educated and are experiencing status frustration. The first group tends to want the past back, without any prospect of all those stable jobs returning; the second group, made up mainly of migrants, the disabled, minorities and so on, tends to drift into the margins of society; the third group is what exploded into the streets and squares of great cities last year, in the Occupy movement, in Euro May Day parades across Europe, in the indignados in Madrid, in Athens and in the Middle East.
(G. Standing, The precariat is you and me, 2012.) http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3820486.html
Precariat refers to what some revolutionaries call the “new class” and new form of proletariat created by the electronic revolution. Its core is the destitute proletarians created by the robotic economy.
(See, Proletariat.)
Price:
A commodity’s value expressed in money is called its price. Price is the monetary expression of the value of a commodity. Price is the money for which a commodity can be purchased. While in the short run, price and value may diverge, over time they will approximate one another.
(See, Value.)
Primitive accumulation of capital:
The primitive accumulation of capital is a past historical phase in the formation of the capitalist system. Primitive accumulation is a historical phase in the formation of the bourgeois mode of commodity production, rather than every starting point for a new cycle of accumulation of capital.
The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it.
In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are epoch-making that act as levers for the capitalist class in course of formation; but, above all, those moments when great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and ‘unattached’ proletarians on the labor-market. The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process. . . .
. . . . Hence, the historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867; bold added.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm
Primitive communism: (See, Mode of production, Simple hand tools, primitive communal productive relations.)
Private property:
Private property is private ownership of socially necessary means of production, the products of labor and all the things that dominate the productive life of the individual and classes. Private property is a social power based on the property rights, which ultimately determine the productive relations of society.
Property as an economic category is always bound up with definite objects and things, since without an object of acquisition there cannot be any ownership. Natural objects, whether they be the gifts of nature or the products of human labor, make up the material content of property. However, the concept of property cannot be reduced merely to its material content. A thing as such is not property unless people enter into definite relations with one another with regard to it. (N. Kolesov, Social Property in the Soviet Union, 1961/2; bold added.)
Private property relationships arose when the division of labor developed in such a way as to increase labor productivity, which made it possible to create a stable storehouse of surplus products — more than what was needed for the survival of the community. Some individuals discovered that they could increase the store of surplus products by using the surplus to get others to work for them. Private property relations crept imperceptibly into the daily life of people. Individuals became enslaved in a compulsory labor system. The division of society into masters and slaves became the first great economic-class division based on private property. The reproduction of a permanent store of surplus products and the ownership of the surplus product by a non-laboring class became the foundation for all forms of private property.
The emergence and growth of private property relations split society into contradictory classes, led to creation of the state (armed bodies of men, military) and created antagonistic development from one mode of production to the next. The owners of the means of production and surplus products under private property became the ruling class, which created institutions to enforce its will and ownership rights.
Private property has taken different forms throughout history. Slave property of antiquity was private ownership of the slave by a master and/or class of masters. Feudal private property was based on land ownership as the primary form of society’s wealth and the serf who worked the land of the nobility, his “lord” and “master.” Capitalist private property is the bourgeois mode of commodity production, where most of society is compelled to sell its labor ability to the owners of means of production for wages. Capitalism rests exclusively upon competition between the laborers for wages.
Privatization:
Privatization transfers ownership of a public service or public enterprise or agency from the public sector, government, to the private sector. It may also mean government outsourcing services or functions such as revenue collection, law enforcement, and prison management to private firms.
(See, Nationalization.)
Process:
A process is the totality of stages of development of dialectical motion.
(N. Peery, Entering An Epoch of Social Revolution, 1993.)
http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf
Every process is matter in motion that manifests the internal contradiction that impels it forward through all its stages of development. The process is impelled forward as the result of the ongoing struggle between the contradictory aspects of that thing. A process is dialectical because it impels the emergence of successive stages of development as the basis of self-motion. The world and everything in the universe is coming into to being, changing and passing out of being. Dialectics asserts that the process of development is from a lower to a higher order, and that development is through definitive, indispensable, quantitative stages with a leap into a new quality.
‘The great basic thought,’ Engels writes, ‘that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away . . . . For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher.
(V. I. Lenin, Karl Marx, A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism, 1914.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/ch02.htm
Production:
Production is the mental and physical power of humanity that operates on nature and changes the material provided by nature to create means of life, goods and services. It is a major component of the economy, and distribution is the other.
In the process of production, human beings work not only upon nature, but also upon one another. They produce only by working together in a specified manner and reciprocally exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations to one another, and only within these social connections and relations does their influence upon nature operate—that is, does production take place.
(K. Marx, Wage Labor and Capital, 1847.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labor /ch05.htm
(See, Economy.)
Production (reproduction):
Reproduction is a process of renewal and the continuous gathering together and deployment of natural resources, material goods, human labor and recreation of the productive relations at the foundation of the economy. Reproduction and production are not the same.
Each cycle of capitalist production creates commodities. Capitalist reproduction also recreates wage-labor and the social relations of bourgeois inequality on an expanded scale. Under socialism some bourgeois inequality ingrained in the society’s social pattern and expressed in the force of habit will persist and be combatted by the proletariat in power. Later concrete first-stage communist relations of production will not reproduce inequality that was sustained by private property relations because private property will be abolished.
Reproduction differs under different historical conditions. A distinction is made between simple reproduction, in which the process of production is renewed on an unchanged scale, and expanded reproduction, in which it is renewed on an ever-increasing scale. Simple reproduction was typical of precapitalist formations.
Capitalist reproduction. Under capitalist conditions, reproduction involves not just the reproduction of material goods but also the reproduction of capital and of surplus value, and the moving force is the pursuit of surplus value, or profit. This pursuit of surplus value and competition motivates capitalists to carry out expanded reproduction or accumulation of capital. Under capitalist conditions, reproduction of the work force is characterized by its reproduction as a commodity: hired workers, consuming the essentials of life — which they have bought with their wages — renew their ability to work in order to sell it to the capitalists again and again. Because the exploitative relations are renewed in capitalist society between the class of hired workers and the class of capitalists, there is also reproduction of capitalist production relations.
(Reproduction.)
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/reproduction
Production (social):
Having arisen out of nature, human beings carry on a struggle in nature, first against it and then increasingly in conformity with its natural laws for the production of material values, not in isolation from each other, not as separate individuals, but in common, in groups, in societies. This common activity in pursuit of preserving and perpetuating the generations is social production.
All previous and current modes of production are social production. In the production of material values, people still enter into mutual relations of one kind or another.
Production (socialized):
Socialized production developed on the basis of the industrial revolution, which created a new division of labor, wherein groups of people working together were required to work together and operate huge machinery to create a single product. Socialized production became dominant over production based on the individual labor of handicraftsmen and production based on the old feudal guild system. Driven by the industrial revolution, large-scale industry amalgamated thousands of workers under one roof who worked together, in organic connection and deployed the new means of production that could only be operated by large groups of people. Socialized production and social production are different concepts. All production is social because human beings must work together, in cooperation with each other, to exist on earth. Socialized production refers to industrial means of production that must be worked in common by groups of people, in a system of cooperation.
Then came the concentration of the means of production and of the producers in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into actual socialized means of production and socialized producers. But the socialized producers and means of production and their products were still treated, after this change, just as they had been before — i.e., as the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had himself appropriated the product, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others was the exception. Now, the owner of the instruments of labor always appropriated to himself the product, although it was no longer his product but exclusively the product of the labor of others. Thus, the products now produced socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by the capitalists. The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialized.
(F. Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
Productive forces:
The instruments of production, by means of which material wealth is produced, and the people who set these instruments in motion and accomplish the production of material values, thanks to the production experiences and habits of work which they possess, constitute the productive forces of society. . . .
The productive forces reflect the relationship of people to the objects and forces of nature used for the production of material wealth. In production, however, men act not only upon nature but upon each other.
(Textbook of Political Economy, 1957; ital. in orig.)
http://www.dmeeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
Of all the productive forces in a society, the most revolutionary is the human mind.
Productive labor:
The term productive labor, as used by Marx in describing capitalism, refers to labor that produces surplus value.
Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital.
(K. Marx. Capital Volume One, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch16.htm
Productive relations: (See, Relations of production, Social relations of production.)
Progress:
Progress and development are closely related. Rather than being a value judgment, progress is the continued development, compounding, enlargement and stage by stage enhancement of the productive forces and phenomena in general.
The relationship between the concepts of development and progress must be clearly understood. They are close to each other but not identical. Development results in the appearance of a new quality, but it is not at all necessary that this quality should be more complex or more perfect than the previous one. If the Fnew quality is in some respect superior to the old one, we have a progressive tendency of development, and if it is inferior, we have a regressive tendency. Thus the aging of an organism is a regressive tendency of development, which may be accompanied (though not always) by a progressive tendency in the development of the individual’s spiritual and intellectual potential. Regress is just as irreversible as progress, that is to say, a new quality may appear at any stage in regress which is irreducible to the previous states. Being just one of the tendencies in the development of life, regress is by no means linked with degeneration or extinction.
. . . . Progress and regress actually coexist in objective reality, as do deformation, decay, revolutionary (leap-like) and evolutionary changes, spiral and cyclical material processes, i.e. there coexist two opposing directions of development~ along the ascending and the descending line. Development along the ascending line is development from the elementary towards the complex, more perfect, more finely organized, towards a richer potential and greater information volume, a process in which the structure becomes more refined, matter and energy accumulate, and the extent of coded information grows. Descending development is the path of decay, degeneration, impoverishment and decomposition.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Proletarian internationalism:
Proletarian internationalism in the age of robotics is the unity of the proletariat of all countries in their worldwide fight to overthrow the power of capital and speculative finance. Proletarian internationalism is the opposite of bourgeois nationalism. It is the fight for the demands of the destitute proletarian worldwide. It is the global striving for emancipation from all forms of capital and speculative finance.
The rise of the new economy requires abandonment of outmoded doctrines of revolution. What is needed today is a new doctrine of proletarian revolution. During the era of Marx and Engels, the slogan of proletarian internationalism was, “Proletarians of the World, Unite!” During the era of Lenin and the Third Communist International the slogan was, “Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite!” In the era of robotics, the slogan has not yet been formulated, but social media are throwing millions into concerted action across the globe.
Proletarian revolution:
The proletarian revolution is the political aspect of the communist social revolution, rather than a “workers” revolution against “bosses,” or fight for “democratic workers’ control of production.” It is called the proletarian revolution because the proletariat must emancipate all of society from private property, as the condition for its self-emancipation.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
(K. Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Proletariat:
By proletariat, [is meant] 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. [Engels, 1888 English edition]
(Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor [power] and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; . . . whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor—hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. . . .
(F. Engels, Principles of Communism, 1847.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
In the writings of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, the new rising and developing class of workers, created by the industrial revolution, was the industrial working class, the proletariat. The word proletariat is a property designation, while the word “worker” and “laborer” are designations of placement in the division of labor. The slave laborer of antiquity was a worker but not a proletariat. The serf laborer of medievalism was a worker but not a proletariat. The modern proletarians are proletarian precisely because they do not own their means of production and must sell their labor power for wages.
Just as the original Roman proletariat became fallen laborers shut out of production by slave labor, the new proletariat is also fallen, shut out of production by robotic slaves. It can be said to be a fallen proletariat.
Propaganda and agitation:
Propaganda is the presentation of many ideas, while agitation presents one or a few ideas. Propaganda is often in written words, and agitation is often spoken.
Some think that agitation urges people to action, and propaganda does not, but this is not correct because this notion ignores the mobilizing effect of ideas.
Historically, some thought that propaganda was the province of intellectuals, and agitation was for workers to do, but this too is not correct. What is needed is for people to develop into intellectuals capable of understanding and presenting complex ideas. However, some people are better at public speaking, and others are better at writing. In Lenin’s time, there was a clear distinction between agitation and propaganda.
. . . . the propagandist, dealing with, say, the question of unemployment, must explain the capitalistic nature of crises, the cause of their inevitability in modern society, the necessity for the transformation of this society into a socialist society, etc. In a word, he must present ‘many ideas,’ so many, indeed, that they will be understood as an integral whole only by a (comparatively) few persons. The agitator, however, speaking on the same subject, will take as an illustration a fact that is most glaring and most widely known to his audience, say, the death of an unemployed worker’s family from starvation, the growing impoverishment, etc., and, utilizing this fact, known to all, will direct his efforts to presenting a single idea to the ‘masses’, e.g., the senselessness of the contradiction between the increase of wealth and the increase of poverty; he will strive to rouse discontent and indignation among the masses against this crying injustice, leaving a more complete explanation of this contradiction to the propagandist. Consequently, the propagandist operates chiefly by means of the printed word; the agitator by means of the spoken word. The propagandist requires qualities different from those of the agitator.
(V. I. Lenin, What is to Be Done?, 1901.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/download/what-itd.pdf
In the present era where communism solves immediate, pressing problems, there is some merger between agitation and propaganda as it is necessary to present communism to vast numbers of people. Further, with social media, what is written and what is spoken has become blurred.
Property (economic): See, Private property.
Property (philosophy):
The concepts of quality, property and state. Let us ask ourselves this question: Is a given thing different from some other thing in some respect? If we think that the given thing is no different from any other, it is impossible to speak of our knowledge of that thing. If we know what a given thing is, then it is something for us, and if it is something, that means that it is the sum total of certain properties.
. . . . A property is thus a way of manifestation of the object’s definite aspect in relation to other objects with which it interacts. A property is precisely that through which something manifests its specific being in relation to something else. Among all possible properties, we can single out properties essential (or necessary) and inessential (accidental) for the given object, and also internal and external, universal and specific, natural and artificial ones. The sum total of properties taken as a whole, as a system, forms the object’s qualitative definiteness, reflecting its aspects of integrality and relative stability. Quality is an existing definiteness, the expression of the stable unity of an object’s elements and structure.
Properties are manifested with various degrees of intensity, and this expresses the state of the system involved. The state is a stable manifestation of a given property in its dynamic. We speak of the physical, psychical, or moral state of a person or a people, of the state of a given nation’s economy, or of its political or military state. The object’s other properties are addressed to the outside, while its state is turned towards its inner structure. Properties, states, functions and connections are an object’s qualitative features.
Having established what property and state are, we can tackle a fuller definition of the quality of an object. Quality is an integral description of the functional unity of an object’s essential properties, its internal and external definiteness, its relative stability.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; ital. in orig.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Quality:
Quality is the essential character of a particular thing or phenomenon, making it what it is and distinguishing it from other things and phenomena. Quality is the totality of properties that makes a particular thing what it is. Quality is the inseparable specific mark of a thing. It is inseparable because without it the thing ceases to exist as that given thing.
The philosophical concept of quality differs from the notion of “quality” in everyday life, where it is associated with the worth or value of things. People speak of the good or bad quality of food, clothing, shoes, or artistic production. The philosophic concept of quality contains no element of moral or value judgment.
The most essential property of a quality is its character. A thing without character, without an essential property, cannot exist and therefore cannot possess a feature. A feature is a nonessential property of a quality.
Qualitative change:
For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).
All qualitative differences in nature rest on differences of chemical composition or on different quantities or forms of motion (energy) or, as is almost always the case, on both. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e., without quantitative alteration of the body concerned. In this form, therefore, Hegel’s mysterious principle appears not only quite rational but even rather obvious.
(F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1883.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch02.htm
Qualitative change is not a simple process of change in magnitude, something getting bigger or smaller. It begins with the addition or subtraction of something from the existing process. Qualitative change results from the incremental and stage-by-stage addition of a new quality, to a thing, phenomenon, or process, or subtracting something from a thing, phenomenon, or process.
Quantity:
Quantity is mass, how much, density and magnitude of a specific thing, of a quality. There only exists in actuality a specific quantity of a thing, of a quality. The totality of properties establishes a thing’s existence in time and space. In actuality, there is no such thing as abstract and general quantity.
Considered from the standpoint of development, quantity is a measure of growth and development of a specific quality and its maturing as stages of development. Everything that exists passes through quantitative stages of growth.
Quantitative change:
Quantitative change is the successive stages of development of a quality, under specific conditions bounded by a specific environment, rather than a concept limited to an increase or decrease in magnitude. Quantitative change is the developmental path by which a quality becomes more of what it is, acquiring new features without changing its fundamental character.
In the development of a process, that is to say, the quantitative maturing of a specific thing which is a quality, the specific thing becomes more of what it is. The quantitative maturing of a specific thing takes place as quantitative stages of growth. Thus, the philosophic concept of quantity embodies quantitative stages of growth as well as measurement of amount.
A girl is born female and becomes woman. She becomes more of what she is. At a certain stage in her quantitative growth — quantitative maturing — she may become capable of child bearing. Growth and development are bound up with quantitative stages of development rather than a simple abstract increase in magnitude. In fact, increase in magnitude ought to be understood as part of the process of maturing and a thing becoming more of what it is.
In developing capitalist production, the laborers under the feudal system lost their character as worker-serfs who deployed primitive means of production and owned their means of production. Some workers under feudalism became more proletarian and owned nothing but their ability to labor for wages and were forced into the factory system. The capitalists, who once administered businesses, now hired workers to administer the business for them. The capitalists became owners of stock and financial institutions divorced from laboring, and so they were more clearly owners of bourgeois property. One capitalist or ten capitalists alone do not make a bourgeois mode of commodity production. Thousands of capitalists who own thousands of factories and hire thousands of workers, that are connected with other millions of workers through the division of labor, result in the system of capitalist commodity production.
In the quantitative development of the bourgeois mode of commodity production, the workers become more clearly proletarian, and the owners of the means of production become more clearly capitalist.
Race and racism:
Race is a belief, a bourgeois ideology, which states that humanity comprises separate groups, at different evolutionary stages of development and that the group at the higher stage will rule over the earth and the people of the world. The ideology of racism justifies exploitation and class-based inequality in society. It states that physical, 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. In reality, the reason for classes, exploitation and class-based inequality in society, is private property – private ownership of the means of production and commerce.
Discrimination based on class, color, ethnicity and sex is real and has been statistically proven. Racism is not the cause of this discrimination. The cause of discrimination is property rights and the division of society into the haves and have nots. Racism is the excuse – justification – for class-based inequality and discrimination. Racism says that the reason for exploitation and class inequality is skin color, ethical behavior, morality and cultural differences rather than property relations.
Any feature of a group that distinguishes it from another group can serve as an ideological justification for exploitation and oppression.
(See, Color line, National question and National-colonial question, Slavery.)
Reform:
Reform is change in a political-economic system, which does not change its essential quality. Reform changes relations within and between classes without changing the property relations. It allows the system to further develop and pass to a new stage.
The dialectic of reform is that as long as a system is passing through its stages of development, it can be reformed. Once something qualitatively new is added to a system of production, reform of the old system is no longer possible. This is so because the old system is now undergoing a qualitative change and transition to something new. Development on the old basis has come to an end. This Marxist conception of the general law of change is the basis to explain the relationship between reform and revolution. Once qualitative change inaugurates the transition to something qualitatively new, reform of the old is no longer possible. The system goes into social revolution.
Capitalist commodity production and the industrial system upon which it was based have completed all their historical stages of growth and cannot be reformed.
Reformism:
Reformism is an ideology and strategy that advocates for quantitative change in the system and gradual improvements of wages and conditions of labor and social conditions as the path to emancipation of the working class. Reformism claims that reform will gradually lead to greater political liberty and economic prosperity for the proletariat and people of America. It is incrementalism.
Forty years of falling real wages, recent drops in the life expectancy of men and women, destruction of the public school system, rising health-care costs, expansion of the robotic economy and growth of a new class of destitute proletarians discredit the politics of reformism.
Reform and concession are different. A concession is the winning of a temporary benefit. Reforms change relations between classes, without changing the property relations and are irreversible, within the quantitative stage of the system. Concessions are reversible. Concessions do not change relations within or between classes.
The economic and social basis of the politics of reformism was the stage-by-stage quantitative development of the capitalist system. The era of capitalist development has come to an end. As society leaps to a new mode of production, the reforms of the past period, which were built upon the old social organization of labor and the old political and social superstructure, collapse as the classes wage a life and death struggle to reconstruct society on a new basis.
(See, Pragmatism, Reform.)
Relations of production:
Relations of production are the connections between people and property, that is, the ownership pattern, in the process of production. The ownership pattern determines the placement and role of classes — exploited and exploiters — in the process of production. The process of production consists of the division of labor, stage of development of technology, the level of deployed science and skills in shaping and defining the social organization of labor.
When productive forces and productive relations are compatible with one another, their interactivity causes more rapid development of the productive forces. The struggle between exploiting and exploited classes drives the mode of production through all its phases of development. When productive forces develop so as to become incompatible with the less mobile and more stagnant productive relations, the productive relations become fetters on production and hinder development of the productive forces. When qualitatively new productive forces, that is new machinery, arise in society, , the new machinery calls forth new forms of classes that express the new productive relations that correspond with the new productive forces. The new productive forces, new classes and new productive relations develop in antagonism with the old productive forces and its old corresponding productive relations. This dialectic of development occurs in every mode of production and is the motive force of history.
In the process of production, human beings work not only upon nature, but also upon one another. They produce only by working together in a specified manner and reciprocally exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations to one another, and only within these social connections and relations does their influence upon nature operate—i.e., does production take place.
. . . . The relations of production in their totality constitute what is called the social relations, society, and, moreover, a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with peculiar, distinctive characteristics. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois (or capitalist) society, are such totalities of relations of production, each of which denotes a particular stage of development in the history of mankind.
(K. Marx, Wage, Labor and Capital, 1847.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labor /ch05.htm
(See, Mode of production, Social relations of production.)
Reserve army of labor: (See, Industrial reserve army.)
Revisionism:
Revisionism is a doctrine hostile to Marxism within Marxism. Its conscious design is to emasculate Marxism, to cut out its revolutionary heart, blunt its revolutionary edge and make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Revisionism is an intellectual expression of private property within Marxism and reflects the conscious striving of hostile classes.
Revisionism is not simply a mistaken idea or mistaken notion that lends itself to correction by criticism and self-criticism. Revisionism alters, distorts and reinterprets Marx’s writings to make his science of society, theory of social revolution and doctrine of class antagonism acceptable to the ruling class and ideological groups favorable to the maintenance of private wealth and the historic social power of private property.
What is now happening to Marx’s theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. . . . After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie.
(V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1
Applying Marx’s science of society to new conditions is not revisionism. Developing Marx’s method, approach and philosophy in correspondence with changes in the productive forces and science ensures Marxism does not become a dogma and brings it into the new era.
The most well known example of revisionism in the past sixty years occurred in the Soviet Union under the regime of Nikita Khrushchev. At the time the Communist Party Soviet Union (CPSU) put forth various revisionist theories. These included the theory of the “state of the whole people.” By definition the state is a tool in the hands of the ruling class, and a state of the whole people could never exist within the Marxist definition of a state. The CPSU also put forth the idea of peaceful transition to socialism which will never happen as the owners of wealth won’t peacefully relinquish what they have. Finally, the CPSU supported a so-called third path of development that was neither capitalist nor socialist, and this never existed in actuality. This analysis is consistent with calling some place part of the “Third World” which is misleading terminology as there have been only two worlds – capitalist and socialist.
Revolution:
A revolution is an abrupt and notable change in the pattern of events, both in its Marxist and non-Marxist meaning. From the standpoint of Marxist philosophy, revolution is composed of both objective and subjective aspects. The economic revolution is objective and takes place as qualitatively new means of production replace the old. On that basis, a political revolution takes place. A political revolution is subjective and is the process of a subordinate class overthrowing a ruling class and becoming the ruling class. Together, these two elements constitute a social revolution.
Social revolution begins with the introduction of qualitatively new means of production into the economy. It goes through stages of destruction and reconstruction. Once the process has begun, the destruction is an automatic process. Reconstruction, however, is not automatic. At critical points and through the work of conscious revolutionaries, political revolution (that is, the seizure of political power) facilitates the stage of reconstruction. After the assumption of political power, the revolution unites and completes itself by changing the mode of distribution and reconstructing society.
People generally recognize revolution only when it reaches the stage of political revolution, thus its seemingly abrupt appearance.
The question of leaps is closely connected to the question of social revolution. If everything in nature and society develops by decisive qualitative changes, by leaps, then capitalism too will be inevitably replaced by another social order, and this will take place by means of a leap, which can only be by social revolution.
Revolutionary crisis:
A revolutionary crisis is an era of mass uprisings, protests and demonstrations. It is an era of the masses battering the state in such a way on make possible the transfer of political power from an old class to a new class. The process is complex, and each country will exhibit its own features, but one of the signs is the state turning inward against itself and a section of the military establishment and even a few police going over to the side of the revolution, providing it with its professional armed detachments.
The fundamental law of revolution, which has been confirmed by all revolutions and especially by all three Russian revolutions in the twentieth century, is as follows: for a revolution to take place it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realize the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the ‘lower classes’ do not want to live in the old way and the ‘upper classes’ cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters). It follows that, for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking, and politically active workers) should fully realize that revolution is necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the ruling classes should be going through a governmental crisis, which draws even the most backward masses into politics (symptomatic of any genuine revolution is a rapid, tenfold and even hundredfold increase in the size of the working and oppressed masses — hitherto apathetic — who are capable of waging the political struggle), weakens the government, and makes it possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it.
(V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, 1920.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm
Robot and robotics:
A robot is a complex machine based on the microchip that replicates the action of living labor in production, and replaces the laborer.
Just as the steam engine with its technology was the foundation for the industrial revolution, the robot and its technology, the microchip, ushered in the robotics-electronics revolution and robotic economy. The microchip is revolutionary. It makes possible creation of machines, called robots, that can process data and knowledge with matter other than the human brain. Robotics brings human society to a new evolutionary stage of development and makes it possible to destroy all forms of society and social relations based on exploitation of human labor.
Robotic production does not conform to the laws of political economy, which are based on human labor in production.
The labour-process, . . . is human action with a view to the production of use-values, appropriation of natural substances to human requirements; it is the necessary condition for effecting exchange of matter between man and Nature; it is the everlasting Nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent of every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every such phase.
(K. Marx, Capital Vol. I, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
How will people replaced by robots and with no money enter the world of exchange? Robotic production demands distribution of products based on needs.
Robotics does not create human misery. It is the capitalist system that creates misery with its demand that people have money to consume, even when billions cannot find work in the dominant economy. Under capitalism, a tiny group of capitalists reaps the financial benefit from robotics. In a communist society, robotics will benefit the people and bring unknown levels of prosperity and leisure time, to all, with a chance for the individual to contribute their talent to society. The robotic revolution brings the system of capitalist production and private property relations of production to an historical end.
Robotic revolution: (See, Electronic revolution.)
Scarcity:
While scarcity involves a shortage of things, scarcity acquires a larger meaning when applied to the material power of productive forces. Scarcity is a low state of development of the productive forces where human species activity is determined by the struggle for survival. When daily behavior is directly tied to the struggle for production of means of life, society remains in a state of scarcity.
Scarcity in the general sense of political economy refers to the availability of goods and natural resources. With development of the robotic economy, scarcity and abundance take on a deeper meaning. Scarcity is a stage of development of the material power of productive forces, rather than a numerical concept of quantity. Finally, scarcity is productive forces not powerful enough to emancipate the individual from their enslaving subordination to the division of labor.
Just as surplus and abundance are not identical, shortage and scarcity are not identical. Surplus is the opposite of shortage, and abundance is the opposite of scarcity.
Before the robotic economy, all modes of production operated under conditions of scarcity. Societies may experience momentary shortages and surpluses of individual products, but permanent abundance becomes possible only with the rise of the robot economy. Computers and robotics create the society of abundance, with the societal ability to care for all, without a demand for labor as a precondition to consume the fruits of society. Robotics destroys scarcity.
(See, Abundance.)
Science:
Science is the study of the law system that governs a process. A process is the totality of stages of development of dialectical motion. Science studies the law system that governs the behavior of matter in motion and human thought. It is the application of law systems towards a definite purpose.
Science [is] systemized knowledge derived from observation, study, and experimentation carried on in order to determine the nature or principles of what is being studied. (Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary.)
Science, the organized body of knowledge concerning nature and society acquired in the historical evolution of social life. In a broad sense science is the name of both the accumulated knowledge we have at any time, of any and all aspects of phenomena, and for the process through which such knowledge is acquired, verified and enlarged. Science endeavors to find the basic laws underlying the apparent accidents of phenomena in all fields. As Marx remarked, ‘All science would be superfluous if the appearance, the form, and the nature of things were wholly identical.’ (H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, 1949.)
Sectarianism:
Sectarianism is rejection of a connection with people who do not adhere to a group’s beliefs, doctrines (political, theoretical or religious), moral principles or ideology. One meaning of “sect,” as defined by dictionary.com is “any group, party, or faction united by a specific doctrine or under a doctrinal leader.” Sectarians seek to convert the individual or class to conform to their beliefs. Every sect demands faithful adherence from its members. In this sense:
Every sect is in fact religious. . . . The sect sees the justification for its existence and its ‘point of honor’ — not in what it has in common with the class movement but in the particular shibboleth which distinguishes it from it.
(Marx-Engels Correspondence, Letter from Marx to Schweitzer, 1868.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_10_13-abs.htm
Marx wrote of the efforts of the First International to defeat socialist sectarianism within the movement of the working class.
The International was founded in order to replace the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organization of the working class for struggle. The original Statutes and the Inaugural Address show this at the first glance. On the other hand, the Internationalists could not have maintained themselves if the course of history had not already smashed up the sectarian system. The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary.
(Marx-Engels Correspondence, Marx to Friedrich Bolte, 1871.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_11_23.htm
Slavery:
Slavery is involuntary servitude, a condition where human beings become property of other human beings and are compelled, through routine, heredity and force of arms, to labor for the slave owner.
Slavery of antiquity, say, five thousand years ago, produced use values for the immediate use of the slave owner’s family. New World slavery produced exchange-value commodities for sale for profit on the market.
Slavery of antiquity bore a patriarchal familial character based on primitive means of production in an agricultural society, including the wooden plow, handicraft and later weaving and pottery making. Ancient slavery produced products directly consumed by the family and clan. The focus of production was production of use values. Production of exchange value occurs when products are sold on the market. Products created to be sold on the market become commodities, that is, acquire a commodity form. Slaves in ancient times were often not visibly different than their owners other than through visible poverty; they generally were not distinguished by skin color or hair texture. Often they were simply captives of war from a neighboring area.
All forms of slavery are destructive and involve appropriation of the surplus products of the slave. The surplus products are all the products created by the slave over and above what the slaves themselves use and consume. The surplus products supported the wealth of the family and clan. Slavery for the production of exchange values, such as in Southern slavery, resulted in market horrors that were not present in early patriarchal slavery which produced use values.
Marx discloses the impulses (use value vs. exchange value) that changed the character and features of slavery.
Capital has not invented surplus-labor. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the laborer, free or not free, must add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production, whether this proprietor be the Athenian [well-to-do man], Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus [Roman citizen], Norman baron, American slave-owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord or capitalist. It is, however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not the exchange-value but the use-value of the product predominates, surplus-labor will be limited by a given set of wants which may be greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus-labor arises from the nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity over-work becomes horrible only when the object is to obtain exchange-value in its specific independent money-form; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory working to death is here the recognized form of over-work…. Still these are exceptions in antiquity. But as soon as people, whose production still moves within the lower forms of slave-labor, corvée-labor, etc., are drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the sale of their products for export becoming their principal interest, the civilized horrors of over-work are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, etc. Hence the Negro labor in the Southern States of the American Union preserved something of a patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly directed to immediate local consumption. But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital interest to these states, the over-working of the Negro and sometimes the using up of his life in seven years of labor became a factor in a calculated and calculating system. It was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful products. It was now a question of production of surplus-labor itself.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S2
In the US South the slaves were the class at the bottom of the laboring classes. The slave owners hated and feared the slaves who greatly outnumbered them. Those feelings are still reflected today in the attitudes of some towards the descendants of slaves, who are distinguished in appearance by color and African ancestry. It is the class nature of the old slave status that is carried forward and remains toxic today.
Social:
Social refers to the complex of connections between people in daily life, without regard to the specific society being described. The human species is a collective whose joint common activity creates purpose, desire and the will to cooperate under all conditions of life. Hence, production in all human societies is social production because individuals must act in concert with one another to reproduce the generations.
The production of life, both of one’s own in labor and of fresh life in procreation, now appears as a double relationship: on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relationship. By social, we understand the co-operation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end. It follows from this that a certain mode of production, or industrial stage, is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or social stage, and this mode of co-operation is itself a ‘productive force.’ Further, that the multitude of productive forces accessible to men determines the nature of society, hence, that the ‘history of humanity’ must always be studied and treated in relation to the history of industry and exchange. . . . Thus it is quite obvious from the start that there exists a materialistic connection of men with one another, which is determined by their needs and their mode of production, and which is as old as men themselves. This connection is ever taking on new forms, and thus presents a ‘history’ independently of the existence of any political or religious nonsense which in addition may hold men together.
(K. Marx, The German Ideology, 1845; bold added.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a3
Social being:
Social being is social existence, and social existence determines social consciousness. It cannot be said in unduly simple manner that “being determines consciousness,” because people are much more social and complex than “being” implies.
The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
(K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behavior. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process.
(Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, 1845.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
(See, Economic determinism.)
Social contract:
The social contract is the spoken and unspoken social arrangement between people, government, and different classes that defines how classes and individuals relate to one another in a system of production. In America, the social contract based on wage labor is being torn asunder, with all classes and social groupings spontaneously drawn into the social revolution.
The social contract (“compact”), espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762, with its history-changing cry of the sovereign rights of the citizen, was the voice of the new bourgeois productive relations and a new economy based on a growing system of mechanized labor. This new economy (material relation of production) was born under feudal society, which had been governed by a different productive relation—social contract—based on the rights and obligations of subjects and lords.
The social contract of bourgeois society flows from capitalist productive relations, based on the buying and selling of labor-power and competition between the laborers for wages. “If you work for me, I will pay you, and everyone in society will prosper.” This social contract has become increasingly inoperable in the robotic economy. In every layer of the economy, the computer and robotics render labor superfluous in the production of commodities, reduce the amount of workers that are employed as a percentage of the total population, threaten to push more millions outside the social division of labor and by doing so breach the capitalist social contract based on the buying and selling of labor power. Robotics calls forth social revolution to create a new social contract, compatible with robotics. Capitalist productive relations—expressed in its social contract—have entered antagonism with the robot economy.
Social democracy:
Social democracy is bourgeois ideology and a political movement to establish a democratic socialist society based on the factory system, while preserving forms of private property and the wage labor system. Having originated during the transition from agriculture (feudalism) to industry (capitalism) social democracy advocated for the democratic republic, for citizens’ rights and against feudal despotism, while preserving private property relations of all kinds. Social democracy was revolutionary in relationship to the past feudal society but reformist in relationship to proletarian socialism, with its abolition of bourgeois private property.
The term social democracy appeared when socialist working class parties formed in Europe. Marx described the growth of social democracy.
As against the coalesced bourgeoisie, a coalition between petty bourgeois and workers had been formed, the so-called Social-Democratic party. . . . A joint program was drafted, joint election committees were set up and joint candidates put forward. The revolutionary point was broken off and a democratic turn given to the social demands of the proletariat; the purely political form was stripped off the democratic claims of the petty bourgeoisie and their socialist point thrust forward. Thus arose social-democracy. . . . The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. . . . This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie.
(K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch03.htm
(See, Pragmatism, Reformism, Social-fascism, Socialism.)
Social-fascism:
“Socialist in name and fascist in deed” and “custodians of fascism under the banner of socialism and bourgeois democratic liberty” is social-fascism. In the 1920s, the term came into use in the Comintern (Communist International). Social-fascism described the anti-Soviet, anti-communist, anti-Comintern and anti-proletarian policies of the European social democratic parties and social democratic political trend. Social democracy supported bourgeois rule. Just as the terms “labor aristocracy” and “reformist” described a layer of society and political trend, social-fascism described the behavior of social democracy in its objective unity with bourgeois rule. Social democracy’s unity with capital was of vital importance to ushering in German-led European fascism.
The greatest factor in the stabilization of capitalism after the first round of wars and revolutions was Social-Democracy. In such countries as Germany and Austria the Social-Democratic leaders actually undertook to organize and maintain the capitalist State against the revolutionary onslaught of the workers. A German Social-Democrat, Noske, drowned in blood the workers’ revolution in Germany in 1918 and 1919. Social-Democratic ministers suppressed strikes, fired at workers’ demonstrations, declared martial law against the workers. A Socialist government in Great Britain sent armies to subdue the uprising of the colonial peoples. The Social-Democrats of France took the initiative in introducing the imperialist martial laws. In short, everywhere the leaders of Social-Democracy became part and parcel of the bourgeois State apparatus. They advanced the idea that where there is a coalition government, i.e., a government of capitalist and Socialist ministers, there we have a transition from capitalism to socialism. The fact of the matter is that a coalition government remains a capitalist government since it does not shake the foundations of capitalism, private property and exploitation. On the contrary, it only serves to strengthen capitalism by deceiving the workers with the idea of peaceful transition to socialism.
In Germany and Austria Social-Democracy actually aided the growth of fascism. Fascist bands were being organized under the protection of Social-Democratic governments. Fascist demonstrations were unmolested by Social-Democratic police presidents while Communist demonstrations were being dispersed. Fascist bands were allowed to arm while the militant Red Front organization of the German workers was outlawed. Martial law and semi-martial law were repeatedly introduced to curb the movement of the workers who demanded an improvement of their intolerable conditions.
In the very same way as Lenin, after the betrayal of the proletariat by Social-Democracy at the beginning of the War, called the Social-Democratic leaders social-patriots and social-chauvinists, so the Communist International, after the new betrayals of Social-Democracy, called its leaders social-fascists—in the sense of paving the way for fascism.
(M.J. Olgin, Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise, 1935.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/12.htm
A section of European social democracy was in fact custodians for fascism. Soviet power (dictatorship of the proletariat) and the Comintern approached the rise of European fascism as an economic response to the outcome of World War I and a political response to the proletariat having taken power in the Russian empire. The Bolshevik party and Comintern strategy identified social democracy as the political middle, at which the parties of the Comintern in the advanced capitalist countries would direct their main blow.
The Sixth Congress of the Comintern in 1928 proclaimed the end of capitalist stability and the beginning of the “third period.” The first period spanned from 1918 to 1923 (defeat of the German Revolution) and the second period – a time of relative stability of capitalism — lasted from 1923 to the outbreak of the 1928 Great Depression. The “third period” began by 1929 and was a time of revitalized large mass movements, brought on by economic collapse.
After the fascists gained substantial power in Germany and attacked the working class, including the trade unions and the upper bribed layer of the working class, social democracy split into a “left” and “right.” With fascism emerging as an instrument of the industrial sector of finance capital that sought direct colonies, new sources of raw material and new markets for its industrial production, the “right-wing” of social democracy merged with “National Socialism” (fascism.)
A “left-wing” democratic section of social democracy declared itself anti-fascist and conciliatory towards Sovietism in a fight to the death against German fascism. The emergence of an anti-fascist/anti-communist, but pro-Soviet bloc within social democracy made possible a temporary alliance in the form of a united front against fascism. When conditions of the class struggle changed and made unity with a section of social democracy possible, the Comintern discarded the term social-fascist.
When it had been used, labeling social democracy as social-fascism was historically accurate. Under conditions of building a united front against fascism, the slogan and designation of all of social democracy as social-fascism became obsolete. Thus, the label social-fascism was abandoned.
(See, Strategy and tactics.)
Social imperialism:
Coined during the era of the Third Communist International, social imperialism and social chauvinism were used interchangeably by V. I. Lenin to criticize individuals and parties, as being “socialist in words and imperialist in deeds.” During the First World War, Lenin denounced Kautsky, the head of the German Social Democratic Party at that time, as being a “social imperialist,” that is, one who is socialist and communist in ideology, but actually a supporter of one’s “own” bourgeoisie and their imperialist policy of war and colonial plunder.
‘Fabian imperialism’ and ‘social-imperialism,’ are one and the same thing: socialism in words, imperialism in deeds, the growth of opportunism into imperialism. This has now become, during the war of 1914-18 and since, a universal fact. . . . Opportunism, or reformism, inevitably had to grow into a phenomenon of worldwide importance, socialist-imperialism, or social-chauvinism, because imperialism brought to the fore a handful of very rich, advanced nations, engaged in plundering the whole world, and thereby enabled the bourgeoisie of those countries, out of their monopolist super profits (imperialism is monopoly capitalism), to bribe the upper strata of the working class.
(V.I. Lenin, The Tasks of the Third International, 1919.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jul/14.htm
Lenin pinpointed the economic basis of social imperialism as colonial plunder used to bribe and stabilize a layer of socialist leaders and convert them into a social prop of bourgeois production relations.
In 1968, “social imperialism” took on a different meaning and was applied to the Soviet Union by a politically dominant section of the Communist Party China (CPC). The CPC claimed that the bourgeois mode of commodity production had been restored in the USSR, during the 1950s and this restoration converted the Soviet state into an imperialist state. Hence, a “social imperialist country.”
Social imperialism is imperialism with a ‘socialist’ label. . . . Whether it is capital imperialism or social imperialism, they are identical in their basic economic characteristics. . . . State monopoly capitalism is the main economic basis of social imperialism.
(Fundamentals of Political Economy, (Shanghai) 1977, edited by G. Wang, pages 199-200.)
In socialist society, the state-operated economy based on socialist state ownership is a leading element in the national economy. Once the revisionist renegade clique usurps the leadership of the socialist economy, it is naturally transformed into a state monopoly capitalist economy. This is because the more productive forces the new bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie puts under state ownership representing its interests, the more it can control the whole society’s wealth in the name of the ‘state.’
(Fundamentals of Political Economy, (Shanghai) 1977, edited by G.
Wang, page 202.)
The core of this ‘new system’ is to use every means to encourage the enterprises to seek profit and to promote production by material incentives. It means expanding the autonomous power of the management of enterprises, energetically carrying out the practice of adjusting production according to market prices, and expanding the power of the leaders of enterprises in recruiting and discharging employees as well as in meting out rewards and punishments. These measures have changed the socialist enterprises, which are owned by the whole people, into capitalist ones and replaced the planned economy of socialism by the free competition of capitalism.
(How the Soviet Revisionists Carry out the All-Round Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR, 1968.) http://www.bannedthought.net/China/MaoEra/GreatDebate/HowSovietRevisionistsCarryOutAll-RoundRestorationOfCapitalism-1968.pdf
A section of the CPC used the term social imperialism to describe the ruling clique of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. The CPC used the epithet “Soviet revisionist social imperialist” in its ideological and political struggle with Soviet party leaders during the era of the Sino-Soviet split.
With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent overthrow of its socialist property relations, the old economic assessment that the Soviet Union had been a capitalist economy lost much of its credibility. The Soviet economy had not, in fact, conformed to the fundamental laws that define the bourgeois mode of commodity production and financial-industrial imperialism.
Social organization of labor:
The way in which human labor is organized to carry out production is the social organization of labor. The means of production, the primary energy source deployed in production, the division of labor, the property relations and the general form of the working class constitute the social organization of labor. The social organization of labor arose with the division of labor. The division of labor began as natural, based on biology and age and then became a social-technical division of labor with the spread of invention and applied science in production. Lenin uses the term “social organization of labor” to describe the system of class relations in his celebrated 1919 article A Great Beginning. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/28.htm
(See, Class.)
Social production, socialized production: (See, Production, social and Production, socialized.)
Social relations of production:
Social relations of production are the connections that individuals, groups and economic classes must enter, in order to produce their means of life. Participation in these connections is not voluntary but based on the circumstances each generation finds in existence. These circumstances have included the property relations (ownership and non-ownership of means of production), the division of labor in society and the ideological, political and cultural institutions, which correspond with a historically determined stage of development of the productive forces.
In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.
(K. Marx, Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm
M. Proudhon the economist understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.
The same men, who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations.
(K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847; Emphasis added.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm
(See, Productive relations.)
Social revolution:
At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.
Then begins an era of social revolution.
(K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Social revolution is the transition from an old mode of production to a new mode of production based on qualitatively new productive forces. The struggle for political power is the political aspects of the social revolution, while winning state power is generally an act of insurrection.
(See, Revolution, Social revolution (Marx.))
Social revolution (Marx):
Karl Marx described social revolution in these words.
(These breaks in paragraphing do not follow the original.)
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.
The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.
The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.
Then begins an era of social revolution.
The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.
No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.
Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.
In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society.
The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production—antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals’ social conditions of existence—but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.
(K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Socialism:
Proponents of different forms of socialism advocated for different combinations of public and private ownership of land, housing, public education, health care, primary transportation and socially necessary means of production.
During the early stages of industrialism, notions of socialism meant calls to end poverty and regulate private wealth. Socialism was an ideology that sought to do away with poverty and destitution by restricting or ending capitalist property relations while implementing a system of cooperatives and public ownership of means of production. The public ownership of means of production remains the essence of socialism.
In the past two centuries, various notions of socialism included feudal socialism, bourgeois socialism, utopian socialism, Christian (clerical) socialism, council communism, democratic socialism and petty bourgeois socialism. In Part III of the Communist Manifesto, these precursors of Marxist socialism are discussed. Public ownership, workers’ control of means of production (such as factories), cooperatives and many democratic-republican schemes were the essence of non-Marxist socialism.
Marxism replaced the utopian socialist vision and openly proclaimed the need for destruction of bourgeois property relations. Marx described the transition period between capitalism and communism as being socialism. The transitional system was to be primarily a system of production and distribution without capitalist property relations — a society without a mechanism that would allow means of production to pass into the hands of individuals and be converted into private property.
Socialism, Soviet: (See, Soviet socialism.)
Socialized production:
Socialized production occurs when means of production are configured in such a way that they must be worked by groups of individuals, in cooperation, based on a division of labor, to create the final product. In the curve of history, socialized production is a progressive development after handicraft and manufacture and systems of production based on individually operated means of production. It is a progressive development because it increases the productivity of labor.
(See Production (socialized).)
Socially necessary labor time:
Socially necessary labor time is the average time it takes to produce a commodity under the general prevailing conditions of the economy.
The labor time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time.
(K. Marx. Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
In saying that the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor worked up or crystallized in it, we mean the quantity of labor necessary for its production in a given state of society, under certain social average conditions of production, with a given social average intensity, and average skill of the labor employed.
(K. Marx, Value, Price and Profit, 1865.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch02.htm
The basis for the exchange of commodities of all kinds is the human labor, the social value, social labor, socially necessary labor time, required to produce them, rather than individual labor time. An individual could take a long time and knit a sweater so it had a lot of labor time in it. However, the socially necessary labor time to make a sweater, at a point in time, is the measure of its value and exchangeability for other commodities.
Society:
At a certain stage in developing productive forces, community becomes society. Society is constituted on the basis of productive forces and relations of production. Society appears with the emergence of the social division of labor, which makes creation of a surplus product possible and gives rise to classes, private property and the state.
Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.
(K. Marx, Grundrisse: Notebook I, 1845.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch05.htm#individuals
The foundation of all societies is the economy. The economy has two basic interdependent parts: production and distribution. The production process is always based on a certain stage of development of the productive forces using a specific social organization of labor, such as handicraft, manufacturing (simple machines), industrial (mechanized labor). Distribution is a consequence of property rights and what groups in society own the means of production.
Modern productive forces (computers and robotics) give society the ability to permanently maintain and expand the surplus products with decreasing human labor.
Society of abundance:
The distinguishing quality of the society of abundance is the high level of development of the productive forces. Robotics creates the society of abundance on the basis of productive forces powerful enough to kick the majority of humanity outside the production process, renders their labor unnecessary for production of products, and at the same time produces enough to sustain everyone.
Today machines and robots in the fields and factories already work the land and carry the load of the worker. The decisive struggle is on whose behalf the new technology will be used: capitalists and financiers or proletarians.
(See, Abundance, Electronic revolution, Scarcity.)
Soviet:
Literally, “council.” Soviets were a people’s assembly that emerged in the 1905 Russian revolution against the czar.
Soviet Revisionism: (See, Revisionism.)
Soviet revisionism refers to the revisionism of a group of Soviet Communist Party members, who united behind the doctrine of Nikita Khrushchev in the post Stalin years, The Khrushchev clique sought peace at all cost with US imperialism, and advanced a path of peaceful transition to socialism. Khrushchev’s efforts to explain peaceful co-existence from his view meant changing basic tenets of Marxism and making it acceptable to the bourgeoisie.
(See, Revisionism.)
Soviet Socialism:
Soviet socialism came into existence during the Henry Ford stage of the industrial revolution through implementation of the Soviets’ first five-year plan (1928-1932). Soviet industrial socialism was an economic system that operated outside the laws of capitalist commodity production and outside of capitalist private ownership of the means of production. Rather than a class of capitalists owning means of production, the state (dictatorship of the proletariat) owned the means of production.
The society which we have built cannot possibly be called ‘state socialism.’ Our Soviet society is socialist society, because the private ownership of the factories, works, the land, the banks and the transport system has been abolished and public ownership put in its place. The social organization which we have created may be called a Soviet socialist organization, not entirely completed, but fundamentally, a socialist organization of society.
The foundation of this society is public property: state, i.e., national, and also co-operative, collective farm property. Neither Italian fascism nor German National-’Socialism’ has anything in common with such a society. Primarily, this is because the private ownership of the factories and works, of the land, the banks, transport, etc., has remained intact, and, therefore, capitalism remains in full force in Germany and in Italy.
Yes, you are right, we have not yet built communist society. It is not so easy to build such a society. You are probably aware of the difference between socialist society and communist society. In socialist society, certain inequalities in property still exist. But in socialist society, there is no longer unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities. In socialist society everyone is obliged to work, although he does not, in return for his labor receive according to his requirements, but according to the quantity and quality of the work he has performed. That is why wages, and unequal, differentiated wages, still exist. Only when we have succeeded in creating a system under which, in return for their labor, people will receive from society, not according to the quantity and quality of the labor they perform, but according to their requirements, will it be possible to say that we have built communist society.
(Interview between J. Stalin and Roy Howard, March 1, 1936; emphasis added.) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/03/01.htm
Soviet industrial socialism was based on an industrial system of production. Soviet industrial socialism rendered inoperable the fundamental law of capitalist production, by doing away with bourgeois, capitalist, private ownership of the means of production. The Soviet state was a democratic republic, realized as the dictatorship of the proletariat, in alliance with the poorest peasants. Democracy meant destruction of the feudal system of hereditary privileges, abolition of slavery, serfdom, nobility, monarchy and destruction of the political category “subject.” The Soviet system of political liberty flowed from its organization as a garrison state.
The Soviet Union abolished capitalist private property relations and brought to an end capitalist commodity production, capitalist productive relations and gave the people of the earth their first experience in ruling without private property and without the profit motive dominating the life of society. The rule of bourgeois private property was dethroned by Soviet socialism, and for a while the fundamental laws of capitalist production were blocked.
Soviet Union (USSR) I:
The October 1917 socialist revolution established the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The state was reorganized as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in December 1922 and called the Soviet Union.
At the time of the 1917 Revolutions, Russia was a country of small peasant serf farms. The serf was attached to land owned by a lord, a master, and had to labor for him as a condition of living on the master’s land. This attachment to the land was enforced by a legal code which defined the serf as a “subject” rather than a citizen. Serfdom in Russia was a feudal system, headed by a Russian monarch, called the czar. Czarism was in political crisis, and feudalism faced economic dislocation brought on by social revolution — the industrial revolution. Russia was pregnant with revolution brought on by the steam engine, the factory system, electricity, the automobile and all the new means of production, which tore society from its mooring in the old social order and forced everyone to reorganize based on industrial machinery.
The industrial revolution created new classes, a new industrial social organization of labor and new system of wealth creation. The feudal society’s pattern (its laws keeping the serf in bondage, its inherited privileges, its system of social ranking and the feudal state) had to be overthrown in order for the new classes created by the industrial revolution to advance. A revolutionary situation developed in Russia, and it lead to the 1905 Revolution and its defeat and then revolution in February 1917 and the socialist revolution in October of the same year. A revolutionary situation occurs when the ruling class can no longer rule in the same old way, and the laboring class refuses to be ruled in the old way, and mass demonstrations and protests bring down the old political order.
The rule of the Czar was overthrown in February 1917, and the capitalist class took state power. Russia was suffering horrific defeats in World War I. The capitalist government refused to remove the country from war and feed the people. Lenin and the Bolsheviks rallied the people under the slogan, “Land, Bread and Peace” and promised to take the country out of the imperialist war and build a new Russia without landlords and capitalists. The Bolsheviks seized political power from the capitalists, established the first proletarian state, and fought a bitter war in which it defeated the 14 capitalist countries which invaded Russia. This fight for survival shaped the young Soviet republic as a garrison state.
The Bolsheviks seized power and understood that Russia could be industrialized under the rule of either capitalists or communists. The Bolsheviks industrialized Soviet Russia under proletarian supremacy, rather than under a capitalist supremacy. For the next ten years the Bolsheviks cultivated different forms of economy to get the country back onto its economic feet, feed its people and build the foundation of an industrial society without capitalist ownership of financial institutions, factories, infrastructure, schools, hospitals or raw materials.
The economic achievements and struggles of the Soviets.
Between 1921 and 1927, the NEP revived economic commerce in the Soviets, and it allowed the sale of produce and consumer products at a profit. This concession restored circulation and exchange between urban centers and the rural areas.
The first task of N.E.P. was the restoration of the economy. . . . The New Economic Policy allowed for capitalism within certain limits while retaining the key positions in the hands of the proletarian State.
The end of the war made it possible to replace the requisitioning of food surpluses by the food tax. The food tax, the scales of which were laid down in advance of the spring sowing, was smaller than the assessments under the requisitioning scheme, and left the peasants with a surplus of grain and other products for free sale on the market and for exchange for industrial goods.
The need for commodity circulation between town and country . . . necessitated an improvement in the monetary economy of the country. . . . Consumer rationing was replaced by free trade. The monetary reform was completed in 1924 and provided the country with a stable currency.
(Textbook of Political Economy, 1957.)
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
In 1928, a policy shift took place, that was away from NEP –- New Economic Policy. The Soviets began a five-year plan of industrialization without a stock market, privately owned banks, financial houses or capitalist ownership of factories, transport, stock of housing or any primary means of production. The plan succeeded and created cities without crises of financing, a system of matching labor with expanding production, a free education system, a health care system open to all with no deductibles, vast literacy campaigns and a militarized economy able to withstand probable attacks from the capitalist powers.
Daily life for the Soviet people was harsh, but optimistic, filled with gigantic leaps forward, setbacks and spectacular achievements unparalleled in human history. Life began slowly to improve, and the poorest citizen was better off than the poorest of the hundreds of millions of wage-slaves of the world imperialist order. The period between 1928 and the outbreak of World War II was a time of optimism and intense political struggle for the Soviets. Belief in the promise of a brighter future, punctuated by sharp political struggles to build the country up in ten years or get crushed by the capitalist powers, gave the Soviets a purpose. At great personal and collective cost, the Soviets transformed their country into an industrial powerhouse between 1928 and the outbreak of World War II.
The garrison state, feudal heritage, peasant economy and the need to militarize the country to ward off imperial aggression were the conditions for creation of a highly militarized one-party state with bureaucratic distortions. The Soviets faced unique problems and had to develop their system of political liberty based on the one-party system in a garrison state, with domestic systems of police controls.
Democracy as a political form of the state and the system of political liberty within the state are not identical in any country. Democracy, bourgeois republican or proletarian, abolishes the individual’s political status as a subject and/or slave and establishes the society of the individual as citizen. Political liberty defines the rights of citizens within a democracy. The Russian feudal empire had private property relations wherein human beings were classified as “subjects” rather than “citizens.” The feudal state was not democratic.
Democracy was enshrined in the Soviet Union at its birth. The Soviets abolished the political category called “the subject” and established “the citizen” as the universal meaning of democratic form of government. The Bolsheviks called the abolition of the categories of “subject” and “slave” the carrying out of the bourgeois democratic revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The Soviets attempted to overcome their feudal heritage by means of redistribution of the land, education and organization of a vast network of 45,000 organizations that embraced 40 million families with the freedom to discuss, legislate and solve problems of production and distribution. Decades of anti-Soviet propaganda have prevented the people of the US from envisioning an economy without capitalist production relations.
Soviet industrialization entailed enormous individual sacrifice, privation and hardship. Injustice existed in the Soviet Union, and some were unjustly entrapped in the gulag system.
To stage a purge of the party is very dangerous. The best people are the first purged. Many people who are honest and speak frankly are expelled while those who keep everything in the dark and are eager to curry favor with the party chiefs retain their positions.
. . . . Now you understand why so many mistakes were made. They deceived us, and innocent people were sometimes incriminated. Obviously one or two out of ten were wrongly sentenced, but the rest got their just desserts.
(Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics, 1991.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/molotov/1991/remembers-abs.htm
Unjust imprisonment is inexcusable, but the fact remains that imprisonment rates in the Soviet Union, during the height of the Soviet gulag, were far below the rate of imprisonment in the US today. What accounted for much of the unjust imprisonment in the Soviet Union was the nature of the one-party system. In a one-party system revolution and counter-revolution coexist together in the same party. Enemies of the revolution seeking power and privilege join the party and illegally arrest people, jail them and even execute the innocent to turn the people against the government. Such was the case in the Soviet Union.
Permanent war by the bourgeois states against Soviet Power and then defeat of the foreign invaders of Soviet soil shaped the political state as a militant garrison state, with enhanced internal security systems that monitored the party elite, managers, bureaucrats and an intelligentsia forced to serve the workers and peasants rather than the bourgeoisie. At an enormous cost, the Soviets squeezed decades of normal capitalist industrialization into ten years, which allowed them to arm themselves in time to defeat fascist Germany. The Soviets came out of World War II a major political and military power but suffered from major problems.
A staggering 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives in World War II, due primarily to fascist Germany. The Soviets sustained an enormous loss of the most educated and resolute Marxists. The Soviets faced a need to rebuild their country and the Soviet zone of Europe and educate a new generation in the science of Marxism and the culture of Bolshevism. The historic achievements of the workers and peasants who held state power in the Soviets prove that an industrial society without capitalist property relations was possible and historically inevitable.
Soviet Union (USSR) II:
By the late 1980s, Soviet society experienced a deep, wrenching process of change. The capitalist and socialist worlds fought to adjust their societies to the qualitatively new means of production based on the microchip. Soviet industrial relations and “red bureaucracy” had entered into antagonism with robotics. A new era of social revolution opened, and the struggle to reorganize society based on robotics lay ahead. Here world Marxism suffered a severe setback.tttt8tt88ttt89ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt999999888899 t International capital and its domestic agents carried out a political coup, dismantled the Soviet Union, and overthrew economic socialism.
The question now asked by a new generation of communist revolutionaries is this: “If socialism was superior to capitalism, why was Soviet socialism overthrown and replaced with capitalism?” The short answer is that the forces of reaction supporting capitalist methods and reliance upon world imperialism were stronger than the revolutionary forces fighting to hold the Soviet Union intact and transition to a new economy based on communist economic policy.
Several conditions describe the environment in which Soviet socialism was overthrown. World War II and its impact on Soviet life determined the course of Soviet development. The most resolute and class conscious revolutionaries and Marxists had been killed as they defended Soviet socialism and buried German-led European fascism. Over 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives in the war. The resolute Marxists, both party and non-party members, lead the counter offensive against fascism and won but sustained a crippling blow. The Nazi war machine destroyed much of the economy, which was rebuilt by a population that faced an acute labor shortage. The one-party state was flooded with individuals who sought personal advancement and lacked ideological fortitude and theoretical clarity of purpose.
The party bureaucracy was instrumental in the counterrevolutionaries coming to power through political coup and then overthrowing Soviet socialism. In a real way, the party and Soviet society had to rely upon the intelligentsia, the party bureaucracy, and the bureau system to transform the country into a gigantic military machine to prepare for the fight against the inevitable capitalist offensive. After World War II, the party bureaucracy which relied upon the statewide system of bureaus (called “departments” in the US) and the bureaucratic practices used to administer the needs of the country held the party and people hostage.
Nikita Khrushchev’s ascendency to power and his revision of Marxism must be seen in the environment of post-World War II Soviet life and the population’s craving for peace and stability. The pool of the most resolute and steeled communists, trained in the science of Marxism and organized as leaders of the 45,000 local organizations in the USSR, had been wiped out by the war. Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign blamed the ills of Soviet society on one man – Stalin and Stalinism. The Khrushchev clique sought to reform Soviet society based on bourgeois methods and polices of decentralization and “local control” that would be called “market socialism” in the 1980s. The Khrushchev clique’s revisionist attack on the Stalin polarity within the Marxist movement disoriented the revolutionary movement at a time it faced an aggressive US imperialism and the international upsurge of the post-war anti-colonial revolutions. World Marxism, whose ranks were overrun by the anti-fascist/anti-communist bourgeois democrats in the imperial centers, were unable to politically and ideologically aid the Soviet communists in isolating and overthrowing the Khrushchev clique.
The US Marxist movement and revolutionaries in the advanced capitalist countries were caught between anarcho-syndicalism and reformism and could not aid the new emerging Soviet “proletariat.” It was in the environment of World War II’s massive loss of life, which was a crippling blow to the Communist Party USSR Bolsheviks, that a fierce 40-year moral, political, ideological and philosophic battle unfolded as Soviet society began its leap to a new scientific and technological base. Supported by a section of the military, revisionists, careerists, and dissident intellectuals, Khrushchev’s clique outmaneuvered and ousted the last remaining core of the old Bolshevik group, then headed by Molotov.
A clique of party leaders sought to preserve the privileges of their party group without revolutionizing the base of Soviet society. These party leaders, breastfed on the milk of socialism, were traitors to their motherland. Revolutionizing the base of Soviet society would have meant the ideological fight for a new morality hostile to privilege, a willingness to utilize and hold the bureaucracy accountable, and a cutting-edge Marxism based on the ongoing revolution in technology.
The role of the individual is and was important in shaping the ideological form of the struggle. Khrushchev as an individual was important to what Marx called the ideological form in which things work themselves out. Khrushchev had a peasant mentality and ideology and was suspicious of technology. He also felt technology could deprive human beings of the dignity of laboring and the touch and feel of the soil. Khrushchev’s peasant mentality (the outlook of the small-scale commodity producer) became a foundation for anyone and everyone who resisted change and the transformation of Soviet society based on the technology of nuclear power and Sputnik.
Khrushchev would be ousted from power in 1964 and replaced by a collective leadership comprised of Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary, Alexei Kosygin as premier and Nikolai Podgorny as chairman of the Presidium, which lasted until Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent Soviet leader.
Brezhnev’s party policy was “preserve cadre,” which was a way of saying to preserve the status quo, with the system of privileges made possible and protected by the bureaucracy. Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, and his next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long. Yuri Andropov was 68 years old, and Konstantin Chernenko was 72 when they assumed power; both died in less than two years.
In 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selected the 54-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev, probably acting as a CIA agent, would lead the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The content of the period in which Soviet socialism was overthrown was the world transition from industrial mechanics to robotics. Robotics created crisis and antagonism in all forms of industrial economy, not simply the capitalist form but also the socialist form, as society was wrenched from its foundation in the industrial order.
The revisionists, counterrevolutionaries, opportunists, dissident intellectuals and reactionary forces were not a new bourgeoisie or new capitalist class. They represented a privileged stratum of Soviet society, lodged in the bureaucracy and attuned to the world bourgeoisie. During the last 30 years of Soviet power (1960-1990), a massive illegal economy evolved in the Soviet Union and produced consumer goods and the equipment for such production. The illegal economy was a source of income and goods and pitted a large section of the working people against Soviet legality. The Soviet communists lost the ball to the counterrevolution, and the counterrevolutionaries carried out a successful coup, overthrew Soviet power and restored bourgeois private property relations in the former Soviet Union.
Soviet socialism lasted for 70 years and left a rich legacy of monumental achievements, political blunders, policy errors and a road map of their struggle to organize an economy without bourgeois property relations. The Soviet experience is the greatest and most beneficial experiment in consciously organizing an economy and political system in the history of the world.
Soviet Revisionism:
The revision of the science and doctrine of Marxism, which developed on the basis of Khrushchev’s regime, was referred to as modern revisionism and Soviet revisionism.
(See, Revisionism.)
Speculative finance:
Speculative finance makes profits outside of value production. Speculative finance, referred to by some as speculative capital, grew out of finance capital and is a new form of wealth, based on a new non-banking, financial architecture. This new system is an interlocking and interactive infrastructure, which was not possible until the electronic revolution. Computers have made possible this new non-banking worldwide financial system and altered the traditional role and function of banks.
The new non-banking financial system is the means by which the quest for maximum profits is realized, and which birthed speculative finance. Speculative finance, in its purest form, is profitmaking detached from commodity production. It is expansion of the credit system, and through this expansion creation of the so-called “debt economy.”
(See, Bank, Imperialism, and Mega-corporation.)
(Henry C.K. Liu, The Global Economy in Transition.) http://henryckliu.com/page181.html
(Henry C.K. Liu, Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imperialism.)
http://henryckliu.com/page143.html
(Henry C.K. Liu, Dollar Hegemony.)
http://henryckliu.com/page2.html
(Rally, Comrades!, “The Rise of Speculative Capital and its Geopolitical Implications,” December 2008.)
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v18ed6art2.html
(Rally, Comrades!, “Globalization, Speculative Capital and US Hegemony,” August 2006.)
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v16ed5art2.html
Spontaneity:
The doctrine of spontaneity advocates that the objective, spontaneous element of upheaval, rather than communist-class consciousness, is sufficient for the foundation and framework of a revolutionary organization, and to establish a new society. Spontaneity is the worship of the spontaneous movement of the masses which by definition has limited goals to reform the system.
Lenin wrote that “the question of the relation between consciousness and spontaneity is of such enormous general interest, and for this reason the question must be dealt with in great detail.”
V. I. Lenin’s 1901publication What Is To Be Done?, Chapter II, The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the [communist] Social-Democrats, established the theoretical foundation distinguishing the doctrine of spontaneity from the science of society.
. . . . Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union struggles, not yet [communist] struggles. They marked the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers; but the workers, were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was not yet [communist] consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of the nineties, despite the enormous progress they represented as compared with the ‘revolts’, remained a purely spontaneous movement.
We have said that there could not have been [communist] consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals.
(V. I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done, 1901.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm
The definitive debate over communist class consciousness and spontaneity of the masses is a question of what kind of organization revolutionaries should build as the shortest path to revolutionary change.
The fundamental division between organizations arises from their different bases and their different goals. One type of organization arises from the mass movement. They are guided by theory that arises from practice. Their actual goal becomes the goal of the spontaneous movement, which can be nothing but reform.
The other organization arises from an intellectual grasp of the significance of the contradiction between society’s productive forces and its productive relations. This group is guided by philosophy — which is the study of the processes governing all thought, principles, and laws.
(“On History’s Shoulders,” Rally, Comrades!, May 2012.) http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/on-historys-shoulders/
Spontaneous consciousness is bourgeois ideology. Television and all forms of media are controlled by the ruling class and perpetuate capitalistic ideology. The people of the US are “brainwashed,” having been taught to believe they are free thinkers. Media shape all forms of social consciousness and opinions.
Spontaneous movement:
The spontaneous movement is called spontaneous because the masses are set into motion by changes in the productive forces, rather than by communist consciousness. Capitalist exploitation and oppression draw one layer of society after another into movements for reform. The experience of the spontaneous movement, as it focuses on narrow issues, gives rise to ideas for narrow solutions in the minds of participants in this movement, rather than broad ideas of revolution.
The struggle between capitalist and worker reformed the system as it passed through all its stages of development. At each stage, the spontaneous movement demanded a greater share of the social product and expanded political liberty, while the capitalists fought to realize a greater profit.
Computers and robotics are antagonistic to capitalism and push it into a mode of destruction. The demand for the necessaries of life is transformed from a demand to reform the system to a spontaneous movement for communist economy. It is the role of revolutionaries to give consciousness to this movement.
Stage:
A stage is the successive and connecting quantitative development of a quality. Stages occur as the specific form of development of a process. A process is the totality of stages of development of dialectical motion. Dialectical motion is the self-movement of contradiction in a thing.
Different stages are distinguished by increased polarity of the basic contradiction of the process. Increased polarity means the aspects of the contradiction become more of what they are. “Becoming more of what it is” defines quantitative development as progressive development. Progressive development means in part that things – processes – develop from the less complex to the more complex.
In developing capitalism, the capitalist became more capitalist and cast off earlier features as owner/worker, and the worker became more proletarian and cast off its agrarian legacy and serf form of servitude. A stage is an historically concrete form of development of all processes.
A mode of producing, as a system, must advance in stages that cannot be skipped. In contrast, a community or country can skip a stage of development of the productive forces already reached somewhere else by a portion of humanity. For example, when the Americas were colonized, the indigenous peoples were rapidly dragged from handicraft to a more advanced stage of production. But a mode of production must pass through its successive stages of development, as a condition for its leap to a new mode of production.
(See, Polarity, Polarization.)
Stalinism:
If one were to give a general definition of Stalinism, then one would say that it represents the nature of the motion of the proletariat, that it is the totality of the methods used by the dictatorship of the proletariat to build the foundations of Socialism in the conditions in existence in a country of small peasants [holdings]. Finding itself in fact on an economic terrain which is hostile to it, in conditions which daily breed capitalism in an ever-widening scope, the proletariat can only put its dictatorship into motion by utilizing any and every means at its disposal and by tremendous sacrifices. The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in Russia has had a particularly violent character, and has been accompanied by certain inevitable errors. There is no doubt but that these painful experiences will greatly aid and facilitate the tasks of the working class in other countries under similar conditions. (Program and Principles of the Revolutionary Soviet Communists – Bolsheviks; emphasis added.)
(Marxist Glossary Discussion, Facebook. See files section. Revolutionary Soviet Communist.) https://www.facebook.com/groups/322055931321074/
Stalinism is named after Joseph V. Stalin (1878-1953), who was general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to his death in 1953. Stalinism, according to every definition of it by diverging points of views, is a form of political rule exercised on behalf of a class in possession of state power. All states throughout history, without exception, embody a division of labor and productive forces as a definable stage of development and property relations.
Stalinism was a political-ideological form of the dictatorship of the proletariat based on an alliance with the poorest peasants. It was a political phenomenon of the one-party garrison state in a country of small peasant farms. Economically, Stalinism was the blueprint for industrializing the Soviet Union based on socialist property relations, rather than bourgeois private property, with its economic laws that flow from bourgeois private property relations.
Stalinism took shape during the general period of transition from agriculture to industry and belongs to the epoch of the industrial revolution. The Stalin stage of the industrial revolution spanned the period from 1928 until his 1953 death. During this era the world underwent destruction of the economic and political aspects of feudalism, the breakup of the European based direct (closed) colonial system, rise of the neo-colonial regimes, and transition from the transistor to the microchip revolution.
Stalinism’s political roots are in Leninism which defined dictatorship as the rule of a class unrestricted by law. Stalinism was systematic “red terror” against the class enemy and the suppression of petty bourgeois democracy. Stalinism included the demand for conformity to a newly created Soviet orthodoxy and Bolshevik culture.
Stalin’s personality dominated Soviet party life, the USSR and the international communist movement. The Stalinist state transformed the Soviet Union from an agricultural country symbolized by the hammer, sickle and wooden plow, into a modern industrial economy and global superpower with nuclear power. Thus, the Stalin period, the era in which he ruled and died, embraced the mechanization of agriculture and industrialization of the Soviet Union. Stalinism was subjective in the sense of having been Stalin’s specific approach to the objective development of industrialism. The Stalin period witnessed the massive growth of the Soviet form of bureaucracy.
Stalinism used the bureaucracy to fight the bureaucracy but could never completely prevail over the bureaucracy. Fundamental defeat and destruction of bureaucracy become possible only when society advances to robotics. Destruction of bureaucracy is bound up with destruction of the division of labor.
The Soviet Union industrialized under the banner of Stalinism and ceased being a country of peasants and became more urban. As industrialism came to an end, Stalinism, which arose on the basis of industrialism, entered into crisis. Stalinism as an historical artifact, was inextricably bound up with the rise and fall of industrialism, and as the USSR left that stage of development, Stalinism became obsolete along with all the political and ideological forms that arose based on the industrial revolution.
Stalinism corresponded with a form of the revolutionary movement based on: a) monopoly capitalism and redivision of the world by colonial powers, b) emergence of Soviet Power, c) national-colonial revolutions, and d) the reform struggle of the industrial workers in the advanced countries during the period of Fordism. This was the era of the Third Communist International and Leninism.
(See, Soviet Union (USSR) I, Soviet Union (USSR) II.)
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. As an organization of violence that protects private property, the state maintains and enforces the domination of the propertied classes over all others. The state protects all the relations and institutions that enforce the ruling class’ right to appropriate the surplus products and govern society in its class interest.
The state is . . . a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.
(V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1
The state is the primary institution by which class rule is maintained. Today there is a merger between the state and corporations, which results in the mega-corporate state. Many functions that were previously the sole province of the state, such as operating prisons and fielding armies, are now being privatized with these functions taken over by private corporations for profit.
(See, Mega-corporate state.)
State (withering away of the state):
The withering away of the state as an organization of violence in the hands of one class to suppress another class is one of the most exciting and intriguing theoretical propositions in Marxism.
Below is Frederick Engels’ presentation of the question of the withering away of the state.
The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production in the first instance into state property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the state, that is, of an organization of the particular class, which was pro tempore the exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it was this only in so far as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords; in our own time, the bourgeoisie.
When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not “abolished”. It dies out (withers away, ed.). This gives the measure of the value of the phrase “a free people’s state”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand.
Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realisation were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times. So long as the total social labor only yields a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labor engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of society — so long, of necessity, this society is divided into classes. Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labor, arises a class freed from directly productive labor, which looks after the general affairs of society: the direction of labor, state business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division of labor that lies at the basis of the division into classes. But this does not prevent this division into classes from being carried out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. It does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning its social leadership into an exploitation of the masses.
But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the existence of class distinction itself has become an obsolete anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually a hindrance to development. This point is now reached.
(F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch24.htm
In State and Revolution, Lenin discussed the withering away of the state.
. . . . Engels says that, in seizing state power, the proletariat thereby ‘abolishes the state as state’. . . . Engels speaks here of the proletariat revolution ‘abolishing’ the bourgeois state, while the words about the state withering away refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist revolution. According to Engels, the bourgeois state does not ‘wither away’, but is ‘abolished’ by the proletariat in the course of the revolution. What withers away after this revolution is the proletarian state or semi-state.
(V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution, 1919; ital. added.)
http://marxist.net/lenin/staterev/index.html
The withering away of the state is the process of the state losing its function as a product of class antagonism. The state as state dies out, withers away, as the proletariat in power abolishes private property and economic classes.
Strata:
They are groups (or “layers”) of people who have certain common social (as opposed to sexual, national, color, and ethnic) characteristics, which set them apart from other groups, but who do not form a separate class (in the Leninist sense). For example, the trade union bureaucracy in the US is a stratum, the upper layer, of the working class. But not all strata are a part of one particular class. Perhaps the best example of one which is not is the intelligentsia, the upper section of the ‘brain workers’ in a society; the doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists, artists, etc. They do not form a class . . . Instead they are members of different classes who may have different relationships to the means of production, but share common characteristics — education, technical skill, etc.
(Jonathan Aurthur, Socialism in the Soviet Union, 1977, page 19.)
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-2/aurthur-su.pdf
Strategy and tactics:
Strategy.
The Marxists who speak authoritatively on strategy and tactics are those who have successfully lead armies in war as well as political parties. Mao is one of these.
The task of the science of strategy is to study those laws for directing a war that govern a war situation as a whole. The task of the science of campaigns and the science of tactics is to study those laws for directing a war that govern a partial situation.
(Mao Tse-tung. Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, 1936.)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_12.htm
Stalin also defines strategy.
The most important function of strategy is to determine the main direction which ought to be taken by the working-class movement, and along which the proletariat can most advantageously deliver the main blow at its enemy in order to achieve the aims formulated in the programme. A strategic plan is a plan of the organisation of the decisive blow in the direction in which the blow is most likely to achieve the maximum results.
(J. V. Stalin, Concerning the Question of the Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists, 1923.) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1923/03/14.htm
Strategy is the determination of the direction of the main blow of the proletariat at a given stage of the revolution, the elaboration of a corresponding plan for the disposition of the revolutionary forces (main and secondary reserves), and the fight to carry out this plan throughout the given stage of the revolution. . . .
. . . . Strategy deals with the main forces of the revolution and their reserves. It changes with the passing of the revolution from one stage to another, but remains basically unchanged throughout a given stage.
(J. V. Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, 1924.)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FL24.html#c7
Tactics.
. . . . Tactics are the determination of the line of conduct of the proletariat in the comparatively short period of the flow or ebb of the movement, of the rise or decline of the revolution, the fight to carry out this line by means of replacing old forms of struggle and organization by new ones, old slogans by new ones, by combining these forms, etc. While the object of strategy is to win the war against tsarism, let us say, or against the bourgeoisie, to carry through the struggle against tsarism or against the bourgeoisie to its end, tactics pursue less important objects, for their aim is not the winning of the war as a whole, but the winning of some particular engagements or some particular battles, the carrying through successfully of some particular campaigns or actions corresponding to the concrete circumstances in the given period of rise or decline of the revolution. Tactics are a part of strategy, subordinate to it and serving it.
Tactics change according to flow and ebb. While the strategic plan remained unchanged during the first stage of the revolution (1903 to February 1917), tactics changed several times during that period. . . . Tactics deal with the forms of struggle and the forms of organization of the proletariat, with their changes and combinations. During a given stage of the revolution tactics may change several times, depending on the flow or ebb, the rise or decline of the revolution.
(J. V. Stalin, The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists, 1924.)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/12.htm
Structure:
Structure is the system and organization of interrelated parts operating together as a whole.
The concept of structure. The aim of scientific cognition is to discover law-governed relations between the elements forming a given system. In the process of this research we identify the structures peculiar to that system. When studying the content of an object, we enumerate its elements such as, for example, the parts of a certain organism. But we do not stop at that, we try to understand how these parts are coordinated and what is made up as a result, thus arriving at the structure of the object. Structure is the type of connection between the elements of a whole. It has its own internal dialectic. Wholeness must be composed in a certain way, its parts are always related to the whole. It is not simply a whole but a whole with internal divisions. Structure is a composite whole, or an internally organized content.
But structure is not enough to make a system. A system consists of something more than structure: it is a structure with certain properties. When a structure is understood from the standpoint of its properties, it is understood as a system. We speak of the ‘solar system’ and not the solar structure. Structure is an extremely abstract and formal concept.
Structure implies not only the position of its elements in space but also their movement in time, their sequence and rhythm, the law of mutation of a process. So structure is actually the law or set of laws that determine a system’s composition and functioning, its properties and stability.
(A. Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism, 1983.)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s07.html
Subject and Object:
Subject is the conscious thinking mind; object is the thing the mind perceives and thinks about.
In philosophy, especially epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, the subject means a being endowed with the consciousness and will, acting and acquiring knowledge in accordance with his own aims. To the subject is opposed the ‘object,’ an external thing, towards which the consciousness and activity of the subject may be directed. Idealistic philosophy says, ‘There is no object without a subject,’ that is, the external world has no existence outside and independent of consciousness.
Dialectical materialism, on the contrary, holds that the object exists independent of the subject, that without material existence there is not and cannot be any consciousness. At the same time dialectical materialism points out that the subject, the human individual, does not simply mirror passively the objective world, but acts on it and changes it, while also changing itself.
(H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, Theory of Reflection, 1949.)
Dialectics is formed by the unity of its two aspects, subjective and objective. As the theory of the development of thought, cognition, of the struggle of ideas in science, art, philosophy, in spiritual and intellectual life in general, dialectics is subjective: it unfolds in the subject’s mind as a reflection of the connections of objective being independent of man and of mankind, that is, of objective dialectics. Such is the materialist principle of the interpretation of the relationship between objective and subjective dialectics considered in their unity.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
(See, Objective and Subjective.)
Subjectivism:
[A] world view that ignores the objective approach to reality and denies the existence of objective laws of nature and society. Subjectivism is one of the main epistemological sources of idealism. In essence, it grants primacy to the role played by the subject in various spheres of activity and in the cognitive process above all. The concomitant abstraction of thought, which does not correspond to the nature of objects, leads ultimately to a divorce from reality, subjective blindness, agnosticism, and relativism.
. . . . According to Marxist philosophy, which rejects subjectivism, the subject’s active role in practical life and in the cognitive process presupposes the existence of a dialectical relationship between subject and object as well as the existence of an objective reality that has its own laws and is independent of consciousness. Various distortions of Marxism-Leninism have their foundations in subjectivism. Right-wing revisionism, proceeding from a subjectivist understanding of practice, eclectically attempts to combine the principles of Marxist philosophy with subjectivist philosophical conceptions, such as existentialism and pragmatism. The left-wing revision of Marxism-Leninism is an attempt to replace its creative theory with a system of subjectively interpreted dogmas that serve as a justification for voluntarism.
In the political sphere, subjectivism is reflected in policy decisions based on arbitrary, unscientific principles, a contemptuous attitude toward the laws of society, and a belief in the omnipotence of administrative decisions. Genuinely scientific policymaking combines a strictly objective approach to reality with recognition of activism and initiative displayed by the masses, by social classes, and by individuals. This approach is a guarantee against subjectivism in any form.
(Subjectivism.)
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/subjectivism
Sublated, sublation:
Sublation is part of the process of negation and refers to development and change where something of the old is preserved in the new. To sublate refers to a specific aspect of the old quality of a thing is carried over into the new development. The new development with its carried over aspect, is the “sublated form.” Every sublation involves negation because the sublated form is an expression of displacement – negation. Sublation signifies the discarding of something old while at the same time carrying forth something of the old into the new. The thing that is preserved of the old quality is called “preservation of the positive.”
Engels explains negation and sublation in such a way as to make clear sublation is the end result of a stage of development. In this sense, sublation is to inherit all that is positive from a previous stage of development. “All that is positive” is that which survived and continued to develop in a new environment, new form and under new circumstances.
Negation is at the same time assertion and retention: while destroying that which exists, it retains the positive in sublated form. This retention, the unity of negation and continuity in development, is an important feature of the dialectics of negation as a universal principle of all being.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
The history of private property provides examples of negation and sublation. The appropriation of unpaid labor is the foundation of every system based on private property. The form of exploitation of labor, which corresponded with each distinct mode of production was repeatedly negated based on changes in the means of production and development of the division of labor. The private property relation remained, and appropriation of unpaid labor remained, but appropriation and division of labor assumed new forms. Slavery and domination of slave labor were negated by feudalism. Appropriation of the surplus labor of the slave by the old slave master was sublated by the relations of the feudal lord and serf. The system of feudalism was later negated by capitalism. The appropriation of the surplus labor of the serf by the feudal lord was sublated by the capitalist class. The feudal lord and serf were replaced by the capitalist and wage laborer.
(See, Negation of negation.)
Sublate, sublation:
Sublation is part of the process of negation and refers to development and change where something of the old is preserved in the new. To sublate refers to a change in which a specific aspect of the old quality of a thing is carried over into the new, which is the “sublated form.” Every sublation involves negation because the sublated form is an expression of displacement — negation. Sublation signifies the discarding of something old while at the same time carrying forth something of the old into the new. The process in which something of the old quality is preserved. This is called “preservation of the positive.”
Engels explains negation and sublation in such a way as to make clear that sublation is the end result of a stage of development. In this sense, sublation is inheriting all that is positive from a previous stage of development. “All that is positive” is that which survived and continued to develop in a new environment, new form and under new circumstances.
Negation is at the same time assertion and retention: while destroying that which exists, it retains the positive in sublated form. This retention, the unity of negation and continuity in development, is an important feature of the dialectics of negation as a universal principle of all being.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
The history of private property provides examples of negation and sublation. The appropriation of unpaid labor is the foundation of every system based on private property. The form of exploitation of labor, which corresponded with each distinct mode of production was repeatedly negated based on changes in the means of production and development of the division of labor. The private property relation remained, and appropriation of unpaid labor remained, but appropriation and division of labor assumed new forms. Slavery and domination of slave labor, was negated by feudalism and appropriation of the surplus labor of the slave by the old slave master was sublated by the feudal lord and serf relation. The system of feudalism was later negated by capitalism. The appropriation of the surplus labor of the serf by the feudal lord was sublated by the capitalist class. The feudal lord and serf were replaced by the capitalist and wage laborer.
(See, Negation of negation.)
Superstructure:
Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought, and views of life. The entire class creates and forms them out of its material foundations and out of the corresponding social relations. The single individual, who derives them through tradition and upbringing, may imagine that they form the real motives and the starting point of his activity.
(Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch03.htm
(See, Base and superstructure.)
Surplus:
Surplus is an amount over and above a certain threshold. In Marxist political economy, the surplus product, surplus labor and surplus value are related terms. They describe how the laboring classes contribute a part of their lifetime of labor (mental and physical energy) to the enrichment of the ruling class. Robotics destroys the need for all systems of production based on appropriation of the surplus product (unpaid labor) of the laboring masses. Robotics makes it possible to end class exploitation.
(See, Surplus product, Surplus value.)
Surplus labor:
Surplus labor is the labor time performed by the working population over and above necessary labor time. Necessary labor is the amount of labor time needed to produce the means of livelihood of the worker and create the next generation of laborers. Surplus labor is unpaid labor time under capitalism and uncompensated labor under slavery and feudalism. Unpaid labor appears as the surplus product under capitalism, and this surplus product is the source of surplus value.
Surplus labor, surplus product and surplus value are related terms. They describe how the laboring classes contribute a part of their lifetime of labor (mental and physical energy) to the maintenance of the non-producing sections of society and enrichment of the ruling class.
Once there exists a society in which some people live without working (without participating directly in the production of use values), it is clear that the surplus labor of the workers is the condition of existence of the whole superstructure of the society. They [the non-workers] receive two things from this surplus labor. Firstly: the material conditions of life, because they share in, and subsist on and from, the product which the workers provide over and above the product required for the reproduction of their own labor capacity. Secondly: The free time they have at their disposal, whether for idleness or for the performance of activities which are not directly productive (as e.g. war, affairs of state) or for the development of human abilities and social potentialities (art, etc., science) which have no directly practical purpose, has as its prerequisite the surplus labor of the mass of workers, i.e. the fact that they have to spend more time in material production than is required for the production of their own material life. The free time of the non-working parts of society is based on the surplus labor or overwork, the surplus labor time, of the working part. The free development of the former is based on the fact that the workers have to employ the whole of their time, . . . purely in the production of particular use values; the development of the human capacities on one side is based on the restriction of development on the other side. The whole of civilization and social development so far has been founded on this antagonism.
On the one hand, therefore, the free time of one section corresponds to the surplus labor time, the time in thrall to labor, of the other section — the time of its existence and functioning as mere labor capacity. On the other hand: The surplus labor is realized not only in a surplus of value but in a surplus product — an excess of production over and above the quantity the working class requires and consumes for its own subsistence.
. . . . Just as plants live from the earth, and animals live from the plants or plant-eating animals, so does the part of society which possesses free time, disposable time not absorbed in the direct production of subsistence, live from the surplus labor of the workers. Wealth is therefore disposable time.
(K. Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63.) https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch25.htm
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch25.htm
Robotic automated systems of production replace systems based on human labor and begin to destroy the categories of paid and unpaid labor, and make it possible to stop sublation of one form of appropriation of the surplus product replace human labor based systems and destroy the categories of paid and unpaid labor, and make it possible to bring sublation of appropriation of the surplus product to an end.
(See, Necessary labor, Robotics.)
Surplus population (relative surplus population):
The “surplus” population arose with the development of capitalism and is the underemployed and unemployed masses whose labor is not needed for commodity production by the capitalists. In the early stage of capitalist development, the surplus population consisted of dispossessed people driven off the land and unable to find employment in the city. As labor-enhancing industrial machinery increased productivity and displaced workers, they too became part of the surplus population.
Marx describes the surplus population:
The relative surplus population exists in every possible form. Every laborer belongs to it during the time when he is only partially employed or wholly unemployed. Not taking into account the great periodically recurring forms that the changing phases of the industrial cycle impress on it, now an acute form during the crisis, then again a chronic form during dull times — it has always three forms, the floating, the latent, and the stagnant.
In the centers of modern industry — factories, manufactures, ironworks, mines, &c. — the laborers are sometimes repelled, sometimes attracted again in greater masses, the number of those employed increasing on the whole, although in a constantly decreasing proportion to the scale of production. Here the surplus population exists in the floating form.
. . . . The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labor, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital develop also the labor-power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labor army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labor. The more extensive, finally, the Lazarus layers of the working class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S4
Surplus product:
The surplus product is the portion of the social product over and above what is socially necessary to sustain the laborers as a class and to produce a new generation of the working class. The time during which the surplus product is created is surplus labor time, and the labor expended is called surplus labor. Necessary products are the amount of products needed for the survival and reproduction of the laborers as a class.
The emergence, development and reproduction of the surplus product brought about an epochal change in human development. The maintenance and reproduction of surplus products are the foundation for societal development.
The surplus products sustain the non-producing section of society. The control and ownership of the means to create the surplus products and outright ownership of the surplus product were the foundation for the emergence of private property relations, the state and classes.
At every stage in the development of private property relations, the ruling class has appropriated the surplus product as its property. The surplus product has formed the foundation of the wealth of every ruling class in history.
The surplus product assumes a specific form in each of the socioeconomic formations. The conditions of its production and distribution are governed by the property relations in the means of production in a particular society. In primitive society, because of the extremely low labor productivity, the creation of a surplus product was accidental. A surplus product was first produced on a regular basis at a definite stage in the development of the productive forces, when it became possible to produce more material goods than were needed by the worker and his family. The appearance of the surplus product served as the material basis for the differentiation of producers, the distinction between mental and manual labor, and the exploitation of man-by-man. In all exploitative socioeconomic formations, the surplus product is appropriated without compensation by the ruling classes. It serves as the source of their wealth and the basis of their parasitic way of life. The creation and extraction of the surplus product in slaveholding and feudal societies were based on extra economic constraint.
Under capitalism, the surplus product is the material embodiment of surplus value, the production and appropriation of which is the goal and motive force of the capitalists. The surplus product reflects the antagonism between the class interests of the bourgeoisie and proletariat. . . . As capitalism develops, the surplus product represents a greater share of the social product as a whole. This is evidence of the increased exploitation of wage labor.
(The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979.)
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Surplus+product
Robotics replaces human labor in production and destroys the need and impulse to maintain society based on exploitation of labor and appropriation of the surplus product.
(See, Surplus value.)
Surplus value:
In the process of capitalist production, the laborers create a surplus of value that is more than the value paid to them as wages. The difference between the value paid to the workers as wages and the greater value the workers create is the source of surplus value. Surplus value is the name for the value that comes from the surplus products, created by the unpaid labor of the workers, and appropriated by the capitalists as profit.
Owners of the means of production appropriate the surplus products. When these products are sold and their value is returned to the capitalist, surplus value is realized. Human labor (not machines or robots) is the source of surplus value.
The working day can be divided into two parts: paid labor time (necessary labor) and unpaid labor time (surplus labor) or, what is the same, necessary products and surplus products. The paid labor time of the workday creates an amount of products, which when sold pay the workers’ wages. The unpaid labor time pays for the building, energy cost, raw materials, and what is left is profits. The unpaid labor creates surplus products. They are called surplus products because they are products over and above what is paid to the workers as wages. When these products are sold and their value is returned to the capitalist, surplus value is realized. Human labor (not machines) is the source of surplus value.
Capitalist exploitation is defined as the power of capitalists to appropriate the surplus product and realize an expanded value (surplus value) created by the working class.
(See, Exploitation, Necessary labor, Necessary product, Surplus labor, Surplus product.)
Syndicalism:
Syndicalism is the ideology of the labor syndicate, which was a forerunner of the trade union, whose group identity was a craft rather than class. The early labor syndicate sought to protect its members from competition from other workers by creating a closed, restricted-membership organization to fight for higher compensation and better conditions for its members. Syndicalism emerged during the period of the transition from agriculture (feudalism) to industry (capitalism) and united labor based on group identity rather than class-property interest.
As the industrial revolution developed, syndicalism was built into the architecture of the industrial trade union movement. By the early 1900s, syndicalism merged with anarchism to become anarcho-syndicalism. The radical left wing of syndicalism (the anarcho-syndicalists) advocated for “revolutionary unions” and workers’ councils as the primary organization to overthrow capitalist private property and reorganize the economy.
The American syndical vision was group identity, first as craft, then as industry-wide trade unions, rather than class struggle. Owing to the role of the color line in American history, craft union and then industrial trade union group identity initially excluded black people. It did not matter if the black worker had a skill/craft or was in a particular industry, they were still excluded.
During the last stage of the industrial system, the industrial trade unions dominated the labor movement and defined trade unions’ interest as labor’s interest. The excluded groups fought out their struggles against marginalization and for entrance into the system based on their group identity, trying to get into the system. Today these groups and their politics are called identity politics that encourage women to fight men, blacks to fight whites, Chicanos to fight non-Chicanos, etc.
(See, Anarcho-syndicalism, Identity politics.)
System:
A system is a combination of related parts organized into a complex whole.
The system and its elements. A system is an internally organized whole where elements are so intimately connected that they operate as one in relation to external conditions and other systems. An element may be defined as the minimal unit performing a definite function in the whole. Systems may be either simple or complex. A complex system is one whose elements may also be regarded as systems or subsystems.
All things, properties and relations that strike us as something independent are essentially parts of some system, which in its turn is part of an even bigger system, and so on ad infinitum. For example, the whole of world civilization is no more than a large and extremely complex self-developing system, which comprises other systems of varying degrees of complexity.
Every system is something whole. So anything that corresponds to the demands of unity and stability—an atom, a molecule, a crystal, the solar system, the organism, society, a work of art, a theory—may be regarded as a system. Every system forms a whole, but not every whole is a system.
(A Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism, 1983.)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s07.html
Tendency of the rate of profit to fall: (See, Falling rate of profit.)
Terrorism:
Terrorism by individuals and groups involves political assassinations and is intended to inspire the masses likewise to strike out against their oppressors, coerce centers of authority and topple an existing government. The terrorist individuals view themselves as an “historical force” and a “great person in history,” to be followed and emulated. Marxists reject terrorism.
Individual terrorism is a social phenomenon bound up with the passionate indignation of the intellectual and the petty capitalist. State terrorism is bound up with dying classes who lash out at a changing society to preserve antiquated private property relations.
The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the urgent and imperatively necessary work of organization and agitation, destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the revolutionary classes of the population, and spreading both among the revolutionaries themselves and the population in general utterly distorted ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy.
(Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., July 17 (30)-August 10 (23), 1903.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/2ndcong/5.htm
Terrorism deprives the innocent of life, disorganizes the proletariat and deflects attention away from overthrowing private property relations and raising the proletariat to class consciousness. Revolutionaries are concerned with change beneficial to the masses and educating the masses to become self-aware of the cause of emancipation from private property.
All states on earth are terrorist organizations to a large degree because they use organized violence and terror (state power) to maintain the authority of their ruling classes. All the bourgeois states systematically arm themselves to conduct war over market shares, to terrorize the proletarian masses and to maintain the profitability of their military-robotic complex. As speculative finance creates a worldwide shadow transnational state of their own, state terrorism is becoming internationalized and privatized.
Terrorism rejects the Marxist theory of class antagonism and the role of the individual in history. Terrorism bows to ignorance and spontaneous impulses. Terrorism asserts that the masses can reorganize society by spontaneous mass acts combined with heroic deeds and selected execution of individuals. The modern advocates of terrorism are more often than not, police agents and agents provocateur.
Theory:
Theory is the body of fundamental principles, rules, ideas, and techniques that apply to a particular subject. Marxist theory is the science of society and describes the general system of the laws of change from one mode of production to another, the law system of social revolution. This general law system is summed up in Marx’s Preface to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
(See, Social revolution.)
Third International: (See, International.)
Trade union(ism):
With development of capitalism, the spontaneous movement of small-scale producers and then wage laborers formed syndicates, trade union organizations, to shield their members from lower prices for their products and competition for work and lower wages. Early syndicates (trade unions) walled off their members from competition by establishing contracts with employers to hire from the unions’ ranks. The syndicates also fought for better conditions for their members and later, for a shorter workday. The unions’ calling card was, “We exist to protect our own.”
“To protect our own” is the ideology of the identity movement. The trade unions — syndicates – began as an identity movement and remained so during the entire epoch of bourgeois production.
When machinery was applied to industry, and mill and factory took the place of the country blacksmith shop; when the workers were divorced from their tools and recruited in the mills; when they were obliged to compete against each other for employment; when they found themselves in the labor market with but a low bid or none at all upon their labor-power; when they began to realize that as tool-less workingmen they were at the mercy of the tool-owning masters, the necessity for union among them took root, and as industry developed, the trade union movement followed in its wake and became a factor in the struggle of the workers against the aggressions of their employers.
(Eugene V. Debs, Unionism and Socialism, 1907.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1907/unionsandsocial.htm
The role of trade unions was to mediate relations between owners and workers, without changing the property relations. Under capitalism this limited trade unions to the struggle for reform of the system. The vision of unions as revolutionary organizations proved to be romantic thinking.
Trotskyism:
Trotskyism was born as a petty bourgeois trend in the Russian revolutionary movement, in contradistinction to Bolshevism. Rather than a doctrine, as is the case with Leninism and Marxism, Trotskyism was a combination of Marxist precepts, Russian revolutionary ideology and idealism of the first two decades of the 1900s, individual heroism, and individual insights into the revolutionary process. Trotskyism was a mishmash of ideology, political positions and positions taken in the inner party struggle. After the 1924 death of V. I. Lenin, Trotskyism emerged as a political faction anchored by a theory of “permanent revolution.”
The heart of Trotskyism, the theory of permanent revolution, is the notion of the impossibility of building socialism in one country — the Soviet Union. Trotsky believed that it was impossible to build a socialist industrial economy in only one country, due to the integration of the world economy and the international division of labor. Building industrial socialism in the Soviet Union disproved this theory.
Trotsky was an opponent of the Bolshevik party from 1903 until 1917, and his various polemics against the Bolsheviks never assumed the dimensions of a coherent theory or particular doctrine.
Where Leon Trotsky stood on political issues between 1903 and before he abandoned his old alliances and affiliation and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917 is a matter of public record, available on-line and by way of direct statements by Lenin. Here is an example.
Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism, he unites Potresov and Maximov, who detest the ‘Lenin-Plekhanov’ bloc, as they like to call it. Trotsky unites all to whom ideological decay is dear, all who are not concerned with the defence of Marxism; all philistines who do not understand the reasons for the struggle and who do not wish to learn, think, and discover the ideological roots of the divergence of views. At this time of confusion, disintegration, and wavering it is easy for Trotsky to become the ‘hero of the hour’ and gather all the shabby elements around himself.
(V. I. Lenin, Letter to the Russian Collegium of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., 1910.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1910/dec/15.htm
Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion, and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. And these gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the Party is concerned.
(V. I. Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1914.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/ch09.htm
The point is that Lenin speaks of Trotsky’s political positions rather than a coherent theory or doctrine called Trotskyism.
Trotskyism was defined very differently by adherents of this ideology and followers of Leon Trotsky. James P. Cannon, a leading American Trotskyite and follower of Trotsky before and after his expulsion from the Soviet Union, pointed out in The History of American Trotskyism that:
Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival, of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International.
(James P. Cannon, Fourth International, The First Days of American Communism, February 1944.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1944/ht01.htm
There is no evidence in Trotsky’s voluminous writings to support the proposition that Trotskyism revived any aspect of the science of Marxism, its theory of political economy or its philosophy of dialectical materialism. All sorts of myths have been propagated about Leon Trotsky and his historic personality, in a way that is contrasted with Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Nevertheless, Leon Trotsky was indeed an important revolutionary and remains a unique historical character.
Trotsky initially supported the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, and eventually became a leader within the Communist Party. He was, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov, one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. During the early days of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the Soviet Union, he served first as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army, with the title of People’s Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs. He was a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918–1923).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky
During the critical year of 1917, Trotsky temporarily abandoned his differences with the Bolshevik Party and joined the Bolshevik group two months before it came to power in October 1917. Trotsky was expelled ten years later from the Central Committee in October 1927 and from the Bolshevik Party in November of the same year. He was deported from the Soviet Union in 1929 and assassinated in 1940.
Leon Trotsky became perhaps the greatest political renegade and most famous individual enemy of the Soviet state of the past century. Within the world communist movement, Trotskyism became a label of insult, implying intrigue, pettiness, a tendency to organizational factionalism and ability to unite with anyone considered the “enemy of your enemy.” Trotskyism was condemned by the Comintern as counter revolution in disguise based on its advocacy of assassination of Soviet leaders and attacks against Marxists and revolutionary organizations.
According to Soviet party leader J. V. Stalin, Trotskyism changed from a petty bourgeois ideological trend within the Russian revolution to something resembling a conspiratorial organization, which intersected with the intelligence agencies of imperialism based on advocating assassination of Soviet leaders and overthrow of the Soviet government and state.
(See, M. J. Olgin, Trotskyism Counter Revolution in Disguise, 1935.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/04.htm
(See, Soviet Union II.)
Truth:
. . . . [T]ruth must be defined as an adequate reflection of an object by the knowing subject, which reproduces reality such as it is by itself, outside and independent of consciousness. It is the objective content of sensuous, empirical experience as well as of the concepts, judgments, theories, and finally of the entire integral picture of the world in the dynamics of its development. The fact that the truth is an adequate reflection of reality in the dynamics of its development lends it special value connected with the prognostic dimension. True knowledge enables people to organize their practical activities in a rational manner in the present, and to foresee the future. If cognition had not been from its very inception a more or less true reflection of reality, man would not have been able to transform the surrounding world or even adapt himself to it. The very fact of the existence of man, the history of science and practice confirm the justice of this proposition.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990; ital. in orig.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Truth is the true reflection of reality in the consciousness, the reflection of reality as it exists for itself, independently of the will and consciousness of people.
Closely connected with truth and error is the concept of faith, which ordinary consciousness often associates with the meaning it has been given in religion. In the broad philosophical sense faith should be understood as an individual’s profound conviction of the correctness of their actions, thoughts or ideals. And this conviction may have a generic or a derivative character. As something generic, faith may be just blind everyday superstition or it may simply be a confidence in science, scientists and so on. As something derivative, faith is scientifically grounded, authentic knowledge and in this sense it is based on truth. Faith may be true, but this principle is not reversible.
The concept of truth is linked with the moral concepts of honesty and sincerity. Truth is the aim of science and honesty is the ideal of moral motivation. Fruitful studies in science and philosophy are impossible where fear of the consequences of thinking is stronger than the love of truth. Truth is authenticated knowledge and knowledge is strength, the greatest strength of all. It cannot be destroyed by prisons, penal servitude, the gallows, the guillotine, or the stake. The burning bush of truth will never burn out.
(A. Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism, 1983.)
http://marxists.catbull.com/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch04-s03.html
Truth (Absolute Truth):
Stated with complete clarity and authenticity, absolute truths do not encounter any further counter-arguments. In other words, absolute truth is identity of concept and object in thought — in the sense of complete coverage, of coincidence of essence and of all the forms of its manifestation. Of this nature are the propositions of science like, ‘Nothing in the universe is created out of nothing, and nothing disappears without a trace,’ ‘The earth revolves round the sun,’ and so on. Absolute truth is a piece of knowledge that is not refuted by the subsequent development of science but enriched and constantly reaffirmed by life.
Absolute truth in science is taken to mean exhaustive, extreme knowledge of an object, attainment, as it were, of the boundaries beyond which nothing can be cognized any more. The development of science can be presented as a series of consecutive approximations to absolute truth, each of which is more precise than the previous ones.
The term ‘absolute’ is also applied to any relative truth: inasmuch as it is objective, it contains something absolute as one of its elements. Any truth may therefore be said to be absolute-relative. The share of absolute knowledge is constantly growing in the sum total of mankind’s knowledge. The development of the truth is accumulation of the elements of the absolute. Each subsequent scientific theory is a more complete and deeper knowledge compared with the previous one. But new scientific truths by no means discard their predecessors-they rather complement the latter, make them more concrete and include them as elements of deeper and more profound truths. An earlier theory is interpreted as a particular case of the new one (as Newton’s classical mechanics was interpreted in relation to Einstein’s theory of relativity).
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Truth (historical, relative):
Truth is historical. In this sense it is a child of the epoch. The concept of finite or immutable truth is no more than a ghost. Any object of knowledge is inexhaustible, it is constantly changing, it has a great variety of properties and is connected with countless threads of relationships with the surrounding world. . . .
. . . . Each stage of cognition is restricted to the level of development of science and practice, by the historical conditions of the life of society. Scientific knowledge, including the most accurate and reliable knowledge, is probabilistic. Truth is relative inasmuch as it reflects the object within certain limits and relations which constantly change and develop, rather than does it fully and exhaustively. Relative truth is limited true knowledge about something. . . .
. . . . On the question of relativity of truth, let us stress that we refer to the sphere of scientific knowledge and not at all to absolutely authentic facts like the nonexistence of the king of France today. It is the availability of absolutely reliable and therefore absolutely true facts that is extremely important in people’s practical activity, especially in those areas that are connected with decisions affecting human fates. . . . Absolute truths include ascertained facts, the dates of events, birth, death, etc.
(A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Union: (See, Trade union.)
United Front Against Fascism:
The United Front Against Fascism (UFAF) of past-century Europe referred to unity of action against fascism. UFAF is an application of the doctrine of the united front, which was developed by the Third International.
The united front tactic is simply an initiative whereby the Communists propose to join with all workers belonging to other parties and groups and all unaligned workers in a common struggle to defend the immediate, basic interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie.
(Fourth Congress of the Communist International, Theses on Comintern Tactics, 1922.)
http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/tactics.htm
The UFAF of the 1930s developed out of the revolutionary crisis in Italy and Germany It combined the resources of different working-class organizations with different outlooks and different constituencies against the common enemy — 1930s industrial fascism.
During the struggle for a “united front of action,” the “Popular Front” was also created. When reactionary trade union leaders, Catholic trade union leaders, and social democratic leaders and organizations refused to enter the formal agreements required to be part of the united front, a different tactic to create a unified mass movement of small apparatuses and individual trade unions was applied. The UFAF was an official front with signed agreements. The Popular Front did not have formal agreements and sought to combine the broadest popular front of antifascist people.
In the past century, European fascism was based in the industrial wing of the capitalist class, which was the most reactionary, chauvinistic and imperialist element of finance capital. The UFAF strategy was based in a world completing the transition from agriculture to industry. This world was dominated by three great classes: working class, capitalist and petty bourgeoisie.
Today, in practical terms, it is no longer possible to be both anti-communist and pro-democracy. Communism today is a practical movement to live in society as a humane person with unconditional access to socially necessary means of life. The communist goal is that every member of society be given socially necessary means of life, even if they are unemployed, marginally employed, work two jobs or are better paid workers. The UFAF goal was not communism.
(See Fascism, historical Europe; International, 3rd.)
Use value:
Use value is the utility of a thing. Use value and exchange value are the two components of a commodity.
The utility of a thing, the characteristics thanks to which it is able to satisfy some human demand, makes the thing a use-value. A use-value can either directly satisfy an individual human demand or else serve as a means of production of material wealth. For instance, bread satisfies a demand as food and cloth as clothing, while the use-value of a loom consists in the fact that cloth is made with its help. . . .
Use-value is possessed by many things which have not in any way been created by human labour, such as, for example, spring-water or the fruits of wild trees. But not everything which has use-value is a commodity. For a thing to become a commodity it must be a product of labour produced for sale. Use-value forms the material substance of wealth, whatever its social form may be. In a commodity economy, use-value is the depository of the exchange-value of a commodity.
(Political Economy, A Textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of sciences of the USSR, 1957.)
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
(See, Commodity, Value.)
Utopian socialism
[Utopian Socialism is] the projects and doctrines that express the longing for a radical transformation of society according to socialist principles but are not based on knowledge of the laws of social development and of its driving forces. Utopian socialism was named after T. More’s Utopia (1516). In Lenin’s words, ‘Early socialism was Utopian socialism. It criticized capitalist society, it condemned and damned it, it dreamed of its destruction, it had visions of a better order and endeavored to convince the rich of the immorality of exploitation. But Utopian socialism could not indicate the real solution. It could not explain the real nature of wage-slavery under capitalism, it could not reveal the laws of capitalist development, or show what social force is capable of becoming the creator of a new society.’
The longing for a new order contained the embryonic elements of socialist ideas and represented the toiling masses’ reaction to the rise of private property, class inequality, and exploitation; it expressed the masses’ dreams of liberation and, at the same time, their ideological and political impotence. The intelligentsia played a major role in the more conscious formulation of the exploited classes’ ill-defined aspirations . . . .
. . . . An important influence in the development of Utopian socialism was the social doctrine of early Christianity, which advocated universal equality and brotherhood and preached the evangelical ideal of a patriarchal communal system including the practice of consumer communism in everyday life. . . .
. . . . These initial rationalist aspects of Utopian socialism gained in strength during the early capitalist period. In the era of Enlightenment, French Utopian socialism based its criticism of bourgeois society on the demands of reason and ‘natural right’; a communist society was called for—a uniquely rational society that would provide all people with equal access to freedom and the good things of life. This was the Utopian socialists’ version of the golden age, and it was advocated in the Utopian travel fiction of the time, which described societies of ‘noble savages’ practicing a natural system of ‘communal property.’ A clearer and more convincing presentation of such ideas can be found in the communist tracts of the 18th century. Testament, a materialist and atheistic work by the French Utopian communist J. Meslier, called for revolutionary action on the part of the peasants to overthrow feudalism, the rule of kings, the nobility, and the clergy, in order that society might be reorganized. Other rationalist proposals, appearing in the mid-18th century, were those of Morelly and G. de Mably, whose projected communist societies were to embody the principles of the ‘absolute equality’ of all people and the right to work, as well as the idea of work as an obligation for all members of the society.
. . . . Socialist and communist ideas were revolutionized by Marx and Engels.
Marxism transformed socialism from Utopia into science by demonstrating that socialism is not the realization of abstract principles of justice and reason but rather the normal and logical result of the historical development of society and the class struggle of the proletariat—a proletariat that joins together all those who labor. Utopian socialism was a towering achievement of social thought; it was one of the most important ideological sources of scientific communism, which at the same time went far beyond it.
(Utopian Socialism.)
(The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979)
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Utopian+Socialism
Value:
In political economy value is the amount of socially necessary labor time in commodities. A commodity is a product made to be exchanged, rather than consumed by the producer. The production of objects for exchange is the characteristic feature of commodity economy.
Human beings, rather than machines, are the source and determinant of value in commodities. In political economy, value is a shorthand way of saying exchange value. Exchange value expresses the ratio at which two different products of human labor exchange for each other. A commodity possesses a use value and exchange value.
Value, that is, exchange value, exists in human society where people are organized with a division of labor for the production of commodities. The sum total of social relations based on the exchange of commodities (buying and selling) is the value relation. The development of commodity production signifies the existence of value and sets the stage for the emergence of the law of value.
The law of value makes its first appearance under the slave mode of production. Under the bourgeois factory system (capitalism) the law of value allocates labor, resources and money into areas of maximum profitability as the driving inspiration for production.
(See, Commodity; Value, Law of.)
Value of labor-power:
The value of labor-power is determined by the cost to maintain workers and enable them to labor and to reproduce the next generation.
The value of labor-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labor-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labor of society incorporated in it. Labor-power exists only as a capacity, or power of the living individual. Its production consequently pre-supposes his existence. Given the individual, the production of labor-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance, he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore, the labor-time requisite for the production of labor-power reduces itself to that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence; in other words, the value of labor-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the laborer. Labor-power, however, becomes a reality only by its exercise; it sets itself in action only by working. But thereby a definite quantity of human muscle, nerve, brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored. This increased expenditure demands a larger income. If the owner of labor-power works to-day, to-morrow he must again be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as regards health and strength. His means of subsistence must therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state as a laboring individual. His natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel, and housing, vary according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his country. On the other hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent on the degree of civilization of a country, more particularly on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, the class of free laborers has been formed. In contradistinction therefore to the case of other commodities, there enters into the determination of the value of labor-power a historical and moral element. Nevertheless, in a given country, at a given period, the average quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the laborer is practically known.
The owner of labor-power is mortal. If then his appearance in the market is to be continuous, and the continuous conversion of money into capital assumes this, the seller of labor-power must perpetuate himself, “in the way that every living individual perpetuates himself, by procreation.” The labor-power withdrawn from the market by wear and tear and death, must be continually replaced by, at the very least, an equal amount of fresh labor-power. Hence the sum of the means of subsistence necessary for the production of labor-power must include the means necessary for the laborer’s substitutes, i.e., his children, in order that this race of peculiar commodity-owners may perpetuate its appearance in the market.
(K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm
(See, Labor, Labor-power.)
Value, Law of
The law of value is an objective law of commodity production and is the fundamental regulating law of capitalist commodity production. It states that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time in its production. Under capitalism where anarchy of production and competition between laborers for wages and between capitalists for market shares hold sway in society, the law of value acts as a spontaneous regulator of production. Under the capitalist mode of production, the law of value directs labor and capital to areas of greater profitability.
The law of value is the economic law of commodity production and exchange. The basic content of this law is this: The value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labor. Commodities must be exchanged according to their values. That is, there must be equivalence in exchange. Wherever and whenever the conditions of a commodity economy exist, the law of value has a role to play. Marx said, ‘In the anarchic constantly changing trade relations of private labor products, the socially necessary labor time for their production forcibly clears its own path as a regulatory law of nature, just as the law of gravity forcibly clears its own path when a house falls on a person’s head.’ In other words, in commodity exchange, although because of the influence of the supply-demand relation the proportions in which commodities are exchanged may change continuously so that the socially necessary labor (the value) embodied in two commodities being exchanged may not be exactly equal, in the long run, commodity exchange necessarily involves equivalence in exchange. The values being exchanged must be identical.
(China Book Project, Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited with an introduction by George C. Wang, 1977.)
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/fundamentals.pdf
Voluntarism:
Voluntarism is a trend in philosophy which raises to an absolute the ability of human will to effect change and bring about a desired result regardless of objective conditions. Voluntarism does not consider the objective laws of the historical process and the law of causality that makes some things possible and other things not possible. When someone says to “think positive,” that may be an indication of voluntarism.
(See, Idealism.)
Wages:
Wages therefore are only a special name for the price of labor-power, and are usually called the price of labor; it is the special name for the price of this peculiar commodity, which has no other repository than human flesh and blood.
Consequently, labor-power is a commodity which its possessor, the wage-worker, sells to the capitalist. Why does he sell it? It is in order to live.
(K. Marx, Wage Labor and Capital, 1847.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labor /ch02.htm
Wages are the money-price form of value paid to the workers by capitalists to purchase their labor power. The price paid for labor ability is always below the value created by the workers’ labor. The value created by the workers, but never returned to them, is the source of surplus value, the basis of capitalist profits.
Marx pointed out: ‘Wages are not what they appear to be. They are not the value or price of labor, but a disguised form of the value or price of labor power.’ The wages advocated by the capitalist as ‘the value or price of labor’ is entirely fictitious.
The key lies in the distinction between labor-power and labor. . . . Under the capitalist system, what is being sold and bought as a commodity is labor power, not labor. Why is labor not a commodity and why can it not be bought or sold? This is because, first, if labor is a commodity, it should exist before it is sold, just like other commodities. But, in fact, labor is the exercise of labor power. It does not exist before it is sold. It exists only after it is sold and used in the labor process. Also, once the worker’s labor is hired out, it no longer belongs to the worker himself. His labor belongs to the capitalist. Second, if labor is a commodity, according to the requirements of the law of value, it must be exchanged for equivalent value. Then the capitalist should pay the worker the full value created by the worker as his wage and as payment for the worker’s labor. If this were the case, then the capitalist would lose his source of wealth and surplus value would be abolished. There would no longer be capitalism.
Third, if labor is a commodity, it should have a value. How should this value be determined?
Under capitalism, the capitalist purchases labor-power from the worker, but not labor. The wage paid to the worker by the capitalist is equivalent only to the value of the labor power. The remainder of what the worker’s labor creates over and above the value of the labor-power is surplus value which is exploited by the capitalist. Therefore, the capitalist wage reflects the relation between the hiring capitalist and the hired worker, between the exploiting capitalist and the exploited worker.
(China Book Project, Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited with an introduction by George C. Wang, 1977.)
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/fundamentals.pdf
War:
Clausewitz, one of the most famous writers on war, said, “War is a continuation of policy by other means.” Lenin wrote that it would be a mistake to have a
conception of war as being a thing apart from the policies of the governments and classes concerned, as being a simple attack that disturbs the peace, and is then followed by restoration of the peace thus disturbed, as much as to say: ‘They had a fight, then they made up!’
. . . . War is a continuation of policy by other means. All wars are inseparable from the political systems that engender them. The policy which a given state, a given class within that state, pursued for a long time before the war is inevitably continued by that same class during the war, the form of action alone being changed.
(V. I. Lenin, War and Revolution, A lecture delivered May 14 (27), 1917.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/14.htm
War is politics by military means. Mao Zedong wrote:
‘War is the continuation of politics.’ In this sense, war is politics and war itself is a political action; since ancient times there has never been a war that did not have a political character. . . . However, war has its own particular characteristics and in this sense, it cannot be equated with politics in general. ‘War is the continuation of politics by other . . . means.’ When politics develops to a certain stage beyond which it cannot proceed by the usual means, war breaks out to sweep the obstacles from the way. . . . When the obstacle is removed and our political aim attained the war will stop. Nevertheless, if the obstacle is not completely swept away, the war will have to continue until the aim is fully accomplished. . . . It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
(M. Zedong, On Protracted War, 1938.)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch05.htm
Politics is a concentrated expression of economic relations and the rule of a class. War in the epoch of private property guarantees the rule of a class, expands its wealth, and secures its property relations.
It seems to me that the most important thing that is usually overlooked in the question of the war, . . . is the question of the class character of the war: what caused that war, what classes are waging it, and what historical and historico-economic conditions gave rise to it.
(V. I. Lenin, War and Revolution,1917.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/14.htm
The quest for profits impels capitalist states to confront one another in wars of conquest. World Wars I and II were fought over market shares, including colonial possession. War, which now includes militarization of the police, is driven by economic necessity under capitalist production relations.
The crisis of overproduction necessitates an outlet for finance and the productive forces of capitalist society. War and production for war become highly profitable investment opportunities for capital. The business of human slaughter becomes an enormous profit center under capitalism.
The US now is in a state of permanent warfare, where nobody expects peace to return; the only question has become where to fight next. This reflects that everything is now commodified, and to the arms makers/sellers war is just another business, an extremely lucrative one.
In the 21st century, like every other activity, war is becoming robotized, privatized, and globalized. War in the era of robotics eliminates many “boots on the ground,” that characterized the old industrial warfare. War profits flow to a transnational financial network that includes Wall Street. War in the 21st century is a question of the destruction of humanity and calls for worldwide dismantling of the global war machine and capitalism.
White chauvinism
White chauvinism is a form of great nation chauvinism based on “white” skin color. It was a form of material bribery of the Anglo-American people, rooted in chattel slavery, colonialization of the Black Belt of the South by Wall Street imperialism and colonial possessions during the last stage of the colonial system and industrialism. During the era which spanned from the end of World War II up to the early1980s, some American Marxists used the term white chauvinism to describe policies and actions of the US state and the specific role of the color line in US history. US white chauvinism built upon the ideology of white supremacy and was the ideological justification for brutal exploitation of the non-white nations and peoples of the world.
In the US, the most aggressive and brutal specific form of national chauvinism was white chauvinism. White chauvinism was fused with anti-communism and prevented unity of the fighting sections of the working class. It was the principal ideology of aggressive US fascism.
(See, Chauvinism, White supremacy.)
White supremacy:
White supremacy grew with Anglo-American expansionism. So long as there was no real economic use for white supremacy in the U.S.N.A. or rather in the English colonies, it did not develop. It was only with the need to clear the western parts of the original colonies that the concept of white supremacy arose. With the development of chattel slavery in the South, a new rationale other than bringing the Africans here to make Christians of them was needed; then the concept of a racial superiority slowly emerged.
(Communist League, Negro National Colonial Question, 1972.) https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/cl-nncq/definitions.htm
White supremacy is a system of cooperation and unity between classes based on Europeanness or “whiteness.” It was a system engineered by the capitalists by which white people dominated nonwhite people and relegated nonwhite people to the bottom of the economic, social, and political system. White supremacy is built into the architecture of America’s capitalist productive relations. In this system, whites and those classified as “white” occupy a privileged position in society over nonwhites. White supremacy is material and ideological.
The roots of US white supremacy reside in the settling of America and the genocidal wars of conquest against the Native peoples. Land theft and wars of plunder were justified by the supposed inherent backwardness of the Red man. Later, with the Civil War, defeat of the Confederacy and conversion of the plantation South into a colony of Wall Street imperialism, white supremacy was superseded by white chauvinism.
US white chauvinism was white supremacy in the era of monopoly capitalism, colonialism and political domination by Wall Street imperialism. It was a form of bribery of the Anglo-American people, used by the bourgeoisie to prevent the unity of the working class.
(See, Color factor, National colonial question, Racism, White chauvinism.)
Woman question:
The social position of women and the proposed resolution to their historic inequality is called the woman question by the Marxist movement. The role of women in society, as is the case with all classes, exploited and oppressed groups, is first and foremost an expression of inequality rooted in private property relations. Before the rise of private property, women played a leading position in the development of the family and social life. This form of society is referred to as matriarchal.
There was a spontaneous natural division of labor, based on biology — sex and age – that is, between men and women, between adults, children and older people. The social division of labor replaced the natural division of labor. With the slow incremental development of the productive forces, the social division of labor was stabilized with specialization of men in spheres of hunting and eventually cattle breeding, activity outside the home, and women in the sphere of gathering foodstuffs and maintenance of the home.
The origin of women’s inequality was in the rise of private property that cast women as the first exploited and oppressed group. With the development of productive forces, a social division of labor arose that assigned responsibility in production to the existing groups in society.
The dominance of primitive communal society based on the spontaneous natural division of labor was superseded with the advance of cattle breeding (pastoral economy) and a more developed agriculture, which in turn called forth new social relations based on a new social division of labor. The new division of labor made it possible to create and sustain a societal surplus of food. Tillers of the soil and breeders of cattle required products they did not produce within their own community, and this need was met with the development of exchange. Over a long period of time, the roles and voices of men and women in social life shifted. The old form of society based on matriarchal structures gave way to a new form of patriarchal governing structures, which coincided with the rise of private property and classes.
The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. This degraded position of the woman, especially conspicuous among the Greeks of the heroic and still more of the classical age, has gradually been palliated and glozed over [justified], and sometimes clothed in a milder form; in no sense has it been abolished.
(F. Engels, Origin of Family, Private Property and the State, 1884.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02c.htm
In an old unpublished manuscript, written by Marx and myself in 1846, [The reference here is to the German Ideology, published after Engels’ death – Ed.] I find the words: “The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.” And today I can add: The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.
(F. Engels, Origin of Family, Private Property and the State, 1884.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm
During the past century, a complex of social and political struggles and inventions destroyed much of the division of labor which had trapped women at the bottom of the social ladder and assigned them to home, kitchen, laundry, church, nursery, and had limited women’s participation in the artistic, literary, cultural, and political sphere.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination in employment, and also at this time the use of birth control became widespread. These two developments along with technological changes that eliminated the need for strength from most jobs allowed women to enter the workforce and begin the fight for equality on a higher level.
Women’s ability to escape their historically evolved social position of inferiority, in every society based on private property is bound up with and intertwined with the social division of labor. In the age of computers and robotics, which begins destruction of the social division of labor for the new world proletariat cast outside commodity production, the final emancipation of women begins with the worldwide overthrow of private property. The overthrow of private property will change the old exploitative social relations and how life, love, and intimate relations are understood and experienced. The final emancipation of women is bound up with the overthrow of private property, destruction of the social division of labor and destruction of the ability of any section of society to appropriate the unpaid labor of anyone.
(See, Emancipation of women, Feminism.)
Working class:
Working class refers to the laboring masses, whose labor creates the material wealth of society and reproduces social relations of production and human culture. Since the rise of the social division of labor, the working class has been the principal social force.
With the division of society into classes, there has existed a working class in one form or another and by one name or another. Each form of the working class is associated with a different state of development of the means of production.
What working classes were there before the industrial revolution? The working classes have always, according to the different stages of development of society, lived in different circumstances and had different relations to the owning and ruling classes.
In antiquity, the workers were the slaves of the owners, just as they still are in many backward countries and even in the southern part of the United States.
In the Middle Ages, they were the serfs of the land-owning nobility, as they still are in Hungary, Poland, and Russia. In the Middle Ages, and indeed right up to the industrial revolution, there were also journeymen in the cities who worked in the service of petty bourgeois masters. Gradually, as manufacture developed, these journeymen became manufacturing workers who were even then employed by larger capitalists.
(F. Engels, The Principles of Communism, 1847.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
Not all working classes in history have been proletarian.
The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell him daily and hourly. . . . The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries. The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. . . . The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of his labor. The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. . . . In contrast to the proletarian, the so-called handicraftsman, as he still existed almost everywhere in the past [eighteenth] century and still exists here and there at present, is a proletarian at most temporarily. His goal is to acquire capital himself wherewith to exploit other workers. He can often achieve this goal where guilds still exist or where freedom from guild restrictions has not yet led to the introduction of factory-style methods into the crafts nor yet to fierce competition. But as soon as the factory system has been introduced into the crafts and competition flourishes fully, this perspective dwindles away and the handicraftsman becomes more and more a proletarian. . . . The manufacturing worker of the 16th to the 18th centuries still had, with but few exceptions, an instrument of production in his own possession – his loom, the family spinning wheel, a little plot of land which he cultivated in his spare time. The proletarian has none of these things. The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the countryside and in a more or less patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation.
The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation by big industry, loses whatever property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian.
(F. Engels, The Principles of Communism, 1847.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
The manufacturing worker becomes a proletarian. Just as the industrial working class replaced the manufacturing working class, the further development of the means of production and emergence of the robotic economy changes the form of the working class, without changing the property relations. The industrial form of the working class is negated and sublated by an electronic form of working class eking out a wretched existence producing commodities in an environment of robotics. Under capitalist private property relations, robotics leads to creation of a fallen – destitute – proletariat, shut outside capitalist production.
(See, Precariat, Proletariat.)
Bibliography
Works by Marx and Engels Marx Internet,
The online source for all quotes of Marx and Engels.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/index.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20131016042354/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/index.htm
Abolitionism:
Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Abstract labor: (See, Concrete and abstract labor.)
Accumulation of Capital:
See, Universal Law of Capitalist Accumulation. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Universal+Law+of+Capitalist+Accumulation
Reviews of Capital by Frederick Engels, Review of Vol. I of Capital for the Demokratisches Wochenblatt, March 1868
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/reviews-capital/dwochenblatt.htm
Karl Marx. Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 32: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Alienation of Labor:
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Estranged Labor
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labor.htm
American Revolution 1776
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring
Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science by 1877 Part I: Philosophy
X. Morality and Law. Equality
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch08.htm
American Revolution 2.0: Civil War (1861–865)
Karl Marx in Die Presse 1861, The North American Civil War
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/25.htm
American Revolution 2.5:
Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, 2009
American State as empire state:
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic, Chapter 6, The Empire of Bases.
Anarchy of production:
Frederick Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific III [Historical Materialism]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
Anarcho-syndicalism:
Nelson Peery, Entering an epoch of Social Revolution
http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf
Antagonism: Class
Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political Economy
Strikes and Combinations of Workers
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02e.htm
Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, 1937. Prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy under the Direction of M. Shirokov
Antagonism: Philosophy
Nelson Peery, Entering an Epoch of Social Revolution, 1993.
http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf
Basis and Superstructure:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, page 270. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/
Being:
Alexander Spirkin Fundamentals of Philosophy.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Bolsheviks and Bolshevism:
Vladimir Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, 1920.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch02.htm
History of the Communist Party Soviet Union (Bolshevik) 1939. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/index.htm
Bourgeois and Bourgeoisie:
Note by Engels, 1888 English edition Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848. http://www.marx2mao.com/M&E/CM47.html
Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
Bourgeois revolution:
Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
J. V. Stalin, Concerning Questions of Leninism, Dedicated to the Leningrad Organization of the C.P.S.U. (B.), January 25, 1926. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1926/01/25.htm
A Short History of the World Vol. I, Edited by Prof. A. Z. Manfred. Progress Publishers 1974. Page 242 “The Revolution in the Netherlands.”
The Future is Up to Us. Nelson Peery. Page 34.
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-2/future.pdf
Bureaucracy:
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Bureaucracy
Cadre:
Marxist Glossary by L. Harry Gould page 17, June 1946. Reprinted by Proletarian Publishers, approx 1974.
M. Zedong, The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War 1938.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch29.htm
Capital:
Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx//works/1847/wage-labor /ch02.htm
Karl Marx. Capital, Vol. I, 1867.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm
Capitalism (bourgeois mode of commodity production):
Frederick Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
Category:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals, page 119.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/
Causality:
Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877, Introduction
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/introduction.htm
“Causality and Human Will,” March-April Rally, Comrades! Vol. 22 Ed 2. http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/causality-and-human-will/
Cause and vision in revolutionary change:
Nelson Peery, The Future Is Up To Us page 47.
Citizen:
Napoleonic Code.
http://henryckliu.com/page248.html
Class:
V. I. Lenin, A Great Beginning Heroism Of The Workers In The Rear “Communist subbotniks”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/28.htm
Class Struggle:
V. I. Lenin, Articles for “Rabochaya Gazeta” Our Immediate Task.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/articles/arg3oit.htm
Commodity:
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4
Commodity fetish:
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4
Communist Manifesto:
Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1852, Marx to J. Weydemeyer In New York
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05.htm
Concentration and centralization of capital:
Political Economy, A Textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of sciences of the USSR
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
Concrete and abstract labor:
Karl Marx. Capital, Vol. I, 1867. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
Connection:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Consciousness:
K. Marx. The German Ideology. 1845.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
Consciousness (class):
V. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm
Content:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Contradiction:
O. Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism Manual, pages 92, 93, 94 and 95. Foreign Languages Publishing House Moscow. 1961 Lawerence & Wishart London.
Content:
AP. Sheptulin, Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Progress Publishers, 1978, Second printing, 1980, page 215.
Corporation:
Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
On the Edge of History, Political Report of the Standing Committee of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, June 2008
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v18ed4art4.html
Culture:
L. Harry Gould, Marxist Glossary 1946 page 33.
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals …. Page 387
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Cultural hegemony:
K. Marx, F. Engels, The German Ideology, 1845.)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm
(E. J. Hobsbawm, “Introduction” to The Gramsci Reader, Selected Writings 1916-1935.)
http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/gramsci-reader.pdf
Democracy:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy.
J. V. Stalin, Concerning Questions of Leninism, Dedicated to the Leningrad Organization of the C.P.S.U.(B.), January 25, 1926
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1926/01/25.htm
Democracy, bourgeois:
V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917 https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm
Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
Democratic centralism:
J. Peters, A Manual on Organization. http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1935/07/organisers-manual/ch02.htm
Development:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals, page 123. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Dialectics:
Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm
Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1883.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch02.htm
A. Spirkin. Fundamentals, Page 33.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Dictatorship of the proletariat:
Karl Marx Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1852, Marx to J. Weydemeyer In New York
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05.htm
J. V. Stalin, Concerning Questions of Leninism, Dedicated to the Leningrad Organization of the C.P.S.U. (B.), January 25, 1926
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1926/01/25.htm
Division of Labor:
revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PoliticalEconomy.pdf
Nelson Peery, Entering ….
http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf
Economic Determinism:
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1894 Engels to Borgius[1] Abstract
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm
Economy:
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Egalitarianism:
Egalitarianism
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/egalitarianism
Electronic revolution:
Nelson Peery, Revolutionary Change in America, 1997, page 11. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/peery-change.pdf
Emancipation:
Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, Part I: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm
Engels, Frederick:
H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, Proletarian Publishers, page 37, 38.
Anti-Dühring – Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science by Frederick Engels 1877 Part I: Philosophy
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch08.htm
Equality:
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch08.htm
Error:
Alexander Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism http://marxists.catbull.com/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch04-s03.html
Essence:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals, Page 155. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Exploitation:
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. I Section 2, 1867. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.
Expropriation:
Karl Marx. Capital Vol. 1, 1867. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Falling rate of profit: the tendency of the rate of profit to fall
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm
Destruction of Value Marks Capitalism’s End, January 2009 http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v19ed1art3.html
Fascism:
Georgi Dimitrov. The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism, 1935.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm#s2
The Rise of Fascism and Social Revolution in America, Rally, Comrades!, 2013
http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2013/07/the-rise-of-fascism-and-social-revolution-in-america/
Fascism, America:
Fascism: Unity between the state and the corporations to protect private property, Rally, Comrades!, March 2009.
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v19ed2art4.html
The Changing Form Of The State: The Merger of Government and the Corporations
June 2006.
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v16ed4art5.html
Fatalism:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Fetishism:
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1867.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4
Feudal private property:
Karl Marx, The German Ideology, 1845. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm
(China Book Project, Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited with an introduction by George C. Wang, 1977.)
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/fundamentals.pdf
Form and Content:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Freedom, necessity, and law:
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch09.htm
General crisis of capitalism:
Political Economy, A Textbook.
http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PoliticalEconomy.pdf
Political Economy, A Textbook.http://www.marx.be/Prime/ENG/Books/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
J. V. Stalin, The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (B) December 2-19, 1927
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1927/12/02.htm
General Law of capitalist accumulation:
Karl Marx. Capital, Chapter 32: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Karl Marx. Capital, Vol. I, 1867. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm
Globalization:
W. I. Robinson, Understanding Global Capitalism, 2008.)
https://www.trentu.ca/globalpolitics/documents/Discussion082Robinson.pdf
Hegel:
H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, 1949, page 48 & 49.
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1873 Afterword to the Second German Edition
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm
Henry C K Liu, The Coming Trade War, Part 4.
http://www.henryckliu.com/page8.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GG28Dj01.html
History:
Marx, Engels, The German Ideology
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm
History role of the individual:
Marx-Engels Correspondence, Engels to Borgius, 1894.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm
Historical Materialism:
Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentals…page 271. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation:
See, Accumulation,
Karl Marx, Capital, Chapter 32 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Idealism:
Handbook of Philosophy, H. Selsam, page 53
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Identity:
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Identity+(disambiguation)
Identity politics:
Rally, Comrades! New conditions demand new ways of thinking. September 2009.
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v19ed5art4.html
Ideology:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals, page 248.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Imperialism:
Vladimir I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
Also, see, V. I. Lenin Imperialism and the Split in Socialism
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm
Industrial reserve army:
Frederick Engels, Reviews of Capital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/reviews-capital/dwochenblatt.htm
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S5b
Industrial Revolution:
F. Engels, The Principles of Communism
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
A. Overthrow of Co-operation Based on Handicraft, and on the Division of Labor
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S8a
Insurrection:
V. I. Lenin, Marxism and Insurrection. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/13.htm
Intelligentsia
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Intelligentsia
Interaction:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals Page 121.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
International Communist Organizations:
V. I. Lenin. The Third International and Its Place in History
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/apr/15.htm
Frederick Engels, On the History of the Communist League.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1885hist.htm
Imperialism:
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, 1916.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm
Industrial reserve army:
Frederick Engels, Review of Vol. I of Capital for the Demokratisches Wochenblatt, 1868.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/reviews-capital/dwochenblatt.htm
Industrial Revolution:
Frederick Engels, The Principles of Communism, 1847. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
Insurrection:
V. I. Lenin, Marxism and Insurrection, 1917.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/13.htm
Intelligentsia:
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Intelligentsia
Interaction:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
International Communist Organizations:
V. I. Lenin, The Third International and Its Place in History, 1919.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/apr/15.htm
See, Rally, Comrades!, Revolutionary History and Our Tasks, 2007, http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v17ed2art2.html
Labor:
Karl Marx. Capital, The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
Labor aristocracy:
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/pref02.htm
Labor-power:
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
Law (jurisprudence):
Karl Marx, The German Ideology http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01c.htm
Law and law system:
http://leninist.biz/en/1963/FML734/1.2.1-The.Universal.Connection.of.Phenomena
Leap:
The Leap: the motion of qualitative change, the key to understanding social revolution
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals, page 194. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Leninism:
J. V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/index.htm
Line of march:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Luddite:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm
Lumpen proletariat:
Frederick Engels, The Peasant War in Germany. Preface to the Second Edition http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/ch0a.htm
Maoism and Mao Zedong Thought:
A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement. The Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist party of China in Reply to the Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, March 30, 1963. http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/PGL63.html.
The Historical Significance of Mao Zedong
Henry C.K. Liu (廖子光)
http://www.henryckliu.com/page260.html
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, Resolutions of our Fourth General Meeting (July, 1977)
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-5/bacu-2/resolution4.htm
Nelson Peery, for the Communist League Secretariat
N. Sanmugathasan’s Bright Red Banner, Proletariat, Winter 1972,
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/sri-lanka/peery-banner.htm
Maoism to Marxism-Leninism to Maoism (Maoism to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to Maoism):
Exchanges on the Maoist Movement
http://www.panix.com/~lnp3//archives/august98/maoism.htm
Marx, Karl
The Life and Times of Karl Marx, in the words of Ronnie Kasrils. (Taken from Daily Maverick, a South African Journal.)
H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, Proletarian Publishers, page 70, 71.
Marxism:
Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
Part 2: Materialism
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch02.htm
Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific II [Dialectics]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm
Frederick Engels’, Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx Highgate Cemetery, London. March 17, 1883
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/burial.htm
V. I. Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, 1913.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
Materialism:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals page 26.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Materialist conception of history:
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch24.htm
Matter:
Alexander Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism Chapter 2. The System of Categories in Philosophical Thought. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s02.html
Means of labor:
Political Economy,
http://www.dmeeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
Metaphysics:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/introduction.htm
Mega-corporate state:
L. Harry Gould,
Marxist Glossary, page 30, 1946, reprinted by Proletarian Publishers.
Karl Marx, Engels, Communist Manifesto.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
Mode of production:
K. Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1867
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PoliticalEconomy.pdf
Political Economy.
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
(China Book Project, Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited with an introduction by George C. Wang, 1977.)
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/fundamentals.pdf
Monopoly capitalism:
V. I. Lenin. Imperialism and the Split in Socialism
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm
Motion:
A. Spirkin. Fundamentals page 82.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Motion, self-movement:
Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentals, page 129.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Nation:
J. V. Stalin. Marxism and the National Question
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm#s1
Nationalization:
Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
National question and national-colonial question.
J. V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, 1924. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm
J. V. Stalin. The Tenth Congress of the R.C.P. (B.)1 March 8 – 16, 1921
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1921/03/08.htm
Nelson Peery, The Comintern Position on the Negro Question: A Review of H. Haywood’s Negro Liberation, pages 29, 30.
Proletariat, 1976. A theoretical journal by the Communist Labor Party United States of North America.
Necessary labor and surplus labor:
K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch09.htm
K. Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63. https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch25.htm
Needs:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals, page 288. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Negation and negation of the negation:
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch11.htm
Karl Marx. Capital, Vol. I, 1867.
Chapter 32: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Neoliberalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
A primer on Neoliberalism http://www.globalissues.org/article/39/a-primer-on-neoliberalism
A Short History of Neo-liberalism:
Twenty Years of Elite Economics and Emerging Opportunities for Structural Change
http://www.globalexchange.org/resources/econ101/neoliberalismhist
New Communist Movement:
Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line,
http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/erol.htm
Nobility:
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/nobility
Nodal line and nodal points:
Frederick Engels, Anti Dühring https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch02.htm
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Hegel’s, Science of Logic Measure
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hl348.htm
Oppressed nation:
J. V. Stalin, The Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) March 8 – 16, 1921.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1921/03/08.htm
N. Peery, Proletariat, A Theoretical Journal published by the Communist Labor Party, Vol. 2, Number 1, Summer 1976. The Comintern position on the Negro Question A Review of H. Haywood’s Negro Liberation by page 30. https://www.facebook.com/notes/marxist-glossary-discussion/the-comintern-position-on-the-negro-question-by-nelson-peery/334377206755613
Marxist Glossary Discussion Face book, see files for Nelson Peery Comintern article. https://www.facebook.com/groups/322055931321074/
Organic composition of capital:
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm
Overproduction:
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch24.htm
Manifesto of the Communist Party
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
Organic composition of capital:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm
Party of a New Type:
Joseph Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch08.htm
J. V. Stalin. Lenin as the organizer and leader of the Russian Communist Party April 23, 1920
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1920/04/23.htm
Permanent Revolution:
See, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm)
Petite bourgeoisie:
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/petty+bourgeoisie
Petty bourgeoisie:
K. Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
Petty bourgeois consciousness
K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852; emphasis added.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch03.htm
Philosophy:
Handbook of Philosophy by H. Selsam, page 93, 1949.
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Political economy:
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring. Political Economy I. Subject Matter and Method
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/ch13.htm
Political Economy,
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
Populism:
Lessons from American Populism,
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v21ed3art6.html
Populism in America
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v17ed3art3.html
Pragmatism:
Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/pragmati/
Precariat:
Guy Standing, The precariat is you and me.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3820486.html
Primitive accumulation of capital:
Karl Marx. Capital
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm
Process:
Nelson Peery, Entering an epoch http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf
Production:
Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labor/ch05.htm
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Production, reproduction:
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/reproduction
Production, socialized:
Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
Productive forces:
Political Economy,
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
Productive labor:
Productive Labor.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/productive+labor
Productive relations:
Political Economy,
http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf
Progress: Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Proletariat:
[Engels, 1888 English edition] Manifesto of the Communist Party http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
Frederick Engel, The Principles of Communism
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
Propaganda and agitation:
V. I. Lenin, What is to Be Done?, 1901.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/download/what-itd.pdf
Property (philosophy):
Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentals. Page 190
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Also
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/8/Space-and-Time
Quality:
Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch02.htm
Quantity:
A. P. Sheptulin, Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1980.
Resource paper #3, How and why things change.
See, Marxist Glossary Discussion Facebook.
Relations of production:
Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labor/ch05.htm
Revisionism:
V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1
V. I. Lenin, Marxism and Revisionism http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/apr/03.htm
V. I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/oct/10.htm
Revolution:
V. I. Lenin, New Tasks and New Forces, 1905.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/mar/08.htm
V. I. Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/csi/ii.htm#v21pp74h-212
Revolutionary crisis:
V. I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm
Science:
Handbook of Philosophy by H. Selsam 1949, translated from Russian.
Sectarianism:
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868, Letter from Marx to Schweitzer
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_10_13-abs.htm
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871, Marx to Friedrich Bolte
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_11_23.htm
Revolutionary History and our task, March 2007.
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v17ed2art2.html
Slavery:
Letters of Marx and Engels 1846, Letter from Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov in Paris
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htm
Political Economy, A Textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of sciences of the USSR, 1957, Lawrence & Wishart, London
Understanding Racism
http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/understanding-racism/
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S2
Social democracy:
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch03.htm
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, 1916. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm.
Revolutionary History and Our Tasks, 2007.
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/555/v17ed2art2.html
Social fascism:
M.J. Olgin, Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise, 1935.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/12.htm
Social relations of production:
Karl Marx, Abstract from the Preface of a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm
Karl Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, 1847.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm
Social revolution:
Karl Marx, Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Preface
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Socialism:
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Socially necessary labor time:
Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, 1865.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch02.htm
Socially necessary labor time:
Karl Marx. Capital, Vol. I, 1867.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
Marx, Value, Price and Profit, VI. Value and Labor.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch02.htm
Society:
A. Spirkin. Fundamentals page 269. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
Soviet Union (USSR) 1:
Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/molotov/1991/remembers-abs.htm
Henry C.K. Liu, The Socialist Revolution Started 90 Years Ago in China,
http://www.henryckliu.com/page206.html
Soviet Union II:
K.V. Ostrovityanov, The Role of The State in the Socialist Transformation of the Economy of the USSR. http://www.directdemocracy4u.org/DDEN/The%20Role%20of%20the%20State%20Socialist%20Transformation_K.V.Ostroviyanov_FLPH_1950.pdf
Speculative finance (capital):
Henry C.K. Liu, The Global Economy in Transition
http://henryckliu.com/page181.html;
Henry C.K. Liu, Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imperialism http://henryckliu.com/page143.html;
Henry C.K. Liu, Dollar Hegemony (originally published as [US Dollar Hegemony has to go] in AToL on April 11, 2002),
http://henryckliu.com/page2.html)
Rally, Comrades!, The Rise of Speculative Capital and its Geopolitical Implications, December 2008
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v18ed6art2.html
Rally, Comrades!, Globalization, Speculative Capital and US Hegemony, August 2006.
http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v16ed5art2.html
Spontaneity:
V. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done, 1902. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm
Rally, Comrades!, “On History’s Shoulders,” 2012. http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/on-historys-shoulders/
Stalinism:
Program and Principles of the Revolutionary Soviet Communists – Bolsheviks, reprinted 1979.
State:
V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution: The Marxist Teaching on the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution, 1917.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1
State (withering away of the state):
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-Dühring/index.htm
Strata:
Jonathan Aurthur, Socialism in the Soviet Union, 1977.
Strategy and tactics:
J. V. Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism,1924.
http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FL24.html#c7
J. V. Stalin, The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists, 1924.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/12.htm
Structure:
Alexander Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism, 1983. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s07.html
Subject and Object:
A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy, 1990.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy
H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, 1949.
Subjectivism:
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/subjectivism
Superstructure:
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,1852.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch03.htm
Surplus Labor:
Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch25.htm
Surplus population (relative surplus population):
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, 1867.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S4
Surplus product:
Surplus Product, The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Surplus+product
Karl Marx. Capital, Vol. I, 1867.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch09.htm#S4
System:
Alexander Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism, 1983. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s07.html
Terrorism:
Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., July 17 (30), August 10 (23), 1903.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/2ndcong/5.htm
Trade Union:
Eugene V. Debs, Unionism and Socialism, 1907.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1907/unionsandsocial.htm
Trotskyism:
M. N. Pokrovsky, Brief History of Russia, Vol. II, p. 320, 1935.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/02.htm
The Errors of Trotskyism, A Symposium, 1935.
“Trotskyism or Leninism?”
http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/trotvslenin.htm
Lev Kamenev, Leninism or Trotskyism, 1924.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kamenev/1924/11/trotskyism.htm
Gregory Zinoviev, Bolshevism or Trotskyism: Where the Line of Trotskyism is Leading, 1925.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/zinoviev/works/1925/05/trotskyism.htm
The Tukhachevsky Conspiracy (and Trotsky).
http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv13n2/tukhach.htm
H. Haywood, Trotsky’s Day in Court, 1978.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/haywood/black-bolshevik/ch06.htm
Truth (absolute, concreteness of, criterion of, historical and relative):
A. Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism, 1983. http://marxists.catbull.com/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch04-s03.html
United Front:
Fourth Congress of the Communist International, Theses on Comintern Tactics
5 December 1922.
http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/tactics.htm
Use Value:
Karl Marx. Capital, Vol. I, 1867.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
Utopian Socialism:
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Utopian+Socialism
Value, law of:
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Value%2c+Law+of
China Book Project, Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited with an introduction by George C. Wang, 1977.
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/fundamentals.pdf
Wages:
Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital, 1847.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labor/ch02.htm
China Book Project, Fundamentals of Political Economy, edited with an introduction by George C. Wang, 1977.
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/fundamentals.pdf
War:
M. Zedong, On Protracted War, 1938.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch05.htm
Working class:
Frederick Engels, The Principles of Communism, 1847.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
