MarxistGlossaryExpanded Edition

Twenty-First Century American Narrative

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Abolitionism:Abolitionism is the movement seeking to end inequality, class distinction and all forms of slavery. It is the oldest and most powerful spontaneous social movement in human history. Abolitionism is the content of allmovements against inequality.

The first abolitionist impulse arose as a response to the overthrow of matriarchal society and the creation of a new society framework based on the division ofsociety into economic classes and private property. Overthrowing matriarchy was a condition for therise of class society and private property.

Thousands of years later, the abolitionist movement was the moral and ethical force behind ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Abolitionists of all kinds fought to end slavery through passionate appeals, lectures, printed material, public rallies and, in extreme cases such as JohnBrown, armed rebellions against the slave power. New World slaverywas the pedestal upon which Europe’s wage system was built andjustified.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, froma historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.

All property relations in thepast have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change inhistorical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favor of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property isthe final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, which 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. (Emphasis added.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

Today abolitionism seeks to

abolish the wage system, end the existence of the mega-corporate state and aid in the emancipation of the proletariat from all forms of private property. Communists are abolitionists on the side of the proletariat.

Abstract labor: See, Concrete and abstract labor.

Abundance:Abundance is that stage of development of productive forces, powerful enough to emancipate humanity from what Marx called the“enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor.” Abundance and the society of abundance emerge after the industrial revolution has peaked and given way to the electronic revolution and the robotic economy.

Abundance is not a quantitative measure of things. Nor should it be confused with “surplus” and surplus products. Improved means of production made it possible to create a stable surplus of products. The stable surplus, in turn, made it possible to create and sustain a non-producing section of society and the variouslayers of society more or less dependent upon the labor of others. Surplus products created the foundation for private property and economic classes.

Abundance is a qualitative measure. It is an expression of a certain stage of development of productive forces that creates the

foundation to abolish private property and economic classes. (See, Society ofAbundance.)

Accumulation of capital: The accumulation of capital is thepath of development of capitalist production relations, created by the motion of continuous cycles ofexpanded reproduction. It is a). the reproduction of capital and capitalist relations of productionon an expanded scale; b). 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 frame work of capitalist property as preparation for the societal leap to a new mode of production. (See, Universal Law of Capitalist Accumulation. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Universal+Law+of+Capitalist+Accumulation).

A. Accumulation of capital. Here it is first shown that the capitalist mode of production, i.e. that inaugurated by capitalists onthe one hand and wage-workerson the other, not only continually regenerates capital for the capitalist, but at the same time also continually produces the poverty of the workers; thereby it is provided for a constant regeneration of, on

one hand, capitalists who arethe owners of all means of subsistence, all raw materials and instruments of labor, and on the other hand,the great mass of the workers, who are quantum of the means of subsistence which at best just suffices to keep them able-bodied and to bring up a new generation of able-bodied proletarians. 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 asit itself is reproduced on anever greater scale, so the modern capitalist mode of production reproduces the class of propertyless workersalso 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 Frederick Engels, Review of Volume One of Capital for theDemokratisches Wochenblatt March 1868.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/

reviews-capital/dwochenblatt.htm

B. General Law of capitalist accumulation.

Since, however, owing to the progress of machinery, owing to improved agriculture, etc., fewer and fewer workersare 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 thisever-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 isirregularly 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 whichunder 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-armyin proportion to the active (regularly employed) labor-

army, the greater is the massof a consolidated (permanent)surplus-population, or strataof workers, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labor. The more extensive, finally, the Lazarus-layers of the workingclass, and the industrial reserve-army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.” (IBID.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/reviews-capital/dwochenblatt.htm

C. 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 asthe 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, aswell 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. Onecapitalist 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 ofthe capitalistic regime. Alongwith the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurpand monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the massof 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 andsocialization of labor at lastreach a point where they become incompatible with theircapitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

In the search for maximum profits,the accumulation of capital breaksup the old productive relations based on agricultural and creates a society “more and more splittingup into . . . . two great classes. . . . . Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” In its compulsion toaccumulate or die, capital wipes out the small scale producer as a social force, tightens the chains of exploitation of the laborer andshrinks 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 constituting a vast sea ofthe surplus population shut out ofthe civic society of the

capitalist. The compulsion to accumulate and expand or die, drives capital to revolutionize the means of production with laborreplacing machinery (computers, robotics, biogenetics), and in doing such, opens a new epoch of social revolution.

Alienation of labor:Marx’s concept of alienation refers to social alienation of people from aspects of human nature (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 and appropriate the commodities created by the workingclass. Products created by the laborer confront the producer as an alien and hostile power.

The world of commodities confrontsthe proletariat, as a hostile power and necessities of life thatcan only be acquired with money. Alienation of labor is the direct result of capitalist production relations.

What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor?

First, the fact that labor isexternal to the worker, i.e.,it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in hiswork, 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 ismerely 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, theexternal character of labor for the worker appears in thefact 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. Justas in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him - that is, operates as analien, divine or diabolical activity –- so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It

belongs to another; it is theloss of his self.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labor.htm

American exceptionalism:American exceptionalism is the belief that America is qualitatively different from all the states, nations and peoples onearth and is destined to play a special role in the world, ordained by God and history. This special role includes defining what is right for the people of the earth and 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 aredue to democratic tradition and cultural superiority rather than genocide of the Native Americans, enslavement of the Africans, theftof half of Mexico’s territory and the fact that both world wars werefought in Europe.

The term “American exceptionalism”was popularized in the 1920s afterSoviet leader Joseph Stalin chastised members of the American Communist Party. Jay Lovestone, national secretary of the

Communist Party USA in 1927 and later an operative for the CentralIntelligence Agency (CIA), maintained that America was an exception to Karl Marx’s law of social revolution and crisis of the capitalist system. Lovestone maintained that American capitalism had become so strong and dynamic that it would not be subject to cyclical crises of capitalism. The 1929 Great Depression disproved this theory.

American populism: (See, Populism.)

American Revolution 1776:The American Revolution of 1776 was a new thing in history. The revolution established the political category of the citizen as state doctrine, rooted in the economic theory of the equality ofowners of capital, separation of Church and State and the division of government into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. To establish the societyof the citizen, the revolution hadto overthrow the power and authority of the British Empire. Thus, the revolution opened a new epoch in world history with its war of national liberation againstBritish imperialism.

The Thirteen Colonies of America rejected the governance of the British Parliament and later the British monarchy itself. The colonies rejected the authority ofthe Parliament to govern them without representation and

expelled all royal officials. By 1774, each colony had established a Provincial Congress, or some equivalent governmental institution, to form individual self-governing geographic states. Through representatives sent in 1775 to the Second Continental Congress, they joined together to defend their respective self-governance and manage the armed conflict against the British (1775–83). Ultimately, the colonies collectively determined that the British monarchy, by actsof tyranny, could no longer legitimately claim their allegiance. They then cut ties with the British Empire in July 1776, when the Congress issued theDeclaration of Independence, rejecting the monarchy on behalf of a new vision for a new nation of citizens. The war ended with American victory in October 1781, followed by formal British abandonment of any claims to the United States with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

The cause of the Revolutionary Warwas independence, expressing 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 vision was statedin the Declaration of Independence: “all men are createdequal,” which did not refer to theslave, but was a militant rebuttalto the current political theory of

the day, the “Divine Right of Kings.”

Founded as a colony, America experienced no feudal economic relations. America was founded as a bourgeois country, with capitalistic slavery. The more clear-thinking visionaries understood that unless national liberation from England also emancipated the slaves, the revolution would have to be foughtout again and again until it achieved its stated goal. Slavery distorted everything the American Revolution said it stood for. Muchof the new government consisted ofslave owners’ interests and supporters of the slave system. One of the first acts of rebellionagainst England was that of colonists’ armed resistance to England’s interference with the slave trade. Friedrich Engels describes the Constitution, which resulted from the revolution:

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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch08.htm

Thus, the noble ideas and noble vision of 1776 were momentarily lost and buried under slaveholdinginterests, only to be 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.

American Revolution 2.0: Civil War(1861–1865)

The question of the principleof the American Civil War is answered by the battle sloganwith which the South broke the peace. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, declared in the Secession Congress that what essentially distinguished theConstitution newly hatched atMontgomery from the Constitution of Washington and Jefferson was that now for the first time slavery was recognized as an institution good in itself, and as the foundation of the whole state edifice, whereas the revolutionary fathers, men steeped in the prejudicesof the eighteenth century, had treated slavery as an evil imported from England and to be eliminated in the course of time (Karl Marx, London, October 20, 1861).http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/25.htm

The slave trade, with its shippingand manufacturing needs, made slavery an important component in the primitive accumulation of capital. Slavery as an institutionwas at the heart of the formation of the American state. Southern plantation slavery was a hybrid system. The slaves were slaves in the worst sense of the word. Theirmasters were bourgeois –- capitalists. Slavery plus capitalism condemned the slave to horrific exploitation for surplus value.

The interests of the Southern slave-owning class were protected in the very fabric of the Constitution itself. Southern slaveholders controlled the presidency of the United States for 41 of the first 50 years, with12 of the first 16 presidents being slave owners. Eighteen of 31Supreme Court justices were slaveholders in these years.

The Civil War was a continuation of the first American Revolution, becoming a revolutionary war of emancipation destroying the slave system. The Civil War overthrew aneconomic order that was commodity production based on the plantationsystem. Plantation slavery—the “peculiar institution”—was an economic order with a political and ideological superstructure. The slave state carried out the political will of the Slave Oligarchy.

The Civil War destroyed this society. It destroyed the two primary classes constituting the productive relations of the slave system, the slave and the slave master; it expropriated the primary wealth of the ruling class(the slave) without compensation and destroyed the Southern ruling class—Slave Oligarchy—as an economic and political force. By destroying the economic foundationof slavery and emancipating the slave and then destroying the Slave Oligarchy as a form of property relations, the Civil War can be classified as a genuine political revolution.

The Civil War remains the most traumatic event in American history. Every generation of American revolutionaries has had to answer anew the cause, path of development and outcome of the American Civil War.

The Republican Party was founded in the Northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists. Abraham Lincoln was the party’s presidential candidate in 1860, and won the election by a minorityvote of about four out of every ten ballots cast. Presidential candidate John Breckenridge split the votes cast against Lincoln, and this split allowed for Lincoln’s election as president.

Lincoln’s anti-slavery stance as astate senator and congressman werewell known by the slave oligarchy.The slave owners hated Lincoln.

There is no record of him receiving a single vote in the South. 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 proportionsof slaves in their populations, almost fifty percent.

The Confederate States of America (Confederacy) was formed February 1861 in Montgomery, Alabama. A total of eleven Southern slave states would declare their secession from the United States. The Confederacy’s attack on the Union Army in the Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–13, 1861) was thespark that ignited the Civil War. The cause of the Civil War was slavery, pure and simple. The Confederacy was formed to preserveand perpetuate the slave system, outside the Union framework.

Resolution of the conflict betweenthe Yankees (North) and the Confederacy (South) required military defeat of the Confederacy. The Confederacy wouldnot peacefully surrender, even though its cause was hopeless. Theindustrial revolution and industrial capitalism were destined to wipe out capitalist slavery as a force of history. This is so because the tractor andgeneral mechanization of agriculture destroyed the need formass inputs of human labor in agricultural production, includingslave labor. 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 anyways in 50 – 80 years.

The Confederacy could not be speedily defeated apart from emancipation of the slaves. The demand for emancipation of the slaves did not cause the Civil War, nor was the war fought over emancipation. Rather, emancipationarose during the course of fighting the Civil War. It arose from the struggle to preserve the Union and defeat the slaveholders’rebellion.

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 value production: cotton and tobacco in the South, industrial products and finance in the North.

What drove them apart were their antagonistic productive relations.Production relations are the laws defining property and the relations of people to property inthe process of production. In the North, these relations were free labor capitalism, or 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 differentdemands on government, paving the road to war.

The development of giant industrial enterprises and a new concentration of money called intoquestion the political dictatorship of 300,000 men - the Slave Power. Industrialism, more productive than manufacture, and most certainly more productive than slave production based on preindustrial means of production,caused the North to break its economic dependence upon, and comeinto political antagonism with, the South. The Northern states, manufacturing the necessities for the slave system, originally developed as an economic appendageto the plantation South. As America grew and its population increased, the North entered into a social-economic revolution from manufacturing to industry, with its own agricultural production offood to feed a growing class of industrial workers. Social-economic revolution calls 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 known as “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 populousin free, voting-age males, was constantly out-voted by the slave-owning South and its Northern supporters. The Southern-dominatedSenate, Supreme Court, and presidency refused to pass harbor,railroad, canal and tariff appropriations vital to industrialgrowth. 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.

The election of Abraham Lincoln aspresident caused the breakup of the Union. Lincoln campaigned against expanding slavery beyond the states in which it already existed. Commercial slavery, producing cotton and tobacco for the market, depleted the soil, causing an irresistible need to expand into fresh territory and new land. With Lincoln’s election,the core South seceded from the Union to show its resolve to preserve slavery as an expansionist economic, social, andpolitical institution. The goal ofthe Confederate States of America was to reorganize the entire

country, and eventually the entirehemisphere, based on slave labor. The North responded with a war to whip the South back into the Union. The Northern aim was to defeat the Slave Power, bring the South back into the Union and makethe South a dependency of industry, with or without slavery.

The Northern political establishment began to mobilize the people to defeat the Slave Power apart from emancipating the slave. Lincoln faced significant opposition to his anti-slavery policies from collaborators of theslave system in government, in thejuridical and military structure of the state and by the Northern working class, his political base of support.

Lincoln’s actions cannot be properly understood by analyzing them with the modern concept of racism. His greatness as a leader was his grasp of the thinking of the entire country and a sense of what was possible at a given moment. To emancipate the slaves required defeat of the Confederacy. To defeat the Confederacy required emancipation of the slaves and the support of the Northern working class. The Border States held the balance of power. By advocating gradual emancipation and colonization, Lincoln gradually won the North and some in the Border States overto emancipation, as the only way to save the Union. Any miscalculation could push the

Border States into the camp of theConfederacy.

Military necessity, including slaves’ leaving the plantations en masse with advances of the Northern Army into the Slave states, made emancipation an immediate issue. The shortest route to defeating the Slave Powerwas to strike at its economic and manpower 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 January1, 1863. None returned to the Union.

Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the Border States. Of the states that were exempted from the Proclamation, Maryland (1864), Missouri (1865), Tennessee (1865),and West Virginia (1865) outlawed slavery before the war ended. However, in Delaware and Kentucky,slavery continued to be legal (affecting about 40,000 slaves) until December 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified.

On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declaredthe freedom of 3.1 million of the nation’s four million slaves, and immediately freed fifty thousand of them, with the rest freed as Union armies advanced. The Emancipation Proclamation changed the political and social content

of the war, transforming the Northern Army into an army of emancipation. Emancipation kicked the economic legs from under the Southern economy, speeding up the South’s defeat.

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 underlyingSouthern plantation economy. The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution blocked the return of chattel slavery and its political institutions.

Then American Revolution 2.0 beganReconstruction of the plantation South, based on the bourgeois democratic republic, and the firstten amendments to the US Constitution. The bourgeois democratic republic is a form of the state upholding 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.

In the end, 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 and state: a nation—not a union of settler states—conceived

in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Defeat of the Politics of Reconstruction by the Counterrevolution

Suffering catastrophic military defeat, the Confederate commander General Lee surrendered to GeneralGrant at Appomattox Court House onApril 9, 1865, and President Lincoln was assassinated six days later. After the defeat of the Confederate States of America, the“irresistible conflict” shifted tothe political arena. The war endedwith proslavery president Andrew Johnson in office and all the Southern legislators who had resigned their seats showing up toclaim them. The old political South was trying to win politically what they had lost on the battlefield. The radical wing of the Republicans looked frantically to preserve the victory of the Civil War and reconstruct America on a new antislavery basis. Northern voterscould not affect Southern elections for representatives. Thefreeman had to be enfranchised to vote to oust the Southern fascistsand reactionaries.

The aim of Reconstruction was, on the one hand, politically to crushthe old Southern elite, and on theother hand, to contain the revolutionary forces unleashed by the Civil War. By 1875, both of these goals had been accomplished,

and Reconstruction came to an end.Between 1875 and 1890, the political scene was remapped. WallStreet financial imperialism wouldin the end dictate the politics ofReconstruction.

The interests of the Southern elite merged with those of the financial-industrial oligarchy, under the domination of Wall Street imperialism. The result wascounter-revolution in the core South and the world’s first fascist form of state power.

The counter-revolution in the South was the open terrorist dictatorship of finance-industrialcapital, Wall Street imperialism. America birthed fascism as a political form of state power, supporting and buttressing 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.

In the past two centuries, a political force constructed and funded by finance capital, which overthrew, and/or nullified a legal bourgeois democratic government, and the historically evolved forms of bourgeois republicanism, and substituted in its place, a form of rule that wasthe open terrorist dictatorship offinance capital, as a state form, was called fascist. In the past

such a political state was called fascism.

American Revolution 2.5: civil rights movementAmerican Revolution 2.5 refers to the modern civil rights movement, dated from the December 4, 1955, Montgomery Alabama bus boycott. Itis referred to as American Revolution 2.5 because it completed the goals of the Civil War (which is called American Revolution 2.0).

The Civil War was fought to preserve the Union by destroying the political hegemony of the slave oligarchy over the American state and government. In the course of the war emancipation of the slaves became a military and political necessity. The slaves were emancipated. The passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution created the political possibility of bringing the former slaves into American society as equals.

Equality would have meant that former Southern slaves and Northern blacks would develop along the same general path as thewhite majority with members of each class interacting with their members on a non-color factor basis. This relative equality within classes and strata was not realized by the Civil War. The counter-revolution brought to power a fascist form of governmentand state in the 1890s South, and on this basis all of America

remained segregated based on colorfor another eighty years.

Around 1940 a new stage in the industrial revolution began with the mechanization of the agriculture. Mechanization, the tractor, destroyed much of the need for labor in Southern agriculture. This rendered the system of sharecropping (peonage),with its chain gangs and armed bodies of men dedicated to keepingthe tiller of the land chained to the land, more or less superfluous. Mechanization of agriculture began the breakup of Southern neo-slavery, the sharecropping system with its debtslavery, forced labor, segregation, and set the conditionto challenge Southern fascist state rule on a new political foundation

“[S]lavery, real slavery, didn’t end until 1945” when mechanizationdestroyed the sharecropping systemby reducing labor in production and rendering the primitive tools of the sharecropper obsolete.(Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, page 402.)

Ultimately, mechanization forced eleven million laborers (five million black) off the land and into the Southern and Northern cities. Changes in the Southern economy set the stage for a massive push by blacks to enter the system as equals.The Southern political establishment, from local sheriffs to the halls of

Congress, was filled with men winning elections no black could vote in, and offices no black could run for. However, in states like Alabama, more whites than blacks were excluded from voting. Given these factors, what unfoldedwas a second edition of Reconstruction on a higher level.

Desegregation could not be won without new legislation reestablishing voting rights for blacks. The system of segregation was attacked by all classes, and millions took part in protests, mass uprisings and riots to changeAmerica. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. These acts were followed by the Fair Housing Act, affirmative action, penaltiesagainst businesses refusing to endsegregation, lawsuits against police departments and finally massive protest to open the political system to blacks.

As the new economy emerged in the 1980s, the civil rights movement, birthed on the basis of the color line and the fight against legal (Jim Crow-neo-slavery) segregation, began to decline. By the mid-1990s new class-color dynamics were taking shape, culminating in the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion, ignited by the videotaped beating of Rodney King and a jury finding the police innocent of any wrongdoings.

Black Americans remain at the bottom of the social and economic

ladder in America, relative to their white counterparts and this fact is proven by all statistics concerning living circumstances inAmerica. The social position of American blacks is carved into thearchitecture of the productive relations and nothing short of thetotal destruction of the capitalist system can promise evena glimmer of hope for emancipation.

American Revolution 3.0: Third American RevolutionThe Third American Revolution is occurring in an epoch of social revolution in a globalized world economy. The Third American Revolution is to break the power of mega-corporations, raise the proletariat to ruling class, and reorganize the economy on communallines, as the path to the emancipation of labor.

In contrast to the past century when the world completed its transition from agriculture to industry, social revolution today is the transition from industrial society to electronics, a society based on robotics, computers and biogenetics.

The banner of America’s First Revolution was, “No taxation without representation.” Today things are direr because millions have no jobs or wages that can be taxed. The largest mega-corporations are given tax breaks and represented. The people are taxed and not represented.

The Second Revolution was fought to preserve the Union and defeat the Confederates, and in the course of the war the slaves were emancipated. Today things are direr, with a huge section of the population pushed to the level of indentured servitude with millionsliving below the conditions of chattel slaves. As the robotic economy advances, the basis of thedemocratic state is eroded, with the capitalists and their minions deploying the rule of a fascist political state.

The Third American Revolution is to defeat the capitalist supremacy, break the power of the megacorps, raise the proletariat to ruling class and reorganize theeconomy on communal lines backed by proletariat supremacy. The Third American Revolution is for the emancipation of labor in all its manifestations and dimensions.

Anarchism:From the Greek words meaning “lackof authority” and “without government,” anarchism is an ideology and doctrine that arose in the middle of the nineteenth century (1800s). Anarchism advocates abolition of government control, the state, and all hierarchical structures as the condition for full social and political liberty. It contends that the state can be abolished ina single stroke by mass action, and that a cooperative society canbe organized based on autonomous

democratic organizations of the masses. When merged with syndicalism, employed workers in production are viewed as the foundation of the cooperative society.

The class origin of anarchism is the small property owner (petty bourgeoisie) and like minded intelligentsia of the 1800’s and 1900s. Anarchism was a protest against the rising bourgeois state, its juridical and moral platitudes that justify the ruin of the small producer by large scale industry (industrialism). Anarchism holds that “top down” reorganization of production and civic society as a whole, deploying institutional state power is inherently wrong, undemocratic and must be shunned because institutional power is hierarchical.

Differences between anarchism and Marxist-communism rest on several points of theory (science) and doctrine (practical politics): therole of the individual in history,conditions for the abolition of capitalism and transition to a newmode of production. Finally, thereremains a history of divergence concerning the conditions for abolition of the state.

Anarchism places a premium on pragmatism, believing that the “masses on their own” can come to adequate political conclusions based on practical experience. Marxist doctrine holds that the

role of an organization and network of revolutionaries is the decisive condition and element forthe education and development of class consciousness of the fighting leaders of the proletariat. Some Marxists hold the fundamental task of an organization of revolutionaries isas propagandists and abolitionistson the side of the proletariat.

Marxism contends that the old state has to be smashed. A new political state controlled by the revolutionary class has to be built and consolidated. Such a state is necessary to ensure the social power of the mega-corporation and the megacorp stateare broken and swept from history.Marxism holds that the state cannot be abolished by political fiat. Rather, the old state is shattered, and a new demilitarizedproletariat state is to be established devoid of corporate and private property interests. (See, State, withering away of thestate.)

Anarcho-syndicalism:Anarcho-syndicalism was a 20th-century ideology of industrialism.It viewed the individual relationship in material production and trade unions as themost important feature of the labor movement and/or labor’s mostimportant section. Anarcho-syndicalism viewed the conflict between “bosses and workers” as the essential meaning of class struggle. The general strike was

seen as the highest form of class struggle for anarcho-syndicalism, which held that trade unions and workers’ councils were the primaryinstrument for overthrowing capitalism and advancing to a communal mode of production.

Anarchism advocates for abolition of government and state as the practical solution to crisis of capitalism. Anarchism is the doctrine urging the abolitionof governmental restraints orof the government itself as the condition for full socialand political liberty. In theUSNA, anarchism arose from the petty bourgeoisie in its struggle against the robber barons. Early on, it united with syndicalism from the immigrant European workers tobecome 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 majorweapon of syndicalism is the general strike. http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf

Anarcho-syndicalism conceives of the trade unions as constituting the essence of the labor movement.The labor movement for Marxists is

the spontaneous movement of all who must sell their labor power for wages. The trade union movement is only one sector of thelabor movement, and not it most revolutionary.

Anarcho-syndicalism’s “bosses vs. workers” ideology and “class struggle trade unionism” politics,does not distinguish between contradiction and antagonism. Hence, every struggle between workers and bosses is viewed as transformative and containing the seeds of social and political revolution.

Social revolution only becomes possible when society is undergoing qualitative change, andnew classes enter into antagonism with the old classes connected to the old means of production. Before the appearance of qualitative change in the means ofproduction, the contradiction between worker and capitalist resulted in reforming the system and pushing development to its next stage of resolution. (See, Marxist Glossary Supplement, From Contradiction to Antagonism.)

The anarcho-syndicalist vision is workers’ councils as the medium for the overthrow of bourgeois property relations, and the building of economic socialism on a democratic basis. The ideological advocates of anarcho-syndicalism within Marxism collectively identify themselves as “council communists.” The

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) remains the most famous and well known model of this trend in America.

Marxist doctrine does not reject the general strike. Marxist doctrine envisions the revolutionary crisis as opening the path to power for the oppressed class. Marxist theory does not view the meaning of classstruggle as a conflict between “workers and bosses.” Conflict between “workers and bosses” drives the system through its stages of growth. Class struggle also involves antagonism between old and new classes and the society’s leap to a new mode of production.

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.

The last dying gasp of the anarcho-syndicalist movement was felt during the 1960s as the growth of the New Left. All that was new of the New Left was its slogan of participatory democracy in place of anarchist demands for doing away with the state, government and government restraints.

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-syndicalism and demand a new vision of a new kind of society.

Anarchy of capitalist production:Producing in competition for customers, without regard to the consuming capacity of the market and thus blindly producing things,is anarchy of capitalist production. Producing blindly and seeking to drive one’s competitorsfrom the market, creates a mass ofunsalable products and crises of overproduction. Anarchy of production is inherent to capitalist commodity production and is the result of bourgeois private 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 tosatisfy 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 sellhis commodity at all. Anarchyreigns in socialized production.

. . . . We have seen that theever-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 similarly compulsory law. ….

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.’

. . . . In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation endsin a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. Allthe laws of production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its apogee [peak]. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode ofexchange. (Frederick Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, III [Historical Materialism])http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

Antagonism:Antagonism is a mode of destruction, resolution and transition to a new quality. It isone of the two basic modes of change, and contradiction is the other. Antagonism replaces and destroys contradiction. The definition of antagonism as a modeof destruction and as transition to a new quality is new within Marxist dialectic.

Contradiction and antagonism are not the same. Contradiction is theunity and struggle of opposites internal to a thing and a process.Antagonism is a mode of destruction that, under certain

conditions, replaces and destroys contradiction. In society, what isdestroyed is the bond that held classes together. Fundamental to antagonism as a mode of destruction, is transition from one mode of production to another. To say that society moves in class antagonism means that class society transitions from an old mode of production to a new one through destruction of the old classes and old system.

Antagonism, classes: In class society, antagonism operates as a mode of destruction of old classes, old production relations and transition to a new economic order. Qualitative changes in the means of productionblock development and expansion ofthe system and halt its development on the old basis. New means of production destroy the old social organization of labor, tear society from its old foundations and compel reorganization around qualitatively new means of production. This mode of destruction is the meaning of antagonism.

The mode of destruction takes place dialectically.

New technology (the steam engine and the microchip) is applied to the production process, creating anew way of laboring. Those laboring in a new way constitute the beginning of a new form of class. The old classes at the

foundation of the old production relations begin to decay. The decay is not immediately visible because it is only at a certain quantitative stage of development of the new quality that the socialdisruption begins to grip large swaths of society.

The old classes begin to splinter and come apart. This coming apart of contradiction (polarization) isnot the result of the struggle between the two poles – such as serf and nobility. Layers of the old owning class (nobility), and the old working class (serf, handicraft and manufacturing worker) become part of the new laboring industrial class and the rising bourgeoisie. The bond that held the old classes together as exploiter and exploited is unraveled, as a new form of wealthinvades, disrupts and transforms the old property relations.

The antagonism (the mode of destruction) arises from private property relations rather than from the new means of production.

The new classes share no connection (contradictory relationship) with the old classesas the unity of production. For example, industrial workers, capitalist, serf and nobility do not constitute a contradiction. Industrial workers and capitalistsare the unity and conflict (contradiction) driving industrialproduction. Serf and nobility are the unity and conflict

(contradiction) driving feudal relations of production. These contradictions, industrial workersand capitalists on the one hand and serf and nobility on the otherhand, face each other in external collision. The life of the new contradiction, expressing new production forces, develops in external collision and destructionof the old form of property and the old classes. There is also further rupture (polarization) between serf and nobility as the rise of the new property relationsdestroys the old property basis ofthe old society. The rise to dominance of a new form of property based on new productive forces and the destruction of the old primary classes at the base ofthe old productive relations is how society moves in class antagonism rather than simply class struggle.

The mode of destruction (antagonism) is expressed as external collision, caused by phenomena existing outside the bond which connects the old primary classes together. Contradiction does not become antagonistic to itself. That is tosay, the serf does not and cannot overthrow the nobility. The bourgeoisie and proletariat overthrow the nobility and serf. Antagonism destroys and replaces contradiction.

Appropriation:Appropriation is the right and actof the ruling class owning the

wealth - surplus product and the surplus labor - of society. Every society founded on class antagonism is based on the ruling class ownership rights of the surplus product, which is used to maintain all the non-productive layers of society.

Appropriation and expropriation are not the same. Appropriation isa legal right of property owners. Expropriation is not. Expropriation describes the forcible seizure of property. The ruling class does not “expropriate” the surplus product of the working class. Rather, the surplus product is “appropriated.”

The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. (Karl Marx Capital Vol. 1.)

The ruling class appropriates the surplus products created by the laboring population in all societies rooted in class antagonism.(See, Surplus labor, Surplus product, Working class.)

Automation:The highest stage of mechanizationis the automation of production, which is the use of self-regulating automatic machines. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Where mechanizationprovided human operators with

machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements in production.

The essence of automation is production carried out with a minimum expenditure of physical labor based on the electromechanical process. Workersare increasingly freed from heavy labor, and their duties are chiefly relegated to supervisor and industrial caretaker of automatic machine cycles. Automation changes the workers’ labor and makes workers an appendage of the machine. The moreextensively automation is introduced, the more the labor of the worker approximates that of the technician.

Bank:The purpose of banks is to serve as a safe haven for money, acting as middlemen in the making of loans (credit) and payment of all kinds to the state, small and large-scale producers, and individual consumers.

Banks become the financing agency of capitalism, establishing a credit system that makes possible the wide sale, purchase, and circulation of commodities. These activities expand the amount of money in circulation, thus providing essential services to the functioning of capitalism.

Modern computers make possible a new nonbank financial system, altering the role and function of banks. This new system is an interlocking and interactive infrastructure made possible by the electronic revolution. The newfinancial system is not based in commodity production, with the capitalist appropriation of surplus products. The new financial system functions based on notional value.

In the context of a new financial architecture, the new form of finance capital becomes speculative finance. These financial institutions exist outside the law system of value production and evolve in antagonism with labor-capital relations.

Base and Superstructure:Base refers to the economic foundation of society, the economic basis of society. The economy is essentially production and distribution, and how people relate to one another in the process of production. Economic class is delineated by who are owners and non-owners of means of production. The economy and property rights make up the base of society.

Superstructure refers to somethingabove, built upon, and reacting toa foundation, to the base.

The superstructure is the totality of the ideological

relations, views, and institutions; it includes lawand the state, as well as morality, religion, philosophy, art, and the political and legal forms of consciousness and the institutions corresponding tothem. (Base and Superstructure.)http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Base+and+superstructure

On an economic base arise a politicalstate (an organization of violencethat is the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonism), a legal system, social institutions, and definite ideas about the existing society and humanity’s relationship to nature. These elements make up thesuperstructure, which exists in correspondence with the economic base, reacting to its development,providing assistance one moment and acting as a drag at another moment. This relationship of social and material institutions to the economy is referred to as “base and superstructure.”

The categories of basis and superstructure are set up in socio-philosophical theory inorder to concretize the materialist conception of thestructure of society and to establish cause-and-effect relations in social life. …. [T]he principal idea of the materialist understanding of

history is that social relations are divided into material and ideological, andthe latter are merely a superstructure over the former. The basis is the totality of production relations constituting society’s economic structure which determines the system of the ideological forms of men’s social life. Superstructure is taken to mean the ensemble of ideas and ideological relations as well as establishments and organizations (the state, political parties, trade unions, etc.) in which these ideas and relations are embodied and which are characteristic of the given society.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Being:Being is a philosophic categoryexpressing that which exists.

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 thatexists: 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. Allthe 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 invarious ways: it could be regarded as something primaryand determinant or as something reflecting a different existential essenceinaccessible 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.

…. The antithesis of being orsomething is nothing. All theconcrete forms of being, suchas stars or plants or animals, emerge as it were out of nonbeing and become actual, present being. But the being of that, which is, however long it endures,

comes to an end and returns to nonbeing, losing the givenform of existence. The dialectical aspect here is that the transition to nonbeing is destruction of a given form of being and its transformation into a different form. The emergenceof a given form of being is aresult of the transition fromone form of being into another. Nonbeing is a relative concept: there is nononbeing in an absolute sense. (A. Spirkin, Fundamentals

of Philosophy.)http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Bolsheviks and Bolshevism:Bolshevik is Russian for “majority.” Supporters of V.I. Lenin at the 1903 Second Congress of Russian Social Democratic LaborParty were in the majority and thus called themselves “Bolsheviks.” Bolshevism began as a political trend in 1903 and in 1912 constituted itself as a separate political party.

On the one hand, Bolshevism arose in 1903 on a very firm foundation of Marxist theory.

. . . . Russia achieved Marxism -– the only correct revolutionary theory –- through the agony she experienced in the course of half a century of

unparalleled torment and sacrifice, of unparalleled revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, devoted searching, study, practical trial, disappointment, verification, and comparison with European experience. Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism,revolutionary Russia, in the second half of the nineteenthcentury, acquired a wealth ofinternational links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement,such as no other country possessed.

On the other hand, Bolshevism, which had arisen on this granite foundation oftheory, went through fifteen years of practical history (1903-17) unequalled anywherein the world in its wealth ofexperience. During those fifteen years, no other country knew anything even approximating to that revolutionary experience, that rapid and varied succession of different formsof the movement –- legal and illegal, peaceful and stormy,underground and open, local circles and mass movements, and parliamentary and terrorist forms. In no other country has there been concentrated, in so brief a period, such a wealth of forms, shades, and methods of

struggle of all classes of modern society, a struggle which, owing to the backwardness of the country and the severity of the tsarist yoke, matured with exceptional rapidity, and assimilated most eagerly and successfully the appropriate ‘last word’ of American and European political experience. (Vladimir Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch02.htm

The book, History of the CommunistParty Soviet Union (Bolshevik) 1939, with its brief summary at the end of each chapter, remains the greatest historical expositionof the origin, history and evolution of Bolshevism. Here is the benchmark text, by which everybook on Bolshevism can be measuredand judged. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/index.htm (See, Leninism.)

Bourgeois and Bourgeoisie:

The class of big capitalists,who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistence and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials

necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Bourgeois is a French term to describe a class of property owners created based on capitalistcommodity production. Bourgeoisie describes an economic and social class created under feudalism. It initially described a class of freemen and intermediaries existing as a middle class betweenthe feudal lord and the serf. As society changed qualitatively, this middle class under feudalism became the capitalist class. The transformation of the primary formof private property from land to money, the growth of commodity exchange and finally the industrial revolution set the stage for transformation of the bourgeoisie into the modern 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 withthe 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 kingdomof free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward, thecapitalist mode of productioncould develop in freedom. (Frederick Engels, Socialism:Utopian and Scientific.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

Bourgeois revolution:The political transition that established the dominance of the capitalist (bourgeois) mode of production took place through bourgeois revolutions, which triumphed over feudalism and pre-feudal modes of production and social structures. They are calledbourgeois revolutions by Marxists because they established the bourgeoisie (capitalists) as the new ruling class, which created a bourgeois political state and bourgeois superstructure.

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 ofthe bourgeois (capitalist) mode ofcommodity production as the new dominant productive relation.

The revolutionizing of production in England’s manufactories during the mid-1750s onward (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 a bourgeois democratic revolution, fought out as a revolutionary war for national independence. America freed itselffrom colonial England, establishedthe 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.

The political state of the bourgeoisie is a democratic state which abolished the status of serf, subject and slave.

During the past century, bourgeoisdemocratic revolutions broke out in the colonies of imperialism as struggles for national emancipation. The historic basis of America’s bourgeois republican form of democratic state was broadand widespread land ownership in private property, commercial enterprise and home ownership.

Bureaucracy:Bureaucracy is a system of class rule. It is a system of administration of things and people. Its origin is in a stage of development of the division of labor, where private property has made its appearance and became entrenched. Bureaucracy, especially as part of government, state, and corporations, divides work into specific categories carried out by special departmentsof workers trained in specialized functions.

The forms of bureaucracy havechanged over the course of history in conjunction with changes in exploitative social and economic formations. The rudiments of bureaucracy arose at the sametime that a realm of government administration became set apart in the slaveholding states of the ancient East. During this period the most highly developed bureaucracy was thesystem of rule in China. Complex bureaucratic systems of governing existed in the Roman Empire and Byzantium. During the Middle Ages the throne and the church, headedby the papal curia, had bureaucratic apparatus in thefeudal states of Western Europe. The consolidation of royal power and absolutism was accompanied by the growthof bureaucracy.

As capitalism developed and the bourgeoisie acquired power in the government, the bureaucratic regime became firmly established in the realm of political life. The degree of bureaucratization of political life in various countries was influenced to an enormous extent by their sociopolitical traditions; the formation of centralized feudal states and absolutism served as historical basis for the formation of the bourgeois bureaucratic machinery of state power. This was the case in Europe in the 19th century; by contrast, in the USA, for example, a bourgeois democratic system arose in a “pure” form and for a while prevented the universal development of bureaucracy inthe country’s political life.

Whereas in pre-capitalist formations bureaucracy existed primarily as a form of political organization, inthe period of the ascendancy of capitalist relations it has also become the form of organization of economic life. The transition from theera of free competition to monopolistic capitalism brought the emergence of bureaucracy into the economicsphere. With the development of state monopolistic capitalism, bureaucracy

became the universal form of bourgeois social organization, including the monopolies as well as variouskinds of voluntary organizations. . . . .

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 psychologicaland 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 socialorganization.

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Bureaucracy)

The bureau system and bureaucracy reached their highest stage of development during the epoch of industrialization. Revolution in the productive forces destroys oldclasses and old social organization of labor, changing the technology basis of society and creating more efficient ways of administration.

The electronic revolution and robotic economy create the condition for destroying the division of labor, for overthrowing private property and ridding human existence of the social power of bureaucracy.

Cadre:

Literally a frame or framework. Cadres are those members on whom the Communistparty, throughout its variousunits of organization, can mainly depend to carry forward its policy; they are a living framework which mustbe 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. (Bold in orig.)(Marxist Glossary by L. HarryGould page 17, Sydney, June 1946. Reprinted by Proletarian Publishers circa 1974.)

Capital:Capital is an historically evolvedsocial power. It is a relationshipbetween people and classes, ratherthan objects. It is ownership of the means of production and money-capital, which dominates the productive life of society and theindividual. It is a social

organization of labor driven by the law of value.

Capital also is a social relation of production. It isa 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 newproduction, 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 rawmaterials, not only as material products; it consists just as much of exchange values. All productsof 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 everysum 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. (Karl Marx Wage Labour and Capital.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch05.htm

Capitalism:Capitalism is an interlocking system of buying and selling commodities based on capitalist private property in the means of production and exploitation of wage labor. Capitalism rests exclusively on competition betweenthe laborers for wages. It is a system where human labor appears

on the market as the commodity labor power, which is bought and sold alongside every other commodity. Having no means of production of their own, the laborers as a class of wage earners, must sell their labor ability to the owners of production for wagesor starve.

The workers are paid a sum that isless than the value they create. The value created over and above what is paid to the worker is surplus value, the source of capitalist profits in commodity production. The source of capitalist profits in production is the unpaid labor of the employee.

The essential feature of capitalism consists in the production of surplus-value on an ever-increasing scale and the appropriation of it by the capitalists.

The process of production, considered on the one hand asthe unity of the labor-process and the process of creating value, is productionof commodities; considered onthe other hand as the unity of the labor-process and the process of producing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production, or capitalist production of commodities.

Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Part III: The Productionof Absolute Surplus-Valuehttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm

Capitalism achieves dominance and universality as a distinct mode ofproduction based on the rise, development and peaking of the industrial revolution. With the establishment of its dominance, the capitalist class creates its own specific political, legal, educational, ideological, and other social institutions. These institutions constitute the superstructure.

Category:

In philosophy, categories areextremely general, fundamental concepts reflecting the most essential, law-governed connections and relationshipsof reality. Categories are the forms and stable organizing principles of the thought process and, as such,they reproduce the propertiesand relations of existence inglobal and most concentrated form.

Categories are the result of generalization, of the intellectual synthesis of theachievements of science and socio-historical practice andare, therefore, the key points of cognition, the

moments when thought grasps the essence of things. This is the starting-point for theanalysis 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, inthe process of history the content, role and status of the categories change and newcategories (system, structure, for example) arise.http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02.html#ch02-s01

Causality: cause and effect, law, and law system.Causality is the connections and interactions between one event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is the result of the first. From the standpoint of dialectics,causality does not mean a mechanical cause and effect, with one body acting upon another. Causality is at the heart of philosophic materialism. It is theunderstanding that there is a cause for everything, every cause becomes an effect, and every effect becomes a cause.

In materialist dialectics, cause and effect describe a sequence in time, where cause comes before

effect. Cause and effect merge, interpenetrate: effect becomes (isalso) cause, and cause becomes (isalso) effect. That is to say, cause is actually “cause-effect” and effect is “effect-cause,” in aworld where the environment of onething merges with and impacts the environment of other things. Also,one cause may have multiple effects, and effects may be the result of multiple interacting causes (which is, in fact, the general rule).

And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soonas we consider the individualcases 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, sothat what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.(Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877, Introduction.)https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/introduction.htm

In dialectics, connections are a special kind of relation between things. This relation is where onething is dependent upon another thing, and this dependence is the

connection. Laws are the necessaryconnections between things, makingthem what they are. The totality of the laws describing the connections is a law system. Some laws are general to all things of the same quality, for instance, society. Every kind of society hasthings in common, such as means ofproduction, social organization oflabor, a certain stage of technology and, of course, human beings whose wills shape society. Karl Marx discovered the general law system of connections -– causality -– driving transition from one mode of production to another.

The concept of causality in its relation to the principles of universal connection and development. The concepts of cause and effect arise on the borderline between the principles of universal connection and development. On the one hand, causality isdefined, in terms of the principle of universal connection, as one of the types of connections, namely as genetic connectedness of all phenomena, in which one phenomenon (the cause) gives rise, under definite conditions, to another (the effect or consequence). On the other hand, from the standpoint of the principle of development, causality is defined as follows: any change, to say nothing of

development, i.e. change towards a new quality, has its cause and consequence.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Causality describes routine interactions enabling processes tofunction (for example, respirationin the human body or production and circulation in the economy). Causality describes how things change from one quality to another. Causality allows us 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 causalityand everything in human activity, it is the human mind and the human will that is the determining factor. That does not mean that humanbeings 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 humanbeings think and what they are prepared to sacrifice andstruggle for.“Causality and Human Will,” March-April Rally Comrades! Vol. 22 Ed 2.http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/causality-and-human-will/(See, Social revolution.)

Cause and vision in revolutionary change:Cause is motivation or the reason something happens. Vision is a common idea of what could happen as the result of a cause. Cause inspires a mass of people to fightand strive for a goal. Vision informs them what the desired outcome of the fight should be.

Each revolution passes through stages, creating the conditions for the next revolution. One side to revolution is described as objective: the economic side driven by qualitative changes in the means of production and the stage-by-stage development of the new means. The other is its subjective side: its political goals, the mobilizing, inspiring vision arising from new conditionsof production.

At each stage of the revolution, the subjective factor—the revolutionaries—must complete the specific tasks presented by their

stage of development. The two sides are interactive, feeding into each other. The objective side of a successful political revolution achieves its cause by sweeping away the social and political superstructure of the old social order and constructing a new social and political superstructure as the condition for further development of new means of production, new classes and the new productive relations.

The vision of one revolution becomes the cause of the next.

Change: (See, Causality, Qualitative change, Quantitative change.)

Chauvinism:Chauvinism, that is, national chauvinism, is the “national idea”and bourgeois patriotism in the epoch of capitalist production relations. Chauvinist ideology justifies oppression and exploitation by one nation, oppressing peoples, or one political state over nonsovereign peoples, nations, and defeated political states.

Chauvinism declares that one nation or one people is superior to another, ordained by God, biological necessity or heredity to rule and control the wealth of society and earth as ruler over others. Chauvinism does away with class outlooks and class interest and substitutes the national bourgeois imperialist outlook.

American exceptionalism is the ideological foundation of Americannational chauvinism.(See, White chauvinism.)

Citizen:Citizen is a political status of individuals, social groups and classes. Before being a citizen became a general status in bourgeois society, the laboring masses (working classes) were classified and treated as subjects, slaves, and serfs. The slave was property owned by another human being, and the serf was chained to the land and landlord as a subject.

The universal status of citizen arose during a certain stage in the development of the productive forces—the industrial revolution. Industrialism required free individuals with the right to selltheir labor ability and engage in commodity exchange free of the political constraints of subjects,slaves, and serfs.

With the coming of capitalist society, free individuals – citizens – competed for wages in anew system of commodity production. The old society, its institutions and the mediaeval social pattern, chained the population to slavery and serfdom and prevented free competition. The bourgeois revolutions created a new society, based on the capitalist mode of production, thecitizen and citizens’ rights (political liberty).

The Napoleonic Code legitimized the concept of equality before the law, for all individual citizens and granted the state total sovereign authority by law over its subjects, a totalitythat had not been enjoyed by the sovereign under feudalism. The limits of sovereign authority had been strictly prescribed by reciprocal feudal rites, the glue which held medieval society together. In France, the pre-Revolution socio-political organizational structure of ‘three estates of the realm’, each with its separate legal systems, was superseded by the theory of asociety composed of legally equal citizens operating under the Napoleonic Code. The rigid structure of estates in medieval society gave way to a less rigid structure of socio-economic classes through the legal order of the Napoleonic Code.http://henryckliu.com/page248.html

Class:

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 theirrole 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 whichcan appropriate the labor of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy (Lenin). http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/28.htm

The origin of classes is private property. Class is based on property rights as owners and non-owners of means of production and the right to deploy labor and appropriate the surplus product. Class is an economic and politicalphenomenon, rather than a subjective form of consciousness or social rating.

The cause of the general form of classes is the stage of development of productive forces, the division of labor and propertyrelations. In antiquity, the general form of the working class is based on hand work (handicraft). As means of production developed and evolved into more complex tools and machines, a manufacturing form of working class developed. The manufacturing workers and all the layers of society intertwined intothe system of production

constituted the social organization of labor. The industrial revolution birthed the industrial form of the working class, expressing a new industrial social organization of labor.

Today’s electronics revolution, with its computers, robotics and additive production processes, destroys the industrial form of classand creates an electronic form of class, deploying the new means of production. Under capitalism, robotics shuts out billions of proletarians from the production process, consigns hundreds of million to life at the margin of capitalist society and destroys industrialism in all forms. The growing mass of destitute proletarians is a new class.

On the one hand robotics displacedthe industrial working class with an electronic form of working class. On the other hand, there isa new destitute proletariat increasingly pushed out of civic society and living on the margin. This new class or precariat, is birthed in antagonism with all forms of private property and develops in external collision with capitalist society.

Corresponding to the new class of proletarians is a new form of capitalist class whose wealth is detached from private property, surplus value production and outside the value relation.

Class consciousness:

Consciousness is conscious existence, and conscious existencerequires elements of science and ascientific understanding of the world in which we live. Class consciousness is an understanding by the proletariat, most certainlyits leading fighting section, of being a single class globally and that its social and economic problems can only be solved by transfer of political power to it,becoming the new ruling class in society. Only by the proletariat taking control of state and publicinstitutions, abolishing private ownership of means of production and reorganizing distribution based on need, can society and theearth can be saved.

The revolutionaries’ responsibility is to introduce newideas based on the science of society and a plausible vision of a new society. The ideas and vision are new because they do notarise spontaneously on the basis of bourgeois production relations.The new ideas arise based on the stage of development of the productive forces which each new generation encounters.

The only ideology that arises spontaneously is the ideology of reforms, that is, fighting within the system. Spontaneous awareness is social consciousness and includes an embryonic sense of group identity and common interests or of who the enemy is, such as 99% vs. 1%.

Politics of qualitative change (the struggle for power) requires a vision of the reorganization of society on a new foundation, and theoretical concepts have to be brought into the struggle from theoutside by revolutionaries educated in the science of society. These new ideas and new vision are products of the analytical and imaginative power of the human mind.

Class consciousness and communist consciousness are counter posed tothe doctrine of spontaneity. The definitive debate over class consciousness (communist consciousness) and spontaneity of the masses was answered by V.I. Lenin in 1902 with his publicationof “What Is To Be Done?” (See, Spontaneity.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/

Class struggle:Class struggle is the struggle forpolitical power. It is a consciousassertion of will by the fighting section of a class and its foremost political representativesto 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 ofa 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 ofit. 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 thatclass.

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 strugglebecome a class struggle.

Every class struggle is a political struggle” —these famous words of Marx are not to be understood to mean thatany struggle of workers

against employers must alwaysbe a political struggle. Theymust be understood to mean that the struggle of the workers against, the capitalists inevitably becomes a political struggle insofar as it becomes a classstruggle. It is the task of the (Communists) by organizing the workers, by conducting propaganda and agitation among them, to turntheir spontaneous struggle against their oppressors intothe struggle of the whole class, into the struggle of adefinite political party for definite political and socialist ideals. This is something that cannot be achieved by local activity alone.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/articles/arg3oit.htm

Colony:A colony is an area, country, nation and/or non-sovereign peoplesubjugated and governed directly by an imperialist state. The direct colony is part of the closed colonial system. This system was distinguished by the stationing of the army of imperialaggression in the subjugated area and the reduction of the non-sovereign peoples to second-class citizens. In the direct colony model, the colonials lack the political rights of citizens.

Neocolony: The neocolony is defined by financial dependence upon a former direct colonizer. The neocolony differs from the direct colony. The latter is defined by the stationing of troops and garrisons by the imperial colonizing state as rulerof the colonials and political exclusion of the colonials from government and state, in their ownlands. The neocolony was the last stage of imperial bondage based onmonopoly capital. With the rise ofspeculative finance, the neocolonyleft the orbit of its historical colonizer and became open to American-led world speculative finance.

The horrific slaughter of World War II weakened the imperialarmies of the British, French, Dutch, Japanese, Portuguese, and Italian colonial empires, setting the condition for destruction of the worldwide direct colonial system. Neocolonial states emergedas newly independent states, each economically tied to and financially dependent upon its former direct colonizer.

Semicolony:A semicolony is a country in

political upheaval and transition,seeking to break the direct colonial relationship, with the domestic democratic forces having gained control of the state. It isa semicolony because the country remains 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-WWII era.

While a handful of colonies still exists, society today no longer consists of the old colonial system of the past era of monopolycapitalism. Asia, Africa and LatinAmerican have been fundamentally decolonized. The terms “colony,” “neocolony,” and “semicolony” are bound up with the direct colonial system described in Lenin’s “Imperialism, the Highest Stage ofCapitalism,” and no longer convey the new reality of a globalized world market.

Color factor, color line:The color factor in American history is the historically evolved privileged social positionof white people, built into the architecture of the base and superstructure. The color factor is not ideology, but a system of privilege. This system of privilege enforces a lower social status on the non-white, non-European people of the world, relative to those designated “white” in American society and much of the world market. The color factor is an economic factorbased on skin color, which originated in new world slavery, the primitive accumulation of capital and New World conquest andcolonization.

As an economic factor, the color line was long ago built into the architecture of the productive relations and the political-ideological superstructure and appears in everyday life as the color line. The system enforcing the color line, whether in America, United Kingdom or Russia is white supremacy. White supremacy is a form of capitalist rule. It is an infrastructure buttressing social bribery (privilege) of white people of allclasses. White supremacy prevents unity of the world proletariat. The ideology justifying the systemof white supremacy is white racism.

An article by Frederick Douglass entitled “The Color Line” was published in the North American Review in 1881. The phrase gained fame after W. E. B. Du Bois’ repeated use of it in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. DuBois wrote, “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”

Comintern (Third Communist International): (See, International.)

Commodity:A commodity is a product created to be sold (exchanged) rather thandirectly consumed by the producer.A commodity is, in the first place, a thing that satisfies a human want; in the second place, it can be exchanged for another commodity, based on the socially

necessary labor in it. The utilityof a commodity makes it a use-value. Exchange value (or, simply,value) is the socially necessary amount of labor in a commodity. (See, Value, Use value.)

Commodities are exchanged based onwhat they have in common, that is,the amount of socially necessary labor in them. Commodity production is ancient, having existed long before the capitalistsystem. However, a social system based on value production arises only with capitalism. The capitalist mode of commodity production is a value-producing system or commodity production at its highest stage.

Commodity fetishism: A fetish is a belief that objects (things)—in this case commodities—possess mysterious and magical power. The fetish that attaches itself to commodity production means the commodity form of products, their production for exchange, rather than human needs,masks the connections (social relationships) between people carrying out a division of labor in society. In a capitalist economy, individuals in productionconnect with each other through the market relation.

Since the producers do not come into social contact witheach other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labor does

not show itself except in theact of exchange. In other words the labor of the individual asserts itself as a part of the labor of society, only by means of therelations which the act of exchange establishes directlybetween the products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers. To thelatter, therefore, the relations connecting the labor of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things (Marx, Capital, Volume I).http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4

Communism: Communism is a spontaneous movement to do away with class privilege, exploitation, politicaloppression and the division of labor that sustains inequality. Since the overthrow of matriarchy and the rise of private property and the state, sections of all societies on earth have striven toattain a communal (communist) way of life that lessens and does awaywith privation. Today, there are ideological trends within communism -- doctrines and ideologies, religious and secular -- whose general goal or vision isa world of peace, justice,

equality, sisterhood and brotherhood.

Communism is a general vision of the way the world should be and a social movement to achieve that goal.

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” (Karl Marx. The German Ideology, 1845, [5. Development of the ProductiveForces as a Material Premise of Communism].)https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm

Communist, economy:Communist economy is production and distribution of social products based on socially necessary needs rather than private profit. The general 20th century Marxist description of communist economy was an economic system where means of production would be owned in common rather than by individuals, corporations or the state. Communist economy was envisioned as production and distribution based on the principle, “from each according to

their ability, to each according to their needs.”

Most of human history was lived under primitive communism with a low level of technology, the absence of a division of labor andthe need to pull together for survival in nature. 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, effectively destroying the division of labor for much of humanity. Once again the absence and destruction of thedivision of labor make communal life and society possible.

Communist economy differs from socialist economy. Socialist economy grew out of industrialism and its three great classes: proletarians, bourgeoisie, and peasants (farmers). Distribution of non-means of production (consumer items) was based on labor contribution rather than according to needs.

Communist International: (see, International Communist Organizations.)

Communist Manifesto:Affectionately called “the Manifesto,” the “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, is the greatest programmatic doctrine of scientific communism ever written. It is also the first

published general view of the meaning of the materialist conception of history, creation ofnew economic classes, the class struggle and society moving in class antagonism. The basic ideas of Chapter One of the Manifesto are summarized here.

Frederick Engels explains the origin of the name “Communist Manifesto,” in the 1888 preface tothe English edition.

Yet, when 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 inFrance, and of Weitling in Germany. Thus, in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the 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 whichof the two names we must take. Moreover, we have, eversince, been far from repudiating it.

Marx and Engels were eyewitnesses to a social and political revolution from agrarian society to machine-dominated (industrial) society. This social revolution would go on to be called the industrial revolution. The political revolutions would be called the bourgeois democratic (capitalist) revolutions.

The basic thought running through the Manifesto — that economic production, and the structure of society of everyhistorical epoch necessarily arising there from, constitute the foundation forthe 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 ofclass struggles, of strugglesbetween exploited and exploiting, between dominatedand 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 fromthe class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing thewhole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles — this basic thought belongs solely and exclusively to Marx.Frederick Engels June 28, 1883, Londonhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm

Seven prefaces were added to the Manifesto and cover 20 years in the development of large-scale industry and growth of the industrial working class. These prefaces themselves are worthy of study after reading the Manifesto itself. Marx and Engels observed the rise of new classes created bythe industrial revolution. These new classes constituted the foundation of a new mode of production Marx called the bourgeois mode of commodity production, which we know as capitalism.

Marx states what the two basic classes under capitalism are:

Chapter One: Bourgeois and Proletarians [1]

Later Engels added definitions of these terms.

Fn 1. By bourgeoisie is meantthe 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 productionof their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition.]

Marx began the actual text by explaining the world history ofclass struggles.

The history of all hitherto existing society [2] is the history of class struggles.

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, societybegins 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.]

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, afight 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 theseclasses, again, subordinate gradations.

Marx opens the narrative with the Manifesto’s most famous line, “Thehistory of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” The Manifesto’s statement proclaiming the history of all existing societies is the history of class struggles, means:

1. since the division of societyinto economic classes, in each era oppressor and oppressed have been locked infierce combat with each other. As each era draws to an end, there is also the struggle between new classes

created by new means of production and the old classes connected to the old means of production

2. the history of these class struggles is the flesh and blood that drives society from one quantitative stage of development to another andfrom one mode of production to another.

3. this class struggle leads to a new kind of society or results in the mutual destruction of both primary classes and destruction of the existing society.

Marx did not discover the existence of economic classes. Several years after publishing theManifesto, Marx in a March 1852 letter explained his contribution to clarifying the class struggle.

Now as for myself, I do not claim to have discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was 1. to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain 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 constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society. Ignorant louts . . . who deny not onlythe struggle but the very existence of classes, only demonstrate that, for all their bloodthirsty, mock-humanist yelping, they regardthe social conditions in which the bourgeoisie is dominant as the final product, the non plus ultra (highest point) of history, and that they themselves are simply the servants of the bourgeoisie, a servitude which is the more revolting, the less capable are the louts of grasping the very greatness and transient necessity of the bourgeois regime itself.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05.htm

Rather than the discovery of classes and class struggles, Karl Marx discovered the law system that impels society to transition from one mode of production to thenext.

The Manifesto describes how and why society changed from one mode of producing based on agrarian relations and the manual labor system to a new mode of productionbased on new technology, new means

of laboring and new industrial relations of production. Marx describes how qualitative changes in the means of production create new classes and compels society toreorganize around the new means ofproduction. .

The old classes were already struggling before Marx and Engels were born. The new classes corresponding to the new productive forces, collectively called the industrial revolution, expressed a different kind of classes in struggle. The new industrial classes were birthed inantagonism to the old social order. Antagonism is a mode of destruction. Thus, the destructionof the old classes of agrarian society, along with their old means of production was the necessary condition for the growthof the new means of production andnew classes called the bourgeoisieand the industrial working class.

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, andnew 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, intotwo 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, therounding 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 industrialproduction was monopolized byclosed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. Themanufacturing system took itsplace. The guild-masters werepushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between thedifferent corporate guilds vanished in the face of

division of labor in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand everrising. 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 handeddown 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, servingeither the semi-feudal or theabsolute 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. Theexecutive of the modern stateis but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

Marx spoke of society “splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and

Proletariat,” 165 years ago while most of the earth was still dominated by agrarian relations. Today, this polarity between bourgeois private property and proletariat is established, acute in all countries of a world tied together as never before into a single global economy.

Marx and Engels 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 theworkers 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 wascarried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old societyfurther, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first withthe 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 conditionsof 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 ofdissolution 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 classthat 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 otherclasses decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special andessential product.

The industrial form of the workingclass is negated by the electronicrevolution. A new form of the working class corresponding to electronics is created by the new technology regime. Also created are new classes, a new form of capitalist in the form of speculative finance and a new proletariat, a communist class, shut out of production and shut out of the civic society of the mega-corporations.

The Manifesto describes the politics of the communists fighting in their own country as the basis of 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 allsettle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most generalphases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civilwar, 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.

Finally, Chapter One outlines the general progression of the bourgeois mode of commodity production, which leads the systemto a point where it can no longer assure the existence of its wage laborers.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as wehave 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, thatthe bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling classin society, and to impose itsconditions 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 existenceis 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

Concentration and centralization of capital:

The concentration of capital means the growth in the size of capital as a result of theaccumulation of surplus-valueobtained in the given enterprise. The capitalist becomes, through investing inhis enterprise part of the surplus value which he has appropriated, the owner of anever 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 standup 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), thelarge-scale factory-owner increases the amount of capital in his possession. Theunion of many capitals into one is effected also by the forming of joint-stock companies, etc.

(Political Economy, A Textbookissued 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

Concentration and centralization of capital is the process that is the general law of capitalist accumulation. It mean the concentrating of wealth in the hands of one-percent of the one-percent; the concentration of production and distribution into mega-corporations at one extreme and poverty and destitution for the vast majority of humanity.

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 and art 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 abstractlabor makes the commodity exchangeable for other commodities, a value.

Connection:

Connection is usually definedas a deep-seated attributive property of matter, consisting in the fact that all objects and phenomena arelinked by infinitely varied interdependence and various relations with each other. Inother words, connection is a general expression of dependence among phenomena, areflection of the interdependence of their existence and development. Asfor 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.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Consciousness (class):Class consciousness is an understanding by the proletariat, most certainly its leading

fighting section, of being a single class globally and that itssocial and economic problems can only be solved by transferring political power to it, becoming the new ruling class in society. Only by the proletariat becoming the ruling party of state and public institutions, abolishing private ownership of means of production, and reorganizing distribution based on socially necessary needs, rather than profits, can society and the earthbe saved.

Content:Content in its philosophic meaningis the determining quality of a thing as it exists in its interactivity and interrelatednesswith other thing 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. Incomplex objects content is many-sided, effectually passing into infinity, for the properties of the objectpertaining to its content are infinite: they are variously manifested depending on the other objects with which the givenone 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 bedefined 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 ofcontent 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, …. (Ital. in orig.)http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Establishing the content of phenomena makes it possible to more deeply grasp development, to distinguish between what is dying and what is emerging and make an educated estimate of what is destined to triumph over the old.

Once it is determined what the oldforms of struggle are and what is new and arising, revolutionaries can chart a line of march based onthat which is rising and developing.

Today, transformation from industrialism requiring human labor to operate gigantic means ofindustrial production to computer-controlled robotic production requiring little or no human laboris the determining content of our time.

Content and form:Content in its philosophic meaningis the determining quality of a thing as it exists in its interactivity and interrelatednesswith other thing in its environment.

…. Having thus defined content as the identity of the components of the whole with the whole itself, let usnow 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 ofan object is expressed in thecategory 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 categoryof 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, thelatter being interpreted herenot as a material substratum (stone, metal, wood, etc.) but as a certain meaningful formedness pointing to a modeof operation involving the object and determining the mode of its perception and incorporation in a system of a given intellectual and practical sphere. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Form has two meanings, a). appearance and the external shape of things and b). the actual structural connection of a thing defining its existence.

In the Europe of the handicraft and manufacturing epoch, the form of its society was compatible withfeudalism. Changes in the productive forces set the stage for the dying away of the serf andnobility and the rise of new classes connected to industrial means of production. The form of class and private property changed, but not the content of

private property. The content of the productive forces changed qualitatively, from primitive machines and tools to gigantic machines eventually driven by electricity (electro-mechanical processes).

In Russia the form of the industrial revolution was different than in Europe. Rather than the capitalist class, the communists (Bolsheviks) won political power and led the industrial revolution through all its stages – boundaries.

Contradiction (unity and conflict of opposites):Contradiction refers to the unity and struggle of opposites within phenomenon in nature and society. Internal contradiction sets matterin motion and impels it forward. When considering a thing or specific process in its environment, motion, change, and interconnection, one is confrontedwith contradiction.

Capitalist and proletariat together are the basic classes in contradiction, at the foundation of capitalist society. Both sides of the contradiction come into being at the same time, as the unity and conflict driving capitalist production relations. Their unity and struggle are absolute, quantitative, and ongoing.

All processes develop in stages. The relationship between the two

sides of a contradiction becomes more contradictory within each stage, forcing 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 aphenomenon 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. (Page 93.)

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 humanthought, development proceedsin such a way that opposite, mutually exclusive sides or tendencies reveal themselves in an object; they enter intoa ‘struggle,’ which culminates in the destructionof 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 ofthe most fundamental featuresof 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 timeit 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 forcesor sides takes place, leadingeventually to the resolution of the contradiction, to a radical, qualitative change of the thing. (O. Kuusinen, ed., “Division into Opposites is the Chief Source of Development,” Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism 1961 Lawrence & Wishart, London, pages 94-95.bold in orig.)

Corporation The word “corporation” derives from corpus, the Latin word for body, or a “body of people.” Corporation acquired a specific meaning in the modern epoch (capitalism).

In the Middle Ages a widespread form of organization of artisans and merchants (guilds). The GreatFrench Revolution abolished guild corporations, whose monopoly position had hampered the development of the productive forces of capitalist society.

An aggregate of individuals united for the achievement ofsome goal and forming an independent subject under thelaw (a juridical person).

The term “corporation” is most common in Anglo-American

law. In the USA public corporations are accorded therights of a juridical person (municipalities, for example,are considered public corporations), as are corporations of lawyers and so on. Private corporations in the USA correspond to joint stock companies in the countries of Western Europe.

As a form of monopolistic joint-stock association, the corporation has become widespread in the USA as a result of the concentration and centralization of capital. The first corporations sprang up in railroad construction in the middle of the 19th century. By the early 20th century thecorporation had become the main form of capitalist enterprise. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/corporation

Corporation, joint-stock, Modern to mega-corporation:The modern corporation is a specific kind of capitalist production enterprise that develops at a specific juncture inhistory. It came into existence and develops based on the monopolystage of capitalism.

In America, the modern corporationemerged from the American Civil War era, when laissez faire capitalism was transitioning to monopoly capitalism. The corporation at that time began as a monopoly combination. Standard Oil Company, founded in 1870 was atemplate with J.D. Rockefeller personifying corporate capitalism.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. The modern corporation, the “trusts” of the late 1800s served a purpose.

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. They determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out amongthemselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business becomes bad, are generally liable to break up,and on this very account compel a yet greater concentration of association.The whole of a particular industry is turned into one gigantic joint-stock company;internal competition gives place to the internal monopoly of this one company.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

The “trust,” the “union for the purpose of regulating production” and “one gigantic joint-stock company” are phrases Frederick Engels used to describe the moderncorporation and corporate capitalism at their emergence. Prior to the economic phenomenon of “one gigantic joint-stock company,” the modern corporation did not yet exist. What existed were capitalist companies, some chartered to do business domestically and in foreign markets, but all operating based on laissez faire capitalism.

The concentration and centralization of capital create the conditions for monopoly capitalism and growth of the corporation. The period of the rise of the modern corporation spans the period from the end of the American Civil War to the 1890s. The period from the 1890s to the 1918 end of the First Worldimperialist war, was an era of consolidation of the corporation and the rise of imperialism. The end of World War I saw the rise ofa new kind of international organization based on Henry Ford style mass production techniques, dominated by finance capital - themultinational corporation.

The multinational corporation (MNC) was the extension of a nationally based corporation into

another country. It grew out of the modern corporation. While not all modern corporations became multinational, the MNC belonged toa definite period of history, which corresponded to a definite stage of development of the means of production and finance capital.The multinational corporation emerged in the 1920s. It was born of the domination of financial-industrial capitalism in the age of modern imperialism, when the world had been redivided among thevictors of World War I.

This new type of corporation, the MNC, was based in the imperialist mother country with branches and subsidiaries throughout the world market. The MNC took shape betweenthe two world wars and belonged tothe period of completion of the transition from agriculture to industrialism when the world was governed based on financial imperialism, imperialist blocks possessing colonies and neo-colonies and the Soviets keeping 1/6 of the world out of the orbit of bourgeois productive relations.

With the end of World War II and Europe lying in ruins, the American-based multinational corporation became dominator of world production. America geared up its productive and financial capacity to rebuild the world. Ford Motor Company was an early 1920s MNC emerging from World War I. IBM became the model of the newcorporation emerging from World War II.

Between 1945 and 1970, Europe and Japan recovered their industrial might. Nixon abandoned the BrettonWoods agreement, unhinged the dollar from gold by ending its convertibility into gold and went to China to seeking a new market for American imperialism. The Nixon shocks caused far reaching changes, setting the stage for thedemise of the “national capitalist” and emergence of a newform of finance capital detached from value production. Computers made possible a real time interactive international network,a new non-banking financial system, which, in the context of dollars being detached from gold, allowed for creation of a new world of financial products.

Between the ending of the Second World War and the Nixon shocks of 1971, America completed its final stage of industrial development. The period from the 1971 Nixon shocks to the Dec. 1, 1999 Seattleprotest against the World Trade Organization, was an era of applying the new technology of theelectronic revolution. A series ofpolicy changes heralded a transition in finance capital and the modern corporation. As dominator of total world capital, speculative finance accelerated changes in the multinational corporations (MNCs).

Technical definitions of the corporation, modern corporation, multinational corporation (MNC)

and transnational corporation (TNC) vary, but for the purposes of Marxist Glossary these forms ofcapitalist enterprise correspond to different stages of developmentof the economy and finance capital. The TNC belongs to a definite period of history, corresponding to a definite stage of development of the means of production and finance capital. The TNC is a child of the electronic revolution, computers, the robotic economy and dominationof speculative finance. The MNC isnot. The MNC is from an earlier period. These designations are meant to isolate development and understand transition, rather thanto be understood as frozen categories.

Speculative finance operates in a globalized world, circling the world thousands of times a minute,creating profit based on speculation rather than profit based on production of surplus value.

The general law of capital accumulation led to the formation of the modern corporation. However, a simple and continuous quantitative increase in capital accumulation was not sufficient tocreate the mega-corporation. Qualitatively new means of production changed the environmentof capitalist accumulation and created the condition for the formation of the mega-corporation.

Computers (a qualitatively new means of production) were used to create the new non-banking financial system. Computer modeling led to creation of financial products, which broadened the boundary of gamblingbeyond value based on productive capital. The “casino economy” entered the American vocabulary todescribe speculative finance. Driven by a qualitatively new level of speculation, an unheard of amount of money-capital was accumulated, as companies of the new economy were valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, then billions, causing the leap tothe mega-corporation. Google, Samsung, Microsoft and Apple were born of the new world of speculative finance and globalism.Google is capitalized at a staggering $409 billion dollars. It is a mega-corporation. Old corporations such as Exxon, Hewlett Packard and GE were recaston the basis of speculative finance.

The capitalists are desperateto open up new markets and create new consumers. Africa is one of several potential candidates that they are looking to recycle from amongthose nations and continents they destroyed through imperialist exploitation. Massive infrastructural projects would be needed, roads and railroads would have to be built, and airports upgraded or rebuilt.

They would need modern power suppliers, the extraction andrefining capabilities to run them, and ports dug and managed. The sky would be thelimit on what could be made from these projects alone.

The pursuit of money on such a scale requires huge conglomerates, mega-corporations, state and crossstate involvement, managing abewildering 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.http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v18ed4art4.html

In the era of mega-corporations, the capitalist courts protect the megacorps. The mega-corporations have assumed such gigantic proportions that they buy up the political system and merge with the state, creating the mega-corporate state.

Crisis theory:Crisis theory within Marxism refers to two distinct kinds of

developments of a mode of production: a). the stage-by-stagequantitative growth of productive forces and productive relations and b). the qualitative transition– leap – to a new mode of production.

Marx and Engels pinpoint anarchy of production as the source of capitalism structural crises. The act of producing blindly, without regard to the consuming capacity of the market, results in cyclicalcrisis of overproduction (depression and recession) and wars between capitalist states seeking new markets. Since 1825, cyclical crisis of overproduction have been the typical form of structural crisis of capitalist production.

Marx and Engels write of another kind of crisis as the law of social revolution, transition fromone mode of production to another.Introducing qualitatively new means of production into an existing system of production creates new forms of classes and brings society to class antagonism.

Both kinds of crises are bound up with changes in the productive forces and productive relations. The first - anarchy of production - is a crisis immanent (internal) to capitalist production, expressing the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation of the surplus product. At each stage of

development of the capitalist system the struggle between workers and capitalists becomes sharper, more polarized, punctuated by periodic crisis of overproduction, revolts and attempts at political revolution. Each class seeks to increase its portion of the social product and expand its political liberty to protect its placement in the social contract. The workers seek higher wages, employment rights, social security, civil rights, health care, housing and transportation while the capitalists seek to reduce wages, raise profits and secure broader legal rights for the mega-corporation.

The second kind of crisis arises based on qualitatively new means of production being applied to theproduction process. Qualitatively new means of production create newforms of classes and bring capitalist productive relations toantagonism. Just as the steam engine was the symbol of industrial revolution destroying feudal society, the microchip causes a similar social revolutionto industrial society.

In the past century some revolutionaries believed capitalism faced its death agony and come to its historical end based on its internal contradictions. Such theories haveproven to be wrong. The capitalistsystem comes to its historical endas the result of qualitatively new

productive forces – computers, robotics and the electronics revolution. Culture:

The arts, methods, and techniques by which humanity satisfies its needs and givesexpression to what it experiences and to what it aspires; the sum total of thesignificant achievements and accumulation of knowledge in mankind’s past and conceived of as the only basis for further development.

The culture of any epoch reflects the main characteristic of contemporary society, specifically its mode of production. ‘In every epoch, the ruling ideas have been the ideas of the ruling class.’ (Marx) Marxist Glossary by L. Harry Gould, page 33.

Culture is a way of life for a group of people, a community, class, occupation, country and virtually any type of group that acts together in a way to produce 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.

The concept of culture (fr. L. cultura “tilling”) is basically connected with something that is done well—not only what is done but also how and what for. Doing is a mode of mastering the world. Culture is a kind of magic crystal that focuses all being. It is the creativeprinciple of the life of the individual and of society as a whole; it is not just an ability taken to the point ofart but a morally sanctioned goal.

An ensemble of material and non-material values and of methods of creating them, andthe ability to use them for the advancement of mankind and to transmit them from generation to generation, constitute culture. The starting point and the sourceof the development of cultureis 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.

Culture is the embodiment of mankind’s reason, which functions as a semantic augmentation of the natural world. The non-material phenomena incorporated in it are not confined to some definite historical period but have an eternal nature: Plato’s thought today is justas real as it was more than two thousand years ago. Even if they originate as individually subjective and historically concrete, in thecourse of time these phenomena assume the status of socially objective and even, as it were, supratemporal spiritual factors, forming an uninterrupted universal cultural tradition outside the individual’s control.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Cyclical crisis: (See, Overproduction, Production: subset, Anarchy of production.)

Dead and living labor: All the material objects human labor produce are expressions of congealed or dead labor. A pair ofshoes, automobile, house, airplane

and baked apple pie are so much dead labor. Labor in the act of production is living labor. In capitalist society, living labor confronts dead labor in the form of commodities that required moneyto attain. Dead labor dominates living labor 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 laborit sucks. The time during which the laborer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labor-power he has purchased of him. (Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Chapter Ten: The Working-Day.)https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S1

Democracy, bourgeois:

…. Democracy is a method of exercising state power based onthe principle of subordination of the minority to the majorityand on legal equal possibility for all to take part in the management of public and state affairs. As a method of state government, democracy has a long history closely connected with the entire system of society’s political organization and with politics in general. Democracy is a historical phenomenon.

Democracy in general does not exist — there are only concretetypes and forms of democracy whose content is determined by a given mode of production. Accordingly, such types of democracy are distinguished as primitive-communal (tribal), slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and socialist. (A. Spirkin, Fundamentals of Philosophy.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Democracy is a political form of the rule. The capitalist (bourgeois) democratic form of rule (state power), upholds the political status of citizen, and equality before the law of all commodity owners, as its content. Engels defines the content of bourgeois democracy.

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 withthe 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, thecapitalist mode of productioncould develop in freedom.(Frederick Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific III [Historical Materialism].) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

The bourgeois democratic state abolishes the political status of the slave, subject and serf, whichexisted under feudalism, and sweeps away primitive communal forms of life and governance. Feudal society (serfdom) enforced a political status on the masses as slaves and subjects of lords and masters. Even in a bourgeois democratic state with a monarchy, democracy prevails as the abolition of serfdom, slave and subject. In England the citizens are not real subjects but rather notional subjects.

The bourgeois democratic republic is a form of the democratic state.It is a political system with elected representatives, based on the political category of the citizen. Citizens are generally a group of people considered to be equal before the rule of law.

Forms of state power vary, depending on whether the supreme power is exercised by a

single person or whether it officially belongs to an elected organ. Monarchist formsof government are distinguishedfrom republican ones. A monarchy is a state headed by amonarch; in such a state, power, sometimes restricted, isin the hands of an autocrat (king, czar, emperor) and is inherited. For instance, Czarist Russia was an absolutist autocratic monarchy.

A republic is a form of government which is exercised by elected organs; according tothe law, power is vested here in the majority of the people.

Democratic centralism:Democratic centralism is a form ofdemocracy and central authority inan organization. Democracy means collective discussion and decisionmaking, while centralism is individual responsibility to carryout the decisions. It is a principle of organization pioneered by Vladimir Lenin, constituting the foundation of his“party of a new type.” These principles were used by Communist parties of the Third Communist International. J. Peters 1935. “A Manual on Organization” described democratic centralism during the era of the Communist International. http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1935/07/organisers-manual/ch02.htm

During the period of Lenin and theThird International, democracy wasrealized as the National Congress or national convention as the highest authority of the organization. The period leading to the Convention was a period of extraordinary 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 as 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.” 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 based on industrialism. Today, in the national security state based on universal surveillance and paid agent provocateurs, the old military industrial style of organization is obsolete. The stability of an organization of revolutionaries cannot be built based on strict organizational centralism. Political centralism is the watchword. This means conforming to and carrying out a common line of march, based on a common understanding of the leap from one

mode of production to the next. Political centralism also means anunflinching propaganda campaign for emancipation of the new class of destitute proletarians.

Development:Development is the stage-by-stage movement through which a phenomenon passes, constituting its internally driven self-movement. Seasons change, but summer always follows spring, as surely as autumn following summer and precedes winter. This repetitive cycle cannot be changed, according to our current understanding of science.

There are two basic kinds of development: quantitative and qualitative change. Quantitative change is stage-by-stage development of the basic properties of a thing based on polarity -– the unity and struggleof opposites. A stage is a new quantitative level in a quality that comes about as the result of cumulative quantitative changes, causing increased polarity. The new level (the increased polarity)represented by the new stage expresses the reform of the phenomenon as it strives to complete its process.

Qualitative change is transition from one quality to another. The transition from one quality to another -– the leap -– is the result of subtracting or adding a new qualitative ingredient into the process. The addition of a new

quality halts development on the old basis and begins the leap –- transition -– to a new quality.

The general conception of development.Application of the principle of universal connection and interaction results in a specific and universal category of dialectics—the category of development. There is nothing ultimately complete in the world: everything is on the path towards something else. A given type of connections andinteractions determines a definite direction of this path: where from and where to. The principle of the motion of matter as a mode ofits existence, combined with the principle of universal connection, gives a general idea of the development of the world. Development is an irreversible, definitely oriented and law-governed change of material and ideal objects resulting in the emergence of new qualities.

…. What does irreversible change mean? It means that inthe process of development, as distinct from the cyclicalfunctioning of a system, return to already passed states is impossible. Everything passes through oneand the same state only once;thus the movement of an

organism from old age to youth is impossible.

…. Progressive development isthus thought of not as movement of some object from one point to another but as aprocess which, at each subsequent stage of its further movement, raises higher and higher the whole mass of already attained content and, far from losing something essential, carries with it all that it has accumulated, bringing in new content. The new is an intermediate or final result of development correlated with the old. The changes maypertain to the composition ofan object (i.e. to the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of its components), to the mode of the connection between the elements of the given whole, to the function or behavior of the object—to the character of the object’s interactions with a differentobject, and finally to all these characteristics as a whole.Development is a dual process: the old departs and the new comes in, asserting itself in the struggle against the old rather than through unhampered unfolding of its potential.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Dialectics:Dialectics is the self movement ofmatter through space and time. Dialectics refers to the process of spontaneous self movement and change found in nature, human society, and human thought. Motionand change occur in a certain way,passing through stages of growth and leaps from one quality to another. The summation of this spontaneous self movement is a lawsystem.

Taken as a whole, the law system of dialectical change is explainedas causality (a coherent law system of connections) with rules that govern the process of being. Philosophy long ago put forth the notion that everything changes andis in constant motion. Change and development take place as ebb and flow, backsliding, pauses and leaps forward. Modern dialectics contend that in nature, society and human thought, something is always rising and developing and something is always disintegratingand dying away.

The law system of change and constant motion in the heavens andon earth existed before the birthof humanity and human consciousness. This law system of motion is objective dialectics. The reflection of objective dialecticsin the human mind and the study ofthe law system of change is conscious (subjective) dialectics.

In this system — and herein is its great merit — for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process — i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development. From this point of view, the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgment seat of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgotten as quicklyas possible, but as the process of evolution of man himself. It was now the task of the intellect to follow the gradual march of this process through all its devious ways, and to trace out the inner law running through all its apparently accidental phenomena.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm

Fredericks Engels’ “Dialectics of Nature” calls 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 transformationof 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.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch02.htm

Some features of Marx’s dialecticsare:

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. 2) Nature, society, earth and the heavens are in a state of constantchange, development, disintegration, dying away, and rebirth.3) Contradiction is the internal compulsion inherent to all things.The process of development and change includes polarity, polarization, and antagonism.

Antagonism is a mode of destruction. 4) Changes are from lower to higher order and from lower systems to more dynamic systems. Thought and human understanding follow this law of “from lower to higher.”Change occurs by sublation and negation of the negation. 5) Quantitative changes are the definite and indispensible stages of development of a quality. The passing from one stage to another entails crossing a nodal point in development. 6) Qualitative change begins withthe 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 the emergence of a new qualitative state. The passing from one qualitative state to another is crossing a nodal line in development. Dialectical Materialism:Dialectical materialism (materialist dialectics) is the study of phenomenon in its historyof development and environment.

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 fundamentally from all the philosophies that existed before them.

Dialectical materialism was born of the generalization of scientific achievement and also ofmankind’s historical experience, which showed that social life and human consciousness, like nature itself, are in a state of motion, change, transformation, and development, punctuated by leaps. Materialist dialectics is the science of universal interconnections - causality. Materialist dialectics and dialectical materialism are used interchangeably and in turn defineMarxist philosophy.

Dictatorship of the proletariat:The dictatorship of the proletariat is the proletariat organized as the ruling class in society.

Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is alsoa political transition periodin which the state can be nothing but the revolutionarydictatorship of the proletariat.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm

And now 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 anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up withthe 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.

Marx, Letter to Weydemeyer (1852) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/quotes/

Division of Labor:The social-technical division of labor occurs when different work tasks are assigned to different individuals, groups and economic classes. The initial division of labor was natural, based on child bearing and age groups, young and old. In primitive society productive activity was based on anatural division of labor and simple cooperation. Simple cooperation is the community doingthe same thing to accomplish a goal, unattainable and unthinkablefor a single person, for example, hunting large animals. In such

primitive communities, communal life prevailed, corresponding to the natural division of labor.

A certain stage in development of the productive forces brought forth the first agricultural revolution and created 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 toengage in differing forms of productive activity. The separation of the pastoral tribes was the first great social division of labor. Thepastoral tribes engaged in breeding cattle achieved substantial successes. They learned to care for the cattle in such a way that they received more meat, wooland milk. This first big social division of labor already led to what was for that age a noticeable rise inthe productivity of labor. . . .revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PoliticalEconomy.pdf

Changes in the productive forces create the condition for, and cause change in, the division of labor.

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, affordedthe opportunity for the accumulation of wealth in thehands 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.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PoliticalEconomy.pdf

Handicraft, manufacture and industry are names for different qualitative states of development of productive forces. Handicraft is a system of manual labor where one worker makes a product from beginning to end. At a certain stage in the development of productive forces, handicraft separates from agriculture and becomes an independent part of thesocial division of labor. Handicraft becomes a system of production, increasingly organizedin the towns, while the towns

develop based on trade.

The rise of manufacture displaces handicraft and its social organization of labor as the foundation of the mode of production. Manufacture institutesa technical division of labor, dividing production into separate tasks, each now carried out by separate workers. Manufacture brings together a group of workerswithin one enterprise for the production of a commodity, formerly done by a single artisan.

Manufacturing was the highestand final stage of the manuallabor system. The last stagesof manufacturing prepared theground for mechanical labor and made its introduction inevitable. A qualitative change in motive force was necessary. ‘Not till the invention of Watt’s second and so-called double-acting steam engine was [such] a prime mover found.’ In a leap, manufacturing changed to industry. http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf

With the development of the industrial revolution and industrial machinery, a new division of labor develops.

Division of labor, destruction of:Robotics and computerization create the foundation for the destruction of the division of

labor, including the division between mental and manual workers.Mental labor as a division of labor is being destroyed by computers with the ability to process knowledge outside the human brain. Robotics reproduces the skills and labor of the workers in their absence, destroying the division of labor. Nowhere is this better experiencedthan in 3D printing technology. Less than 1% of the people of America are involved in farming. For all practical purposes, on a societal scale, the division of labor has been destroyed for the overwhelming majority because their labor is not needed.(See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing for information on 3D printing.)

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 thegrowth of understanding. One form of dogmatism clings to propositions appropriate during a previous stage of development, insisting that the old propositions remain valid for all times.

Economic determinism:Economic determinism holds that all events in society are the

direct result of the economy, economic activity and technological development. In its most vulgar meaning, economic determinism holds that all cultural-ideological, social, political, and intellectual activities are a direct product ofeconomic organization, in an automatic way. A common misconception is that Marxism is economic determinism. More often than not, those charging Karl Marxand Frederick Engels with economicdeterminism have not studied or read their writings.

Engels clarifies Marx’s approach.

We regard economic conditions as the factor which ultimatelydetermines historical development. But race is itself an economic factor. Here, however, two points mustnot be overlooked:

(a) Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic base. It is not that the economic position is the causeand alone active, while everything else only has a passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of the economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself. The state, for instance, exercises

an influence by tariffs, free trade, good or bad fiscal system; and even the deadly inanition and impotence of theGerman petty bourgeois, arising from the miserable economic position of Germany from 1640 to 1830 and expressing itself at first in pietism, then in sentimentality and cringing servility to princes and nobles, was not without economic effect. It was one ofthe greatest hindrances to recovery and was not shaken until the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars made the chronic misery an acute one. So it is not, as people try here and there conveniently toimagine, that the economic position produces an automaticeffect. Men make their historythemselves, only in given surroundings which condition it and on the basis of actual relations already existing, among which the economic relations, however much they may be influenced by the otherpolitical and ideological ones, are still ultimately thedecisive ones, forming the redthread which runs through themand alone leads to understanding.

(b) Men make their history themselves, but not as yet with a collective will or according to a collective planor even in a definitely defined, given society. Their

efforts clash, and for that very reason all such societiesare governed by necessity, which is supplemented by and appears under the forms of accident. The necessity which here asserts itself amidst allaccident is again ultimately economic necessity. This is where the so-called great men come in for treatment. That such and such a man and precisely that man arise at that particular time in that given country is of course pure accident. But cut him outand there will be a demand fora substitute, and this substitute will be found, goodor bad, but in the long run hewill be found. That Napoleon, just that particular Corsican,should have been the military dictator whom the French Republic, exhausted by its ownwar, 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. While Marx discovered the materialist conception of history, Thierry, Mignet, Guizot, and all the English historians up to 1850 are the proof that it was being striven for, and thediscovery of the same conception by Morgan proves that the time was ripe for it

and that indeed it had to be discovered.

So with all the other accidents, and apparent accidents, of history. The further the particular sphere which we are investigating is removed from the economic sphere and approaches that of pure abstract ideology, the more shall we find it exhibiting accidents in its development, the more will itscurve run in a zig-zag. So also you will find that the axis of this curve will approach more and more nearly parallel to the axis of the curve of economic development the longer the period considered and the wider the field dealt with. (Marx-EngelsCorrespondence 1894, Engels toBorgius[1] Abstract London, January 25, 1894.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm

Economy:The economy is the foundation of society, consisting of two basic parts, production and distribution. Production takes place based on knowledge, tools, machines, skills, and sources of energy. The foundation of the pastcentury’s economy was industrial, but it is changing. An industrial economy is the combination of human labor and power-driven machines.

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 thematerial 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

The capitalist mode of distribution is a system of buyingand selling commodities as its property relation. The workers

sell their ability to work for wages and use their wages to buy necessaries of life. This system of production and distribution makes it a capitalist economy.(See, Communist economy, Politicaleconomy.)

Electronic revolution:

The term “electronic” means different things to differentpeople. To some, it means a qualitative improvement in their sound and entertainmentsystems. To others, it means a new quality in the process of producing our means of life. I would like, for the moment, to speak of electronics as a new quality that is emerging and forming the basis of not any particular aspect of life, but creating, or has the potential to create, a whole new form and quality of life.

When we speak of the electronic revolution, we arenot talking about electricity. By electronics, we essentially mean processing knowledge with matter other than the brain. The electronic revolution should be compared to the discovery of fire. Fire was more than a means of production — it was the foundation for the quantitative separation of humans from animals. Everything that the following

social and economic formations created was based on the discovery of fire. Steel and the steam engine, to name just two things basicto our civilization, are unthinkable without fire.

Electronics should be viewed the same way.

(Nelson Peery, Revolutionary Change in America page 11, January 1997.) https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/peery-change.pdf

Electronic means of production create commodities with less and less labor and in the absence of the human. It process knowledge with matter other than the human brain.

The electronic revolution developsin contradistinction to the industrial revolution. Industrialism drove transition from agriculture to industry, created a new division of labor based on gigantic machinery and brought humanity into a new socialorganization of labor. Electronics renders human labor superfluous in production, destroys the division of labor andbegins destruction of economic classes.

Computers and robotics are new kinds of machines. Robots incorporate the knowledge, skills,and efforts of previous

generations of laborers and produce things without and in the absence of the laborer. This new quality of production is revolutionary. It differs from allprevious systems of production because it is laborless, deployingmachinery with the ability to process information and knowledge outside the human brain.

Each stage of development of robotics gives rise to more complex production systems. The more robotics displaces human beings, the more the system becomes wageless production. Machines are not paid wages and cannot consume a mass of commodities. To introduce laborless production into a systemdependent upon wages to circulate commodities constitutes an assaultupon the economic base of capitalist society. These qualitatively new means of production are incompatible with the wage labor system and stand inantagonism with capitalist property relations.

Emancipation (liberation):Emancipation is being liberated (freed) from economic and political restraints imposed by a certain stage of development of private property and the division of labor. Individuals may escape their class position and avoid theenslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, but classes cannot escape the division of labor that cast them as working class, ruling

class, and all the economic layersin between these two poles.

Classes are fully emancipated by being kicked out of the economic, and consequently social, position that casts each as a specific form of the working class or ruling class. Qualitative changes in the means of production create the conditions for the emancipationof a class. Slaves, serfs, and proletarians, as economic classes, cannot be emancipated (liberated) 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, sohumanity 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’ isan historical and not a mental act, and it is broughtabout by historical conditions, the development

of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse....http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm

Electronic production is more efficient than industrial production. In our lifetime theindustrial form of the working class has been shattered (negated) and replaced (sublated) by an electronic working class deploying qualitatively new means of production. If robotics allows,say, two billion people to produce all the socially necessary means of life that are continuously required by 7–10 billion people, humanity hasbeen effectively emancipated from laboring for means of life, as its purpose on earth. The problem is the capitalist system will not allow the people to have distribution based on need, and thus capitalism as a system has to be destroyed and replaced with a new system based on common property.

Emergence: (See, Marxist Glossary Supplement.)

Empiricism:A philosophic outlook that states that sensory experience is the sole source of knowledge. Empiricism originated in England in the seventeenth century. It wasa mode of thinking of the rising

bourgeoisie. Religion had been thedominant mode of thought. But as the capitalist and worker began struggling against the old feudal classes, bourgeois thought swung to the other extreme, becoming overly impressed with the value ofexperience. Empiricism was opposedto a scientific, historical outlook.

Today, through its control of the media and other means of influencing ideas, the capitalist class has made empiricism a dominant stream of thought in the United States. Empiricism denies the need to study history, politics, and economics—indeed, tostudy at all. It 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 textilemanufacturer. In 1841 he joined the circle of ‘Left-Hegelians’ (see), radically inclined students of the philosophy of Hegel (see). InMarch, 1842, appeared Engels’brochure, Schelling and Revelation,in which he subjected to a devastating critique the reactionary and mystical doctrines of Schelling, whichattempted 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 secondcongress, for which it was necessary to set up a program. Engels wrote Principlesof Communism as a rough draft of this program and then, together with Marx, wrote theworld famous Manifesto of the Communist Party (Communist Manifesto).

From 1864, the time of the founding of the First International (International Workingmen’s Association, see Marx), Engels together with Marx carried on a struggle against the Proudhonists, Bakuninists, and all the otherenemies 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 againstanti 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 Duhring (see), from which the celebrated work Herr Eugen Duhring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Duhring) was composed. During this period Engels alsodevoted 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, whichMarx had not completed. In 1885 Engels published the

second volume, and in 1894 thethird. 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 ClassicalGerman Philosophy, which, together with his Anti Duhring, 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 creationof Marxism can be given than that which Engels himself gave. He wrote: ‘I cannot denythat both before and during myforty 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 specialstudies - Marx could very wellhave 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 agenius; we others were at besttalented. Without him the theory would not be what it istoday. It therefore rightly bears his name.’ (Ludwig Feuerbach, p. 52, note.)H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, Proletarian Publishers, pages 37 - 38.

Equality:

… . [B]ourgeois demands for equality were accompanied by proletarian demands for equality. From the moment when the bourgeois demand forthe 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.…

The idea of equality, both inits bourgeois and in its proletarian form, is therefore itself a historicalproduct, the creation of which required definite historical conditions that inturn themselves presuppose a long previous history.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch08.htm

Error:

Error is an idea or a combination of ideas and images that arise in the mindof 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 deceptionis 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 himselfhas erred. The liar, on the other hand, while deceiving others, is not himself deceived. Falsehood speaks ofsomething 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 isbound to fly in the liar’s face. Error should be distinguished from the mistake that is the result ofincorrect practical or mentalactivity, 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 thelevel 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. (See, Truth.)http://marxists.catbull.com/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch04-s03.html

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 lawsof its functioning, as well as the tendencies of development.

…. Essence is concealed from the human eye, while phenomenon lies on the surface. Essence is thereforesomething 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 theircause-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 propertiesof 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.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Exploitation:Exploitation is a social power based in private property that allows one section of society to appropriate the unpaid labor of another and convert the wealth of society created by labor into personal riches of owners of meansof production. Exploitation is a class phenomenon and a social power, rather than an event where one seeks to “exploit” and gets the most out of a situation.

Capital has not invented surplus-labor. Wherever a part of society possesses themonopoly of the means of production, the laborer, freeor 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 ofthe 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.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10

Expropriation:Expropriation is the annihilation,negation or sublation of a form ofprivate property with or without compensation. It is the deprivation of the property of oneclass by another class. Expropriation and appropriation are not the same. Expropriation describes the forcible seizure of property. Appropriation is a legalright of property owners. It is the ruling class’ claim to the surplus product.

In the formation of the capitalistsystem, expropriation is bound up with the historical process that tears the means of production fromthe hands of the individual. This process strips people of their land and means of life. In order to acquire the necessaries of life, individuals are now compelled to sell their labor power to owners of property.

From that moment new forces and new passions spring up inthe bosom of society; but theold 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 expropriationof the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, andfrom the means of labour, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. Itcomprises a series of forcible methods, of which wehave passed in review only those that have been epoch-making as methods of the primitive accumulation of capital. The expropriation ofthe immediate producers was accomplished with merciless Vandalism, and under the stimulus of passions the mostinfamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanlyodious. 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 labour, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which restson exploitation of the nominally free labour of others, i.e., on wage labour.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

In the wide historical sense whichMarx narrates, expropriation is the historical process of changingforms of private property. Marx’s narrative continues:

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 labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labour and further transformation of theland 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 beexpropriated is no longer thelaborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploitingmany laborers. This expropriation is accomplishedby the action of the immanentlaws 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 labour process, the conscioustechnical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into

instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labour, 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 oftransformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class alwaysincreasing 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 hassprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where theybecome incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators areexpropriated.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

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 fund raising capability. It fights to establishitself as a competing center of authority. Difference of opinion is normal for any organization or group of individuals. When differences cross a threshold and become a faction, the organizationwill either split over the factional program or purge the faction.

Falling rate of profit:Falling rate of profit refers to the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, due to reducing the amount of human labor in commodities. The application of labor-enhancing machinery and technology reduces human labor (value) in production,and value is the source of surplusvalue from which profits come. Therate of profit is the ratio of surplus value to the total capitalinvested in an enterprise. The rate of profit is an index of the profitability of a capitalist enterprise, steering investment into areas of highest returns on investment.

The progressive tendency of the general rate of profit to

fall is, therefore, just an expression peculiar to the capitalist mode of productionof the progressive development of the social productivity of labor. This does not mean to say that therate of profit may not fall temporarily for other reasons. But proceeding from the nature of the capitalist mode of production, it is thereby proved logical necessity that in its development the general average rate of surplus-valuemust express itself in a falling general rate of profit. Since the mass of theemployed living labor is continually on the decline ascompared to the mass of materialized labor set in motion by it, i.e., to the productively consumed means of production, it follows that the portion of living labor, unpaid and congealed in surplus-value, must also be continually on the decrease compared to the amount of 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.

(Capital Vol. III, Part III. The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall Chapter 13. The Law As Such.)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm

Under capitalism labor is sold as a commodity -– labor power. The price paid for labor power (wages)is always less than the value created by the laborer. The value created by the laborer over and above what is paid them as wages is the source of surplus value. Capitalist profits in production are derived from surplus value.

Value is a measure of the sociallynecessary human labor in a commodity. Increased investment intechnology lowers the socially necessary labor in commodities, while enlarging the cost of the non-human inputs of production. Less value means less surplus value. Less surplus value due to eliminating a mass of labor in production creates the tendency ofthe general rate of profit to fall.

From its earliest beginnings to its domination of the global society, capitalists have been, and are, driven bycompetition to maximize theirprofit 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 processof production. Thus, the rateof profit falls for all.

The introduction of 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 ed.) expropriated in the process of production. Thus, the rateof 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. Itlowers labor costs by replacing human labor with robots and with computer technology that controls and operates machinery. (Destruction of Value Marks Capitalism’s End) 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 ofthe capitalist mode of production.It is a reflection of capitalist production relations. (See, Organic composition of capital.)

Fascism, American:Twenty-first century American fascism in power is the open terroristic dictatorship of the mega-corporate state.

The mega-corporation (megacorp) isa form of capitalist enterprise. The state is an organization of violence in the hands of the ruling class. It is a product of the irreconcilability of class antagonism. The mega-corporate state is the merger of mega-corporations with the state power.

Fascism in power today is a political response by mega-corporations (private property) toqualitative changes in the economy. The source and origin of fascism is private property, that is to say, capitalist private property. The class basis of fascism, at every stage of

industrialism and during the era of the megacorp state, is the capitalist class seeking to maintain its private property relations. Mega-corporatism today,in power, in the robotic economy, defines fascism in power.

The fundamental characteristic of fascism is corporate economic power merged with the political power of the State. Politically, fascism is the substitution of one form of class domination -– bourgeoisdemocracy -– by another. Fascism is State interventionin every aspect of the economy and society to protect private property.http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2013/07/the-rise-of-fascism-and-social-revolution-in-america/

Twenty-first century fascism consolidates and evolves as society is undergoing social revolution. The social revolution is transition from industrial production and industrial economy to computerized, electronic production and the robot 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 peoplecannot change anything. Fatalism

is harmful because it disarms the proletariat and renders everyone who believes in it passive and inactive.

[F]atalism regards each humanact 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 . . . . http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Feminism:Feminism as an ideology sees the fundamental antagonism in the world not as between private property and the proletariat but as between men and women. Thus, itfocuses on individual lifestyle changes such as learning self-defense, etc., as opposed to joining the propaganda campaign toconvince the proletariat and all progressive humanity its salvationresides in changing the economic system and mode of distribution ofthe social product.

In the United States, the first wave of feminism was expressed by the Declaration of Sentiments, issued by the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The second wave of feminism was set off when,in 1964, Betty Friedan published

The Feminist Mystique. Feminism’s purpose was to secure economic, social, and political equality forwomen within the framework of capitalist property relations. As such, the ideology and vision of feminism was of bourgeois women owning property and fighting for an equal standing alongside the men. Feminism embraced the fight for political equality at the ballot box, equal access to the checkbook, and against the norms of society that relegated women tobe the personal slaves of men. These issues affected all women without regard to class.

Because the key obstacle to women’s emancipation is capitalistsupremacy and the existence of classes, and feminism points instead at every man as the enemy,it disarms the women’s movement. While women’s yearnings for equality certainly must be fulfilled, the struggle is held back by the non-class outlook of feminism.(See, Emancipation of women, Womanquestion.)

Feudalism: (See, Mode of production.)

Finance capital:Finance capital of the past century meant financial-industrialcapital. It reflected increased monopolization of capital and productive forces, based on merging banking and industrial capital, dominated by banking institutions. Finance capital, as

imperialism of the industrial era,was the export of capital in two forms: first as productive capital, second as loan capital. Financial-industrial imperialism is the export of capital as distinct from the export of commodities.

The export of productive capital consisted of investments in industry, transport, trade, etc.The export of loan capital occurred in the form of governmentloans and private credit to buy upland and natural resources, investin production of commodities and infrastructure projects and to militarize the economy. Financial imperialism led to the division ofthe world among imperialist countries.

Today, finance-industrial capital is dominated by speculative finance and has become untethered from states and now flows around the world rapidly in the form of transnational capital.

Speculative finance transformed a small group of the biggest financial magnates into a new financial oligarchy. This new financial oligarchy controls the global economy and rules society based on the interest of mega-corporate states.

First International: (See, International.)

Form: (See, Content and form.)

Freedom, necessity, and law:Marxist philosophy combines freedom, necessity, and law into aharmonious 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 expressing a system of laws or the logic of a process.Water runs downstream as a law based on earth’s gravity. Freedom is the recognition of the law systems operating in nature, society, the heavens, and the earth.

“Freedom” from the law system of nature, by ignoring the 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 laws of nature, and there is no point in wishing they’d go away. What is important is to recognize laws of nature, the environment, and motion, and learn their operations and move freely within them.

Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in theknowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this givesof systematically making themwork towards definite ends. 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 knowledgeof the subject. Therefore thefreer a man’s judgment is in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content of this judgment willbe determined; while the uncertainty, founded on ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among many different and conflicting possible decisions, shows precisely bythis 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. (Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877 Part I: Philosophy)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch09.htm

General crisis of capitalism:The general crisis of capitalism was a new crisis stage of capitalism, revealed in the outbreak of World War I, the 1917

October Revolution and creation ofSoviet power.

The general crisis of capitalism is the all-round crisis of the world capitalist system as a whole,characterized by wars and revolutions, by a struggle between moribund capitalism and growing socialism. The general crisis of capitalism involves all sides of capitalism, both economic andpolitical.

…. The October Revolution wrested from the rule of capital the working people ofone-sixth of the earth and brought about the splitting of the world into two systems, capitalist and socialist, which is the most vivid expression of the general crisis of capitalism.As a result of the splitting of the world into two systemsa contradiction arose which was new in principle and was of world historical importance - the contradiction between dying capitalism and growing socialism. The struggle between the two systems, capitalism and socialism, became of decisive importancein the present epoch.

Describing the general crisisof capitalism, J. V. Stalin said: “It means, first of all, that the imperialist war

and its aftermath intensifiedthe decay of capitalism and upset its equilibrium, that we are now living in an epochof wars and revolutions, thatcapitalism has already ceasedto be the sole and all-embracing system of world economy, that side by side with the capitalist system ofeconomy 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.” (Stalin, “Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the C.P.S.U. (B)”, Works, vol. XII, p. 253.)

…. The general crisis of capitalism began in the period of the first world warand developed especially as aresult of the falling away ofthe 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 ofthe 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 theAcademy of sciences of the USSR.)http://www.marx.be/Prime/ENG/Books/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

In the past century Soviet power existed in antagonism with world imperialism. With collapse and destruction of the socialist community, the general crisis of capitalism has been superseded by an antagonism internal to capitalist production. Caused by qualitatively new productive forces and the new forms of classes it creates, capitalism haspassed from periodic crisis to a mode of destruction.

The electronic revolution is not simply an intensification of polarity within capitalism but a mode of destruction of the wage labor system and the value relation. With the advent of globalization, collapse of the Soviet bloc and the stage-by-stagedevelopment of the robot economy, the general crisis of capitalism has been rendered obsolete as a description of the crisis of 21st century capitalism.

General law of capitalist accumulation: See Capital, generallaw of.

Globalization (Globalism):

Globalism is capitalism in the ageof the electronic revolution, the robot economy and mega-corporation. Globalization describes the process of integration and connections based on a new technological regime. Regional economies, societies, andcultures have become more integrated worldwide through communication, transportation, andtrade based on revolutionary new means of production.

Globalization supersedes the old form of financial-industrial imperialism described by Lenin. Globalism is created based on a new nonbanking financial architecture made possible by modern computers, or similar qualitatively new technology.

Government:Government functions as the executive committee for the rulingclass, carrying out the day-to-daypolicy and administration of civicfunctions at a local, regional, state, and federal level. The three branches of the American 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 isn’t 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 police force are part of the state.(See, State.)

Handicraft: Handicraft is a stage of development of the means of production and system of labor where the individual laborer creates an entire product using elementary tools and instruments. (See, Division of labor.)

Hegel, Hegelian system:Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and creator of a school of German philosophy (idealism), which established a modern category of philosophic principles. These principles outlined and articulated a general law system of motion, development and change in society, on earthand in the heavens.

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 existedbefore 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 andpasses over into its opposite. In the process of its dialectical self-movement, by means of transformation into its opposite (negation) and further negation (negation ofthe 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, re- turns to therealm 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 philosophythe 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 qualitativechanges, that truth is concrete, that the process ofevolution of human society isone wholly governed by scientifically ascertainable laws and not by the arbitraryforce of personalities.

However, Hegel’s dialectics is not separated from the idealistic system, but is on the contrary an integral partof 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 asthe culmination of all intellectual evolution, the final and complete truth. Thedialectical 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 butat the same time inconsistent, half-hearted and cowardly, seeking compromises with feudalism. In spite of his dialectics, Hegel pronounced the Prussianlanded bourgeois monarchy thelast and highest stage in theevolution of human society. Likewise he regarded the “national soul” of the Prussian monarchical state asthe embodiment of absolute spirit. Contemporary reactionaries utilize this part of Hegel’s philosophy inorder to argue the finality and unchangeability of reactionary bourgeois states in the contemporary world (see neo-Hegelianism).

Marx and Engels, in constructing their philosophy-dialectical materialism could not accept dialectics in the form workedout 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. (See Method, Marxist Dialectical.) “When describing their dialectical method, Marx and Engels usually refer to Hegel as thephilosopher who formulated the main features of dialectics. This, however,

does not mean that the dialectics of Marx and Engelsis identical with the dialectics of Hegel. As a matter of fact Marx and Engels took from the Hegeliandialectics only its ‘rationalkernel,’ casting aside its idealistic shell, and developed it further so as tolend it a modern scientific form.” (Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism.)

. . . . “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 formof ‘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.”

(Capital, Vol. I, Preface, p.xxx.) The chief works of Hegel are Phenomenology of Mind,1807; Science of Logic, 1812-16; Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Short Logic, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Mind), 1817; Philosophy of Right, 18 21.

Posthumously published works include Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 1833-36; Philosophy ofHistory, 1837, Philosophy of Art, 1836-1838.

(Handbook of Philosophy, H. Selsam. Proletarian Publishers, Page 48 & 49).

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, andthus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in completely changedcircumstances and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changed activity.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm

History, Role of the Individual:The role of the individual definesthe place of the individual withinthe objective, material processes going on in the world, a country, and the individual’s community, and identifies his or her active role in the process of 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 is room for the role of the individual, including greatindividual 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 particularCorsican, should have been themilitary 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 1894 Engels to Borgius.)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm

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 could seebeyond the limits of their stage of development.

Thus, knowledge is relative, deepening as it evolves from a lower to a higher understanding ofthe world we live in.

Historical materialism:Introduced as a popular term byFrederick Engels in an 1890 letter to Bloch, historical materialism means the materialist conception of history. Historical materialismis the application of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of social life and the law systemsthat govern reproduction and development of human society. (See, Materialist conception ofhistory.)

I would furthermore ask you to study this theory from itsoriginal 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 itsapplication. There are also many allusions to it in Capital. Then may I also directyou 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. (Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890 Engels to J. Bloch In Königsberg.)https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm

Idealism:Idealism is the philosophical doctrine that holds that consciousness, thought, the psychological and spirit are primary and fundamental in the existence of reality, while matter, nature and the physical are secondary, derivation and dependent upon consciousness for existence. It is one of the two main camps in philosophy. The other is materialism. Idealism as a philosophy is different 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 andthought are product, functionsof matter. (Handbook of Philosophy, H. Selsam, page 53.)

Spirkin poses the question:

The crux of the basic questionof 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? 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. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Identity:Identity in philosophy refers to sameness and the thing(s) a group

of phenomena have in common. Identity in contradiction is that which holds the conflicting aspects together. It is the bond that prevents the two poles from separating. Capitalist and proletariat are the primary classes at the foundation of the capitalist mode of production. Theidentity of capitalist and proletariat is their existence as buyers and sellers based in capitalist private property. The identity or stable connection between classes – the exploiter and the exploited – is mediated through the property relations casting capitalist as owner of means of production and proletariat as owners of labor ability. The bourgeoisie faces themarket 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 wagesattained from the sale of labor power.

Identity politics:

Movement or identity politics arose in the 1960’s when capitalism was in midst of an extended upswing with increasing production and employment opportunities bringing optimism that the growth would continue indefinitely. People who had long suffered discrimination and oppression on the basis ofcolor, ethnicity, or gender

identified with others like themselves and organized in their own ‘movement’ and organizations to demand a piece of the expanding pie.

…. The Civil Rights Movement set the tone and pace for all struggles. Color has always been at the cutting edge of American history, not just forAfrican-Americans, but also for other minorities, for women, and other disadvantagedsocial groups.

Trade union politics also expressed the identity politics of the past period. ‘Class identity’ was too oftenapproached or interpreted as ‘trade union identity.’

…. Equating ‘class identity’ with ‘trade union identity’ was wrong, but understandable at that time. In reality the working class is much broader than the trade union movement,and the social movements for equality were integral to the working class struggle. Class and color in this country are as intertwined as slavery and capitalism.http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v19ed5art4.html

The economic basis of the identitypolitics of the past was expandingemployment opportunities. With thesystem undergoing qualitative change due to the electronic revolution, the basis of achieving

reform through identity politics has been eliminated. Fighting for socially necessary means of life, as a birthright entitlement for all, rather than as a concession to an identity group, is the essence of class politics.

Ideology:Ideology is a body of ideas, beliefs, and ethics that expressesand defines relationships among people. An ideology is a world viewpoint, a set of conscious and unconscious ideas that constitute one’s goals, expectations, and actions. Revolutionary ideology sustains the individual in the cause of emancipation of the proletariat. Ideological conviction is what allows the individual and class to translate belief into activity and fight andeven die for a cause.

Ideology is a partial analogue of the theoretical level of consciousness; it systematically evaluates social reality from the positions of a definite classor party. Ideology accumulates the historical experiences of definite groups or classes, formulatestheir sociopolitical tasks and goals, and builds a system of authoritative ideals. A significant featureof ideology as a specific form of consciousness is thatit reflects reality in a mediated form, and not integrally and directly as

social psychology does; ideology develops its own categorical tools which, being fairly abstract, are more remote from reality; this holds the danger of ideology becoming self-contained and inclined towards scholastic theorizing.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Imperialism:

Imperialism is the extension of rule or dominance by one people over another. Ancient imperialism reached its climax under the Roman Empire, which collapsed in the West after two centuries of Pax Romana, and withered away finally in the East in the late Middle Ages with thecollapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to theOttoman Sultan Mohammad II isviewed by some historians as the beginning of the modern age. Thereafter, imperialism subsided. Subsequently, the Holy Roman Empire and OttomanDominion emerged as confederations of princely states of high degrees of autonomy rather than imposed imperial rule.

A new imperialism was reborn in the West with the rise of commercial capitalism in the

17th century in which external trade became indispensable to the growth of domestic economies. …. Therise of industrial capitalismdated from the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century with the private ownership of the means of production and imposed distant markets. Nineteen-century imperialism was an extension of industrial capitalism. Neo-imperialism of the post-Cold War era is an extension of finance capitalism, in which the global manipulation of finance dominates all else.http://henryckliu.com/page61.html

Modern imperialism of the past century was the monopoly stage of capitalism, when the concentrationand centralization of capitalism had reached such gigantic propositions that a new form of capitalist enterprise evolved - the monopoly-based corporation.

Imperialism was colonialism and the horrific “beat down” of the colonized by the colonizer, which entailed the world’s people being forcefully dragged (as slaves and peons), into a new world order of economic and social relations thatdestroyed natural economy. Imperialism brought the world intocapitalist productive relations. Lenin describes the imperialism ofthe 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 offree 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 thefinancial oligarchy (finance capital is monopoly industrialcapital merged with bank capital); (4) the (economic) partition of the world by the international cartels has begun. There are already over one hundred such internationalcartels, which command the entire world market and divideit ‘amicably’ among themselves—until war redivides it. The export of capital, as distinctfrom the export of commoditiesunder 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 Americaand Europe, and later in Asia,took final shape in the period1898–1914. The Spanish-American War (1898), the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and the economic crisis inEurope in 1900 are the chief historical landmarks in the new era of world history.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm

Imperialism based on the monopoly stage of capitalism no longer exists and has been supplanted by globalism.

Individualism: (See, History: subset, Role of the individual in history.)

Industrial reserve army of labor:The industrial reserve army of labor develops as part of the surplus population. As feudal society gave way to capitalist production, a surplus population was formed, consisting of people whose labor was not needed in the new system of commodity production. The industrial reservearmy of labor consisted of workerswho were unemployed and under

employed during bad economic timesand called into employment during economic “boom” periods.

The “industrial reserve army” of labor 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, making it employable, and giving 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, flowing 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.

Since, however, owing to the progress of machinery, owing to improved agriculture, etc., fewer and fewer workersare 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 thisever-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 isirregularly 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 whichunder 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-armyin proportion to the active (regularly employed) labor-army, the greater is the massof a consolidated (permanent)surplus-population, or strataof workers, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labor. The more extensive, finally, the Lazarus-layers of the workingclass, and the industrial reserve-army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.’(Reviews of Capital by Frederick Engels, Review of Volume One of Capital for theDemokratisches Wochenblatt March 1868.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/reviews-capital/dwochenblatt.htm

Industrial revolution:The industrial revolution was the

transition from manual labor to large mechanized labor, from about1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. The industrial revolution put an end to feudalism. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use ofsteam power and the development ofmachine tools. It also included the change from wood and other biofuels to coal. The industrial revolution began in England and within a few decades had spread toWestern Europe and the United States.

This industrial revolution wasprecipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines, whichwere very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the wholemode 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. (Frederick Engels 1847, The Principles of Communism.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

The industrial revolution is called industrial because it was asystem of mechanical motion drivenby the application of a new energysource, displacing animal and human energy. It is called a revolution because it introduced aqualitatively new technology that changed the old mode of productionand created the economic foundation for a new mode of production.

The industrial revolution reconfigured the labor process qualitatively and changed the social organization of labor basedon handicraft and manufacture. By industrial is meant the rise of electro-mechanical machine systems. Industrial was a new formof co-operation between laborers based on a new division of labor based on the factory system and assembly-line production. It marked a major turning point in history. Almost every aspect of daily life changed and was influenced in some way by the industrial revolution.

Each mode of production was founded on a distinct technology. Handicraft was the first technology. Slave society’s technology was based on handicraftand animal power. Changes in the division of labor, breakdown of production into separate parts performed by individuals, gave rise to a new technology that was manufacture. Manufacture negated handicraft. Feudalism’s technologywas based on handicraft,

manufacture, animal and water power and finally the development of capitalist manufacture. The industrial revolution gave rise tothe electro-mechanical regime, with industrial capitalism displacing capitalist manufacture.

Along with the development ofthe factory system and of therevolution in agriculture that accompanies it, production in all the other branches of industry not onlyextends, but alters its character. The principle carried out in the factory system, of analyzing the process of production into its constituent phases, and of solving the problems thus proposed by the application of mechanics, of chemistry, and of the whole range of thenatural sciences, becomes thedetermining principle everywhere. Hence, machinery squeezes itself into the manufacturing industries first for one detail process,then for another. Thus the solid crystal of their organization, based on the old division of labor, becomes dissolved, and makes way for constant changes. Independently of this, a radical change takes place inthe composition of the collective laborer, a change of the persons working in combination. In contrast withthe manufacturing period, thedivision of labor is

thenceforth based, wherever possible, on the employment of women, of children of all ages, and of unskilled laborers, in one word, on cheap labor, as it is characteristically called in England. . . . This modern so-called domestic industry has nothing, except the name,in common with the old-fashioned domestic industry, . . . .(Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Chapter Fifteen: Machinery and Modern Industry.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S8a

The industrial revolution spans the period from the 18th century upto the emergence of the microchip.The microchip is to the present society what the steam engine was to feudal agrarian society. The microchip calls forth robotics, the robot economy and a period of social revolution.

Industrial Revolution, post:The April 21, 2012 Economist magazine’s front cover featuresthe 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 numberof 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 tosomething. Society has gone beyondproduction methods and a social organization of labor, which originated with the steam engine and broad introduction of electro-mechanical production, expressed in Henry Ford’s production system.The postindustrial revolution is anew technology regime, whose building blocks are based on the microprocessor.

Computers and robotics are to our society what the steam engine and the technology regime embodied in the steam engine was to manufacture. Postindustrial is nota concept of blue-collar workers versus white collar workers or service workers versus non-serviceworkers or direct producers of value (commodities) versus non-direct producers of value.

Postindustrial literally means “after industrial.” Industrial refers to the electro-mechanical process. Nor does postindustrial imply the destruction of factories. Factories are

reconfigured based on the new technology to the same degree thatthe industrial revolution reconfigured cooperation based on handicraft and manufacture. A new technology regime defines the postindustrial revolution.

Today’s electronic revolution, rather than the “information revolution,” is the foundation of social revolution. The social revolution changes every aspect ofsociety and human life. It destroys the old classes built up based on the industrial revolutionand creates new classes, deployingnew means of production. It renders human labor superfluous toproduction and begins destruction of the value relation as the basisfor directing and deploying labor,while it creates abundance in society. (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, demanding society reorganize around the new economic conditions of labor. Insurrection is the “crown on the head of revolution” and the revolutionary crisis.

To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy

and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class. That is thefirst 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.

. . . . In order to treat insurrection in a Marxist way, i.e., as an art, we mustat the same time, without losing a single moment, organise a headquarters of the insurgent detachments, distribute our forces, move the reliable regiments to themost important points, surround the Alexandriusky Theatre, occupy the Peter andPaul Fortress, arrest the General Staff and the government, and move against the officer cadets and the Savage Division12 those detachments which would rather die than allow the

enemy to approach the strategic points of the city.We must mobilise the armed workers and call them to fight the last desperate fight, occupy the telegraph and the telephone exchange atonce, move our insurrection headquarters to the central telephone exchange and connect it by telephone with all the factories, all the regiments, all the points of armed fighting, etc. Of course, this is all by wayof example, only to illustrate the fact that at the present moment it is impossible to remain loyal toMarxism, to remain loyal to the revolution unless insurrection is treated as anart. N. Lenin

(V. I. Lenin, Marxism and Insurrection, A Letter to the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.))http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/13.htm

The insurrectionary movement is consolidated by an organization ofrevolutionaries, whose goal is capture of political power (commanding heights of state) and formation of a new political state. The organization of revolutionaries clarifies the goals of the movement and brings together the popular leaders of masses and classes, specifically

the lead fighting section of the revolutionary class. In US revolutionary history, the Philadelphia Continental Congress’writing the Declaration of Independence was an aspect of the work of the insurrectionary movement, which would go on to wage war against British imperialism. In old Russia the Lenin group of Bolsheviks formed a“party of a new type” for the purpose of seizing political authority rather than limiting thenotion of a party to running candidates for public office.

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 toeducated 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, andtheoretical 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, whoseelite members belonged to the class of feudal lords. Some ofthe physicians, teachers, artists, and other members of the intelligentsia were originally serfs or slaves or members of the lowest strata of freemen. During the Middle Ages the role of the intelligentsia of the oppressed classes was played by wandering scholars, storytellers, teachers, and actors, as well as by experts on the Holy Scriptures - common people who sometimes held views radically opposed to the state. In antiquity andin the Middle Ages intellectual work was regardedas a privilege of the propertied classes. However, even then a service intelligentsia appeared, including philosophers, physicians, alchemists, poets,and artists who made a living by selling their services to the nobility. In China the service intelligentsia—educated officials—enjoyed the

highest social prestige, and in Europe, as centralized states developed, intellectualretainers of the monarchs found their way into high government positions.

The scientific, literary, andartistic intelligentsia, and to a lesser extent, the engineering and technical intelligentsia, underwent considerable development during the Renaissance, when both the intelligentsia and culture in general became markedly secular. Increasingly, the intelligentsia was drawn fromthe lower classes: for example, Leonardo da Vinci was the son of a notary, and Shakespeare, Spinoza, Rembrandt, and Benvenuto …. The history of the intelligentsia actually begins with the consolidationof capitalism. With the accelerated development of productive forces, the need for mental workers grew, as did their number. Nonetheless, even in the mostdeveloped countries, at the beginning of the 20th centurythe proportion of the intelligentsia among the economically active population did not exceed several percent (4 percent inthe USA in 1900). Lawyers, teachers, and physicians madeup 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 inthe formation of a broad stratum, the intelligentsia, consisting of persons engagedin 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 . ..Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism Edited by 0. Kuusinen(1961), page 190.

Interaction (interactivity):

The concept of interaction. Everything that happens in theworld springs from constant interaction between objects. Because of the universality ofinteraction, all the structural levels of being areinterconnected, 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 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 isthe 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.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 been formed, corresponding to the three great quantitative stages in the development of the industrial revolution and the transition fromagriculture to industry. Each of these stages produced its corresponding doctrines of the class struggle, serving 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, whenthe 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 thisInternational, 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 ofthe Third International has manifested itself immediately in the fact that the new, third, ‘International Working Men’s Association’ has alreadybegun to develop, to a certainextent, into a union of SovietSocialist 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 hasbegun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/apr/15.htm

A rogue “Fourth International” wasformed 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 feudalsociety. 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 thinkerswas won over to Karl Marx’s science of society (Marxism).(See, Revolutionary History and Our TasksMarch, 2007, http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v17ed2art2.html)

International, First: The modern, scientific communist

movement began at the time when manufacturing with its small, scattered workshops was replaced by industry with its concentrationof thousands of workers in giant factories. This development was the environment for the founding of the Communist League in 1847.

(See, 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, stating 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 theCologne communists in 1852, a period (era, stage) of the proletarian movement came to an end. 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 very 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 theworld, creating a new imperialist system and bribing their working class, or rather upper strata of workers, into political and military support. Under these changed conditions, the First International, which was formed based on a previous stage of development of capital and the industrial revolution, was dissolved.

At its peak, the IWA had 5 millionmembers according to police reports, although the official journal reported 8 million members. The sixth Congress of theInternational was held in Geneva in September 1873, but was generally considered to be a failure. The International disbanded three years later, at the 1876 Philadelphia conference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First

_International

International, Second:Between the founding of the First International in 1864 and 1900, earth was divided into colonial spheres attached to European greatpowers. This system of colonialism– the direct colonial system – furthered the spread of capitalistcommodity production, alongside the emergence of a new financial architecture. A new form of capital (financial-industrial capital) arose in America based onfinancing the American Civil War and created Yankee or Wall Street imperialism. With growth of the spontaneous working movement in Europe and America and the beginning of American export of finance capital in the American plantation South and Latin America, the Second International was founded in 1899. The Second International was founded based ofthe stage of development of the industrial revolution and capitalist productive relations, birthing modern imperialism and the consolidation of the direct colonial system.

By 1912, the economically undeveloped world, (expressing different stages of development), was conquered. Any further market expansion would have to be done byone 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 thedeclaration of war, almost all thesocialist 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 antagonism based on each party supporting itsown bourgeoisie 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, Third:The Third International, “Comintern,” was formed on the basis of the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution, establishment of Soviet power and in the environment of emergence ofAmerican led financial-industrial imperialism (monopoly capitalism).World capitalism sought destruction of lingering feudal relations and completion of the world transition from agriculture to industry. American imperialism sought to reshape the new world through destruction of the direct colonial system and opening up theworld to American finance.

The Comintern sought destruction of the colonial system. 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 advancedcountries 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 ofRussia was more or less limited toEurope and the Americas.

From 1922 (the birth of Italian fascism) until the opening of World War II, revolution and counter-revolution evolved as a unity, leading to the consolidation of fascism. The Comintern confronted European fascism as the hangman of proletarian revolution. From this point of view, it followed that war and fascism were the form the counter-revolution was taking to which all questions were subordinated.

Europe was still ruled by twelve monarchies as late as 1930, which drove a section of bourgeois democrats upholding republican form of government, into the communist movement. Thus, the Third International was a hotbed of intense political struggles, divergent class ideology and different line of marches. Marxists and revolutionaries grouped around Lenin’s Bolshevism fought these hostile non-Marxist ideologies, including Trotskyism

and in America various doctrines of American exceptionalism.

The Comintern had seven World Congresses between 1919 and 1935. It also had thirteen “Enlarged Plenums” of its governing Executive Committee. The seventh and last congress of the Cominternin 1935 represented 65 parties andover 3 million Communists, with 785,000 residing in the industrialdeveloped countries. That is to say, more than 2,200,000 Communists were outside Europe andAmerica by this time.

The Comintern reflected the Leninist strategy of detaching thehundreds of millions of slaves of imperialism from their imperial masters, converting them from a reserve of reaction to a reserve of the proletarian revolution. Leninism and the Comintern broke the patriotic petty bourgeois ideology of the Second International, for who only white skinned people had been seen as civilized and worthy of serious “consideration.”

The objective basis for the dismantling of the Third CommunistInternational was the new stage ofthe industrial revolution, growingout of the Second World War. Formed on the basis of the world of 1919, the parties of the Comintern completed the mission itwas formed to carry out and was officially dissolved in May 1943.

International, Fourth or

Trotskyite International:Established in France in 1938, theFourth International was founded and organized around the personality and political propositions of Leon Trotsky. These propositions are collectively called Trotskyism. The Fourth International was quickly labeled the Trotskyite International

The Trotskyite International self-proclaimed purpose and goal was a). the overthrow of the Soviet government and state; and b). to replace the Soviet government and state with a Trotskyite “workers state” and c). to oppose the Comintern as theprinciple enemy of the world working class and fundamental roadblock of world revolution, as the condition for the defeat of world capitalism.

The Trotskyite International sought to unite all that could be united under the banner of anti-Stalinism. The Comintern was labeled “a stinking corpse,” the great road block to world revolution, and was to be fought, opposed and destroyed worldwide. The Soviet state, was declared a degenerate workers’ state and to be overthrown by any means necessary including terrorist actsagainst individuals.

The majority of Marxists worldwide, in the advanced capitalist countries and the former colonies, viewed the

Trotskyites as counterrevolutionaries, part of the worldwide alliance and convergence of forces of imperialist thuggery (including intelligence agencies) seeking overthrow of the Soviet state.

Cominform.With the Soviet conquest of

much of Eastern Europe, a new communist network of organizationswas formed politically and economically to consolidate this area. Founded in 1947, Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) wasthe 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’slabor ability to owners of means of production for wages. The society of jobs, that is, the job form of work, is a recent creationin human history. In 1994, Fortunemagazine reported:

As a way of organizing work, it [the job] is a social artifact that has outlived itsusefulness. 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 are starting to be 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 based on need. The jobless cooperative society is communist economy. Communist society destroys the category of jobs and in its place has voluntary laboring. In the society of abundance, human energy will be used to enhance life, and the old world of the job will be a relic of the past.

Labor:Labor is a purposeful activity that transforms and adapts natural

objects so as to satisfy human requirements. Labor is a spontaneous and natural necessity,an indispensable condition of human existence. Without labor human life itself could not develop qualitatively.

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, andcontrols the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself toNature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adaptedto his own wants. By thus 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 bestof 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.(Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Part III.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm

Labor aristocracy: Labor Aristocracy is a layer of the working class, historically the best paid workers in trade unions and their political representatives mediating relations between capitalist and workers, constituting the social prop of the capitalist system.

This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour 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 thereal agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalistclass, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers take the side of the bourgeoisie,

the ‘Versaillese’ against the‘Communards’.

Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problem of the communist movement and ofthe impending social revolution.

Imperialism is the eve of thesocial revolution of the proletariat. This has been confirmed since 1917 on a world-wide scale. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/pref02.htm

On a world scale, this privileged economic, social, and political layer of the working class status was a fundamental characteristic of the monopoly stage of capitalism, the colonial system and the consequence of the exploitation of the majority of humanity by a handful of imperialist states.

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. As such, the labor movement encompasses thestruggle of American society as a whole, 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, organized and unorganized, 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. It is the ability to work, the sum totalof the mental, physical and spiritual forces of the human, thanks to which material wealth isproduced. Labor power in the capitalist mode of production acquires a commodity form of existence andas a market relation is sold and bought alongside of every other commodity. The laborers sell this potential to the capitalists for wages in order for the worker to buy the necessities of life. As a potential force, expended labor power becomes labor in the processof production.

Labor ability is an important aspect of being human, and existedbefore the coming of society, before classes, private property and the category mode of production. Before the appearance of society, classes and private property, human beings live in

communities, deploying labor powerfor survival.

Under capitalism this ability is sold in the market as a commodity alongside all the other commodities. 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, that is, is not a slave or a serf. If the labor ability of the individual is sold all at once, the individual becomes a slave andis in fact physically cast as a commodity. The wage worker is not a commodity. Rather, his labor ability acquires a commodity form of existence. Second, instead of being in a position to sell commodities made with the individual’s labor, the laborer must have no other resources on which to rely, so that the laboreris compelled to sell his or her labor power.

Law (jurisprudence):Law in the juridical sense is the will of the ruling class written down. Law is a series of rules andregulations, which guarantee sanctity of the state and private property. Law regulates the relations between classes and individuals in such a way as to preserve the system.

Since the State is the form in which the individuals of aruling class assert their common interests, and in which the whole civil society

of an epoch is epitomized, itfollows that the State mediates in the formation of all common institutions and that the institutions receivea political form. Hence the illusion that law is based onthe will, and indeed on the will divorced from its real basis — on free will. Similarly, justice is in its turn reduced to the actual laws.

Civil law develops simultaneously with private property out of the disintegration of the naturalcommunity. With the Romans the development of private property and civil law had nofurther industrial and commercial consequences, because their whole mode of production did not alter. (Usury!)

With modern peoples, where the feudal community was disintegrated by industry andtrade, 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, alsodeveloped maritime law. As soon as industry and trade developed private property further, first in Italy and later in other countries, thehighly 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 feudalnobility 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 exceptEngland 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 hasjust as little an independenthistory as religion.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01c.htm

Law in the juridical meaning is different from law and law system in the philosophic meaning.

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 thesame phenomenon.… Some laws establish the precise quantitative dependence of phenomena and may be expressedmathematically (e.g., the laws

of mechanics). Other laws do not lend themselves to precisemathematical formulation (e.g., the law of natural selection). But all laws express the objective, necessary connection of phenomena.http://leninist.biz/en/1963/FML734/1.2.1-The.Universal.Connection.of.Phenomena

Laws are the necessary and stable connections between things, makingthings what they are. In dialectics, connections are a special kind of relation between things. This relation is where onething is dependent upon another thing, and this dependence is the connection. The totality of the laws describing the connections isa ‘law system.’ The connections making a system what it is are itsdynamics. The system dynamics are its evolving connections as it passes from one stage of growth tothe next. System dynamics is an approach to understanding the behavior of complex systems over time, based on their law system.

Laws operate within its range of conditions, or a field of phenomena. The law of correspondence of productive relations to productive forces operates throughout all human history. This general law is at the foundation of the “law system”of a mode of production. This law states that qualitative change in the means of production compels

society to reorganize itself around the new means of production.

Necessity and Law.By recognizing that all

phenomena are necessarily subject to causality, we recognize the existence of necessity. The inception and development of phenomena that follow from the most essentialrelations lying at the root ofa process are called necessary. Necessary development is the developmentthat cannot fail to take placeunder the given conditions. For example, in the history ofthe organic world less adaptedorganisms are necessarily replaced by those more adapted.

Necessity in nature and society is most completely revealed in laws. Recognizing necessity in the origin and development of phenomena involves recognizing that theyare subject to certain regularities that exist independently of man’s will ordesire.

Each law is a manifestationof the necessity that governs phenomena. For example, a bodyraised above the surface of the earth will necessarily fall back to earth, provided it is not held up by some force acting in the opposite direction. This example

illustrates the law of gravitation.http://leninist.biz/en/1963/FML734/1.2.1-The.Universal.Connection.of.Phenomena

Leap:Leap means transition, the motion of change from one quality to another. It is a break in the gradualness of quantitative change. It is a series of changes wherein one quality is quantitatively, stage by stage, replaced by another quality. The leap is highly chaotic and immensely unstable. It is the process of the old quality being destroyed and the process of the new quality emerging and consolidating based on a new law system.

All processes pass through successive boundaries and develop in stages. In the development of athing, boundary is the totality offeatures defining the shape and existence of a thing as it passes from one stage to the next. At each quantitative stage of development of a process, it acquires new features distinguishing it from the stage it has left.

Qualitative change occurs by the quantitative extraction or by quantitative introduction of a newquality into a process. The new quality literally halts development of the process on the old basis because the process has

been qualitatively changed. The transition (the leap) begins and development now takes place based on incremental development-growth of the new quality.

The steam engine and the technology it embodied are today bookmarked as the new quality driving transition from handicraftand manufacturing (agricultural) society to industrial society. This leap from one technology regime and state of development ofthe material power of productive forces denotes social revolution.

The semiconductor and the technology it expresses, is bookmarked as the new quality inaugurating transition (the leap)and introducing social revolution into industrial society.

The introduction of electronics into production has begun a qualitative change—leap—in the economy. Electronics in production(robotics) develops in antagonism with industrial means of production. Society is drawn into social revolution. During the process of transition, that is to say during the leap, it is the subjective element, human will, which ensures the resolution and outcome of the kind of society we wish to live in.

Left wing and right wing:The left-right designation in politics dates from the seating arrangements in the French Chamberof 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 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 strugglefor emancipation. Calls for workers to “fight the right” lead a fight against one grouping within capitalist politics whereaswhat is required for political power is a fight against the entire capitalist system.

Leninism:Leninism is associated with V.I. Lenin’s doctrine of proletarian revolution based on Marxist theory. V.I. Lenin—Vladimir IlyichLenin (April 22 [O.S. April 10], 1870-January 21, 1924)—was a Russian revolutionary and acknowledged leader of the Bolshevik faction, which after 1903 evolved into the Bolshevik party. Lenin’s doctrine of combat gave the Bolshevik party its exceptional revolutionary orientation. The Bolsheviks becamethe primary party, seizing political power in October 1917, and establishing the worker-

peasant alliance as the specific form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Written in 1924, J.V. Stalin’s classical definition of Leninism remains the benchmark by which alldescriptions of Leninism are measured.

Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To bemore 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. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period,(we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did notyet exist, in the period of the proletarians’ preparationfor revolution, in the periodwhen the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical inevitability. But Lenin, thedisciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in theperiod of developed imperialism, in the period ofthe unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of

proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.

That is why Leninism is the further development of Marxism.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/introduction.htm

V.I. Lenin called his doctrine of combat (class war) Bolshevism. TheLeninist doctrine formed the basisof the Third Communist International. (See, Bolshevism.)

Line of march:Line of march is a military concept of “the route along which a column of troops advances.”

The term “line of march” originated in the military. It looks at conceptually how do we get to our target, how strategically do we achieve what we are trying to achieve.

I want to make a distinction between what we mean by line of march in the military sense and what we mean by line of march in the political sense. When revolutionaries talk about line of march, we mean the general progression of revolutionary development andtransformation, something that is entirely objective.

The term was first used in the political sense by Marx and Engels when they stated in The Manifesto:

“The communists therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute sectionof 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 advantageof clearly understanding the line of march, the conditionsand the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.” (Program of the dispossessed is key to victory of revolution.)http://www.lrna.org/archive/rally/15.04/rc.15.04.program.html

Line of march for communist revolutionaries is based on the path of development of the technology revolution. It informs revolutionaries of the route to take, based the rise and fall of classes, changes in the form of classes and property and which section of classes to based their program on.

Line of march is broader than strategy and demands the revolutionary rely upon philosophyto create and chart a path to the

future. Line of march points to the goal, while strategy is the plan to achieve an objective at each stage of the social process. The focus of strategy is how to win the decisive engagements in the stage of the social process rather than “how do we get from where we are at, to the end goal.”

Marxist theory studies the stage-by-stage development of the economy. Strategy is the determination of where to throw the main blow within each stage ofdevelopment of a campaign. Strategy seeks to achieve the goalestablished along the route - lineof march. (See, Strategy and tactics.)

Luddite:The Luddites were 19th century English textile artisans who, from1811 to 1817, destroyed machinery to protest being forced out of work by labor-saving machinery. The modern usage of the term Luddite is derogatory, implying a person who refuses to acclimate himself or herself to robotics andutilize modern computers and devices based on the semiconductor, such as iPads.

The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in theEnglish manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century, chieflycaused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave theanti-Jacobin governments of a

Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital,and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, butagainst the mode in which theyare used.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S1

Lumpen proletariat:A population group formed from thebreakdown of all classes during the decay of the feudal system. Rather than a new class formed on the basis of new means of production, the lumpen proletariatwas 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 feudalsystem 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 around growing towns seeking food, work, and a new life. One section of the serfs entered into employment as artisans and producers of commodities, with

some able to rise to become bourgeoisie while others became modern proletarians, exchanging their labor for wages. Those unable to find a station in the new relations of capitalist production became “ragged proletariats,” becoming criminals,prostitutes, thieves, thugs, beggars, and a loose mass of people supported by charity. The lumpen proletariat belongs to the period of crisis of the feudal system.

There has never been a lumpen proletariat in America because there has never been feudalism here. There is a criminal element that some workers get pulled into. The electronic revolution creates a dispossessed and destitute proletariat, who is not a lumpen proletariat.

Male supremacy:Male supremacy is a system of exploitation, oppression, ritual behavior, and ideology of patriarchy justifying the domination of men over women. It is part of the architecture of productive relations based on class exploitation and appropriation of the unpaid labor of a section of society. It is acts justifying the oppression of women by men built into the system. Men came to own means of production and ritualized passing wealth through males of the next generation, thus making women dependent upon the male for survival.

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 (Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels); (See, Communist Manifesto.)

Manufacture:Manufacture is the highest stage of the manual labor system. It divides production into separate tasks, carried out by separate workers. Manufacture brings together a group of workers withinone enterprise for the production of a commodity, formerly done by asingle artisan.(See, Division of labor.)

Market:The market is the totality of links making 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 appearance of thecapitalist 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 actually face each other as individuals, but

rather each class faces the marketand its institutions as buyers andsellers. Since the market seems impersonal and not controlled by either the worker or the capitalist, it appears that the two parties face each other as equal citizens. As individuals, each is free either to reach or not to reach agreement. No worker is bound to any employer, and no employer is compelled to hire any individual worker. Exploitation ofthe working class takes place through the market relation. Hence, the bourgeois mode of commodity production (capitalism) is called the “free market” systemby capitalist propaganda.

Communist economy abolishes the market system but preserves retailoutlets 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 worker-proletarian abolishes the market and their status as proletarian, and distribution of the social products is based on need. Thus, the market relation comes to an end.

Marx, Karl:

Marx was born May 5, 1818, inTrier, 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 studentsof the Hegelian philosophy (see Hegel) who were known as“Left-Hegelians” (see). On completing his university studies Marx wrote his doctoral dissertation on “TheDifference Between the Natural Philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus,” in which work he still held an idealist viewpoint. During the next few years, he passedthrough Feuerbachian (see Feuerbach) humanism to dialectical materialism.

Political reaction in Germanyin 1841 having made a university position impossible, Marx became editor. of a radical bourgeois newspaper at Cologne. Soon he resigned hiseditorship 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 wentto Brussels, where he lived until 1848. Banished from Belgium after the February Revolution of 1848, Marx finally went to London, wherehe lived to the end of his days.

During 1845-49, with the helpof Engels (see), 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 Philosophyin criticism of Proudhon, allpoint 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 ofCommunists. It appeared just before the outbreak of the French and German revolutionsof 1848, in connection with which Marx also played an important practical organizing role.

After the political upheavalsin 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 Capitalwere also years of extensive political and organizational activity.

With the strengthening of thelabor 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 Londonin 1864 the International Workingmen’s Association - the First International - wasfounded, 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 ofthe 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 Marxcarried 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 - dialecticalmaterialism (see). Extending and applying this world view to the field of social history, Marx created

historical materialism (see),the science of the laws of social evolution and of the class struggle. On the basis afforded by his philosophy ofdialectical and historical materialism, his profound study of world history and ofthe 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 asthe gravedigger of capitalismand the creator of the new communist society, Marx put forward the basic idea of thedictatorship 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 (see).

It is important to note the philosophic significance of the fact that Marx’s theoriesin 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, pages 70, 71.

Marxism:Named after Karl Marx, Marxism is the science of society. Frederick Engels, Marx’s longtime collaborator, called Marx and his discovery of the law system governing the development of society the “science of society” in his celebrated work, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of ClassicalGerman Philosophy.

For we live not only in naturebut also in human society, andthis also no less than nature has its history of developmentand 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch02.htm

Marx discovered the general law ofsociety.

Just as Darwin discovered thelaw of development or organicnature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means,and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people orduring a given epoch, form the foundation upon which thestate institutions, the legalconceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of thepeople concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of viceversa, as had hitherto been the case.

But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and

socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.

Two such discoveries would beenough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one suchdiscovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.

Such was the man of science. (Frederick Engels,’ Speech atthe Grave of Karl Marx Highgate Cemetery, London. March 17, 1883.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/burial.htm

In a 1913 article, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin described Marx’s contribution to the development of human understanding.

I

The philosophy of Marxism is materialism. Throughout the modern history of Europe, andespecially at the end of the eighteenth century in France,where a resolute struggle wasconducted against every kind of medieval rubbish, against serfdom in institutions and

ideas, materialism has provedto be the only philosophy that is consistent, true to all the teachings of natural science and hostile to superstition, cant and so forth.

…. Marx and Engels defended philosophical materialism in the most determined manner and repeatedly explained how profoundly erroneous is everydeviation from this basis. Their views are most clearly and fully expounded in the works of Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and Anti-Dühring, which, like the Communist Manifesto, are handbooks for every class-conscious worker.

II

Having recognized that the economic system is the foundation on which the political superstructure is erected, Marx devoted his greatest attention to the study of this economic system. Marx’s principal work, Capital, is devoted to a study of the economic system of modern, i.e., capitalist, society.

…. He showed that the value of every commodity is determined by the quantity ofsocially necessary labor timespent on its production.

Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between things (the exchange of one commodity for another)Marx revealed a relation between people. The exchange of commodities expresses the connection between individualproducers through the market.Money signifies that the connection is becoming closerand closer, inseparably uniting the entire economic life of the individual producers into one whole. Capital signifies a further development of this connection: man’s labor-powerbecomes a commodity. The wage-worker sells his labor-power to the owner of land, factories and instruments of labor. The worker spends one part of the day covering the cost of maintaining himself and his family (wages), whilethe other part of the day he works without remuneration, creating for the capitalist surplus-value, the source of profit, the source of the wealth of the capitalist class.

The doctrine of surplus-valueis the corner-stone of Marx’seconomic theory.

III

When feudalism was overthrownand ‘free’ capitalist societyappeared in the world, it at once became apparent that

this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people. Various socialist doctrines immediately emergedas a reflection of and protest against this oppression. Early socialism, however, was utopian socialism.

…. The genius of Marx lies inhis having been the first to deduce from this the lesson world history teaches and to apply that lesson consistently. The deduction he made is the doctrine of the class struggle.

People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.

…. Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm

Marxism-Leninism:Marx’s science of society and the doctrine of combat deployed by Vladimir Lenin to build a political party and seize political power in Russia, and found the Third Communist International. (See, Leninism.)

Mass uprising:A mass uprising involves a multitude of people in protest. Mass uprisings broke out in Tunisia in December 2010, then in Egypt and Libya, and finally in Madison, Wisconsin, February 15, 2011.

A mass uprising is not “the revolution” or “social revolution.” 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 citizen rights but should not be mistaken for revolution.

Materialism:Materialism holds that matter, nature and being are primary in relation to consciousness, thinking, and spirit, and that theworld is knowable. For philosophicmaterialism, consciousness is human awareness rather than otherworldly universal consciousness of what animates plants and other forms of organic life.

Materialism is a term of philosophy rather than a notion ofthe love of material things. Philosophy and terms of philosophyexamine the relationship of matterand consciousness, thinking and being, nature and spirit, and determine what is primary and whatis 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.

Materialist philosophy does not deny the existence of nonphysical things. Clearly, a thought is not physical. Materialism holds that matter exists as an objective reality outside and independent ofthe consciousness of the individual and, in fact, existed before the coming of human beings and human consciousness.

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 ofthings 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 ordersis 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, butin 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 silentlytaken 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

The material conception of historyoverturned the old historical narrative based on the “great man theory of history” wherein one individual possessing the Wisdom of Solomon or great strength creates qualitative change in the mode of production based on their individuality. The materialist conception of history made obsolete the God theory of historywhere kings and queens ruled society as servants and subjects of a universal, all knowing God who has predetermined all past andfuture events.

The God theory of history denies that society is held together by alaw system based on production anddistribution of the means to support and sustain human life. The God theory of history also denies human will in history, as the most revolutionary productive force.

The materialist conception of history also overthrows the degenerate bourgeois metaphysical science of history, which denies the existence of society altogether and views human relations as a collection of individuals expressing heroic deeds that motivate the development of humanity.

The materialist conception of history is not a key that unlocks all the mysteries of history but astarting point and framework in which to view and understand the

motion and underlying law systems of a society.

Matriarchy:Matriarchy refers to “mother right” and the role of women in a society that is not based on classantagonism, inequality, and exploitation of human labor. Matriarchy was a social organization of labor and family life based on the natural divisionof labor and held sway until the breakup of the primitive communal system and transition of the “tribal-family” life to a society based on private property and economic classes. In a matriarchy,women held esteemed social positions in all society affairs, in contradistinction to the second-class citizenship status ofwomen in most class societies.

Matriarchy was a matrilineal society with inheritance through the female line. Female inheritance or mother right stabilized early society and the generations’ inheritance of knowledge, culture, arts, and skills as matriarchy’s fundamentalcharacteristic. Lineage (inheritance) was through the mother because no one could know for sure who the father was. The father’s role developed more and more away from the home, while themother’s role was riveted to the home because she bore children. Under matriarchy, subjugation based on class did not exist. Rather, mutual dependency and various forms of group marriage

made survival of the species possible.

Matter:Matter in the Marxist philosophic tradition speaks of objective reality in all its multiform manifestations. Matter denotes everything that exists objectively, that is, independently of our consciousness. That is to say, matter’s existence is not dependent upon our 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 ormay 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 isto say, its universal, intransient properties without which it could not exist.(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

Matter is reflected, expressed, and given to us in sensation and finally interpreted through human experience. Knowledge of matter and its law system grows with the development of science. Matter is all the infinite multiplicity of different objects that exist and move in time and space and possessan inexhaustible diversity of qualities. Our sense organs can perceive only an insignificant part of all the actually existing forms of matter, but thanks to construction of increasingly sophisticated instruments and measuring devices, humanity is

widening the frontier of the knownworld and universe.

Means of labor:

Means of labor consist of all those things with the aid of which man acts upon the subject of his labor and transforms it. To the categoryof means of labor belong, first and foremost, the instruments of production, together with land, buildings used for production purposes, roads, canals, storehouses, etc. The determining role among the means of labor is played by the instruments of production. These comprise the various kinds of tools which man uses in his working activity, beginning with the crude stone implements of primitive man and ending with modern machinery. The level ofdevelopment of the instrumentsof production provides the criterion of society’s masteryover nature, the criterion of the development of production.Economic epochs are distinguished one from anothernot by what is produced but byhow material wealth is produced, with what instruments of production.

The subjects of labor and the means of labor constitute the means of production. Means of production in themselves, not associated with labor power, can produce nothing. For the

labor process, the process of producing material wealth, to begin, labor power must be united with the instruments ofproduction.http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Means of production:Means of production are one of theindispensable 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, Productive forces, Mode of production.)

Mega-corporation: (See, Corporation.)

Mega-corporate state:The mega-corporate state is the merger of the mega-corporation with the state. The American megacorp state today, is a fasciststate. Fascism in power is a political form of the state created by the ruling class. The merger between mega-corporations and the state is witnessed in megacorps acquiring an intelligence-gathering capacity, conducting warfare on behalf of states, employing private policingagencies, designing new forms of the city, including its infrastructure based on location convenience of the megacorp.

Today’s mega-corporate state differs from the “corporative state” of Nazi Germany and fascistItaly. 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 duringMussolini’s regime; ….. Its essential idea is the organization of the national economy through corporations covering the various industries, the managements to consist of representativesof 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 statetook shape during a stage of development of the industrial revolution, imperialism and the multinational corporation. European fascism took shape decades before the peaking of the industrial revolution when societywas completing the transition fromagriculture to industry.

During the time of transition between agriculture and industry, social democratic politics dominated politics throughout Europe. Social democracy began as

a political alignment of the bourgeoisie, workers and farmers against feudalism. After World WarI (July 1914 – November 1918) and the Russian October 1917 SocialistRevolution, social democracy split, and a narrow section becamefascist, as was the case with Italy’s Benito Mussolini. Another section of social democracy becameanti-fascist and anti-communist bourgeois republican democrats. Under conditions of capitalist crisis, war, impending political revolution and the split in socialdemocracy, the communist movement led by the Third International sought unity with the anti-fascistbourgeois republican democrats, against the fascist state.

The economic foundation of pre-World War II fascism was the industrial revolution, based on imperialist blocks. Politically, fascism sought and achieved unity with a section of European social democracy. The political form of the statethat marked it as fascism in powerwas the open terroristic dictatorship of capital; specifically its most reactionary and chauvinistic industrial sector.

The world of L. Harry Gould no longer exists. Still, fascism in power today – if such a term is tobe used - is the political rule ofcapital. That is to say, fascism in power is the subjective will ofcapital – speculative finance - firmly in control of the state. The state is part of the

superstructure. It is the organization of violence and coercion in the hands of the ruling class. Marx clarified the class origin of the state in the 1848 Communist Manifesto.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.

…. the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishmentof Modern Industry and of theworld market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. Theexecutive of the modern stateis but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

Sixty years of capitalist development exist between L. Harry Gould’s definition of fascism and fascism in power today -– 2014. At a certain stage in the accumulation, concentration and centralization of capital, in the age of electronic production, the megacorp mergeswith the state and remakes the state in its own image, resulting in the mega-corporatestate. The mega-corporate stateis a fascist state. The new megacorps have changed the state so that it can function

effectively as their executive committee.

The mega-corporation and its stateoperate in the realm of the superstructure and can be dismantled on behalf of the people. (See, State.)

Metaphysics:As a branch of philosophy, metaphysics view and understand existence and things in reality asfixed and isolated, unconnected with and separate from other things. It is a static way of thinking, reflected for example, in the type of historical analysisthat merely lists one thing after another without causal connection.Metaphysics rejects causality and the doctrine of self movement being motivated by the internal opposites (contradiction) in a thing and process. Metaphysics is the opposite of dialectics. In contrast to metaphysics, dialectics looks at things as changing and connected with other things. Dialectics analyzes thingsin 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 existsor 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.

. . . . In the contemplationof individual things it (metaphysics) 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.

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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/introduction.htm

Metaphysics in contradistinction with 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 inany 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 renewaland development, where something is always arising

and developing, and somethingalways 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, theirdevelopment, their coming into being and going out of being.

The dialectical method regards as important primarily not that which at the given moment seems to be 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, forthe dialectical method considers invincible only that which is arising and developing.

Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the process of development asa simple process of growth, where quantitative changes donot lead to qualitative changes, but as a developmentwhich passes from insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes to open’ fundamental changes’ to qualitative

changes; a development in which the qualitative changesoccur 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 imperceptibleand gradual quantitative changes.

The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development shouldbe understood not as movementin 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 itmust 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 mantoo, is all a product of a process of development that has been in progress for millions of years.”

(J. V. Stalin September 1938,Dialectical and Historical Materialism.)https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm

Middle Ages: (See, Feudalism.)

Middle class: (See, Political middle.)

Military coup:The seizure of political authorityby a section of the military, outside of constitutional means. Amilitary coup differs from political insurrection. Political insurrection is based on and rooted in an uprising of the popular masses and revolutionary movement of a class and takes political power on their behalf. Amilitary coup is a form of palace coup with representatives of the military establishment seizing power outside the legal democraticframeworks of political transition.

Mode of production:Mode of production is the unity ofproductive forces and social relations of production (productive relations).

It describes society’s economy. The economy is production and distribution. How things are produced is determine by the productive forces, while distribution of what is produced is determined by the productive relations.

To Marx is due the discovery of the historically transient character of all mode of production and the language to more accurately describe its components. Human society developsfrom lower forms of economy to higher ones. Every mode of production is a definite stage in the qualitative development of technology (productive forces) andsocial relations of production.

Each mode of production has its own basic law system. This basic law system expresses the essence of the given mode of production and determines its main aspects and line of development.

The productive forces and theproduction relations as a unity constitute the mode of production.

The productive forces are themost mobile and revolutionaryfactor 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, themselvesin turn actively, affect the productive forces. http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PoliticalEconomy.pdf

New productive forces create and operate based on a new division oflabor and new forms of classes corresponding with the new productive forces. The new social arrangement created based on new productive forces, comes into conflict with and is antagonistic to the old social arrangements, old classes and old forms of wealth in society. 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 thenext based on qualitative changes in the means of production.

Modes of production:Four main types of modes of production are known to history: primitive communal, slave, feudal and capitalist. All of the modes of production based on private property and classes (slave, feudal and capitalist), have theirunique form of working (laboring) class. The working class is slavesin the slave mode of production, aserf under feudalism and wage

laborers under capitalism. Under these modes of production the ruling class appropriates the unpaid labor of the working classes.

The primitive-communal society:

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 single number could not have provided food and protection for themselves. These groups of human beings were more of a small community rather than society. The discovery of fire and then the development of stable communities was the condition for people to invent things – tools and instruments - and create society. A society is constituted based on productive forces and productive relations.

The primitive-communal system was the first form of society. The instruments of labor were of the most primitive kind. Stone tools, and, later, the bow and arrow precluded the possibility of people individually combating the forces of nature and beasts of prey. In order to gather the fruits of the forest, to catch fish, to build some sort of habitation, people were obliged towork in common if they did not want to die of starvation, or fallvictim to beasts of prey or to neighboring societies. Labor in common led to the common ownership

of the means of production, as well as of the fruits of production. Here, there was no exploitation, no classes.

(1) Thanks to labour, (humanity) emerged from the animal world and human society arose. The distinctive feature of human labor is the making of implements of production.

(2) The productive forces of primitive society were on an exceedingly low level, the implements of production wereextremely primitive. This necessitated collective labor, social property in themeans of production and equaldistribution. In the primitive community there wasno property inequality or private property in the meansof production; there were no classes or exploitation of man by man. Social ownership of the means of production was confined within a narrow framework; it was the property of small communitiesmore or less isolated from one another.

(3) “The basic economic law of the primitive community consists in the securing of man’s vitally necessary meansof subsistence with the help of primitive implements of production, on the basis of communal property in the means of production, by means

of common labour 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 ledto the appearance of the social division of labor and exchange, of private propertyand property inequality, to the division of society into classes and to the exploitation of man by man. 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 owningsystem.http://www.marx.be/Prime/ENG/Books/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Slave-owning mode of production:

The community of people that gathers, depletes the nutrient content of the area of their

residence by eating everything up and then must move to new areas seeking nutrient – alkalinity. Something else must happen to transition the community of gatherers into a society of inventive producers. Something else does happen.

Instead of just the club and stonetools and the discovery of fire, which are bookmarks for the transition from community to society, there comes into existence invention – the qualitative reconfiguration of nature for human purposes – in the form of the spear and bow and arrow. Invention transforms community and paves the way for the society that invents metal tools. Instead of primitive agriculture of the gatherer and hunter there now appear pasturage,tillage, handicrafts, and a division of labor between these branches of production. The law oflife (“whatever can happen will”) and development by invention, asserted itself in human development.

With the human discovery of fire and then human invention – tools and instruments - there appears the possibility of creating a surplus of things. Surplus is morethan what is required to maintain yourself and family. Surplus does not mean abundance, which developsthousands of years later. With thedevelopment of a surplus of thingsthe foundation for exchange of products between clusters and groups of people is created. With

this foundation comes the possibility of the accumulation ofwealth in the hands of a few and then the actual accumulation of the means of production in the hands of a minority. The possibility of subjugation of the majority by a minority is created and then the actual conversion of the majority into slaves takes place.

With the development of invention and growth of private ownership ofthings, what was the common and free labor of all members of society in the production process is negated and sublated by the forced labor of slaves, who are exploited by the non-laboring slave owners. It is not simply theownership of things that creates the private property relation. Private property is the ownership of things, with which the individual enter into relationshipwith as owners and non-owners. It is the existence of things that dominate the social life of the individual.

Here, therefore, under the slave mode of production there is no common ownership of the means of production or of the fruits of production. Communal relations arereplaced by private ownership – private property relations. The slave owner appears as the prime and principal property owner in the full sense of the term. Slave society and the slave owning mode of production replaces the matriarchal society of commons and

communal property.

The foundation of the relations ofproduction of the slave mode of production is private property, with private ownership of the means of production and the working class - the slaves. The slave oligarchy owns the slave as their private property, whom the owner can 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 matriarchal society 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 become the basis of every society founded on classes and private property.

The slave mode of production negates the communal society template and creates new economic classes based on private property and handicraft technology. Privateproperty in slaves becomes the form of appropriation of the surplus product and unpaid labor of the many by the few. Unpaid labor is converted into private wealth and private riches for the ruling class.

The basic economic law of theslave-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-ownersof 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) Political Economy, ATextbook issued by the Institute of Economics of theAcademy of sciences of the USSRhttp://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Feudal mode of production: The economic foundation of

feudal society - called medievalism or the “Middle Ages” in America - is a higher development of the means of production than under slavery. Further improvements in the smelting and working of iron, the spread of the iron plow and the loom, the further development of agriculture and dairying, the appearance of manufactories alongside the handicraft workshops, such are the characteristic features of the state of the productive forces. The new productive forces demand that the laborer display some kindof initiative in production and aninclination for work, an interest

in work.

The production relations of this system are the feudal ownership ofthe means of production; primarilyof 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 owns the means of production and does not fully own the worker in production - the serf - whom the feudal lord can nolonger kill, but whom he can buy and sell. Alongside feudal ownership, there exists individualownership by the peasants and the handicraftsmen of their implementsof production and their private enterprise based on their personallabor. Such relations of production, in the main, correspond to the state of the productive forces of that period.

The feudal lord therefore discardsthe slave, as a laborer who has nointerest in work and is entirely without initiative. The lord prefers to deal with the serf, whohas his or her own implements of production, science, skill, and art of farming and a certain interest in work essential for thecultivation 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 sectionof society to appropriate the

unpaid labor of another section ofsociety, is further developed. Exploitation is nearly as severe as it was under slavery - it is only slightly mitigated. A class struggle based on the contradiction of exploiters and exploited, drives the feudal system through all its stages of development.

The feudal mode of productionnegates the slave society templateand creates economic classes basedon private property in land - landlords and the landless serfs. Private property in land becomes the form of appropriation of the unpaid labor of the serf. The unpaid labor of the serf is converted into private wealth and private riches for the ruling class.

(1) Feudalism arose on the basis of the disintegration of slave-owning society and the break-up of the village community of the tribes which conqueredthe 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 anddistributed 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 ofthe relations of production in feudal society. As well asfeudal property there existedthe individual property of the peasant and craftsman, which was based on personal labour. The labour 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 thatserfdom laid on the peasant was frequently little different from that of slavery. However, the serf system opened certain possibilities for the development of the productiveforces since the peasant could work a certain part of the time on his own holding and had a certain interest inhis labour.

(3) The basic economic law offeudalism consists in the production of surplus productto satisfy the demands of thefeudal lords, by means of theexploitation of dependent peasants, on the basis of theownership 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 ofthe 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 andfeudal lords took place throughout the whole history of feudal society. The feudalState, 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 epoch agriculture played a predominant part, and the economy had a basically natural character. With the development of the social division of labour and exchange, the old towns whichhad 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 thedecline of the crafts and promoted the birth of capitalist enterprise-the manufactories. Feudal limitations and territorial divisions acted as a brake onthe growth of commodity production. In the process offurther development the national market was formed. The centralized feudal State arose in the form of absolutemonarchy.

(7) Primitive accumulation ofcapital 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 labour 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 tookthe lead in the struggle for the overthrow of feudalism. It made use of the revolutionary struggle of thepeasants 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 forcesof production. http://www.marx.be/Prime/ENG/Books/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Capitalist mode of production: The capitalist mode of production is a system of commodity production based on bourgeois (capitalist) private ownership of means of production. The laborers are deprived of means of production and in order not to dieof hunger and want, are obliged tosell their labor ability (labor power) to the capitalists for wages. The basis of its relations

of production is that the capitalists own the means of production, but not the workers inproduction (the wage laborers) whom the capitalist can neither kill nor sell because they are personally free. Owners of capitaldeploy wage labor in a system of socialized production, where instruments of production are worked simultaneously by hundreds and thousands of people, producingcommodities. It is private appropriation of the surplus valuewage labor creates.

Capitalist commodity production becomes the dominant mode of production worldwide based on gigantic machinery created by the industrial revolution. While the system’s roots are in private property (slavery and mercantilism), its technology foundation is mechanized labor. The capitalist mode of production negates and sublates feudal private property, its division of labor, social ranking, its system of privileges and its mode of appropriation of the surplus labor. The appropriation of the surplus (unpaid) labor of the worker takes place differently under capitalism. Capitalists pay the laborer a wage (value) that isless than the value they create. This extra value created by the laborer is surplus value. Capitalists appropriate the surplus value created by the working class and this surplus value is the source of capitalist profits in production and the

genesis of their wealth.

Capitalism creates large-scale production both in industry and in agriculture. The development of the productive forces engenders such instruments and methods of production that they demand the joint labour of many hundreds and thousands of workers. Production becomes continually more concentrated. In this way capitalist socialization of labour and of production takes place.

This growing socialization oflabour occurs, however, in the interests of a few private entrepreneurs who strive to increase their own profits. The product of the social labour of millions of people becomes the private property of the capitalists.

Consequently, a profound contradiction is inherent in the capitalist system: production is a social matter, whereas the ownershipof the means of production remains private, capitalistic, and so is incompatible with the social character of production. The contradiction between the social (socialized ed.) character of production and the private, capitalist form of appropriation of the results of production is the basic contradiction ofthe capitalist mode of production, and

becomes continually more acute as capitalism develops.This contradiction is expressed in the intensified anarchy of capitalist production, in the growth of class antagonisms between theproletariat and the working masses as a whole, on the onehand, and the bourgeoisie on the other. (IBID)

The contradiction internal to capitalist production, between thesocialized character of means of production and the private characterof appropriation of the surplus-value, is the foundation for all the laws and principles governing capitalist production. However, this contradiction does not and cannot bring the capitalist systemto its historical end. The contradiction between socialized character of production (working class) and private character of appropriation (capitalist class) is the internal contradiction driving the system through its stages of development.

Qualitative changes in the productive forces brought primitive communalism, the slave, and the feudal modes of productionto an historical end. Capitalism is also brought to its historical end by qualitative changes in the productive forces —computers and robotics.

Money:Money is the universal representation of material wealth.

The main function of money is as amedium of exchange, a unit of accounting, and a store of value (dead labor). It is a means of accumulation of capital. Differentcommodities can function, and havefunctioned, as money, or, as it was once said, become “good as gold.” The money supply of a country is 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 theresult of the development of the division of labor in society. It’sa way to equate the labor of the teacher, bricklayer, software programmer, and waitress to the labor of the shoemaker, the technician, and the lawyer and allows them to exchange products based on the labor in them. Money expresses and represents quantities of labor in products - dead labor.

Monopoly capitalism:Monopoly capitalism is a stage in the development of the capitalist system that grew out of the general law of capitalist concentration and centralization (competition). It is the increasing domination of the economy, government and state, by gigantic corporations, birthed through and in the wake of the American Civil War. Monopoly capitalism is domination of banking capital over industrial capital that resulted in the rise

and consolidation of financial-industrial capital and creation ofthe modern corporation.

The new financial-industrial oligarchy in America was personified by J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D and William Rockefeller. Worldwide themonopoly stage of capitalism is bookmarked as arising with the economic crisis of 1873 that lead to consolidation of businesses andthe universal rise of the joint stock corporation.

V.I. Lenin called imperialism the monopoly stage of capitalism and the last stage of capitalism. Monopoly capitalism - imperialism - was the division of the world among imperialist states that possessed colonies, neo-colonies and spheres of influence. Speculative finance, globalizationand the rise of the mega-corporation brought to an end the period of monopoly capitalism, based in the old imperial-colonialconfiguration of the world.

Motion:

The concept of motion. The unity of matter and motion.Everything in the world is incontinual 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 revolvinground them, the stars rotate round their axes and participate in the rotation of the galaxy round its axis.In its turn, our galaxy movesin 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, flourishesand 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 theprimary 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 developmentof all that is, just as the source of the existence of matter, was often thought of in a reference frame comprising the omnipotence ofdivine power and universal will. Materialism, on the other hand, especially dialectical materialism, relies on the data of sciencewhich prove that motion, justas matter, is uncreatable andindestructible, 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 ofnowhere. Motion is self-motion in the sense that the tendency, the impulse towardsa change of state is inherentin matter itself: it is its own cause. If the universe came into being after the bigbang, the causes of that big bang must be sought for in matter itself, not in some external force. (Ital. in orig.)http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Motion, self-movement:

There is nothing mysterious about the concept of self-motion. It merely means that the source of development is inherent in the developing object itself, which interacts with others. The development of any system is realization of the universal principle of being—the activeness and inner strivingof all that is towards self-expression in infinite forms of interaction. Development is a form of motion, and the latter is an attribute of matter, a mode of its existence, inherent in it andnot inferred from anything. The self-motion of matter on the whole is not conditioned by any external factors, while the self motion of the concrete forms and kinds of matter is conditioned by internal and external causes.If the self-motion of matter is absolute, the self-motion of concrete systems is relative: the higher the level of the organization of a system, the greater its independence in behavior, andconsequently in its development. For example, primitive society depended toa much greater extent on the elements of nature than modern society.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Nation:

A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basisof 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. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm#s1

A nation and a state are not the same. Political states are much older than nations. The state is an organization of violence in thehands of the ruling class. In contrast, the nation is an economic formation born of the epoch of bourgeois production. Nations are created in the processof forming a national market and tying people together in a new economic unit. The epoch of capitalism knows two tendencies inthe national question: formation of nations and then breaking them down.

Nationalism:Nationalism is an ideology that does away with class outlook and substitutes notions of collective

identity based on ethnicity, religion, color, nation, or political frontiers. Nationalism arises with the development of capitalism. The ideology of nationalism, the very notion of a nation, arises as an expression ofthe rising capitalist class’ questto create and secure a common economic life expressed in development and capture of a home market. The home market is the framework and material foundation for the nation, the national idea and nationalism. Thus begins 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 nationalism of the oppressed, which often fought the imperial invaders to the death, isnot sufficient to win freedom fromcapital, foreign and domestic. In America, nationalist ideology presents the oppression and exploitation of black and brown masses as “racism” rather than imperialist enslavement, capitalist exploitation, and the color factor in history.

Nationalization:Nationalization is the taking overof 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 bythe 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.

Many of these means of production and of distributionare, 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 anydefinite 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 orwithout, 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

In the days ahead, and as the economy deteriorates, there will be more calls for nationalization to provide goods and services no longer profitable for capitalists to produce.

Although the capitalist utilizes nationalization when nationalization serves its interests and discards it when it doesn’t, revolutionaries dare not leave this battlefield to the enemy. Chrysler and General Motorsought to be fully nationalized. Health care ought to be fully nationalized as a single-payer governmental system with no deductibles to the individual. The

key issue concerning nationalization is: Whose interestwill it serve? (See, Privatization.)

National question and national-colonial question.The national question, according to Leninist doctrine, refers to colonialism within a European context from roughly 1800 to WorldWar I and the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution. National-colonial refers to colonialism worldwide based on the monopoly stage of capitalism (imperialism) from roughly 1900 – 2000. The doctrine of the national and then the national-colonial question belongs exclusively to the period of the industrial revolution as society underwent transition from agriculture to industry.

The roots of the inequality between peoples, rather than a simple division between exploited and exploiting classes, has its origin in the transition from agriculture to industry, and creation of the national market and state. Indeed, the Marxist concept “peoples,” has its origin in the development of industrial capitalism and emergence of the world market.

The national question referred to the status of an oppressed nation and people in Europe between 1800 and 1894, in the period of Marx and Engels, before the rise to dominance of the corporation and monopoly capitalism. The oppressed

nation and oppressed peoples developed during the breakup of feudalism and formation of the capitalist mode of production.

The first period is the period which saw the break-upof feudalism in the West and the triumph of capitalism. The formation of people into nations occurred during this period. I am referring to such countries as Great Britain (without Ireland), France and Italy. In the West- in Great Britain, France, and Italy and partly in Germany - the period of the break-up of feudalism and theformation of people into nations on the whole coincided in time with the period which saw the appearance of the centralizedstates, and as a result the nations in their development became invested in state forms. And inasmuch as there were no other national groupsof any considerable size within these states, such a thing as national oppression was not known. In Eastern Europe, on the contrary, the process of formation of nationalities and the elimination of feudal disunity did not coincide in time with the process of formation of centralized states. I am referring to Hungary, Austria and Russia. In these countries capitalistdevelopment had not yet

begun; it was perhaps only incipient; but the necessity of taking defensive measures against the invasions of the Turks, Mongols and other Oriental peoples, [required] that centralized states capable of withstanding the onslaught of the invaders should be formed without delay. And since in Eastern Europe the process of formation of centralized states proceeded more rapidlythan the process of formationof people into nations, mixedstates arose, each made up ofseveral nationalities which had not yet formed themselvesinto nations but which were already united in a common state.

Thus, the first period is marked by the appearance of nationalities in the dawn of capitalism: in Western Europewe observe the birth of purely national states to which national oppression is unknown, whereas in the East we observe the birth of multinational states with onemore developed nation at the head and the remaining, less developed nations in a state of political, and later of economic, subjection to the dominant nation. These multinational states of the East were the birthplace of that national oppression which gave rise to national conflicts, national

movements, the national problem and the various methods of solving that problem.The Comintern position on the Negro Question a Review of H. Haywood’s Negro Liberation by Nelson Peery. Page 29, 30.

A similar translation of the quote from Stalin is located here:http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1921/03/08.htm

The national-colonial question refers to the fate of the hundredsof millions of slaves of the imperialist world order during thenext stage of development of the capitalist system: the era of monopoly capital, the corporation,financial-industrial imperialism and the establishment of Soviet Power. The national-colonial question sublated the national question. This sublation took place based on the monopoly stage of capitalism, the division of theworld between imperialist states and the outbreak of the first world imperialist war. Between 1894 and the 1914 outbreak of world war, Asia, Africa and Latin America became colonies of Europe and America. The monopoly stage ofcapitalism spelled the end of the period of the national question and reconfigured the world based on colonies of imperialism. This was the era of the national-colonial question.

…. This second period was thetime 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 nations were transformed into colonies of imperialism.

(Proletariat, A Theoretical Journal published by the Communist Labor Party, Vol. 2, Number 1, Summer 1976. The Comintern position on the NegroQuestion A Review of H. Haywood’s Negro Liberation by Nelson Peery, page 30.)

In summary, the national question arose before the outbreak of the first world imperialist war, during the pre-Fordist phase of the industrial revolution and before consolidation of financial-industrial imperialism based on the monopoly stage of capitalism.

The national question referred primarily to the so-called civilized oppressed white peoples of Europe.

The consolidation of monopoly capitalism witnessed the first world imperialist war for the redivision of an already divided world. This war was fought out in Europe, but the fight was over the colonies controlled by Europe – Asia, Africa and Latin America. The end of the war and victory of the 1917 October Revolution spelled the end of the period of the national question. The world was reconfigured based on imperialist countries and their colonies and the existence of Soviet Power.

Formerly, the national question was usually confinedto a narrow circle of questions, concerning, primarily, ‘civilized’ nationalities. The Irish, theHungarians, the Poles, the Finns, the Serbs, and severalother 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 savageand 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 ofthe colonies. The national question was thereby transformed from a particularand internal state problem into a general and international problem, into aworld problem of emancipatingthe oppressed peoples in the dependent countries and colonies from the yoke of imperialism.(J.V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism.) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm

Changes in the post-World War II political system, including the destruction of the direct colonial

system, changed the form of the national-colonial question, ushering in the era of neo-colonialism and neo-colonial state.

The victory of the Vietnamese revolution and 1976 unification ofVietnam bookmark the beginning of the end of the period of the neo-colonial state and the start of the first stage of globalism. Globalization saw the end of the era of the national-colonial question. Globalism severed the economic connection between the neo-colony and the former direct colonizer, leaving these areas of the world free to be dominated by world speculative finance and the mega-corporate state.

Under the new conditions where small producers have been fundamentally wiped out by the advance of industry, when the world has been economically evenedup, the proletarian revolution advances worldwide on the basis ofthe most poverty stricken destitute section of the proletariat.

National security state: (See, Fascism.)

Necessary product: As a term of political economy, the total products created by the laborers in a society are made up of two components, necessary products and surplus products.

Necessary products are the portionof products consumed by the laborers and his family that sustains their existence. Consumption of necessary products is the condition for the normal maintenance and reproduction of the means of life required by the workers, their families and society as a whole. All the products over and above the necessary products are surplus products. Surplus products, which are appropriated by the ruling class, sustain the non-producing sections of society. The time required to create necessary products is necessary labor time and the labor creating these products is necessary labor.

Necessary labor and Surplus labor:Necessary labor is labor expended in production that is the requiredto produce the objects of consumption of the workers, neededto sustain the work life and culture of the working class. It is the labor performed by the working population necessary to maintain and reproduce the next generations of workers.

Surplus labor is labor expended inproduction over and above what is required to maintain the life of the working class. It is the laborperformed by the working population, in excess of necessarylabor. Surplus labor is unpaid labor under capitalism and uncompensated labor under slavery and feudalism.

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 thesurplus-value, this sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i.e., the working-day.

(Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Chapter Nine: The Rate of Surplus-Value, Section 4. Surplus-produce.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch09.htm

Once there exists a society in which some people live without working (without participating directly in theproduction of use values), itis clear that the surplus labor of the workers is the condition of existence of thewhole 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 onand from, the product which the workers provide over and above the product required for the reproduction of theirown 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, hence the room for their own development] purely in the production of particular use values; the development of the human capacities on one side is based on the restriction of development onthe 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 othersection — the time of its existence and functioning as mere labor capacity. On the

other hand: The surplus laboris 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.

…. The form of surplus labor we are examining here — laborprolonged beyond the necessary labor time — is common to capital and all forms of society in which development has taken place beyond the purely natural relation; a development whichis therefore antagonistic, making the labor of one section into the natural basis of the social development of another section.

…. 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.(Marx’s Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63 , 2) Absolute Surplus Value by Karl Marx, e) Character of Surplus Labour.) https://marxists.anu.edu.au/a

rchive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch25.htm

Needs:Needs, as authentic human requirements, are a certain set ofconditions and things without which human life cannot be sustained. They are the foundationof development from one generationto the next. Authentic human requirements –- needs -– are different from desires created andcultivated 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 take part in the physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional development of the system in a mode of production. Today, public transportation, public education including higher education, modern communication devices, computers and cell phones, and national health care are 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.

Activity in any sphere of society is directed by definite needs and interestsgrowing out of production and at the same time working

as subjective stimuli for its further development. 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 queryaddressed to objective reality, a need for objects and conditions which would facilitate the maintenance of the system’s equilibrium necessary for its normal functioning.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Negation:Negation is a principle that states every object, condition andprocess, made up of internal contradiction, contains within itself, stages of development wherein one stage displaces the stage from which its comes. As a natural element of development, negation brings to end an old stage of development.

Negation in dialectics does not mean simply saying no, ordeclaring that something doesnot exist, or destroying it in any way one likes. Long ago Spinoza said: Omnis determinatio est negation - every limitation or determination

is at the same time a negation. And further: the kind of negation is here determined, firstly, by the general and, secondly, by theparticular nature of the process. I must not only negate, but also sublate the negation. I must therefore soarrange the first negation that the second remains or becomes possible. How? This depends on the particular nature of each individual case. If I grind a grain of barley, or crush an insect, Ihave carried out the first part of the action, but have made the second part impossible. Every kind of thing therefore has a peculiar way of being negatedin such manner that it gives rise to a development, and itis just the same with every kind of conception or idea.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch11.htm

Negation of the negation:When applied to the general history of human society and the rise and fall of forms of private property, negation of the negationmeans a new qualitative stage is realized as a return to the initial point of development, but at a higher level.

In the gigantic transition from primitive communist economy to electronic communist economy basedon robotics, the first negation is

of primitive communism by the various forms of society based on private property. Primitive communism as a communal society devoid of private property relations is negated by the worldsof private property. The worlds ofprivate property involve sublationof different forms of unpaid laboras society advances through slave labor, serf labor, and then wage labor of industrial capitalist society. In this exposition, the negation of the negation appears as creating a new communist economy based on robotics. From communism to communism - primitiveto robotic communism - is the negation of the negation when the starting point is primitive communism.

Karl Marx’s classical presentationof negation and the negation of the negation was set forth in Capital, Volume I, and Chapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency ofCapitalist Accumulation.(See, 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 expressing the hegemony of American 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 government restraints on the world economy. “Neoliberalism” is a non-class, non-Marxist term used to hide the exploitative essence of capitalistproduction relations.

The rise of speculative finance todominator was based on the microchip-based computer that madeit 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 andthen 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 TheShock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, the primary exponents of neo-liberalism 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, this doctrine was crystallized in a policy statementcalled “The Washington Consensus,”which went so far as to advocate that all state enterprises should be privatized. This consensus expresses the rise of speculative finance as dominator of world capital, which was restructuring world finance based on 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 and global corporations.These corporations became mega-corporations. The mega-corporationemerges from the world of speculative finance as it combinestogether and sublates the multinational and transnational corporation.

Neoliberal policy was the responseof Washington to changes in the world economy brought about by theelectronic revolution and globalism:

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 internationalaspects. http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/06/transforming-world-economy-lays-foundation-for-world-revolution/

The policy of the ruling class hasevolved beyond the neoliberalism of the 1990s, beyond multinationaland transnational corporations andin the first decade of the new century brings us face to face with the mega-corporation.

New class:New forms of classes are created by qualitative changes in the means of production. Just as the steam engine created an industrial form of working class that replaced the then existing manufacturing form of working class,the microchip creates an electronic working class that replaces the industrial working class.

The working class of America todayis an electronic working class, deploying new means of production.All the layers of American societydeploying new means of production built upon the microchip are by definition part of the new form ofclasses.

There exists a new form of the proletariat, a real proletariat shut out of social production. Thelabor of this real proletariat has

been rendered superfluous by robotics. Existing as the polar opposite (not as a contradiction) of the new proletariat shut out ofproduction is a new form of the capitalist class –- speculative finance - creating wealth outside the production of surplus value.

In the 1950s the term “new class” was coined by Milovan Dilas, to describe the ruling bureaucratic layer of society within the communist states. In 1957 in the West, a book by Dilas was published under the title The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.

Since the mid-1990s the term “new class” has been used by the newspaper Rally Comrades!.

Since many of the articles appearing in Rally, Comrades! contain the phrase, ‘the new class,’ the Editorial Board thought it would be helpful if we explain precisely what we mean by the term.

The double-acting steam engine created industry. The working class created by industry was different from the old class that was created by hand labor or manufacturing. It was still aworking class but the emphasis rapidly shifted fromthe manufacturing sector to the industrial sector. Thus, the industrial workers were anew class. In a somewhat likemanner the application of

electronics to production is creating a new class. http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v16ed1art5.html

Guy Standing popularized the term precariat as the dangerousnew class of proletarians. (See, Precariat.)

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, 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 workingclass, the New Communist Movement conformed to the last phase of thenational-colonial revolts and revolutions.

Much of the literature of the NCM is located at the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line,http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/erol.htm

Nodal line and nodal point:Nodal line and nodal point are terms for the point at which change occurs.

This is precisely the Hegelian nodal line of measure relations, in which, at certain definite nodal points, the purely quantitative increase or decrease gives rise to a

qualitative leap; for example, in the case of heated or cooled water, whereboiling-point and freezing-point are the nodes at which — under normal pressure — theleap to a new state of aggregation takes place, and where consequently quantity is transformed into quality.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch02.htm

Spirkin explains that Hegel considers change in the form of a movement where development occurs as qualitative and quantitative changes.

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 alwaysclearly fixed, and sometimes they are tentative—as tentative, say, as the boundaries separating childhood from adolescence oryouth from maturity, determined by anatomic, physiological, psychical, andsocial factors.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 throughstages of maturing. Maturing and growing older do not qualitativelyalter our species-being or change our relationship in nature. Yet maturing and growing older are a stage-by-stage process, with “tipping points” wherein a child becomes an adult. These “tipping points,” in this instance, are nodal points in the quantitative stages of becoming an adult.

Qualitative changes -– leaps - take place within modes of production and property relations.The leap from agriculture to industry is the crossing of a nodal line that is bookmarked by the steam engine. From the time ofthe application of the steam engine and its related technology,there are numerous nodal points of development. There is the application of electricity to giant industry, the Taylor system,Henry Fordism, mechanization of agriculture and discovery of nuclear power, all expressing stages of development of the quality, which is the industrial revolution. These nodal points occur as the path of development of the industrial revolution.

The microchip inaugurated the qualitative leap from the industrial revolution to the electronic revolution. The microchip is a nodal line of this change. The nodal points today arethe stages of development of the

microchip and its broadening application in social life.

Objective and Subjective:Objective and subjective are philosophic concepts used to describe and define the relationship between human beings,the reality they live in, the impact of the mind and how it cognize actuality. The object or objectivity exists outside consciousness and is the focus of the human mind which is defined asthe subject or subjective.

Objective refers to all phenomena,which exist independently of and without reliance upon the subjective mind and human perception, as a condition or foundation for existence.The “objectiveness” of matter consists in being the object of human perception and thought. The objectivity of existence of matter, that is, the objective character of matter, is the law system that binds matter together and establishes its being. A law system is a series of connections constituting the repeating patternof events that drives a process and give the process its self-contained logic and movement. These objective laws of development are inherent to matter, establishing its existenceand form and do not grow out of orhave their source in human consciousness.

Subjective refers to the human mind and sense perception. The

mind perceives and holds the capacity of awareness of things existing objectively, outside of consciousness and within imagination. Subjective refers to the thinking mind rather than to the object of thought. (See, Subject and Object.)

The crux of the basic question of philosophy is therecognition of two main typesof 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 thecontrary, create the materialworld? 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 that the development of 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 known as dualists.

The other aspect of the basicquestion 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 theknow 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 beingso 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, moreover,to all the general-theoretical, worldview issuesof any other sciences attempting to grasp the

essence of the universe and life, that is, of sciences that make a significant contribution to the construction of the scientific picture of the world. (Ital. in orig.) http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Organic composition of capital:According to Marx, the organic composition of capital is the relationship between the amount ofhuman labor in production (living labor) and plants, equipment, machines and material in production (dead labor). It is an indicator of how much must be invested into both components of production - living labor (wages or variable capital) and dead labor (fixed cost or constant capital) - in order to realize surplus value, the source of capitalist profit in production.

Variable capital is investment in labor (purchase of labor power). Constant capital is investment in buildings, materials, energy inputs, and machinery. The ratio between constant and variable capital in an industry or enterprise is the organic composition of capital. From the standpoint of Marxist political economy robotics dramatically alters the organic composition of capital by ousting human labor from production.

A high organic composition of capital means one with a preponderance of constant capital over variable capital or above thesocial average. Investment in production of microchips has a high organic concentration of capital, as compared with say, automotive production. The application of computers and advanced robotics to the production process increases constant capital and decreases living labor (variable capital) ina radically new way, ushers in laborless systems of production and brings society to social revolution.

As stated by Karl Marx:

The composition of capital is to be understood in a two-foldsense. On the side of value, it is determined by the proportion in which it is divided into constant capital or value of the means of production, and variable capital or value of labor power, the sum total of wages.On the side of material, as itfunctions in the process of production, all capital is divided into means of production and living labor power. This latter compositionis determined by the relation between the mass of the means of production employed, on theone hand, and the mass of labor necessary for their employment on the other. I call the former the value-

composition, the latter the technical composition of capital.

Between the two there is a strict correlation. To expressthis, I call the value composition of capital, in so far as it is determined by itstechnical composition and mirrors the changes of the latter, the organic composition of capital. Wherever I refer to the composition of capital, without further qualification,its organic composition is always understood.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm

Overcapacity:Overcapacity refers to a permanentstate of overproduction, which is the result of the robotics (electronics) revolution. The electronic revolution creates productive forces powerful enough to meet the needs of the world population. Capitalism prevents these needs from being met, because it demands money and profits from the production and sale of means of life. Thus, the periodic crisis of under consumption, which is the result of people having no money to buy things, becomes a permanent crisisof overcapacity in the robotic economy.

Overcapacity expresses antagonism or a mode of destruction. The

crisis of overcapacity is not cyclical but permanent and intractable. The crisis of overcapacity is a crisis of the value relation and cannot be resolved through war, expansion ofthe market and the economy, or reform of the system. The appearance of overcapacity signalsthe endgame of an economic system based on buying and selling of labor power. Overcapacity sublatesoverproduction and describes the final crisis of the value-producing system.

Overproduction:Crisis of overproduction is the existence of a mass of commoditieswith no buyers, leading to layoffsof wage laborers and depression. Overproduction is the cyclical crisis of capital or crisis of overproduction.

Called the business cycle, recession, and depression by spokespersons of the capitalist class, overproduction is the periodic breakdown in production and distribution that occurs undercapitalism.

Houses go unsold, food goes unsold, and gasoline, clothing, and merchandise of all kinds are stockpiled because people have no money to purchase commodities. Crisis of overproduction is the outcome of capitalist private property. These crises could not and cannot be prevented as long ascapitalism exist.

Modern bourgeois society, withits relations of production, of exchange and of property, asociety that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, islike 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 pastthe history of industry and commerce is but the history ofthe revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois andof 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 createdproductive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks outan 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? Becausethere is too much civilization, 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 toopowerful 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 thesecrises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a massof 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 destructivecrises, and by diminishing themeans whereby crises are prevented.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

Party of a new type:The “party of a new type” was an organization of professional

revolutionaries designed to carry out political insurrection during the period of transition from agriculture to industry. Pioneeredby V.I. Lenin, its goal was defined by the line of march of the Russian social-political revolution. The line of march was based on the fight of all classes antagonistic to feudal property relations and fighting for the overthrow of the feudal system. Lenin’s party fought to organize the industrial working class as the vanguard champion of democracy, in alliance with the peasants – small scale producers. The Communist Party Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) was such a party of anew type.

The Bolsheviks began as a political trend within the RussianSocial-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) and organized itself as a separate organization with its ownnewspaper after the 1903 Second Party Congress. Lenin outlined theblueprint of the party of a new type in his book, “What Is to Be Done?” and defined it as a party of insurrection, with semi-military features. The party of a new type was vastly different fromthe mass proletarian parties whichgrew up in the West.

In the pre-revolutionary period, the period of more orless peaceful development, when the parties of the Second International were thepredominant force in the working-class movement and

parliamentary forms of struggle were regarded as theprincipal forms, under these conditions the Party neither had nor could have had that great and decisive importancewhich 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 revolutionarysituation, 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 ofthe proletariat. This new party is the party of Leninism. (J.V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism.) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch08.htm

The formation of the proletarian party in Russia took place under special conditions, differing from those prevailing in the West

at the time the workers’ party was formed there. Whereas in the West, in France and in Germany, the workers’ party emerged from the trade unions at a time when trade unions and partieswere legal, when the bourgeois revolution had already taken place, when bourgeois parliaments existed, when the bourgeoisie, having climbed into power, found itself confronted by the proletariat–- in Russia, on the contrary, the formation of the proletarian party took place under a most ferocious absolutism, in expectation ofa bourgeois-democratic revolution; at a time when, on the one hand, the Party organizations were filled to overflowing with bourgeois ‘legal Marxists’ who were thirsting to utilize the working class for the bourgeois revolution, and when, on the other hand, the tsarist gendarmerie was robbing the Party’s ranks of its best workers, while the growth of a spontaneous revolutionary movement calledfor the existence of a staunch, compact and sufficiently secret fighting core of revolutionaries, capable of directing the movement to the overthrow of absolutism.

The task was to separate the

sheep from the goats, to dissociate oneself from alienelements, to organize cadres of experienced revolutionaries in the localities, to provide them with a clear program and firmtactics, and, lastly, to gather these cadres into a single, militant organizationof professional revolutionaries, sufficientlysecret to withstand the onslaughts of the gendarmes, but at the same time sufficiently connected with the masses to lead them into battle at the required moment.http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1920/04/23.htm

Patriarchy:Patriarchy or “father right” is a form of male privilege based on private property. Patriarchy is a form of social structure arising in the period of the breakup of the clan system when classes and the state came into being. Patriarchy is typified by men’s dominant role in the economy, society, and family inheritance, initially based on development of cattle rearing, agriculture based on irrigation systems, and metal working. Patriarchy as a system isidentified as inheritance of institutional private property andwealth through the male line rather than female.

Permanent Revolution: (See, Marxist Glossary Supplement.)

Personal possessions versus private property:Consumer items, for example, a coat, car, television, home, and all possessions of the individual not used to hire labor and make a profit, are personal possessions. One, two, or three cars in a family are personal possessions ofthe family. Owning a car dealership is a private property relation because the purpose of the dealership is to make money, “exchange value,” as in sales of vehicles for profit rather than for personal use. (See, Private property.)

Petty (petite) Bourgeois: The petty bourgeoisie are small property owners who occupy a social-economic position between the proletariat and the big capitalists. This class of small-scale producers constantly pushed lower and driven into the proletariat as capitalist competition raises the cost of means of production, concentrates and centralizes capital, forcing the small producer out of business.

The petite bourgeoisie is nothomogeneous in its property status. Its upper strata are close to the bourgeoisie, butthe living conditions of its lower strata are sometimes materially worse than those of many skilled workers in

large enterprises. No matter how bad his material condition, the petit bourgeois is distinguished from the worker by his private ownership of the means of production. Althoughwhat is owned may be of negligible proportions, including perhaps only the place of work and tools, in all cases it constitutes the basis of production and the mainsource of livelihood of the petit bourgeois. The class affiliation of the petit bourgeois is determined by his role in the capitalist market not as the seller of his own labor power but as the seller of the goods and services he has produced. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/petty+bourgeoisie

Petty bourgeois consciousness: Petty bourgeois consciousness is an outlook that does not transcendthe class ideology and political outlook of the small- scale producer, seeking to preserve his status in the capitalist system. The petty bourgeoisie opposes the big bourgeoisie’s polices that crush the small-scale producer andput them in the ranks of the proletariat and finally into the surplus population of unemployed. Petty bourgeois consciousness opposes monopoly and supports a form of free enterprise, to which society cannot return. The political program of the petty

bourgeoisie is the anti-monopoly program, born of the populist movement of the 1890s.

Any individual or group of people can possess petty bourgeois consciousness, including the poorest of workers.

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 andearth. 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 aclass and the class they represent. Emphasis added. (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch03.htm

Philosophy:

Philosophy is the name for thewhole body of thought, in its historical development, concerning the kind of world we live in, the kind of beingswe are, and our relation to the world (Handbook of Philosophy by H. Selsam, 1949.)

Philosophy ponders the processes governing reality, existence, thought, principles of development, and law systems of change. In this sense, every individual is a philosopher because everyone accounts for nature and the world, one way or another. Marxist philosophy is a method of cognizing and changing reality. It is based on dialectical materialism. (See, Dialectics, Materialism.)

Fifth, philosophy answers the central question arising out of the consideration of man’s relation to the world (the so-called basic question of philosophy): the question of the primacy of objective or subjective being. This problemcovers the forms of reflectionof the world of objects by thesubject, and the modes of establishing the correctness or truth of the subjective image of the objective world. Sixth and last, philosophy substantiates its subject matter as the universal pivot of the process of cognition in

general. That is why the humandimension of philosophy causessuch great interest. The view is sometimes taken as a basic philosophical axiom that the universe is in itself the way we perceive it. However, thereis a great deal in the universe that is inaccessible to our perception. Man directly observes only processes of a strictly determined type, while processes of a different type unfold ‘without witnesses’. Itwould therefore be more precise to say that the universe opens itself up to usto the extent to which we as observers ask it quite definite questions determined by our human essence. By its very nature, the universe assumed the emergence of life and consequently of man. That is why there is a direct link between the existence of man and the fundamental propertiesof the universe. The identification of that link isa significant task of science and philosophy.http://www.scribd.com/doc/

47675159/

Polarity, Polarization:Polarity as the unity and struggleof opposites (two poles) in a contradiction is the internal impulse of development. Polarization is the process of destruction of contradiction and is destruction of the connecting tissue (glue) holding the two

poles together as the unity and struggle of opposites in a contradiction.

Polarity and polarization are not separate categories but expressions of two kinds of change. Polarity is the inherent, unending struggle of contradiction, fueling its growth and development from one stage to the next. This growth 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.

Polarization refers to the poles of a contradiction being wrenched apart and ultimately destroyed as the bond holding the poles together is breached and broken. Contradiction is disrupted when a new quality enters the process causing a breach and rupture in the unity and struggle of the two poles.

Once the bond holding a contradiction together is breachedand ultimately broken, the contradiction is unraveled and destroyed because one pole cannot exist and develop without the other. As polarization increases, each pole begins separation from the other, with each pole also experiencing an internal rupture. This internal rupture does not happen all at once. The result of internal rupture is that the previously united poles become

independent from each other (in stages, not all at one time), finally entering into external collision with each other because what held them together has been breached.

Under capitalism the buying and selling of labor ability as the foundation for creating an expanding value (profits) holds capitalist and worker together, asthe unity of capitalist production.

The fundamental polarity in capitalist society involves two major classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. Capitalism consists of economic layers (strata, gradations) and differences in income level, stretching from extreme poverty to obscene wealth.These gradations are economic threads tying the two poles - bourgeoisie and proletariat - together. Each economic layer penetrates the next, tying classestogether into a society. All the economic and social strata betweenthe two poles (bourgeoisie and proletariat) are the economic-political middle.

The polarity between capitalist and proletariat is not enough to bring the capitalist mode of production to its historical end. Once computers and robotics are injected into the economy, the polarity between capitalist and worker enters a path of polarization. Polarization is the process of destruction of the

economic-political middle, which holds the system of value production together. (See, Political middle.)

Political economy:Political economy is the science that studies production relations between people, the laws of development of social production, the rise of a surplus product in society, the emergence of propertyrelations, the development of exchange and the forms of distribution corresponding to the various stages of human society.

Political economy, in the widest sense, is the science of the laws governing the production and exchange of thematerial means of subsistence in human society. Production and exchange are two differentfunctions. Production may occur without exchange, but exchange—being necessarily an exchange of products—cannot occur without production. Eachof these two social functions is subject to the action of external influences which to agreat 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 menproduce and exchange vary fromcountry 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 exchangeamong 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch13.htm

Every economic system presentsa contradictory and complicated picture. The task of scientific research consists in revealing by meansof theoretical analysis the deep-seated processes and fundamental features of the economy, which lie behind the outward appearance of economicphenomena and express the essential character of the particular production relations concerned, abstracting these from secondary features.

What emerges from such scientific analysis are economic categories, i.e., concepts which represent the theoretical expression of the real production relations of the particular social formation concerned, such as, for example, commodity, value,money, economic accounting, profitability, work-day, etc.

Marx’s method consists of gradually ascending from the simplest of economic categories to more complex ones, which corresponds to theprogressive development of society on an ascending line, from lower stages to higher. When such a procedure is used in investigating the categories of political economy, logical investigationis combined with historical analysis of social development.http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Political liberty:Political liberty is an aspect of governance that protects the inviolability of the individual, grants the individual rights and equal treatment before the law andthe state power. It is the rights of the individual in a democratic state.

Far from an abstract notion of freedom, political liberty is “political” because it defines therights of the individual in relationship to state, government,commerce and all facets of societywhere the individual falls under the sway of organized social powerof classes and class based institutions.

In the bourgeois democratic republic, the individual becomes a“citizen” of a political state, rather than a subject, serf or slave. Bourgeois democracy and theold Soviet democracy abolished thedesignation of an individual as a subject, serf or slave, extending to the individual a system of rights constituting liberty. In America the foundation of liberty is written as the Bill of Rights.

Democracy, the democratic state, and political liberty are not identical. The designation of all persons as citizens is the essenceof the democratic state. Although America was a democracy in the past century (most certainly the northern states, with the core southern states being more or lessfascist) women did not win the vote until passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. America was a democratic republic in the 1950sand 1960s, yet blacks still faced legally sanctioned second-class citizenship status (segregation). That is, they suffered from restricted political liberties as compared with their white

counterparts. As the mega-corporate state consolidates its fascist grip on American society, the democratic republic has been gutted and shattered, along with the system of political liberty enshrined in the Constitution. Officially, although Americans arestill all “citizens,” political liberty is in the process of beingdestroyed. What remains is the formal shell of a bourgeois democratic republic now run by themega-corporations.

Political middle:The political middle is the economic and social layers and political institutions serving as a social prop of the system. Through owning property, stocks, and achieving stable income, a layer of society developed that isloyal to the system. This economic-political middle is the foundation of mass support of the major political parties, the system of laws and has stabilized the system.

The economic-political middle, built upon colonialism and briberyof the working class, has being shattered. Economic revolution, brought on by computers and robotics, has destroyed the connection between a growing section of wage labor and capital.One economic layer after another is being thrown into the ranks of the permanently unemployed, and the economic middle is being pushed down into the ranks of the destitute proletariat. The

economic middle begins to disintegrate, and the poles (capitalist and proletariat) beginto clash in a real way.

This is only the beginning of polarization, but the process is now irreversible. As the economy polarizes, so does society. Consequently, the legal, social, and ideological threads that held society together are breaking down, shattering the political middle. (See, Polarity, Polarization.)

Populism:Populism is an American political ideology posing the issue of debt,poverty, and destitution in society as a struggle between “thepeople” and some big institutions,such as the banks or Wall Street. Driven by the small-scale propertyholder, populism was a social response to domination by financial corporations after the Civil War. It was a movement of poor farmers, small rural businessmen, and some sections of the working class between the 1890s through the 1930s. Populist ideology spoke of a democratic vision of America, the kind of economy that should exist for the benefit of the people, not for corporations.

The most important aspect of US populism is its non-class outlook.While some sections of this movement were quite progressive and militant in opposition to the banks, railroads, and stock

exchanges, they never fundamentally challenged capitalism as a system. Populism in the main was an all-class whiteunity movement. It rejects the idea that the working class has interests absolutely hostile to those of the capitalist class.http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v21ed3art6.html;http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v17ed3art3.html

Pragmatism:

Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that themeaning of a proposition is tobe found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas areto be rejected.http://www.iep.utm.edu/pragmati/

Pragmatism holds that the functionof thought is practical problem solving, rather than radical reconstruction of society based onunproven theoretical models. Pragmatism can be summarized by the phrase “whatever works, is likely true.” Pragmatism is an American philosophy that denies that law systems and law-governed processes exist independently of human consciousness and do not require human consciousness to operate in nature, on earth, or inthe heavens.

Founded in the United States shortly after the Civil War and coinciding with the rise of American financial and industrial capital, pragmatism rejects dialectical materialist philosophyand the notion of scientific knowledge developing in stages corresponding to development of the productive forces. It rejects the proposition that change in nature and society is a law-governed process involving quantitative stages with leaps from one quality to another quality. Pragmatism views dialectics as unworthy of consideration because the value ofan idea and proposition consists in its ability to yield a direct and desired result.

Precariat:The term is a combination of precarious with 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 theOccupy movement, in Euro May Day parades across Europe, in the indignados in Madrid, in Athens and in the Middle East.http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3820486.html

The precariat is created by the electronic revolution within capitalist productive relations. It is the core of a new class of destitute proletarians created by robotics.

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 theamount of money for which a commodity can be purchased.

Primitive accumulation of capital:The primitive accumulation of capital is a past historical phasein the formation of the capitalistsystem.

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, isthe 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 bourgeoishistorians. 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.(Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Part VIII: Primitive Accumulation.)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm

Primitive communism: See, mode of production.

Private property:Private property is ownership of means of production, which allows an individual and class to deploy labor in production and appropriate the surplus product. Private property is bound up with definite objects and things, sincewithout an object of acquisition (a material thing) there cannot beany ownership. However, private property cannot be reduced to a thing and ownership of things because it’s subjective essence (that is to say, the thing that make private property a social relations of production), is humanlabor. A thing is not and cannot become private property unless groups of people (classes) enter into definite social relations of production with one another in regard to it. Private property mediates social relations and through this mediation comes to dominate the life of society, classes, and individuals and compels everyone to enter into definite social relations of production, based on the things owned.

Personal possessions are not private property, because people do not enter into productive relations based on individual ownership of a pair of pants, cellphone, automobile or table. Nor does ownership of these personal

items allow the owners to deploy labor in production and appropriate the surplus product created by labor.

Most of human history has been lived without private property relations. Private property relationships of one sort or another are 5,000 years or more old. These relationships arose when the productivity of labor wasable to create an accumulation of surplus products - more than what was needed for the survival of thecommunity. Some individuals discovered that they could increase the store of surplus products by using the surplus to get others to work for them. This eventually created the demand for slaves, and 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 development of private property split society into contradictory classes, creating antagonistic development leading to emergence of the state and exploitation of one person by another. The owners of the means of production and surplus productsbecame 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 is private ownership of the slave by a master and/or classof masters. Feudal private property is based on land ownership as the primary form of society’s wealth, compelling the serf to work the land of the nobility and his “lord” and “master.” Capitalist private property is the bourgeois mode of commodity production, with one section of society being compelledto sell its labor ability to the owners of means of production for wages.

Communist revolution is the abolition of private property, which destroys the right of any individual or class to own socially necessary means of production, the deployment of labor and the surplus products.

Privatization:Privatization transfers ownership of a public service or public property enterprise or agency fromthe public sector (a government) to the private sector. It may alsomean government outsourcing to private firms’ services or functions, for example, revenue collection, law enforcement, and prison management. (See, Nationalization.)

Process:

A process is the totality of stages of development of

dialectical motion. Internal contradictions set matter in motion and compel it forward. A process is dialectical because it compels and forces the creation and unity of the antithetical elements; forces them to polarize and struggle,creating a synthesis by their mutual destruction. Social production is such a process. An individual might stand aside from this compulsion, but society cannot.(Nelson Peery, Entering An Epoch of Social Revolution.) http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf

Dialectics asserts that the process of development is from a lower to a higher order, and that development is through definitive,indispensable, quantitative stageswith a leap into a new quality.(See, Stage.)

Production:Production is the mental and physical power of humanity (labor)operating on nature and changing the material provided by nature tocreate means of life, goods and services spurring on social development.

In the process of production, human beings work not only upon nature, but also upon oneanother. 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 doestheir influence upon nature operate—that is, does production take place.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch05.htm

Production, reproduction: Reproduction is the motion that recreates all the ingredients for the next cycle of production. It is a process of renewal and the continuous gathering together and deployment of natural resources, material goods, human labor and the productive relations that makethe production of material value possible. Capitalist production isreproduction on an expanded scale.

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-increasingscale. 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 valueand competition motivates capitalists to carry out expanded reproduction or accumulation of capital. Under capitalist conditions, reproduction of the work force is characterized by itsreproduction 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 societybetween the class of hired workers and the class of capitalists, there is also reproduction of capitalist production relations. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/reproduction

Production, social:Production of material means to sustain, develop and reproduce human life (generations) is at alltimes and all stages of human development social production.

Having arisen out of nature, humanbeings carry on a struggle in nature, first against it and then increasingly in conformity with

its natural laws for the production of material values, notin isolation from each other, not as separate individuals, but in common, in groups, in societies. Production, therefore, is at all times and under all conditions is social production. In the production of material values, people enter into mutual relationsof one kind or another, based on adivision of labor.

Production, socialized: Socialized production develops based on the industrial revolutionand deploys groups of people working together as interdependentunits, based on a technical division of labor. Socialized production displaces 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, working together, in harmony, in organic connection,deploying the new means of production that can only be harnessed based on socialized productive forces. Socialized production and social production are not the same.

Then came the concentration of the means of production and of the producers in largeworkshops and manufactories, their transformation into actual socialized means of production and socialized producers. But the socialized

producers and means of production and their productswere still treated, after this change, just as they hadbeen 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 ownerof the instruments of labor always appropriated to himself the product, althoughit 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 hadactually 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 essencesocialized.(Frederick Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, III [Historical Materialism]) 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 theproduction experiences and habits of work which they possess, constitute the productive forces of society.… (Ital. in orig.)

The productive forces reflect the relationship of people to the objects and forces of nature used for the productionof material wealth. In production, however, men act not only upon nature but upon each other.http://www.dmeeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Of all the productive forces in a society, the most revolutionary isthe human mind.

Productive relations: Productive relations are the relations of people to property and to one another in the process of production. Productive relations are social relations of production. They are social relations because production at all times is social production. People enter into definite connections and relations in orderto sustain human life. Productive relations begin with how people are organized, based on the division of labor, as they carry out production and distribution ofthe social products. (See, socialrelations of production.)

The definitive social connections and relations formed between people in the process of production of material wealth constitute production relations. Production relations include: (a) forms of ownership of the means of production; (b) the position of the various social groups in production which results from this, and their mutual relations; (c) the forms of distribution of products that follow from the ownership of the means of production and people’s position in production.

The character of production relations depends on who owns the means of production (land,woods, waters, subsoil, raw materials, instruments of production, buildings used forproduction, means of communications and transport, etc.)—whether they are the property of particular persons, social groups or classes, which uses these means of production in order to exploit the working people,or whether they are the property of society, whose aimis the satisfaction of the material and cultural requirements of the masses of the people, of society as a whole. The state of the production relations shows howthe means of production are

distributed among the members of society and, consequently, how the material wealth produced by people is distributed. Thus, the determining feature, the basisof production relations is oneor another form of property in themeans of production.

The relations of production determine also corresponding relations of distribution. Distribution is the connectinglink between production and consumption. (Ital. in orig.)http://www.dmeeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Progress:Progress is development. Rather than a policy of moral and ethicalappraisal, progress is the continued development, compounding, enlargement and stageby stage enhancement of the productive forces and phenomena ingeneral.

Progressive development is thus thought of not as movement of some object fromone point to another but as a process which, at each subsequent stage of its further movement, raises higher and higher the whole mass of already attained content and, far from losingsomething essential, carrieswith it all that it has accumulated, bringing in new

content. The new is an intermediate or final resultof development correlated with the old. The changes may pertain to the composition of an object (i.e. to the qualitative andquantitative characteristicsof its components), to the mode of the connection between the elements of the given whole, to the functionor behavior of the object—tothe character of the object’s interactions with adifferent object, and finally to all these characteristics as a whole. Development is a dual process: the old departs andthe new comes in, asserting itself in the struggle against the old rather than through unhampered unfoldingof its potential.

The relationship between theconcepts of development and progress must be clearly understood. They are close to each other but not identical. Development results in the appearance ofa new quality, but it is notat all necessary that this quality should be more complex or more perfect thanthe previous one. If the newquality is in some respect superior to the old one, we have a progressive tendency of development, and if it isinferior, 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, regressis by no means linked with degeneration or extinction. Regressive simplification ofthe morphophysiological qualities of a given biological species is often linked with the needs of adjustment to a new environment, and many of theso-called degenerated forms belong among the most flourishing groups of the animal world. Progress and regress are two different tendencies of development which, however, are intertwined with one another, forming a complex interdependence. In complex systems, one element or level may be subject to regress while the system as a whole may progress or, on the contrary, a general regress of the system may beaccompanied by progressive development of its separate

elements. If we consider thelarger scales of development, such as organicevolution, interaction of differently oriented processes is distinctly discernible there: the general line of progressive development is interwoven with changes that give rise to the so-called blind alleys of evolution or even paths of regress.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Progress, regression and development:

Progress and regress actuallycoexist in objective reality,as do deformation, decay, revolutionary (leap-like) andevolutionary changes, spiral and cyclical material processes, i.e. there coexisttwo opposing directions of development—along the ascending and the descending line. Development along the ascending line is developmentfrom 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 ofcoded information grows. Descending development is thepath of decay, degeneration,

impoverishment and decomposition. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Proletarian internationalism:Proletarian internationalism is a strategy and doctrine of unity based on the goal of world proletarian revolution. Internationalism is adherence to an international line of march anddoctrine of revolution. The internationalism of the proletarian revolution was expressed with different slogans and strategies during different stages of the industrial system and different stages of the communist-revolutionary movement.

Proletarian internationalism in the age of electronics and emergence of a worldwide robotic economy requires abandonment of the old doctrines of revolution. What is needed is creation of a new doctrine of assault against capital, and transferring political power to the proletariatin a globalized economy.

Proletarian revolution:The proletarian revolution is the political aspects of the communistsocial revolution, rather than a “workers” revolution, struggle against “bosses,” or fight for “democratic workers control of production.” It is called the proletarian revolution because the proletariat must liberate all of society from private property, as

the condition for its self emancipation.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolitionof property generally, but theabolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeoisprivate property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing andappropriating 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

Proletariat:In the writings of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, proletariat meantthe industrial working class created as the result of the industrial revolution.

By proletariat, [is meant] theclass 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]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 and does not draw profitfrom any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose lifeand death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor—hence, on thechanging state of business, onthe vagaries of unbridled competition.…http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Today, in our time, the electronics revolution creates a new form of proletariat. The new proletariat is both employed and unemployed and is the new form of the working class, deploying productive forces that did not exist forty years ago. The core ofthis new proletariat is a proletariat in Marx’s meaning of individuals who must sell their labor for wages. It is also proletariat in the Roman sense of being more or less shut out of production and “the one who produces offspring.”

Unlike the original Roman proletariat shut out of productionby slave labor, the new proletariat is shut out of employment by “electronic slaves”

-- robots. This new social group (new form of class) shut out of capitalist production relations isa real 21st century proletariat.

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 agiven thing is, then it is something for us, and if it is something, that means thatit 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 tosomething 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 elementsand structure.

Properties are manifested with various degrees of intensity, and this expressesthe 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 moralstate of a person or a people, of the state of a given nation’s economy, or ofits 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 anobject’s essential properties, its internaland external definiteness, its relative stability. Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentals. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Quality:

Quality is the totality of properties that makes a particularthing 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. Qualityis the essential character of a particular thing or phenomenon, making it what it is and distinguishing it from other things and phenomena.

The philosophical concept of quality differs from the notion ofit in everyday life, where it is associated with the worth (value) of things. People speak of the good or bad quality of food, clothing, shoes, or artistic production. The philosophic concept of quality does not contain any element of moral or value judgment. The most essentialproperty 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 innature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitativeaddition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).

All qualitative differences innature 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 bodywithout addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e., without quantitative alteration of thebody concerned. In this form, therefore, Hegel’s mysterious principle appears not only quite rational but even ratherobvious.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch02.htm

Qualitative change is not a simpleprocess of change in magnitude, something getting bigger or smaller. It begins with the addition or subtraction of something from the existing process. Qualitative change is theresult of 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:

The totality of properties indicating a thing’s dimensions of magnitude is called it quantity (Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, A. P. Sheptulin, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1980).

In actuality there is no such thing as quantity in general. There exists only the quantity of a determined quality (A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, M. Shirokov, 1937).

Quantitative change:It is the successive stages

of growth of a quality rather thana simple increase or decrease in magnitude. It is the developmentalpath by which a quality becomes more of what it is. In the development of capitalist production, the laborers under thefeudal system lose their characteras workers owning their means of production and become more proletarian, owning nothing but their ability to labor for wages. The capitalists, who once administered business, now hire workers to administer them. The capitalists become owners of stockand financial institutions divorced from laboring and more clearly owners of means of production.

It can be observed that there are a definite number of stages of growth of anything. What is not so easily seen is that each stage of growth (quantity) is also a stage in the preparation for change of quality. For example, the qualitative change in production from electro-mechanical to robotics started150 years ago with the application of electricity to

mechanical devices. At the endof the stages of development of electro-mechanics, the microchip was introduced whichforced a leap from machinery guided and controlled by humans to machinery guided andcontrolled by computers.http://www.scienceofsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Institute-Resource-Paper31.pdf

Race, racism, and white racism:Racism is an ideology. Race, racism, and white racism are ideological justifications for exploitation and oppression. Exploitation and oppression exist in all class societies and existedbefore racism. Class exploitation and oppression are one way or another tied to appropriating the unpaid labor of a section of society.

Race is not a scientific concept or theory. Science long ago provedthat there is only one race of people on earth, the human race. Racism justifies productive relations, social institutions, and the architecture of the system. In England, the Irish weredeemed an inferior race. The ideology that justified this oppression and exploitation was racism. In Japan, the Koreans and Chinese were deemed inferior races. The ideology that justifiedthis oppression and exploitation was racism. Racism is not limited to an ideology of skin color.

New World slavery and New World conquest had to be justified with an ideology. This ideology was white superiority. White racism or“white superiority” declared that Europeans, in relationship to non-European people, were white and, based on their whiteness, had beenchosen to rule the earth in God’s name.

White racism was not the reason for New World slavery. Money and wealth were the reasons for this slavery. New World slavery came first, and called forth the white racist ideology as justification for preserving and protecting thisnew economic foundation. New Worldslavery was purely an affair of capitalist profit, rather than debt slavery, religious persecution, or hereditary slavery. The ideological justification for New World slavery was white racism.

Reform:Reform means change in a system, which does not change its essential quality and characteristic. Reform is change in a mode of production, caused byquantitative development of the productive forces and production relations. These quantitative changes demand adjustments and changes to the relations within and between classes or social groupings. As long as a system is passing through its stages of development, it can be reformed. The essential quality and condition of the capitalist mode

of commodity production has been bourgeois private property and industrial production.

Once a new qualitative ingredient is added to the economy (the bow and arrow, the plow, the steam engine, then computers and robotics), reform of the old system becomes impossible because the old system is now undergoing qualitative change to something new, and society is compelled to reorganize around the new means ofproduction. The new qualitative ingredient blocking reform of the capitalist system is computers androbotics. This new technology causes revolutionary change in thesystem.

Reformism:Reformism advocates for change acceptable to the bourgeoisie and within the bounds of bourgeois private property. Reformism claimsthat reform would gradually lead to greater political liberty and economic prosperity for the American people. Forty years of falling real wages, 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 not the same. Concession is winning of a temporary benefit. Reforms change relations between classes, withoutchanging the property relations

and are generally irreversible, within the quantitative stage of the system. Concessions are reversible. Concessions do not change relations within or betweenclasses.

The economic and social basis of the politics of reformism was the stage-by-stage quantitative development of the capitalist system. The epoch of capitalist development has come to an end. (See, Reform.)

Relations of production:Relations of production are the connections between people and between people and property in theprocess of production.

In the process of production, human beings work not only upon nature, but also upon oneanother. 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 doestheir 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch05.htm

People engage nature for production, not in isolation from each other, nor as separate individuals, but in common, in group activity based on a certain stage of development of the means of production and a definite division of labor. Production, therefore, is at all times and under all conditions social production. The means of production may or may not be ownedtotally or partially by the producers. Productive relations embody different forms of ownership rights in production, property rights.

Five main types of relations of production are known to history: primitive communal, slave, feudal,capitalist, and socialist. Four main types of modes of production are known to history: primitive communal, slave, feudal, and capitalist. Humanity is living in the epoch of transition to the next economic-social formation,

robotic communalism. (See, Mode ofproduction, Socialism.)

Reserve army of labor: (See Industrial reserve army of labor.)

Revisionism:Revisionism is a doctrine hostile to Marxism within Marxism. Revisionism alters, distorts and reinterprets Marx’s writings to make his science of society and theory of social revolution acceptable to the ruling class. After Marx’s science of society triumphed over various socialist doctrines (1890s), the revolutionaries won over to Marxism began to face a new form of opposition and hostility to Marx’s doctrine under the guise ofadherence to Marxism.

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. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of liesand slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so tosay, and to hallow their namesto a certain extent for the

‘consolation’ of the oppressedclasses and with the object ofduping 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1

Lenin describes the “revision” of Marxism up to and during the era in which he lived in Marxism and Revisionism and The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/apr/03.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/oct/10.htm

Development of Marx’s science of society is not the same thing as revisionism. Developing Marx’s method, approach and philosophy ensures Marxism does not become a dogma and brings it into the new era.

Revolution:

Revolution is a specific kind of change in society that occurs whenthe means of production change in such a way that the old social arrangements - the way necessitiesare distributed to those who need them - are no longer adequate, andchanges are needed to fit the new conditions.

In describing the political aspectof revolution, Lenin wrote:

… the revolution itself is nothing but the break-up of old superstructures and the independent action of the various classes, each strivingto erect the new superstructure in its own way.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/mar/08.htm

Revolution has objective and subjective aspects. The objective economic revolution goes through stages of destruction and reconstruction, as qualitatively new means of production replace the old. Based on the objective economic revolution, a political revolution takes place. A political revolution is the process of a subordinate class overthrowing a ruling class and becoming the new ruling class.

The subjective aspect of revolution is the human mind, heart, and will as the work of conscious revolutionaries, teaching the oppressed class to seize political power on behalf of

itself. The purpose is to create anew society, based on revolutionary new technology to meet the needs of the majority rather than profits for the corporate-state. After the assumption of political power by anew class, the revolution completes itself by changing the mode of distribution to bring it into conformity with the changed productive forces. (See, Revolutionary situation.)

Revolutionary process:The revolutionary process is the motion of the basic contradiction of a mode of production, as it passes through each stage of development. At a certain stage ofdevelopment, qualitatively new means of production make their appearance and inaugurate the leapto a new mode of production. The revolutionary process embraces twodistinct, interrelated, and intertwined motions and law systems, which express quantitative change and qualitative change.

Capitalist commodity production iscapitalist private ownership of means of production. Capitalists own the commodities created by their employees. In the early daysof capitalism, the tools were simple, and there was a close relationship between the tools, the workers, the capitalist, and the market.

The relationship between the capitalists and the workers

becomes more contradictory within each stage of development of capitalism and forces the emergence of a new stage, as each class fights for a greater share of the social product. The capitalists want more profits; theworkers want more necessaries of life in exchange for their labor power. The capitalists introduce more labor-augmenting machines to make greater profits. The workers resist greater exploitation. Each class strives for a greater share of the social product and the political means to carry out its will. This contradictory struggle (class conflict) drives the system, from one stage to another.

Each succeeding stage polarizes the relations between labor and capital. Development of new means of production intensifies the colluding and collision, unity andstruggle between proletarians and capitalists. Each stage of development forces the worker and the bourgeoisie further apart. Thebourgeoisie becomes more clearly capitalist, the workers more clearly wage slaves. The market becomes more clearly worldwide, globalized.

Each quantitative stage in the development of means of productionis further preparation for the introduction of a new quality intothe process of production. The quantitative introduction of qualitatively new instruments of production begins the leap to a new mode of producing. That is to

say, the contradiction between capitalist and proletariat, based in the industrial system, is augmented, joined by, and superseded by a new struggle, involving new classes created by the qualitatively new means of production. The developmental process of the new classes and newmeans of production becomes a modeof destruction of the old means ofproduction and old classes.

Production with electronics (microchip) is in antagonism, active hostility (not simply contradiction), with the old economic relations, the old division of labor and the old social organization of labor basedon the industrial system and wage labor.

Revolutionary situation:A revolutionary situation is an era of mass uprising, protest, anddemonstrations. The spontaneous movement batters the state in sucha way as to make possible the transfer of political power from an old class to a new class.

To the Marxists it is indisputable that a revolutionis impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicatethe following three major

symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rulewithout any change; when thereis a crisis, in one form or another, among the ‘upper classes’, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for ‘the lower classes not to wantto live in the old way; it is also necessary that ‘the upperclasses should be unable’ to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in ‘peace time’, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the ‘upper classes’ themselves into independent historical action.

Without these objective changes, which are independentof the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible. The totality of all these

objective changes is called a revolutionary situation. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/csi/ii.htm#v21pp74h-212

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 inthe old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should notbe 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’ cannotcarry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be expressed inother 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 theclass-conscious, thinking, andpolitically 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. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm

Robot and robotics:A robot is a complex machine basedon the microchip. The microchip revolution makes possible creationof machines (robots) that can process data and knowledge with matter other than the human brain.A robot can duplicate the actions of living labor in production, in the absence of the living laborer.

During the industrial revolution, industrial technology amplified human labor and assisted the laborer in production. Industrial technology reduced value in production, lowered the price of labor power and created an industrial reserve army of labor, which was brought into production during peak periods and laid off during periods of overproduction.

Robotics goes further, destroying value in production and through this destruction beginning the destruction of the division of labor in society. Robotic production (more or less laborlessproduction) is a game changer. Before the 1970s, robotic systems in production did not exist outside the realm of science fiction. Robots and robotics leavethe realm of science fiction and fantasy with application of computers and microchips to automated processes.

Scarcity:Scarcity is used to mean a low state of development of the means of production and not a shortage of things. It is a stage of development of the productive forces, where our species activityis determined by the struggle for survival.

Scarcity in political economy is aconcept of the development of productive forces, rather than theavailability of natural resources.It 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.

Computers and robotics make possible the society of abundance,with the societal ability to care for all, without a demand for

labor as a precondition to consumethe fruits of society.(See, Abundance.)

Science:

Science [is] systemized knowledge derived from observation, study, and experimentation carried on in order to determine the nature or principles of what is beingstudied. (Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary.)

Science, the organized body ofknowledge concerning nature and society acquired in the historical evolution of sociallife. In a broad sense scienceis 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 suchknowledge is acquired, verified and enlarged. Scienceendeavors to find the basic laws underlying the apparent accidents of phenomena in all fields. As Marx remarked, ‘Allscience would be superfluous if the appearance, the form, and the nature of things were wholly identical.’ (Handbook of Philosophy by H. Selsam 1949, translated from Russian.)

Sectarianism:Sectarianism is adherence to a proposition or doctrine derived from moral principles. Sectarians

seek to convert the individual or class to conform to their program.An organization is sectarian (a sect) when its goal is to win members and convert them over to its ideological system and mode ofliving.

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.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_10_13-abs.htm

(Shibboleth = a belief stronglyheld, by members of a group that is usually regarded by outsiders as meaningless, unimportant, or misguided.)

Marx wrote of the efforts of the First International to defeat socialist sectarianism within the movement of the working class.

The International was foundedin 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 sectsand that of the real workers’movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, theworking class is not yet ripefor an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_11_23.htm

Revolutionary Marxists in America faced difficulty avoiding becomingsectarian groups, drawn into the vortex of sectarian practices during the period of reform of thecapitalist system.

One lesson that we can learn from this period of history is that during the periods ofclass peace between social revolutions, the communist parties must not attempt to persuade the workers to drop their concrete demands in favor of the abstract demand of revolution. The inevitableresult is isolation as a sect, instead of a party.http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v17ed2art2.html

Slavery:Slavery is involuntary servitude, a condition where human beings

become property of other human beings and are compelled, through rituals, 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. In contrast, New World slavery produced exchange-value commodities for sale for profit onthe market in general.

Slavery of antiquity bore a patriarchal family (clan) character based on primitive meansof production in an agricultural society, including the wooden plow, handicraft and later weavingand pottery making. Slave labor was deployed for things – products– directly consumed by the family and clan. This kind of production is use value production, with goods and services created for direct consumption of the clan rather than production for the market in exchange for other goods. Exchange value production occurs when products are created to be sold on the market. Productscreated to be sold on the market become commodities or acquire a commodity form.

All forms of slavery are destructive and involve appropriation of the surplus products of the slave. The surplusproducts are all the products created by the slave over and above what the slave himself uses

and consumes. The surplus productsform the basis of the wealth of the family and clan. It is very important to understand the difference between production of use-values and production of exchange-value.

Marx discloses the impulses (use value vs. exchange value) that changed the character and featuresof slavery.

Capital has not invented surplus-labor. Wherever a part of society possesses themonopoly of the means of production, the laborer, freeor 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 ofthe 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 withinthe lower forms of slave-labor, corvée-labor, etc., are drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalisticmode 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 inthe 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, theover-working of the Negro andsometimes the using up of hislife 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 aquestion of production of surplus-labor itself.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S2

Social contract:The social contract is the spoken and unspoken social arrangement between people, government, and different classes, defining how classes and the individual relate to one another in a system of production. In America, the socialcontract based on wage labor is being torn asunder, with all classes and social groupings spontaneously drawn into the social struggle.

The social contract (compact), espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762), with its history-changing cry of the sovereign rights of thecitizen, was the voice of the new bourgeois productive relations anda new economy based on a growing system of mechanized labor. This new economy (material relation of production) was born under feudal society, which in turn had been governed by a different productiverelation—social contract—based on subjects and lords.

The social contract of bourgeois society flows from capitalist productive relations, based on thebuying and selling of labor power:“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 computerand robotics threaten to displace more millions, breaching the foundation of the capitalist social contract and calling forth revolution to create a new social contract, compatible with robotics. Capitalist productive relations—its social contract—haveentered into antagonism with the robot economy.

Social democracy:Social democracy is a reformist social movement, embracing the striving of new classes created bythe industrial revolution and birthed in antagonism with feudal productive relations. Social democracy sought the overthrow of feudal productive relations and the establishment of a society based on the equality of citizens.The social democratic vision was the bourgeois democratic republic and a land of the “citizen” ratherthan a society of serf’s, slaves, lords and masters. Social democratic politics rested on waging the fight for the ballot box and electing its candidates toparliament or public office. Social democracy rejected the needfor the proletariat to be the ruling class in society.

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 wasstripped off the democratic claims of the petty bourgeoisie and their socialist point thrust forward. Thus arose social-democracy. . . . . The peculiar character of social-democracyis 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 societyin a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch03.htm

The term Social democracy was popularized when socialist workersparties were formed in the last third of Europe’s 1800s. These parties contained a Marxist trend within them. The Second International, founded 1889 was essentially a patriotic petty

bourgeois reformist (social democratic) movement. During the era of the Second International, 1889 - 1916, the social democraticmovement split between its more revolutionary communist sector galvanized by Lenin’s Bolshevik party and the essentially patriotic, petty bourgeois social democratic movement and parties ofreform, which sided with their “own” bourgeoisie during World WarI.

Social production, socialized production: See production.

Social relations of production:Social relations of production arethe society connections that people and economic classes must enter into, in order to survive, to produce and reproduce their means of life. Participation in these social relations is not voluntary, but based on the circumstances each generation finds in existence. These circumstances include the propertyrelations (ownership and non-ownership of means of production),the division of labor in society and all connections that stabilizesociety.

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independentof their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their materialproductive 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.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 isthat 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. (Emphasis added.)(Karl Marx The Poverty of Philosophy Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political Economy.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm(See, Productive relations.)

Social revolution (according to Karl Marx):(The following breaks in paragraphing do not follow the original.)

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definiterelations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of productionappropriate 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 realfoundation, 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 frameworkof 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 ofthe whole immense superstructure.

In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economicconditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artisticor philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which menbecome 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 itis 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 closerexamination will always show that the problem itself arisesonly 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 emanatesfrom 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

Socialism:Socialism advocates that the meansof production, distribution, and the infrastructure of public life be owned or regulated by the community as a whole, rather than by individuals and corporations. In the past, various notions of socialism included feudal socialism, bourgeois socialism, Christian (clerical) socialism andpetty bourgeois socialism. Public ownership, workers’ control of production-commons and all kinds of democratic-republican schemes were to be the essence of non-Marxist and non-proletarian socialism.

Marxism placed utopian socialist visions on the foundation of what

was possible with the existing mode of production. With the development of Soviet industrial socialism, socialist economy was concretized as a system of industrial production and distribution without capitalist property relations. That is to say, a society without a mechanismallowing means of production to pass into the hands of individuals. Marxists justified this approach based on Karl Marx’s“Critique of the Gotha Programme.”

What we have to deal with hereis a communist society, not asit has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; whichis thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the oldsociety from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after thedeductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is hisindividual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours ofwork; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributedby him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of

labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock ofmeans of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of laborwhich he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as thisis exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, andbecause, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as thedistribution of the latter among the individual producersis concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount oflabor in one form is exchangedfor an equal amount of labor in another form.

(Karl Marx Critique of the Gotha Programme.) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

Soviet socialism overthrew and shattered the capitalist class andabolished capitalist ownership of

factories, mines, hospitals, and public transportation and all things fundamental to an industrial infrastructure and economy. Proletarian socialism made it impossible for means of production to pass into the hands of individuals. Politically, Soviet industrial socialism was a democratic class system based on the rule of the proletariat -– dictatorship of the proletariat --and abolished the political category of slave, serf and subject.(See, Utopian socialism.)

Socialism, Soviet: (See, Soviet socialism.)

Socially necessary labor time:

The labor time socially necessary is that required toproduce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time.(Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Part I: Commodities and Money.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1

Socially necessary labor time is the average amount of time it takes to produce a commodity underthe general prevailing conditions of the economy.

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. (Marx, Value, Price and Profit, VI. Value and Labour.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch02.htm

Commodities are exchanged based onsocial value, social labor, that is, socially necessary labor time,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 it takes to make a sweater, at a given point in time,is the measure of its value and exchangeability for other commodities.

The electronic revolution begins the destruction of value and greatly limits the basis for exchange. Robotics replaces human labor in production and drives down the socially necessary labor time in commodities. Robots replace labor and work at a cheaper cost than human labor. This cheaper cost lowers the socially necessary labor in commodities, which forces down the

price of labor power.

Society:In political economy, a society isa community of people constituted based on a mode of production, productive forces and productive relations. The foundation of all societies is the economy. The economy has essentially 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 kind of social organization of labor, such as handicraft, manufacturing (simple nonmetal machines), and industrial(mechanized labor). Modern societyis increasingly based on computersand robotics.

An industrial economy is the combination of human labor and power-driven machinery. Its political shell can be socialist or capitalist. In capitalist society everything is a system of buying and selling. The workers sell their ability to work, their labor power, and buy the commodities that are necessary to live. The capitalist buys this ability to work, the labor power, the nerve and muscle and energy that, once put in motion, becomes labor, and sells the commodities that labor produces. American society is leaping to a robotic economy but remains capitalist. This cannot stand because robots are not paid wages and do not buy commodities.

Society of abundance:The society of abundance is a stage of society with productive forces powerful enough to emancipate humanity from scarcity.Scarcity is used to mean the struggle for survival, rather thana shortage of goods. Abundance is a stage of development of production where the individual isfreed from the enslaving subordination to the division of labor. For all of history, the individual was dominated by a ritual activity of having to laborto attain the necessaries of life.Computers and robotics create the foundation for the society of abundance, by freeing the individual from ritual production as the meaning of life on earth. The capitalist class (ruling classand 1% of the 1%) have their abundance based on private wealth and have been freed from ritual laboring for generations. Today, robotics makes it possible to emancipate the individual.

Abundance is more than a concept of “lot of things.” The bourgeois ideologists conceive the world based on exploitation of labor andpossessing things that dominate the individual and consequently abundance is limited to things – apurely quantitative measure. Marxism proceeds from social relations between people and the things people need in life to advance the species. Consequently,abundance is a social relation of

production advancing the human agenda.

The basic component of the material life of society is the labor activity in which people engage to advance the generations and human existence on earth. Labor is deployed to create the necessities and comforts of life -– food, clothing, housing, healthcare, communications devices, transportation, literature, arts and romance. This activity is a natural condition of human existence. As Engels wrote, mankind must first eat, drink, andhave shelter and clothing before it can pursue politics, arts and the finer things in life.

For the past twenty thousand (20,000) generations, the activityof our species and the individual was dominated by the struggle for survival and the ritual activity that is laboring to attain the necessaries of life. With the appearance of classes and exploitation, each ruling class appropriated the surplus labor andsurplus product of laboring humanity as their personal wealth.

The electronic revolution creates the conditions to free the individual from ritual production of the necessaries of life as the meaning of human activity in nature, on earth and in the cosmos. Computers, robotics, biogenetics and the technology embodied in them overcome scarcityand end the long history of

humanity’s struggle for survival in nature. Often this struggle in nature produced disastrous result for the earth and humanity.

The new technology opens a new chapter in human history and brings to an end the need for economic classes and a ruling class based on class exploitation.Class exploitation is always boundup with appropriation of the surplus labor and surplus product of the laboring population. Duringthe slave mode of production, the wealth of society is produced by the slave, and his surplus labor is appropriated by the ruling class. During serfdom and the freemarket system, the surplus labor of the serf and the wage worker isappropriated by the nobility and capitalist class respectively. Robotics created the foundation toend all societies based on appropriation of the surplus laborof the human.

The content of the society of abundance, its determining quality, is creation of a system of productive forces (robotics) that begins destruction of the division of labor and destroys thevalue relation. Such productive forces are powerful enough to freethe individual from the necessity to personally reproduce in labor what they consume.

Biblical lore states that the first man -– Adam -– was created because there was no “adapa” (man of the soil or earthling) to till

the land and carry the load of theGods. Today, in our time, robots in the field and the robotics system of production can till the land and carry the load of humanity.

The robot economy is the foundation of the society of abundance. Karl Marx’s most famouswords describe the essence of the society of abundance: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesisbetween mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-arounddevelopment of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly –only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right becrossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! (Karl Marx Critique of the Gotha Programme.)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

(See, Electronics, Abundance.)

Soviet:Literally, “council.” Soviets werea type of people’s assembly (organization) that emerged in the1905 Russian revolution against the czar.

Soviet socialism:The dictatorship of the proletariat in an environment without capitalist property relations is the base line definition and essence of Soviet industrial socialism. The dictatorship of the proletariat safeguarded socialism from external and domestic enemies; strived to suppress and abolish the economic basis of exploiting classes and effectively defeated and destroyed the exploiting class. Finally, the proletarian state ensured the organization of socialist construction and creation of a socialist society. Under Soviet socialism the state owned all socially necessary meansof 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 fundamental law ofcapitalist commodity production was summed up by Marx as: “Accumulate, accumulate” – the striving for maximum profits

through production and appropriation of surplus value.

The Soviet state was a democratic state, defined as the dictatorshipof the proletariat, in alliance with the poorest peasants. The content of its democracy was the abolition of slavery, serfdom and the political category “subject,” which were replaced by the universal designation of all peoples as citizens. Its system ofpolitical liberty flowed from its organization as a garrison state.

By abolishing capitalist private property relations (the essence ofproletarian socialism) the Soviet Union brought to an end capitalistcommodity production and capitalist productive relations. The rule of bourgeois private property was dethroned by Soviet socialism and the fundamental lawsof capitalist production were blocked.

Soviet Union (USSR) I:The October 1917 socialist revolution established the RussianSoviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The state was reorganized as the Union of SovietSocialist 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. Theserf was attached to land owned bya lord (master) and was required 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 called feudalism and czarism. Czarism was in political crisis, with feudalism facing economic dislocation brought on bythe industrial revolution. Russia was pregnant with revolution brought on by the steam engine, new factories and new means of production, forcing society to reorganize itself based on gigantic machinery.

The industrial revolution created new classes, a new social (industrial) organization of laborand 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 overthrownin order for the new classes created by the industrial revolution to advance. A revolutionary situation developed in Russia, leading to the 1905 Revolution and its defeat and thenrevolutions in February 1917 and the socialist revolution in October of the same year.

The rule of the Czar was overthrown in February 1917, and the capitalist class took state power. Russia was suffering horrific defeats in the war. 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 andPeace” and promised to take the country out of the imperialist warand 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, defeating the14 foreign countries which invadedRussia. This fight for survival shaped the young Soviet republic as a garrison state.

The Bolsheviks seized power, understanding that Russia could beindustrialized under the rule of either capitalists or communists. The Bolsheviks proceeded to industrialize Soviet Russia under proletarian supremacy, rather thanbased on a bourgeois mode of commodity production. For the nextten years the Bolsheviks cultivated different forms of economy to get the country back onto its economic feet, feed its people and build the foundation for an industrial society without capitalist ownership of financial institutions, factories, infrastructure, schools, hospitalsor raw materials.

The economic achievements and struggles of the Soviets.Between 1921 and 1927, the NEP revived economic commerce in the Soviets, allowing the sale of produce and consumer products at aprofit. This concession restored circulation (exchange) between urban centers and the rural areas.

In 1928, a policy shift took place. The shift was away from NEP–- New Economic Policy.

NEP was in essence a mixed market economy; the main partof the market was in state ownership (banks, industries,foreign trade, etc.), while the peripheral parts were owned by collectives or private entrepreneurs. NEP, while temporarily successful in arresting economic chaos, did not give the Soviet economy sufficient growth in the capital-goods sectors (that is, coal, steel and electricity, transportation, heavy industry, etc.), nor did it provide adequate food for the urban population, even as the middle peasantry managed to feed itself through a new market system. To overcome such structural obstacles and to combat general economic backwardnessinherited from centuries of feudal Czarist rule, Stalin introduced a command economy with central planning toward set policy objectives and achievement targets as a strategy of national survival. (Henry C.K. Liu, The Socialist Revolution Started 90 Years Ago in China.) http://www.henryckliu.com/page206.html

In 1928, the USSR 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 anyprimary means of production. The plan was successful, creating cities without crises of financing, a system of matching labor with expanding production, afree education system, a health care system open to all without any deductibles, vast literacy campaigns and a militarized economy able to withstand probableattacks 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 humanhistory. Life began slowly to improve, with the poorest citizen being better off than the poorest of the hundreds of millions of slaves of the imperialist order. The period between 1928 and the outbreak of World War II was a time of optimism for the Soviets. Belief in the promise of a brighter future, punctuated by sharp political struggles to buildthe country up in ten years or getcrushed 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 state with bureaucratic distortions. The Soviets faced unique problems, developing their system of political liberty in the context of a 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 stateare not identical in any country. Democracy, bourgeois republican orproletarian, abolishes the individual’s political status as asubject 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 a form of 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 Bolshevikscalled abolishing the category of “subject” and “slave” carrying outthe bourgeois democratic revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Soviets attempted to overcome their feudal heritage through landredistribution, education and organization of a vast network of 45,000 organizations embracing 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 America from envisioning an economy without capitalist production relations.

Soviet industrialization entailed enormous individual sacrifice, privation and hardship. Most certainly injustice existed in theSoviet Union, and some were unjustly entrapped in the gulag system.

To stage a purge of the partyis very dangerous. The best people are the first purged. Many people who are honest and speak frankly are expelled while those who keepeverything in the dark and are eager to curry favor withthe party chiefs retain theirpositions.

. . . . 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.)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 ofthe Soviet gulag, were far below the rate of imprisonment in America today.

Permanent war by the bourgeois states against Soviet Power and then defeat of the foreign invaders of Soviet soil shaped thepolitical state as a militant garrison state, with enhanced internal security systems monitoring the party elite, managers, bureaucrats and an intelligentsia forced to serve theworkers and peasants rather than the bourgeoisie. At an enormous cost, the Soviets squeezed decadesof normal capitalist industrialization into ten years, allowing it to arm itself in time to defeat fascist Germany. The Soviets came out of World War II amajor political and military powerbut suffering from major problems.

A staggering 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives in WorldWar II, due primarily to fascist Germany. The Soviets sustained an enormous loss of the most educatedand resolute Marxists. The Sovietsfaced a need to rebuild their country and much of Europe which had entered the orbit of Soviet

rule and the need to build a new generation of Marxists, schooled in Bolshevism. The historic achievements of the workers and peasants holding state power in the Soviets prove that a society without capitalist owners is possible and, indeed, historicallyinevitable.

Soviet Union (USSR) II:The question now asked by a new generation of communists is this: “If socialism was superior to capitalism, why was Soviet socialism overthrown?”

The fundamental condition that allowed for the overthrow of Soviet socialism was World War II.Roughly 80% of the most resolute and class conscious revolutionaries were killed, defending Soviet socialism and burying German-led European fascism. More than 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives in the war, with the resolute Marxist party members leading the counter offensive against fascism and sustaining a crippling blow. In a very real way, the party had to rely upon the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy before the warin order to transform the country into a gigantic military machine in preparation for the fight against the inevitable capitalist offensive. After the war, the intelligentsia and bureaucracy held the party hostage.

Nikita Khrushchev’s ascendency to power and his revision of Marxism

are explained by the Soviet’s war causalities. 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, had been depleted. It is in the context of this massive loss of life, a crippling blow to the Communist Party USSR Bolsheviks, that a fierce 40-year ideological battle unfolded as Soviet society attempted to leap to a new technology-economic base. In this struggle the communists and Marxists were outmaneuvered by revisionists, careerists, and dissident intellectuals. These revisionists, counterrevolutionaries, opportunists, dissident intellectuals and reactionary forces were not a new bourgeoisie or new capitalist class but represented a privileged stratum of Soviet society attuned to the bourgeoisie, aspiring to use its methods. Soviet socialism lasted for 70 years, leaving a rich legacy of the struggle to organizean economy without bourgeois property relations.

Speculative finance:Speculative finance, referred to by some as speculative capital, grew out of finance capital of theera of the microchip, globalization and robotics. It is private property in a new form. Speculative finance writes the political agenda for the world total capital in the era of the growing separation of price from

value, the opening era of destruction of the division of labor and increasing destruction of the value relation.

Speculative finance does not mean to speculate (gamble) with the money form of capital, although gambling and speculation take place. Simple speculation in the market can occur wherever there ismoney in an independent form. Actually, speculation arose beforethe capitalist mode of production.The first recorded speculative bubble was the Dutch tulip mania of 1637, many decades before the victory of the capitalist mode of production and the industrial revolution. In the same way that finance is more ancient than financial capitalism, speculation is more ancient than speculative finance.

Under capitalism, finance is a system of credit that allows one to deploy resources in production and enter the system of buying andselling of commodities, money and paper certificates of all kinds. Capitalism is a social relation ofproduction based on wage labor, private ownership of means of production and the conversion of means of production and money intoinstruments of capital accumulation and reproduction.

Finance capital grew out of capitalism. It is “financial-industrial capitalism,” a merger of banking and industrial capital,under the domination of banking

capital. In America, this merging of banking and industrial capital consolidated through financing theCivil War and worldwide was completed with the 1914 outbreak of the first world imperialist war. The system of financial-industrial imperialism ruled untilthe 1970s, when speculative finance began its domination.

Speculative finance is a new thingin history. It grows out of financial-industrial capitalism. It is a new form of wealth, based on a new non-banking, world-wide financial architecture. It is profit making detached from commodity production and appropriation of the surplus product. Speculative finance operates outside the law system ofproduction of surplus value. It isexpansion of the credit system, and through this expansion creation of the so-called “debt economy.”

In the robotic economy, the rate of profit to falls precipitously, because capitalist profits in production comes from exploitationof human labor, not robots. The less human labor in commodities the more the rate of profit declines. The inability to turn over productive capital rapidly toachieve maximum profits led to therise of speculative finance as a means for investors to achieve higher rates of return. Speculative finance began in investment houses and insurance companies as a means to mitigate

risk in the investment of productive capital. The quest for maximum profits divorced from value production led to the creation of the world of financialproducts.

The global financial system, with the dollar as a foundation currency, backed up by the power of the American state, created theglobal financial system that sustains the activity of speculative finance.

Speculative finance dominates productive capital but speculativefinance is detached from production and does not create value. Profit making, divorced from value production and appropriation of the surplus product, creates notional (imaginary) value, which implies profits from “abstract commodities” rather than real commodities that embody value. (Henry C.K. Liu coined the term “notional value.” The term “abstract commodities” is used in Global Slump by David McNally.)

Speculative finance writes the political agenda for the mega-corporation. In a brief period of about forty years, speculative finance has come to dominate finance capital. Through this domination gigantic capitalist combines have been created (new form of corporations—mega-corporations - such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung). Their functioning and reproduction

require worldwide removing of all restrictions to their global market domination. (See, Corporatestate, Fascism.)

The Global Economy in Transition by Henry C.K. Liu,http://henryckliu.com/page181.html; Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imperialism by HenryC.K. Liu, http://henryckliu.com/page143.html; Dollar Hegemony by Henry C K Liu (originally published as [US Dollar Hegemony has to go] in AToL on April 11, 2002), http://henryckliu.com/page2.html

The Rise of Speculative Capital and its Geopolitical Implications, RC, December 2008http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v18ed6art2.html

Globalization, Speculative Capital and US Hegemony, RC, August 2006http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v16ed5art2.html

Spontaneity:Spontaneity is a view that the masses can attain consciousness oftheir class status and acquire an understanding of society based on their protest, inherent democraticimpulses and collective struggles against injustice of all kinds.

The doctrine of spontaneity advocates that the objective, spontaneous element of revolutionary development and upheaval, rather than communist-class consciousness, should constitute the foundation and framework of a revolutionary organization.

Lenin wrote that “the question of the relation between consciousnessand spontaneity is of such enormous general interest, and forthis reason the question must be dealt with in great detail.”

V.I. Lenin’s 1902 publication ‘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, thesestrikes 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 couldnot 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.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm

The definitive debate over class consciousness (communist consciousness) and spontaneity of the masses is a question of what kind of organization revolutionaries should build as the shortest path to revolutionarychange.

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 type of organization arises from an intellectual grasp of the significance of the contradiction between society’s productive forces and its productive relations.This group is necessarily guided by philosophy - which is the study of the processesgoverning all thought, principles, and laws. http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/on-historys-shoulders/

Spontaneous consciousness is bourgeois ideology. Television andall forms of media are controlled by the ruling class and perpetuatecapitalistic ideology. Americans are “brainwashed,” having been taught to believe they are free thinkers. Media shape all forms ofsocial consciousness and opinions.Spontaneous consciousness is the thinking of the ruling class propagated through mass media.

Spontaneous movement:The spontaneous movement expressestwo kinds of change in the mode ofproduction: quantitative and

qualitative. It is spontaneous because the masses are set into motion by changes in the productive forces. Capitalist exploitation and oppression draw one layer of society after anotherinto movements for change.

The struggle between capitalist and worker reforms the system as it passes through all its stages of development. At each stage, thespontaneous movement demanded a greater share of the social product and expanded political liberty. The capitalists fought torealize a greater profit, and the workers fought for a larger share of the social product and for expanded political liberty.

Computers and robotics enter into antagonism with capitalism, bringing it to irresolvable crisis. The demand for the necessaries of life is transformedfrom a demand to reform the systemto a spontaneous movement for communist economy. It is the role of revolutionaries to give consciousness to this movement.

Stage:A stage is quantitative development of a quality. It is the successive and connecting quantitative boundaries of a quality, brought on by quantitative changes. Stages occurwithin the development of a process. A process is the totalityof stages of development of dialectical motion. Dialectical

motion is the self-movement of contradiction in a thing.

The spontaneous development of a quality must complete all its stages, or the process and qualitycome to an end. 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. In the development of capitalism, thecapitalist becomes more capitalist, casting off earlier features as owner/worker and the worker becomes more proletarian, casting off its agrarian legacy.

The industrial mode of producing, as a system, advances in stages that cannot be skipped. A community or country can skip a stage of the productive forces, but humanity cannot skip stages ofdevelopment.

State:The state is the army, police, judiciary, intelligence and penal systems - that is to say, all the coercive machinery in society. Thestate is not neutral. It is a toolof ruling class exploitation and oppression. The state is the product of the irreconcilability of class contradiction and class antagonism. It is an organization of violence in the hands of a ruling class. The modern state is guardian of bourgeois private property. The base of the state isthe productive relations, with the

state being the political superstructure protecting the productive relations -– private property.

The state is, therefore, by nomeans a power forced on society from without; just as little is it ‘the reality of the ethical idea’, ‘the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it isa 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 splitinto irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflictingeconomic interests, might not consume themselves and societyin 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.

This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regard to the historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is a product and a manifestation of the

irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1

(See, Mega-corporate state.)

State (withering away of the state):

The proletariat seizes state power and turns the means of production into stateproperty to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself asthe proletariat, abolishes allclass distinctions and class antagonisms, and abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, neededthe state, that is, an organization of the particularexploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and,therefore, especially, for thepurpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole, its

concentration in a visible corporation. …

When at last it becomes thereal representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon asthere is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection—nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state.

The first act by which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—is also its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself. The governmentof persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes ofproduction. The state is not ‘abolished’. It withers away.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm

Strata:

Strata are groups (layers) of people who have certain commonsocial (as opposed to sexual, national, color, and ethnic) characteristics, which set them apart from other groups, but who do not form a separateclass in the Leninist sense. For example, the trade union bureaucracy in America is a stratum, the upper layer, of the working class. But not allstrata are a part of one particular class. Perhaps the best example is the intelligentsia, the upper section of the ‘brain workers’in society; the doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientist, artist, 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 skills, etc. (Socialism in the Soviet Union, Jonathan Aurthur, Workers Press, Chicago, 1977).

Strategy and tactics:

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 andsecondary reserves), and the

fight to carry out this plan throughout the given stage of the revolution.…

… Strategy deals with the mainforces of the revolution and their reserves. It changes with the passing of the revolution from one stage to another, but remains basicallyunchanged throughout a given stage.http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FL24.html#c7

Tactics:

…Tactics are the determinationof 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, thefight 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 thebourgeoisie 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 someparticular engagements or someparticular 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 toflow 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 andthe 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.http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/12.htm

Structure:Structure is the system and organization of interrelated partsoperating together as a whole.

The concept of structure. The aim of scientific cognition isto discover law-governed relations between the elementsforming a given system. In theprocess 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 awhole with internal divisions.Structure is a composite whole, or an internally organized content.

But structure is not enough tomake 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 theposition of its elements in space but also their movement in time, their sequence and rhythm, the law of mutation ofa process. So structure is actually the law or set of laws that determine a system’s

composition and functioning, its properties and stability.http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s07.html

Subject and Object: Subject is the conscious thinking mind; while 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 whichthe consciousness and activity of the subject may be directed. Idealistic philosophy says, ‘There is noobject 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. (See Reflection, Theory of.) H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, 1949. (See, Objective and Subjective.)

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 reflectionof the connections of objective being independent ofman and of mankind, that is, of objective dialectics. Such is the materialist principle of the interpretation of the relationship between objectiveand subjective dialectics considered in their unity.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Sublation:Sublation is the outcome of a stage of development, where the defining quality of the old is preserved in the new.

Every sublation involves negation.However, not every negation leads to a sublation of a particular quality. Negation brings to an endan old stage of development. Industrial means of production negated manufacturing, which in

turn negated an earlier stage of the manual labor system. The waterwheel is negated by the steam-powered engine. The manual labor system is negated by the mechanized labor system. Sublationand negation are not the same.

In the transition from agricultureto industry, new forms of private property sublated old forms of private property. Slavery during the slave mode of production with the unpaid labor of the slave was sublated by feudalism with the unpaid labor of the serf. Feudalism with the unpaid labor ofthe serf was sublated by capitalism in the form of the unpaid labor of the proletariat. The appropriation of unpaid labor is the essence of private property. The unpaid labor of the slave, serf, and worker is not negated, brought to an end, with the development of industrial mechanics. Sublation carries forththe defining quality of the old into the new. To negate unpaid labor and with it private property, a new quality has to enter the picture. (See, Qualitative change.)

Robotics in production is such a new quality. Robotics destroys labor in production and with this destruction negates the social division of labor. The electronic revolution blocks sublation of thesystem of appropriating unpaid labor, by rendering labor superfluous in production. (See, Negation of negation.)

Superstructure: (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) tothe 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 makesit possible to end class exploitation as a mode of life.

Surplus labor: See necessary and surplus labor.

Surplus population (relative surplus population):Arising with the development of capitalism, the surplus populationis the underemployed and unemployed masses whose labor is not needed in commodity production. In the early stage of capitalist development, the surplus population consisted of folks driven off the land and unable to find employment in the city. As labor enhancing machineryincreased productivity and displaced workers, they 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 phasesof 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, thelatent, 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 lowest sediment of the relative surplus population finally dwells in the sphere of pauperism. Exclusive of vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes, in a word, the “dangerous” classes, this layer of society consists of three categories. First, those

able to work. One need only glance superficially at the statistics of English pauperism to find that the quantity of paupers increases with every crisis, and diminishes with every revival of trade. Second, orphans and pauper children. These are candidates for the industrial reserve army, and are, in times of great prosperity, as 1860, e.g., speedily and in large numbers enrolled in the active army of laborers. Third, the demoralized and ragged, and those unable to work, chiefly people who succumb to their incapacity for adaptation, due to the division of labor; people who have passed the normal age of the laborer; the victims of industry, whose number increases with the increase ofdangerous machinery, of mines,chemical works, &c., the mutilated, the sickly, the widows, &c. Pauperism is the hospital of the active labor-army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army. Its production is included in that of the relative surplus population, its necessity in theirs; along with the surpluspopulation, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth. It enters into the faux frais of capitalist production; but capital knows how to throw these, for the

most part, from its own shoulders on to those of the working class and the lower middle class.

…. The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energyof 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 ofthe 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 greateris the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labor. The moreextensive, 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. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S4

Surplus product:

The surplus product is the portion of the social products created by direct

producers in material production, over and above the necessary product. The time during which the surplusproduct is produced is calledsurplus labor-time, and the labor expended during this time is called surplus labor.

The surplus product assumes aspecific form in each of the socioeconomic formations. Theconditions of its production and distribution are governedby the property relations in the means of production in a particular society. In primitive society, because ofthe extremely low labor productivity, the creation ofa surplus product was accidental. A surplus productwas first produced on a regular basis at a definite stage in the development of the productive forces, when it became possible to producemore material goods than wereneeded by the worker and his family. The appearance of thesurplus product served as thematerial 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, thesurplus 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 andextraction of the surplus product in slaveholding and feudal societies were based on extra economic constraint.

Under capitalism, the surplusproduct is the material embodiment of surplus value, the production and appropriation of which is thegoal and motive force of the capitalists. The surplus product reflects the antagonism between the class interests of the bourgeoisie and proletariat. When it is distributed, it is broken down into entrepreneurial income, interest on loans, commercial profits, and land rent. Thus, the capitalists and landowners receive their share of the surplus product,which makes possible both personal consumption and capital accumulation. 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. A. A. KHANDRUEV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Surplus+product

Surplus value:

The surplus value, surplus labor and surplus product are related terms. They describe how the laboring classes contribute a part of their lifeforce, labor time (mental and physical energy) producing the means of enrichment for the ruling class and all layers of society that do not produce commodities. Surplus value is the name for the unpaid labor appropriated by the capitalistsbased on bourgeois property. Robotics destroys the need for all systems of production basedon appropriation of the unpaid labor of the worker. By removing the worker from production, robotics destroys the category of unpaid human labor and begins the destruction of surplus value, by destroying the value relation.

Surplus value is the difference between the wages (value) paid to the workers and the value the workers create. The capitalist buys the one commodity that increases value - labor ability. Labor ability is purchased for theexclusive purpose of deploying it in production to create an expanding and greater value - profit.

The working day can be divided into two parts: paid labor time (necessary labor) and unpaid labortime (surplus labor) or, what are the same, necessary products and surplus products. The paid labor

time of the workday creates an amount of products, which when sold pays the workers’ wages. At aMcDonald’s, Walmart or auto company, it might take the workforce five hours to create theproducts required to pay wages andcost of production of a nine-hour day. The remaining hours of unpaidlabor create surplus products. They are called surplus products because they are products not needed to pay the wages of the workers and the cost of production.

Capitalists appropriate the surplus products, from which when they are sold, surplus value is realized. Profit comes from surplus value, and the surplus value is a form of the surplus product under capitalism. Labor isthe source of surplus products.

Capitalist exploitation is definedas the power of capitalists to appropriate for themselves the surplus product (surplus value) created by the working class. Robotics in production creates a mass of products in the absence ofthe human laborer, whose labor is increasingly not needed to produce. Robotics destroys value in production by ousting human labor from production, destroying the value relation by destroying the source of surplus products andsurplus value. Capitalism comes toits historical and practical end, the same way all social systems come to an end –- by creation of qualitatively new means of

production that compel society to be reorganized around the improvedmeans of production.

Syndicalism:Syndicalism is “workerism” - a trend viewing the trade unions or workers’ councils as the primary instruments for overthrowing capital and reconstructing the economy. Syndicalism’s final goal and vision is the control of society by federated bodies of industrial workers. The major weapon of syndicalism is the general strike. By the early 1900s, syndicalism merged with anarchism to become anarcho-syndicalism.

As a form of trade unionism, the syndicalists’ goal was that the worker would own the means of production and distribution. Hence, it is an ideology and program that views class struggle as being a conflict between workers and bosses, rather than the struggle of new classes in antagonism with the old social order. (See, Anarcho-syndicalism.)

System:A system is a combination of related parts organized into a complex whole.

The system and its elements. Asystem is an internally organized whole where elementsare 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 alarge 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, amolecule, a crystal, the solarsystem, the organism, society,a work of art, a theory—may beregarded as a system. Every system forms a whole, but not every whole is a system. 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 the individual is thesystem of individual political assassinations, aimed at inspiringthe masses to strike out against their oppressors, topple an existing government, and follow the passion of the individual terrorist. The terrorist individual views himself as an “historical force” and a “great man in history,” to be followed and emulated.

Individual terrorism is a social phenomenon, generally bound up with the passionate indignation ofthe intellectual and the petty capitalist. State terrorism is generally the ideology of dying classes, lashing out at a changingsociety in a futile effort to preserve an existing way of life. Marxists have historically rejected terrorism.

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 contactbetween 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

Revolutionaries are concerned withchange beneficial to the masses and educating the masses to becomeself-aware and class conscious.

All political states on earth are terrorist organizations because they use state power –- organized violence and terror - to maintain the sanctity of private property and divisions between rich and poor and to systematically murder their citizens to maintain the society of privilege. All the bourgeois states systematically arm themselves for the purpose of conducting war over market shares and to maintain the profitability of their military-robotic complex.Terrorism rejects the Marxist theory of class antagonism and therole 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 Economists and the terrorists merely bow to different poles of

spontaneity; the Economists bow to the spontaneity of ‘the labor movement pure and simple’, while the terroristsbow to the spontaneity of thepassionate indignation of intellectuals, who lack the ability or opportunity to connect the revolutionary struggle and the working-class movement into an integral whole. It is difficult indeed for those who have lost their belief, or who have never believed, that this is possible, to find some outlet for their indignation and revolutionaryenergy other than terror. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm

Revolutionaries (abolitionists on the side of the proletariat) reject terrorism as a doctrine, strategy and tactic. The sole roleof revolutionaries and the organization of revolutionary propagandists is the raising of the class consciousness of the working class. That is to say, revolutionary abolitionists are always alert to any attempts by individuals with a terrorist inclination to penetrate our ranks. We reject any discussion ofterrorist activity, advocacy of gun play and actions designed to confront the state and police as individuals. We reject any actionsthat prevent us from carrying out our sole task, which is to create and present effective propaganda

that advances the workers to the next step and stage of class consciousness. As a general rule, the advocates of terrorism amongstus are police agents.

Theory:Theory is the body of fundamental principles, rules, ideas, and techniques that apply to a particular subject. Marxist theoryis the science of society describing the general system of the laws of change from one mode of production to another, that is,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:

When machinery was applied toindustry, and mill and factory took the place of thecountry blacksmith shop; whenthe 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 Debs) http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1907/unionsandsocial.htm

Trade unions are the most basic economic organizations of wage laborers. The spontaneous movementof workers creates trade unions. As the basic organization of employed workers, trade unions fight for better wages and better conditions of labor.

Initially, trade associations wereorganizations grouping together workers based on skills rather than employment in an industry. Trade unions based on skills were craft unions. With the growth of mass production, with its greater division of labor and simplification of the labor process, the demand for a union ofunskilled workers, based on industry rather than skill, grew. The industrial union movement accelerated, with establishment ofsteel, auto, and various public-sector unions in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. The industrial form of the trade union movement peaked inthe 1960s and has experienced a half century of decline and decay.

Trotskyism:Trotskyism was a collection of theoretical postulates advanced byLeon Trotsky, which his adherents claim express a coherent and harmonious doctrine of revolution,based on the notion of permanent revolution and the impossibility of building industrial socialism in the Soviet Union. Trotsky believed that it was impossible tobuild a socialist industrial economy in one country - the Soviet Union. The building of industrial socialism in the SovietUnion disproved this theory.

Trotskyism was born as a petty bourgeois political trend within the Russian revolutionary movementafter the 1903 split producing theBolsheviks (the Lenin group) and Mensheviks.

The views and principles of Trotskyism were formulated inopposition to those of Leninism on all fundamental questions concerning the strategy and tactics of the working-class movement. Trotskyism took as its point of departure the rejection ofthe Leninist doctrine of a new type of party. In the debate over the wording of the first paragraph of the party rules at the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903, Trotsky supported L. Martov’s wording, which opened the way for unstable elements to enter the party. On the question of the

dictatorship of the proletariat, which was a mostimportant thesis in the partyprogram, Trotsky asserted, asdid the leaders of the SecondInternational, that the dictatorship would become possible only when the SocialDemocratic Party and the working class were virtually one and when the working class made up the majority ofthe population.

. . . . Trotskyism found little support in the Russianworking-class movement. Few in number, Trotsky’s followers were Russian émigréintellectuals who had lost their connections with the proletarian movement and wereattempting to profit politically from the differences of opinion between the principal trends within the RSDLP—Bolshevism and Menshevism. Lenin wrote: “Trotsky was an ardent Iskrist from 1901 to 1903. ... At the end of 1903,Trotsky was an ardent Menshevik, i.e., he deserted from the Iskrists to the Economists. ... In 1904 and 1905, he deserted the Mensheviks and occupied a vacillating position, now cooperating with Martynov (the Economist), now proclaiming his absurdly Left‘permanent revolution’ theory” (ibid., vol. 25, p. 205).

Leon Trotsky (7 November 1879 – 21August 1940) was a Russian revolutionary and one of the greatpersonalities of the October 1917 Russian revolution. He was a gifted writer, an educated man butnever a highly regarded Marxist byLenin and the leading members of the Bolshevik committee system. Hewas chairman of the 1905 Soviets, the paramount symbolic leader of the newly established Red Army, diplomat of the Soviet state, a personality in the Communist International and later, perhaps the greatest political renegade ofthe twentieth century.

During the critical year of 1917, Russia underwent political realignment as various political organizations fought openly to influence change and seize political power. Against the backdrop of World War I, the February 1917 Revolution overthrewczarism, bringing the parties of the capitalist class to power.

During this time Mr. Trotsky abandoned his differences with theBolshevik Party, in order to join them, because the ideological groups he was a part of were insignificant. Trotsky joined the Bolshevik group two months or so before it came to power in October1917. He was expelled ten years later from the Central Committee in October 1927 and from the Bolshevik Party on November 12 of the same year. That is, Trotsky was expelled during the period of

the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. He was deported from the Soviet Union on January 22, 1929.

Trotsky’s role in history was cemented based on his ten year membership in the Bolshevik party,and later this visceral hatred of the Soviet government and state.Trotsky has left not one single contribution to the treasure house of Marxism in its scientific meaning or as a doctrine of combat. He was assassinated by a man purported tohave been awarded the medal of Lenin.

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, intersecting with the intelligence agencies of imperialism based on advocating assassination of Soviet leaders and overthrow of the Soviet government and state. The Comintern labeled Trotskyism counter revolution in disguise.(See, “Trotskyism Counter Revolution in Disguise.”)http://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/04.htm

Truth:

That is why truth 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 specialvalue connected with the prognostic dimension. True knowledge enables people to organize their practical activities in a rational manner in the present, and toforesee 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 veryfact of the existence of man,the history of science and practice confirm the justice of this proposition. (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 associateswith the meaning it has been given in religion. In the broad philosophic al sense faith should be understood as an individual’s profound conviction of the correctness of his 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 isscientifically 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 linkedwith 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.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 sciencelike, ‘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 nothingcan 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, itcontains something absolute as one of its elements. Any truth may therefore be said to be absolute-relative. The share ofabsolute knowledge is constantly growing in the sum total of mankind’s knowledge. The development of the truth isaccumulation of the elements ofthe absolute. Each subsequent scientific theory is a more complete and deeper knowledge compared with the previous one.But new scientific truths by nomeans 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 newone (as Newton’s classical mechanics was interpreted in relation to Einstein’s theory of relativity). http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Truth (concreteness of truth):

The concreteness of truth, as one of the basic principles of the dialectical approach to knowledge, assumes an accurate taking into account of all the conditions (in social knowledge, of the concrete historical conditions) in whichthe object of cognition exists.

Concreteness is the property oftruth based on a knowledge of real connections, on the interaction of all the aspects of the object, of the principaland essential features of it, of its tendencies of development. Thus the truth or falsity of given statements cannot be established unless weknow the conditions of place, time, and so on, under which they are formulated. A statement correctly reflecting an object under given conditions becomes false in relation to the same object under different conditions. A correct reflection of some element of reality may become its opposite, an error, unless we take into account definite conditions of place, time, and role of what is reflected in the composition of the whole. For example, it is impossible to understand a separate organ outside a whole organism, a manoutside society, and a historically concrete society at that, and outside the context of special, individual circumstances of his life.

…. The principle of the concreteness of truth demands that facts be approached with due regard for the specific situation and the real conditions rather than with ready-made general formulas andschemata; it is thus incompatible with dogmatism. The concrete historical

approach becomes particularly important in the analysis of social development, since the latter proceeds at an uneven rate and is marked by the specifics of the particular countries. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Truth (criterion of truth):

The criterion of truth cannot be found in thought itself, neither does it exist in reality considered regardless of the subject. The criterion of truth lies in practice. ‘Thequestion whether objective truth,’ writes Marx, ‘can be attributed to human thought is not a question of theory but isa practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-worldliness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated frompractice is a purely scholasticquestion.’

One of the fundamental principles of scientific thought is that a statement is true if it can be proved that it is applicable to a given situation. This principle is expressed by the term ‘realizability’. Through the realization of an idea in practical action, knowledge is measured against its object

revealing the true measure of its objectivity or the truth ofits content. That part of knowledge that is directly or indirectly confirmed by practice, i.e. effectively realized in practice, is true. 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 orimmutable truth is no more thana ghost. Any object of knowledge is inexhaustible, it is constantly changing, it has a great variety of properties and is connected with countlessthreads 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 andreliable 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’spractical activity, especially in those areas that are connected with decisions affecting human fates. …. Absolute truths include ascertained facts, the dates ofevents, birth, death, etc. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

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 theunited front, developed by the Third International.

The united front tactic is simply an initiative whereby the Communists propose to joinwith 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.http://www.marxists.org/history/international/

comintern/4th-congress/tactics.htm

The United Front of 1921–22, and in 1924 China between Sun Yat-sen Kuomintang [Pinyin: Guomindang]) party and the Communist Party of China, was different from the UFAF. The UFAF of 1930s developed out ofthe European theater, the revolutionary crisis in Italy and Germany. Facing the issue of a bourgeois republican (parliamentary) state or a bourgeois fascist (authoritarian) state, the UFAF combined the resources of different working-class organizations, with different outlooks and different constituencies against the common enemy - 1930s industrial fascism.

Past century European fascism in power was the rule of a sector of finance capital. This sector sought to dominate the direct colonial system, reorganize the domestic economy based on industrial corporatism, and overthrow Soviet power, as the solution to its quests for new markets. The Third Communist International pinpoints the fascist torchbearer of fascism in power as the most reactionary, chauvinistic and imperialist elements of finance capital dependent upon and expressing the needs of the industrial sector of the capitalist class.

While the economic essence of fascism in the past century was

corporatism and the authoritarian corporate state, UFAF strategy of the 1930s cannot be applied today,against American fascism and the mega-corporate state. The UFAF strategy was based in a world thatwas completing the transition fromagriculture to industry, dominatedby three great classes, working class, capitalist and petty bourgeoisie.

Yankee imperialism was opposed to the industrial corporatist strategy of the German fascist state. The fascist states strivings sought to block the investments and interest of American financial imperialism. Under conditions of momentary identity of interest between anti-communists democrats who were anti-fascist and anti-fascist communists who were anti-capitalist, the deal was struck tofight fascism. Thousands of pro-capitalist, anti-fascist ideologues ended up in communist organizations and the Marxist movement.

Today, it is increasingly difficult to be anti-communist andpro-democracy in practical terms. Communism today is a practical movement to live in society as a humane person with unconditional access to socially necessary meansof life. The communist goal is that every member of society are 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.

During the struggle for a “united front of action,” in the past century, the politics of the “Popular Front” and “People’s Front” were created. When reactionary trade union leaders, Catholic trade union leaders, and social democratic leaders and organizations refused to enter into formal agreement as a united front of organizations, a tactic to create a unified mass movement of small apparatuses and individual trade unions was applied. The United Front was an official front with signed agreements. The Popular Front sought to combine the interest of various classes around issues without official agreements between organizations and political parties.

Utopia:Utopia is a name for an ideal community or society, taken from abook by Sir Thomas More, “Of the Best State of a Republic, and of the New Island Utopia.” Written in1516, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, Utopia possessed a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system. The idea or vision of a society which is not based on development from any existing material conditions of production is fantasy or a “utopia.”

Communists and socialists of all shades have been charged by the

bourgeoisie with desiring a utopian society. Espousing communism is not utopian but, indeed, deeply practical. Computers and robotics create abundance and the possibility of ending poverty and suffering from want of things forever.

Seeing the magnitude of the task of changing government, state and economy, many people despair and try to carve out for themselves some type of morally acceptable life within capitalism. When people retreat to the countryside and try to build an entity separate from capitalism, and propose “dropping out of the system” as a solution to capitalist crisis, this is a form of utopian thinking. The only way out is fundamental changes, involving the entire economic and political system.

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 onknowledge of the laws of socialdevelopment 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 notexplain the real nature of wage-slavery under capitalism, it could not reveal the laws ofcapitalist development, or showwhat 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 intelligentsiaplayed a major role in the more conscious formulation ofthe exploited classes’ ill-defined aspirations. ….

…. An important influence in the development of Utopian socialism was the social doctrine of early Christianity, which advocateduniversal 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 theearly 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 peoplewith 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 moreconvincing 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 ruleof 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 asthe idea of work as an obligation for all members ofthe 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 ratherthe normal and logical resultof the historical developmentof society and the class struggle of the proletariat—aproletariat that joins together all those who labor.Utopian socialism was a towering achievement of social thought; it was one ofthe most important ideological sources of scientific communism, which at the same time went far beyond it. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Utopian+Socialism

Value:Value is the amount of socially necessary labor in commodities. A commodity is a product made to be exchanged, rather than consumed bythe producer. The production of objects for exchange is the characteristic feature of commodity economy.

Labor of human beings, rather thanmachines, is the source and determinant of value in commodities. Value is a specific social expression of time, human physical and mental energy and duration of labor in motion, congealed in a product. In political economy, value really means exchange value. Exchange value expresses the ratio at whichtwo different products of human labor exchange for each other. A commodity possesses a use value and exchange value.(See, Commodity.)

Value, that is, exchange value, exists in human society where people are organized with a division of labor for the production of commodities. Value is a social relation that exists only in the process of buying and selling. The sum total of social relations based on the exchange ofcommodities (buying and selling) is the value relation. The development of commodity economy signifies the existence of the value relation.

The value relation is the fundamental law of commodity production, making its first appearance under the slave mode ofproduction. Under slavery and feudalism the law of value allocated labor and other scarce resources for production and distribution under conditions where there was an insufficient division of labor, insufficient development of means of production

and insufficient development of sciences and culture (trade) to satisfy the socially necessary needs of all. Under capitalism thelaw of value allocates labor, resources and money into areas of maximum profitability.

Value, Law ofThe law of value is an objective law of commodity production and the fundamental regulating law of capitalist commodity production. It states that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labortime in its production. Under capitalism where anarchy of production and competition betweenlabor for wages and between capitalists for market shares holdsway in society, the law of value acts as a spontaneous regulator ofall social production. The law of value directs labor and capital toareas of maximum profitability.

The regulating mechanism of the law of value consists in the fluctuation of prices andin the deviation of prices from social value as a consequence of the competitive struggle, both under the impact of supply and demand. An excess of market price over value stimulates supply and, thus, brings an increase in the production of commodities. A deviation below value brings a reduction in the productionof commodities. ‘Whatever themanner in which the prices of

various commodities are firstmutually fixed or regulated, their movements are always governed by the law of value.’ (K. Marx, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 25, part 1, p. 194).

. . . . In an unregulated commodity economy, the law of value plays a great role in the growth and improvement of production, in increases in the productivity of labor, andin the reduction of the value of commodities, for the law’s effect stimulates commodity producers to reduce the individual expenditures of labor relative to what is socially necessary.’ (Value, Law of.) http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Value%2c+Law+of

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 acommodity which its possessor,the wage-worker, sells to the capitalist. Why does he sell it? It is in order to live. http://www.marxists.org/archiv

e/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch02.htm

Wages are the money-price form of value paid to the workers to purchase their labor ability. The price paid for labor ability is always below the amount of value created by the workers’ labor. Thevalue created by the workers, but never returned to them, is the source of surplus value, the basisof capitalist profits. Because theworkers receive as wages a value below the value they create, they can never buy back the products oftheir creation. This buildup of products causes the business cycle, recessions and depressions that is the crisis of overproduction and under consumption. (See, Overproduction.)

War:War is politics by military means.Politics is a concentrated expression of economic relations and the rule of a class. War should not be seen as a thing-in-itself, in isolation from the class and property relations in society. War is ancient in human history, involving many factors, including human ego. Marxists examine war in the context of the existing mode of production. War in the epoch of private property is ultimately to preserve the ruleof a class, its wealth, and its property relation against externalthreats and internal dissent.

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 supremacy:White supremacy is a system of cooperation and unity between classes based on Europeanness or “whiteness.” It was a system of domination by white people over nonwhite people, and relegation ofnonwhite people to the bottom of the economic, social, and political system. White supremacy was built into the architecture ofAmerica’s capitalist productive relations. In this system, whites and those classified as “white” occupy a privileged position in society over nonwhites.

White supremacy was dominant before the Civil War. With the Civil War, defeat of the Confederacy and conversion of the plantation South into a colony of Wall Street imperialism, white supremacy was sublated by white chauvinism.

White chauvinism is white supremacy in the era of monopoly capitalism and colonialism. It is a form of bribery of the Anglo-American people, preventing the unity of the proletariat. The privileges of the Anglo-American people are carved into the architecture of the productive relations. In American history, the ideology of white chauvinism became closely linked to

anticommunism. White chauvinism isa form of fascist ideology.

Woman question:The role of women in society and the proposed resolution to their historic inequality was called thewoman question by the Marxist philosophic movement of the past century.

The role of women in society is inturn bound up with changes in the means of production. During the past century, a complex of social and political struggles and inventions began destroying the division of labor, which assigned women to home, kitchen, laundry, church, nursery, and limited participation in the artistic, literary, cultural, and political spheres.

Women’s ability to escape their historically evolved social position in the division of labor sets the stage for their full and total emancipation, which is boundto change how our society thinks about life, love, and intimate relations. The final emancipation of women is bound up with destruction of the division of labor and destruction of the ability of any section of society to appropriate the unpaid labor ofanyone.

Working class:The working class is the principalsocial force in society whose laboring creates the material wealth of society, reproduces

social relations of production andthe generations of humanity. Sincethe division of society into classes, there has existed a working class in one form or another and by one name or another.

What working classes were there before the industrial revolution? The working classes have always, accordingto the different stages of development of society, lived in different circumstances andhad different relations to theowning and ruling classes.

In antiquity, the workers werethe slaves of the owners, justas they still are in many backward countries and even inthe southern part of the United States.

In the Middle Ages, they were the serfs of the land-owning nobility, as they still are inHungary, Poland, and Russia. In the Middle Ages, and indeedright up to the industrial revolution, there were also journeymen in the cities who worked in the service of pettybourgeois masters. Gradually, as manufacture developed, these journeymen became manufacturing workers who wereeven then employed by larger capitalists. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Not all working classes in historyare proletarian.

The slave is sold once and forall; the proletarian must sellhim daily and hourly. . . . The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries. The slave countsas a thing, not as a member ofsociety. . . . The serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange forwhich 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 yetled to the introduction of factory-style methods into thecrafts 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 awayand the handicraftsman becomesmore 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 hisrelation 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. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

World Revolution:The objective side of world revolution was born of the steam engine and the industrial revolution. The course of the industrial revolution meant completion of the leap (transition) from agriculture to industry. This completion is

marked by destruction of the small-scale producers as the defining character of society. The subjective side is thinking human beings, classes, political parties and their response to society being uprooted and reorganized based on the industrial system. The doctrine ofworld revolution entered the history of strategic thinking withdevelopment of Marxist theory.

During each stage of the industrial revolution, capitalistsand communists fought to win the masses to a social order based on private property and public property respectively. Marxist developed their vision and doctrine of world revolution in correspondence with each stage of the industrial revolution.

These three general stages are generally described as: a) formation of national and multi-national states with their corresponding markets, b) the rise of imperialism, moderncorporations and the division of the world into imperialist powers and colonies, two world wars, c) destruction of the colonial system and the emerged of the electronic revolution, which set the stage for global revolution. Completing the industrial revolution evened up the world economically.

During the advance of the industrial revolution, all of the previous modes of production

existed in some section of the world. That is to say, between 1760 and 1945, societal elements of primitive communalism, slavery (handicraft), feudalism (manufacture), and capitalism/socialism (industrial production) coexisted. The completion of the industrial revolution is marked by wiping outthe small-scale producer as a social force driving history. The previous modes of production, which to one degree or another were based on the small-scale producer, have been negated and sublated by the industrial system.The world has been evened up economically.

Rather than a concept of being thesame, identical rates of development, or uneven developmentof capitalism, “the world has beenevened up economically,” means onemode of production dominates the world, more or less. One mode of production world wide set the stage for global revolution, basedon the electronic revolution.

Today, production is a global affair dominated by mega-corporations. The world is transitioning to a new mode of electronic production. The globalized economy is the precondition for world revolution in its post-industrial meaning. The transition earth is experiencing is the world revolutionary leap and is comparable to the discovery of

fire in its impact on all human relations.

Stage one:The transition from

agriculture and various stages of manual-labor-based systems to giant industry based on mechanizedlabor provided the environment andeconomic content of the past 200 years. With the 1848 publication of The Communist Manifesto, world revolution, for Marx, meant the line of march to overthrow bourgeois private property in Europe. Rather than simultaneous revolution in all countries, worldrevolution for Marx meant revolution in those countries thatwere advanced and constituted the outline of the world market. On this basis a revolutionary Europe would pull the less developed areas of the world in its wake. Marx view reflected the curve of development of the industrial revolution.

This first stage in development of the theory of worldrevolution can be defined as the era of Karl Marx. During that era,the theory of world revolution viewed the European revolution as the catalyst to begin a world transition to communism, based on the industrial social revolution. Revolutionaries developed a doctrine of combat to transfer political power to the working class in the industrially advancedcapitalist countries, as the condition for world revolution. This theory and doctrine dominated

the era of the First and Second Internationals. The slogan for this stage of world revolution was, “Proletarians Unite!”

. . . . When Marx was alive, the development of capitalism was at an elementary level, determined by the limits established by the feudal epoch. Within those limits (with the exception of the U.S.A.) the capitalist world was quite restricted and its contradictions so hardened and involved that Marx correctly conceived the overthrow of capitalism as the result of a single world revolution, of a general revolutionary war.(Program and Principles of the Revolutionary Soviet Communists, Workers Press, Chicago, 1979, page 36.)

That era spanned from the founding of the Communist League in 1847 to the rise and consolidation of monody capitalism-– modern imperialism. The new period was characterized by the division of the world between the advanced capitalistic countries. It witnessed the founding and demise of the First International in 1876, the “Berlin Conference” of 1884, regulating European colonization, trade, and spheres of influence in Africa, and the 1889 founding of the Second International. By 1902, 90 percentof Africa was under bourgeois European control. Imperial super-

profits from the colonies paid forreform of the system through creation of a new social prop of imperialism - the labor aristocracy.

As imperialism reshaped the world in the image of financial-industrial capital, Marx’s doctrine of world revolution basedon “advanced” Europe going over tosocialist revolution and dragging the less developed, “uncivilized” countries in its wake, would have to be abandoned. The next stage ofthe world revolutionary process would grow out of the previous stage, with the world being reconfigured based on the colonialsystem.

Stage two:The second stage in

development of the theory and doctrine of world revolution runs roughly from 1884 to 1943. This was the period of the rise of the joint-stock companies or the Modern Corporation, emergence of monopoly capitalism (imperialism),development of Fordism, rise of Soviet power, mechanization of agriculture and the beginning of the end of the colonial system.

Bolshevism (Leninism) developed between the Berlin Conference of 1884 and the 1914 outbreak of the first world imperialist war, reflecting profound changes in the structure of world capitalism, culminating in the emergence of monopoly capitalism and the fight for a new

division of the world among imperialist states of Europe.

The working class movement ofthe last decade of the 1800s was becoming different from Europe’s working class movement when the Communist Manifesto was first written in 1848 and the First International formed in 1864. A social democratic movement and social democratic parties were forming, expressing the interest of all classes with a stake in theoverthrow of feudalism.

Founded in 1889, the Second International was a subjective expression of this stage of the world industrial revolution, characterized by the formation of the corporation and emergence of imperialism. The Second International was primarily a petty bourgeois patriotic movementof reform, whose banner was socialdemocracy. The achievements of theSecond International were its 1889declaration of May 1 as International Workers’ Day, its 1910 declaration of March 8 as International Women’s Day, and initiating the international campaign for the eight-hour working day. Without question, these rallying banners for the workers in Europe and America are bookmarks in the working class march to class consciousness but did not include the hundreds of millions of slaves of the new imperial order.

This second stage was also the era of Lenin. Leninism was concretized as the “party of a newtype” and the October 1917 Socialist Revolution. The first world imperialist war of 1914 and the 1917 October Soviet revolutionopened up a new line of march and vision of world revolution, that rendered obsolete the Second International’s theory and doctrine of world revolution.

But in the course of the fight for colonies and the development of monopoly capital there emerged the most important law of the capitalist system—the law of its uneven development. The uneven development of capitalism did not leave roomfor the intercontinental revolution. The economic situation, the strength of the exploiters, and the development of the worker’s movement in the different capitalist countries varied considerably. However, this uneven development makes possible—and this Lenin saw—abreak in the weakest link in the capitalist chain. The Leninists’ theory of revolution in a single country was, without doubt, ahigher development of the theory of revolution.(Program and Principles of the Revolutionary Soviet Communists, Workers Press, Chicago, 1979, page 36.)

The period of Leninism and the Third International came to anend during the Second World War, with the Comintern being dissolvedMay 1943. With the close of this stage of the industrial revolution, a new vision of world revolution was advanced based on the postwar creation of the Socialist camp and the postwar wave of national-colonial revolution.

Stage three:In this third and final stage

of the industrial revolution, profound changes took place withinthe world economy and revolutionary movement. This finalstage opened with the Soviet victory over German-led European fascism, the establishment of People’s Democracies in Eastern Europe and victory of the Chinese revolution, crowned with the 1949 establishment and victory of the People’s Republic of China.

Soviet society never recovered from losing upwards of 25 million people in the Second World War. A complex of events provided the environment in which the Soviet party lost its extreme revolutionary edge. During the 1950s the Soviets entered the first stage of social revolution with emergence of telemechanics (the 1950s way in which the Russians referred to computer technology). Needing to revolutionize the economy and society at large, the bureaucracy

and bureaucratic practices blockedthe revolutionary advance.

Led by Nikita Khrushchev’s clique, the Soviet party advocateda revisionist view of Marxism, advancing a program of world revolution, based on “peaceful transition,” “noncapitalist development,” “third world nonaligned politics,” and the “balance of power” theory. Newly liberated China could not and did not accept a policy of collaboration with American-led imperialism. The result was the Sino-Soviet split in the world communist movement.

Decolonization in the contextof capitalist production relationsled to the neocolony. This period of neocolonialism began came to anend around the time of victory of the Vietnamese revolution and the 1976 unification of Vietnam. During this period, the last remaining Bolshevik section of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union was defeated, purged and isolated in society. Between 1976 and the 1991 overthrow of Soviet power, the communist movement built on the basis of the industrial revolution and in the US the so-called “new communist movement,” collapsed as the world entered the leap to the robotics economy. (See, New Communist Movement, Marxist Glossary Supplement.)

Entering an Epoch of Global Revolution:

The content of our time, today, is global transition to a new mode of production based on computers and robotics. The microchip (computers and robotics)bring capitalism to its historic end. The outcome will be the destruction of capitalist private property as an historical force.

Revolutionary History and Our TasksMarch, 2007

http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v17ed2art2.html

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

Abstract labor:Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Chapter One: Commodities. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1

Alienation of Labor:Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.Estranged Laborhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labor.htm

Alinskyism:Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971.)https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fservv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com%2F~gbpprorg%2Fobama%2FRules_for_Radicals.pdf

American Revolution 1776Frederick Engels, Anti-DühringHerr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution inScience by 1877 Part I: PhilosophyX. Morality and Law. Equality

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch08.htm

American Revolution 2.0: Civil War(1861–865)Karl Marx in Die Presse 1861, The North American Civil Warhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/25.htm

American Revolution 2.5:Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, page 402.

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 ofSocial Revolution.http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolution2.pdf

Antagonism:Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political EconomyStrikes and Combinations of Workershttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-

philosophy/ch02e.htm

Textbook of Marxist Philosophy,1937. Prepared by the LeningradInstitute of Philosophy under the Direction of M. Shirokov. Page 174.http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/subject/left-book-club/1937/textbook/index.htm

Basis and Superstructure:Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentalsof Philosophy, page 270. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/

Being:Alexander Spirkin - Fundamentals of Philosophy, Being and consciousness.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Bourgeois and Bourgeoisie:Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, III [Historical Materialism]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

Bourgeois revolution:Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Partyhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

A Short History of the World Vol. 1 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

Capital:Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx//works/1847/wage-labour/ch02.htm

Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Chapter Ten: The Working-Dayhttps://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:http://www.scienceofsociety.org/“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.

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, Volume I.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4

Communist Manifesto:Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Partyhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1852, Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer In New Yorkhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05.htm

Contradiction:O. Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism Manual, pages 92,93,94 and 95. Foreign LanguagesPublishing 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 Scientifichttp://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 aNew America, June 2008http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v18ed4art4.html

Culture:L. Harry Gould, Marxist Glossary 1946 page 33.

Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals ….Page 387http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Democracy and the bourgeois democratic republic:http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy.

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:Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentals, Page 33.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Dictatorship of the proletariat:Marx-Engels Correspondence 1852, Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer In New Yorkhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05.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] Abstracthttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm

Economy:Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

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 byFrederick Engels 1877 Part I: PhilosophyX. Morality and Law. Equalityhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/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. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.

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.http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm#s2

The Rise of Fascism and Social Revolution in Americahttp://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2013/07/the-rise-of-fascism-and-social-revolution-in-america/

Fascism: Unity between the state and the corporations to protect private propertyMarch 2009.http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v19ed2art4.html

The Changing Form Of The State:The Merger of Government and the CorporationsJune 2006.http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v16ed4art5.html

Fatalism:http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Freedom, necessity, and law:

Frederick Engels, Anti-DühringXI. Morality and Law. Freedom and Necessityhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch09.htm

General crisis of capitalism:Political Economy, A Textbook.http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PoliticalEconomy.pdf

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.)1 December 2-19, 1927http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1927/12/02.htm

General Law of capitalist accumulation:Karl Marx. Capital, Chapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency ofCapitalist Accumulationhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

Karl Marx. Capital, Section 4. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm

Hegel:Henry C K Liu, The Coming Trade War, Part 4.http://www.henryckliu.com/page8.html

Or

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GG28Dj01.html

Karl Marx, Capital Volume One 1873Afterword to the Second German Editionhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm

History:Marx, Engels, The German Ideologyhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1894, Engels to Borgiushttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm

Historical Truth, error and theoretical error:http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Historical Materialism:Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentals…page 271. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Historical Tendency of Capitalist 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

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 Socialismhttp://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

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S5b

Industrial Revolution:

Frederick Engels, The Principles of Communismhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

A. Overthrow of Co-operation Basedon Handicraft, and on the Divisionof Laborhttp://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

Intelligentsiahttp://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 Historyhttp://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

Labor:

Karl Marx. Capital, The Productionof Absolute Surplus-Valuehttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm

Labor power:Engels, Review of Capital.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/reviews-capital/dwochenblatt.htm

Law (jurisprudence):Karl Marx, The German Ideology Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook, C. The Real Basis of Ideologyhttp://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 revolutionhttp://www.scienceofsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Marx_philos_course1.pdf

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 GeneralLine of the International Communist Movement” (The Letter ofthe 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 of March 30, 1963). http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/PGL63.html.

The Historical Significance of MaoZedongHenry C.K. Liu (廖廖廖)http://www.henryckliu.com/page260.html

Marx, Karl

H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, Proletarian Publishers, page 70, 71.

Marxism:Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbachand the End of Classical German PhilosophyPart 2: Materialismhttp://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, 1883http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/burial.htm

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxismhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm

Materialism:Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentalspage 26.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Materialist conception of history:Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühringhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm

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-duhring/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:http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PoliticalEconomy.pdf

Political Economy.http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Monopoly capitalism:V. I. Lenin. Imperialism and the Split in Socialismhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm

Motion:

Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentalspage 82. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Motion, self, 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 Questionhttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm#s1

National question and national-colonial question.J. V. Stalin. The Tenth Congress of the R.C.P. (B.)1 March 8 - 16, 1921http://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 by. Page 29, 30.Proletariat, 1976. A theoretical journal by the Communist Labor Party United States of North America.

Needs:Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals, page 288. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Negation of the negation:Karl Marx. Capital Volume OneChapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulationhttp://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 class:The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.http://www.uciteljneznalica.org/upload/ebook/816_%C4%90ilas,%20Milovan,%20The%20New%20Class%20-%20An%20Analysis%20of%20the%20Communist%20System,%20Thames%20and%20Hudson,%201957.pdf

Rally Comrades!http://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v16ed1art5.html

New Communist Movement:Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line,

http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/erol.htm

Nodal line and nodal points:Frederick Engels, Anti Duhring https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch02.htm

Alexander-Spirkin, Fundamentls.http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Hegel’s, Science of Logic Measurehttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hl348.htm

Overproduction:Manifesto of the Communist Partyhttp://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, 1920http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1920/04/23.htm

Political economy:Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring. Political Economy I. Subject Matter and Methodhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/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 Americahttp://www.lrna.org/2-pt/articles/v17ed3art3.html

Pragmatism: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. Capitalhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm

Process:Nelson Peery, Entering an epoch http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/EnteringAnEpochOfSocialRevolut

ion2.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 Programhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

Productive forces:Political Economy,http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Productive relations:Political Economy,http://www.d-meeus.be/marxisme/manuel/Textbook_Political_Economy_1957.pdf

Progress: Alexander Spirkin, Fundamentals, page 194. 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 ofCommunismhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Property:Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentals. Page 190http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-PhilosophyAlsohttp://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/8/Space-and-Time

Quality:Frederick Engels’, Dialectics of Naturehttp://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.http://www.scienceofsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Institute-Resource-Paper31.pdf

Reform:Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (1900)http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm

Relations of production:Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labor/ch05.htm

Revisionism:Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution: 1. The State: A Product of the Irreconcilability

of Class Antagonismshttp://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1

Marxism and Revisionism http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/apr/03.htm

The Proletarian Revolution and theRenegade Kautsky.http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/oct/10.htm

Revolution:V. I. Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International 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

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 In Berlinhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_10_13-abs.htm

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871, Marx to Friedrich Bolte In New Yorkhttp://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 Parishttp://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 Racismhttp://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/understanding-racism/

Karl Marx, Capital http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S2

Social Relations of production:Karl Marx, Abstract from the Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economyhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm

Karl Marx, Poverty of Philosophy.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm

Social revolution (according to Karl Marx):Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Prefacehttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

Socialism:Karl Marx, Critique of the Gothahttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

Socially necessary labor time:Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch02.htm

Society:Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentalspage 269. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47675159/Alexander-Spirkin-Fundamentals-of-Philosophy

Soviet Union (USSR) 1.0:Nelson Peery, Entering ….http://www.scienceofsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Peery_Entering_an_Epoch.pdf

Henry C.K. Liu, The Socialist Revolution Started 90 Years Ago inChina,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 Economyin Transitionhttp://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 AToLon April 11, 2002),http://henryckliu.com/page2.html)

Rally Comrades!, The Rise of Speculative Capital and its Geopolitical Implications, December 2008http://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:http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm

On History’s Shouldershttp://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/on-historys-shoulders/

State:Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution,http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1

State (withering away of the state):Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm

Strata:Jonathan Aurthur, Socialism in theSoviet Union, Workers Press, Chicago, 1977.

Strategy and tactics:

J. V. Stalin The foundations of Leninism,http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FL24.html#c7

J. V. Stalin 1924 The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communistshttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/12.htm

Structure:

A. Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s07.html

Subject and Object:H. Selsam, Handbook of Philosophy, 1949.

Surplus Labor:Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of1861-63https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch25.htm

Surplus population (relative surplus population):http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S4

Surplus product:Karl Marx. Capital http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch09.htm#S4

System:A. Spirkin, Dialectical http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s07.html

Trotskyism:M. N. Pokrovsky, Brief History of Russia, Vol. II, p. 320.http://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/02.htm

The Errors of Trotskyism, A Symposiumhttp://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/pamphlets/1925/trotskyism/index.htm

“Trotskyism or Leninism?”http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/trotvslenin.htm

Lev Kamenev, Leninism or Trotskyismhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/kamenev/1924/11/trotskyism.htm

Gregory Zinoviev, Bolshevism or Trotskyism: Where the Line of Trotskyism is Leading.http://www.marxists.org/archive/zinoviev/works/1925/05/trotskyism.htm

The Tukhachevsky Conspiracy (and Trotsky.)http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv13n2/tukhach.htm

Trotsky’s Day in Court, Harry Haywoodhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/haywood/black-bolshevik/ch06

Truth (absolute, concreteness of, criterion of, historical and relative):Dialectical Materialism 1983, A. Spirkin Chapter 4. The Theory of Knowledge and Creativityhttp://marxists.catbull.com/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch04-s03.html

United Front:Fourth Congress of the Communist International, Theses on CominternTactics5 December 1922

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/tactics.htm

Use Value:Karl Marx. Capital Volume One, Part I: Commodities and Moneyhttps://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

Wages:Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capitalhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labor/ch02.htm

Working class:Frederick Engels, The Principles of Communism.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Back Cover

“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 classwhich 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, asthey 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 rulealso 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.”