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An A-Z of
Marxism
(A to E) (F
to J) (K
to
O)
NOTE
TO THE READER: This text was written in the 1980s. Hence, suggested
further reading is rooted in books of that period. Parts of this text
was originally published in the now defunct Irish magazine, Socialist View, in the late 1980s.
Foreword
This
dictionary is intended as a reference-companion for the socialist. It
is aimed particularly at the newcomer to the socialist movement who may
be unfamiliar with socialist terminology.
Our
approach has been to combine brevity with clarity, as far as possible,
with cross-referencing and a guide to further reading at the end of
most entries.We have been selective.
We
have concentrated on those words and ideas that are relevant to the
case for socialism. In addition, there are many biographical entries of
individuals and organisations of interest to the socialist movement.
The inclusion of any of these should not necessarily be understood as
an endorsement of their ideas and practices. Likewise, many entries
have suggestions for further reading but the views expressed in these
books are not necessarily the same as those of the socialist movement.
It
will be obvious that there are some errors, omissions and unworthy
inclusions. We make no claim to comprehensive, final and definitive
truth. This dictionary can and should be better. We therefore invite
suggestions and constructive criticisms for use in future editions of
this dictionary.
Abundance.
A situation where productive resources are sufficient to produce enough
to satisfy human needs; whereas scarcity is a situation where
productive resources are insufficient for this purpose. It is because
abundance is possible that socialism can be established. But in
capitalist economics abundance is defined as a situation where an
infinite amount of something can be produced; and in the absence of
this impossible 'abundance', it is claimed, scarcity and capitalism
must always exist.
Reading
Bookchin, M., Post-scarcity Anarchism, 1974.
Accumulation of
capital.
The driving force of capitalism is the accumulation of capital through
the extraction of surplus value, as surplus labour, from work in
productive employment. In capitalist economics this process is
described as individuals having a subjective preference for future
consumption (i.e. present investment) at the expense of consumption in
the present. However, the imperative to accumulate operates
independently of the will of individual capitalists: it is imposed on
them by competition in the world market. After receiving their
privileged income, capitalists re-invest surplus value in the means of
production, thereby reproducing capital on an expanded scale. (See also
CAPITAL.)
Alienation.
Marx argued
that human self-alienation arises from capitalist society and has four
main aspects:
- Workers are alienated from the product of their labour, since others
own what they produce and they have no effective control over it
because they are workers.
- Workers are alienated from their
productive activity. Employment is forced labour: it is not the
satisfaction of a human need.
- Workers are alienated from their
human nature, because the first two aspects of alienation deprive their
work of those specifically human qualities that distinguish it from the
activity of other animals.
- The worker is alienated from other
workers. Instead of truly human relations between people, relations are
governed by peoples' roles as agents in the economic process of capital
accumulation. (See also FETISHISM;
HUMAN NATURE.)
Reading
Ollman, B., Alienation, 1976.
Anarchism.
A general term for a group of diverse and often contradictory
ideologies. All strands of anarchist thought, however, tend to see the
source of oppression and exploitation in authority in general and the
state in particular. Socialists, on the other hand, see oppression and
exploitation in the social relationships of capitalism (which includes
the state). (See also BAKUNIN;
KROPOTKIN; PROUDHON; STIRNER.)
Reading
Joll, J., The Anarchists, 1979.
Miller, D., Anarchism, 1984.
Thomas, P., Karl Marx and the Anarchists, 1980.
Ancient society.
'In
broad outline, the Asiatic, the ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois
modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the
economic development of society' (Marx's Preface to A Contribution to the Critique
of Political Economy,
1859). Marx's list of historical epochs is not comprehensive (it does
not mention primitive communism), nor is it how social development has
everywhere taken place (North America has never known feudalism).
Ancient (Graeco-Roman) society reached its greatest extent in the
second century AD, with the Roman Empire encompassing most of Europe,
northern Africa and the Middle East. In ancient society the predominant
relations of production were the master and slave of chattel slavery.
However, a society is not identified merely by its class relations: it
is rather a specific mode of appropriation of surplus labour.
Independent producers who were the forerunner of the medieval serf
produced the surplus labour, appropriated as taxation. As the Roman
Empire declined chattel slavery increased, but the increasing demands
placed on the independent producers by an expanding and costly empire
brought about (together with external invasion) internal collapse.
Reading
de Ste. Croix, G.E.M., The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World,
1981.
Asiatic society.
In the 1859 Preface, Marx had designated the Asiatic as one of the
epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. He
believed that the Asiatic mode of production was based on a class of
peasant producers rendering tax-rent (in the form of money or produce)
to a landlord state. Marx gave the example of Mughal India, though the
'Asiatic' mode of production could also be found in Africa and
pre-Columbian America. Marx said the consequences of this mode of
production were despotism and stagnation. In the 1930s the Communist
Party tried to suppress all discussion of Asiatic society because of
its similarities with Stalinism. (See also STALINISM.)
Reading
Rigby, S.H., Marxism and History, 1998.
Bakunin, Michael
(1814-1876).
Bakunin was an anarchist who opposed authority from the point of view
of peasants and workers. He thought that a spontaneous uprising would
sweep away capitalism and the state, but his belief in the 'cleansing'
benefits of violence was mystical:
"Let
us then put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and
annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternally creative
source of all life. The lust of destruction is also a creative lust".
(The Reaction in Germany, 1842.
Note that the last sentence is often mistranslated as 'The urge to destroy is also a creative
urge'.)
Revolutionary
violence, it is claimed, would create a new society organised as a
federation of communes with an individual's income being equal to their
work. Bakunin's conspiratorialism and romantic adventurism brought him
into conflict with Marx in the First International. It ended with
Bakunin being expelled in 1872. One consequence of this was that, to
this day, anarchist criticism of Marxism centres on the alleged
authoritarianism Marx displayed in the dispute. But the dispute was
much more than a mere clash of personalities. In the first place,
Bakunin rejected all forms of political action; Marx's insistence on
the need to gain political power was anathema. Secondly, Bakunin
believed that the state must be destroyed by conspiratorial violence;
Marx's proposed 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was rejected on the
grounds that it would result in a new form of tyranny.
Since
Marx's day, however, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' has taken on
a meaning which he never intended and anarchists have seized on it s
proof of the authoritarian nature of Marxian socialism. But this is due
to Lenin's distortion of the concept in the aftermath of the Russian
revolution. For Marx the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' meant
democratic control of the state by a politically organised working
class; it didn't mean rule by a vanguard party, as Lenin claimed.
Nevertheless, Marx put forward this concept in the circumstances
prevailing in the nineteenth century, which in certain respects no
longer apply.
In his Conspectus of Bakunin's 'Statism
and Anarchy' (1874), Marx argued that, so long as a class of
capitalists exist, the working class must make use of the state ('the general means of coercion')
to dispossess them of the means of production. This would be the most
effective way of changing society because it minimises any potential
for violence. With a socialist working class in control of the states
through their use of their socialist parties, international capitalism
can be replaced by world socialism. It is of course a great irony that
anarchists should condemn this proposed course of action as potentially
authoritarian, given their recipe for bloody civil war by waging
violence against the state (or what amounts to the same thing, trying
to change society whilst ignoring the state). In this respect they are
closer to the Leninists than they might realise. (See also ANARCHISM; MARXISM.)
Reading
Kelly, A., Michael Bakunin, 1982.
Banks.
Financial intermediaries that accept deposits and lend money. Banks and
other financial institutions do not create wealth: their profits are
ultimately derived from surplus value created in the production
process. (See also INTEREST; LABOUR
THEORY OF VALUE.)
Bolshevism.
At the second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
(RSDLP), held in London in 1903, a vote was taken on the composition of
the editorial board of Iskra, the Party newspaper. The vote gave a
majority to Lenin's group, who then assumed the name 'Bolsheviki' (the
majority). The other wing of the RSDLP were known as the 'Mensheviki'
(the minority), led by Julius Martov. These two titles are misleading,
however. What really separated the two wings of the RSDLP were the
Party's conditions of membership. Under Lenin's influence, the
Bolsheviks believed that, because the working class by themselves could
only achieve a trade union consciousness, workers needed to be led to
socialism by a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries. The
Mensheviks, especially Martov, were critical of the elitist and highly
undemocratic nature of Bolshevism. (See also LENINISM.)
Reading
Harding, N., Lenin's Political Thought, 1983.
Mattick, P., Anti-Bolshevik Communism, 1978.
Capital.
Capital is a social relation that expresses itself as a form of
exchange value. As money capital it constitutes the accumulated unpaid
surplus labour of the past appropriated by the capitalist class in the
present. Capital can also take the form of a sum of commodities
(machinery, raw materials, labour power, etc.) used in the
re/production of exchange values.
In capitalist economics,
however, capital is defined as an asset from which an income can be
derived, even if only potentially (a house, for example). From this it
follows that capital has always existed and always will, and that
inanimate things can be productive. But it is only under certain
historical and social conditions that capital comes into existence:
specifically, when the means of production are used to exploit wage
labour for surplus value. (See also CAPITALISM.)
Reading
Fine, B., Marx's 'Capital', 1989.
Capitalism.
A system of society based on the class monopoly of the means of
production and distribution, it has the following six essential
characteristics:
- Generalised commodity production, nearlly all wealth being produced
for sale on a market.
- The investment of capital in productionn with a view to obtaining a
monetary profit.
- The exploitation of wage labour, the soource of profit being the
unpaid labour of the producers.
- The regulation of production by the marrket via a competitive struggle
for profits.
- The accumulation of capital out of proffits, leading to the expansion
and development of the forces of production.A single world economy.
Reading
Buick, A. and Crump, J., State Capitalism, 1986.
Hirschman, A.O., The Passions and the Interests: political arguments
for capitalism before its triumph, 1977.
Capitalist class.
The capitalists personify capital. Because they possess the means of
production and distribution, whether in the form of legal property
rights of individuals backed by the state or collectively as a
bureaucracy through the state, the capitalist class lives on privileged
incomes derived from surplus value.
The capitalists personally
need not -- and mostly do not -- get involved in the process of
production. Social production is carried on by capitalist enterprises
which are overwhelmingly comprised of members of the working class.
(See also CLASS.)
China.
Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-tung) helped to form the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) in 1921. After the Second World War all the major Chinese cities,
previously controlled by the Japanese, fell into control of the
nationalists, the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek. However, the
Kuomintang soon became discredited in the eyes of the peasants and by
1947 civil war broke out between the Communists and the Kuomintang. In
September 1949 Chiang Kai-shek and other Kuomintang leaders fled to
Taiwan. On 1 October 1949 Mao proclaimed the inauguration of the
Peoples' Republic of China.
Mao launched the disastrous Great
Leap Forward (1958-59) in an attempt to hasten economic development. He
also instituted the Cultural Revolution (1966) to re-establish
revolutionary fervour and get rid of his opponents. Mao modelled the
development of Chinese industry on Russian State capitalism; and this
model of development continued after the Sino-Soviet split in 1960.
Since Mao's death in 1976 the development of capitalism in China, on a
more market-orientated basis, has continued under the auspices of the
CCP. (See also MAO; MAOISM; STATE
CAPITALISM.)
Reading
Buick, A. and Crump, J., State Capitalism, 1986.
Class.
People are divided into classes according to their social relationship
to the means of wealth production and distribution. These classes have
changed according to changing social conditions (e.g. slaves and
masters, peasants and lords). In capitalism people are divided into
those who possess the means of production in the form of capital, the
capitalist class, and those who produce but do not possess, the working
class (which includes dependants).
The working class, as they
have no other property to sell on a regular basis, live by selling
their labour power for a wage or a salary. This class therefore
comprises unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled, professional, and
unemployed workers; it includes those at various stages of the
reproduction cycle of labour power, such as schoolchildren, housewives
and pensioners. This class runs society from top to bottom. The
capitalist class, on the other hand, does not have to work in order to
get an income. They draw rent interest and profit (surplus value)
because they own the means of life.
Of course there are other
social groups such as peasants and small proprietors, but these are
incidental to capitalism. As a system of society that predominates
throughout the world, capitalism is based on the exploitation of the
working class by the capitalist class through the wages system. Nor
does the number of jobs in management and the professions alter the
situation; for the most part they too are workers compelled to sell
their labour power and suffer unemployment. Even if there has been some
separation of ownership and control of capitalist enterprises, the
capitalists still maintain a privileged income through their ownership;
they still possess but do not produce. (See also CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS; CLASS STRUGGLE;
WORKING CLASS.)
Reading
Graham, K., Karl Marx, Our Contemporary, 1992.
Wright, E.O., Classes, 1985.
Class-consciousness.
The objective social position of the working class is that they stand
in an antagonistic relation to the capitalist class. When the working
class become aware of this antagonism, the subjective dimension of
class, they can abolish capitalism and establish socialism. As Marx put
it, workers would develop from a class 'in itself' (a common class
position but without workers being aware of it), to become a class 'for
itself' (a collective awareness among workers of their class position).
Class-consciousness develops mainly out of the working class's
everyday experiences of the contradictions of capitalism (poverty
amidst plenty, etc.). These contradictions are, in turn, derived from
the most basic contradiction of capitalism: the contradiction between
social production and class ownership of the means of production. To
the extent that workers fail to perceive their class position this can
be attributed largely to ideology. It is the role of the Socialist
Party to combat ideology with socialist argument and political action.
(See also CLASS; CONTRADICTION;
IDEOLOGY.)
Class struggle.
'The history of all
hitherto existing
society is the history of class struggle' (Communist Manifesto).
Marx and Engels later qualified this to refer to written history in
order to take account of early primitive communist societies in which
class divisions had not yet emerged. In ancient society the struggles
were between slave owners and slaves; in feudal society between lords
and serfs; and in capitalism, capitalists and workers.
These
struggles have been over the distribution of the social product, the
organisation of work, working conditions and the results of production.
The class struggle is more than a struggle over the level of
exploitation, however. Ultimately it is a struggle over the ownership
and control of the means of production and distribution. Throughout
history, classes excluded from the ownership and control of the means
of production and distribution have been driven by their economic
situation to try to gain such ownership through gaining political
power. (See also CLASS; HISTORY.)
Commodity.
A commodity is an item of wealth that has been produced for sale.
Commodities have been produced in pre-capitalist societies but such
production was marginal. It is only in capitalism that it becomes the
dominant mode of production, where goods and services are produced for
sale with a view to profit. Under capitalism the object of commodity
production is the realisation of profit when the commodities have been
sold; these profits are mostly re-invested and accumulated as capital.
Commodities can be reproduced, and this includes the uniquely
capitalist commodity of human labour power. (See also LABOUR POWER; LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE.)
Reading
Fine, B., Marx's 'Capital', 1989.
Common ownership.
If everyone owns the means of wealth production and distribution then,
to put it another way, nobody owns them. The concept of property in the
sense of exclusive possession then becomes meaningless. Common
ownership is a social relationship and not a form of property
ownership. This social relationship will be one of equality between
people with regard to the control of the use of the means of
production. In practical terms, common ownership means democratic
control of the means of production by the whole community. Common
ownership is therefore synonymous with democracy. (See also DEMOCRACY.)
Communism.
The word 'communism' originated in the revolutionary groups in France
in the 1830s. At about the same time, Owenite groups in Britain were
first using the word 'socialism'. Marx and Engels used both words
interchangeably. In fact, in Marx and Engels' earlier years on the
continent they usually referred to themselves and the working class
movement as communist; later in Britain as socialist. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme
(1875), Marx made a distinction between two stages of 'communist
society', both based on common ownership: a lower stage, with
individual consumption being rationed, possibly by the use of
labour-time vouchers, and a higher stage in which each person
contributes to society according to ability and draws from the common
stock according to needs. In both stages, however, there would be no
money economy or state.
Lenin, in his State and Revolution
(1917), made famous the description of these two stages as 'socialism'
and 'communism', respectively, in which there would be a money economy
and state in 'socialism'. Socialists use the words socialism and
communism interchangeably to refer to the society of common ownership,
thereby denying the Leninist claim that there is a need for a
transitional society. (See also SOCIALISM;
TRANSITIONAL SOCIETY.)
Reading
Rubel, M., and Crump, J., Non Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries, 1987.
Lichtheim, G., A Short History of Socialism, 1970.
Communist Party.
In 1848
Marx's Manifesto of the Communist
Party (now somewhat misleadingly called the Communist Manifesto)
was published by the Communist League. In the Manifesto, Communists are
said to be distinctive only in always emphasising 'the common interests
of the entire proletariat'.
In Russia the Bolshevik section of
the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party changed its name to the
Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), after its seizure of power in
1917. From 1952 it has been called the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (CPSU). The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was formed in
1920 and took its political line (and, until its demise, a lot of its
money) directly from Moscow. During the 1970s many European Communist
Parties began to re-assess their bloody, anti-working class history.
One by one they adopted 'Eurocommunism' and attempted to distance
themselves from the CPSU and their Stalinist past. Following the fall
of the Kremlin Empire in 1989, however, the Communist Parties lost all
credibility and many changed their name and ideology. Though suppressed
by Yeltsin in 1991, the Russian Communist Party retains its name but is
now more a supporter of market capitalism than state capitalism. In
Britain the CPGB became the Democratic Left and is now a pressure group
for various reforms. (See also BOLSHEVISM;
COMMUNISM; RUSSIA.)
Reading
Macintyre, S., A Proletarian Science, 1986.
Contradiction.
In capitalist society there is a contradiction, or conflict of
interests, between the class monopoly of the means of wealth production
and distribution and the social process of production. Capitalism, in
other words, subordinates production to privileged class interests;
profits take priority over needs. From this essential contradiction of
capitalism others follow, such as: famine amidst plenty, homelessness
alongside empty buildings, pollution as a way of 'externalising' (i.e.
reducing) costs and maximising profits, and so on.
Socialist
society will end these contradictions because it will bring social
production into line with social ownership and therefore into line with
social needs. (See also CLASS
CONSCIOUSNESS.)
Co-operatives.
Enterprises which are jointly owned and controlled by their members.
The origins of the co-operative movement go back to Robert Owen in the
early nineteenth century. As an alternative route to socialism it has
been a failure, although the modern co-operative movement continues to
draw inspiration from examples such as Mondragon in Spain.
Some
supporters of capitalism are also supporters of co-operatives. They see
them as a way of mitigating the class struggle and persuading workers
that they have an interest in accepting 'realistic' (i.e. lower) wages.
However, co-operatives do not give workers security of employment or
free them from exploitation.
Co-operatives cannot be used as a
means for establishing socialism. As long as the capitalist class
control political power, which they will be able to continue to do for
as long as there is a majority of non-socialists, capitalist economic
relations (commodity production, wage labour, production for profit,
etc.) will be bound to prevail and these will control the destiny of
co-operatives. (See also CAPITAL;
LETS; OWEN.)
Reading
Thornley, J., Workers' Co-operatives: Jobs and dreams, 1981.
Crises.
Capitalist production goes through a continuous cycle of boom, crisis
and depression. A boom is a period when most industries are working to
full capacity and unemployment is correspondingly low. A crisis is the
sudden break that brings the boom to an end. A depression is the
decline of production and increase of unemployment that comes after the
crisis. It is important to recognise the difference between the two
latter stages of the trade cycle, because the factors that govern the
period up to the crisis and the crisis itself are different to the
factors which operate during the period of depression.
A booming
economy will go into a phase of 'overtrade' when a number of industries
find that they have each produced more than they can sell at a profit
in their particular market. Then comes the sudden crisis followed by
depression. This cycle is natural for capitalism and does not mean that
something has 'gone wrong' with the economy. (See also DEPRESSIONS.)
Reading
Clarke, S., Marx's Theory of Crisis, 1994.
Cuba.
The national liberation movement in Cuba began with an assault on Fort
Moncada on 26 July 1953 and ended with the seizure of power by Fidel
Castro and his July 26 Movement on 2 January 1959. This overthrew the
corrupt and brutal regime of Fulgencio Batista.
After the
revolution, in February 1960, a trade and credit agreement with Russia
was signed. In April, Russian oil began to arrive in Cuba and, when the
American-owned oil companies refused to refine it, Castro confiscated
the Texaco, Shell and Standard Oil refineries. Between August and
October 1960 Castro nationalised virtually all American-owned
properties and most large Cuban-owned businesses. In October the United
States announced a total trade embargo with Cuba. So, to survive the
economic isolation Castro looked towards the 'Communist bloc'.
In
April 1961, the day before the Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro officially
declared that Cuba's revolution was socialist. By happy coincidence,
and with no previous interest in left-wing ideology, in December 1961
Castro announced that he was now a 'Marxist-Leninist'. In October 1965
the Communist Party of Cuba was formed. However, for several years it
had no programme or statutes (its first Congress was held ten years
later, in December 1975), and is essentially an organisational
extension of Castro's personal authority. Brought to power by mass
support for national liberation, Castro and his ruling party continue
the development of national state capitalism. (See also NATIONAL LIBERATION.)
Reading
Blackburn, R., Slavery and Empire: The Making of Modern Cuba, 1978.
De Leon, Daniel
(1852-1914).
De Leon joined the Socialist Labour Party in the United States in 1890.
As editor of the SLP paper The People, De Leon was an outstanding
advocate of Marxism until his death in 1914. In 1903 a Socialist Labour
Party was formed in Britain, which broke away from the SDF a year
before the SPGB, and modelled its ideas on the industrial unionist
policy of De Leon and the American SLP. On the political front, De Leon
firmly rejected reformism and argued for the capture of political power
solely to establish socialism; and on the industrial unionist front he
argued for a revolutionary trade unionism. In 1905 he joined in
founding the Industrial Workers of the World (the 'Wobblies'), a
syndicalist organisation. (See also SYNDICALISM.)
Reading
Coleman, S., Daniel De Leon, 1990.
Democracy.
A term which originated in ancient Greece where it meant rule by the
citizens (which excluded the majority --- aliens, women and slaves). In
the modern Western world, 'liberal democracy' means little more than
regular elections in which competing political parties put up
candidates for government office, offering voters the chance to choose
between marginally different sets of policies. This is to be preferred
to those conditions in countries where even these limited rights do not
exist. However, 'liberal democracy' does not constitute a meaningful
conception of democracy. Socialists argue that all governments, no
matter how well intentioned or enlightened, in trying to administer the
capitalist system as a whole ('the national interest'), usually pursue
policies that favour the capitalist class.
In a socialist society
the machinery of government of the states of the world will have given
way to democratic administration at local, regional and global levels.
Real democracy will involve equality between all people with regard to
the control of the use of the means of production. (See also COMMON OWNERSHIP; DICTATORSHIP; PARLIAMENT.)
Reading
Graham, K., The Battle of Democracy, 1986.
Depressions.
Capitalist production goes through continuous cycles of boom, crisis
and depression. In a boom some industries, encouraged by high profits,
produce more than can be profitably in a particular market. A crisis
then occurs. And, if the combined effect is large enough, it is
followed by a depression as other industries get sucked into the
downward spiral of unsold commodities and falling profits. Businesses
then curtail production, or close down altogether, and lay off workers.
Eventually the conditions for profitable production are restored (less
competition as competitors go bust, an increased rate of exploitation,
higher profits, etc.) and business booms . . . but only to repeat
the
cycle. (See also CRISES.)
Dialectic.
The categories thesis, antithesis and synthesis are often attributed to
Marx and Hegel's dialectic, although in fact both rejected this
interpretation. In the Poverty of
Philosophy
(1847), Marx gave his only account of the dialectic in the triadic form
of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and his purpose in so doing was to
criticise Proudhon's use of these categories. In his Science of Logic (1816), Hegel
defined the dialectic as 'the
grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the
negative, that speculative thought consists'.
Marx's dialectic also grasped the positive and negative of things. But
many commentators have retained Hegel's idealist presuppositions ('speculative thought')
in explaining Marx's dialectic. Accordingly, the dialectic is often
presented as a form of logical syllogism; for example, the capitalist
class are the thesis, the working class the antithesis and the
classless society of socialism is the synthesis. However, there is no
evidence that Marx employed such a simplistic notion and the exercise
is meaningless anyway.
For both Hegel and Marx the dialectic was a
method of investigating society, a method that specified the
contradictory and progressive aspects of whatever was under scrutiny.
In Hegel's case this method was confused by philosophical idealism. 'With him it is standing on its head',
said Marx. 'It must be turned right
side up again' (1873 Afterword to Capital).
Marx grounded his dialectic in the material conditions of life;
primarily, it analysed the conflicts between the forces and relations
of production. Engels gave a rather different interpretation. He turned
it into the 'laws of motion and
evolution in nature, human society and thought'. (See also ENGELS; HEGEL; MARXISM.)
Reading
Norman, R. and Sayers, S., Hegel, Marx and Dialectic, 1980.
Wood, A., Karl Marx, 1981.
Dictatorship.
Under a dictatorship the traditional forms of working class political
and economic organisation are denied the right of legal existence.
Freedom of speech, assembly and the Press is severely curtailed and
made to conform to the needs of a single political party that has for
the time being secured a monopoly in the administration of the state
machine.
The concept of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' has
a central place in Leninist thought. The phrase was used by Marx and
Engels to mean the working class conquest of political power. In the State and Revolution
(1917), however, Lenin wrote of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat
under the guidance of the party'. The Leninist theory of the vanguard
party leads inevitably to the dictatorship over the proletariat. (See
also DEMOCRACY; LENINISM.)
Reading
Draper, H., Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution: Dictatorship of the
Proletariat, 1987.
Hunt, R.N., The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, 1975.
Direct action.
A form of civil disobedience in which people use force in an attempt to
achieve their aim. For example, anti-road campaigns. The direct action
movement often combines Green and anarchist strands of thought and
urges people to organise at local level and avoid all electoral
activity. The direct action criticism of the socialist argument for
gaining political power rests on disillusionment fostered by
capitalism's inability to solve its own problems, and a belief that the
capitalist class would use the state to violently crush a majority
decision to establish socialism. On the other hand, this is
contradicted by their claim that the ruling class will give in to
pressure from below (and there is no evidence of any direct action
campaign succeeding) from grass-roots groups who are not united in
organisation and have not shown that they represent the majority view.
(See also ANARCHISM; ECOLOGY.)
Ecology.
In 1871 a German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, coined the word 'ecology'.
It derives from the Greek word 'oikos' meaning 'house' or 'habitat' and
can be defined as the study of relationships between organisms and
their environment or natural habitat.
Under the present economic
system production is not directly geared to meeting human and
environmental needs but rather to the accumulation of profits. As a
result, not only are basic needs far from satisfied but also much of
what is produced is pure waste. For instance, all the resources
involved in commerce and finance, the mere buying and selling of things
and those poured into armaments. Moreover, capitalist states,
industries and even individuals are encouraged by competition in the
market to externalise their costs ('externalities' as economists call
them) by dumping unwanted waste products into the environment. The
whole system of production, from the methods employed to the choice of
what to produce, is distorted by the imperative to accumulate without
consideration for the longer term and global factors that ecology
teaches are vitally important. The overall result is an economic system
governed by blind economic forces that oblige decision-makers, however
selected and whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder,
pollute and waste.
If we are to meet our needs in an ecologically
acceptable way we must first be able to control production --- or, put
another way, able to consciously regulate our interaction with the rest
of nature --- and the only basis on which this can be done is the
common ownership and democratic control of the means of production,
with production solely for human and environmental needs. (See also GREENS; ZERO GROWTH.)
Reading
Pepper, D., Eco-socialism, 1993.
Economics.
The study of the production and distribution of wealth in capitalist
society (also known by its older and more accurate name, political
economy). Under capitalism wealth production is governed by forces
based on exchange value which operate independently of human will and
which impose themselves as external, coercive laws when people make
decisions about the production of wealth. In other words, the social
process of wealth production under capitalism is an economy governed by
economic laws and studied by a special discipline, economics.
Socialism will re-establish conscious human control over wealth
production; therefore, socialism will abolish capitalism's economic
laws and so also 'the economy' as the field of human activity governed
by their operation. Hence socialism will make economics redundant. (See
also MARKET; SOCIALISM.)
Reading
Buick, A. and Crump, J., State Capitalism, 1986.
Engels, Friedrich
(1820-1895).
Born in what is now called Wuppertal, Germany, the eldest son of a
textile capitalist. Engels was trained for a career as a merchant, but
in 1841 he went to Berlin and became closely involved in the Young
Hegelians, a group of left-wing philosophers with whom Marx had also
been involved. In 1842 Engels became a communist (before and
independently of Marx) and went to Manchester to work in his father's
business. In England he became interested in Chartism and the struggles
of the English working class. His researches, and his socialist
conclusions, were recorded in The
Condition of the Working Class in England (1844). Engels and
Marx agreed to produce a political satire: The Holy Family (1845) marked the
beginning of a life-long collaboration. Engels and Marx began writing The German Ideology in November 1845
and continued work on it for nearly a year before it was abandoned
unfinished, as Marx put it, to 'the
gnawing criticism of the mice'
(teeth marks of mice were subsequently found on the manuscript). This
work contains an attack on the Young Hegelians (the German ideology in
question) and in so doing they set out the basic principles of the
materialist conception of history. Engels helped Marx to write the Manifesto of the Communist Party,
published by the Communist League in 1848. To some extent, this work
derives from a piece Engels wrote in catechism form the previous year, Principles of Communism. Engels and
Marx then became active in radical journalism during the upheavals that
followed the revolutions of 1848.
In 1850 Engels re-joined the family firm in Manchester, where he stayed
until 1870, helping Marx financially and journalistically. Engels also
developed his own lines of interest, especially in the natural
sciences, and one result of his studies was published in 1927 as Dialectics of Nature.
In 1878 he was able to retire and move to London. As Marx became less
politically active due to ill health, so Engels took on more
responsibility for setting out 'our joint position.' In 1878 Anti-Duhring appeared, and three
chapters from it were published as Socialism,
Utopian and Scientific
in 1880. This latter work proved to be immensely popular within the
growing socialist movement as a general exposition of Marxism. Engels
continued to pursue his own lines of interest and in 1884 The Origin of the Family, Private Property
and the State was written and published. And in 1888, in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical
German Philosophy,
Engels explained his philosophy of nature and history. However, after
Marx's death in 1883 Engels spent most of his time editing Marx's notes
for volumes two and three of Capital,
published in 1885 and 1894 respectively. Engels also spent his last few
years acting as an adviser to the parties of the Second International,
before dying of cancer in 1895.
Assessing Engels' contribution to
Marxism is problematical. One of his greatest talents was for
popularising Marxism within the growing socialist movement. Indeed,
some commentators have maintained that what is now generally understood
as 'Marxism' is mainly derived from Engels, but that some of his
interpretations of Marx's ideas differ in significant ways from Marx's
own ideas. It appears, for example, that Engels' interpretation and
application of the dialectic is fundamentally different from that of
Marx. For Marx the dialectic was a way of teasing out the
contradictions within social phenomena, whereas for Engels it was the
universal laws of motion of thought and matter. In other cases problems
arise because of Engels' interest in the natural sciences. For
instance, Engels' famous phrase concerning the 'withering away'
of the state comes from his interest in biology, whereas Marx always
used the more precise 'abolish' in this context. In view of these
problems, it seems fair to say that when quoting from of referring to
Marx and Engels on some issues it cannot be assumed that they are both
speaking with one voice. (See also MARX;
MARXISM.)
Reading
Carver, T., Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship, 1983.
Equality.
Socialism will be a system of society based on the common ownership of
the means of production. Common ownership will be a social relationship
of equality between all people with regard to the control of the use of
the means of production. This establishes a classless society.
Socialism does not mean equality of income or reward, nor does it mean
equality by a re-distribution of personal wealth.
Contrary to
popular myth, Marx and Engels did not frame their arguments for
socialism in terms of substantive equality. In fact they rejected
demands for levelling down as 'crude communism'. They did not criticise
capitalism because poverty is unevenly distributed, but because there
is poverty where there need be none, and that there is a privileged
class which benefits from a system which subjects the majority to an
artificial and unnecessary poverty. And in his Critique of the Gotha Programme
(1875), Marx argued that communism would run along the lines of 'From each according to ability, to each
according to needs'.
This is not an egalitarian slogan. Rather, it asks for people to be
considered individually, each with a different set of needs and
abilities. (See also COMMON OWNERSHIP.)
Reading
Wood, A., Karl Marx, 1981.
Exchange value.
The proportion in which commodities exchange with each other depends
upon the amount of socially necessary labour-time spent in producing
them. Commodities actually sell at market prices that rise and fall
according to market conditions around a point regulated by their value.
(See also LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE;
VALUE.)
Exploitation.
A morally neutral term, as used by socialists, to denote the
historically specific form of the extraction of surplus labour.
Feudalism was based on the appropriation of surplus labour as feudal
tribute (in the form of money, produce or labour services) from the
peasantry. Capitalist enterprises buy workers' labour power for a wage
or a salary which is more or less equal to its value but extract labour
greater than the equivalent of that wage or salary. This surplus labour
takes the form of surplus value and is the source of profit. But it is
important to remember that, because surplus value is socially produced,
an employee is not just exploited by their particular employer.
Exploitation is a class relationship only: the capitalist class
exploits the working class. (See also CLASS;
LABOUR POWER; SURPLUS VALUE.)
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