An A to Z of Marxism K to O

Kautsky, Karl (1854 - 1938). Born in Prague, he became a Social Democrat while a student at the University of Vienna. Kautsky was the leading theorist of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Second International. He wrote the theoretical section of the Erfurt Programme adopted by the SPD at its Congress in 1891. The Socialist Party of Great Britain translated and published in 1906 and 1908 the first three parts of this work but, on learning the contents of the fourth, refused to publish it. The sticking point was his reformism. At the Lubeck Congress of 1901 he opposed Bernstein's 'revisionism' (that is, the rejection of Marxism in favour of gradualism). This controversy was misleading, however, since Kautsky's writings showed that he did not oppose reformist activity and had a state capitalist conception of 'socialism'.
Kautsky, nevertheless, was an outstanding populariser of Marx's ideas. He edited Marx's Theories of Surplus Value (1905-10), and gave his own introduction to Marxian economics in the influential Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx (1925). He also applied the materialist conception of history in his Origins of Christianity (1908) and other works. Kautsky opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917, and he criticised Lenin's interpretation of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' as a distortion of Marxism. Lenin then publicly denounced him as a 'renegade'. But Kautsky's analysis in Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1918) shows a much better understanding of Marx's views on democracy and socialism than did anything Lenin ever wrote, despite Kautsky's reformism. (See also DICTATORSHIP; INTERNATIONALS; REVISIONISM.)
Reading
Geary, D., Karl Kautsky, 1988.

Keynes, John Maynard (1883 - 1946). Born in Cambridge, educated at Cambridge University, he became Baron of Cambridge in 1942. Keynes' main work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was first published in 1936. His chief concern expressed in this book was the revolutionary consequences of heavy and sustained unemployment. His fear was that capitalism would not survive the mass unemployment of the 1930s. As Keynes wrote:

It is certain that the world will not much longer tolerate the unemployment which, apart from brief intervals of excitement, is associated - and, in my opinion, inevitably associated - with present-day capitalistic individualism.

He believed that free market, individualistic capitalism had to be replaced by a more corporate form of capitalism if capitalism as a system of society was to survive. He therefore advocated greater government intervention in the economy to cure unemployment, and held that this was justifiable as 'the only practicable means for avoiding the destruction of existing economic forms in their entirety'.
Keynes described Marx's Capital as 'an obsolete economic textbook, which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world' (A Short View of Russia, 1925). But it is Keynes' views that have not fared well. Despite the fact that Keynes was a Liberal and an avowed defender of capitalism, the Labour Party and most of the left-wing organisations are still Keynesian in their economics. (See also INFLATION; KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS; UNEMPLOYMENT.)
Reading
Skidelsky, R., John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Saviour, 1992.

Keynesian economics. The branch of capitalist economic theory associated with J.M. Keynes. In general, Keynesian economics argues that: Depressions and high unemployment are caused by insufficient aggregate demand in the economy. Aggregate demand can be most easily increased by increasing government expenditure.
In his main work on economic theory, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Keynes argued that increased government expenditure need not be inflationary and that, indeed, the long term policy of governments should be to 'allow wages to rise slowly whilst keeping prices stable'. He thought the real enemy was the revolutionary potential of mass unemployment.
After the Second World War the Labour, Liberal and Tory parties all became Keynesian. Their common outlook was expressed in the policy adopted by the Labour Party at its Annual Conference in 1944:

If bad trade and general unemployment threaten, this means that total purchasing power is falling too low. Therefore we should at once increase expenditure . . . We should give people more money and not less to spend.

All the main political parties pledged themselves to maintain 'full employment' and prevent inflation. In the years immediately following the war unemployment was unusually low, but this was mainly due to the post-war reconstruction and some of Britain's competitors being temporarily knocked out of the world market. The Keynesian economist Joan Robinson admitted that the post-war boom would have happened anyway and for those reasons.
However, from the mid-1950s onwards unemployment has been on an upward trend, rising to 1.5 million in 1976 under a Labour government. It was in 1976 that the Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, told the Labour Party Annual Conference:

We used to think you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that this option no longer exists.

Not only did Labour and Tory governments fail to secure 'full employment'; they also failed to prevent inflation. Under the Labour government of 1974-79 the general price level rose by 112%. The Tory government elected in 1979 had formally abandoned Keynesian economics. But they still inflated the currency to pay for government spending, and in the following decade prices rose by over 100%. During the same period unemployment increased to over 3 million.
Inflation is caused by governments - Labour and Tory - financing their increased expenditure by printing and putting into circulation hundreds of millions of pounds of excess paper money. They did this in the vain hope that it would prevent unemployment rising, ignoring the fact that unemployment generally is caused by a failure of profitability. (See also INFLATION; KEYNES; MONETARISM; UNEMPLOYMENT.)
Reading
Mattick, P., Marx and Keynes, 1969.

Kropotkin, Peter Alexeyevich (1842 - 1921). Born in Moscow into a noble family, he was educated at an elite military school and served as an army officer. He resigned his commission in 1867 and became an anarchist in 1872. Kropotkin was imprisoned for his propaganda activities in Russia in 1874, but escaped two years later and lived in Western Europe until 1917. In France he founded and edited Le Revolte, was arrested again in 1883, but was released early, in 1886. He then went to England and helped to found the anarchist paper Freedom in London.
A prolific writer, Kropotkin is an example of a thinker in the anarchist trend, sometimes called 'anarcho-communism', who held many ideas which socialists could agree with. His books can be recommended: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899) and, above all, Mutual Aid (1902). And some of his shorter works, in articles and pamphlets, contain excellent socialist arguments. (See also ANARCHISM.)
Reading
Baldwin, R.N., (ed.) Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, 1970.
Miller, M.A., Kropotkin, 1976.

Labour Party. In 1900, representatives from the ILP, SDF, Fabians and other organisations joined trade unionists in setting up the Labour Representation Committee, to establish 'a distinct Labour Group in Parliament'. In the 1906 general election 29 out of the 50 LRC candidates were successful and it was decided later in that year to change their name to the Labour Party. Lloyd George, a Liberal, claimed that the name alone was worth a million votes.
At the start the Labour Party was intended merely as a trade union pressure group in Parliament. It had no socialist pretensions, and was indeed merely the tail end of the Liberal Party. Nearly every Labour MP returned before the First World War owed his election to Liberal votes in accordance with a shady deal Ramsey MacDonald had made with the Liberals. In 1918, under the influence of the Fabians, the Labour Party adopted a new constitution that included the now rejected Clause Four. This clause in fact committed it not to socialism, but to state capitalism which was the real aim of the Fabians.
The first Labour government, kept in power with Liberal support, was in office from January to November 1924. The second Labour government, returned in 1929, again had Ramsey MacDonald as Prime Minister. He had promised to reduce unemployment, then standing at 1,164,000. But within a year it had gone up to 1,911,000, and in two years it had more than doubled, at the record level of 2,707,000. In 1931 the Cabinet were split over what was to be done about the economic crisis. The upshot was that the Labour Prime Minister, MacDonald, formed a National Government along with Liberal and Tory leaders, and the Labour Party was split in two.
When in 1945 Labour were returned with an overall majority they set about nationalising a large section of industry; but those who thought that state capitalism coupled with a Labour government was in the interests of workers soon learned the truth. In administering capitalism Labour did what was required to protect and further the interests of the British capitalists. They retained war-time legislation banning strikes; they sent troops into the docks; they put striking gas workers and dockers on trial; they imposed wage restraint and then a wage freeze; they introduced peace-time conscription for the first time; they began the development of the British atomic bomb; they sent troops to help American imperialism in Korea - but they did not solve the housing problem as Bevan had promised.
Elected in 1964 and 1966, Labour were once again able to show their commitment to capitalism - another wage freeze, incomes policy legislation, proposed trade union legislation ('In Place of Strife', dropped in the face of a storm of union protest) and a tougher immigration bar. In 1974 Labour was elected with Harold Wilson again as Prime Minister. In the same year Labour's Chancellor, Denis Healy, had said: 'We will squeeze the rich until the pips squeak'. But over the next two years the richest 10% of the population increased their share of the wealth from 57.5% to 60.6%, a process which was to continue. During the Labour government 1974 - 1979 unemployment went up from 628,000 to 1,299,000, while the general price level rose by 112%. It was a Labour government led by James Callaghan, trying to hold wage increases down to half the increase in the cost of living, that led to the 'Winter of Discontent' (1978-1979) and the sending in of troops to break the firemens' strike.
After defeat at the polls with Michael Foot (1983) and Neil Kinnock (1987 and 1992) as leaders, the Labour Party has moved away from state capitalism towards openly accepting market capitalism. Now led by Tony Blair, they are the Tory reserve team. The evolution of the Labour Party is a practical confirmation of the theoretical case against reformism. With a working class that has never at any time understood or wanted socialism, the Labour Party, instead of gradually transforming capitalism in the interests of the workers, has itself been gradually transformed from a trade union pressure group into an instrument of capitalist rule. (See also FABIANS; NATIONALISATION; REFORMISM; SOCIALIST LABOUR PARTY;TRADE UNIONS.)
Reading
Pelling, H., A Short History of the Labour Party, 1988.

Labour power. The capacity to do useful work which creates value in the form of commodities. Workers sell their labour power to capitalist enterprises for a wage or a salary. As a commodity, labour power has an exchange value and a use value, like all other commodities. Its exchange value is equal to the sum total of the exchange values of all those commodities necessary to produce and reproduce the labour power of the worker and his or her family. The use value of labour power is its value creating capacity which capitalist enterprises buy and put to work as labour. However, labour power is unlike other commodities in that it creates value. During a given period it can produce more than is needed to maintain the worker during the same period. The surplus value produced is the difference between the exchange value of labour power and the use value of the labour extracted by the capitalists. (See also COMMODITY; EXCHANGE VALUE; WAGES.)
Reading
Braverman, H., Labour and Monopoly Capital, 1974.

Labour theory of value. The labour theory of value explains how wealth is produced and distributed under capitalism. Human labour power applied to nature-given materials is the source of most wealth. The wealth produced, however, belongs not to the workers but to those who own and control the means of wealth production and distribution (land, factories, offices, etc.). Wealth production under capitalism generally takes the form of commodities produced for sale at a profit.
The value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time required under average conditions for its production and reproduction. Subject to any monopolies or government subsidies, it is around a point regulated by value that the price of a commodity fluctuates according to supply and demand. (See also CAPITAL; COMMODITY; VALUE.)
Reading
Fine, B., Marx's 'Capital', 1989.

Law. A form of class domination. Laws are a set of state-sanctioned commands with the overall aim of conserving the power and privilege of the ruling class. The capitalist state, including its judiciary and police, exist to protect the prevailing capitalist property relations. This becomes obvious with certain aspects of the class struggle, such as strikes and picketing, The capitalists and their apologists want the workers - those excluded from owning more than relatively insignificant amounts of property - to regard the state as protector of rich and poor alike and for everyone to be equal before the law. In reality, the state historically developed as an instrument of class rule and the capitalists' monopoly of the means of life ensures that the law can never be impartial. If capitalist property is threatened the law must defend it above everything else, or else the whole legal system is threatened. This is why the modern state and its laws arose and puts into context the incidental laws which may not seem to be directly necessary for class rule - for example, laws dealing with health and safety at work.
Of course, capitalism being the essentially vicious and anti-human society that it is, laws may seem to be a permanent necessity to protect us from some of our fellow workers. But there is no reason why, on the new basis of material sufficiency and social co-operation, human behaviour can be very different. In world socialism there will no doubt be various democratic procedures for dealing with unacceptable behaviour, but there will definitely be no state and its laws. (See also HUMAN NATURE; STATE.)
Reading
Collins, H., Marxism and Law, 1986.

Leadership. Working class emancipation necessarily excludes the role of political leadership. The World Socialist Movement has an absolute need of supporters with understanding and self-reliance. Even if we could conceive of a leader-ridden working class displacing the capitalist class from power such an immature class would be helpless to undertake the responsibilities of democratic socialist society. (See also CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS.)

Left-wing. A term which comes from the old French legislature, referring to that section of the membership sitting on the left side of the chamber (as viewed from the president's chair) holding progressive liberal opinions.
Socialists reject the conventional method of political analysis that seeks to understand politics in terms of 'left' or 'right'. The left and right are different only to the extent that they provide a different political and organisational apparatus for administering the same capitalist system. This includes those on the left who aim for socialism some time in the distant future but in the meantime demand some form of transitional capitalism. For this reason the World Socialist Movement cannot be usefully identified as either 'left-wing' or 'right-wing'.
Reading
Rubel, M. and Crump, J., Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 1987.

Lenin, V.I. (1870-1924). Real name: Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov. Born in Simbirsk (called Ulyanovsk after the 1917 revolution, but since 1991renamed Simbirsk), the son of a school inspector. At sixteen years of age his eldest brother Alexander was hanged for complicity in a plot to assassinate the Tsar. Soon after, Lenin devoted himself to revolutionary activity, was arrested, and spent three years in prison in Siberia. In 1900 Lenin joined Plekhanov in Geneva and the following year he adopted the pseudonym 'Lenin'. He helped to set up a newspaper, Iskra (The Spark), which would articulate anti-Tsarist opinion and activity. Lenin set out what he saw as the necessary organisational structure for a revolutionary political party under an autocracy in What Is To Be Done? (1902). In 1903 he became the leader of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democrats.
After the revolution of March 1917 Lenin returned to Petrograd (as St Petersburg was renamed because of its German connotations, which became Leningrad, and has now reverted to St Petersburg) in a sealed train provided by the German army. No doubt they counted on Lenin and the Bolsheviks spreading disaffection amongst the Russian army. But after an abortive coup in July he fled to Finland. Lenin then put to paper his views on the state and the socialist revolution, based on his theory of imperialism and giving special emphasis to his interpretation of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', in State and Revolution (1917). He returned to Petrograd in October and led the Bolsheviks to power with a successful coup.
As head of the new government Lenin was preoccupied with the chaos produced by an external war with Germany and an internal civil war. His response was to reemphasise 'democratic centralism' in which the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' came under the increasingly total (itarian) control of the vanguard party. However, since the number of people in any country who wanted socialism was very small (Russia especially), the Bolsheviks had no choice but to develop some form of capitalism. When he died from a stroke in January 1924, most of the main feudal obstacles to capitalist development had been removed, together with all effective political opposition.
With his concepts of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' and the leading role of the vanguard party, and a transitional society of 'socialism', Lenin distorted Marxism and thereby severely damaged the development of a socialist movement. Indeed, Leninism continues to pose a real obstacle to the achievement of socialism. (See also LENINISM.)
Reading
Harding, N., Lenin's Political Thought, 1982.

Leninism. According to Stalin, Leninism is 'Marxism in the era of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution . . . . Leninism is the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular' (Foundations of Leninism, 1924). Accordingly, this ideology is often referred to as 'Marxism-Leninism'. This, however, is a contradiction in terms: Marxism is essentially anti-Leninist. But not everything Lenin wrote is worthless; for example, his article entitled The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913), contains a concise exposition of Marxism. Why, then, is Leninism objectionable? Because, for socialists, it is anti-democratic and it advocates a course of political action which can never lead to socialism.
In What Is To Be Done? (1902) Lenin said: 'the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness'. Lenin argued that socialist consciousness had to be brought to the working class by professional revolutionaries, drawn from the petty bourgeoisie, and organised as a vanguard party. But in 1879 Marx and Engels issued a circular letter in which they declared:
When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry:

The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.

Nor is this an academic point, since the history of Leninism in power shows that allowing elites to rule 'on behalf of' the working class is always a disaster. Working class self-emancipation necessarily precludes the role of political leadership. In State and Revolution (1917) Lenin said that his 'prime task is to re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the state'. Lenin argued that socialism is a transitional society between capitalism and full communism, in which 'there still remains the need for a state . . . For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.' Moreover, Lenin claimed that according to Marx work and wages would be guided by the 'socialist principle' (though in fact it comes from St Paul): 'He who does not work shall not eat.' (Sometimes this is reformulated as: 'to each according to his work'.) Marx and Engels used no such 'principle'; they made no such distinction between socialism and communism. Lenin in fact did not re-establish Marx's position but substantially distorted it to suit the situation in which the Bolsheviks found themselves. When Stalin announced the doctrine of 'Socialism in One Country' (i.e. State Capitalism in Russia) he was drawing on an idea implicit in Lenin's writings.
In State and Revolution, Lenin gave special emphasis to the concept of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. This phrase was sometimes used by Marx and Engels and meant working class conquest of power, which (unlike Lenin) they did not confuse with a socialist society. Engels had cited the Paris Commune of 1871 as an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat, though Marx in his writings on this subject did not mention this as an example, since for him it meant conquest of state power, which the Commune was not. Nevertheless, the Commune impressed itself upon Marx and Engels for its ultra-democratic features - non-hierarchical, the use of revocable delegates, etc. Lenin, on the other hand, tended to identify democracy with a state ruled by a vanguard party. When the Bolsheviks actually gained power they centralised political power more and more in the hands of the Communist Party. For Lenin the dictatorship of the proletariat was 'the very essence of Marx's teaching' (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918). Notice, however, that Lenin's Three Sources article - referred to above - contains no mention of the phrase or Lenin's particular conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And for modern Leninists this concept, in Lenin's interpretation, is central to their politics. So, for its anti-democratic elitism and its advocacy of an irrelevant transitional society misnamed 'socialism', in theory and in practice, Leninism deserves the hostility of workers everywhere. (See also BOLSHEVISM; COMMUNIST PARTY; IMPERIALISM; LENIN; RUSSIA; TRANSITIONAL SOCIETY; VANGUARD.)
Reading
Harding, N., Lenin's Political Thought, 1982.

LETS (Local Exchange Trading Schemes). LETS schemes are essentially local barter clubs. A group of people with varying skills get together and agree to exchange the services they can provide with any other member without using conventional money. Each member has an account and when one member's services are used their account is credited with the exchange value of that service while that of the user is debited by the same amount. Clearly for all this a unit of account is needed. From an economic point of view, LETS club members are acting as self-employed; a LETS scheme is a club in which self-employed individuals barter their services. It could never extend beyond this to productive activities that require expensive equipment and plant and a large workforce --such as, precisely, the manufacture of the things that LETS members and the self-employed repair and service. There are also limits to the size a LETS scheme can attain before the increased running costs would outweigh the advantages of being members in the scheme.
Don't LETS schemes help recreate a 'local community spirit'? Maybe, but no more than any other local club. Do LETS schemes overcome the disadvantages of a money economy? LETS units of account are not money; they do not circulate. They only exist on paper or computer as a record of transactions. However, LETS schemes are in fact more cumbersome than money. After all, with real money that circulates an individual account of a person's exchange transactions doesn't have to be kept. In an exchange economy (as indicated by the full name Local Exchange Trading System) conventional money is the best means of exchange. Not only does it allow many more exchanges to take place than barter or a modified form of barter like LETS schemes, but the payment and receipt of interest also facilitates more exchanges. This is not a defence of the money economy but rather an acknowledgement of the impracticalities of retaining an exchange economy without money; of wanting to retain capitalism but without the nasty bits. (See also CO-OPERATIVES.)

Luxemburg, Rosa (1871-1919). Born in Russian Poland, she moved to Germany where she made a name for herself as an opponent of Bernstein's revisionism in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Her pamphlet Social Reform or Revolution (1899) was an attack on the view that capitalism could be gradually transformed into socialism by a process of social reform. A courageous agitator, she was arrested many times. The Socialist Standard for January 1907 carried a report of Luxemburg's trial at Weimar and commented:

Well done 'Red Rosa'; you have grandly expressed the sentiments of the class-conscious workers of the world and may you live to see the Social Revolution accomplished.

But Luxemburg was not opposed to all reforms; she agreed with the SPD's tactic on reform: that the working class should be encouraged to struggle for them in order to prepare itself for the eventual capture of political power. By 1910, however, it became obvious to her that reformism was not confined to Bernstein but included Kautsky, Bebel and other leaders of the SPD. She still did not blame advocating reforms as such and in fact her answer to the danger of reformism was to involve the workers themselves in a 'mass strike'. This was a tactic she had picked up from the 1905 revolution in Russia in which she had participated.
In her main theoretical work, The Accumulation of Capital (1913), Luxemburg argued that capitalism would collapse due to its inability to sell an ever increasing surplus product over and above what the workers could buy back. She believed that as capitalism approached this point the growing economic instability would cause the working class to establish socialism before the point of collapse was actually reached. However, she made the mistake of assuming that the level of demand was determined exclusively by consumption whereas in fact it is determined by consumption plus investment (capitalist spending on new means of production as opposed to consumer goods for themselves). Luxemburg led the opposition to the First World War in Germany, and eventually helped to form a new party, the Spartacus League. She had to spend most of the war in prison and it was there that she wrote the classic socialist statement against the war, the Junius Pamphlet (1915). She had already criticised Lenin for his conception of a centralised vanguard party in Organisational Questions of Russian Social Democracy (1904). She had also criticised Lenin for his insistence on the right of nations to self-determination - even describing Marx's demand for Polish independence as 'obsolete and mistaken'. And yet the differences between Luxemburg and Lenin are often exaggerated. In The Russian Revolution (1918), she again criticised the Bolsheviks for their attitude towards democracy; but in other respects her sympathies are unmistakable: 'the future everywhere belongs to Bolshevism', she concluded.
Rosa Luxemburg was freed from prison in late 1918 and participated in an armed uprising in Berlin. In January 1919 soldiers responsible to the SPD government murdered her and Karl Leibknecht.
Reading
Geras, N., The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg, 1976.

Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-tung). Born in the Hunan province of south central China; Mao's father was a poor peasant who became rich from trading in grain. Mao helped to form the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921. He led the Long March (1934-35) to Yanan where, after the collapse of the Japanese army, he defeated the Nationalists and proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949. As 'Chairman Mao' he instituted the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958-59) and the Cultural Revolution (which was at its height from 1966-68 but lasted several more years). Since Mao's death in 1976 there has been a power struggle within the CCP, starting with the putting down of the 'Gang of Four' (which included Mao's widow). (See also CHINA; MAOISM.)
Reading
Hollingworth, C., Mao, 1987.

Maoism. This term is never used in China or by its supporters elsewhere; rather what is called 'the thought of Mao Zedong' is a synthesis of Leninism, China's economic backwardness and Chinese philosophy.
Mao was basically a peasant revolutionary. At the time of the Chinese revolution (1949) the great majority of the population were peasants. Mao believed that the peasantry were discontented enough to be the agency of China's capitalist revolution. In his Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan (1927), Mao admitted that the coming revolution would not be socialist: 'To overthrow these feudal forces is the real objective of the revolution'.
His argument, derived from Lenin, was that capitalist development could be quickly telescoped into a socialist society. Mao administered China's capitalist industrialisation on the basis of a predominantly peasant population, combating the resulting contradictions (class struggles) with a state bureaucracy under strict CCP control and attempting to justify this by drawing on various elements of eastern philosophies. In On Contradiction (1937) Mao argued that class struggles would continue within a 'socialist' society and that the subjective will of the masses could overcome objective obstacles to economic development.
The key role assigned to the peasantry has meant that Maoism has been widely used as an ideology of peasant revolution in Third World countries. (See also CHINA; MAO.)
Reading
Womack, B., The Foundations of Mao Zedong's Political Thought, 1982.

Herbert Marcuse (July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a prominent German and later American philosopher and sociologist .A member of the Frankfurt School.

Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin to a Jewish family and served in the German Army, caring for horses in Berlin during the First World War. He then became a member of a Soldiers' Council that participated in the aborted socialist Spartacist uprising. Notably, the uprising was crushed by the Freikorps, a proto-fascist militia precursor to the Nazis. After completing his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Freiburg in 1922 on the German Kunstlerroman, he moved back to Berlin, where he worked in publishing. He returned to Freiburg in 1929 to write a habilitation with Martin Heidegger, which was published in 1932 as Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity. With his academic career blocked by the rise of the Third Reich, in 1933 Marcuse joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, emigrating from Germany that same year, going first to Switzerland, then the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1940.

Although he never returned to Germany to live, he remained one of the major theorists associated with the Frankfurt School, along with Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. In 1940 he published Reason and Revolution, a dialectical work studying Hegel and Marx.

During World War II Marcuse first worked for the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) on anti-Nazi propaganda projects. In 1943 he transferred to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). His work for the OSS involved research on Nazi Germany and denazification. After the dissolution of the OSS in 1945, Marcuse was employed by the US Department of State until 1951 as head of the Central European section, retiring after the death of his first wife in 1951.

In 1952 he began a teaching career as a political theorist, first at Columbia University and Harvard, then at Brandeis University from 1958 to 1965, where he was professor of philosophy and politics, and finally (he was by now past the usual retirement age), at the University of California, San Diego. He was a friend and collaborator of the historical sociologist Barrington Moore, Jr. and of the political philosopher Robert Paul Wolff. In the post-war period, he was the most explicitly political and left-wing member of the Frankfurt School, continuing to identify himself as a Marxist, a socialist, and a Hegelian.

Marcuse's critiques of capitalist society (especially his 1955 synthesis of Marx and Freud, Eros and Civilization, and his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man) resonated with the concerns of the leftist student movement in the 1960s. Because of his willingness to speak at student protests, Marcuse soon became known as "the father of the New Left," a term he disliked and rejected. His work heavily influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies. He had many speaking engagements in the US and Europe in the late 1960s and in the 1970s. He died on July 29, 1979, after having suffered a stroke during a visit to Germany. He had spoken at the Frankfurt Römerberggespräche, and second-generation Frankfurt School theorist Jürgen Habermas had invited him to the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg.

Before Marcuse, who wrote the worldwide well known and for the evolution of the Soviet Union important "Soviet-Marxism. A critical analysis", had taken the position to defend the arrested dissident Rudolf Bahro ("Die Alternative. Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus", engl. as "The Alternative for Eastern Europe") and to discuss in 1979 his theories of a "change from within", as it is called now.

Marx, Karl Heinrich (1818-1883). Born in Trier, southwest Germany, Marx was the son of a lawyer and raised as a Protestant Christian. He was a student at Bonn and Berlin universities before taking his Doctorate at Jena in the philosophy of science in ancient Greek philosophy. At Berlin he had come under the influence of Hegel's philosophy; Marx was briefly but actively involved with the Young Hegelian movement which produced a radical liberal critique of religion and Prussian autocracy. Marx then took up journalism, and at some point in late 1843 to early 1844 he became a communist while living in Paris. Marx set out his new ideas, for self-clarification, in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844). Just before he was expelled from Paris for being a subversive Marx had met Engels for the first time.
In Brussels, Marx and Engels sought to 'settle accounts' with their 'former philosophical conscience', Hegelian philosophy, and in so doing established the basic principles of their materialist theory of history in The German Ideology (1845). After being initially impressed with the anarchist Proudhon, Marx launched an attack with The Poverty of Philosophy (1846), his first published work. As members of the Communist League, Marx with the help of Engels wrote their Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848). After being journalistically involved in the revolutions of 1848, Marx and his family moved to London. There he wrote two analyses of the 1848 revolutions: The Class Struggles in France (1850) and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1851).
During the 1850s Marx intensified his study of political economy, courtesy of the British Museum Library. His main source of income during this period was Engels; but though often in dire poverty Marx was not the idle sponger he is sometimes made out to be. Marx was in fact a journalist for twenty years and was twice a newspaper editor (Rheinische Zeitung, 1842-3, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 1848-9). The following is an incomplete list of about 700 articles (many quite lengthy) up to 1862 when he gave up journalism:

1842-4: Rheinische Zeitung

Anekdota

Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher - about 30 articles
Vorwarts!

1848-9: Neue Rheinische Zeitung - about 100 articles
1850: Neue Rheinische Zeitung-Revue - about 5 articles plus 10 with Engels
1852-62: New York Daily Tribune - about 330 articles
1852-5: Neue Oder Zeitung - about 100 articles
1856: The Peoples' Paper - 6 articles
1857-60: New American Cyclopedia - 9 articles plus 7 with Engels
1859: Das Volk - 10 articles
1861-2: Die Presse - about 175 articles

This is in addition to all the books, pamphlets, speeches and correspondence! The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, which began publication in 1975 and will eventually comprise 122 volumes, will not contain all of Marx's writings.
The first result of Marx's study in Britain of political economy came in a manuscript first published in 1941 under the title Grundrisse (Outlines). In 1859 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy was published. This contains a Preface in which Marx gave a summary of the 'general result' which served as a 'guiding thread' for his empirical studies; and this Preface also contains the only auto-biographical account of Marx's intellectual development we have. In 1865 Marx delivered a report to the General Council of the First International, later published as a pamphlet under the title Wages, Price and Profit, arguing against the view that higher wages cannot improve the lot of the working class. In 1867 volume 1 of Capital (subtitled: A Critique of Political Economy) was published; volumes 2 and 3 were edited for publication posthumously by Engels.
As well as Marx's theoretical concerns, moreover, he was a political activist. He was deeply involved in the First International, serving on its General Council from 1864 to 1872. After the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune, Marx became notorious through his defence of the Commune in The Civil War in France (1871). He corresponded with socialists world-wide but, for the last several years of his life, Marx's health had deteriorated to the point where political work was impossible.
It is from Marx and Engels that we get that body of thought known as 'Marxism'. This comprises the labour theory of value, the materialist theory of history and the political theory of the class struggle. These are tools of analysis, which have been further developed and modified by socialists, to explain how the working class are exploited under capitalism and how world socialism will be the emancipation of our class. The validity of Marx's theories is independent of Marx the man. Nonetheless, criticisms of Marx have been made because of the misinterpretations and distortions of Marxism that have occurred in the twentieth century. (See also ENGELS; MARXISM.)
Reading
McLellan, D., Karl Marx: His Life and Thought, 1974.

Marxism. The socialist theory formulated by Marx and Engels and further developed by socialists. Marx regarded himself as having given expression, in theory, to a movement that was already going on; it was the direct product of the recognition of the class struggle and the anarchy of production in capitalist society. Socialist theory arose in opposition to capitalism, but expressed itself in terms of already existing ideas. Marx's close collaborator, Engels, identified three intellectual trends that they were able to draw upon:

Utopian socialism (Fourier, St. Simon, Owen)
German philosophy (Hegel, the Young Hegelians)
Classical political economy (Adam Smith, David Ricardo)

Socialist theory was a critical blending together of these three tendencies in the light of the actual class struggle.
The utopian socialists provided a constructive criticism of capitalism (its private property, its competitiveness, etc.) and some interesting ideas about the possibilities of socialism (dissolving the distinction between town and country, individual self-development, etc.). But, lacking an adequate understanding of the class nature of society and social change, they were unable to see socialism as anything other than an ideal society, one that could have been established at any time. What was needed was a politics that acknowledged the class struggle.
An adequate theory of society and social change is what Marx was to contribute to socialist theory, providing it with a scientific basis. Hegelian philosophy tried to explain history, law, political institutions and so on, in terms of the development of ideas. Marx inverted this method and argued that the explanation lay not in the development of ideas, but in the development of social classes and their material conditions of life. Marx's method for studying the general process of historical change is called the materialist conception of history.
By 1844 Marx had become a socialist and had reached the conclusion that the anatomy of 'civil society' (i.e. capitalism) was to be sought in political economy, in economics. Marx studied the classics of British political economy, Adam Smith and particularly David Ricardo. In Ricardo's labour theory of value the value of a commodity was said to be determined by the amount of labour used in producing it. Profits, according to some of Ricardo's followers, represented the unpaid labour of the workers; and so it was said that workers were not paid their full value and were cheated by their employers. Marx's version of the labour theory of value explained exploitation, not by the capitalists cheating the workers, but as the natural result of the workings of the capitalist market. Marx pointed out that what the workers sold to the capitalists was not their labour, but their labour power; workers sell their skills, but have to surrender the entire product to the employer. Profits do indeed represent unpaid labour. And workers are exploited even though they are generally paid the full value of what they have to sell. Marx produced a theory of how the capitalist economy functioned which is still broadly acceptable today.
The Socialist Party has further developed Marx's theories, and has made plain where it disagrees with Marx. We do not endorse Marx's ideas regarding struggles for national liberation, minimum reform programmes, labour vouchers and the lower stage of communism. On some of these points the Socialist Party does not reject what Marx advocated in his own day, but rejects their applicability to socialists now. There are, of course, other issues upon which the Socialist Party might appear to be at variance with Marx, but is in fact only disputing distortions of Marx's thinking. For example, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is usually understood in its Leninist interpretation. Indeed, it is a tragedy of world-historical proportions that Marx has been Leninized; what is basically a method of social analysis with a view to taking informed political action by the working class, has had its name put to a state ideology of repression of the working class. Instead of being known as a tool for working class self-emancipation, we have had the abomination of 'Marxist states'.
Undeterred by these developments, the Socialist Party has made its own contributions to socialist theory whilst combating distortions of Marx's ideas. In the light of all the above, the three main Marxist theories can be restated as:

The political theory of class struggle
The materialist theory of history
The labour theory of value

Marxism is not only a method for criticising capitalism; it also points to the alternative. Marxism explains the importance to the working class of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use and the means for establishing it. And while it is desirable that socialist activists should acquaint themselves with the basics of Marxism, it is absolutely essential that a majority of workers have a working knowledge of how capitalism operates and what the change to socialism will mean. (See also CLASS STRUGGLE; ENGELS; HISTORY; LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE; MARX; SOCIALIST PARTY.)
Reading
Graham, K., Karl Marx, Our Contemporary: Social Theory for a Post-Leninist World, 1992.

Materialism. In philosophy this is the view that everything that exists is, or at least depends upon, matter. In Marx's theory of history, however, materialism is usually referred to in a somewhat different sense. Marx called his theory the materialist conception of history, and he never used the terms 'historical materialism' (Engels' term) or 'dialectical materialism' (Plekhanov's term). In The German Ideology (1845), Marx had stated the materialist principles that were to serve as a guiding thread for his research: living people, their activities and their physical conditions of life. It is in this practical sense of the word (not in its acquisitive sense) that socialists are materialists in their outlook. (See also HISTORY; IDEALISM.)
Reading
Carver, T., Marx's Social Theory, 1982.

Means of production. Land, factories, railways, offices, communications, etc. A mode (or system) of production is constituted by its forces and relations of production. The forces of production in capitalism include means of production and labour power. (See also FORCES OF PRODUCTION; RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION.)

Monetarism. A capitalist economic theory which holds that increases in the 'money supply' cause inflation. Indeed, inflation is always a question of the 'money supply', defined precisely as the supply of currency (notes and coins). Monetarists, however, usually include bank deposits in their definition of 'money supply'. This is absurd since it attributes to banks the ability to create new purchasing power, whereas all they can do is redistribute existing purchasing power from their depositors to their borrowers. Only the central state can create new purchasing power, in the form of more currency.
The emergence of monetarism in the 1970s can be largely attributed to Milton Friedman. He has wrongly labelled Karl Marx a monetarist: 'Let me inform you that among my fellow Monetarists were Karl Marx' (Observer, 26.9.82).
Marx explained inflation on the basis of his labour theory of value. With convertibility (into gold) the price level is determined by the total amount of gold in circulation. Although prices rise and fall according to market conditions, there is no inflation (a sustained increase in the general price level). But with inconvertibility the required level of currency is determined by the total amount of commodities in circulation. If there is an issue of currency in excess of this amount, prices rise.
Of course, capitalism without inflation, as in the nineteenth century, no more solves working class problems than does capitalism with inflation, as in the years since the end of the Second World War. (See also INFLATION; KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS.)

Money. Historically, money developed on the basis of private property and the exchange of commodities. Money can function as a means of exchange, a measure of value, a general equivalent, a standard of price, a store of value.

Morality. A discussion of the principles which ought to govern human behaviour. Socialists are indignant about the effects of capitalism on people and the environment. This, however, does not affect the validity of Marxism as a scientific theory. Marxism reveals, as no other theory can, how capitalism came into being, what its dynamics are, why it must exploit and what it must be replaced with. Socialists are therefore hostile to morality when, as if in a timeless social and economic vacuum, people espouse rights, obligations, justice, etc. These (basically liberal) notions misrepresent the exploitative social relations of capitalism and are inappropriate to the struggle for socialism. (See also IDEOLOGY; MARXISM; SCIENCE.)
Reading
Lukes, S., Marxism and Morality, 1985.

Morris, William (1834-1896). The son of capitalist parents, he became a pioneer Marxian socialist. While a student at Oxford in the 1850s he was involved with a group of romantic artists known as the pre-Raphaelites because they reckoned that painting had degenerated after the Middle Ages with Raphael, the first Reformation painter. Morris tried his hand at painting but became more famous as a poet, though he was involved in a wide variety of arts and crafts.
Morris began his political life in the Radical wing of the Liberal Party. In the 1880 general election he worked for the return of Gladstone, but soon became disillusioned with the new Liberal government. In 1883 he joined the Democratic Federation, an association of working class radical clubs formed in 1881. Soon after Morris joined, it changed its name to the Social Democratic Federation, proclaiming Socialism as its aim and Marxism as its theory, though in fact it never did outlive its radical-Liberal origins as it continued to advocate the same reforms of capitalism. Morris set about studying Marxism and there can be no doubt that he did understand Marx's ideas well enough to be regarded as a Marxist. But that was not all. John Ruskin had defined 'art' as the expression of man's pleasure in his labour. Morris wholeheartedly endorsed this definition of art, with its implication that people would produce beautiful things - things of everyday use, not mere decorations - if they enjoyed their work. It was recognition that capitalism denied most people pleasure in their work that led him to become a socialist.
Hyndman, the man who had been largely instrumental in founding the Democratic Federation, was an authoritarian and tried to run the SDF as his personal organisation. This led to discontent and eventually, at the end of 1884, to a split in which Morris became the key figure in the breakaway Socialist League. Unlike the reformist SDF, the Socialist League saw its task as simply to make socialists. As Morris wrote:

Our business, I repeat, is the making of socialists, i.e., convincing people that socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles into practice. Until we have that mass of opinion, action for a general change that will benefit the whole people is impossible. (Where Are We Now?, 1890)

Morris found himself as the main theorist of the Socialist League. He never denied that the working class could capture political power, including parliament; but his refusal to advocate the use of parliament to get reforms upset a group, including Marx's daughter Eleanor, who in the end broke away from the Socialist League. This left Morris at the mercy of the real anti-parliamentarians and anarchists, who eventually came to dominate the League with their advocacy of violence and bomb throwing. In 1890 Morris and the Hammersmith branch seceded, carrying on independent socialist activity as the Hammersmith Socialist Society.
William Morris was an outstanding socialist activist: he frequently toured the country giving talks and wrote a prodigious amount of literature, culminating in his masterpiece about a socialist utopia, News from Nowhere (1890). He died in 1896, but eight years later the Socialist Party was formed from a group that broke with the SDF (and for much the same reasons as the League). The Socialist Party, when formulating its Declaration of Principles in 1904, drew heavily upon the Manifesto of the Socialist League that was drafted by Morris. (See also HYNDMAN; IMPOSSIBILISM; SOCIALIST PARTY.)
Reading
Coleman, S. and O'Sullivan, P., William Morris and News from Nowhere: A Vision for Our Time, 1990.
Thompson, E.P., William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, 1977.

Nation. A collection of people with their own culture and claiming a specific territory. The geo-political entity of the state and its machinery of government are not necessarily the same as the nation; and this forms the ideological basis for nationalism - the belief that a nation should become a state. (See also NATIONALISM; STATE.)

Nationalisation. The wages system under new management. Nationalisation is state capitalism and does not differ from private capitalism as far as the exploitation of the workers is concerned. They still need their trade unions, and the strike weapon, to protect themselves from their employers. The Socialist Party has never supported nationalisation. It is not socialism, nor is it a step towards socialism. (See also STATE CAPITALISM.)
Reading
Buick, A. and Crump, J., State Capitalism, 1986.

Nationalism. An ideology which emphasises the distinctiveness of a nation and usually points to its statehood. Nationalist movements arose with the development of capitalism and the state. In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx supported some nationalist movements because they were historically progressive in that they served the class interests of the rising bourgeoisie in its struggle against the traditional aristocracy. In the twentieth century, nationalism is associated with movements for 'self-determination' and 'ethnic cleansing'.
Socialists do not support movements for national liberation. Certainly socialism will allow the fullest linguistic and cultural diversity, but this cannot be achieved through nationalism. Marxism explains how workers are exploited and unfree, not as particular nationalities, but as members of a class. To be in an 'oppressed minority' at all it is usually necessary to first belong to the working class. From this perspective, identifying with the working class provides a rational basis for political action. The objective is a stateless world community of free access. Given that nationalism does nothing to further this understanding, however, it is an obstruction to world socialism. (See also NATION; STATE; STATE CAPITALISM.)
Reading
Harris, N., National Liberation, 1993.

Needs. Wants of the means of living. Needs have a physiological and a historical dimension. Basic physiological needs derive from our human nature (e.g. food, clothing and shelter), but historically conditioned needs derive from developments in the forces of production. In capitalism, needs are manipulated by the imperative to sell commodities and accumulate capital; basic physiological needs then take the historically conditioned form of 'needs' for fast food, fashionable clothing and large houses, or whatever. The exact type of 'needs' current will depend on the particular stage of historical development.
In socialism, a society of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use, human beings will be ends in themselves and consumption will take place according to their self-defined needs. (See also HUMAN NATURE.)
Reading
Heller, A., The Theory of Need in Marx, 1976.

Organic composition of capital. The ratio of constant to variable capital (c/v). Constant capital is that money invested in machinery, buildings and raw materials. In the process of production their value is only transferred to the finished product. Variable capital is that money invested in labour power and is so called because this is the part of the total capital that increases in value in the process of production. An understanding of the organic composition of capital is important for ascertaining the rate of profit. (See also CAPITAL; LABOUR POWER.)

Overpopulation. In his Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, first published in 1798, the Reverend Thomas Malthus argued that population growth always tended to outstrip the growth in food supply, with the result that periodically population growth was checked by famine, disease and war. It was, and still remains, a very popular apology for the poverty of capitalism.
Karl Marx showed that there is no such thing as a general law of population that applied to all societies and to all times. At times under capitalism there seemed to be overpopulation and at others underpopulation. But this had nothing to do with the birth rate. It was a feature that appeared at the various stages of the business cycle. In depressions there were more people than jobs offered by capitalist industry. In booms, on the other hand, there was a comparative shortage of workers (as in the years after the Second World War when immigrants were recruited to make up the shortage).
It was not just a question of the number of people; moreover, productivity had to taken into account. Beginning with the industrial revolution, technological development increased social productivity so that more food was provided for the increasing population. However, food is not produced directly to meet human needs but rather for profit. Capitalism is a system of artificial scarcity, so creating poverty amidst potential abundance and the illusion that there are too many people and not enough to go around. (ABUNDANCE; ECOLOGY; GREENS.)

Owen, Robert (1771-1858). Born and died in Newtown, Wales. In 1800 he became a partner in a mill at New Lanark, Scotland, and was able to show in practice that people work better if their living and working conditions are improved. This confirmed the theory he was to set out in A New View of Society (1813), that the establishment of a better society was all a question of changing the environment. At first he addressed his pleas to the manufacturers and aristocrats; but when this failed he turned to establishing communitarian colonies, mostly in America, and most of which failed. In later years he was to be a formative influence on the co-operative movement and helped found the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union in 1834.
The term 'socialist' is found for the first time in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine of November 1827. For Owen and his followers, 'social' signified 'co-operation' and a socialist supported co-operation. They criticised the private enterprise and competition that produced poverty, unemployment and crime. In their proposed 'Villages of Co-operation', private property, money, the Church, the legal and penal systems were all to be abolished and common ownership introduced. Owen's labour standard of value was to determine the distribution of goods, though some would be given according to need. In the 1830s some of his followers established 'labour bazaars' where workers brought the products of their labour and received in exchange a labour note which entitled them to take from the bazaar any items which had taken the same time to produce. These bazaars were failures, but the idea of labour-time vouchers, or 'labour money', appeared in substantially similar forms in France with Proudhon, in Germany with Rodbertus and in England with Hodgskin and Gray. The idea was also to appear in Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875). This proposition has been seized upon by left-wingers as proof that Marx presumed the use of money in the early phase of communism. But in this work, as elsewhere, Marx is clear that communism (in its early and mature phases) will be based on common ownership and have no use for money:

Within the co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products.

Marx was quite adamant that his and Owen's suggested labour-time vouchers would not function as money:

Owen's 'labour-money', for instance, is no more 'money' than a ticket for the theatre. Owen presupposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely inconsistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption (Capital, Vol. 1).
These producers may . . . receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate (Capital, Vol. 2).

Marx only suggested labour-time vouchers as a possibility; given the low level of development of the productive forces, he believed that this was one way of restricting individual consumption. The objective was, for Marx and Owen: from each according to ability, to each according to need. And this is now realisable, as soon as a majority wants it. For Owen in the early nineteenth century the problem of the underdevelopment of the forces and relations of production was even more acute; and it is probably for this reason that he did not recognise the existence of the class struggle. This is why Marx and Engels called his ideas (along with those of Fourier and Saint-Simon) 'Utopian Socialism'. (See also CO-OPERATIVES; UTOPIAN SOCIALISM.)
Reading
Taylor, K., The Political Ideas of the Utopian Socialists, 1982.