Absolute Surplus Value: The amount of surplus value created by extending the working day, as opposed to relative surplus value.
Actually Existing Socialism (AES): A term used to describe socialist nations which currently exist today, such as China, Cuba, the DPRK, Laos, and Vietnam.
Adventurism: Political tactics or strategies performed without the consent and support of the masses, usually with “no stable or serious principles, programme, tactics, organisation, and no roots among the masses.” – Lenin
Anarchism: Any ideology which rejects the political struggle to seize state power. Characterised by a hostility to all political parties as well as centralist and hierarchical methods of organisation, including democratic centralism. Tactics often centre on the role of individuals, including individual acts of terrorism and violence. See: Propaganda of the Deed.
Anarcho-Syndicalism: A form of anarchism which seeks to overthrow capitalism and the state through a federal structure of militant trade unions, rather than a Communist Party.
Antagonism: In philosophy, antagonism is one of the two basic modes of change, contradiction is the other. Antagonism and contradiction are not the same. Antagonism is the mode of destruction. Contradiction is the mode of unity and struggle of opposites internal to a process that serves as the basic development. At a certain stage, under definite conditions, antagonism replaces and destroys contradiction.
Antagonistic Contradiction: See: Antagonism.
Aristocracy: An upper class which inherits land and private property as a circumstance of birth.
Armed Struggle: A special form of class struggle involving the use of weaponry and physical force.
Base: See: Economic Base.
Biological Determinism: The belief that human behaviour is caused by genetic or physiological factors, rather than the environment. In feminism, this group saw femininity and women’s oppression as a product of inferior biology.
Black Nationalism: A form of anti-racist identity politics represented by political figures like Malcolm X which seeks to organise black people in struggle against “white supremacy” without dismantling capitalism.
Bourgeoisie: “The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistence and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence.” This exploiter class appropriates the surplus value of the proletariat through wage slavery, without producing anything of value itself.
Bourgeois Feminism: Any type of feminism which emerged from bourgeois intellectuals, e.g., liberal feminism or radical feminism.
Bourgeois Revolution: A revolution led by the bourgeoisie against feudalism, e.g., the Glorious Revolution in England and the French Revolution.
Capital: A type of commodity which is bought for the purpose of selling it again and making a profit. Self-expanding value.
Capitalism: A form of society usually succeeding feudalism ruled by a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in which the production of commodities for exchange is dominant.
Capitalist: See: Bourgeoisie.
Capitalist Crisis: See: Crisis of Overproduction.
Class: “A large group of people differing from others by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it.” – Lenin
Class Against Class: The political line of the international communist movement under Stalin between 1928 and 1934 which opposed co-operation between communists and social democrats.
Class Collaboration: Collaboration between different classes, e.g., between capitalists and proletariat, usually to the detriment of the oppressed class.
Class Consciousness: The awareness of belonging to a specific class with specific class interests.
Class Politics: Any ideology which centres the role of class in the pursuit of power over other categories of identity, e.g., Marxism-Leninism. See also: Identity Politics.
Class Society: Any society divided into different classes as a result of the appropriation of the surplus value of an exploited class by an exploiting class, e.g., slave society, feudalism, and capitalism.
Class Structure: The combination of all classes and class strata within a society as a whole.
Class Struggle: The competition between different classes as a result of antagonistic class interests. Along with the development of the productive forces, this is the driving force of development under class society.
Colonialism: The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over a nation through occupation or economic coercion and exploitation.
Commodity: A product of human labour which has both a use-value and an exchange value and represents a share of the socially necessary labour time of a particular society. The smallest economic unit of capitalist society. “A commodity is, in the first place, a thing that satisfies a human want; in the second place, it is a thing that can be exchanged for another thing.” – Lenin
Communism: “The doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.” – Engels. Also used to refer to the higher stage of socialism in which the means of production are fully socialised, different classes have ceased to exist, and the state has withered away.
Communist International (Comintern): An international Marxist-Leninist organisation which existed from 1919 to 1943. It was formed as part of the progressive split with the imperialist and reformist socialists of the Second International. It was dissolved in 1943 in an attempt to extend the period of peace between the socialist and capitalist bloc during WWII, then was partially succeeded by the Communist Information Bureau or Cominform, made up of European Communist Parties from 1947 to 1956, which was then dissolved under Khruschev’s leadership.
Communist Party: A political party of a new type guided by Marxism-Leninism which represents the vanguard force of the most revolutionary, class-conscious, and advanced members of the proletariat. The Communist Party is organised under the principles of democratic centralism and is established in order to coordinate the efforts of the wider working class in all of its organisations as it wages class struggle, as well as all other progressive classes. The ultimate aim of this is to lead them towards proletarian revolution, the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, and the construction of socialism.
Comprador Bourgeoisie: A stratum of the capitalist class, usually in a colonised nation, which supports and represents the interests of foreign imperialist capitalists in opposition to the native national bourgeoisie.
Congress: A meeting of communists, usually at a national or international level, during which party line is decided and a leadership is elected.
Conservatism: An ideology which seeks to conserve elements of or return to an old economic and political order, or traditional customs and values.
Constitutional Monarchy: A system of government in which the monarchy persists under capitalism with powers limited by and subordinate to a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Constant Capital: The means of production as a form of capital which does not produce any value in and of itself. Capital with a “high organic composition” (a higher-than-average amount of constant capital compared with variable capital) yields a lower rate of profit. Under capitalism, there is therefore more investment in variable capital than constant capital. Under socialism, it is the reverse, creating a more productive and useful system.
What is “expended on means of production (machinery, tools, raw materials, etc.), whose value, without any change, is transferred (immediately or part by part) to the finished product.” – Lenin.
Contradiction: Two opposing forces which counteract each other. May be antagonistic or non-antagonistic.
Counterrevolution: The overthrow of a progressive class by another representing a less advanced mode of production, e.g., the capitalist counterrevolution in Russia.
Craft Union: A trade union representing skilled workers of a specific craft, e.g., carpentry or painting, rather than workers across an entire industry regardless of skill. See: Labour Aristocracy
Crisis of Overproduction: A general feature of capitalism in which the increasing accumulation of the means of production, the provision of credit, and the expansion of the reserve army of labor lead to the production of more commodities than can be sold on the market. Predicted by Marx to occur about every ten years. Part of the cycle of “boom and bust”.
Defeatism: Support for one’s own defeat, e.g., Trotskyist support for the defeat of proletarian governments, or Lenin’s support for the defeat of Russia during WWI in order to refocus on class struggle.
Democratic Centralism: A Marxist-Leninist organising principle defined by the submission of the minority to the majority, freedom of criticism, and unity of action.
Democratic Revolution: A revolution against a feudal monarch or fascist tyrant in order to establish a liberal democracy, usually led by the working class as a first step towards a full socialist revolution. Not to be confused with a bourgeois revolution which is led by the capitalist class.
Dialectics: Dialectics is a method of inquiry and dialogue designed to reveal contradictions within one’s beliefs, leading to a more nuanced and clarified understanding. It involves a dynamic process of debate and discussion, seeking to uncover truths, refine ideas, and hone the skill of persuasive speaking. In the realm of dialectics, the emphasis is on the transformative nature of dialogue, recognizing that through the exploration of opposing viewpoints, a richer and more comprehensive comprehension of concepts can be achieved.
Dialectical Materialism: Dialectical materialism is a philosophical framework that combines materialist principles with dialectical reasoning. It applies the dialectical method to the analysis of material conditions, societal structures, and historical processes. It recognizes contradictions within phenomena and posits that change arises from the internal conflicts of asymmetrical opposing forces.
Dialectical Negation: In dialectics, negation refers to the process of contradiction leading to the negation or overcoming of an existing state or condition. It’s a transformative process where one state gives rise to its opposite, resulting in change.
The growth of a seed (affirmative) negates its previous state as a seed (negative), leading to the emergence of a plant.
(Class) Dictatorship: The rule of one class over another.
Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie as ruling class after a successful bourgeois revolution. A tyranny of the minority, usually initiating the period of social development in which capitalism is dominant.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat: The proletariat as ruling class after a successful proletarian revolution. A democracy of the majority, usually initiating the period of social development in which socialism is dominant. It is used to defend the gains of the revolution and build socialism after taking power.
Division of Labour: The way in which the labour of a society is organised between different producers. “A system of social relations in which individual producers create diverse products.” – Lenin
Double Burden: The burden placed on women of both productive labour (wage labour) and reproductive labour (domestic labour), resulting in two simultaneous forms of exploitation.
Dual Power: A revolutionary situation in which the dictatorships of two classes compete for power, e.g., between the capitalist duma and the proletarian soviets after the February Revolution in Russia.
Dualism: Any branch of philosophy which argues that matter and consciousness are two equal and disconnected entities, e.g., that the mind is separate from the body rather than coming from it.
Economic Base: The sum total of the relations of production at a certain level of the development of the productive forces which together form the economic structure of society, e.g., class relations, labour relations, relationship to the means of production, etc. The political, legal, and cultural superstructure then emerges from this economic base. These two forces interact, but the economic base is dominant.
Economism: The focus on purely economic demands, such as higher wages and a shorter working day, over political demands, such as revolution or anti-imperialist struggle.
Evolution: Gradual, quantitative change.
Exchange Value: Also known as value. The quantity of one commodity which can be exchanged for another at a specific time on the market, e.g., 20 yards of linen = 1 coat. “The proportion, in which a certain number of use-values of one kind can be exchanged for a certain number of use-values of another kind.” – Lenin
Faction: A subsection of a class or a minority of a political party which acts in opposition to other parts or against the majority.
Fascism: A particular form of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship understood as “The open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” – Dimitrov
Feudalism: A mode of production where most of the labour of society is performed by rural serfs whose surplus value is appropriated by an aristocratic nobility of hereditary landlords on whose land they live and work, usually in conjunction with a monarch.
Finance Capital: Capital controlled by the banks and employed by the industrialists as a result of the concentration of production and capital, leading to monopoly and the merging of banking with industry.
Gender: A term originally used in linguistics which, following the development of bourgeois feminism and Queer Theory, can now refer either to sex, “gender identity”, or socially constructed stereotypes associated with the sexes, i.e., masculinity and femininity.
Gender Identity Theory: An assortment of ideas around sex and identity which emerged out of Queer Theory and seek to deconstruct sex as a material reality, instead centering the concept of “gender identity” as a truer way to categorise human beings. Gender identity is understood as an innate sense of being male, female, or something else. Within the framework of this theory, the invalidation of this subjective sense of self is considered a form of discrimination which causes harm to others, leading to hostility between groups.
Historical Materialism: The application of the principles of dialectical materialism to understanding social development and history. Historical materialism recognises that the chief determinant force in social development is the development of the productive forces of society and, under class society, the consequent class struggle. Historical materialism broadly recognises five stages of human history: primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism.
Historical Nihilism: A term used by the Communist Party of China to refer to anti-communist falsifications of history.
Ho Chi Minh Thought: Marxism-Leninism as applied to the conditions of contemporary Vietnam, and as developed by the revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.
Hyper-Imperialism/
Super-Imperialism: A proposed period in the era of imperialism where the interests of lesser imperialist powers are subordinated to the interests of the United States, creating the potential for an anti-imperialist alliance made up of the majority of humanity, including both socialist and sovereign-seeking capitalist nations. Not to be confused with ultra-imperialism.
Idealism: Any branch of philosophy which regards some form of consciousness as primary to matter.
Identity Politics: Any ideology which centres the role of individual identity categories in the pursuit of power rather than class, e.g., Black Nationalism, radical feminism, Queer Theory, white supremacy, etc. See also: Class Politics.
Imperialism: “Capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, and the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.” – Lenin
Industrial Capital: Any form of capital involving the production of commodities, e.g., factories.
Intellectual: See intelligentsia.
Intelligentsia: An upper stratum of the proletariat consisting of educated mental and cultural workers and professionals, e.g., artists, writers, journalists, scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, etc.
Interest: A part of profit paid by an industrial capitalist to a finance capitalist in exchange for credit.
Intersectionality Theory: A form of identity politics which promotes an understanding of oppression as the product of various intersecting identity categories, e.g., race, disability, ethnicity, sexuality, etc., rather than as a product of class society. Opposed to ideologies rooted in class politics, like Marxism, Intersectionality Theory sees class as merely a single factor of oppression among many, rather than the root of all other forms of oppression and discrimination.
Juche: Marxism-Leninism as applied to the conditions of the contemporary DPRK, and as developed by the revolutionary leader Kim Il Sung.
Labour: The physical act of creating value. Can be described in concrete forms, e.g., weaving and tailoring, or an abstract form, e.g., human labour in general.
Labour Aristocracy: A traitorous, higher stratum of the working class in imperialist countries which is bribed by the imperialists to divide the working class and prevent revolution. Lenin used this term specifically to describe members of the craft unions, which no longer exist in Britain today.
Labour Power: The capacity to create value through physical acts. Under capitalism, human labour power is a commodity which can be purchased by a capitalist and used to create surplus value which is then appropriated.
Labour Theory of Value: Emerging out of the ideas of classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the Labour Theory of Value argues that the exchange value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of socially necessary labor required to produce it, rather than other factors, such as supply and demand.
Labour Time: The amount of time spent performing labour.
Landlord: Under feudalism, one of the two main classes usually belonging to the aristocracy which is characterised by its ownership of the land and its exploitation of the peasantry or serfs through rent.
Under capitalism, anyone who rents out their private property for someone else to use. Can belong to multiple classes.
Law of Equal Exchange: The law by which even if all commodities are traded at their value, the capitalist will still make a profit due to the value added by labour.
Law of Quantity into Quality: This law proposes that quantitative changes, when they reach a critical point, lead to qualitative changes. In other words, accumulating small, incremental changes can eventually bring about a fundamental shift in the nature of a system or process.
Leap: In philosophy, a rapid qualitative change.
Legalism: Only engaging in tactics of struggle that are permitted under bourgeois law.
Liberal Democracy: A form of bourgeois dictatorship under capitalism usually characterised by universal suffrage and parliamentary elections. The most favourable system for organising towards a proletarian revolution.
Liberal Feminism: An early branch of bourgeois feminism which seeks to achieve sexual equality through political and legal reforms under capitalism, such as universal suffrage, a regulated sex trade, or a greater number of female capitalists.
Liberalism: The ideology of the bourgeoisie which seeks reform under the framework of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship.
Liquidationism: Liquidationism “consists ideologically in negation of the revolutionary class struggle of the socialist proletariat in general, and denial of the hegemony of the proletariat”. – Lenin. When taken to its logical conclusion, liquidationism denies the need for a Communist Party at all, leading to its dissolution or collapse.
Lumpenproletariat
A criminal underclass. “Passive decaying matter of the lowest layers of the old society which is here and there thrust into the progressive movement by a proletarian revolution; however in accordance with its whole way of life, it is more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues.” – Marx and Engels
Manual Workers: Both productive and unproductive labourers who perform physical labour, rather than mental tasks. A lower stratum of the working class.
Market: The sum total of all the relations of commodity exchange within class society.
Marxism-Leninism: The collection of ideas primarily formulated by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin, including among other things dialectical and historical materialism, the labour theory of value, and the theory of class struggle in the revolutionary transition out of capitalism and into socialist society. The world outlook of the class-conscious proletariat.
Materialism: Materialism is a foundational philosophical perspective asserting the primacy of the material world in shaping reality. It posits that tangible, physical elements constitute the basis of existence, and consciousness, including ideas and thoughts, emerges from and is influenced by material conditions.
Means of Production: The tools, technology, machinery, energy, etc., needed to produce goods and the means of survival. Owned by the capitalist class under capitalism, and the working class under socialism.
Mechanical Materialism: A form of materialism which seeks to understand the world through fixed laws and external forces, rather than interaction and internal development.
Mechanical Negation: Putting an end to an object’s development through an external force.
Merchant Capitalism: An early form of capitalism defined by the exchange of commodities on a market for profit, e.g., shopkeeping and trading.
Metaphysics: A branch of philosophy characterised by the study of the nature of individual, static objects or phenomena in isolation from each other, e.g., as developed by Aristotle.
Mode of Production: The sum of all the productive forces and relations of production at a particular stage of human development, e.g., feudalism, capitalism, and socialism.
Money: The form of value in a society used as “universal equivalent” in exchange, meaning against which all other commodities can be valued and traded.
Monopoly: Control over an entire section of the market by a single capitalist or group of capitalists working together.
Monopoly Capitalism: An advanced stage of capitalism resulting from the increasing concentration of production where capitalists cease to compete amongst each other and instead unite in large organisations, such as syndicates, combines, and trusts, in order to share the profits of entire sections of the economy. See: Imperialism
Multipolarity: A predicted stage following the decline of US hegemony in which there will be a more equal balance of power between nations.
Nation: “A historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” – Stalin
National Bourgeoisie: The stratum of the bourgeoisie, particularly in a colonised country, which can be persuaded to join with the workers in support of a democratic revolution against imperialism and occupation.
National Chauvinism: The belief that one’s country is flawless or superior to others.
National Liberation: The liberation of a country from imperialism or colonialism.
National Nihilism: The belief that one’s country is hopeless or inferior to others.
Nationalism: Any ideology which prioritises the pursuit of the perceived interests of a nation’s people as a whole, rather than individual classes. Can be progressive in the case of a colonised country, or reactionary in the case of an imperialist country.
NEP: The New Economic Policy introduced by Lenin in 1921 after the period of war communism which was characterised by the introduction of a mixed economy of small private businesses alongside large state enterprises as a means of attracting foreign capital and technology and developing the Soviet Union’s productive forces. Lenin considered this a necessary form of state capitalism and a strategic retreat from socialism. Stalin ended the NEP in 1928 as a step towards full socialisation of the economy.
Neocolonialism: A form of colonialism and imperialism marked by the granting of formal sovereignty but informally maintaining control of a nation through political and economic coercion. “The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.” – Kwame Nkrumah
Neoliberalism: The period after the dismantling of state capitalism marked by mass privatisation in certain capitalist countries in an attempt to deal with capitalist crisis without proceeding to socialism, e.g., post-Pinochet Chile, post-Thatcher Britain, and post-Reagan USA.
New Cold War: The recent era of hostility and aggression from the United States towards China, currently stopping short of direct armed conflict.
Organic Composition: The ratio between constant and variable capital within any particular enterprise. An enterprise or project with a high organic composition has a higher amount of constant capital compared to variable capital, e.g., the Channel Tunnel, and therefore provides a lower rate of profit.
Pacifism: The rejection of violence of all kinds, even in self-defence and even to put an end to more violence.
Particularity of Contradiction: The particularity of contradiction emphasises that while contradictions are universal, their specific manifestations and characteristics can vary based on the particular conditions, context, and nature of the entities involved.
Party Line: The established positions of a political party on various issues.
Patriarchy: Any society in which men are classed as superior to women.
Patriotism: Love of one’s country and its people and the desire to see them thrive.
Peasantry: A rural class which came to dominate in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, referring to those feudal serfs who remained in the countryside and were allocated their own plots of land. Unlike the proletariat, the peasantry owned their own means of production but usually experienced exploitation through taxation. The peasantry included small, medium, and large strata with different class interests and was one of the key, revolutionary classes in Russia and China.
People’s Democracy: A form of dictatorship of the proletariat born out of the popular front struggles against fascism and imperialism in Eastern Europe and Asia, e.g., the German Democratic Republic and the People’s Republic of China. Due to the participation of various different classes in their revolutions, these socialist states exhibited different features to the Soviet Union, including multi-party systems led by the Communist Party, as well as different types of representative democracy that reflected their broader class base, rather than soviet councils.
People’s Democratic Dictatorship: The system of socialist democracy originally developed by the Communist Party of China under Mao reflecting the reality of the Chinese Revolution: a united front of the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national (anti-imperialist) bourgeoisie, under the leadership of the working class. See also: People’s Democracy
Perestroika: The Russian word for “restructuring.” Refers to the period of political and economic reform in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev which included decentralising the government and economy and implementing liberal, pro-market reforms and privatisation.
Permanent Revolution: Opposed to Lenin and Stalin’s theory of Socialism in One Country, Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution argued that the socialist revolution in Russia and the east could not be sustained without revolution in the advanced capitalist countries in the west.“Only the victory of the proletariat in the West could protect Russia from bourgeois restoration and assure it the possibility of rounding out the establishment of socialism.” – Trotsky.
Personal Property: Not a Marxist term, but used colloquially to refer to private property that is used to meet one’s own personal needs, rather than for extracting surplus value or profit, e.g., a personal home or personal items of consumption.
Petty Bourgeoisie: Small business owners or tradespeople who own their own means of production but also live off their labour.
Planned Economy: An economywhose production is organised around a plan rather than the anarchy of the market. One of the fundamental features of socialist societies.
Postmodernism: In philosophy, a term used to refer to branches of philosophy which have emerged since the 1960s and argue for new interpretations of the world, rejecting previous interpretations, particularly during the modernist movement, which are viewed as essentialist and reductive. This includes any idea of a single, foundational historical narrative, whether liberal or Marxist. Examples of philosophy which have been referred to as postmodernist include poststructuralism and postcolonialism.
Poststructuralism: A branch of idealist philosophy which emerged in the West in the 1960s and ‘70s. Poststructuralists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida criticised the way in which the previous structuralist movement relied on “centers” and “binary oppositions” to understand the world, questioning the ways in which language had been used to define power structures and arguing that this reinforced the inequalities themselves. Instead, they argued for new, anti-essentialist language and interpretations of the differences and inequalities between different groups in the mistaken belief that this would undermine the inequalities between them.
Primary Contradiction: In the context of dialectical materialism, the primary contradiction refers to the fundamental and decisive contradiction within a system or process. It’s the contradiction that drives change and development.
Primitive Accumulation: “The forcible divorcement of the worker from the means of production off the land, the stealing of communal lands, the system of colonies and national debts, protective tariffs, and the like. ‘Primitive accumulation’ creates the ‘free’ proletarian at one extreme, and the owner of money, the capitalist, at the other.” – Lenin.
Primitive Communism: A pre-class form of society prior to the emergence of private property in which the means of production were shared and almost everything was produced for consumption, e.g., early hunter-gatherer communities
Private Property: A social relation which forms the basis of class society in which individuals or groups have right of ownership over something, sometimes counterposed to personal property as any property which is owned at the expense of others who need it, usually to extract surplus value or profit.
Privilege Theory: A form of identity politics which argues that different identity categories grant different privileges, which must therefore be challenged as individuals in order to end discrimination. Within this framework, white people are seen to gain from racism and men are seen to gain from misogyny, rather than a ruling class benefiting from the division of the workers at the expense of the workers as a whole.
Productive Forces: The various forces of production in society, including the means of production (such as tools and machinery), and the labourers themselves, including their level of skill and organisation.
Productive/Unproductive Labour: Productive labour is labour which creates surplus value embedded in a commodity, e.g., miners, farmers, and manufacturers. Unproductive labour is labour employed out of the surplus value created by others but which does not create value itself, e.g., cashiers, shop assistants, waiters, and domestic servants. This divide represents one stratification of the working class and to some Marxists divides the revolutionary proletariat at the base of society from other types of labourer above them.
Profit: One of the portions of surplus value created by labour, alongside rent and interest, which is appropriated by a capitalist. “The ratio between surplus value and the total capital invested in an undertaking.” – Lenin
Progressive Federalism: A federal system of bourgeois government formed out of national parliaments across Britain.
Proletariat: The class which emerged in the development of capitalist society which lives entirely from the sale of its labour in exchange for a wage, which does not own the means of production, and which therefore does not draw profit from any kind of capital. Can either be used to refer to the working class as a whole, or else only refer to the productive labourer, rather than unproductive labourers who are paid out of the surplus value created by the proletariat proper.
Propaganda: Any information which is shared, usually on behalf of a specific class or ideology, e.g., the Guardian and the Morning Star are both propaganda outlets which represent the political positions of two different classes in Britain..
Propaganda of the Deed: The anarchist tactic of performing individual acts of rebellion in the belief that others will follow, leading to social revolution.
Qualitative Changes: Certain key stages in a plant’s life cycle, like germination, flowering, and seed production, represent qualitative changes. These stages introduce new structures and functions, fundamentally transforming the plant’s biological state.
Quality: Any characteristic which makes something what it is and without which it would be something else, e.g., the colour or nature of something.
Quantitative Changes: As a plant grows, it undergoes numerous quantitative changes, a quantitative change in a plant might involve an increase in the number of leaves, the length of stems, or the number of flowers. These changes do not alter the basic nature of the plant; it remains the same kind of plant.
Quantity: Any characteristic which can be counted or measured, e.g., size or weight.
Queer Theory: A bourgeois field of identity politics emerging out of post-structuralism, women’s studies, and gay and lesbian studies which seeks to reframe various material phenomena such as sex and sexuality as social constructs, e.g., through non-conventional use of language. This is done in an attempt to blur the lines between binary categories such as men and women, or gay people and straight people, with the categories themselves seen to be harmful due to “reinforcing” hierarchies of oppression. Famous queer theorists include Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.
Radical Feminism: A form of bourgeois feminism which sees women’s oppression as the oldest form of oppression, resulting from “patriarchy”, rather than class society. Radical Feminism seeks to unite women as a class of themselves against patriarchy, rather than to unite workers of both sexes against capitalism.
Reactionary: Acting against progress, usually progress towards a new economic system. See: Counterrevolution.
Reformism: Any ideology which seeks to achieve change solely through piecemeal reforms. Reformists seek to either fix capitalism or transition to socialism exclusively through trade unions or parliamentary reforms without a revolutionary leap.
Relative Surplus Value: The amount of surplus value created by reducing the time necessary to produce a commodity, e.g., through technological advances.
Rent: One of the portions of surplus value created by labour, alongside profit and interest, which is appropriated by a landlord.
Republic: A form of bourgeois or proletarian state in which supreme power is held by elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated leader rather than a monarch.
Relations of Production: The sum total of social relationships that people must enter into in order to survive, to produce, and to reproduce their means of life, including relationships between different classes and the means of production, as well as between the classes themselves. This is contrasted with the productive forces which are hampered by relations of private ownership.
Reserve Army of Labour: Under capitalism, the replacement of workers by machinery leads to high unemployment which increases working-class competition and drives down wages. One of the factors of the periodic crisis of overproduction under capitalism.
Revisionism: Distortions of Marxism or Marxism-Leninism under the same name.
Revolution: A rapid, qualitative change, particularly the change from one mode of production to the next, e.g., the final transition from capitalism to socialism. “The act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon.” – Engels
Second International: The international organisation of revolutionary and reformist socialist parties which existed between 1889 and 1916. Lenin led a progressive split with the revisionist socialists over their support for imperialism during WWI, leading to the founding of the Communist International or Comintern.
Serf: The principal exploited class under feudalism. The serf owns their own means of production, but not their own land, so must give up a portion of their labour to a landlord in the form of rent.
Sino-Soviet Split: The period of division between Khruschev’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China based primarily on China’s opposition to Khruschev’s “secret speech” denouncing Stalin, as well as his theory of the possibility of “peaceful co-existence” with the imperialist camp. While the majority of the socialist camp sided with the Soviet Union, Albania sided with China until the late ‘70s when disagreements emerged based on China’s rapprochement with the United States, as well as other positions adopted under Deng Xiaoping.
Skilled/Unskilled Labour: Skilled labour is ordinary human labour with the addition of particular skills, expertise, knowledge, and training which increase its productivity and the amount of value it creates. Unskilled labour is ordinary human labour without these additional qualities. “The average labour of a given state of society.” – Marx
Slave Society: Any society or mode of production in which the principal class conflict is between slaves and slave owners. This emerged across the world as a result of the emergence of private property after primitive communism. Where wage labourers sell their hourly labour as commodities on the market, slaves are themselves commodities who are sold once and for all.
Small Business Owner: See petty bourgeoisie.
Social Democracy: Before WWI, used by both revolutionary and reformist socialists. Since the split with the Second International, refers only toreformist socialism.
Social Fascism: Socialist in name, fascist in nature. A term historically used to describe social democracy as the “left wing” of fascism.
Socialism: The political and economic system which succeeds capitalism after a proletarian revolution, characterised by a dictatorship of the proletariat, the collective ownership of the means of production, and a planned economy organised to meet the needs of the masses of the people. “A system of civilised co-operators under the social ownership of the means of production, with the class victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, is the system of socialism.” – Lenin
Socialism in One Country: The theory developed by Lenin and then carried forward by Stalin which argues that in the age of imperialism, it is now possible for socialism to emerge and maintain itself in individual countries before a world revolution or revolution in the developed capitalist countries. Opposed to Leon Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution.
Socially Necessary Labour Time: The average amount of time needed to create a specific commodity in a society using human labour. Influenced by factors like the level of technology.
Soviet: A workers’ council. First established in Russia in 1905, these working-class democratic bodies organised meetings of workers, and then of soldiers and peasants, in order to co-ordinate strike actions and political and military activities.
As these councils grew in power, they became strong enough to confront the Russian ruling class directly, leading to a situation of dual power and proletarian revolution. Following the October Revolution, power was transferred from the bourgeois parliament to the working-class soviets.
Working-class people across the world later established their own soviets following the Russian model of revolutionary strategy.
Spontaneous Materialism: Unconscious, accidental materialism, e.g., as applied by many scientists.
Standpoint Theory: A framework originating out of bourgeois feminism which argues that the experience of oppression and discrimination as a result of personal identity offers unique and truer perspectives on these issues. It is therefore a form of subjective idealism which can lead to valuing the conscious beliefs about oppression as held by individuals belonging to certain identity groups over the material reality of how oppression actually manifests as a product of class society.
State: An organ of class rule belonging to the most powerful, economically dominant class in a particular society. The state emerged out of class conflict and maintains class rule through the use of organised violence, e.g., police, armies, prisons, etc.
State Capitalism: A state-controlled capitalist economy, either by a bourgeois government as a measure to secure the profits and interests of the capitalist class as a whole, e.g., post-WWII Britain, or by a proletarian government as a necessary part of the transition period towards a socialist economy, whereby capitalists continue to organise some aspects of production in accordance with government regulation and planning, e.g., during the early Soviet Union.
State-Monopoly Capitalism: A state-controlled monopoly capitalist economy. “State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs.” – Lenin
Stratum: A subsection of a class, e.g., the labour aristocracy of the proletariat or the small, medium, or large peasantry.
Superstructure: The superstructure of politics, law, culture, ideology, etc., which emerges out of the economic base of a society and helps to reinforce it, e.g., private property rights under the law emerge out of the relations of production of class society. These two forces interact, but the economic base is dominant.
Surplus: The total amount produced through human labour above the amount necessary for reproduction of the labourer. Under primitive communism, no surplus is produced, while under class society, any surplus is appropriated by the ruling class.
Surplus Value: The total value added to a commodity through variable capital (human labour power) which is then appropriated by a capitalist in order to make a profit. Includes both absolute surplus value and relative surplus value. “The increase over the original value of the money which is put into circulation.” – Lenin
Syndicate: A group of capitalists who have united to ensure a steady share of profits to themselves, thereby strengthening their position in the market in a way that would not be possible through direct competition. Syndicates are one of the key capitalist organisations involved in the formation of monopolies and monopoly capitalism/imperialism.
Tailism: Political demands, tactics, or strategies which trail behind the working class’ current level of class consciousness and so fail to lead them closer to revolution. This can lead to disappointment, disengagement, and a decline in militancy.
Tariff: A tax placed on a type of import or export, usually by a government.
Tenant: Anyone who does not own their home or place of work and is therefore forced to provide compensation to the landlord who does have ownership, usually in the form of rent.
Tenant Farming: The practice by which a group of people, usually peasants or serfs under feudalism, live on a patch of land owned by a landlord and are therefore forced to work the land and provide the surplus to the landlord in the form of rent or produce.
Terrorism: Acts of violence committed by individuals or small groups in the belief that they will help achieve a political objective, e.g., property damage or assassinations. See: Adventurism.
Trade Union: Under capitalism, usually a reformist working-class organisation used to leverage the capitalist class for economic concessions, such as higher wages or a shorter working day. The most effective trade unions achieve this through militancy and strike action. Lenin referred to trade unions as the “schools” of socialism.
Transition Period: Generally refers to the period initiated by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class begin to socialise the means of production and to move from capitalism to socialism. “The teachers of socialism spoke of a whole period of transition from capitalism to socialism and emphasised the ‘prolonged birth pangs’ of the new society.” – Lenin
Trotskyism: The assortment of ideas formulated by Leon Trotsky during the early days of the Soviet Union, principally characterised by an opposition to socialism in one country, support for permanent revolution, and opposition to all actually existing socialist states.
Ultra-Imperialism: A reformist theory developed by Karl Kautsky which proposed that as monopoly capitalism centralised production to a high degree, inter-imperialist conflict would naturally come to a permanent end, leading to an era of peace without the need for socialist revolution.
Ultra-Leftism: Idealist positions situated to the “left” of Marxism-Leninism which seek to advance to a higher level of socialism or communism before the necessary material conditions are met, e.g., Trotskyism or anarchism.
United Front: A working-class alliance of workers of different political tendencies in the pursuit of a common objective, e.g., an anti-fascist or anti-imperialist united front.
Unity of Opposites: The unity of opposites is a key concept in dialectical materialism. It suggests that seemingly contradictory or opposing elements are interconnected and interdependent. Rather than being isolated, opposites are part of a larger whole.
Universality of Contradiction: The universality of contradiction asserts that contradictions are inherent and pervasive in all phenomena, processes, and systems. It suggests that the presence of opposing forces or elements in dialectical tension is a fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of reality.
Use Value: A quality. What something can be used for in order to satisfy a particular human need or want, e.g., A coat can keep you warm. “The utility of a thing.” – Lenin
Utopian Socialism: The first wave of modern socialist thought represented by theorists such as Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and Henri de Saint-Simon. These thinkers were idealist in that they attempted to establish socialism before the material conditions were met.
Value: See: Exchange Value.
Vanguard Party: Usually used to refer to the Communist Party. A proletarian organisation of the most class-conscious and militant representatives of the working class, guided by the most advanced theory. The vanguard of the workers is “capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie.” – Lenin
Variable Capital: Human labour power as a form of capital that creates surplus value. Capital with a ‘high organic composition’ (a higher-than-average amount of constant capital compared with variable capital) yields a lower rate of profit. Under capitalism, there is therefore more investment in variable capital than constant capital. Under socialism, it is the reverse, creating a more productive and useful system.
What is “expended on labor power. The value of this latter capital is not invariable, but grows in the labor process, creating surplus value.” – Lenin.
Vulgar Materialism: A branch of materialism which holds that consciousness is a form of matter, rather than a separate but connected entity. The vulgar materialists included Ludwig Büchner, Carl Vogt, and Jacob Molschott.
Wage: The amount paid to a worker for their labour time which necessarily has a lower value than the labour performed.
Wage Labour: A form of exploitation in which the proletariat is forced to sell their labour power in exchange for a wage due to being separated from the means of production and survival.
Wage Slavery: See: Wage Labour.
Working Class: See: Proletariat.
