Lecture
ABSOLUTISM (ABSOLUTE MONARCHY) —
a form of the feudal state characteristic of the period of late feudalism. Characterized by complete political centralization —
the concentration of legislative and executive power in the hands of the monarch, who relies on a subordinate, extensive
bureaucratic apparatus. A unified state judicial, police,
and fiscal system emerges. The army, previously assembled from a combination of feudal retinues and popular levies, is replaced by a standing royal army. [See Ch. 6]
ABSOLUTE SURPLUS VALUE — the production of surplus value by lengthening the working day beyond
the limits of necessary labor time.
[See Ch. 9]
ABSOLUTE RENT — the part of rent
paid to the owner of a plot of land, regardless of its natural
fertility. [See Ch. 10]
ABSTRACT LABOR — labor that is indifferent
to any particular concrete form, for which
the only significant fact is that it is an expenditure of human labor that has received social recognition, which is precisely what gives commodities, despite
all their differences, a qualitative homogeneity as products of labor
possessing the property of value. [See Ch. 8]
ABSTRACTION — the capacity of human
thought to isolate the general properties inherent in an entire class of phenomena or processes, disregarding those properties that constitute the particular, specific features
of those phenomena or processes. [See Ch. 1]
ALLOD — the hereditary plot of a peasant community member, possessing the property
of alienability — the transition from conditional
tenure sanctioned by the community to
conditional tenure sanctioned by
a private magnate or the church. [See Ch. 6]
BANKNOTE — a bill of exchange drawn on a banker [See Ch. 10]
BENEFICE — a grant of land (originally from the royal authority, and later also from major landed magnates) into personal conditional tenure (usually on condition
of performing military or military-administrative service). [See Ch. 6]
MARRIAGE — a socially sanctioned union of persons
of opposite sex. [See Ch. 5]
BUREAUCRACY — a stable, relatively
closed professional stratum of senior state officials with their own
particular interests, which become relatively separate even from the interests of the ruling class that this bureaucracy serves. [See Ch. 4]
VASSALAGE — a system of relations within
the ruling class (of feudal lords), whereby the vassal performed service to his suzerain in exchange for the latter's
protection. [See Ch. 6]
MATERIAL (THING-BASED) DEPENDENCE: dependence determined by a person's role and place in
the production of things. The main form of this
dependence is the relations of commodity production and the market as their surface expression. People's material dependence creates the conditions for the rapid development of
productive forces in the pursuit of accumulating material wealth. [See Ch. 3]
VIRTUAL PROFIT EXTRACTED FROM
THE FINANCIAL MARKET — the payment charged by money capitalists (agents of the financial market) for providing
capital with the supposed possibility of unlimited expansion and of earning income from
the sale of goods and services that satisfy illusory demand. [See App. 1, Ch. 4]
VIRTUAL MONEY — a form of money that has become detached, representing the
monetary form of movement of virtual
capital. It appears mainly in the
form of electronic money, and acquires an indeterminacy of value content,
caused by the indeterminacy of the valuation of virtual capital. Like the valuation
of virtual
capital, the valuation of virtual money is subject to the manipulative influence of large corporate capital. [See App. 1, Ch. 3]
VIRTUAL CAPITAL — a form of fictitious capital (see the definition of fictitious
capital in the main text — Chapter 10, section 10.4) which becomes detached from the value of real capital under the influence of large corporations' manipulation of prices forming
on the stock market. Virtual capital
acquires a simulated value, consisting in creating the appearance of its capacity for boundless growth. [See
App. 1, Ch. 3]
EXTERNAL EFFECTS (EXTERNALITIES) —
side effects of the production and consumption of a good that affect
third parties outside the seller-buyer transaction, and/or that are not accounted for in the price of the good. [See Ch. 12]
VOTCHINA (PATRIMONIAL ESTATE, IN RUS') — a hereditary land grant conditional on the performance of
service. [See Ch. 6]
PATRIMONIAL IMMUNITY — the right to exercise the full range of administrative-legal functions on the territory of a benefice. [See Ch. 6]
UNIVERSAL LABOR — labor under conditions in which the technological application
of knowledge is transformed into a direct productive force, and which therefore proceeds under conditions
of universal interdependence among an indeterminate circle of its participants, since
it requires for its performance the involvement of a circle of knowledge not known in advance,
acquired both by predecessors and
by contemporaries. [See App. 1, Ch. 1]
GLOBALIZATION — a new stage in the internationalization of production and capital,
characterized by a substantial reduction of cross-border barriers to the movement
of goods and capital, the transformation of large transnational capital into the principal driving force of globalization, and the formation not only of a world market
for goods, but also of a world market for capital.
See also Capitalist globalization.
[See Ch. 13]
STATE-MONOPOLY
CAPITALISM — the historical stage in the
development of capitalism from which
begins an intensification of the mutual dependence of capitalist monopolies and the state: monopoly capital strengthens its influence over the state
apparatus, while the capitalist state
increases the depth and degree of its intervention in economic processes in the interest
of the reproduction of social capital
as a whole, and of the largest monopoly
capital in particular. [See Ch. 12]
THE STATE — is characterized by the separation of power from society, by the creation of a distinct mechanism for exercising power independently of the mass of society's members.
This nature of the state's structure is determined by its role as an instrument of power
of the ruling classes. [See Ch. 4]
THE DUAL NATURE OF THE COMMODITY: a commodity
appears, on the one hand, as a use value, and on the other — as an exchange
value. [See Ch. 8]
MONEY RENT — a form of feudal
rent in which the serf performed his obligations to the lord by paying him
a portion of his monetary income, obtained
from production for the market (from his own plot, or from work away from home). The conversion of feudal obligations into monetary
form is called commutation. [See Ch. 6]
MONEY — a commodity of a special kind, whose natural
form (use value)
has become firmly fused with this commodity's performance
of the role of universal equivalent for all other commodities. Money thereby acquires, unlike
all other commodities, the property of
universal exchangeability. [See Ch. 8]
DEFORMATION OF THE RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION OF SOCIALISM — the formation, due
to the insufficiency of socio-economic preconditions, of such forms of movement of
socialist relations of production as are inadequate to their content. Through reverse influence, such
forms also distortingly affect the very content of these relations. [See Ch. 14]
DIFFERENTIAL RENT — the part of rent paid to the owner of a plot of land
whose source is differential surplus profit. [See Ch. 10]
DIFFERENTIATED SURPLUS
PROFIT — profit received by capitalists farming relatively
more fertile plots of land, over and above
average profit, as a result of the fact that the price
of production in agriculture is regulated by the average-normal conditions of production on relatively less fertile plots of land. [See Ch. 10]
ADDITIONAL CIRCULATION COSTS — costs that change
the useful properties of a commodity and thereby enter into the process of value creation. [See Ch. 10]
NATURAL MONOPOLY — a capitalist monopoly formed in
a branch of industry where a monopolistic organization of production is
manifestly more efficient than a competitive one. [See Ch. 12]
DEPENDENT PERIPHERAL CAPITALISM — the socio-economic model
of capitalism formed in relatively underdeveloped countries (which have
mainly a raw-material specialization and an insignificant modern industrial sector controlled by foreign capital). The capitalist mode
in these countries develops mainly not by
virtue of internal causes, but under the influence
of the capital of more developed countries. For these
reasons a dependence is formed of the "peripheral"
countries on the economically more powerful "core" countries of the capitalist world economy. [See Ch. 12]
THE LAW OF SIMPLE REPRODUCTION: that
part of the production of the means of production in
department I which corresponds in value to the variable capital and
surplus value of department I
must be equal to that part of the production of consumer goods in department
II which corresponds in value to the constant capital of department
II [I(v + m) = II(c)]. [See Ch. 10]
THE LAW OF EXPANDED REPRODUCTION: production in department II, corresponding in value to the constant capital of department II and
to that part of the surplus value of department II
that is directed toward the growth of
constant capital, must
be equal to production in department I, corresponding in value to
the variable capital of department I and to that part of the surplus value
of department I
that is directed toward the increase of the capitalists' personal consumption and the expansion of variable capital [II(c + [1 − b]m) = I(v + am)]. [See Ch. 10]
LANDOWNERS (LANDLORDS) — persons who receive their main income in
the form of land rent. [See Ch. 11]
IDEOLOGY: Ideology is not simply the reflection of social, class interests in
the spiritual life of society, but the expression
of the subordination of the ideological sphere, of spiritual production, to class interests. [See Ch. 4]
IMPERIALISM — the totality of features of monopoly capitalism characteristic of its initial stage: the appearance
of capitalist monopolies, the fusion of capitalist monopolies with the state, the predominance of the export of capital over the
export of goods, the territorial division
of the world into colonial empires among the capitalist powers, and the economic division of the world, leading to military
conflicts in the struggle for the redivision of the world.
[See App. 1, Introduction]
INTELLECTUAL RENT — results of creative
activity based on universal labor that are appropriated by capital,
taking, under capitalism, a value form. [See App. 1, Ch. 5]
CAPITAL: 1. Money capable of yielding
surplus value (the first, most
abstract and superficial definition); 2. A social relation between the capitalist and the wage worker, based on the exploitation of the labor power, acquired by the capitalist, of a personally free
wage worker, for the purpose of extracting
surplus value (the second, deeper and fuller definition). [See Ch. 9]
CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION —
the socio-economic form of the objective process of the internationalization of production, characteristic of late capitalism. It is expressed in the establishment of a worldwide
hegemony of large corporate capital, and in the formation of a world capital market as an instrument of that hegemony. See
also Globalization. [See Ch. 13, App. 1, Ch. 11]
CAPITALIST MONOPOLY —
the ability of large capital to influence
the process of price formation for some
commodity by virtue of its high share in
the production and/or sale of that commodity.
This ability allows monopoly capital to extract monopoly
super-profit. [See Ch. 12]
CAPITALISTS — persons who receive their main income from the exploitation of hired labor power. [See Ch. 11]
CLASS STRUGGLE — the actions of representatives of classes (and of large intra-class
or inter-class social groups), directed against representatives of other classes, aimed at changing the conditions for the realization
of class interests — that is, the economic,
political, legal, and similar conditions of existence of the struggling classes — up to and including
the struggle for state power and its use to undermine the conditions of existence of the opposing classes. [See Ch. 4]
CLASSES: according to V. I. Lenin's well-known classic definition, "classes are large groups of people differing by their place in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formalized in laws) to
the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the manner of acquiring and the size of that
share of social wealth which they
possess. Classes are such groups of people, one of which can appropriate to itself the
labor of another, owing to the difference in their place in
a given system of social economy" [Lenin, V. I., The Great Beginning, in Lenin, V. I.,
Complete Collected Works, vol. 39, p. 15]. [See Ch. 4]
THE CONCRETE — an object taken in the full diversity of its various aspects. [See Ch. 1]
CONCRETE LABOR — labor which creates
the use value of a commodity, determined by the necessity of imparting to the commodity certain definite, concrete physical properties, so
that the commodity constitutes a useful product. [See Ch. 8]
CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL — an increase
in the size of capital in the process of its accumulation, as well as through the centralization of capitals.
It represents the economic precondition for the concentration of production. [See Ch. 12]
CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION — the concentration of production at enterprises
that increase their share in the total output of a given type of product, which usually is accompanied by growth in the size of enterprises. [See Ch. 12]
CREATOSPHERE — the part of the reproduction system where
creative functions of labor activity play a substantial role, as a source of the acquisition and technological application of new knowledge. [See
App. 1, Ch. 5]
FIEF, FEUD — hereditary tenure of a plot of land on condition of performing military or
military-administrative service. [See Ch. 6]
MANUFACTORY — a large enterprise
based on the use of hand tools and the division of labor (by product or by operation) in the making of finished goods. Characteristic of the
period from the 14th to the early 19th centuries. From the point of view of
production relations, both serf labor and
wage labor could be employed in manufactories. A manufactory can be
centralized or dispersed, when scattered small producers are subordinated to the manufactory division of labor by
virtue of their dependence on a middleman (who supplies raw materials and buys up finished goods), who is often also their creditor. [See Ch. 6]
MACHINES — instruments of labor which transmit a person's action on the object of labor
through a special transmission mechanism
and which are set in motion, as a rule, not
by the muscular force of humans or animals.
Thus, a machine consists of three main parts — an engine (motor), a transmission
mechanism, and a working tool. The transmission
device converts the motion of the motor
into the necessary purposive form, while the working tool acts directly
on the object being processed. [See Ch. 2, Ch. 9]
PETTY BOURGEOISIE — small private
owners who possess means of production and receive their main income from
using them to produce goods by means of their own
labor, or, more
briefly — commodity producers who run
their economy mainly by means of their own
labor. [See Ch. 6, Ch. 11]
EXCHANGE VALUE OF A COMMODITY — the ability of a commodity to be exchanged on the market in a definite proportion for other commodities.
[See Ch. 8]
MERCANTILISM — the economic policy of the European states in the early period of the development of capitalism. It was oriented first and foremost toward the accumulation of
money (precious metals) in the hands of the royal treasury. To this end a policy was pursued of an active trade balance,
trade protectionism (elevated
tariffs on imports), the encouragement of manufacturing industry, the founding of monopoly foreign-trade companies, and trade and colonial expansion. This policy led to clashes among the European
powers in the struggle for commercial and industrial predominance. [See Ch. 6]
MULTI-STRUCTURED ECONOMY — the combination, within
a single mode of production, of systems of production relations that qualitatively differ from one another, forming independent (i.e., having a relatively complete cycle of reproduction of the product and of
social relations) economic
structures ("modes"). In transitional societies, multi-structuredness appears as a combination, within
a single national economy, of structures
resting on different modes of production. [See Ch. 6]
MONOPOLY CAPITAL — capital possessing the properties of a capitalist monopoly. [See Ch. 12]
MONOPOLY SUPER-PROFIT — profit that arises owing to the raising by
monopoly capital of the market
price of a commodity above the price of equilibrium between supply
and demand, or through the monopolistic retention in its own hands of the conditions for especially
low production costs. [See Ch. 12]
ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL — the transformation
of part of surplus value into elements of constant and variable capital. [See Ch. 9]
NECESSARY LABOR TIME — the time
needed to create a product that ensures the reproduction of the worker himself, that is, that compensates the expenditure of his
labor power, and ensures the physical replacement of the worker once he passes
working age. [See Ch. 9]
NECESSITY — that aspect of human
practice which is determined by
objective circumstances. [See Ch. 1]
NECESSARY PRODUCT — the product that ensures the reproduction of the worker himself, that is, that compensates the expenditure of his
labor power, and ensures the physical replacement of the worker once he passes
working age. [See Ch. 9]
"NEO-PRIVATIZATION" — on the surface of phenomena is characterized by the reduction of state and various forms of public property, and also by the growing role of small private production and small
private property. Underlying this process is a concentration of actual property
rights in the hands of corporate capital, and, within the latter, in the hands of a narrow
stratum of the corporate oligarchy (the "corporate nomenklatura"). [See App. 1, Ch. 1]
SOCIALIZATION OF PRODUCTION — the growth
of mutual dependence and interconnection among the economic units of industrial production under conditions of an ever more complex division of labor. In other words,
this is a process expressed in the growth of the mutual dependence of the links of the social
division of labor. This process is based both
on the concentration and specialization of production and capital, leading to the growth of the social scale of production, and on
technological shifts that strengthen
the importance of close cooperation in production
among enterprises. [See Ch. 14; App. 1,
Introduction]
TURNOVER OF CAPITAL: the continuous, interconnected circuits of capital form its turnover. [See Ch. 10]
CIRCULATING CAPITAL — capital which
enters into the process of circulation and is consumed in it entirely, and must be renewed
in each cycle of the circuit. The elements
of circulating capital transfer
their value in full onto the finished product in a single circuit. [See Ch. 10]
PUBLIC (SOCIAL) PROPERTY — a form of ownership that provides every
member of society with equal opportunities
for the appropriation (productive and personal) of social wealth. [See Ch. 14]
PUBLIC GOOD — a commodity to which the exclusion principle does not apply, i.e.,
access to which cannot be restricted by the seller, including for those consumers
who have not paid for the good.
That is why public goods are characterized by the presence of external effects (externalities). [See Ch. 12]
SOCIAL DIVISION OF LABOR: the emergence of the social division of labor means the permanent attachment of specific persons to particular types of activity, that is, the specialization of people. Such
a division of labor is called social because these types of activity and the people engaged in them cannot exist outside of social (extending beyond
kinship-based) ties, economic relations (relations of the exchange
of activity) among themselves. [See Ch. 2]
SOCIALLY NECESSARY LABOR
TIME — the average, under given conditions, labor time expended on the production
(more precisely, on the reproduction — that is, on the regularly renewed production) of that
mass of commodities of a given kind which the market has recognized as meeting
buyers' needs. [See Ch. 8]
SOCIAL CAPITAL — the relation of production between the aggregate capitalist and the aggregate labor power of society,
manifested as a multitude of individual relations, whose division,
as well as their interconnection into social capital, are conditioned by the social division of labor. [See Ch. 10]
SOCIAL LABOR — labor performed within the system of the social division
of labor, and intended to satisfy a social need (that is,
the need of other people, not of the
producer himself). [See Ch. 8]
COMMUNITY — a naturally arisen collective of hunters and gatherers, and later —
of agricultural producers.
The primitive clan community was characterized by common descent (kinship) and by a common economic territory occupied. A community could coincide with
a clan or be a product of its territorial subdivision. [See Ch. 5]
OLIGOPOLY — the dominant position, in the production and/or sale of some commodity, of several large capitals. [See Ch. 12]
OBJECTIFICATION — activity that makes it possible to embody knowledge in an object.
[See Ch. 1]
ORGANIC COMPOSITION OF CAPITAL —
the value composition of capital (i.e., the ratio of the value of constant to variable capital), insofar as it
is determined by its technical composition.
[See Ch. 9]
THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF PHILOSOPHY: the question
of which is primary — the material world
that we cognize, or the knowledge we possess of it? Is the matter
of the external world the source of our knowledge,
or is it merely the embodiment of our own (or externally originating) ideas
and thoughts? [See Ch. 1]
FIXED CAPITAL — capital which
during a single circuit is only partially consumed, and hence also only partially enters the process of circulation, although
it is applied in full. Accordingly, it
transfers its value onto the finished product in parts. Its complete renewal
must take place only after a great many
cycles of the circuit. [See Ch. 10]
RELATIVE SURPLUS VALUE — surplus value produced by shortening the necessary
working time and by changing the ratio between the magnitude of necessary and surplus working time. [See Ch. 9]
LABOR-SERVICE RENT (CORVÉE) — a form of feudal rent in which the serf performed his obligations to the lord by working on the lord's own estate (demesne). [See Ch. 6]
PATRIARCHAL SLAVERY — the transformation of people (captives or outcasts) into members of patriarchal families without full rights —
into slaves. [See Ch. 5]
PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL — the process of forming the historical preconditions of capitalist relations of production, expressed
in the concentration of monetary wealth at
one social pole, and in the development, at the other, of the separation of personally free small commodity producers from the means of production and
from the sources of their means of subsistence. This thereby creates the possibility
of transforming money into capital through the hiring
and exploitation of free labor power.
[See Ch. 6]
OVERACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL — the formation, in the process of the accumulation of capital, of a significant mass of additional capitals whose employment does not secure the average
rate of profit. [See Ch. 10]
DEGENERATION OF THE RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION OF SOCIALISM — a change, as a
result of the insufficiency of socio-economic preconditions, in the content of socialist relations of production, up to and including their transformation into their own opposite. [See Ch. 14]
TRANSITIONAL RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION — relations in which
elements of the relations of production of different modes of production are combined.
Transitional relations under late capitalism are relations in which elements of capitalist and post-capitalist relations of production are combined. [See App. 1, Introduction]
TRIBE — a union of several clans.
The original cell of the tribe was a union of two clans, whose members were bound by mutual marriage ties, and later also by
a common cult and common organs of self-government. Such a union is also called
a phratry. [See Ch. 5]
UNDERMINING OF COMMODITY PRODUCTION under
capitalism — the combination of commodity-production relations with conscious non-market regulation of production, which becomes inevitable at a high level of
socialization. [See App. 1, Introduction]
POLITICS — activity connected with
the struggle over the use of state
power. [See Ch. 4]
POLITICAL RELATIONS — relations that arise with respect to state power. [See Ch. 4]
POMESTIE (SERVICE ESTATE, IN RUS') — a grant of land to a nobleman in connection with his place of service (hence the name). It was personal in nature, could not
be sold, inherited, and so on, which made it similar to the West European benefice. Only in the 17th century
did the difference between service-estate and patrimonial-estate
landholding become blurred, and then
disappear. [See Ch. 6]
THE POST-SOVIET ECONOMY: is
a variety of late capitalism of the semi-peripheral type, whose specificity consists in the retention of certain features
of the Soviet-type economy. [See Ch. 15]
USE VALUE OF A COMMODITY —
the usefulness of a commodity, its ability to satisfy certain social needs. [See Ch. 8]
DISTORTED (PERVERTED) ECONOMIC FORMS
(UNDER CAPITALISM) — economic
forms that give a distorted reflection of the content of
production relations, up to and including
creating an appearance that is the opposite of their
content — or, in other words: when
the form of a phenomenon creates a distorted, or even directly opposite, impression of it relative to its actual content, it
thereby appears as a distorted (transformed) form. [See Ch. 9; App. 1, Ch. 1]
DISTORTED (USELESS) SECTOR —
that part of capitalist production
in which are created mainly such goods as are
not oriented toward the development or reproduction of human qualities, nor toward the creation of corresponding intermediate goods. This sector
is not only useless, but also distorted, since it is based on distorted
economic forms, while the useless goods created within it mainly
represent not material goods
(even if these possess a fictitious usefulness),
but rather the same kind of distorted economic
forms. [See App. 1, Ch. 1]
TRANSFORMED FORM — see Distorted
economic forms.
SURPLUS VALUE — that part
of the value of commodities which the wage worker creates, under compulsion to labor,
beyond necessary working time (that
is, the value of the surplus product created by him during
surplus working time). [See Ch. 9]
SURPLUS WORKING TIME — labor time
beyond necessary working time.
During surplus working time
the surplus product is created. [See Ch. 9]
SURPLUS PRODUCT — the product going beyond what is necessary for current consumption. [See Ch. 9]
SURPLUS PRODUCT AND EXPLOITATION: when a person becomes able
to produce more than is needed for his current consumption (to sustain life), the excess — the surplus product —
can be appropriated by other people.
Exploitation means using a person as a kind of living instrument of labor —
compelling him to produce a surplus product for the purpose of subsequently
appropriating it. [See Ch. 2]
SURPLUS PRODUCT — a product produced over and above the production of the necessary product. [See Ch. 2, Ch. 5]
MARKET FAILURES — situations in which
market relations fail to provide adequate information about costs and beneficial effects through market prices. One
particular case of market failure is
the production of goods characterized by
the presence of external effects (externalities) — for example, the production of public goods. [See Ch. 12]
PRODUCT RENT (QUITRENT/TRIBUTE) — a form
of feudal rent in which the serf
performed his obligations to the lord by handing over to him part of the products produced on his own plot. [See Ch. 6]
RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION — the specific social relations into
which people enter in the process of producing the material conditions of their existence. [See Ch. 2]
RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION — the social relations between people
that arise in the process of, and with respect to, the production of their own material
life. The content of the relations of production is objective (independent of people's will and consciousness), since it is
determined by the given, existing level of
development of the material conditions of production, that is, by the level of development of the productive forces of human society. [See
Ch. 2, Ch. 3]
PRODUCTION AS A SOCIAL
PROCESS: social production appears simultaneously both as the production
of products of labor and as the production of the very
social bonds among people, of human society itself (both from the standpoint of the material and from the standpoint of the social conditions of its life), or of the socially-determined human being. [See Ch. 3]
THE PROLETARIAT (WORKING CLASS) — persons
who possess no means of production and receive their main income from the sale of their
labor power. [See Ch. 11]
THE PROCESS OF PRODUCTION — the interaction of humans and the means of production in the labor process. [See Ch. 2]
LABOR POWER — the aggregate of skills,
abilities, methods of production, and the capacity to set them in motion, possessed by an individual. [See Ch. 2]
RENTIERS — persons who receive their main income from investing monetary capital in banks or securities. [See Ch. 11]
DE-OBJECTIFICATION — activity that makes it possible to extract knowledge from an object.
[See Ch. 1]
THE REAL LIBERATION OF LABOR will
be achieved when the freedom provided by the formal liberation of labor
is also secured on the side of the productive forces, on the side of the content of the
process of human activity itself. [See
Ch. 18]
THE REAL SUBORDINATION OF LABOR TO CAPITAL — a subordination of labor which, besides the character of capitalist relations of production, is also determined
by the very character of the production process itself,
by the transformation of the wage worker into an appendage of the machine, by the technical subordination of
the human being to the movement of the material elements of constant capital. [See Ch. 9]
"REAL SOCIALISM" — a historically dead-end
variant of a social system that stood at the beginning
of the world-historical transitional period from
the "realm of necessity" (in particular, capitalism) to the "realm of freedom" (communism); it is a transitional social order
that goes beyond capitalism, but does not form a stable model serving
as the basis for a subsequent movement toward
communism. [See Ch. 14]
REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE IN MARXISM — the coincidence of objectively matured historical changes with human actions directed toward those changes.
[See Ch. 1]
CLAN — a union of blood relatives tracing
descent along a single line (at first kinship was reckoned through the maternal line, later — through the paternal line). [See Ch. 5]
FREEDOM — the property of a human being to overcome the boundaries of what is initially given
to him by the external world. [See Ch. 1]
FREE ASSOCIATION — a socio-economic form of connection among people, based on their voluntary union for realizing common goals in the process of free
activity. [See Ch. 14]
SIMULACRUM (in economic theory) — the phenomenon of economic goods acquiring properties that simulate genuine
usefulness, and the transformation of this simulated usefulness into the defining characteristic of the good. Simulacra in the economy are closely
connected with the dominance of distorted economic forms, which create a distorted
picture of the content hidden behind them. The economic meaning of the production
of simulacra lies in overcoming the limits on the accumulation of capital in the real sector of the economy. [See App. 1, Ch. 2]
THE SIMULATIVE SHELL OF A COMMODITY — that
part of the usefulness of a simulacrum-commodity that is genuinely simulative in character, as distinct from the usefulness of its material bearer (which may represent a real good). [See App. 1, Ch. 2]
ESTATES (SOCIAL ORDERS) — a form in which the class
division of society manifests itself under pre-capitalist
modes of production. Estate groups
were characterized by different legal status; they were, as a rule, hereditary and relatively closed in
character. [See Ch. 6]
SOCIAL REVOLUTION — a qualitative
leap in the entire system of social relations during the transition from one mode of production to another. When old relations of production become an obstacle to the development of new productive forces, a social revolution occurs as a non-economic intervention
into the economic structure of society, leading to the destruction of outdated relations of production and their replacement by new
relations of production, which create the possibility for rapid growth of society's productive forces. On this basis
a revolutionary transformation also occurs in the
social superstructure. [See Ch. 3]
THE SOCIALLY GUARANTEED MINIMUM — a mandatory component of the income
of the working population, and also of those unable to work, ensuring a person's inclusion in social life (socialization).
The socially guaranteed minimum should also be provided (under special conditions) to
persons who avoid work, in order to prevent the criminalization of this social stratum and not foreclose the possibility of their
labor readaptation. [See Ch. 18]
SOCIAL ALIENATION — the alienation
of people from one another, from the
social ties they form, from social processes and phenomena. It is expressed in the opposition of people to their own social ties, as alien, hostile, and imposed
upon them. The most general cause of alienation
lies in the contradictions of economic interests, especially those connected with the exploitation of labor. This leads not only to the estrangement of people from one another, but also to
labor activity itself, its results, and the social relations arising on the basis of this activity
appearing as imposed on the person from outside,
alien to him. [See Ch. 3]
SPECIALIZATION OF PRODUCTION — the concentration of production of a particular
type of output at enterprises producing only that product. It usually also leads to the concentration of production. [See Ch. 12]
MODE OF PRODUCTION — a stage in the development of social production, at the basis
of which lies the contradictory interaction between productive forces of a historically
determined level and character, and the corresponding system of relations of production. [See Ch. 3]
PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY — a particular combination of elements of the productive forces (the simple elements of the labor
process) and the character of their interaction in
the process of production. [See Ch. 2]
COMMODITY FETISHISM: the transformation of the world of things, created by man, into a social force that is independent of him and dominates
him. [See Ch. 8]
COMMODITIES — the products of mutually independent
private labors, entering social consumption through their exchange on the
market. See also: The simulative shell of a
commodity. [See Ch. 8]
THE TOTAL MARKET OF NETWORKS — a market resting not simply on the social division of labor, but on the phenomena of dependence and subordination created by monopolistic tendencies, arising among different capitals. These ties,
based on dependence and subordination,
have the character of flexible, changeable, not rigidly
fixed, reconfigurable networks. [See App. 1, Ch. 1]
TRANSNATIONAL CAPITAL — capital based in several countries,
where the foreign affiliates are comparable in turnover
to the parent company. It is organized, as a rule, in the form of
transnational corporations, comparable in scale to the economies of individual states. [See Ch. 13]
TRANSFER PRICES — prices used for settlements between the constituent parts of large monopolistic organizations. [See Ch. 12]
THE TRINITY FORMULA: the approach according to
which capital appears as yielding interest, land as yielding land rent, and labor as yielding wages, was called by K. Marx the "trinity formula." [See Ch. 11]
LABOR — purposive activity aimed at
changing the form of natural objects,
adapting them to satisfy
human needs. [See Ch. 2]
THE LABOR THEORY OF VALUE: proceeds
from the fact that in the exchange of the most varied commodities, the only possible basis for equating them to one another is the fact, common to the overwhelming majority of them, that commodities are products of labor. Moreover, commodity producers, in exchanging commodities, must in
this exchange economically recoup their
expenditures on producing the commodities. And, accordingly, the quantity of labor expended on their
production serves as the basis for establishing the proportion of exchange. [See Ch. 8]
FACTORY — an enterprise whose process of production is based on a system of
machines. [See Ch. 9]
FEUDAL RENT — the basic form
of appropriating the surplus product in feudal society through the performance by serfs of obligations in favor of the lord (in various forms — labor-service rent
or corvée, product rent or quitrent, money rent). [See Ch. 6]
FICTITIOUS CAPITAL — a form of existence of capital in which the title certifying ownership rights to real capital undergoes an independent circulation, separate from the movement of
real capital, although fictitious
and real capital retain channels of mutual influence. [See Ch. 10]
FINANCE CAPITAL — monopoly capital formed through
the merging of industrial and banking monopoly capital, and occupying a leading position on the financial
market. [See Ch. 12]
THE FORM OF VALUE OF A COMMODITY — the expression
of the value of one commodity through its exchange
value, that is, through the quantity of
use-value for which the given commodity is exchanged. [See Ch. 8]
FORMAL LIBERATION OF LABOR appears as the emergence of freedom in people's social relations in labor, in production — but only in terms of socio-economic form, i.e., only from the side of new
relations of production. [See Ch. 18]
FORMAL SUBORDINATION OF LABOR TO CAPITAL — a subordination of labor that
is determined by the capitalist form
of the production process, that is, by capitalist relations of production, and, above all, by the character of the relations between the capitalist and the wage
worker. [See Ch. 9]
PRICE OF PRODUCTION — the price of commodities,
formed on the basis of competition among capitals for an equal profit on equal-sized capital, and quantitatively equal to the cost of production plus average profit. [See Ch. 10]
PRICE OF A COMMODITY: the expression of a commodity's value
in money is called the price of the commodity. [See Ch. 8]
CENTRALIZATION OF CAPITAL - the combining of several independent individual capitals under the control of a single
owner. It promotes the process of concentration of capital, but is not directly connected with
the concentration of production (a change
of owner by itself does not affect
the scale and specialization of production).
[See Ch. 12]
PRIVATE LABOR — labor performed by private individuals independent of one another, at their own risk and expense. [See Ch. 8]
PURE COSTS OF CIRCULATION - such
costs of circulation as do not add new value to the commodity. [See Ch. 10]
ECONOMIC SOCIAL FORMATION: characterized by the separation of
relations of production from social relations, and by the complex differentiation of the former. Within an economic social formation, relations of production ultimately acquire
the role of the determining social relations. [See Ch. 6]
ECONOMIC RELATIONS - such
relations of production as are connected with the striving for the most efficient acquisition of material wealth, i.e., for
increasing the amount of this wealth while
relatively reducing the costs of
acquiring it. [See Ch. 6]
EXPLOITATION - the compulsion of one person by another to labor, in order to appropriate the surplus product he produces, leaving him only the means of
subsistence. [See Ch. 2, Ch. 5]
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