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I. Terms and Definitions



Petty Bourgeois -A person who owns a means of production, but does not employ others to work on it, he or she works the means of production himself or herself, and still produces commodities. An example would be a small time farmer or small business owner.
[Gracchvs edit] A person who owns means of production, but does not exploit enough labour, or does not exploit labour effeciently enough so that they still need to be a part of production.

Proletariat -A member of the working class, they do not own any means of production, or much, if any, bourgeois private property. They must sell their labor power in order to survive, in order to earn money for the means of subsistence. They sell their labor to the bourgeois in exchange for wages and pay.
[Gracchvs edit]That class of people that owns nothing but their ability to labour, and which lives through the sale of their labour power to others.

Labor Aristocracy-Workers who are abnormally rich due to their participation in capitalism within an imperialist nation. They often times own property and parts of the means of production that they use, but still must sell their labor to a bourgeois.
[Gracchvs edit]A section of the working class that is better off compared to the rest of the national working class due to higher wages or reciept of union dues. This is primarily a product of imperialism enabling the bourgeoisie to pay some workers a greater wage, due to the super-exploitation of the colonial/neo-colonial proletariat.

Alienation- the process whereby people become foreign to the world they are living in.

Anarchism- the creation of a Communist society with stress on the importance of achieving individual liberty and social equality for the working class, through the abolition of authority.


Bernsteinism-A reformist trend in German and International Social-Democracy. It emerged in Germany at the end of the 19th century, and got its name from Eduard Bernstein, a German Social-Democrat, who tried to revise Marx's revolutionary theory on the lines of bourgeois liberalism.


Bonapartism- a government that forms when class rule is not secure and a military, police, and state bureaucracy intervenes to establish order. Nineteenth century Bonapartism is commonly associated with Twentieth century fascism and Stalinism.

Bureaucracy- the social layer of people who administer an organization, and by virtue of their social position have social interests distinct from that of the organization that they administer and the people the organization represents.

Blanquists- The Blannquists were adherents of the trend in the socialist movement of France headed by Louis-Auguste Blanqui. The Blanquists believed that small revolutionary groups could overthrow capitalist rule and bring about Socialism. Similar to modern day Guevaraism.

Bourgeoisie- This is the capitalist class, or a single capitalist (bourgeois). The bourgeoisie are the current holders of the means of production and rulers of society. They are the oppressors in the equation of social conflict. A bourgeois is the owner of a means of production who employs labor with wages for the production of commodities. An example of a bourgeois would be a Factory Owner.
[Gracchvs edit]Footnote to the Manifesto:
By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour. by proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live.

Bourgeois Democracy- A government that serves in the interests of the bourgeois class. The word Democratic is attached to such a government, because in it all people in such a society have certain freedoms: those who own the means of production , the bourgeoisie, are free to buy and sell labor-power and what is produced by it solely for their own benefit. Those who own only their own ability to labor , the proletariat, are free to sell themselves to any bourgeois who will buy their labor power, for the benefit of maintaining their own survival, and giving greater strength and power to the bourgeoisie.

Brest-Litvosk- A treaty initiated by the Soviet government in 1917 in effort to stop the war with Germany. The negotiations lasted several months, during which time Germany continued attacking Russia. The Central Committee sent Trotsky, Kamenev, and Chicherin to end the war. On March 3, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed. The terms were harsh for Russia, but were annulled when Germany was defeated by the Allies in November.

Capital- Money that is used to make more money. Marx represents this in the equation [M-C-M] (Money- Commodity -Money) For example: The capitalist uses money to buy a machine (a commodity) that will allow the capitalist to make a profit.
[Gracchvs edit]Money is the universal commodity. It is the one commodity which can be exchanged for all others, and by who's value all commodities are measured.

Chauvinism- Any explicit support for the idea of the superiority of one nation over others.
[Gracchvs edit]Support for the idea that one nation has some superiority or priority over others

Communism- See section III

Communist - Those who actively support the interests of the working-class as a whole, without any kind of prejudice. Communists live to unite workers, instead of divide them along imaginary lines, whether based on gender, nationality, race, or ideology.
[Gracchvs edit]Those who actively seek to bring about a proletarian revolution for the creation of communism: A democratic society based on the rational planning of the international economy.

Conservatism- the political disposition which resists change

Capitalism-The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour.

Centrism -Political positions that stand or oscillate between being reformist, reactionary and/or revolutionary.
[Gracchvs edit]Those political positions which seek to unite the revolutionary wing of the movement with the reformist wing, and which oscillate between revolutionary words and reformist deeds.

Class - A group of people sharing common relations to labor and the means of production.

Democracy -A political system of rule by the majority.
[Gracchvs edit]Democracy for which class?

Determinism- The acceptance of causality as an objective relation. If carried to the point of absolute (or mechanical) determinism - the denial of chance and accident - as in the case of Laplace, determinism becomes a kind of fatalism in which everything is absolutely determined by what has gone before.

Dictatorship- The imposition of a rule on others who do not consent to it.
[Gracchvs edit]'Rule unfettered by any laws' is how Lenin puts it in S&R, IIRC

Dictatorship of the Proletariat The working class established as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing bourgeois resistance, abolishing private property, building socialism and the immense expansion of democracy.

Dogmatism-The denial of relativity of knowledge and the connection of knowledge to historically changing practice and social relations.

Deism-belief in God as a prime cause or creator of the world, after which God has no hand in its affairs

Democratic Centralism- the organizational method applied by the Bolsheviks in making the Russian Revolution: “democracy in discussion – centralism in action,” within a strategy of building a “vanguard party.” More on this in the politics section.
[Gracchvs edit]An organisational form where there is full freedom of discussion, but all must adhere to the rulings of the party bodies.

Dialectics See Section IV.

Division of Labour- a specific mode of cooperation wherein different tasks are assigned to different people

Facism- A right-wing, fiercely nationalist, subjectivist in philosophy, and totalitarian in practice. It is an extreme reactionary form of capitalist government.

Fetishism- The belief that commodities possess human properties.

Great Leap Forward- The Great Leap Forward was a campaign by the Chinese government from 1958 to early-1960 aimed at using China’s plentiful supply of cheap labour to rapidly industrialise the country.

Humanism- The system of views which makes the human being its central value, as opposed to abstract notions such as God, religious or political ideals, abstractions like History or Reason, or sectional interests such as race or gender.

Idealism - a thought process of how the material world adheres to ideas. Idealists follow a certain ideal concept and understand everything from its adherence to that concept.

Imperialism- An advanced stage of capitalism, attained by some nations in the 20th-century. The epoch of imperialism opens when the expansion of colonialism has covered the globe and no new colonies can be acquired by the great powers except by taking them from each other, and the concentration of capital has grown to a point where finance capital becomes dominant over industrial capital.

Internationalism-the ethical value of the workers’ movement towards the interests of the working class of all countries over and above the interests of the working class in any one country, and the practice of organising on an international basis.

Iron Curtain- a term coined by Winston Churchill in March 1946 referring to the policy of isolating the Soviet Union and its allies from trade and social intercourse with the rest of the world. The “Iron Curtain” was an essential plank of the Cold War strategy to wear down the resistance of the working class of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Jacobinism- The Jacobins were the leaders of the French bourgeois revolution of 1789-93. The term is now used to refer to the radical democratic-revolutionary traditions of struggle of the bourgeois democratic movement against tyranny.

Kulak - Russian term for "tight fisted" Name for the landlords of rural Russia

Labour a process in which both human and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature.

Labour-Power - The combination of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description.

Left Opposition - The Left Opposition was formed in Russia 1923 in response to the rising tide of Stalinism. The opposition was labeled as Trotskyist (because Trotsky was the defacto leader of the opposition), while the right side of the party was referred to as Stalinist (because Stalin was the defacto leader). Both sides stressed that their position was the continuation of Bolshevism.

Liberalism an ideology of the urban bourgeoisie. Very broadly, liberalism asserts individual autonomy against the intrusion of the community into that. There is economic liberalism and civil liberalism. Economic liberalism”, sometimes called Neo-liberalism or “big-L Liberalism” advocates a laissez faire economic regime, i.e., the right of property-owners to exercise the power of money unhindered by regulations, redistributive taxes and so on. Civil liberalism emphasizes the importance of individual autonomy against determination by traditional norms, racial prejudice, entrenched power relations and economic disadvantage.

Libertarianism - Radical, “life-style” liberalism, which promotes individual autonomy in the extreme, usually closer to anarchism than to economic liberalism, save that anarchism has greater focus on the community.

Liquidator - A political position in a party of removing, or liquidating, one side of the party membership in favour of the 'better' side.

Lumpenproletariat- Roughly translated as slum workers or the mob, this term identifies the class of outcast, degenerated and submerged elements that make up a section of the population of industrial centers. It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements.

Maoism- A theory and practice which claims to be an advancement of Marxism, developed as a critique of the Soviet Union. Developed by Mao.

Marxism- the theory of dialectical materialism based on communist practice.

Marxist Leninism- A label of Lenin's approach to Marxism at the beginning of the 20th-century, in a capitalist Russia emerging from feudalism. While Lenin considered himself only a Marxist, after his death his theory and practice was given the label of Marxism-Leninism, considered to be an overall evolution of Marxism in the "era of the proletarian revolution". Marxism-Leninism was the official political theory of the former Soviet state and was enforced throughout most of the former Eastern European socialist governments of the 20th-century. The term is now used t describe those who follow Stalin's contribution to Lenin's theories.

Materialism- Those philosophical trends which emphasise the material world (the world outside of consciousness) as the foundation and determinant of thinking, especially in relation to the question of the origin of knowledge.

III. What is Communism?

V. Politics

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