Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

—   An - Ao   —

ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
[To be added...]
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about this topic.

ANALYTIC STATEMENT
A statement that is true by definition, or simply because of the meanings of the words in it. Thus the statement “All ducks are birds” is true (in the usual context) simply because the word ‘duck’ is defined as a certain type of bird. The opposite of an analytic statement is a synthetic statement.
        The analytic/synthetic distinction (or at least this terminology) was introduced by Kant, but there are various sorts of questions and disputes that have been raised about it in academic philosophy. The logical positivists worried about proving that all knowledge which can be known a priori must be analytic. The bourgeois philosopher W.V.O. Quine claimed that we do not have sufficient criteria to be able to know whether or not the subject and object of a sentence have the same essential meaning. (This is a typical example of the sort of excessively picky quibbling that bourgeois philosophy is prone to.)

ANARCHISM
[To be added...]
        See also below, and: CHOMSKY, Noam

ANARCHISM — Individualist
[To be added...]
        See also: STIRNER, Max

ANAXIMANDER OF MILETUS   (c. 610-c. 546 BCE)
An early Greek materialist philosopher of the Ionian School, a pupil of Thales, and the first philosopher whose views are known to any significant degree. Like Thales and other members of the Ionian School, he was also in effect an early scientist. He constructed the first geometrical model of the universe, and made maps of both the earth and the skies. His cosmological theory consisted of the earth, which he thought had the shape of a flattened cylinder, at the center of the Universe, with three rings (solar, lunar and astral) surrounding the earth. He invented the gnomon (or upright pointer) on sundials, which gave them greater accuracy in keeping time. Anaximander also originated the concept of biological evolution. He thought that human beings, like other animals, had evolved from fish. (This idea probably arose from examining the fish-like appearance of spontaneously aborted early fetuses. See: “ONTOGENY RECAPITULATES PHYLOGENY”)
        Anaximander was the author of the first written work of philosophy in ancient Greece, On Nature, which—unfortunately—has not been preserved. He was a natural dialectician. He introduced the concept of arché, or the “primary principle”, or the underlying impetus of all things, which however does not seem to be any sort of reference to a god or gods. And these “all things” themselves (or at least their original state) he called the apeiron, or the boundless, indefinite, never-ending, multiplicity of our surroundings which are in constant motion. This is perhaps the first attempt to refer to what materialists later came to call “matter in motion”. And Anaximander thought that out of the apeiron, all worlds, and all the objects in them, have been produced through a dialectical struggle of opposites.

ANAXIMENES OF MILETUS   (c. 588-525 BCE)
Greek materialist philosopher and natural dialectician of the Ionian School who was a student of Anaximander (see above). He gave Anaximander’s conception of apeiron (original matter in motion) a more concrete form, by arguing that everything develops from the primary matter air, forming first clouds, then water, and finally earth and rock. Unfortunately, in this case this more definite form of the theory was a step backwards, similar to returning to Thales’s naïve idea that everything is composed of water. However, Anaximenes did seem to understand and utilize the general dialectical principle of the transition of quantity into quality.

ANDROID THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
Marx supposed that only the labor of human beings is capable of producing surplus value in a system of capitalist production. The android thought experiment, which occurred to me some decades ago, is a way of seeing that it is at least conceivable that Marx is wrong on this point.
        The thought experiment starts by assuming that there is nothing mystical about human beings or their labor that allows them alone to create new value, but instead that it might just be because there is some special exclusive characteristic, or set of characteristics, of human beings that allows their labor alone to produce surplus value in capitalist production. Such a characteristic might be intelligence, ingenuity, creativity, or some such thing. (Marx himself implies at one place in Capital that the essential thing which distinguishes human labor from the industrious activity of other animals is our sense of conscious purpose.) But the thought experiment then supposes that some non-human entity might someday be created, such as an artificial “man” or android, which has that same characteristic (or set of characteristics). In short, an artificial human—if it truly replicates the relevant essential characteristics of a human being—should also be capable of generating surplus value in capitalist production. This is the foot in the door.
        The next stage in the argument is to recognize that all characteristics of human beings come in degrees. Intelligence or creativity, for example, are not absolutely uniform characteristics of every human being. Some people are more creative than others. We do not say that a somewhat less intelligent or somewhat less creative human being is unable to produce surplus value in at least many forms of labor under capitalism. In the same way, we are forced to admit that an android might be able to create surplus value even if it were somewhat less intelligent or creative than the average human being. Further considerations along these lines leads us step-by-step to recognize that any “special characteristic” that might allow human labor to generate surplus value must be part of a continuum, only gradually rising from zero to the full abilities of the most capable human being (and then conceivably way beyond!). Finally, in this age of ever growing computer sophistication and artificial intelligence research, we have to at least consider the possibility that computer-controlled robots might someday possess enough of this hypothesized special characteristic (whatever that may be) that they too would have to be viewed as generating surplus value.
        However, the main persuasiveness of this thought experiment does not depend on any belief that androids will ever actually be constructed! It just shows what we would have to say if they ever are constructed. It is a thought experiment, and not a prediction about robots and artificial intelligence. But it already shows that Marx’s insistence that only human labor alone can create surplus value is at least subject to serious doubt.
        The android thought experiment then leads to the further idea that maybe there is no such “special exclusive characteristic” that human labor has which allows it alone to create surplus value. Moreover, more theoretical considerations suggest that it may be necessary to somewhat revise the labor theory of value from the precise form that Marx gave it. See LABOR THEORY OF VALUE—Revised Form —S.H.
        See also: “Steve Keen on Marxist Economics, Together with a Mini Essay on the Labor Theory of Value” (especially sections 3-10) at http://www.massline.org/PolitEcon/ScottH/Keen_LTV.htm, and “Letter to Frank S. about the Labor Theory of Value” at http://www.massline.org/PolitEcon/ScottH/Keen_LTV.htm

“Ang Bayan is the official news organ of the Communist Party of the Philippines issued by the CPP Central Committee. It provides news about the work of the Party as well as its analysis of and standpoint on current issues.
         “AB comes out fortnightly. It is published originally in Pilipino and translated into Bisaya, Ilokano, Waray, Hiligaynon and English.” —Statement on the web page for Ang Bayan, at http://www.philippinerevolution.net/cgi-bin/ab/index.pl as of 10/21/10.

ANNUITY
A series of equal payments as part of a retirement plan or an insurance policy payout (such as to someone who has a long-term disability insurance policy and becomes unable to work). The payments may continue for a fixed period, or on a contingent basis (such as until the beneficiary dies). (The payment of interest to the holder of bonds may amount to the same sort of thing but is seldom described as an annuity.)

ANSHAN IRON AND STEEL COMPANY
The Anshan Iron and Steel Works was constructed in the period of Japanese rule in Manchuria, and was China’s first large modern industrial enterprise and the center of its heavy industry. After the 1949 Revolution, it was the focus of industrialization during the first five-year plan, and by 1960 it was an advanced complex with more than 100,000 workers supplying 25 percent of the nation’s steel, the foundation of the industrial economy. The Charter of the Anshan Steel Company was proposed by the workers of Anshan in 1960. Mao strongly approved of this Charter and wrote a famous note with regard to it which guided industrial work in general during the Maoist period.
        See also: CHARTER OF THE ANSHAN IRON AND STEEL COMPANY

For more discussion of this topic see section VI of Mao’s essay On Contradiction, entitled “The Place of Antagonism in Contradiction”, from which the above quotation is taken, and these more specialized essays: “Antagonistic and Non-Antagonistic Contradictions”, by Ai Siqi (1957), in which he discusses the concept of antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions as expounded in several works by Mao. [PDF format: 107 KB]; “An Attempt to Discuss ‘Antagonism’ and ‘Antagonistic Contradictions’”, by Shan Hong (1957) [PDF format: 108 KB].
        See also: CONTRADICTIONS—Dialectical

ANTI-COMMUNISM
A reactionary political position, point of view, or piece of propaganda opposing communism, revolution, and often also opposing most other ideas or measures which significantly promote the interests of the working class or masses as a whole. Communism is often portrayed as the most horribly evil system, and communists are routinely portrayed as vicious man-eating monsters and the like!
        See also: TO BE ATTACKED BY THE ENEMY IS A GOOD THING

ANTI-DÜHRING
This famous book by Frederick Engels, published in 1878, was directed against a crude petty-bourgeois theory of socialism put forth by Eugen Dühring. The formal title of Engels’ book is Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science). Engels did such an excellent job of exposing Dühring and at the same time putting forward the essentials of his and Marx’s much more coherent and profound theory of scientific socialism, that Anti-Dühring has ever since its publication been considered an essential textbook of Marxism.

[This book analyzes] “highly important problems in the domain of philosophy, natural science and the social sciences. This is a wonderfully rich and instructive book.” —Lenin, “Frederick Engels” (1896), LCW 2:25.

ANTI-HISTORICISM
        See also: HISTORICISM

“Nothing is more characteristic of the bourgeois than the application of the features of the modern system to all times and peoples.” —Lenin, “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are” (1894), LCW 1:154 (footnote).

ANTI-LIN BIAO, ANTI-CONFUCIUS CAMPAIGN
A mass campaign in Maoist China launched in late 1973 and promoting criticism of both the disgraced Lin Biao and Confucius. Lin Biao died in 1971 in a plane crash in Mongolia while attempting to flee China after his plot to assassinate Mao had been exposed. Mao and the CCP recognized that Lin’s betrayal was connected to some deeper lingering problems in the ideology of people left over from the old China, and therefore appropriately attempted to criticize not just Lin, but the broader ideological problem that still remained. This campaign is sometimes considered to be one of the later phases of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and sometimes considered to be a separate mass campaign.

ANTI-MATTER
[Often without the hyphen:] An uncommon type of matter composed of “anti-particles” (such as anti-protons and “anti-electrons”, or positrons) which when brought together with ordinary matter leads to mutual annihilation and the release of enormous quantities of energy in accordance with Einstein’s equation:   E = mc²
        Some forms of anti-matter differ from ordinary matter in the electrical charge carried. Thus while ordinary protons carry a positive charge, anti-protons carry a negative charge. More fundamentally, the difference between ordinary particles and anti-particles lies in their internal characteristics or constituents. Thus ordinary neutrons and anti-neutrons are both electrically neutral, but consist internally of either quarks or anti-quarks which can still annihilate each other when brought together.
        The term “matter” in physics can in one sense refer only to ordinary matter, and in a more inclusive sense can refer to both ordinary matter and anti-matter. Both particles of matter and anti-matter have mass and generally have the same intrinisic properties as their anti-particle forms.
        The even more abstract conception of matter in the materialist philosophical sense includes both ordinary matter and anti-matter, and also energy in all its forms.

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