Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

—   Ina - Ine   —

“IN-AND-OUT-OF-RECESSION”
An informal name for the recent intensified stagnation phase of the current world overproduction crisis. This is the phase that followed the Long Slowdown, and which itself will likely soon be followed by a further great intensification of the crisis.
        This overall crisis began with the beginning of the Long Slowdown starting around 1973 in the capitalist world. At that point the average rate of growth of GDP in capitalist countries suddenly dropped in half, and has remained at that lower level (or below) since then. However, starting in Japan in 1991, and then appearing in Europe during the 1990s and the United States (with the “New Economy” recession of 2001) this Long Slowdown was succeeded by the new phase of “in-and-out-of-recession”, with only very weak recoveries in between the recessions. It was Japan that led the way into this new phase of the crisis, in part because of its smaller home market, low fertility rate, and its racist hostility to immigration (which allows a country to expand its economy simply through more rapid population growth). But the rest of the capitalist world has followed along on the same path.
        It should be noted that in some advanced capitalist countries, and the U.S. in particular, it has not actually seemed to many commentators that we are truly in a period of “in-and-out-of-recession”. In fact, according to official GDP statistics, the period between the end of the Great Recession and the brief but serious economic collapse in the spring of 2020 which was caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, was one uninterrupted record-long economic expansion without any recessions at all! However, if you look carefully at this supposedly unbroken expansion you will see that: 1) the first several years of it were actually part of the Great Recession itself; and 2) there have been a series of new systematic distortions (huge exaggerations) in the supposed rate of expansion of GDP in recent decades which have hidden several actual mild recessions! In the graph at the right, from the ShadowStats.com website, we see that if their adjustments to the official U.S. government claims are at least roughly correct (as they almost certainly are), U.S. GDP “growth” has actually been slightly negative much of the time in recent decades. In other words, if you look at the actual situation, uncorrupted by false government statistics designed to make things look a lot better than they actually are, it is apparent that the real U.S. economy has actually been in-and-out of recession for at least the past two decades, and thus in a state of overall serious stagnation. (See also: GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT—Validity Of)
        At some point, probably relatively soon, this phase of “in-and-out-of-recession” will itself be followed by an even worse phase of the crisis, and most likely a phase that can only be called outright intractable depression. It seemed for a brief time in 2020 that the sharp economic crisis brought on by the Covid-19 Pandemic might mark the start of this new more serious stage of the long developing overproduction crisis. (Sometimes external factors can serve to trigger events which are really more fundamentally due to the internal contradictions in things.) However, interestingly, the advent of the serious Pandemic and its initial severe accompanying economic crisis led the U.S. ruling class, in their panic, to enormously increase government deficits, including a series of direct distributions of money to the masses! This, in combination with the quite ineffective handling of the health crisis (by instead focusing mostly on keeping the capitalist production going), actually led to a temporary boost to the economy—a very temporary mini-boom! But at the same time it also led to a short period of out-of-control inflation! That has mostly been brought under control again by easing back on the Keynesian government deficits, which has in turn pushed the economy right back into the “in-and-out-of-recession” phase again. But it has also shown once again that the ruling class is almost completely out of economic ammunition to keep the capitalist economy from sinking into a worse period of depression accompanied by very serious inflation—both of which the masses really hate!
        See also: JAPAN—In and Out of Recession

“IN LEAGUE WITH THE FUTURE”
The feeling or viewpoint that one is working toward some inevitable future society, or else that one strongly supports forces and developments which are leading to that future society. This has actually been a common feeling or attitude of many individuals participating in political movements which foresee, or are working toward, deep and important changes in society, including not only within communist revolutionary movements but also within right-wing or fascist movements, and even many religious movements. Of course these totally different and opposed movements have completely different ideas about what the future society will turn out to be like! And, more to the point, only a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement, based on genuine social science and scientific predictions, really has any actual justification for this feeling of being “in league with the future”. (See the entry on “INEVITABLEISM” for more on this.)
        Sometimes these often very strongly-held views take on a moral veneer: that the future should be the way that its proponents say it is heading. Or even the claim that actions which promote that inevitable future are therefore morally correct. Engels, in Anti-Dühring, after discussing the three main European moralities of his age, namely Christian-feudal, bourgeois, and proletarian, says: “Which [morality], then, is the true one? Not one of them, in the sense of absolute finality; but certainly that morality which contains the most elements promising permanence, which, in the present, represents the overthrow of the present, represents the future, and therefore the proletarian morality.” [Peking, 1976, p. 117] This could be interpreted as saying that the morality of the future is the best morality simply because it is in the future! However, Engels’s view is more subtle than that. The truth of the matter is that the future socialist, then communist, society is more moral (certainly from our point of view) not because it is in the future, but rather because it more fully meets and satisfies the needs and interests of the people than does present-day capitalist-imperialist society. (However, for futher discussion of Engels’s quote, and the topic in general, see the entry: “CENTRAL PROBLEM” OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST-MAOIST THEORY OF ETHICS

INCARCERATION RATES (US)
See: PRISON POPULATION—US

INCOME (Personal)
See: RICH AND POOR — Income

“The Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany—a Centrist party formed in April 1917. The core of the party was made up of Kautsky’s Labor Commonwealth. The Independents advocated unity with the declared social-chauvinists, justified and defended them and demanded the rejection of the class struggle.
         “In October 1920 a split took place at the Halle Congress of the party. A large section of it united with the Communist Party in December 1920. Right-wing elements formed a separate party and adopted the old name of Independent Social-Democratic Party; it existed until 1922.” —Note 319, Lenin: SW I (1967).

INDETERMINISM
The view that some (or all) phenomena do not have causes. The opposite of determinism.
        See also: FREE WILL

INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS
[Sometimes more concisely referred to as just “the Index”.] This is a list of banned books maintained by the Roman Catholic Church which members of that church are not allowed to read. Religions in general do not trust anyone, even their own indoctrinated members, to be exposed to ideas which differ from their established dogmas.
        See also: BOOKS—Banned

INDISPENSABILITY
        See also: CONCEIT

“Confucius has been dead for ages and today we have a Communist Party in China, which is surely wiser than Confucius; this goes to show that we can do better without Confucius. As for good people, they are not indispensable either. Would the earth stop turning without them? The earth will go on turning all the same. Things will proceed as usual or perhaps even better.”   —Mao, “Speeches at the National Conference of the Communist Party of China: Concluding Speech” (March 31, 1955), SW 5:166.

INDIVIDUALISM
        1. The theory that the rights or interests of the individual are supreme, and are higher than any possible collective rights or interests of groups of people.
        2. Allowing individuals to hold their own opinions, live their lives as they choose (providing they don’t harm the interests of others), and so forth. This sense of individualism is generally positive, whereas definition #1 is clearly very wrong.
        3. The bourgeois ethical theory that morality is (or should be) based on individual interests (in the first sense above), as in the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
        See also below, and: COLLECTIVISM,   SELF-INTEREST

“Man becomes individualized only through the process of history. Originally he is a species being, a tribal being, a herd animal—though by no means as a zoon politicon in the political sense.” —Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58, III. Chapter on Capital, Sect. 2; MECW 28:420. [In the last phrase here Marx is saying that human beings were not originally “political animals” in Aristotle’s sense of being citizens of a town or city. (See end note 11 in MECW 28:544.)]

“Bourgeois society makes fun of us, saying: ‘You Communists only talk about the public as if there were no self.’ But this is not true. We hold that without individuals there is no collective. What we advocate is putting the collective first—public first, self second.”   —Zhou Enlai (1971), quoted in William Hinton, Shenfan (Vintage paperback ed., 1984), p. 367.

INDIVIDUALISM — Within a Revolutionary Party
There are two opposite ways in which a revolutionary party can go wrong with respect to the level of individualism allowed to its members: too much, or too little.
        There is way too much individualism being allowed if party members flout the requirements of democratic centralism, if they refuse to carry out the tasks the party assigns them, or if they consciously fail to take the political and action line of the party to the masses. On the other hand, if the party demands that all members change their own personal views about issues to be completely identical with those of the leadership of the party, that would be an example of not allowing each member to think for him or herself; it would be a very wrong violation of an important individual right (and duty!) of every party member to hold to their own views while they nevertheless obey all the requirements of democratic centralism.

“In addition to establishing the [Jesuit] order’s guiding principles, Ignatius [of Loyola] also put in place the mechanisms that would turn those principles into reality. The greatest challenge, he recognized, was to create a body of men who would be unquestioningly committed to the Society and its goals, and willing to dedicate their entire lives to both. Even a brilliant and highly moral individual might be rejected if the selection committee determined that he was overly individualistic and therefore unsuited to life in a disciplined collective.” —Amir Alexander, Infinitesimal (2014), p. 38.
         [The Jesuit order of religious fanatics should not be compared to any genuine communist party! However, that last sentence reflects a fact about who might make a good member of a revolutionary party as well. Yes, party members have a right to hold to their own views; but they also have a duty to follow the rules of democratic centralism and devote their efforts to serving the people and helping them make revolution. If they are too individualistic to be able to do that, then they do not belong in the party. —S.H.]

INDOCTRINATION
See: ABSURDITIES [Voltaire quote]

INDUCTION (Logic)
The process of reasoning from specific cases to general conclusions. Of course this is sometimes valid, and sometimes invalid. Bourgeois philosophers have struggled (unsuccessfully) to force the valid cases into being considered some kind of deductive reasoning.
        See also: NAÏVE INDUCTIVISM, and Philosophical doggerel about the bourgeois philosopher Nelson Goodman for a discussion of what he called the “new riddle of induction”.

INDUSTRIAL CYCLE
The most common term used by Marx for the economic ups and downs in capitalist society over a period typically of 5 to 10 years. [More to be added... ]
        See also: ECONOMIC CYCLES

INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION
As commonly used in modern capitalism, the term industrial production is the output in these three areas of the economy: manufacturing, mining, and utilities. Mining includes oil and gas drilling and production, and utilities include electricity production and distribution along with natural gas distribution. Manufacturing is the most important component of industrial production, and in the U.S. it makes up around 75% of the total (as of 2010). The Federal Reserve publishes a monthly index of industrial production, which is an important indicator of the health of the entire economy.

INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD (IWW)
A militant working class organization founded in the United States in 1905 with the goal of organizing all workers into one large union. It fought not only for better wages and working conditions, but—unlike most unions in bourgeois society—also favored the overthrow of capitalism. From 1905 to 1908 it was under socialist influence, but afterward became syndicalist in its outlook. Its base of support was among unskilled and immigrant workers who were disgusted with the craft unions and the political conservatism of the American Federation of Labor. The IWW believed that the organization of workers according to their industries could form the basis for a future socialist society, and even conceived of the IWW and industrial unionism as “forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old”.
        Despite its ideological weaknesses, the IWW made a major contribution to promoting militancy and class consciousness in the U.S. during its early years. However, after World War I the organization declined rapidly, due to severe government repression and also internal dissention. The IWW still exists today in a miniscule way, but long ago ceased to be a significant social force.

INEQUALITY [Economic]
Under the capitalist system the overall trend is for the polarization of both income and wealth to intensify over time—that is to say, for the rich to get ever richer and for the poor to get relatively poorer. The basic reason for this is pretty obvious; the capitalist ruling class runs its companies and all of society in its own interests.
        At the present time this inequality of wealth has reached new and record extremes. In early 2015 the Oxfam organization reported that the share of the world’s wealth owned by the richest 1% increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014, while the poorest 80% of the population owned just 5.5% of the wealth. And it added that if current trends continue, the richest 1% will own more than 50% of the world’s wealth by 2016.
        See also: BILLIONAIRES,   GINI COEFFICIENT,   MILLIONAIRES,   RICH AND POOR,   SOCIAL JUSTICE INDEX

“[My book demonstrates that in the U.S.] runaway inequality [is] accelerating. It isn’t just there, it’s growing. The fact that 95 percent of all the new income in the current so-called recovery is going to the top 1 percent is indicative of what’s happening. I don’t think that’s ever happened before in American economic history that I can find. There’s no recovery at the bottom, it just keeps going to the top.” —Les Leopold, a liberal labor writer, in an interview about his new book, Runaway Inequality, on Salon.com, March 6, 2016.

“In the tribal or village community with common ownership of land—with which, or with the easily recognizable survivals of which, all civilized peoples enter history—a fairly equal distribution of products is a matter of course; where considerable inequality of distribution among the members of the community sets in, this is an indication that the community is already beginning to break up.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878), Part II: Chapter 1, MECW 25:136.
         [Engels, of course, is here talking about the transition from primitive communal society to class society, and its several successive forms, slavery, feudalism and capitalism. But in reading this passage in today’s ever more unequal American society we cannot help but think that this extreme and constantly worsening inequality in the contemporary U.S. and around the world also indicates another major social change is looming, namely a socialist revolution whereby the workers and masses finally say “enough of this outrage” and get rid of capitalism entirely! —S.H.]

“The connection between distribution and the material conditions of existence of society at any period lies so much in the nature of things that it is always reflected in popular instinct. So long as a mode of production still describes an ascending curve of development, it is enthusiastically welcomed even by those who come off worst from its corresponding mode of distribution. This was the case with the English workers in the beginnings of modern industry. And even while this mode of production remains normal for society, there is, in general, contentment with the [unequal] distribution, and if objections to it begin to be raised, these come from within the ruling class itself ([such as from utopian socialists like] Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen) and find no response whatever among the exploited masses. Only when the mode of production in question has already described a good part of its descending curve, when it has half outlived its day, when the conditions of its existence have to a large extent disappeared, and its successor is already knocking at the door—it is only at that stage that the constantly increasing inequality of distribution appears as unjust, it is only then that appeal is made from the facts which have had their day to so-called eternal justice.” —Engels, ibid., MECW 25:137-8.
         [Indeed, it is no accident that there is now a much greater and growing mass concern with economic inequality in society, even though capitalism has always been fundamentally unfair and unequal. The time has now come to seriously start to do something about this inequality in America; i.e., to organize ourselves to make revolution. —S.H.]

INERTIA   [Physics]
The characteristic or property of matter which leads it to remain at rest (if it is already at rest) or to remain in motion at a constant speed and straight line direction (if it is already in motion) unless and until a force is applied to it.
        See also: NEWTON’S LAWS OF MOTION (First Law)

However, more recently there have been ideological currents within even Marxism that have denied that many or all of these things are inevitable. It is true of course that very few things are “absolutely inevitable” with no conceivable possibility that they won’t occur! It is conceivable, after all, that humanity might be wiped out by a giant asteroid striking the earth next week, and in that case humanity will not get the chance to overthrow capitalism, introduce world socialism, and transform that socialism into world communism.
        But it seems to me that we should cut Marx, Engels, et al., a little slack here, and understand their predictions that revolution, socialism and communism are inevitable in a more reasonable way. It is in fact true that given a very few assumed conditions, and specifically given that humanity continues to exist, capitalism will eventually be overthrown and the people will institute first socialism and then communism. Indeed, the overthrow of capitalism is itself one of the major conditions required if humanity is to continue to exist! Either humanity gets rid of capitalism, or capitalism will get rid of humanity (through nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, scientific accident through recklessness due to the profit motive, or some combination of such genuine dangers).
        There is a tendency in modern bourgeois society toward philosophical (or epistemological) agnosticism, and this has also had some negative effects within Marxism itself. And part of this is to start thinking that nothing significant can really be known about the future, and that revolution and communism are not inevitable (even on reasonable assumptions). We must strongly resist this inroad of bourgeois agnosticism and decadent pessimism within our revolutionary movement! —S.H.
        See also: “IN LEAGUE WITH THE FUTURE”,   REVOLUTIONARY OPTIMISM,   TELEOLOGY

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