Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

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Notice! Because of its growing size, this file has been split into these separate files: PA.htm — Words and phrases starting with the letters Pa-Pd. PE.htm — Words and phrases starting with the letters Pe-Pg. PH.htm — Words and phrases starting with the letters Ph. PI.htm   — Words and phrases starting with the letters Pi-Pk. PL.htm — Words and phrases starting with the letters Pl-Pn. PO.htm — Words and phrases starting with the letters Po-Pq. PR.htm — Words and phrases starting with the letters Pr-Pt. PU.htm — Words and phrases starting with the letters Pu-Pz. Although this older “P.htm” file still exists (in case there are still links to its contents), all new entries and revisions to old entries are being made to the above files.

PALEOLITHIC AGE
The Old Stone Age, or the period from when human beings and our immediate ancestors first started making crude stone tools until about 10,000 BCE, and the advent of agriculture. Generally in reference to the social and cultural developments of Europe and the Mediterranean area. The Upper (or Late) Paleolithic is the period from 35,000 to 10,000 BCE. The last 2,000 years of the Paleolithic (the “Epipaleolithic”) and the first 2,000 years of the Neolithic (the “Proto-Neolithic”) are collectively known as the Mesolithic Age (i.e. 12,000 to 8,000 BCE).
        See also: NEOLITHIC AGE

PANICS
An older name for capitalist crises, especially the financial aspects of such crises.
        See also below, and: FINANCIAL CRISES, CRASH OF 1929

PANIC OF 1873
A short though severe financial crisis, which however more or less marked the beginning of a long period of economic weakness in the U.S. which is now known as the Long Depression (1873-1896). As is always the case, this capitalist crisis was blamed by bourgeois ideologists on factors external to the capitalist system, including an epidemic of horse flu which harmed the transportation industry. The long period of ensuing economic weakness was also falsely blamed on the Coinage Act of 1873 which switched the U.S. over from a “bimetalic” (gold and silver) money standard to just a gold standard, which somewhat hurt the silver mining industry (but of course gave a further boost to gold mining).

PANIC OF 1893
A severe financial and economic crisis that in many ways was a continuation of the Panic of 1873 after the relatively calm period of the 1880s. Railroad construction had tailed off and many railroad and other companies had financially overextended themselves. Some, such as the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad went bankrupt. As the financial crisis intensified people began cashing in their currency for gold. Foreigners, in particular, demanded gold in payment from Americans. This led to the U.S. Treasury’s gold supply falling to the legally manditory minimum, at which point the government stopped exchanging gold for paper notes. (This was in effect a temporary abandonment of the gold standard.) This, in turn, led to further panic. Banks and other companies began going bankrupt on a large scale.
        Unemployment jumped up to between 12% and 14% in the U.S., and in some cities reached 20% to 25%. There was a wave of evictions, and a tightening of vagrancy laws as the well-to-do became frightened of “anarchy” among the poor and unemployed. There were qualitatively intensified labor struggles occurring. This crisis also took on an anti-foreigner aspect, since many of the unemployed were recent immigrants. Similarly, there was a racist component, since large numbers of African-Americans went north in the period after the Civil War and Reconstruction. It wasn’t until around 1896 that the economy began to improve in a major way.
        See also: LONG DEPRESSION (1873-1896)

PANIC OF 1907
This was the last of the major financial crises in the U.S. during the transition period from pre-monopoly capitalism to modern “monopoly capitalism” (or capitalist-imperialism). This panic itself mostly occurred in the center of U.S. capitalist finance, New York City. It was tipped off for most of the usual reasons, including undue expansion of credit and debt, considerable financial manipulation (including an attempt by the head of one of New York’s big banks to corner the copper market), and outright fraud and thievery. But the underlying cause lay, as virtually always, in the internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production and specificially in the fact (as Engels put it) that the expansion of production proceeds faster than the expansion of the market.
        Though relatively short, this panic was quite sharp and scared the hell out of both the capitalists and the U.S. government. The financial panic led to a recession in 1908, but it also led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System (the U.S. central bank) in 1913. Since “the Fed” did not yet exist in 1907 it fell to J.P. Morgan, by far the most influential financier of the day, working together with the U.S. Treasury department, to patch together a resolution for this particular financial crisis. Since that time, it has been the government itself that has attempted to overall manage the capitalist economy and deal with its perpetual financial and economic crises.

PANIC OF 1929
See: CRASH OF 1929

“PARADOX OF THRIFT”
The supposed “conundrum” in bourgeois economics wherein the tendency of consumers to save money during poor economic times leads to additional falling of effective demand, and thus worsens the economic crisis, leading to more layoffs and cuts in wages, and hence even further reluctance to spend on the part of consumers. This is simply one aspect of the fact that people’s psychology can intensify a boom and also intensify a recession or depression. It is not really a puzzle, though it appears to be so to bourgeois moralists who simultaneously tell people they should save for a rainy day and also “get out there and spend”, even if they have to borrow to do so!
        Keynes thought that negative psychological factors such as this might keep an economy operating at only a perpetually weak level, and this is why a burst of government deficit spending could perk up people’s economic spirits, and get them spending freely again. This would supposedly “prime the pump” and restore the economy to a healthy condition. The flaw in this thinking is that problems with a capitalist economy are most fundamentally due to objective factors (such as the fact that the workers simply cannot be paid enough to buy back all the commodities they produce for the capitalists), and not just psychological moods.

PARIS COMMUNE
The first proletarian uprising which achieved state power for a time. The Paris Commune was established in Paris in March 1871, and was brutally suppressed after two months. The Commune provided both positive and negative lessons. The positive lessons included a vivid example of the real democracy for the people possible with proletarian rule. Among the negative lessons were the realization that the proletariat was not sufficiently organized and conscious of its tasks, and did not act with sufficient determination against the bourgeoisie to prevent their comeback (which led Marx to add the principle the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to the list of basic principles of Marxism).

“It seems the Parisians are succumbing. It is their own fault, but a fault which was in fact due to their too great decency. The Central Committee and later the Commune gave Thiers, that mischievous dwarf, time to concentrate the hostile forces, firstly because they rather foolishly did not want to start a civil war—as if Thiers had not already started it by his attempt at the forcible disarming of Paris, as if the National Assembly, summoned for the sole purpose of deciding the question of war or peace with the Prussians, had not immediately declared war on the Republic! Secondly, in order that the appearance of having usurped power should not attach to them they lost precious moments (it was imperative to advance on Versailles immediately after the defeat (Place Vendôme) of the reactionaries in Paris) by the election of the Commune, the organization of which, etc., cost yet more time.” —Marx, Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, April 6, 1871, in Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence (1975), p. 246; slightly different translation in MECW 44:128.

PARMENIDES OF ELEA   (born c. 515 BCE)
The founder of the Eleatic School of ancient Greek philosophy. (Plato, however, says that the founder of that school was Xenophanes, and it seems Parmenides was influenced by Xenophanes and may have been his pupil.) Parmenides believed and taught that despite all appearances to the contrary, reality must be “One”, that is, an eternal, imperishable, indivisible, motionless and perfect single entity. This may have been one of the earliest arguments for this specific idealist conception, which has frequently reappeared in abstract forms of religion (including Buddhism) and mysticism. Parmenides’s most famous student was Zeno of Elea, the propounder of paradoxes which attempted to “logically prove” Parmenides’s peculiar idea.

PARTICULARS
See: UNIVERSALS vs. PARTICULARS

PARTY DEMOCRACY
See: DEMOCRACY—Within Revolutionary Parties

PATERNALISM
[In Marxist usage:] A method of political leadership (or a political system based on this method of leadership) wherein the authorities or leaders run things on behalf of the ordinary people, make decisions for them, and so forth, in the same way that a father might do for his children. Even if these decisions really are for the benefit of the people for a time, this is still a perversion of Marxism, which since its founding by Marx and Engels, has always championed (at least in theory) a truly democratic society where the people make their own decisions and control their own lives.
        The democratic, Marxist alternative to paternalism is the mass line method of leadership wherein there are still leaders, but the leaders lead not by themselves deciding things for the masses, but rather by seeking to educate the masses in their own real interests and by helping them to organize themselves to implement and satisfy those interests when they are ready to do so.
        By far the worst sin of Stalin (and he was guilty of other very serious crimes as well!) was to rule the Soviet Union in a paternalistic manner. The masses were thus not trained to run things themselves, nor to question or resist their leaders when they seemed to be making changes that went against their interests. Thus when Khrushchev and a new generation of leaders came to power after Stalin’s death—leaders who were now revisionists out for their own welfare and not that of the people—the masses were unprepared to stop them and were lost.
        If the masses accept their status as “children” who are being taken care of by others—even a supposed Marxist revolutionary party trying to serve their interests in the way a father might—then eventually they will be re-enslaved by a new bourgeois ruling class developing out of that once paternalistic party. That is the foremost lesson of the triumph of revisionism in the Soviet Union.
        See also: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

Is this correct? No it is not! This revisionist position denies that there is or can be any contradiction between the national interests of one country (even under socialism!) and those of the people of the world and the world communist revolution, but this is clearly undialectical nonsense. The dedication we genuine communists have is not for our country, but for our international working class and the international communist revolution. Even under socialism, patriotism is dubious at best, and by no means the proper ideological outlook for a Marxist.

“PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK”
See: LIVING PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK

PEASANT REFORM
The name given to the “emancipation” of the serfs in Russia in 1861. See: SERFS—Emancipation of in Russia

PEOPLE, The
1. [In Marxist, especially Maoist usage:] The proletariat and its allied classes and strata, as opposed to “the enemy”.
2. The entire population. (When we anti-revisionist Marxists wish to refer to the entire population we generally use phrases such as: “the people as a whole”, or—better yet—“the whole population”.)

PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE AGAINST POLICE ATROCITIES (PCAPA)
Also known as the Police Santrash Birodhi Janasadharaner Committee (PSBJC). This is a mass organization of Adivasis in the Jangalmahal area of West Bengal, India. This organization has strongly defended the rights of the tribal peoples living in that area, especially against the theft of their land by Indian and transnational mining corporations. This mass organization has been supported by Maoist revolutionaries in the area, and is now falsely viewed by the Indian government as itself being composed almost exclusively of Maoists.
        For extensive news reports about the struggles of the PCAPA see the Lalgarh Page on BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET.

PEOPLE’S WILL
See: NARODNAYA VOLYA

PERCEPTION
[To be added... ]
        See also: SENSATION

PETTY, Sir William   (1623-87)
An early bourgeois political economist, described by Marx as the “founder of political economy” and by Keynes as “the father of modern economics”. His principal mentor was Hobbes, particularly in matters of taxation. Petty was an original thinker and is credited with the first clear statements of many ideas in political economy, including the labor theory of value, the differential theory of rent, how banks create credit, and the velocity of money circulation. He was also the first economist to put forward public works as a cure for unemployment (which Keynes often gets undeserved credit for).

PETTY’S LAW
The tendency in a capitalist economy for the proportion of the labor force engaged in services (rather than production) to increase over time. Some of the reasons why this occurs (or may occur) include:
        1) The tendency of firms to become specialized, and to “outsource” service functions which were formerly done “in-house”.
        2) Rising incomes for some social classes and strata which leads them to hire others to do what they formerly did for themselves.
        3) The growing difficulty in finding profitable new business opportunities in production, which leads some capitalists to start and promote companies which provide services.

PHENOMENALISM
One of a number of related theories of knowledge based on the notion that the immediate objects of knowledge are sensations. These theories often argue that all statements about physical objects are equivalent in meaning to statements about various subjective sensations that people have. All these theories are empiricist and idealist to one degree or another.
        A typical expression of phenomenalism is that, in the words of John Stuart Mill, “objects are the permanent possibilities of sensations”. This takes sensations as all that we really know, and seems to imply that there may be no objective reality beyond sensation. It seems to “define away” the objective reality that gives rise to our sensations. Similar views have been held by Bertrand Russell and most other empiricists. Russell held that all talk about physical objects, including their properties and locations, should be translated into talk about human subjective experiences. From our opposed materialist perspective we argue that our sensations and impressions of the world actually arise from, and are based on (to one degree or another), objective reality rather than the other way around, as the phenomenalists would have it.
        Strangely, the views of Mill and Russell might be considered among the “moderate” forms of phenomenalism. Locke and Herbert Spencer also held similar views, recognizing at least that objective reality did exist, though insisting that all we are actually directly aware of is our own sensations. Kantian agnosticism formalized this point of view that human knowledge cannot know anything directly about the real objects that give rise to our sensations, each of which is supposedly an unknowable “thing-in-itself” (ding-an-sich).
        The more extreme forms of phenomenalism merge into outright subjective idealism. Examples of this are in the philosophies of Bishop Berkeley, Ernst Mach, and the loose school of idealist thought known as Empirio-Criticism.
        From the point of view of dialectical materialism all forms of phenomenalism are false since they divorce human knowledge from objective reality and from human practice in relating to objective reality.
        See also: POSITIVISM, SENSATIONALISM, SENSUALISM

“PHILOSOPHERS’ SHIPS”
A reference to the exiling, on Lenin’s orders, of a small number of reactionary intellectuals (including a few idealist philosophers) who were hostile to the October Revolution and revolutionary Russia. In the fall of 1922 two German boats carried 160 expelled reactionaries to Germany. In 1923 a smaller number of additional bourgeois intellectuals were expelled by train to Riga, Latvia, or by ship from Odessa to Constantinople. Among those expelled on these several occasions were: Nikolai Berdyaev, Nikolai Lossky, Sergei Bulgakov, and Ivan Ilyin.

PHILOSOPHICAL AGNOSTICISM
See: AGNOSTICISM

PHILOSOPHY — Scientific
[To be added... ]
        See also: DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

“Modern materialism embraces the more recent discoveries of natural science, according to which nature also has its history in time, the celestial bodies, like the organic species that, under favorable conditions, people them, being born and perishing. And even if nature, as a whole, must still be said to move in recurrent cycles, these cycles assume infinitely larger dimensions. In both cases modern materialism is essentially dialectic, and no longer needs any philosophy standing above the other sciences. As soon as each special science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous. That which still survives, independently, of all earlier philosophy is the science of thought and its laws—formal logic and dialectics. Everything else is subsumed in the positive science of nature and history.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring, MECW 25:26.

PL or PLP
See: PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY

PLA
See: PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY

PLATO   (c. 427-347 BCE)
[To be added...]
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Plato.

PLATONISM
[To be added...]
        See also: MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM

PLEBEIAN
1. [In ancient Rome:] A member of the lower classes (but not including slaves).
2. [In any class society:] One of the common (or ordinary) people, as opposed to the upper classes.

POLICE MURDER AND BRUTALITY (in the U.S.)
[To be added...]
        See also: COINTELPRO: FBI’s War on Black America (1989) [high quality 50 min. documentary video by Denis Mueller & Deb Ellis].

POLITICAL STUDY
[To be added... ]
        See also: REPEATED STUDY

POOR PEASANT
1. [In China before collectivization in the 1950s:] A peasant (farmer) who owned only a very small amount of land, and few (if any) work animals and pieces of farm equipment, and who consequently had to work part of the time for landlords or rich peasants, in addition to working his own land.
2. Someone in a similar situation at other times and places.
        See also: CHINA—Class Analysis Before 1949

POPPER, Karl   (1902-1994)
Austrian-British bourgeois philosopher strongly influenced by logical positivism. [More to be added...]
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Popper.

POSITIVISM
One of several related bourgeois idealist empiricist philosophies, especially these two:
1. The theory founded by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857), which denies the possibility of ever coming to know the inner connections and relations of things in the world, and denies the capability of philosophy as a means of knowing and changing the objective world. Philosophy is instead reduced to merely summarizing the data obtained by the sciences and a superficial description of direct observation, or—in other words—to what they call “positive” facts. These Comtean positivists view themselves as being “above” idealism and materialism, but in fact their doctrine is merely a variety of subjective idealism.
2. LOGICAL POSITIVISM

“Possibilists (Broussists)—an opportunist trend in the French working-class movement of the 1880s led by Benoît Malon and Paul Brousse that repudiated the idea of a revolutionary proletarian party and renounced revolutionary struggle, believing that the muncipalities alone could ensure gradual transition to socialism. This was the opportunist policy of the ‘possible’, and hence the ironic name Possibilists, coined by Guesde. Towards the end of the eighties, with the support of opportunist elelments in other countries, notably Hyndman of the British Social-Democratic Federation, the Possibilists tried to capture the leadership of the international working-class movement. However, most of the socialist organizations refused to follow their lead and sent delegates to the Marxist congress in Paris (July 14-20, 1889), at which the Second International was inaugurated. Engels systematically exposed their [the Possibilists’] splitting activities. In 1902, in conjunction with the other reformist groups, the Possibilists founded the French Socialist Party, which in 1905 merged with the Socialist Party of France [which had been founded in 1901]. In the imperialist war of 1914-18 Guesde and the other French socialist leaders became social-chauvinists.” —Footnote 46, Lenin: SW I (1967).

POSTMODERNISM
[Sometimes with a hyphen.] A cynical, even nihilistic, trend in modern bourgeois philosophy (especially Continental philosophy) that denigrates concepts such as objectivity and reality and that denies there is any such thing as scientific truth in any sphere. [More to be added...]
        See also: DECONSTRUCTIONISM

POTENTIAL OUTPUT   [Bourgeois Economics]
The output (as measured by GDP) of a capitalist economy during a given period when all its capital and technology are fully put to use. In other words, the output if all the machinery in all the factories was put to good use by the appropriately skilled labor force.
        At least that is what potential output is supposed to be in theory! In actuality, bourgeois economists are driven to cheat on this definition in a whole variety of ways. First, they acknowledge that at any given time there are a lot of machines which are not being utilized, and even some entire factories closed down, but say that it would be impossible to put all of them into full use because if all the companies involved tried to do that at the same time there would be shortages of raw materials, fuel, and so forth! Of course that is true, but if all these companies were to gradually crank up all their machines and factories, there would soon be much more raw materials produced. So this type of excuse is really pure baloney. After all, it is these same apologists for capitalism that claim that the market will soon correct for any short-term shortages!
        Another excuse for not counting all the idle machines and factories is the claim that a certain portion of them are not intended to be used full time. Instead, companies keep a certain amount of excess capacity around just to meet occasional bursts in demand.
        Yet another way in which the real potential production of companies (and the economy as a whole) is grossly underestimated is through counting “full production” as being based on “current industry standards”, which—given the steady overproduction of capital—keep getting lowered. If a company were really going all out to produce all it could, for example, it would be operating its production facilities around the clock, in three shifts. But if effective demand has long since been far exceeded by the expansion of capital, the “industry standard” might now be to operate only one or maybe two shifts.
        Through phony methods and excuses like these, the actual estimates by bourgeois economists of what the “potential output” of a capitalist economy is get grossly understated. Nevertheless, even given these maneuvers, these economists still need to admit at times of recession (at least) that the economy is not producing up to its “full potential”. This is embarrassing for them because their own economic theory states that capitalist economies always will produce at full capacity (barring “external forces”). Their adherence to “Say’s Law” forces them to claim, as Ricardo loved to say, that any amount of capital can and will be put to good use.
        Reality shows otherwise, and even bourgeois economists are forced to admit the existence of “output gaps” between actual production and potential production.
        See also: CAPACITY UTILIZATION RATES

POVERTY
The condition of lacking the usual or socially acceptable minimum amounts of money and material possessions; in other words, being quite poor. This often implies shortage of food, hunger, deficient nutrition, poor or unavailable health care, poor quality housing or even homelessness, lack of access to educational opportunities, and so forth.
        Capitalism as a socioeconomic system is unable (or unwilling) to prevent a significant portion of the population from living in poverty, even in the richest and most advanced capitalist-imperialist countries which steal enormous amounts of wealth from the rest of the world. The level of poverty in any given country depends on a variety of factors, many of which can vary over time. There is always much higher levels of povery in “Third World” countries, which are exploited by foreign imperialism. And poverty levels generally fluctuate somewhat with capitalist economic cycles, and increase substantially in periods of economic crisis.
        Most governments rather arbitrarily set what they call a poverty line, or level of income below which a person or family is considered to be “in poverty”. This line is virtually always set absurdly low in order to try to hide the true extent of real poverty that exists. Even so, the poverty levels in the United States today are quite high and expanding rapidly. In 2009, by this government standard, 14.3% of Americans lived in poverty, which is the highest level in 15 years. That’s a total of 44 million people, or 1 in 7. Among children, 1 in 5 lives in poverty. All this in the richest country in the world. [Statistics from a Census Bureau report, quoted in the New York Times, Sept. 16, 2010.]
        See also below and: WORLD POVERTY

PRAGMATISM
[To be added...]
        See also my essay “Chopping Onions and Pragmatism” at http://www.massline.org/Philosophy/ScottH/ChoppingOnions.htm.

PRATT, Elmer “Geronimo”   (1947-   )
A leader of the Black Panther Party who spent 27 years in prison on trumped-up charges of murder and kidnapping, including 8 years of that time in solitary confinement. Pratt was targeted by the FBI program known as COINTELPRO, which aimed to “neutralize Pratt as an effective BPP functionary.” [From: LA 157-3436, the partially redacted COINTELPRO file on Geronimo Pratt.]
        In December 1968 Pratt was in the San Francisco Bay Area attending BPP meetings. At the same time a woman was kidnapped and murdered in southern California as part of a robbery. The woman’s husband, who was also wounded in that attack originally identified someone else as the killer. But a police and FBI informant within the BPP, Julius Butler, then claimed Geronimo Pratt was the killer.
        Since Pratt was a southern California leader of the BPP, both the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department had him under constant surveillance. The Oakland police also had (illegal) wiretaps of Pratt in conversations in the Bay Area at the time of the murder. They all therefore knew that he was innocent of the crime. However, they withheld this information, along with the fact that Julius Butler was secretly working for them. Thus, whether they put Butler up to his false accusation or not (and they very probably did, since they were holding serious criminal charges over his head that gave them powerful leverage with him), they definitely participating in the frame-up. This led to Pratt being falsely convicted in 1972.
        It was not until 1997 that Pratt’s conviction was overturned. He then won a false imprisonment lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and the FBI, with a reported settlement of $4.5 million (including $1.75 million from the federal government). This was little enough recompense for the ruin of much of his life by the government. Since finally being freed, Pratt has worked as a human rights activist with a particular focus on other false imprisonment cases, and has participated in the campaign to free the political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
        See also: COINTELPRO: FBI’s War on Black America (1989) [high quality 50 min. documentary video by Denis Mueller & Deb Ellis].

“PREACHING TO THE CHOIR”
Directing agitation or propaganda (in Lenin’s sense) at those who already agree with what is being said, rather than trying to reach and win over those who don’t already understand and agree with the ideas. This is a very common failing within most social movements, both left and right.

PREDATORY LENDING
A common practice in contemporary capitalism whereby banks and other financial institutions issue mortgages or other loans to people in misrepresented or even outright fradulent ways, which end up severely harming these people eventually. Here are a just a few of the huge number of ways of doing this:
       *   Falsely representing an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) as a fixed-rate mortgage, thus exposing the mortgage holder to future payments which they cannot possibly afford.
       *   Failing to clearly and openly disclose balloon payments (very large individual repayments on the loan) which will become due at a later date, and which the mortgage holder will not be able to pay.
       *   Representing initial “teaser rates” (temporary low interest rates) on loans as the interest rate that would continue for the life of the loan.
       *   Signing people up for loans at higher interest rates when they actually have credit ratings that qualify them for lower interest rates. (Many people who were signed up for subprime mortgages over the past decade actually qualified for better mortgages with lower interest rates.)
        Of course people taking out mortgages were also always told that the economy would keep booming and that the prices of homes and property would continue to increase indefinitely. Thus they were led to believe that even if they were unable to make the mortgage payments in the future they could still sell the home and end up with a big profit.
        In the U.S. alone, millions of victims of predatory lending have lost their homes, lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, had their credit ratings ruined, and had their lives disrupted. But the banks have made billions of dollars of profits this way, and only a relatively small number of the most blatantly fraudulent mortgage salesmen have gone to jail.

PREDICTIONS — In Economics
See: ECONOMIC PREDICTIONS, ECONOMIC FORECASTING (Bourgeois)

PRETHEORETICAL CATEGORY
An ill-defined or vague concept based on a crude and undeveloped theory, or where there is no overall theory as yet. Many categories in bourgeois ideology, such as “middle class” might well be considered to be pretheoretic notions. However, it is probably true that all theoretical terms start out as pretheoretical notions; some always remain vague and confused, while others are eventually transformed into more definite and precise terms or categories in the course of developing the relevant theory in a scientific manner.

PRICE
[Under capitalism:] The value of a commodity expressed in money. “Price is the converted form in which the exchange-value of commodities appears within the circulation process.” —Marx, CCPE, p. 66. “Price is the money-name of the labor realized in a commodity.” —Marx, Capital, vol. I, Ch. 3, sect. 1: (International, p. 101; Penguin, pp. 195-6.)
        The actual market price, however, tends to fluctuate somewhat around its value based on variations in supply and demand, and also deviates more systematically from its actual value from one industry to another based on the relative amount of machinery being used (because rates of profit tend to get equalized across industries). Prices may also systematically exceed value in industries because of monopoly conditions. Although the prices of individual commodities deviate in practice from their value, considered as a whole the sum of the prices of all the commodities produced in a capitalist system normally equals the sum of the values of all the commodities. When you go to buy something at the store you are concerned primarily with its price, but when you want to correctly analyze and understand the capitalist system of production you must focus first of all on the Marxist concept of value.
        See also: COST-PRICE
[Under socialism:] Prices under socialism are set according to a state plan for production and distribution, instead of constantly fluctuating as they do under a capitalist market system. Prices are still set, in part, according to the law of value, though to a gradually diminishing degree as socialism develops in the direction of communism where goods and services are distributed free. Moreover, the socialist state will tend to purposely lower the prices of basic necessities below their value, while somewhat raising the prices of luxury goods above their value. Thus the overall long-term trend for all prices under socialism is to fall, but for the prices of goods and services of special importance to the people (health services, food, everyday clothing, housing, transportation, education, etc.) to fall faster and more sharply.

PRIME RATE
The interest rate quoted by commercial banks for short-term loans to their best (safest!) commercial customers, usually big corporations. This rate fluctuates based on the cost of money to the banks themselves (the discount rate) from the Federal Reserve, the health of the economy and that of the particular bank, and so forth. Despite the quoted prime rate, banks sometimes charge higher or lower interest rates for particular loans.

“PRIMING THE PUMP”
For the benefit of recent generations we should first say what “priming the pump” is literally, before talking about the analogy used in Keynesian economics! Pumping the handle on old-style mechanical pumps was once the common method used to draw water up from a well. Once water was being pumped out, the damp leather (or similar) seal inside the pump kept air from rushing in at the top (which would allow the partially raised water to fall all the way back down again before the handle was pumped again). So in order to successfully raise water from the well to the spout it was often necessary to pour a bit of water down into the pump mechanism first. This was called “priming the pump”. Once the seal was damp, water could be raised to the spout, and the water being raised continued to keep the seal damp, allowing yet more water to be raised by further pumping.
        Keynes and his followers used this as an analogy for how government deficit financing could get a weakened economy, or one in recession, going strongly again. The problem is that this is a very weak analogy to the true economic situation.
        Keynes understood that sometimes “effective demand” was insufficient to keep the economy going, and that therefore the government had to somehow get more money into the hands of people who would spend it. This is the “priming” part! But he and his followers believed that once this happens the economy should from then on be able to run for a very long time without further government deficits, and even that government surpluses could be successfully managed that would make up for the previous deficits. There are actually some limited circumstances where this can be true for a time. If, for example, the reason for the weakness in the economy was primarily psychological, that people were not going into debt to buy things because they feared they might be layed off, then a fairly short boost to the economy might lead people to abandon their fears, and decide to take out new loans to buy TVs, cars and houses.
        But the problem in the economy eventually gets to be much more basic than something like that; the working class and masses will eventually pile up so much debt that they can’t obtain new loans when they apply for them. In that case, getting government money into their hands will still allow them to buy things but only as long as the government money keeps flowing! In this situation, government deficits still work to keep the economy going, but only as long as they continue (and, for reasons we won’t get into at the moment, for as long as these government deficits keep expanding at an ever faster pace). In other words, no pump is actually being primed, and the economy will not be able to continue on its own.
        However, Keynesian economists deeply believe in this “pump-priming” theory for several reasons:
        1) They see it work on occasion (as with the psychology example) and falsely conclude that it must always work, no matter what the situation.
        2) They have the theory that the Great Depression of the 1930s was resolved through this means; if not through government deficits for public works, then at least through massive government deficits accumulated during World War II. (“Military Keynesianism”.) Actually Keynesian deficits did interrupt the Depression, but only the massive destruction of capital during the war truly ended the Depression, and kept it from resuming after the war.
        3) Being bourgeois ideologists, they just can’t believe that capitalism has any internal flaw that might keep it from working smoothly most of the time. They imagine that all problems with the capitalist economy come from the outside and are fairly easily dealt with if the right techniques (such as Keynesian deficit pump-priming) are used. In other words, they don’t really understand how capitalism actually works, and its serious and inherent internal contradictions.

PRIMITIVE COMMUNAL SOCIETY (or PRIMITIVE COMMUNIST SOCIETY)
The first socioeconomic formation in human history (and pre-history), which lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, and which is characterized by the collective ownership of the means of production (such as the land and nature’s bounty), an absence of social classes and exploitation, a primitive division of labor based only on “natural” factors such as age, sex and physical ability, more or less equal distribution of goods, and a very low level of development of the productive forces. For the most part people in this form of society were nomadic hunter-gatherers, without agriculture or any settled life.
        It is important to note that the people in these societies are/were not biologically “primitive” in any way (at least during the past tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years), but rather their socioeconomic system that is/was primitive, when compared to more advanced societies.
        As of the year 2000 there were very few examples of primitive communal society still left in existence, and even those few which did remain were influenced to various degrees by the class societies all around them. One of the last remaining primitive communal societies (and one of the best studied) is that of the Dobe Ju/’hoansi people of the southern region of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana and Namibia. There are about 50,000 Dobe people, who speak a San language which includes various click sounds, and who are nomadic hunter-gatherers subsisting on fruits, nuts, roots and hunted animals. They live in separate social bands of usually 25 to 50 people, with no organizational forms at any higher level. Even within each band there is no formal political or economic organization or leadership, and even very little specialization or division of labor (except along “natural” lines). However, they practice a form of what cultural anthropologists call “situational authority”, where leaders emerge and then disappear based on the varying tasks at hand. And of course there are no social classes. As one anthropologist, Edward Fischer of Vanderbilt University, comments: “The Dobe are noted for their fierce egalitarian ethic; when a Dobe hunter makes a kill, he must distribute the meat among everyone in his band. Dobe society does not distinguish between work and leisure time.” And what outsiders would consider work (such as actual time spent gathering food or hunting) usually takes up only a modest part of their day.
        Those people who claim that “human nature” prevents socialism or communism from ever working seem not to know that humanity arose and has spent most of the hundreds of thousands of years of its existence in a form of cooperative society which is based on sharing, cooperation and general equality.

PRIMITIVE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
The social organization in the earliest forms of human society, and especially within primitive communal society. Although class society (primarily capitalism, of course) now exists in almost every corner of the world, there still exists today a few small and remote regions where pre-class, primitive communal society persists. Moreover, the scientific investigation of such societies began back in the 19^th century when such societies existed in larger numbers. This has allowed us to develop some general understanding of how these societies function. It has been found that the social organization of these societies is/was very much simpler than has developed in class society, and—in particular—nothing like a government or a state existed.
        One widespread modern summary theory is that of the American anthropologist Elman Rogers Service (1915-96) who postulated the following four levels of social organization (in his book Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective, 1962):
        Level 1 — Band: Bands are groups of roughly 25 to 50 people, who have no higher form of social organization. While there will probably be other similar bands nearby, sharing a common language and culture, there is no formal organizational structure by which they relate to each other. Moreover, even within a single band itself there is no formal structure, no established leadership. As mentioned in the entry for PRIMITIVE COMMUNALISM above, the only form of leadership is a “situational authority” wherein some particular person might on this occasion or that take a temporary leadership role in some specific task (such as a hunt). Such an absence of government and institutionalized authority is possible only because there are no social classes, and a deeply entrenched culture of cooperation and sharing.
        Level 2 — Tribe: Tribes are groups of a few hundred to a few thousand people. This higher population density usually requires an increased dependence of plant food based on some form of low-intensity farming (such as by harvesting crops which were planted but perhaps not otherwise well-tended). Because of such primitive farming, tribes are most often sedentary at least for a few years. (The exhaustion of the farm land might then lead to a relocation to another spot for a few more years.) Anthropologist, Edward Fischer of Vanderbilt University, elaborates: “While there are status differences in tribes, these differences are generally fluid; social organization is governed by kinship ties. Tribal-level societies are led by headmen—individuals who have a formal position of power that they occupy through achieved status instead of inherited status. These headmen continually have to gain the support of the people they lead in order to keep their position.” The Yanomamö people in the Orinoco basin are one example of this social organization level. They have a slash-and-burn form of agriculture based on plantains, sweet potatoes and tobacco, and relocate their villages every three years.
        Level 3 — Chiefdom: Thousands of people, with a hereditary chief. There is a higher and more important level of status distinctions than in tribal societies. Edward Fischer remarks: “Politics and economics are built on the idea of redistributive exchange, in which gifts entail obligations that can often be converted into political power.” More intensive agriculture is required to support this level of society. An example is the Trobriand Islanders in New Guinea. A chief or nobleman inherits his position from his mother’s brother, rather than from his own father. And yams are both the economic basis and the social symbol of Trobrian society.
        Level 4 — Nation-State: Typically millions of people in a complex class society with a strong centralized authority supported by armed power (police and army). The first states arose in Mesopotamia around 2500 BCE.
        Social organizational “level 1”, the band, is the form of primitive communal society, and organizational “level 4” is obviously the form in not only modern capitalist countries, but also in all other class-based socioeconomic formations (i.e., in slave and feudal society). Levels 2 and 3 are transitional social organization forms that bridge the gap between classless primitive commualism and the major forms of class society in the world today.

PROBLEM OF EVIL
An internal logical flaw in the conception of God as put forward by many religions including Christianity. The religious doctrine is that God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing) and omnibenevolent (all good). The trouble is, given the obvious fact that there is much evil in the world, these three characteristics are logically incompatible and inconsistent with each other. David Hume expressed the difficulty this way:
        If evil in the world is the intention of the Deity, then He is not benevolent.
        If evil in the world is contrary to His intention, then He is not omnipotent.
        But evil is either in accordance with His intention or contrary to it.
        Therefore, either the Deity is not benevolent, or He is not omnipotent.
Of course from the materialist point of view there is one other, much more sensible, alternative: No “Deity” exists at all!
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about the problem of evil.

PRODUCTION
See below, and: INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION

PRODUCTIVE FORCES
The means of production (the non-human productive forces) together with human labor power.

PRODUCTIVITY
Labor productivity is the ratio of output (quantity of commodities produced) divided by the the number of workers (or the number of hours worked by the workers) to produce it. Thus if a given group of workers can now produce 25% more output in an 8-hour day as compared to a year ago, their productivity has increased by 25% over that period. Productivity can be increased through the use of better tools and machinery, through the better organization of labor (i.e., improving labor technique and efficiency), by increasing the amount of work demanded from each worker per hour (speed-ups), and by increasing the number of hours the workers must work each day. (This last method does not improve productivity/hour, but it does improve productivity/day.)
        See also: “LEISURE AGE”

“Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes [i.e., bourgeoisie]. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish.” —John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), Bk. IV, ch. VI, sect. 2. [Since Mill’s day some very small proportion of the benefits due to the great advances in the productivity of labor have sometimes been won by the working class through their great struggles, but the vast preponderance still goes to the capitalists.]

“Capital therefore has an immanent drive, and a constant tendency, towards increasing the productivity of labor, in order to cheapen commodities and, by cheapening commodities, to cheapen the worker himself.” —Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. 12. (Penguin ed., pp. 436-7.)

“To be produced, to be brought to the market, the commodity must at least fetch that market price, that cost-price to the seller, whether its own value be greater or smaller than that cost-price. It is a matter of indifference to the capitalist whether his commodity contains more or less unpaid labor than other commodities, if into its price enters as much of the general stock of unpaid labor, or the surplus product in which it is fixed, as every other equal quantity of capital will draw from that common stock. In this respect, the capitalists are ‘communists’. In competition, each naturally tries to secure more than the average profit, which is only possible if others secure less. It is precisely as a result of this struggle that the average profit is established.” —Marx, TSV 3:83.

“A progressive never asks people what they want—why should he, when he already knows what’s good for them?” —Derek Bickerton, Bastard Tongues (2008), p. 186. [This criticizes the tendency among “progressives” and liberals toward paternalism, which demonstrates their total ignorance of the mass line.]

PROLETKULT (or PROLETCULT) ORGANIZATION
A political and cultural movement of the radical intelligensia in Russia (and beyond) from 1917 to 1932, which claimed to be working toward a “totally new” and truly proletarian art and culture which was supposed to be completely devoid of any bourgeois influences. The name comes from the contraction of the Russian words for “Proletarian Culture”.
        The founder and chief theoretician of the Proletkult organization was Alexander Bogdanov, and it was based on his 3-volume work Empirio-Monism (1904-6) which was an attempt to combine Marxism with Machism and positivism. Another very prominent person involved in this movement was Anatoly Lunacharsky, who was the Commissar of Enlightenment (Minister of Culture) in the revolutionary government, and who was Bogdanov’s brother-in-law.
        Bogdanov viewed the Proletkult as the third part of a troika (a Russian vehicle drawn by 3 horses) advancing the revolution. The first two were the proletarian party and the unions. Thus implicitly (and in practice) he viewed the Proletkult as an organization independent of control and supervision by the Bolshevik party. Already by early 1918 Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife) and other Bolsheviks were criticizing this unjustified autonomy and independent political line of the Proletkult.
        Originally the Proletkult organization was supported politically and financially by the new revolutionary government in Russia. Under pressure from the Bolshevik party it somewhat reluctantly agreed to educate its members on pre-Revolutionary Russian and world culture. But the artistic styles and forms it mostly promoted were still somewhat far removed from the interests and appreciation of the workers and peasants. Thus it promoted Constructivism in painting and sculpture and Futurism in literature and other arts. Only because of Lenin’s disapproval (in “On Proletarian Culture” [1920; LCW 31:316-7]) did they pull back from focusing on promoting advant guarde experimental art.
        In 1920 the Proletkult was finally brought under better political control. To counteract Bogdanov’s strongly idealist influence in philosophy, Lenin re-issued his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. And the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued some new guidelines, “On the Proletkults”, which restricted the activities of that group to just the arts and even there said that this should be monitored by the Party. Its funding was also reduced, though it still existed in this much diminished form until 1932.

“Despite this setback, Proletkult leaders continued after 1920 to exercise influence in other institutions and on Soviet intellectual life. The Bogdanovists considered the Soviet regime to be not a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ but rather a coalition of the proletariat, the poor peasantry and the bourgeois intelligensia. Given the cultural backwardness of the first two strata they considered it likely, under prevailing conditions of state capitalism [during the NEP], that the intelligentsia would emerge as the ruling class. Without challenging the role of the Party as custodian of the political interests of the working class or of the trade unions as custodian of their economic interests, the Proletkult had reserved for itself the role of guardian of the cultural development of the working class, arguing that the transition to socialism required the formation of a proletarian intelligentsia.” —John Biggart, in Harold Shukman, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Russian Revolution (1988), p. 271.

PROLETARIAN CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
See: CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS—Proletarian

PROLETARIAN MORALITY
The morality which expresses the class interests of the proletariat (whether or not individual proletarians are conscious of this).
Compare with COMMUNIST MORALITY.

PROPAGANDA
1. [In traditional Leninist usage:] Oral, printed and visual political views whose purpose is to influence people’s consciousness and mood with respect to multiple issues, or in general (as opposed to the narrow sense of agitation), and to motivate them to take general political action.
2. [In bourgeois usage:] Lies and distortions designed to influence people politically. (They recognize no such thing as bourgeois propaganda of course!)

PROPERTY RELATIONS
[In political economy:] The relations of production expressed in legal terms. Note that personal property (such as a person’s clothes, house or automobile) is not at issue here; in political economy the important matter is who owns and controls the means of production.

PROUDHON, Pierre Joseph   (1809-1865)
French sociologist and economist, an ideologist of the petty bourgeoisie. He was a “socialist” of sorts, but hostile to Marxism, and one of the founders of the social theory of anarchism. Proudhon is famous for the remark that “property is theft”, but he advocated “individual possession” of the means of production, which is an impossibility in modern industrial society, and also clearly shows his petty bourgeois perspective.

“Proudhon criticized big capitalist property from the petty-bourgeois position and dreamed of perpetuating petty property ownership; he proposed the foundation of ‘people’s’ and ‘exchange’ banks, with the aid of which the workers would be able to acquire the means of production, become handicraftsmen, and ensure the ‘just’ marketing of their wares. Proudhon did not understand the role and significance of the proletariat and displayed a negative attitude towards the class struggle, the proletarian revolution, and the dictatorship of the proletariat; as an anarchist he denied the necessity for the state. Marx and Engels struggled persistently against Proudhon’s efforts to impose his views on the First International. Proudhonism was subjected to a ruthless criticism in Marx’s Poverty of Philosophy. The determined struggle waged by Marx, Engels, and their supporters ended in the complete victory of Marxism over Proudhonism in the First International.
         “Lenin called Proudhonism the ‘dull thinking of a petty-bourgeois and a philistine’ incapable of comprehending the viewpoint of the working class. The ideas of Proudhonism are widely utilized by bourgeois ‘theoreticians’ in their class-collaboration propaganda.” —Footnote 76, LCW 5:547.

POLICE SANTRASH BIRODHI JANASADHARANER COMMITTEE (PSBJC)
See: PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE AGAINST POLICE ATROCITIES (PCAPA)

“PUMP-PRIMING”
See: “PRIMING THE PUMP”

PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM
[To be added...]
        See also: GOULD, Stephen Jay

PURPOSE
[To be added...]
        See also: TELEOLOGY

PUT or PUT OPTION
See: OPTION

“PUT POLITICS IN COMMAND”
See: POLITICS IN COMMAND

PYTHAGORAS   (c. 570-c. 495 BCE)
Founder of a mystical religious, philosophical idealist, and political sect in the Greek city-state of Croton (in Southern Italy). He had many strange ideas, including the notion that it was wicked to eat beans. Pythagoras was also very mystical about numbers. His numerological system identified the number four with justice, and he thought that the number ten was the “most perfect number” (in part because the numbers 1 through 4 add up to 10). He is said to have proclaimed that “all is number”, after supposedly being the first to discover that musical notes are related in a simple fashion to the relative lengths of the vibrating strings that produce them. The Pythagorean Theorem in geometry is also named after him, though it was known long before his time.
        In ancient times Pythagoras was considered a very wise man and eventually an important philosopher (by the followers of Plato, for example). But modern scholarship has pretty much shown that this hugely exaggerates his real role in intellectual history. His followers had the habit of attributing all wisdom, including their own ideas and discoveries, to Pythagoras, in much the same way that Christians do with Jesus, and that dogmatists within what should be the revolutionary science of Marxism do with Marx, Lenin and Mao.
        See also below, and: Philosophical doggerel about Pythagoras.

PYTHAGOREANS
Members of the sect founded by Pythagoras (see above), and also his later followers. This peculiar sect required self-discipline, silence, and the honoring of numerous taboos—especially the strict avoidance of eating meat and beans. Pythagoras and his followers expanded the concept of the soul (which had originally only meant the physical breath that leaves the body when a person dies) into a partially mentalistic concept. However, they still also identified this “immortal” soul with gases, and seem to have believed that the eating of beans, which led to farting, allowed part of the soul to prematurely escape the body! (Religion is a very weird thing!) After a person’s death, however, they believed the soul could be reincarnated into a new body, or into other animals or plants, or to “rejoin” the universal “soul”. Politically, the Pythagoreans were a secretive, cultish faction of the slave-owning aristocracy.
        The followers of Pythagoras also discovered that the square root of 2 is an irrational number, which so upset them that they tried to hide this discovery from the world.
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Pythagoras and his followers.

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