Glossary of Revolutionary Marxism

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A POSTERIORI
[Latin: literally, “that which follows after”.] The opposite of a priori. An a posteriori statement is one which can only be known to be true or false on the basis of experience. Thus, in reality, all of human knowledge is a posteriori in the strictest sense, though in a looser sense some types of analytical knowledge (i.e., that which is derived from other knowledge, especially in logic or mathematics) are often considered to be a priori rather than a posteriori.

A PRIORI
[Latin: literally, “that which precedes”.] The opposite of a posteriori. A statement which can (it is claimed) be known to be true or false prior to (or independently of) any experience.
        Of course no statements can even be understood at all by new-born infants; it requires considerable experience before even simple statements can be understood, let alone be formulated or be reasonably judged as true or false. So, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as any genuine a priori knowledge. Even innate behavior, such as the urge to suckle by infants, is not “knowledge” in the propositional sense. (Infants do not “know” that it is good or important to suckle; this is merely something which evolution has led them to do.)
        However, there is a looser sense of the term a priori, meaning something which can be determined or known by extrapolating from existing knowledge without the necessity for further experience or investigation of the world. Sometimes this is described as “reasoning from self-evident propositions”, though that can be terribly misleading. The most persuasive examples of this sort of thing are in logic and mathematics where it is, for instance, quite possible to derive some new mathematical knowledge (such as a previously unknown theorm) merely through thinking about the abstract logical relationships of already known mathematical entities, such as numbers or geometrical figures. Of course this would not be possible if our previous experience in the world had not led us to create abstractions like numbers and lines and triangles.
        Another sort of thing that can loosely be called a priori knowledge, is due to recognizing shared elements of meanings of words. Thus we know that all bachelors (in the usual context) are unmarried men simply from the definition of the word, and not from any investigation conducted among all the bachelors of the world. But here again, this implies we have enough previous experience in society to have correctly learned the meaning of that word.
        Idealist philosophers, however, have often argued that—besides these sorts of commonplaces—there is another, much more important, kind of a priori knowledge. One of the worst offenders in this area was Kant, who claimed that all knowledge of the world gained through sensory perception (experience) was unreliable and contraposed it to a priori “authentic knowledge” such as of forms of sensibility (space and time) and reason (cause, necessity, etc.). In actuality, our concepts of space, time, cause, necessity, and other such abstractions are every bit as much derived from human experience in the world as is any bit of everyday knowledge; the process is simply larger and more complex.
        Because idealist philosophers have tried to promote this sort of invalid extention and interpretation of the term a priori, for materialists it has come to be a warning flag that idealist nonsense is on the way! Neither of the terms a priori or a posteriori is commonly used by materialists.

“ABSOLUTE MUSIC”
A term used in bourgeois discussions of music theory to describe music which is supposedly free of external references, ideas or associations. Instrumental music, without lyrics and without any other explicit associations to ideas, human institutions, interests and the like, is thus categorized as “absolute music”. However, the fact that neither the composer nor any lyricist gave any explicit and definite guidelines to the sort of ideas and associations that the music should give rise to does not mean that the music does not nevertheless give rise to various definite ideas and such in the minds of its listeners. Moreover, most types or styles of instrumental music have conventional ideas and references associated with them because of their historical development or milieu.
        In classical European music, where the term is most common, forms such as fugues, sonatas and symphonies are often considered to be “absolute music” (unless they have reference “programmes” associated with them). The opposite of “absolute music” is considered in bourgeois circles to be “programme music”, where there are explicit lyrics or other definite guidelines to the listener as to what ideas or moods the various parts of the music should give rise to.
        Marxists have usually argued that in reality there is no such thing as “absolute music” in the bourgeois sense, and that all music has various kinds of human, social, and class associations, whether it has explicit lyrics and listening guidelines or not. See for example the articles: “Has Absolute Music No Class Character?”, by Chao Hua, and “Criticize the Revisionist Viewpoint in Music”, by Chu Lan, both in Peking Review, #9, March 1, 1974.

ACCUMULATION
[To be added...]
        See also: CAPITAL—ACCUMULATION OF, PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION.

“ACTUALLY EXISTING SOCIALISM”
This is a phrase that was (and sometimes still is) used by those who recognized that many countries which called themselves “socialist” (especially the Soviet Union during its last decades) had severe shortcomings, but who could still not bring themselves to admit that these countries were not really socialist at all! In other words, this is a phrase that was used by those who were unable to recognize revisionism and phony socialism when it stared them in the face. This syndrome was especially common among older Marxists who had developed emotional attachments to the Soviet Union in its earlier socialist period, and who could not face the fact that the nature of the Soviet Union had fundamentally changed from socialism to state capitalism.

AESTHETIC OBJECT
A work of art. Most of the philosophical discussion around this topic centers on whether a work of art is a physical object, or some other kind of thing (such as an “idea”, “illusion”, or even something that “doesn’t really exist at all”!). In the case of a painting or a statue it seems at first quite reasonable to say that the work of art is a physical object, either the physical canvas covered with paint or the physical statue made of bronze, wood, or some other material. But what about a woodblock print that exists in multiple copies, none of which is more “original” than any of the others? What about a song? Or a new dance? Are they physical objects? Or a novel? Is it “really” the original manuscript (even if that differs from the final changed printed version that the author approved, and which exists in a million equal copies?). Or what about a poem that is recited verbally and never written down at all? These are the sorts of questions that arise. To cut a long story short, in my own opinion a work of art of any kind is actually a pattern or arrangement of some sort that is created by the artist and which can—in theory at least—be replicated in many individual copies, each of which is a token of that particular type. (See: types/tokens.) This, by the way, is not an idealist theory, but rather a materialist theory that undercuts idealism on this issue. —S.H.

AESTHETICS
Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with art. In popular usage, as well as in older bourgeois philosophy, aesthetics is often viewed as being focused on “the beautiful”, but actually the explication of beauty is just one of many issues in aesthetics, and not even the most important issue. Some of the many other questions in the philosophy of art are:
        What sort of thing is a work of art? (Is it a physical object? An abstraction? An “illusion”, as some have claimed? Or what?) (See AESTHETIC OBJECT entry above.)
        What makes a work of art a good work?
        Why does art have such an impact on human beings?
        What is the relationship of art to society?
        See also: Philosophical doggerel on aesthetics.

AGITATION
1. [Wide sense:] Oral, printed and visual political works or activity whose purpose is to influence people’s consciousness and mood, and to motivate them to take political action.
2. [Narrow (Leninist) sense:] As above, but specifically with respect to a single issue.
        See also: PROPAGANDA

AGNOSTICISM
1. Claiming not to know, or the view that one cannot know, whether or not God exists.
2. The view that no one can really know anything, at least with any certainty. (This generalized concept may be called philosophical agnosticism or epistemological agnosticism.)
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about agnosticism.

ALIENATED LABOR
The past wealth created by labor which now exists as capital and no longer belongs to the workers who produced it, and furthermore which now confronts the workers as an alien force dominating them and working against their interests.

“To the same extent as political economy developed ... it presented labor as the sole element of value and the only creator of use-values, and the development of the productive forces as the only real means for increasing wealth; the greatest possible development of the productive power of labor as the economic basis of society. This is, in fact, the foundation of capitalist production. ... But in the same measure as it is understood that labor is the sole source of exchange-value and the active source of use-value, ‘capital’ is likewise conceived by the same economists ... as the regulator of production, the source of wealth and the aim of production, whereas labor is regarded as wage-labor, whose representative and real instrument is inevitably a pauper (to which Malthus’s theory of population contributed), a mere production cost and instrument of production dependent on a minimum wage and forced to drop even below this minimum as soon as the existing quantity of labor is ‘superfluous’ for capital. In this contradiction, political economy merely expressed the essence of capitalist production or, if you like, of wage-labor, of labor alienated from itself, which stands confronted by the wealth it has created as alien wealth, by its own productive power as the productive power of its product, by its enrichment as its own impoverishment and by its social power as the power of society.” —Marx, TSV, 3:258-259.

ALTRUISM
The subordination or sacrifice of one’s own personal interests to those of others. The opposite of egoism.

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

ANTAGONISM
[In Marxist usage:] Irreconcilability.
        See also: CONTRADICTIONS—Dialectical

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.

AP&P
This is the jargon being used in the RCP for the following mouthful: “The culture of appreciation, promotion, and popularization around the leadership, the body of work and the method and approach of Bob Avakian.” AP&P is thus a short-hand reference to what most people would simply call the ghastly personality cult which the RCP has created around its leader Bob Avakian.

AQUINAS, St. Thomas (1225-74)
The most important Scholastic philosopher and theologian of the Roman Catholic church.
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Aquinas.

ARISTOTLE (384-322 BCE)
As Marx said, the greatest philosopher of antiquity. Engels commented that Aristotle “was the most encyclopedic intellect” of all the ancient Greek philosophers. He had a more down-to-earth outlook than did his teacher Plato, and emphasized the observation of nature. Nevertheless he vacillated between materialism and idealism. He defended slave society and its political economy, and “was the first to analyze value and the two primitive forms of capital (merchant capital and money-lending capital)”. In the year 335 BCE he established an important school called the Lyceum in Athens.
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Aristotle.

ART
See: AESTHETICS and AESTHETIC OBJECT.

ASSET BUBBLES
[To be added... ]
        See also: HOUSING BUBBLE.

AVAKIAN, Bob
American revolutionary, the Chairman and dominant leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party since its formation in 1975. Avakian should get the credit for being the person most centrally responsible for the creation of the RCP, but also the blame for being the person most centrally responsible for wrecking it as an organization with any serious prospects of leading a revolution in the United States. He played a similar role internationally. Avakian took a lead in arranging for the creation of the international organization of Maoist revolutionaries, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), but then through doctrinaire insistance on what its policies should be, played the leading role in disabling it as a functional organization.
        Avakian has a strongly authoritarian and anti-democratic streak (in practice and also even in theory: consider the title of his 1986 book, Democracy: Can’t We Do Better Than That?), and the Party he leads has never allowed serious internal dissent. Always rather egotistical, Avakian has more and more demanded and achieved the creation of a grotesque personality cult around himself within his Party. The RCP has become pretty much a one-man operation, as far as new ideas and thinking go, as exemplified especially in Avakian’s supposed “New Synthesis” of communist theory.
        See also: AP&P, INSTRUMENTALISM, and the “THREE OURS”.

AVERAGE PROFIT
See: PROFIT, AVERAGE.

AXIOLOGY
The branch of ethics concerned with “value”. The study of “value” separate from ethics in general is based on the mistaken idea that “values” are not derivable from factual relationships and must somehow be appended “from without”.
        See also: DEONTOLOGY

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