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“ONTOGENY RECAPITULATES PHYLOGENY”
This idea, which the 19^th century semi-materialist naturalist Ernst Haeckel called his “biogenetic law”, is basically that the embryological development of an individual creature is a recapituation of the stages of the historical evolution of that species. Thus early embryos of humans and other primates have gills and a fish-like tail recalling their ancient fish ancestry. Modern biological science, however, considers the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny to be sort of a very crude and limited partial truth.

“There is in fact a peculiar correspondence between the gradual development of organic germs into mature organisms and the succession of plants and animals following each other in the history of the earth.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878), MECW 25:69.

“The same phenomenon is illustrated by the gill arches that still dominate the ontogeny of land-living vertebrates. It is obvious in all these cases that development is controlled by such a large number of interacting genes that the selection pressure to eliminate vestigial structures is less effective than the selection to maintain the efficiency of well established developmental pathways.” —Ernst Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (1988), p. 435.

OPPORTUNISM
[In the Marxist-Leninist sense:] “The opportunist does not betray his party, he does not act as a traitor, he does not desert it. He continues to serve it sincerely and zealously. But his typical and characteristic trait is that he yields to the mood of the moment, he is unable to resist what is fashionable, he is politically short-sighted and spineless. Opportunism means sacrificing the permanent and essential interests of the party to the momentary, transient and minor interests.” —V. I. Lenin, “The Russian Radical is Wise After the Event” (Oct. 18, 1906), LCW 11:239.

OUGHT
[To be added...]

OUTSOURCING
The practice by corporations of sub-contracting work (manufacturing work, service work, etc.) to other companies and especially foreign or non-union companies which pay lower wages and offer fewer benefits to their workers. It is one of many very common ways today in which the capitalists are intensifying the degree of exploitation of the international working class.

OVERPRODUCTION
Production which exceeds effective market demand. That is, the production of commodities which cannot be sold because there is no market for them. Overproduction is also call a “glut”.

[Ricardo, from his On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation (1817):] “...the very meaning of an increased demand by them [the laborers] is a disposition to take less themselves, and leave a larger share for their employers; and if it be said that this, by diminishing consumption, increases glut, I can only answer, that glut ... is synonymous with high profits...”
         [Marx, after quoting the above passage, says:] “This is indeed the secret basis of glut.” [TSV, 3:121.]

OVERPRODUCTION CRISES
[Intro material to be added...]
        There can be no overproduction crises under socialism or communism, because society is quite able to use the vast preponderance of all the goods that it plans to produce, and actually does produce. Of course in every society there will be at least a small amount of wastage in production, but under socialism there is no systematic shortfall due to the failure of market demand—since there are no capitalist markets at all!
        “On this assumption—if capitalist production were entirely socialist production—a contradiction in terms—no over-production could, in fact, occur.” —Marx, TSV, 3:118.

OVERPRODUCTION CRISES—CAUSES OF
[Intro material to be added...]

“The form of production is simply the form of distribution seen from a different point of view. The specific features—and therefore also the specific limitation—which set bounds to bourgeois distribution, enter into bourgeois production itself, as a determining factor, which overlaps and dominates production. The fact that bourgeois production is compelled by its own immanent laws, on the one hand, to develop the productive forces as if production did not take place on a narrow restricted social foundation, while, on the other hand, it can develop these forces only within these narrow limits, is the deepest and most hidden cause of crises, of the crying contradictions within which bourgeois production is carried on and which, even at a cursory glance, reveal it as only a transitional, historical form.” —Marx, TSV, 3:84.

“Overproduction, the credit system, etc., are means by which capitalist production seeks to break through its own barriers and to produce over and above its own limits. Capitalist production, on the one hand, has this driving force; on the other hand, it only tolerates production commensurate with the profitable employment of existing capital. Hence crises arise, which simultaneously drive it onward and beyond [its own limits] and force it to put on seven-league boots, in order to reach a development of the productive forces which could only be achieved very slowly within its own limits.” —Marx, TSV, 3:122.

OVERPRODUCTION CRISES—RESOLUTION OF
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OWEN, Robert   (1771-1858)
British industrialist and utopian socialist.