“DIALECTICAL AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM” [Work by Stalin]
An important statement of what dialectical and historical materialism are, which unfortunately
became absolutely rigid dogma within the Soviet Union and the world communist movement for
several decades. Nevertheless, even if it is not the be-all and end-all of these two topics,
it still remains a very useful introduction to them.
This work was written in 1938 as Chapter 4 of
the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)—Short Course, the
whole of which was written under Stalin’s close direction, and published in Russian in 1938
and then in English in 1939. Afterwards, this chapter was issued as a separate pamphlet and
long remained in print in that form. It is available online in HTML format at:
http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/DHM38.html
and also at
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
“Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism is extracted
from Chapter IV of the History of the C.P.S.U.(B). Defining dialectical materialism
as ‘the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party,’ he explains that it is dialectical
in its method, materialist in its theory. Historical materialism is the extension of the
principles of dialectical materialism to the study of social life.
“This book contains a brilliant
exposition of the principal features of (1) the Marxist dialectical method, (2) Marxist
philosophical materialism and (3) the Marxist science of society. In it are summarized
the fruits of the whole experience of the application and development of Marxist theory
in the course of the working class struggle for socialism.
“1. Stalin shows how the Marxist
dialectical method studies things always in their inter-connection and in their movement.
It studies development as taking place through the transformation of quantitative into
qualitative changes and as the disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things.
Whatever we may consider, there is always something coming into being and something
ceasing to be, something arising and something dying—and so the struggle between new
and old constitutes the motive force of all development.
“2. Stalin shows how materialism
holds that the world is by its very nature material, that matter is primary and thought
secondary, and that the material world and its laws are fully knowable.
“3. Stalin shows how society, too,
develops according to regular laws, so that the study of history becomes a science. The
working class party must be guided by knowledge of the laws of development of society.
“The determining force of social
development is always to be found in the material life of society, and this provides the
basis for the development of men’s ideas, theories and political institutions.
“This does not imply, however, Stalin
explains, that theories and political institutions are of no significance in social life.
On the contrary, theories and institutions which arise on the basis of the new developing
forces in material life themselves become an active force in that development.
“The chief force in the complex of
conditions of material life that determines the development of society is the mode of
production. Here Stalin distinguishes (1) the forces of production, consisting
of (a) the instruments of production and (b) people with their production experience and
skill, and (2) the relations of production, which in their totality constitute the
economic structure of society.
“He shows how the forces of production
continually develop. And corresponding to their development there are five principal types
of relations of production—primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism.
“Three principal features of production
are noted.
“(a) Production never
remains stationary for long, but is always in a state of change and development.
“(b) Change and
development of the mode of production always begins with change and development of the
productive forces. First the productive forces change and develop, and then, depending on
these changes and in conformity with them, the relations of production, the economic
relations, change.
“(c) The rise of new
productive forces and new production relations begins within the old system and takes place
independent of men’s will and intentions.
“In the course of development, the
existing system of production relations becomes a fetter on further development of the
forces of production. Then follows a period of social revolution. New relations of production
are established by the revolutionary overthrow of the old relations of production, and this
is effected by class struggle, by the overthrow of the old ruling class and rise to power of
a new ruling class.
“Stalin shows how the capitalist
relations of production have become a fetter of further development, and how under socialism
the way is free for a great further development of the productive forces.
“In conclusion, he quotes the passage
from Marx’s Preface to the Critique of Political Economy in which Marx summed up the
essence of historical materialism. [See entry for: "Critique
of Political Economy: Preface" for Stalin and Cornforth’s summary of that passage.]
—Maurice Cornforth, Readers’ Guide
to the Marxist Classics (1952), pp. 22-23.
DIALECTICAL LEAPS — Popular Terms For and Conceptions Of
Here are some of the terms often heard which seem to be grasping at one or more aspects
of what we Marxists mean by dialectical leaps:
Qualitative leap
Tipping point
Coming to a head
Tectonic shift
Sea change
Inflection point
What all these (and sometimes other) terms
seem to be most centrally getting at is that in nature and all spheres of human life, we
often find relatively sudden, and relatively large, changes in some process or situation.
The term qualitative leap emphasizes that this often entails a fundamental change
in the nature of the thing. The term sea change is more limited in that it seems
only to emphasize a change in magnitude. The term tipping point once again seems to
suggest some qualitative change, or else some major change in the direction as well
as the magnitude of a process. The term tectonic shift invokes the image of
a sudden massive earthquake. An inflection point, in popular discourse, is similar
to a tipping point. [In mathematics an inflection point is a point on a curve which
separates an arc with a concave curve upward from an arc with a concave curve downward (or,
in other words, the isolated points where the second derivative of the function equals
zero.)]
Other terms which sometimes have similar
connotations are: dawn, awakening, crisis, snapping, bursting, explosion, etc. Many of
these terms emphasize the suddenness of the change, as well as the magnitude.
See also:
CONJUNCTURE
“The Zen Buddhism/Chan patriarch Huineng (A.D. 638-713) espoused that
enlightenment came as a ‘sudden awakening,’ as opposed to the gradual attainment by which
earlier Buddhists set store.” —“Maverick Monks and Nothingness”, New York Times,
National Edition, June 24, 2022.
DIALECTICS
The most abstract or general scientific laws or principles governing the development of
nature, society and thought. The most basic and important of these principles is the law
of contradiction in things, the conception of things and processes as a unity of opposites.
Some of the more important subsidiary laws, principles or aspects of dialectics include the
transformation of quantity into quality, dialectical or qualitative leaps, the interpenetration
of opposites, the negation of the negation, the particularity of contradiction, the importance
of recognizing the fundamental contradiction and of determining the principal contradiction at
any given time, as well as the principal aspect of a contradiction, and so forth.
Some beginning conceptions of dialectics
developed in ancient times, especially in ancient Greece and in China. The three major stages
in the development of dialectics are shown in the graphic on the right. [From:
Marxist-Leninist Philosophy: Diagrams, tables, illustrations for students of Marxist-Leninist
theory, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987), p. 20.] The major contribution of Mao
Zedong to MLM dialectics should also be added to this Soviet graphic along with Marx, Engels
and Lenin, especially in his important work “On Contradiction” (1937).
See also nearby related entries, and:
CHANGE,
CONFIRMATION BIAS,
CONTRADICTION—Dialectical,
DEVELOPMENT,
FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION,
FUNDAMENTAL VS. PRINCIPAL CONTRADICTION,
HEGELIAN TRIADS,
NEGATION (In Dialectics),
NEGATION OF THE NEGATION,
ONE-INTO-TWO,
QUALITATIVE LEAP,
SUBLATION
“Dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general
laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.” —Engels,
Anti-Dühring (1878), MECW 25:131.
“In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of
opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics, but it requires explanations and
development.” —Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book The Science of Logic” (1914),
LCW 38:223.
“Dialectics in the proper sense [i.e., as opposed to Hegel’s idealist
conception] is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects: not
only are appearances transitory, mobile, fluid, demarcated only by conventional
boundaries, but the essence of things is so as well.” —Lenin, “Conspectus of
Hegel’s Book Lectures on the History of Philosophy” (1915), LCW 38:253-4.
“We want gradually to disseminate dialectics, and to ask everyone
gradually to learn the use of the scientific dialectical method.” —Mao, quoted in
Peking Review, #47, Nov. 20, 1970, p. 2.
DIALECTICS — ANCIENT
[To be added... ]
“The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians,
and Aristotle, the most encyclopedic intellect of them, had already analyzed the
most essential forms of dialectic thought.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring,
MECW 25:21.
“When we consider and reflect upon nature at large or the history
of mankind or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless
entanglement of relations and reactions in which nothing remains what, where and as
it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. This
primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient
Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and
is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming
into being and passing away.” —Engels, ibid.
DIALECTICS OF NATURE (Book by Engels)
This work is available online in several
places including:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/
“Engels’ Dialectics of Nature is an unfinished book. A few
chapters were left by him at the time of his death in more or less finished form; but
a great part of it consists merely of notes. In this book he intended to demonstrate
how the discoveries of natural science confirm that the same dialectical laws which
operate in human society operate also in nature, and how the dialectical method
constitutes a great theoretical weapon of the natural sciences.
“When Engels died in 1895, the
manuscripts of the Dialectics of Nature fell into the hands of [Eduard] Bernstein
(the ‘revisionist’), who did not see fit to publish any part of them. They never saw
the light until published by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in the U.S.S.R. in
1927.
“Parts of this book are hard to
follow for readers who have not at least some knowledge of the natural sciences—though
those who have will find every page a veritable gold-mine of ideas.
“But the general reader will find
little difficulty with the Introduction (which deals with the history of science, and
shows how the old view of the universe as a static system has been replaced by a
picture of universal evolution); with Chapter II (which explains the dialectical law
of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative changes); with Chapter IX—‘The
Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man’ (which gives a classical
exposition of the Marxist view of human nature and its development); and with Chapter
X—‘Natural Science and the Spirit World’ (in which Engels gives his estimate of
‘Spiritualism.’).
“The Introduction and
The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man have been published
separately in the two-volume Marx-Engels Selected Works, and can be studied
independently of the rest of the Dialectics of Nature.
“Chapters III, IV and V—on ‘The
Basic Forms of Motion,’ ‘The Measure of Motion’ and ‘Heat’ contain vitally important
material on the dialectical conception of the forms of motion in matter, and give a
brilliant account of the dialectics of the science of mechanics.
“Two chapters, on ‘Electricity’
and ‘Tidal Friction,’ are of mainly historical interest.
“The long chapter of ‘Notes’
contains material of the utmost interest and importance relating to the history of
science, scientific method, the philosophy of science, the laws of dialectics, the
materials of the special sciences."
—Readers’ Guide to the
Marxist Classics, prepared and edited by Maurice Cornforth, (London: 1952), pp.
25-26.
DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
Proletarian rule. “The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and
maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that
is unrestricted by any laws.” —Lenin, LCW 28:236.
See also:
CLASS STRUGGLE—In Socialist Society
“The indispensable characteristic, the necessary condition of dictatorship
is the forcible suppression of the exploiters as a class, and, consequently,
the infringement of ‘pure democracy’, i.e., of equality and freedom, in regard
to that class.” —Lenin, “Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky”
(Oct.-Nov. 1918), LCW 28:256.
“The exploiters and reactionaries are, under any circumstance, the minority
while the exploited and revolutionaries are the majority. Therefore the dictatorship of the
former is un-justifiable, whereas that of the latter is fully justifiable.” —Mao,
directive regarding the Cultural Revolution, June 17, 1966. SW9:405.
DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT — As the Dictatorship of the Proletarian Party
Is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat the same thing as the dictatorship of the Communist
party? The correct answer is “yes and no”. In other words, this is something that needs to be
discussed and explicated.
No class can acquire and maintain the domination of
a society, or in other words, its own dictatorship over the other
classes in that society, except through the establishment and continual strengthening of its own
political party. Of course, that dominant class will need many other institutions in addition to its
own political party, but these will all be subordinate institutions, such as the military and police
departments, other government agencies, the news media, schools and other educational institutions,
and so forth. So in this sense, “no”, the dictatorship of the proletariat is more than just
the proletarian party alone, but also “yes”, the dictatorship of the proletariat is in fact most
centrally accomplished by the proletarian party. Or, putting it another way, “yes”, the dictatorship
of the proletariat must essentially be the “same thing” as the dictatorship of the genuine
proletarian party, because the proletarian party is the primary and indispensable instrument of
working class rule.
But what if there are two or more proletarian
parties, in the same way that there are two major bourgeois parties running things in present
capitalist-imperialist America? In that case the capitalist class dictatorship is still the same
thing as the joint dictatorship of the Republican and Democratic parties (who work in a
“bipartisan” unity whenever the continued rule of the bourgeoisie is seriously threatened). If
there were two or more real proletarian parties in socialist society, then in a similar way the
class dictatorship of the proletariat would have to be equivalent to the joint dictatorship
of the genuine proletarian parties. (However, even though having multiple proletarian parties—at
least for a certain period—is conceivable, it is far from desirable or ideal. Among other things,
it makes working class unity, by such means as using the mass line
method of leadership extremely difficult or even virtually impossible.) [For more on this
see: Scott Harrison, “On the Question of Multiple Revolutionary Parties”, April 11, 2000,
available at:
https://www.massline.org/Politics/ScottH/MultPart.htm
]
However, the most important consideration here is
that historically in actual socialist societies it has so far proven to be very difficult to keep
the original proletarian revolutionary party completely under the control of the proletariat
over time, and thus truly working in both the genuine interests of the working class and also acting
democratically according to the actual desires of the working class. Witness the fact that rising
new bourgeoisies eventually captured the original proletarian revolutionary parties in both the
Soviet Union and China! We hope and believe we have now learned the terrible lessons from these two
disasters, and that we will not allow such a thing to ever happen again in the future. But now,
instead of simply saying that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the same thing as the
dictatorship of the proletarian party, we do need to add this further proviso: “... as long as that
party truly remains under the control of the proletariat, and as long as it truly continues to
represent the real interests of the proletariat!”.
[The Russian Revolution of October 1917 was accomplished by the unity of two
classes, the proletariat and the poor peasantry, as Lenin noted. And as such, the rule of the
new regime was initially in the hands of two political parties, the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks),
which represented the proletariat, and also the “Left Socialist-Revolutionary” party, which
represented the poor peasantry. However, the LS-R’s then turned against the new regime and
even shot and attempted to assassinate Lenin. At that point, the Bolsheviks appropriately took
complete control of the revolutionary government. Later on, Stalin summed this all up this
way:]
“We marched towards October under the slogan
of the dictatorship of the proletariat and poor peasantry, and in October we put it into
effect formally inasmuch as we had a bloc with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and shared
the leadership with them, although actually the dictatorship of the proletariat already
existed, since we Bolsheviks constituted the majority. The dictatorship of the proletariat
and poor peasantry ceased to exist formally, however, after the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries’ [attempted] ‘putsch,’ after the rupture of the bloc with the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries, when the leadership passed wholly and entirely into
the hands of one party, into the hands of our Party, which does not and cannot share
the leadership of the state with another party. This is what we call the dictatorship of the
proletariat.” —Stalin, “The Party’s Three Fundamental Slogans on the Peasant Question:
Reply to Yan—sky”, Pravda, No. 255, Nov. 6-7, 1927; included in Stalin, Problems of
Leninism, (Peking: FLP, 1976), p. 246.
DIETZGEN, Joseph (1828-1888)
German tannery worker, Social-Democrat, and self-educated philosopher who arrived at the basic
principles of dialectical materialism independently of Marx and Engels.
For some of Lenin’s comments commending Dietzgen
and in defense of him, and also some very secondary criticisms, see sections of his Materialism
and Empirio-Criticism (1908) and his article “Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Death of Joseph
Dietzgen” (May 5, 1913) (LCW 19:79-82).
“Dietzgen wrote at a time when simplified, vulgarized materialism
was most widespread. Dietzgen, therefore, laid his greatest stress on the historical changes
that had taken place in materialism, on the dialectical character of materialism,
that is, on the need to support the point of view of development, to understand that all
human knowledge is relative, to understand the multilateral connections between, and
interdependence of, all phenomena in the universe, and to develop the materialism of natural
history to a materialist conception of history.
“Because he lays so much stress on
the relativity of human knowledge, Dietzgen often becomes confused and makes incorrect
concessions to idealism and agnosticism....
“By and large, however, Dietzgen was
a materialist. He was an enemy of clericalism and agnosticism.” —Lenin, “Twenty-Fifth
Anniversary of the Death of Joseph Dietzgen” (May 5, 1913) (LCW 19:80). [In my opinion
Lenin’s observation about the connection of too great an emphasis on the relativity of
human knowledge to idealism and agnosticism is positively brilliant! —S.H.]
DIGGERS
A small radical group in England during the period of the Commonwealth, which attempted to
institute rural communism through direct peaceful action. It was led by Gerrard Winstanley
(1609-72), and confiscated unused wasteland owned by the local landlords on which to create
collectively owned farms and dwellings. These settlements were attacked and ultimately
dispersed by the landowners and their thugs.
“On Sunday, April 1, 1649, a group of poor men gathered with their
families on St. Georges Hill, near the town of Kingston in Surrey, England. The hill was
barren and seemed an unpromising locale for a new settlement. But the newcomers had come
to stay: they had brought their belongings with them, and quickly set about building huts
to shelter them from the elements. Then they began to dig. Day after day they continued
digging, carving out trenches and planting vegetables on the rocky hill, while calling on
others in the nearby towns to join them. ‘They invite all to come in and help them,’
noted one observer, ‘and promise them meat, drink, and clothes.’ They confidently
predicted that ‘they will be four or five thousand within ten days,’ and while this
proved overly optimistic, the community did attract newcomers, their numbers soon
reaching several dozen families. And yet they went on digging.
;“As the community slowly grew,
suspicion of the ‘Diggers’ in the surrounding towns and villages grew along with it. ‘It
is feared they have some design in hand,’ noted the same observer, and he was not
mistaken. Digging trenches on a barren hill may seem like an innocent act to us, but
things were different in seventeenth-century England. With their actions, the Diggers
were asserting ownership and their right to cultivate enclosed lands that were owned and
controlled by the local grandees. It was a calculated and open assault on the ownership
rights of the propertied classes, and if their intentions were not sufficiently plain
from their actions, the Diggers soon followed up with a pamphlet they distributed far
and wide. ‘The work we are going about is this,’ they explained: ‘To dig up Georges
Hill and the waste Ground thereabouts... that we may work in righteousness, and lay
the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor... not
Lording over another, but all looking upon each other, as equals in the Creation.’
“Such a bold denial of the rights
of private ownership, would have been enough to send chills down a landowner’s spine,
then and now. But there was more: ‘that this Civil Propriety is the Curse, is manifest
thus, Those that Buy and Sell Land, and are landlords, have got it either by Oppression,
or Murther, or Theft.’ All private property was, according to this logic, stolen, and
should by all rights be returned to its rightful owner: the people. True, the Diggers
professed pacifism and made a point of disavowing the use of force to reclaim the land.
But since several of their members were veterans of the English Civil War and its
ravages, the ‘better sort’ of people in Weyburn and surroundings were far from
reassured. Having been labeled thieves and murderers, and their property rights denied,
they were understandably alarmed. Fearing for their land and possessions, not to
mention their lives and safety, they struck back.
“As established members of society,
they first turned to the authorities.... [Who referred them to the courts. The
landowners were disappointed with this limited initial result.] They charged the Diggers
with sexual licentiousness, and prevailed on the courts to bar them from speaking in
their own defense. Meanwhile, Francis Drake, lord of the nearby manor of Cobham, organized
raids on the Diggers’ settlement, ultimately succeeding in burning down one of their
communal houses. Faced with a concerted legal and physical assault, the Diggers gave way.
By August they had been forced to leave St. Georges Hill and move to a new location some
miles away. When this new refuge also came under attack, they abandoned the land and
largely dispersed. The landowners had won.”
—Amir Alexander, Infinitesimal
(2014), pp. 183-5.
DIRECT DEMOCRACY
The immediate, direct participation of everybody in a mass assembly to determine what to
do, rather than selecting representatives to decide. It is also usually assumed that everyone at
this big meeting is on a completely equal basis, with an equal right to speak and be heard. This
tacitly implies that there are no formal leaders. It may also sometimes imply that no one person
has a right to say too much (thus limiting the role of even informal leaders!).
This is the original meaning of the word ‘democracy’,
as it existed during some periods in some ancient Greek city states, such as Athens. (Of course,
in ancient Greece this democracy was not extended to women, let alone to slaves.)
Because of the practical impossibilities of bringing
too large a group of people together in “one big assembly”, direct democracy is only really feasible
for relatively small groups. (For example, it would be totally absurd to attempt to bring all the
people living in Chicago together in one big assembly to create the laws for that city, let alone
all the people in Illinois, or all the people in the U.S.) For this reason, democracy has come to
mean representative democracy, where different local groups select their representatives, who
then meet together to make decisions and pass laws.
In class society, however, the representatives soon
become not the representatives of all the people in their district or area, but actually only
the representatives of the ruling class. In capitalist society, of course, this means that nearly
always the supposed “people’s representatives” actually represent the capitalist class (or, as the
current euphemism has it, “the 1%”). As is frequently joked (or perhaps only bitterly half
joked), America has the best politicians that money can buy. Of course there are many methods by
which only representatives are selected who act on behalf of the ruling class, and direct bribery
is only one of them. Another way, for example, is to make being elected to office so expensive that
only the rich or those strongly backed by the rich stand any chance at all.
Because representative democracy in the modern
capitalist state has become a complete and obvious fraud to so many of us, with little or no real
actual democratic content left at all, there have developed strong feelings among anarchists and
others that the only form of democracy that can be genuine is direct democracy. This confuses
the situation that definitely exists in capitalist society with what could in fact exist in
socialist or communist society. Even under socialism it will still be essential for the people to
keep a close eye on their chosen representatives (and also other leaders such as those in the
leading revolutionary party), but it will no longer be virtually impossible for those representatives
to truly represent the interests of the people.
DISCIPLINE — Of the Proletarian Revolutionary Party
“As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has
existed since 1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its
existence can satisfactorily explain why it has been able to build up and maintain, under
most difficult conditions, the iron discipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.
“The first questions to arise are: how
is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How
is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its
devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its
ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure,
with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also
with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the
political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy
and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they
are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of
being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and
transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to
establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrase mongering and clowning. On the
other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort
and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory,
which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the
practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.” —Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’
Communism—An Infantile Disorder” (April-May 1920), LCW 31:24-25.
DISINFLATION
A term in bourgeois economics referring to a declining rate of inflation. In other words,
inflation still exists, and prices are still going up, but the rate of increase is not as fast as
it was previously. To achieve “disinflation” after a period of higher inflation is considered in
bourgeois circles to be an impressive accomplishment!
“What’s happening in America right now is what economists call ‘disinflation’:
When you compare prices today with prices a year ago, the pace of increase has slowed notably.
At their peak in the summer of 2022, consumer prices were increasing at a 9.1 percent yearly
pace. As of November [2023], it was just 2.1 percent.
“Still, disinflation does not mean that
prices are falling outright. Price levels have generally not reversed the big run-up that
happened just after the pandemic. That means things like rent, car repairs and groceries remain
more expensive on paper than they were in 2019. (Wages have also been climbing, and have picked
up more quickly than prices in recent months. [However, overall, ‘recent’ wage increases have by
no means made up for all the decline in real wages during this whole inflationary episode.
—Ed.]) In short, prices are still climbing, just not as quickly.” —Jeanna Smialek, “Will
America’s Good News Over Fading Inflation Last?”, New York Times, Jan. 5, 2024.
DISINFORMATION
“False information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to
influence public opinion or obscure the truth.” —Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th
ed. (1993).
Disinformation has always been part of bourgeois
propaganda against socialism and revolution and also a part of their ideological struggle against
competing or hostile ruling classes in other countries. But especially in times of growing economic
and social crisis—such as the present—the use of disinformation becomes a more important part of
intra-bourgeois politics as well. In the U.S. there are of course two major ruling class political
parties at present, with the Democrats somewhat more often appearing to side with the
“middle class” against the big corporations. This means that the
Republicans, who generally promote somewhat more vicious attacks on the working class, must in order
to win votes and get into office, have to more frequently, and in a more extreme fashion, resort to
disinformation to fool the people into supporting them instead. They must also resort to somewhat
more divisive tactics among the masses, such as by blaming the problems of white workers on Blacks,
Latinos and immigrants, and by working to build social outrage against minority groups such as
liberals, homosexuals, trans people, and so forth. All this explains why recently it is the
Republicans who have been much more active in spreading political disinformation than the Democrats.
(However, it should not be forgotten that the Democrats do this too, as with their attempt in the
2016 presidential election to grossly exaggerate the disinformation efforts of the Russians in
“secretly” backing Trump. The gross exaggeration of the disinformation from the other side can also
be a form of disinformation in itself!)
The most notorious individual purveyor of
disinformation in the world at the present moment is no doubt Donald Trump (now once again President).
And his central theme in all this over the past 4 years, which he harped on endlessly, was his totally
baseless claim that “really” he won re-election in 2020, and that the “rigged election” was stolen
from him. (Actually, all elections in bourgeois democratic society are in fact rigged,
but not in the way Trump claimed. See: ELECTION
DENIALISM)
The Liberals and most of the Democrats have been
aghast at the vast and ever-growing pervasiveness of disinformation about the 2020 election, and about
so many other things these days. Those of us who have recognized all along that bourgeois elections
are phony are more amused by it all. But we too need to be quite concerned about indications such as
this that bourgeois democracy seems to be in the process of
collapsing. It may not make much difference if the Democrats or the Republicans hold the Presidency
and control Congress, but it does make a major difference to our efforts to build a revolutionary
movement if the admittedly rather limited freedoms of speech, of the press, of assembly, and to
organize ourselves, and so forth, that now exist are further restricted or eliminated altogether. And
this is what the more serious aspect of the collapse of bourgeois democracy portends.
Formerly it was thought that disinformation must
have a certain plausibility to it, in order for it to be widely believed. However, disinformation
is now so widely propagated in the U.S., and is so commonly of such a wild and extreme nature, that
perhaps many people have become used to believing pretty much anything which seems to support their
own existing biases. Here is one recent case in point:
“At least 20 Republican candidates and elected officials are falsely claiming
that K-12 schools are providing litter boxes for students who ‘identify’ as animals. The myth
that schools are catering to ‘furries’ has been cited by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, Minnesota
gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen, and many other conservatives as ‘a growing crisis’, but
every rumor of a school providing litter boxes for students has proved to be unfounded.” —“Only
in America”, The Week magazine, October 28, 2022, p. 6.
Many people seem to have lost much of what little natural skepticism and common sense they once
had. The fact that growing numbers of people in the U.S. (and especially Republicans and Trump
supporters) will believe just about anything their leaders tell them is quite possibly one of
the most worrisome things about American society today. It is indeed a telling characteristic of a
society falling apart and becoming ripe for fascism. —S.H. [10/29/22; updated 05/25/25]
See also:
FAKE NEWS
“The hallucinatory claim that a grand if largely unnamed conspiracy managed to
snatch victory away from Trump and hand it to Joe Biden is not a trivial, stand-alone falsehood.
Instead, it has become as central to the MAGA [‘Make America Great Again’] belief system as the
crucifixion of Jesus is to Christianity. In these fevered scenarios, Venezuela and South Korea
have corrupted our electoral ballots, China has implanted Covid vaccines with mind-control
devices, and liberal Jewish billionaires like George Soros have underwritten acts of domestic
terrorism. The central premise is all-encompassing fraud: election fraud, medical fraud, monetary
fraud, media fraud, judicial fraud, religious fraud. Everything is suspect.” —Robert Draper in
The Atlantic; quoted in The Week, November 11, 2022 issue, p. 12.
“On the morning of July 8 [2022], former President Donald J. Trump took to
Truth Social, a social media platform he founded with people close to him, to claim that he had
in fact won the 2020 presidential vote in Wisconsin, despite all evidence to the contrary.
“Barely 8,000 people shared that missive
on Truth Social, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of responses his posts on Facebook
and Twitter had regularly generated before those services suspended him after the deadly riot
on Capital Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.
“And yet Mr. Trump’s baseless claim pulsed
through the public consciousness anyway. It jumped from his app to other social media platforms—not
to mention podcasts, talk radio and television. Within 48 hours of Mr. Trump’s post, more than one
million people saw his claim on at least [a] dozen other sites. It appeared on Facebook and Twitter,
from which he has been banished, but also YouTube, Gab, Parler and Telegram, according to an
analysis by The New York Times.
“The spread of Mr. Trump’s claim illustrates
how, ahead of this year’s midterm elections, disinformation has metastasized since experts began
raising alarms about the threat. Despite years of efforts by the media, by academics and even by
social media companies themselves to address the problem, it is arguably more pervasive and
widespread today....
“Not long ago, the fight against
disinformation focused on the major social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. When
pressed, they often removed troubling content, including misinformation and intentional
disinformation about Covid-19.
“Today, however, there are dozens of new
platforms, including some that pride themselves on not moderating—censoring, as they put
it—untrue statements in the name of free speech....
“At least 69 million people have joined
platforms, like Parler, Gab, Truth Social, Gettr and Rumble, that advertise themselves as
conservative alternatives to Big Tech....
“The diffusion of the people who spread
disinformation has radicalized political discourse, said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free
Press, an advocacy group for digital rights and accountability....
“The baseless idea that President Biden was
not legitimately elected has gone mainstream among Republican Party members, driving state and
county officials to impose new restrictions on casting ballots, often based on mere conspiracy
theories percolating in right-wing media....
“The purveyors of disinformation have also
become increasingly sophisticated at sidestepping the major platforms’ rules, while the use of
videos to spread false claims on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram has made them harder for automated
systems to track than text....
“A study of Truth Social by Media Matters
for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group, examined how the platform had become a home
for some of the most fringe points of view. Mr. Trump, who began posting on the platform in April,
has increasingly amplified content from QAnon, an online conspiracy theory.
“QAnon believers promote a vast and complex
falsehood that centers on Mr. Trump as a leader battling a cabal of Democratic Party pedophiles.
Echoes of such views reverberated through Republican election campaigns across the country during
this year’s primaries. Mr. Trump has shared posts from QAnon accounts more than 130 times....”
—Steven Lee Myers & Sheera Frenkel,
“Exploding Online, Disinformation Is Now a Fixture of U.S. Politics”, New York Times,
National Edition, October 21, 2022.
DIVIDENDS
Payments to the owners of stocks or similar investments. This money comes ultimately from the
profits of the corporation, which in turn are a portion (usually quite a small portion) of the
surplus value generated by the workers employed (i.e.,
directly exploited) by that corporation.
There appears to be a long-term trend in modern
capitalism for dividends to fall as a percentage of the company profits. The average percentage
payout of officially stated profits (real profits are much higher and hidden in various ways,
such as in the form of benefits to top managers), for the companies in the Standard & Poor’s
500-stock index in the U.S. as of Oct. 4, 2011, was 2.31%. This represented only 27% of stated
profits in the 2nd quarter of 2011, which was down from 30% of profits in 2008, and well below
the 30-year average of 41%. This is despite the fact that U.S. corporations now have record
hoards of undistributed profits, totaling $2.77 trillion, with few good options for new
investments. [Bloomberg Businessweek, Oct. 17-23, 2011, p. 60.]
In addition, more and more companies do not pay
dividends at all, even when they are making huge profits. Google, for example, has $39 billion
in cash, and Apple Corporation holds $76 billion (including long-term financial investments).
Neither pays a dividend. Why would ordinary investors buy shares in companies that don’t pay
dividends? The answer is that the stock market is primarily a gambling house, and “investors”
(i.e. speculators) primarily buy shares on the hope that the price of those shares will go up.
But the fact is that a declining share of the surplus value extracted by modern corporations
actually goes to the official “owners” of them (let alone to the workers who produce that
wealth); it is instead more and more appropriated by the top management of the companies, and
by banks and financial institutions. Modern capitalism is more and more parasitic, even
according to the logic of bourgeois economic theory.
DIVISION OF LABOR
A characteristic feature of industrial production [Cf. Marx, TSV, 3:271.] in which there is
specialization in the production process, where the tasks are divided up into simpler and more
repetitive smaller tasks, and individual workers are assigned to do just one or a few of these
simpler smaller tasks.
“Division of labor is, in one sense, nothing but coexisting
labor, that is, the coexistence of different kinds of labor which are
represented in different kinds of products or rather commodities. The division
of labor in the capitalist sense, as the breaking down of the particular labor which
produces a definite commodity into a series of simple and co-ordinated operations divided
up amongst different workers, presupposes the division of labor within society outside the
workshop, as separation of occupations. On the other hand, it [division of labor]
increases it [separation of occupations]. The product is increasingly produced as a
commodity in the strict sense of the word, its exchange-value becomes the more independent
of its immediate existence as use-value—in other words its production becomes more and more
independent of its consumption by the producers.... The division of labor within
the workshop is one of the methods used in this mass production and consequently
in the production of the product [as a commodity]. Thus the division of labor within the
workshop is based on the division of occupations in society.” —Marx, TSV, 3:268-9.
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The discount rate is the interest rate that the