ENCYCLOPEDISTS
A group of philosophers, natural scientists, and other French intellectuals of the
Enlightenment, who collaborated to produce the great
Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des
métiers [Encyclopedia or Explanatory Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and
Professions] (1751-1780). They believed that people were oppressed by ignorance and
superstition, and that the solution to this problem lay in the promotion of rationality
and knowledge. The 35-volume Encyclopedia strove to be a compendium of all human
knowledge discovered up to that time.
The leader of the Encyclopedists, and editor
of the Encyclopedia, was Denis Diderot, and his
chief assistant was Jean le Rond d’Alembert. Other contributors and promoters of the project
included Paul Henri d’Holbach, Claude
Adrien Helvétius, the naturalist George-Louis Buffon,
Montesquieu, and Voltaire.
Rousseau also contributed to the first volumes.
The Encyclopedists were ideologists of the
rising bourgeoisie and played a very important role in the ideological preparation for the
great bourgeois revolution in France which broke out in 1789.
“END OF HISTORY”
An absurd notion, briefly entertained by ideologists of the ruling bourgeoisie in the United
States, that ideological development, the evolution of society, and all “history” had come
to an end, leaving only capitalism, bourgeois democracy
and bourgeois ideology to continue to exist until the end of time! (Of course they did not
state the notion in quite this way.)
Marx, of course, characterized all of
history (since classes first arose in ancient times) as being the story of class struggle,
and this “end of history” claim seems to implicitly agree with that as one of its premises.
But when the (revisionist) Soviet Union and its dominion collapsed in 1989-1991, the ruling
classes in the U.S. and other “Western” capitalist-imperialist countries were overjoyed and
thought that their ideology had permanently triumphed over all their enemies. One of these
U.S. bourgeois ideologists, Francis Fukuyama, proclaimed that:
“What we are witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or a
passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such:
that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization
of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” —The End of
History and the Last Man (1992), an expanded version of his essay “The End of
History?”, which appeared in the ruling class journal, the National Interest,
in 1989.
Strangely enough, however, the bourgeois ideologists only had a few years to gloat and
“history” soon reasserted itself with a vengeance. Capitalist financial crises broke out
leading to the major financial panic in 2008 within an overproduction crisis which is
already the worst since the Great Depression of
the 1930s. There is also renewed and expanding class struggle and other forms of struggle
around the world. Many people are now justifiably starting to wonder if capitalism will be
able to survive this new crisis at all!
“The end of history? — a 1989 essay by the bourgeois social ‘scientist’
Francis Fukuyama, in which he posits that the world is nearing a period in which armed
conflicts will end and the world will become homogenized into a liberal-democratic order
(preferably with the United States as its guarantor). Fukuyama sees capitalist free
enterprise and market systems as a force for stability, peace and prosperity, and claims
that these are making alternatives (like Islamist theocracy and Marxist-Leninist
socialism) less and less appealing.
“Like all bourgeois analysts,
Fukuyama has severe blind spots about capitalism that are crystallised in this infamous
essay, and lacks anything approaching authentic dialectical thinking when it comes to
the dynamics and characteristics of capitalism as a system. He assumes, for example,
that capitalism will reach some optimal equilibrium (once conditions are just right)
that will benefit everyone by lifting living standards and that this state of affairs
will continue indefinitely. He fails to see that economic crises are not aberrations but
rather necessary features of capitalism, and that these crises will continue to get
worse, and that in doing so they will continue to engender resistance to capitalism, as
well as having various other effects (feeding into ethnic conflicts, inter-imperialist
rivalries, and providing the objective basis for wars and so forth). Fukuyama expresses
a very typical liberal bias: the assumption of non-ideology. That is, he sees ideology
as belonging to the realm of previous economic and socio-political systems, but assumes
that capitalist liberalism is a type of natural state devoid of ideological baggage. The
radicalization of the proletariat and peasantry across vast swathes of the world will,
unfortunately for Fukuyama, continue to provide plenty of fodder for history! The very
demonstrable and even grotesque absurdity of Fukuyama’s thesis makes it too much even
for many enthusiastic supporters of capitalist-imperialism to stomach, but it does serve
as a fine example of the depths of delusion to which capitalist ideologues can sink, and
the essay is interesting for that reason alone. Indeed, the very existence of colossal
military spending (which is actually increasing every year) demonstrates that there is
more than enough turmoil and instability generated by their wonderful system for them to
need to keep a lid on.” —L.C.
“END TIMES”
1. “End Times” theology is the Christian
Fundamentalist doctrine that the “second coming of Christ” prophesized in the Bible will finally
now occur, and very soon, and that when this happens, all the “true” Christians will be “raptured”
up to heaven (while everyone else is destined for hell) and from heaven the “saved” will watch as
Jesus Christ inflicts seven years of “tribulation” on the rest of humanity, after which he will
lead an epic battle with the “antichrist” and establish a 1,000-year Kingdom of God on Earth.
[In the fanciful terminology of theology, the “study” of the “End Times” is known as
eschatology.]
In a country as miserably educated and
anti-scientific as the United States is today there are many thousands of people, perhaps even a
few million, who believe this total nonsense. During stressful or difficult times, such as the
current (2020-21) COVID-19 pandemic, there is typically an increase in the number of people who
take nutty religious ideas of this sort seriously.
2. [Metaphorically or more generally:] The final
days of some period in history or society, such as when one speaks of the “end times for the
state-capitalist Soviet Union” (meaning the late 1980s and early 1990s) or the eventual “end
times for world capitalism”.
ENEMY, The
[In Marxist, especially Maoist, usage:] The bourgeoisie, its agents, and strata from
other classes which support it, in opposition to “the people”.
See also:
TO BE ATTACKED BY THE ENEMY IS A GOOD THING
“Kindness to the enemy is cruelty to the people. If you do not oppress
the exploiting classes, they will oppress you. In advocating ‘no oppression’ China’s
Khrushchov [Liu Shaoqi] was in fact trying to abolish
the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
—Proletarian revolutionaries of the Political Academy of the Chinese People’s Liberation
Army, “The
Dictatorship of the Proletariat is Dictatorship by the Masses”, Peking Review,
#44, Nov. 1, 1968, p. 15.
ENERGY RETURN ON ENERGY INVESTED (EROEI)
See also:
PEAK OIL
“Economists rate the quality of a fuel reserve by calculating the
Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI). This tells you how much usable energy can be
gained from a particular deposit relative to all the energy you must expend in mining,
refining, and processing it. For example, the first commercially exploited oil fields
in Texas in the early 1900s were very easy to harvest and had an EROEI score of around
100—they yielded a hundred times more energy than was consumed in its extraction.
Nowadays, as the supplies dwindle, more and more effort must be spent in sucking up
(including the hassle of offshore drilling rigs) and processing the remaining drops—the
EROEI has dropped to about 10.” —Lewis Dartnell, The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our
World from Scratch (2014), p. 106 (footnote).
ENGELS, Frederick (1820-95)
Co-founder, with Marx, of scientific social theory (Marxism) including its philosophy,
dialectical materialism. Marx and Engels were
lifelong friends and comrades. In their conscious division of labor Marx concentrated on
political economy while Engels focused on philosophy, science and military questions.
[Much more to be added.]
“So this volume is finished. It was thanks to you alone
that this became possible. Without your self-sacrifice for me I could never possibly
have done the enormous work for the three volumes. I embrace you, full of thanks!”
—Marx, in a letter to Engels upon the completion of volume I of Capital,
August 16, 1867, in Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence (Moscow: 1975), p. 180;
with very slight differences in MECW 42:405.
ENLIGHTENMENT, The (or the AGE OF REASON)
The period of European thought (esp. French, but also Scottish, English and German) from
the early 17th century to the early 19th century. Thinkers of this period
put forward the view that reason should govern people’s ideas and human existence, and that
this would lead to the liberation of humanity. Prominent individuals of the Enlightenment
include Voltaire, Rousseau,
D’Alembert, Diderot, d’Holbach,
Montesquieu, Francis Bacon, Helvétius,
Hobbes, Locke, and
Leibniz.
See also:
ENCYCLOPEDISTS
“The great men, who in France prepared men’s minds for the coming
revolution, were themselves extreme revolutionists. They recognized no external
authority of any kind whatever. Religion, natural science, society, political
institutions—everything was subjected to the most unsparing criticism; everything
must justify its existence before the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence.
Reason became the sole measure of everything.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878),
MECW 25:16.
“Every form of society and government then existing, every old
traditional notion was flung into the lumber-room as irrational; the world had hitherto
allowed itself to be led solely by prejudices; everything in the past deserved only
pity and contempt. Now, for the first time, appeared the light of day, henceforth
superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be superseded by eternal
truth, eternal Right, equality based on nature and the inalienable rights of man.
“We know today that this kingdom
of reason was nothing more than the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this
eternal Right found its realization in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced
itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed
as one of the essential rights of man; and that the government of reason, the Contrat
Social [Social Contract] of Rousseau, came into
being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bourgeois republic. The great
thinkers of the eighteenth century could, no more than their predecessors, go beyond
the limits imposed on them by their epoch.” —Engels, Ibid., MECW 25:16-19.
ENTELECHY [Pronounced: en-TELL-uh-kee]
[Greek: “to have perfection”] A term used in classical idealist
philosophy (especially in Aristotle), to refer to the
realization of the potential in a thing, or a stage of development in which the
essence of a thing is fully realized. Thus the notion tacitly supposes a
teleological point of view. Aristotle thought that all
things contain within them an inherent goal or condition toward which they “aim”, which
is achieved when their actions or development turns their potential into actuality.
It should be noted that Aristotle’s view is
in some ways a form of primitive dialectics. According to dialectics, the primary forces
determining and driving the change and development of a thing are the opposing forces that
lie within it (its internal contradictions).
In some cases this internal development will lead to a result that might be close to
inevitable (see “inevitableism”), and in those cases it might
seem that this end result was foreordained “regardless of what else happened”. This is how
the teleological perspective can arise in naïve dialectics. It is of course true that
many living things have evolved to develop in a certain way under optimum conditions (as
for example a seed germinating in moist, rich soil in good weather). But under other
conditions (such as extreme drought or cold) this result will not occur. Although the
bases for change and development are the contradictions within a thing, external
forces can in many circumstances prevent these internal forces from working in the way they
evolved to do. This is one of the reasons why it is incorrect (or at least seriously
misleading) to talk about the “aim” or “goal” of the seed being to germinate. (Another
reason, of course, is that seeds are simply way too primitive a thing to have a
mind or any psychological states such as “aims” or “goals” in
the first place!)
The term entelechy has also been
used in later idealist philosophy, and virtually always in even worse ways than Aristotle
used it. In Leibniz, for example, the “entelechy” is the urge
of the monad towards realization of the perfection potentially
contained within it. This actually makes no sense at all, since the very concept of a
“monad” (as a supposed substance from which both physical and spiritual things arise) is
totally incoherent. In general, where the term entelechy appears in later idealist
philosophy, it means something like the informing spirit or
soul that gives life to something or which leads to movement in
material things. (I.e., something like the imaginary élan
vital.)
This ever-more-absurd development of the
concept of entelechy in idealist philosophy, from something that sort of half made sense
in Aristotle into something absolutely nutty in later idealism, is a good illustration of
how idealism and its terminology have developed in general.
ENTRYISM [Infiltration]
The tactic of a political group or trend entering en masse into another, usually larger,
organization in order to try to influence its policies and actions, or even to take complete
control of it. Another motive has sometimes been to enter the larger group just short term,
try to win over some of its members to the infiltrating group’s point of view, and then to
split again but now with a larger number of people. (Trotskyists call this raiding scheme
“having a split perspective”.) Of course entryism is almost always done against the wishes
of the target organization, and sometimes with great secrecy and subterfuge to hide the fact
that the infiltrators are part of a unified group with ulterior motives. Although all sorts
of political trends have at various times and places used the tactic of entryism, or
something like it, it is especially associated with the maneuvers of the
Trotskyists.
Entryism got its start with “the
French Turn” proposal of Leon Trotsky himself in June 1934, that the French Trotskyists
should dissolve their own tiny middle-class organization and join the French Section of the
Workers’ International (SFIO). (The SFIO was the party that was created in 1905 when the
French Socialist Party and the Socialist Party of France merged. In 1920 a majority of the
SFIO split to form the Communist Party of France (CPF). So by 1934 the remaining SFIO was the
right-wing remnant of the original social-democratic
party.) After some discord, the French Trotskyists did follow Trotsky’s direction and entered
the SFIO in August 1934, forming an essentially independent faction there (in effect, a
party within a party). However, in 1936 Trotsky insisted that his followers bolt from the
SFIO and form their own separate party again. This was done in a disorganized fashion, and
only about 600 people left the SFIO in this split. Some Trots considered this whole “French
Turn” to have been a failure while others considered it to be a “success” since they came out
of the SFIO with more members than they entered with. However, during this period of political
turmoil most political parties gained a lot of strength, and to a far greater degree than the
tiny Trotskyist faction or party did. The French Trotskyists played no significant social role
during the 1930s and were completely dispersed during World War II. It wasn’t until the 1950s
that they began to make a small reappearance.
Trotskyists have tried entryism in
other countries as well. In 1936 the American Trots entered the Socialist Party of America
(another middle class social-democratic party!) and formed their own faction around the
newspaper Socialist Appeal. But they were expelled in 1937 and then formed their own
group, the so-called Socialist Workers Party, in 1938. In Britain the Trotskyists entered
the mainline Independent Labour Party and then the Labour Party, but left in 1944 to form
their own organization. Somewhat more successfully (from their own perspective) was the
longer-term entryist project of the Trotskyist “Militant Tendency” which infiltrated the
Labour Party beginning in the 1950s and eventually managed to gain control of its Young
Socialists group and the Liverpool Council of the Labour Party—before being expelled in the
1980s. Similar schemes, generally with less persistance and success, have been used by Trots
in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. In general, the question of
whether to use “entryism”, or not, has been a highly divisive issue within Trotskyism ever
since Trotsky first proposed it in 1934. As a solidly middle-class political trend, Trotskyism
has been even more internally divided and sectarian than the “left” in general has been since
World War II, and this issue has further amplified their already ultra-strong petty-bourgeois
sectarian tendencies.
In the late 1960s the Progressive Labor Party
in the U.S. infiltrated the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
This was not quite a pure form of “entryism” because the PLP itself also continued as a
separate party. But they did manage to achieve a majority influence in SDS which then split
into two organizations, one of which was completely controlled by PLP. In combination with the
already existing internal problems in the old SDS (especially anarchism and ultra-leftism),
this “hostile take-over” and splitting of the group, ended up destroying what was once an
extremely important revolutionary student organization in the U.S. So while this entryist
maneuver was successful from the organizational point of view of the PLP, it was disastrous
for the American revolutionary movement. The PLP was nominally “Maoist” at the time, but for
a variety of good reasons many actual Maoists considered it (then and now) to be more like a
“Trotskyite group without Trotsky”.
For many years the Democratic Socialists of
America (DSA), an organization of “left”-liberal reformists, has been attempting to pursue a
policy of what amounts to entryism. While it exists as a separate organization, it does not
even try to be a real political party. Instead it encourages its members to work within the
Democratic Party (one of the two main ruling class parties in the U.S.), rather than trying to
establish itself as a viable “third party” within the American electoral system. This is the
tactic that Bernie Sanders and some other phony “socialist” politicians have been using. While
a few such people have managed to get elected, it makes little difference even when they are.
They still defend and support the basic American capitalist-imperialist system. This is an
example of how “entryism” can in effect become an excuse for not really opposing capitalism
and imperialism at all.
It is sometimes said that the Chinese Communist
Party’s entrance into the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) in
the 1920s was an example of “entryism”. However, if so this is far from a typical case and
there were a number of important special circumstances involved. Sun Yat-sen and the GMD
actually arranged for this CCP participation as part of an agreement to receive help from the
Soviet Union to complete the bourgeois revolution in China and unify the country. Still, if
this is nevertheless regarded as an example of “entryism”, it must surely be one of the most
disastrous cases ever: When the GMD viciously turned on the CCP in 1927 it helped facilitate
the massacre of many thousands of Communists.
Is there ever a truly good reason for actual
Marxist-Leninist-Maoists to employ the tactic of entryism? It seems unlikely.
However, we should also recall our hostility to Kantian-like absolute principles that hold
everywhere and always, and regardless of specific circumstances. Marxism involves the
objective analysis of objective conditions, said Lenin. If real Maoists do someday adopt the
tactic, we can only hope that it will be done only after very careful consideration of the
many dangers and pitfalls involved.
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM
Racism which is reflected in different environmental conditions and responses by the
ruling class. This is just one of the great many aspects of racism in contemporary
American society, which is by no means limited to just discrimination in hiring, job
promotions, basic education, and day-to-day treatment of “people of color” or minorities.
In the graphic here from The Nation (March 7, 2016), a liberal reformist magazine,
we see just a few of the ways that racism in American society impacts people even with
regard to environmental conditions and policies. This article was inspired by the recent
events in Flint, Michigan (which is largely poor and working class, with a large minority
population) where for a long while authorities turned a totally blind eye to the lead
poisoning of the water supply there. The article quite appropriately argues that
environmental racism is nothing new in American society; on the contrary, it has
been rampant all along.
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An entrepreneur is a person who starts a new (capitalist) company. The rate of
“entrepreneurialism” in a given country at a given point is the number of new start-up
companies minus the number of old companies disappearing (through bankruptcy or for other
reasons) during the same time period. The chart at right (from bourgeois economist Robert
Reich’s book Saving Capitalism [2015]) shows that in recent
decades the rate of new firms being established is more or less steadily falling, while
the rate of disappearance of existing firms is roughly constant with a recent increase.
And since the beginning of the Great Recession each
year more firms are now disappearing than are being established. In other words,
entrepreneurialism in the U.S. is clearly in serious trouble.