“IN-AND-OUT-OF-RECESSION”
An informal name for the recent intensified stagnation phase of the current world
overproduction crisis. This is the phase that
followed the Long Slowdown, and which itself will
likely soon be followed by a further great intensification of the crisis.
This overall crisis began with the
beginning of the Long Slowdown starting around 1973 in the capitalist world. At that
point the average rate of growth of GDP in capitalist countries suddenly dropped in half,
and has remainded at that lower level (or below) since then. However, starting in
Japan in 1991, and then appearing in
Europe during the 1990s and the United States (with the “New Economy” recession of 2001)
this Long Slowdown was succeeded by the new phase of “in-and-out-of-recession”, with only
very weak recoveries in between the recessions. It was Japan that led the way into this
new phase of the crisis, in part because of its smaller home market, low fertility rate,
and its racist hostility to immigration (which allows a country to expand its economy
simply through more rapid population growth). But the rest of the capitalist world has
followed along on the same path.
It should be noted that in some advanced
capitalist countries, and the U.S. in particular, it has not actually seemed to many people
that we are truly in a period of “in-and-out-of-recession”. In fact, according to official
GDP statistics, the period between the end of the Great
Recession and the major economic collapse in the spring of 2020 which was initiated by
the Covid-19 pandemic, was one uninterrupted record-long
economic expansion without any recessions at all! However, if you look carefully at this
supposedly unbroken expansion you will see that: 1) the first several years of it were
actually part of the Great Recession itself; and 2) there have been a series of new
systematic distortions (huge exaggerations) in the supposed rate of expansion of GDP in
recent decades which have hidden several actual mild recessions! In the graph at the right,
from the ShadowStats.com website, we see that if
their adjustments to the official U.S. government claims are roughly correct (as they probably
are), U.S. GDP “growth” has actually been slightly negative much of the time in recent
decades. Even if the government distortion of GDP statistics is, say, only half as bad as
ShadowStats.com says, the real U.S. economy has actually been in-and-out of recession for at
least the past two decades; in other words, in a state of overall stagnation. (See also:
GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT—Validity Of)
At some point, probably relatively soon,
this phase of “in-and-out-of-recession” will itself be followed by an even worse phase
of the crisis, and most likely a phase that can only be called outright
intractable depression. Although it is as yet too early to
be absolutely certain, the pandemic-initiated collapse of the U.S. and world economy in
the spring of 2020 may itself turn out to mark the beginning of this new depression. It
must be remembered that the factor or factors which trigger a major economic crisis
are not necessarily the same as the developing underlying contradictions which must
inevitably lead to it at some point. I.e., if that happens soon don’t blame the pandemnic;
blame capitalism itself!
See also:
JAPAN—In and Out of Recession
“IN LEAGUE WITH THE FUTURE”
The feeling or viewpoint that one is working toward some inevitable future society, or else that
one strongly supports forces and developments which are leading to that future society. This has
actually been a common feeling or attitude of many individuals participating in political movements
which foresee, or are working toward, deep and important changes in society, including not only
within communist revolutionary movements but also within right-wing or fascist movements, and even
many religious movements. Of course these totally different and opposed movements have completely
different ideas about what the future society will turn out to be like! And, more to the point,
only a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement, based on genuine social science and scientific predictions,
really has any actual justification for this feeling of being “in league with the future”. (See the
entry on “INEVITABLEISM” for more on this.)
Sometimes these often very strongly-held views take
on a moral veneer: that the future should be the way that its proponents say it is heading.
Or even the claim that actions which promote that inevitable future are therefore morally
correct. Engels, in Anti-Dühring, after discussing the three main European moralities of his
age, namely Christian-feudal, bougeois, and proletarian, says: “Which [morality], then, is the true
one? Not one of them, in the sense of absolute finality; but certainly that morality which contains
the most elements promising permanence, which, in the present, represents the overthrow of the
present, represents the future, and therefore the proletarian morality.” [Peking, 1976, p. 117]
This could be interpreted as saying that the morality of the future is the best morality simply
because it is in the future! However, Engels’s view is more subtle than that. The truth of
the matter is that the future socialist, then communist, society is more moral (certainly from
our point of view) not because it is in the future, but rather because it more fully meets
and satisfies the needs and interests of the people than does present-day capitalist-imperialist
society. (However, for futher discussion of Engels’s quote, and the topic in general, see the
entry: “CENTRAL PROBLEM” OF THE
MARXIST-LENINIST-MAOIST THEORY OF ETHICS
INCOME TAX
A tax on the income of individuals or companies. A progressive income tax is one
which taxes those with higher incomes at a higher tax rate. In the Communist
Manifesto Marx & Engels called for “a sharply progressive system of taxation” as
one of a number of means which might prove to be of use in transforming capitalism into
socialism. But as they noted, such a transformation—by whatever means—will only be
feasible once the revolutionary proletariat achieves full political power. Before then
any reforms along the lines of a progressive income tax will soon be undermined or
reversed by the ruling bourgeoisie.
“In the final decades of the nineteenth century, leaders of
corporations took huge payouts [from their companies] to establish huge fortunes.
One reaction was the passage of an income tax law in 1910 aimed exclusively at
only the richest Americans. Those richest Americans quickly developed a
counter-strategy to change the new income tax law.
“They succeeded and thereby
spread the burden of the income tax across the entire population, which eventually
undermined popular support of the income tax.” —Richard D. Wolff, Capitalism
Hits the Fan (2010), pp. 23-24.
INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY (Britain)
“Independent Labour Party (I.L.P.) was founded in Britain
in 1893 under the leadership of James Keir Hardie, Ramsay Macdonald and others. It
claimed itself politically independent of bourgeois parties but, as Lenin said,
‘it was independent only of socialism but very dependent on liberalism’.
“On the outbreak of the world
imperialist war of 1914-18 the I.L.P. issued an anti-war manifesto (August 13, 1914).
In February 1915 the I.L.P. delegates to the Conference of Socialists from the
‘Entente’ countries held in London supported the social-chauvinist resolution
adopted at the Conference. From then on the I.L.P. leaders used pacifist phrases to
cover up what was in fact a social-chauvinist position. In 1919, the I.L.P. leadership
yielded to the pressure of the leftward-moving rank and file and withdrew from the
Second International. In 1921 the I.L.P. joined the so-called Two-and-a-Half
International, but when the latter fell to pieces, returned to the Second
International. In 1921 the Left wing of the I.L.P. broke away from the Party and
joined the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain.” —Note 47, Lenin: SW I
(1967).
INDIA — Languages Of
It is useful for those of us interested in India and the developing revolution there to have some
idea of the complexity of the language situation in that country. The 1961 census recognized 1,652
different languages spoken in India. 122 languages are spoken by more than 10,000 people, and 29
languages are spoken by more than 1 million people. Here are some of the most important languages,
together with the number of current speakers, locations, etc.:
There are two major language families in India, the
Indo-Aryan family (a sub-family of Indo-European), the languages of which are spoken by about
70% of the people, and the Dravidian family in the southeast part of India, whose languages
are spoken by about 22% of the people. The early forms of Indo-Aryan from around 1000 BCE are
jointly referred to as Sanskrit. All the modern Indo-Aryan languages have developed from Sanskrit
in the same way that the Romance languages in Europe have developed from Latin. (Amazingly, there
are still about 50,000 native speakers of Sanskrit in India!) Tamil is the oldest Dravidian language
and has written records dating back as far as the 3rd century BCE. The boundaries of
Indian states are mostly along socio-linguistic lines.
Because of the heritage of British colonialism in
India, English is also an important language there, especially among the upper classes and the
better educated. There are many English language publications. However, nobody knows for sure just
how many people in India speak English and it is probably a very small fraction of the total
population. Some estimates put the figure as low as 3%, others as high as 10%.
| Language |
Linguistic
Family |
Speakers (2001)
(in millions) |
Location |
Comments |
| Hindi |
Indo-Aryan |
422 |
The “Hindi belt” in
northern India |
|
| Bengali |
Indo-Aryan
(eastern) |
83 |
W. Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand,
Tripura |
|
Telugu
(TEH-luh-goo) |
Dravidian
(south-central) |
74 |
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil
Nadu, Maharashtra, Orissa |
|
Marathi
(muh-RAW-tee) |
Indo-Aryan
(southern) |
72 |
Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pra-
desh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Goa |
|
Tamil
(TAH-mul) |
Dravidian
(southern) |
61 |
Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Pondicherry,
Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra |
|
| Urdu |
Indo-Aryan
(central) |
52 |
Jammu & Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh
Delhi, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh |
Closely related to Hindi; also
widely spoken in Pakistan |
Gujarati
(goo-jah-RAW-tee) |
Indo-Aryan
(western) |
46 |
Gujarat, Maharashtra,
Tamil Nadu |
|
Kannada
(KAH-nuh-duh) |
Dravidian
(southern) |
38 |
Karnataka, Maharashtra,
Tamil Nadu, Goa |
Also known as Kanarese |
| Rajasthani |
Indo-Aryan
(central) |
36 |
Rajasthan, Gujarat,
Haryana and Punjab |
Includes numerous
dialects |
Malayalam
(mah-luh-YAW-lum) |
Dravidian
(southern) |
33 |
Kerala, Lakshadweep, Mahé,
Puducherry |
|
| Oriya |
Indo-Aryan
(eastern) |
33 |
Orissa |
|
Punjabi
(pun-JAW-bee) |
Indo-Aryan |
29 |
Punjab, Chandigarh, Delhi,
Haryana |
|
Assamese/
Axomiya |
Indo-Aryan
(eastern) |
13 |
Assam |
|
| Maithili |
Indo-Aryan
(eastern) |
12 |
Bihar |
Formerly sometimes viewed
as dialect of Hindi or Bengali |
| Santali |
Munda |
6.5 |
Chota Nagpur Plateau (Bihar,
Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa) |
Language of the
Santal tribals |
| Kashmiri |
Indo-Aryan
(Dardic sub-group) |
5.5 |
Jammu and Kashmir |
|
“A linguistics survey in India, perhaps the most exhaustive such effort
ever, has documented 780 distinct languages currently being used in the country, with
many dozens more left to be studied.” —New York Times, “Documenting the Scope of
India’s Linguistic Riches”, National Edition, June 11, 2022. [Note that this survey
counts fewer separate languages than the earlier survey, probably because separate
dialects of many languages are now being lumped together more. —Ed.]
INDIVIDUALISM
1. The theory that the rights or interests of
the individual are supreme, and are higher than any possible collective rights or interests
of groups of people.
2. Allowing individuals to hold their own
opinions, live their lives as they choose (providing they don’t harm the interests of others),
and so forth. This sense of individualism is generally positive, whereas definition #1 is
clearly very wrong.
3. The bourgeois ethical theory that morality
is (or should be) based on individual interests (in the first sense above), as in the
philosophy of Ayn Rand.
See also below, and:
COLLECTIVISM,
SELF-INTEREST
“Man becomes individualized only through the process of history.
Originally he is a species being, a tribal being, a herd animal—though by
no means as a zoon politicon in the political sense.” —Marx, Economic
Manuscripts of 1857-58, III. Chapter on Capital, Sect. 2; MECW 28:420. [In the
last phrase here Marx is saying that human beings were not originally “political
animals” in Aristotle’s sense of being citizens of a town or city. (See end note 11
in MECW 28:544.)]
“Bourgeois society makes fun of us, saying: ‘You Communists only talk
about the public as if there were no self.’ But this is not true. We hold that without
individuals there is no collective. What we advocate is putting the collective
first—public first, self second.” —Zhou Enlai (1971), quoted in William Hinton,
Shenfan (Vintage paperback ed., 1984), p. 367.
INDIVIDUALISM — Within a Revolutionary Party
There are two opposite ways in which a revolutionary party can go wrong with respect to the
level of individualism allowed to its members: too much, or too little.
There is way too much individualism being
allowed if party members flout the requirements of democratic
centralism, if they refuse to carry out the tasks the party assigns them, or if they
consciously fail to take the political and action line of the party to the masses. On the
other hand, if the party demands that all members change their own personal views about
issues to be completely identical with those of the leadership of the party, that would be
an example of not allowing each member to think for him or herself; it would be a very wrong
violation of an important individual right (and duty!) of every party member to hold to their
own views while they nevertheless obey all the requirements of democratic centralism.
“In addition to establishing the [Jesuit] order’s guiding principles,
Ignatius [of Loyola] also put in place the mechanisms that would turn those principles
into reality. The greatest challenge, he recognized, was to create a body of men who
would be unquestioningly committed to the Society and its goals, and willing to dedicate
their entire lives to both. Even a brilliant and highly moral individual might be rejected
if the selection committee determined that he was overly individualistic and therefore
unsuited to life in a disciplined collective.” —Amir Alexander, Infinitesimal
(2014), p. 38.
[The Jesuit order of religious
fanatics should not be compared to any genuine communist party! However, that last
sentence reflects a fact about who might make a good member of a revolutionary party as
well. Yes, party members have a right to hold to their own views; but they also have
a duty to follow the rules of democratic centralism and devote their efforts to
serving the people and helping them make revolution. If they are too individualistic
to be able to do that, then they do not belong in the party. —S.H.]
INDONESIA — Military Coup in 1965 — Role of Foreign Imperialism
The U.S. and British imperialists played major roles in encouraging, organizing, supporting,
and helping to give a propaganda cover to the murderous military coup in Indonesia in 1965.
[More to be added... ]
“In 1990, Kathy Kadane, an American agency journalist, made her name
when she revealed that in 1965 CIA officers had passed death sentences on five thousand
members of the the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, by handing their names to the
insurgent generals.... Britain was no less involved than the US in the coup against
Achmad Sukarno, the nationalist Indonesian leader who was willing to work with the PKI....
“On 5 October 1965, as the massacres
began, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, Britain’s Ambassador in Jakarta, told the Foreign Office: ‘I
have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an
essential preliminary to effective change.’ On the following day, the Foreign Office in
London replied: ‘The crucial question still remains whether the generals will pluck up
enough courage to take decisive action against the PKI.’ Gilchrist shared his superiors’
worry that the generals might be pussy liberals. Although the Army was ‘full of good
anti-Communist ideas’, he said, it was ‘reluctant to take, or incapable of taking,
effective action in the political field’. The Foreign Office resolved on a strategy. ‘It
seems pretty clear that the generals are going to need all the help they can get and
accept without being tagged as hopelessly pro-Western, if they are going to be able to
gain ascendancy over the Communists. In the short run, and while the present confusion
continues, we can hardly go wrong by tacitly backing the generals.’ It is difficult to
say how far British ‘help’ extended—the relevant files will be kept secret until well
into the next century.” —Nick Cohen, “Benetton Ethics”, London Review of Books,
July 2, 1998, p. 7.
INEQUALITY [Economic]
Under the capitalist system the overall trend is for the polarization of both income and wealth
to intensify over time—that is to say, for the rich to get ever richer and for the poor to get
relatively poorer. The basic reason for this is pretty obvious; the capitalist ruling class runs
its companies and all of society in its own interests.
At the present time this inequality of wealth
has reached new and record extremes. In early 2015 the Oxfam organization reported that the
share of the world’s wealth owned by the richest 1% increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014,
while the poorest 80% of the population owned just 5.5% of the wealth. And it added that if
current trends continue, the richest 1% will own more than 50% of the world’s wealth by 2016.
See also:
BILLIONAIRES,
GINI COEFFICIENT,
MILLIONAIRES,
RICH AND POOR,
SOCIAL JUSTICE INDEX
“[My book demonstrates that in the U.S.] runaway inequality [is]
accelerating. It isn’t just there, it’s growing. The fact that 95 percent of all the new
income in the current so-called recovery is going to the top 1 percent is indicative of
what’s happening. I don’t think that’s ever happened before in American economic history
that I can find. There’s no recovery at the bottom, it just keeps going to the top.”
—Les Leopold, a liberal labor writer, in an interview about his new book, Runaway
Inequality, on Salon.com, March 6, 2016.
“In the tribal or village community with common ownership of land—with
which, or with the easily recognizable survivals of which, all civilized peoples enter
history—a fairly equal distribution of products is a matter of course; where considerable
inequality of distribution among the members of the community sets in, this is an
indication that the community is already beginning to break up.” —Engels,
Anti-Dühring (1878), Part II: Chapter 1, MECW 25:136.
[Engels, of course, is here talking
about the transition from primitive communal society to class society, and its several
successive forms, slavery, feudalism and capitalism. But in reading this passage in today’s
ever more unequal American society we cannot help but think that this extreme and constantly
worsening inequality in the contemporary U.S. and around the world also indicates
another major social change is looming, namely a socialist revolution whereby the workers
and masses finally say “enough of this outrage” and get rid of capitalism entirely! —S.H.]
“The connection between distribution and the material conditions of
existence of society at any period lies so much in the nature of things that it is always
reflected in popular instinct. So long as a mode of production still describes an ascending
curve of development, it is enthusiastically welcomed even by those who come off worst from
its corresponding mode of distribution. This was the case with the English workers in the
beginnings of modern industry. And even while this mode of production remains normal for
society, there is, in general, contentment with the [unequal] distribution, and if
objections to it begin to be raised, these come from within the ruling class itself ([such
as from utopian socialists like] Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen) and find no response whatever
among the exploited masses. Only when the mode of production in question has already
described a good part of its descending curve, when it has half outlived its day, when the
conditions of its existence have to a large extent disappeared, and its successor is already
knocking at the door—it is only at that stage that the constantly increasing inequality of
distribution appears as unjust, it is only then that appeal is made from the facts which have
had their day to so-called eternal justice.” —Engels, ibid., MECW 25:137-8.
[Indeed, it is no accident that there
is now a much greater and growing mass concern with economic inequality in society, even
though capitalism has always been fundamentally unfair and unequal. The time has now come to
seriously start to do something about this inequality in America; i.e., to organize
ourselves to make revolution. —S.H.]
“INEVITABLEISM”
The doctrine that something is inevitable, such as revolution in a certain country in a certain
period, or eventual world communism (with no explicit time period specified). The term
“inevitableism” itself has pejorative connotations and is generally used by those attacking
the idea that the possible event or development at issue is actually inevitable.
Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao and most other major
creators and leaders of revolutionary Marxism have forcefully stated that many future things are
in fact inevitable (though they rarely indicate precise timeframes), including social revolution,
the eventual replacement of capitalism with socialism on a worldwide scale, the eventual
transformation of socialism into communism where classes no longer exist, and in the meanwhile
(while capitalism still exists), widespread poverty, major economic crises and interimperialist
contention and wars.
“The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this
is an objective law independent of human will. No matter how the reactionaries try to block
the advance of the wheel of history, sooner or later revolution will occur, and it is bound
to be victorious.” —Mao, “Speech at Moscow Airport” (November 2, 1957), Leung & Kau, eds.,
The Writings of Mao Zedong: 1949-1976, vol. II, p. 762.
However, more recently there have been ideological currents within even Marxism that have
denied that many or all of these things are inevitable. It is true of course that very few things
are “absolutely inevitable” with no conceivable possibility that they won’t occur! It is
conceivable, after all, that humanity might be wiped out by a giant asteroid striking the earth
next week, and in that case humanity will not get the chance to overthrow capitalism, introduce
world socialism, and transform that socialism into world communism.
But it seems to me that we should cut Marx,
Engels, et al., a little slack here, and understand their predictions that revolution, socialism
and communism are inevitable in a more reasonable way. It is in fact true that given a very
few assumed conditions, and specifically given that humanity continues to exist,
capitalism will eventually be overthrown and the people will institute first socialism and then
communism. Indeed, the overthrow of capitalism is itself one of the major conditions
required if humanity is to continue to exist! Either humanity gets rid of capitalism, or
capitalism will get rid of humanity (through nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, scientific
accident through recklessness due to the profit motive, or some combination of such genuine
dangers).
There is a tendency in modern bourgeois society
toward philosophical (or epistemological) agnosticism, and this
has also had some negative effects within Marxism itself. And part of this is to start thinking
that nothing significant can really be known about the future, and that revolution and communism
are not inevitable (even on reasonable assumptions). We must strongly resist this inroad of
bourgeois agnosticism and decadent pessimism within our revolutionary movement! —S.H.
See also:
“IN LEAGUE WITH THE FUTURE”,
REVOLUTIONARY OPTIMISM,
TELEOLOGY
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[Sometimes more concisely referred to as just “the Index”.] This is a list of banned books
maintained by the Roman Catholic Church which members of that church are not allowed to read.
Religions in general do not trust anyone, even their own indoctrinated members, to be exposed
to ideas which differ from their established dogmas.