Glossary Terms List

Bourgeoisie🔗 Link

The class which primarily owns the means of production (private property) and that has an interest in protecting their control of capital.

Capitalism🔗 Link

A socio-economic system based especially on private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of the labor force.

Commodity Fetishism🔗 Link

Viewing a commodity's value as intrinsic with its existence, which neglets the investment of labor value that went into its production.

Communism🔗 Link

A political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat🔗 Link

The democratic rule of the majority class (proletariat) during the transition between capitalism and communism.

Idealism🔗 Link

The view that the “spiritual”, or mental, or non-material reality is primary, and that material reality (if it exists at all) is secondary. One of the two great trends in the history of philosophy, the other being its opposite, materialism.

Marxism🔗 Link

The science of society and social revolution, as originally established by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and elaborated and extended by many others, especially V. I. Lenin and Mao Zedong. Short-hand for Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Materialism🔗 Link

Holds that there is a real objective world which exists independently of any mental conception of it. Although this may seem like simple common sense to most of the readers of this dictionary, this materialist conception had to develop over centuries of struggle against idealist conceptions and philosophies which maintained that ideas form the foundation of all reality.

Proletariat🔗 Link

The economic and social working class which owns no means of production (private property), producing income only from their labor.