essays-ccs/glossary_of_socialist_terms.md

Glossary of Socialist Terms

Try to keep each term to 3 sentences max Try to keep the definitions as simple as possible, ELI 10 years old

Term	Definition
Capitalism	A system that allows private individuals to own the means of production, with the goal of extracting a profit from the sale of commodities produced by wage workers.
Communism	A stateless, moneyless, and classless system where the means of production are democratically owned and controlled by the community, for the benefit of all. Wage labor is non-existent, and production is planned for human needs, rather than private profit.
Socialism	A range of social and economic systems characterized by social ownership of the means of production. It can also mean the transitional stage between capitalism and communism, sometimes referred to as the dictatorship of the proletariet.
Anarchism	A political philosophy that critiques hierarchical organization, and emphasizes free assocation. The main two branches are social anarchism, and individualist anarchism.
Social Democracy	Originally synonymous with evolutionary socialism, social democracy is an ideology that supports economic interventionism to promote social justice whilst retaining a capitalist economy. It is often seen by socialists as supporting "welfare-state" band-aids to capitalism.
Welfare State	A state that provides social services on behalf of the well-being of its citizens, while retaining capitalism. It often refers to Germany, the UK, and the Nordic countries, but can refer to any state with social services.
State Capitalism	An economic system where some means of production are owned by the state, surplus labor is still extracted, and wage labor still exists. The state decides how to distribute the surplus. Engels argued that the state form would be the final stage of capitalism.
Liberalism	A political ideology that emerged in the 19th century that justifies capitalism, free markets, representative democracy, freedom of the press, free speech, and freedom of religion. It emphasizes negative, individual rights, in contrast to positive, communal rights.
Slavery	A system that allows individuals to own other human beings, in order to extract a surplus from their labor.
Feudalism	An arrangement predominating in the middle ages, where a local lord would allow serfs to live and sustain themselves on his land, as long as they provided him labor and military support.
Fascism	A heterodox term generally characterized by hyper-nationalism, racial supremacy, a cult of personality around a "strong" leader as superior to democracy, and an alliance between big and small capitalists.
Means of Production	Physical, non-human inputs used for the production of economic value, such as workplaces, factories, machinery, or tools. Synonymous with Capital.
Private Property	Means of production, when owned by private individuals, whose ownership is claimed through title, and not use, with the aim of extracting rent from the actual users or workers. Synonymous with absentee property.
Personal Property	Property for personal use and consumption. Put simply, your house, and everything in it. Neither socialism nor communism intends to do away with personal property.
Socialized Property	Means of production, when democratically and socially owned and controlled, put to use to benefit people. Surplus value may still exist, but democratic decision-making decides how to use it.
Proletariet	The wage-earning class which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for their labor power(Their ability to work).
Bourgeoisie	The social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital, to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society.
Class Struggle	A tension that exists between competing classes, caused by contradictory interests, that can only be resolved through violent confrontation. The competing classes are determined by the economic mode of society: In Slavery, the slave and the master. In Feudalism, the lord and the serf. In Capitalism, the capitalist and the wage worker.
Petit Bourgeoisie	The lower subset of the bourgeoisie made up of small-scale capitalists such as shop-keepers and workers who manage the production, distribution, and/or exchange of commodities and/or services owned by their bourgeois employers. It often refers to "small business owners", and is contrasted with the haute bourgeoisie, or the big capitalists.
Bourgeois Democracy	The name that socialists use to refer to modern representative liberal democracies, criticized as being democracies for the rich only, since representatives and the media in capitalist countries are often the puppets of the capitalists themselves.
Reformism	A position that advocates gradually transforming a capitalist economy into a qualitatively different socialist system through political and economic reform, in contrast to revolutionary socialism.. Synonymous with evolutionary socialism.
Cultural Hegemony	The domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that their imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm; the universally valid dominant ideology, which justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
The State	In Leninism, the state is a special organization of force used for the suppression of one class by another. Under capitalist society, the state upholds capitalism and wields force to suppress the working class. In general terms, a state is any politically organized community under a single government.
Imperialism	The domination of a weaker country by a stronger one; referring primarily to the conquering and exploitation of labor and natural resources of the weaker country. In Leninism, imperialism is the final stage of capitalism, where finance capital is exported to undeveloped economies, resulting in the colonization and division of the world amongst capitalist monopolies. Geopolitical conflict ensues over this economic exploitation, and the resulting super-profits permit businessmen to bribe native politicians and labor leaders, and intervene militarily to suppress worker revolts.
Nationalism	An ideology which emphasizes nations(and often specific races living in those nations), self-governance, national identity, and patriotism over internationalism. Communists want working-class internationalism, but also defend the right of nations to be free from imperialism.
Revolution
Praxis
Surplus Value	The difference between the value a worker adds, and the value that they receive and are able to use for themselves. This surplus value goes to another leeching party that controls production(capitalists, slavemaster, etc). Surplus Value = Worker Value Added - Wage Paid. Synonymous with unpaid labor, profit, exploitation, and wage theft.
Dictatorship of the Proletariet
Dialectical Materialism
Labor theory of value	A theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of average socially necessary labor required to produce it, rather than by the use or pleasure its owner gets from it.
Socialism in one country	Also called siege socialism.
Permanent Revolution
Right of nations to self-determination
Democratic Centralism	A tenet of Leninism, described by him as, diversity in discussion, unity in action. After decisions are reached, they are followed the group.
Vanguardism	A strategy whereby the most class-conscious and politically advanced sections of the working class form organizations in order to draw larger sections of the workers towards revolutionary politics and serve as manifestations of proletarian political power against its class enemies.
Mass Line
Mass Strike
Alienation
United Front
Transitional Demand
Workers Militia
Branches
Marxism	A socialist tradition created by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, that places emphasis on the means of production, your relation to them, and the inherent class struggle involved between those who control production, and those who don't.
Leninism	A branch of Marxism developed by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks drawn from their experiences in early 20th century Russia. Important concepts include vanguardism, dictatorship of the proletariet(and how to transition to communism), the right of nations to self-determination, imperialism, and democratic centralism. The goal of Leninism is the development of a worker state capable of withstanding capitalist encirclement(often called siege socialism), in order to protect and continue the transition to communism.
Marxism-Leninism(ML)	A term created by Joseph Stalin to refer to the ideology of the USSR, generally synonymous with Leninism.
Maoism
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism(MLM)
Anarcho-communism
Egoist Anarchism
Trotskyism	A branch of Leninism created by Leon Trotsky, a leading bolshevik. Important concepts include permanent revolution, world revolution, the transitional programme, transitional demands, the united front, workers militias, and criticism of the soviet union under Stalin as a deformed workers state.
Luxemburgism	A branch of Marxism created by Rosa Luxemburg, a leading figure in the German revolution of 1919. Important concepts include Revolutionary Spontanaeity, emphasis on low-level democracy, the mass-strike, opposition to reformism, and criticism of bolshevism.
Left-Communism
Syndicalism
Democratic Socialism
Council Communism
Hoxhaism
Autonomism
Bordigism
Titoism
Communalism
Utopian Socialism

Sources

• Principles of communism
• Crash course socialism
• [3 Sources and 3 component parts of marxism]
• https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/wiki/index
• https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism_101/wiki/index
• Wikipedia