CABBALA
“Cabbala—a medieval mystical religious ‘doctrine’ prevalent among the most fanatical followers of Judaism, as well as among adherents of Christianity and Islam. The basic thought of the doctrine is the symbolic interpretation of the Holy Scripture, whose every word and number acquires special mystical importance in the eyes of the Cabbalists.” —Note 106, LCW 38.
CABET, Étienne (1788-1856)
Utopian socialist and author of Voyage en Icarie.
CADETS (CONSTITUTIONAL-DEMOCRATIC PARTY)
“The chief party of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie in Russia. It was formed in October 1905 and included representatives of the bourgeoisie, landowning Zemstvo members, and bourgeois intelligentsia. Prominent leaders of the Cadets included P.N. Milyukov, S.A. Muromtsev, V.A. Maklakov, A.I. Shingaryov, P.B. Struve, and F.I. Rodichev. While calling themselves the party of ‘people’s freedom’, the Cadets in reality sought to make a bargain with the autocracy in order to preserve tsarism in the form of a constitutional monarchy. After the February revolution, as a result of a bargain with the S.R.-Menshevik leaders of the Petrograd Soviet, the Cadets had a leading place in the bourgeois Provisional Government and pursued an anti-popular, counter-revolutionary policy favorable to the American, British and French imperialists. After the October Socialist Revolution the Cadets became irreconcilable enemies of Soviet power and took an active part in all the counter-revolutionary actions and campaigns of the interventionists. After the rout of the interventionists and whiteguards, the Cadets fled abroad and continued their anti-Soviet activity.” —Note 8, Lenin, SW 3 (1967).
CADRE
[In revolutionary parties or countries:] Personnel who spend a large part of their time educating,
organizing and leading others in political or economic work.
CALCUTTA
See: KOLKATA
CALL or CALL OPTION
See: OPTION
CALVINISM
A form of fatalistic Christianity put forth by John Calvin (1509-64) and
his followers, and still embraced by some Christians today. This absurd doctrine (though really no
more absurd than any other of the great number of specific varieties of Christianity) is usually said
to consist of five main points (summarized by the acronym ‘TULIP’ from the first letter of each): 1)
Total depravity: that human beings are totally depraved and completely corrupted by “sin”; 2)
Unconditional election: Since people can’t change on their own, God has merely chosen some of them to
be “saved” (i.e., go to heaven) without regard to their behavior or character; 3) Limited atonement:
Only God’s “chosen” can (with His help) atone for their sins; 4) Irresistible grace: You can’t thwart
God’s effort to save you if that is what he has decided to do; and 5) Perseverance of the saints: The
supposed “guarantee” that once God has saved you, you’ll remain saved no matter what. The main theme
in all this is that God has already determined what is going to happen, and therefore human beings
have no choice in the matter. This is a good example of the sorts of additional ridiculous conclusions
that religious people always arrive at!
CAMUS, Albert [Pronounced (roughly): al-bear ka-MOO] (1913-1960)
French writer associated with existentialism, whose most
famous book was L’Etranger [The Stranger, or The Outsider] (1942). Although
active in the French resistance during the Nazi occupation, a member for a while of the revisionist
Communist Party of France, and co-editor with Sartre of a “left”-wing
newspaper for a few years after World War II, he was never a genuine Marxist revolutionary. In
1948 he broke with “left” political writing, and focused more exclusively on promoting his decadent
philosophy that “absurd humanity exists in an absurd world”. He received considerable applause from
the bourgeoisie for his anti-Communist writing, such as his book L’Homme Révolté
[The Rebel] (1951). He also supported French imperialism in its efforts to maintain control
of Algeria (where he as born) and other colonies. Nevertheless, Camus remains a favorite author in
bourgeois academia. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957.
CAPACITY UTILIZATION RATE
The proportion of a company’s, an industry’s, or the entire economy’s productive capacity
that is actually being used at the given time. If 20% of the factories, mines, etc., in a country
are completely closed down, while the other 80% are being used at full capacity, that would be an
overall 80% capacity utilization rate. If all factories and mines are running, but with short hours
or minus one or more work shifts, so that they collectively produce only 80% of what they really
could, that is also an 80% capacity utilization rate. A high capacity utilization rate encourages
the capitalists to build more factories and is characteristic of a strong economy, whereas a low
capacity utilization rate makes the capitalists reluctant to expand production, leads them to
focus more on cutting costs to boost sales, etc., and is a sign of a weak economy (or one in
recession).
Obviously the capacity utilization rate depends
on standards for what full capacity is understood to mean. Since the fundamental
contradiction of capitalist production leads to the continual construction of new capacity that
is not really needed, if the standards for what is considered to be operating at “full capacity”
remained the same, the capacity utilization rate would drastically fall over time (though there
would be smaller ups and downs within that overall trend). To hide this (and fool everyone,
including themselves), from time to time the capitalists and their government lower the standards.
Thus if at one time the definition for full capacity meant that factories operated around the
clock with three shifts, but because of the increase in the number of factories, the usual
situation is for most factories to have just one or two shifts, the standard for “full capacity”
for the economy as a whole might be adjusted to say 1.5 shifts on average. In that case what the
government counts as an 80% utilization rate might actually be only a 40% utilization rate
on the older definition!
The U.S. capacity utilization figures are available
on a monthly basis from the Federal Reserve website at:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/G17/default.htm
“The history of war production [in World War II] thus demonstrates with crystal clarity that, as far as real capital is concerned, talk about a capital shortage is sheer nonsense. Not only does the United States economy have the latent ability to generate an enormous amount of new capacity, but it can fabricate a great deal more with just the existing capacity. If the standards for getting more production used during the Second World War were applied today [early 1976], we would probably find that only 50%, or maybe less, of existing manufacturing capacity is being used—instead of the official 75-percent figure based on current operating practices.” —Paul Sweezy & Harry Magdoff, “Capital Shortage: Fact and Fancy”, Monthly Review, April 1976. [By December 1976, that 75% utilization rate had fallen further to 73%. But that month the Federal Reserve succumbed to mounting pressure from the “business community” and other government agencies and revised their statistical series drastically upward again. What had been called a 73% utilization level was suddenly said to be 81%! (See: Business Week, Aug. 2, 1976, p. 16, and Dec. 13, 1976, p. 16.) This further amplified the point being made by Sweezy & Magdoff! —S.H.]
“According to a Fed [Federal Reserve] report on Apr. 15 [2009], one-third of manufacturing’s productive capacity is going unused, the biggest share on record back to 1948.” —Peter Coy, “What Good are Economists Anyway?”, Business Week (April 27, 2009), p. 31. [The official U.S. capacity utilization rate for manufacturing in April 2009 was 65.6%. The preliminary rate for manufacturing for June 2009 fell further to just 64.6%, and for industry as a whole stood at just 68.0%. And again, keep in mind that these capacity utilization figures—as low as they are—are still more grossly exaggerated today than ever before! My guess is that at present the true capacity utilization rate is probably only about 35% by any reasonable standard. —S.H.]
CAPITAL
[Simple definition: ] [To be added...]
[More precise, but more technical, definition:] Self-expanding value,
or a value which generates surplus value (and hence more
capital) as the result of exploitation of wage labor. Capital expresses the socioeconomic
relations of production between the two
principal classes in capitalist society—the capitalists (or
bourgeoisie) and the workers
(proletariat).
See also sub-topics below, and especially
CAPITAL—As a Relationship between
People
“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” —Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. 10, sect 1. (Penguin ed., p. 342.) [The idea being expressed here is that the capitalists, through their ownership of capital which came from the previous exploitation of workers, are thereby in a position to further exploit workers.]
CAPITAL (DAS KAPITAL) [The Book by Marx]
[To be added... ]
“Capital [is] the greatest work on political economy of our age.” —Lenin, “Frederick Engels” (1896), LCW 2:25.
CAPITAL (DAS KAPITAL) — Engels Editorship Of
“Marx died before he could put the final touches to his vast work on capital. The draft, however, was already finished, and after the death of his friend, Engels undertook the onerous task of preparing and publishing the second and the third volumes of Capital. He published Volume II in 1885 and Volume III in 1894 (his death prevented the preparation of Volume IV). These two volumes entailed a vast amount of labor. Adler, the Austrian Social-Democrat, has rightly remarked that by publishing volumes II and III of Capital Engels erected a majestic monument to the genius who had been his friend, a monument on which, without intending it, he indelibly carved his own name. Indeed, these two volumes of Capital are the work of two men: Marx and Engels.” —Lenin, “Frederick Engels” (1896), LCW 2:25-26.
CAPITAL ACCOUNT BALANCE
See: BALANCE OF PAYMENTS
CAPITAL — Accumulation Of
Conversion of surplus value into capital. As capitalism
develops there is a generally steady increase in the amount and rate of expansion of surplus
value which goes into accumulation. Major interruptions occur in the process in the form of
overproduction crises.
CAPITAL — As a Relationship between People
“... capital is a certain relation between people, a relation
which remains the same whether the categories under comparison are at a higher or a
lower level of development. Bourgeois economists have never been able to understand
this; they have always objected to such a definition of capital.
“To regard the categories of the
bourgeois regime as eternal and natural is most typical of bourgeois philosophers. That
is why, for capital, too, they adopt such definitions as, for example, accumulated
labor that serves for further production—that is, describe it as an eternal category
of human society, thereby obscuring that specific, historically definite economic
formation in which this ‘accumulated labor,’ organized by commodity economy, falls
into the hands of those who do not work and serves for the exploitation of the labor
of others. That is why, instead of an analysis and study of a definite system of
production relations, they give us a series of banalities applicable to any system,
mixed with the sentimental pap of petty-bourgeois morality.” —Lenin, “What the
‘Friends of the People’ Are” (1894), LCW 1:217.
CAPITAL — Constant
See: CONSTANT CAPITAL
CAPITAL-LABOR RATIO [Contemporary Bourgeois Economics]
The total capital invested (in an economy, sector or individual company) divided by the
total hours worked by the labor force over a standard period of time (usually annually) and
generally expressed as a percentage. If this ratio rises it tends to indicate that the
capitalists are spending an increasing proportion of their investments on machinery rather
than hiring workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the period from 1990
to 2008 the overall capital-labor ratio for the U.S. (including outlays for factories and
other buildings) increased by 29%. This
is obviously just another way of talking about the rising productivity of labor, and the
fact that over time fewer workers are needed to accomplish the same amount of work. The BLS
reports that the capital-labor ratio in just the information processing sphere (computers)
rose by a massive 310% from 1990 to 2010. This explains the rapidly falling need for
clerical, computing and many other “white-collar” workers.
This capital-labor ratio is a concept
that is somewhat similar to (but not actually the same thing as) Marx’s concept of the
organic composition of capital.
CAPITAL — Variable
See: VARIABLE CAPITAL
CAPITALISM
A socio-economic formation based on the
ownership of the means of production by the capitalist class (either in its traditional
form of private ownership by individuals or corporations, or in the form of
state capitalism where the capitalists own the means of
production collectively as a class), and the exploitation of hired labor by the
capitalists through the extraction of surplus value.
“[T]he essence of capitalism is the appropriation by individuals of the product of social labor organized by commodity economy...” —Lenin, “What the ‘Friends of the People’ are” (1894), LCW 1:218.
CAPITALISM — Fundamental Contradiction Of
See: FUNDAMENTAL
CONTRADICTION OF CAPITALISM
CAPITALISM — and Morality
See: MORALITY—and Capitalism
CAPITALISME SAUVAGE
The French phrase le capitalisme sauvage refers to American-style capitalism which is
viewed as being more “savage” than that in Europe. Aspects of this American savagery include
things such as the much inferior “safety net” for unemployed or injured workers in the U.S.,
the pathetically weak public health and welfare systems, etc., as well as the comparative
recklessness and arrogance with which American capitalists speculate and operate, including
internationally. It is certainly true that some capitalist socioeconomic varieties are more
savage than others, with the Nazi fascist regime perhaps being the worst of all time. And yet,
the French term falsely implies that capitalism is somehow civilized and acceptable in
contemporary Europe, which is total nonsense. All forms of capitalism are horrible, even the
“best” of them.
CAPITALIST IMPERIALISM
One of several names used for the form capitalism has taken during the imperialist era (from
the late 19th century on). Also known as “monopoly
capitalism” or just plain IMPERIALISM.
CAPITALIZATION [Capitalist Finance]
1. The issuance of securities (bonds, shares of stock, etc.) in return for investment capital.
2. The calculation of the current lump sum value of a future stream of regular income or cash
flow based on the equivalent financial capital it would require to achieve that income at
current interest rates.
See also:
FICTITIOUS CAPITAL,
STOCK MARKET CAPITALIZATION
CARNOT, Nicolas Leonhard Sadi (1796-1832)
French physicist and engineer, one of the founders of the science of thermodynamics. He made
many important basic discoveries concerning the nature of heat and energy, and its various
transformations.
CARRY TRADE [Capitalist Financial Speculation]
The sphere of financial activity where a speculator borrows money in one financial market where
interest rates are low, and then loans out the funds in another market where interest rates are
higher. This is most commonly done across international borders, by borrowing money in a country
where the interest rates are low (such as Japan in recent decadess), exchanging the borrowed
currency for a different one (such as U.S. dollars), which he can then lend out at a higher
interest rate in a different country. While this may seem to be a fullproof way to “get rich”,
there are a variety of risks involved, such as the possibility that the exchange rate between the
two currencies will change in an unfavorable direction for the speculator thus wiping out his
gains and even part of his initial investment.
CARTESIAN MATERIALISM
The word “Cartesian” refers to the French philosopher René
Descartes (whose name in Latin is Cartesius), and to his followers. So “Cartesian
materialism” refers to the partially materialist views of Descartes and his followers. Descartes
was actually a dualist who thought that humans were made up of both
a material component and a totally independent mental/spiritual component (which “somehow” connected
up in the pineal gland in the brain!). However, he approached the description and explanation of the
functioning of the human body (as well as those of other animals) in an entirely
mechanical materialist way. This led to the general
promotion of materialist conceptions in science and philosophy even though Descartes himself was
not actually a true materialist.
CASINO CAPITALISM
[To be added...]
See also:
SPECULATION
“Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” —John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Harcourt Brace: 1964 (1936)), Chapter 12, p. 159.
CASTES (India)
The religious/feudal division of the population into hierachical groups (castes and sub-castes)
with the higher castes having the most advantages and privileges, and the lower castes being
oppressed and discriminated against in many ways. Traditionally, and to a large extent still
today, people are restricted in the occupations they may engage in, who they can marry, and so
forth, on the basis of the caste they are born into. Although this ancient caste structure has
weakened somewhat as India and the other countries of South Asia become more modernized (i.e.,
especially in the cities), it is still a very serious problem in the region and strong evidence
that feudalism and feudal ideas remain strong there.
The caste system is associated with the Hindu
religion especially. The highest and most privileged caste is the Brahmins, who dominate many
professions. The lowest caste, now called the Dalits (formerly known
as the “Untouchables” or “Scheduled Castes”) are the poorest and least educated. However, the
Adivasis (or “tribals”) may be even worse off. Each year there are
still many hundreds of “honor killings” in India in which families avenge inter-caste marriages
and liaisons. It will almost certainly take a real social revolution in India to totally
eliminate the reactionary caste system.
|
Caste Structure in Bihar This is the caste structure in the state of Bihar, which is similar to (but not exactly the same as) the rest of India: | |
| “Upper” (or “Forward”) Castes Brahmin Bhumihar Rajput Kayasth |
12.7% 4.6% 2.8% 4.2% 1.2% |
| “Upper Backward” Castes Bania Yadav Kurmi Koiri |
18.8% 0.6% 10.7% 3.5% 4.0% |
| “Lower Backward” Castes | 15.6% |
| “Other Shudra” | 15.6% |
| Total for "Backward” Castes | 50.0% |
| Muslim | 12.2% |
| Bengali | 2.4% |
| “Scheduled Castes” (Dalits) [“Untouchables”] Includes: Ravidas, Dusadh, and Musahar) |
13.8% |
| “Scheduled Tribes” [Adivasis] | 8.9% |
|
[Source: Prakash Louis, People Power: The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar, (Delhi: Wordsmiths, 2002), p. 82.] | |
CATEGORIES
[In Marxist philosophy:] The most general notions or concepts reflecting the
basic and essential properties and uniformities of the phenomena of nature, society
and thought, such as matter, motion, time, space, consciousness, contradiction,
necessity, chance, quality, quantity, capital, exploitation, etc.
“Man is confronted with a web of natural phenomena. Instinctive man, the savage, does not distinguish himself from nature. Conscious man does distinguish, categories are stages of distinguishing, i.e., of cognizing the world, focal points in the web, which assist in cognizing and mastering it.” —Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book Science of Logic” (1914), LCW 38:93.
CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
[In Kant’s ethics:] A moral maxim which is unconditionally
binding and which everyone must wish to become a universal law. As against this, first, in
class society different classes have different ethical viewpoints, so “everyone” cannot
possibly agree on moral maxims and their precise interpretations. Secondly, the complexity
and dialectical nature of the world and society precludes virtually any moral maxim from
being valid in all possible situations. (Despite what Kant foolishly thought,
lying is not always wrong!) And third, the categorical
imperative principle has the absurd effect of making some innocuous actions immoral. (It
would be immoral to become a shoemaker, for example, because “if everybody did it” there
would be no farmers and we would all starve to death!)
CATO INSTITUTE
See: THINK TANK
CATTY
See: JIN
CAUSES [Philosophy]
[To be added...]
See also below and:
FINAL CAUSE
CAUSE AND EFFECT
[To be added...]
See also:
Philosophical
doggerel on the topic.
CBB
An abbreviation commonly used by revolutionaries in India to refer to the “Comprador
Bureaucratic Bourgeoisie”, or in otherwords, the ruling class in India which is made up
of a mixture of comprador capitalists and big bureaucrat capitalists.
CDO
See: COLLATERALIZED DEBT
OBLIGATION
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