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NAÏVE INDUCTIVISM
The belief that the phenomena of nature or society can be, and should be, examined in the absence of any initial theory or hypothesis, and that mere raw observation will normally suffice to lead us to valid scientific explanations for the new phenomena. In reality, in both science and politics, we very rarely investigate any phenomenon starting with completely empty heads and with no guess whatsoever as to what might be going on. We bring to our investigations what we have learned (or think we have learned) earlier, including hypotheses that our existing knowledge has suggested with regard to the new phenomenon. Our new investigations may confirm those hypotheses, or else they may lead us to revise them or to reject the initial hypotheses entirely and construct new ones. This is the means by which we gradually extend and revise our existing knowledge based on new experience and new investigations.

NARODISM

“Narodism—a petty-bourgeois trend in the Russian revolutionary movement, which arose between the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century. The Narodniks were out to abolish the autocracy and hand over the landed estates to the peasantry. At the same time they denied the tendency towards the development of capitalist relations [of production] in Russia, and consequently considered the peasantry, not the proletariat, the principal revolutionary force. They regarded the village commune as the embryo of socialism. In their endeavor to rouse the peasants to the struggle against the autocracy, the Narodniks went into the villages, ‘among the people’, but they met no support there.
         “In the [1880s and 1890s] the Narodniks adopted a policy of conciliation with tsarism. They expressed the interests of the kulaks and waged a fierce struggle against Marxism.” —Footnote 120, LCW 20:590-591.

NARODNIKS
Supporters of Narodism. (See above.)

NATIONAL INTERESTS (Under Capitalism)
What are often described as “national interests” in a capitalist state are in fact the interests of its ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Thus when the U.S. government tells Americans that it is in the “national interests” of the United States that it should make war against Vietnam or Iraq, we should understand full well that this is only a camouflaged way of talking about the class interests of the capitalists who currently own and control the country.

“It’s in our national interest to prevent this from happening [the collapse of the giant insurance corporation AIG]. This is beyond a company and beyond its shareholders. It’s in our national interest.” —Hank Greenberg, former head of AIG, pleading on CNBC for the U.S. government bailout of the company, Sept. 16, 2008. The government proceeded to do just that, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, because Greenberg’s ruling class pals who were running the government felt exactly the same way.

NATIONALISM
[Intro material to be added...]

“On the national question the world outlook of the proletarian party is internationalism, and not nationalism. In the revolutionary struggle it supports progressive nationalism and opposes reactionary nationalism. It must always draw a clear line of demarcation between itself and bourgeois nationalism, to which it must never fall captive.” —A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement: The letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in reply to the letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of March 30, 1963 (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1963), p. 17.

NATIONALIZATION
[To be added... ]

“NATURAL LAW”   (In Ethics and Politics)
The theory that there are laws, higher than any man-made laws, and which are universal, unchanging, and an inherent part of human nature. These “natural laws” are supposed to be discoverable through human reason, but oddly enough they always seem to be laws that the current ruling class would approve of. Advocates of the theory of “natural law” include the ancient Stoic philosophers, “Saint” Thomas Aquinas, and many modern “libertarian” reactionaries.

NATURE — Dialectics Of
[Intro material to be added... ]

“Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history. But a knowledge of mathematics and natural science is essential to a conception of nature which is dialectical and at the same time materialist.” —Engels, Preface to the 1885 edition of Anti-Dühring, MECW 25:11.

“... in nature, amid the welter of innumerable changes, the same dialectical laws of motion force their way through as those which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events; the same laws which similarly form the thread running through the history of the development of human thought and gradually rise to consciousness in thinking man.... And finally, to me there could be no question of building the laws of dialectics into nature, but of discovering them in it and evolving them from it.” —Engels, ibid., MECW 25:11-13.

“And since biology has been pursued in the light of the theory of evolution, one rigid boundary line of classification after another has been swept away in the domain of organic nature.... It is precisely the polar antagonisms put forward as irreconcilable and insoluble, the forcibly fixed lines of demarcation and class distinctions, which have given modern theoretical natural science its restricted, metaphysical character. The recognition that these antagonisms and distinctions, though to be found in nature, are only of relative validity, and that on the other hand their imagined rigidity and absolute validity have been introduced into nature only by our reflective minds—this recognition is the kernel of the dialectical conception of nature. It is possible to arrive at this recognition because the accumulating facts of natural science compel us to do so; but one arrives at it more easily if one approaches the dialectical character of these facts equipped with an understanding of the laws of dialectical thought.” —Engels, ibid., MECW 25:14.

“Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasing daily, and thus has shown that, in the last resort, nature works dialectically and not metaphysically....
         “An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring, MECW 25:23-24.

NAXALITES
Common name for Maoist revolutionaries in India. [More to be added... ]

NEGATION (In Dialectics)
[Intro material to be added... ]

“Marxist philosophy, as distinguished from preceding philosophical systems, is not a science dominating the other sciences, rather it is an instrument of scientific investigation, a method, penetrating all natural and social sciences, enriching itself with their attainments in the course of their development. In this sense Marxist philosophy is the most complete and decisive negation of all preceding philosophy. But to negate, as Engels emphasized, does not mean merely to say ‘no.’ Negation includes continuity, signifies absorption, the critical reforming and unification in a new and higher synthesis of everything advanced and progressive that has been achieved in the history of human thought.” —A. A. Zhdanov, “On the History of Philosophy”, 1947.

NEGATION OF THE NEGATION
[To be added... ]

NEO-CLASSICAL SYNTHESIS
[Sometimes without the hyphen.] [Definition to be added...]

NEO-COLONIALISM
[Often without the hyphen.] [Definition to be added...]

NEUE RHEINISCHE ZEITUNG   [New Rhenish Gazette]
Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung was a newspaper edited by Marx in Cologne from June 1, 1848 to May 19, 1949 when it was forced to cease publication.

“Marx and Engels managed the newspaper, Marx being the editor-in-chief. It educated the masses, roused them to take action against counter-revolution; its influence was felt throughout Germany. Because of its resolute and irreconcilable position, its militant internationalism and the political exposures it published against the Prussian Government and the Cologne authorities, the newspaper was hounded by the feudal-monarchist and liberal-bourgeois press and persecuted by the government. In May 1849, at the time of the general offensive of the counter-revolution, the reactionary Prussian Government took advantage of Marx not being a Prussian subject to banish him from Prussia. Because of the banishment of Marx and the persecution of the other editors, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had to cease publication. The last issue (No. 301) appeared on May 19, 1849 printed in red. In a farewell address to the workers the editors said that ‘their last word will always and everywhere be: The Emancipation of the Working Class!’.” —Note 8 to Lenin, Selected Works, vol. I, (Moscow: 1967). [See also Engels’ article “Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung”]

NEUE ZEIT   [New Times]
Die Neue Zeit was the theoretical journal of the Social-Democratic of Germany (SPD) during the period of the Second International.

“Theoretical journal of of German Social-Democracy, published in Stuttgart from 1883 to 1923. Prior to October 1917 was edited by Karl Kautsky, then Heinrich Cunow. In 1885-95, articles by Marx and Engels appeared in its columns. Engels frequently made suggestions to the editors of Die Neue Zeit, and severely criticized them for departing from Marxism. The journal also published articles by Franz Mehring, Paul Lafargue, G. V. Plekhanov, and other leading figures of the international working-class movement. In the late 1890s, after the death of Engels the journal made a practice of publishing articles by revisionists. During the First World War (1914-18) it adopted a centrist position in support of the social-chauvinists.” —Note 13 to Lenin, Selected Works, vol. I, (Moscow: 1967).

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY (NEP)
[To be added... ]

NEW LEFT
[To be added... ]

NIHILISM
1. [Ethics:] The theory that no moral views are valid or justifiable, and that morality is therefore irrational or meaningless. Turgenev originated the term in his novel Fathers and Sons (1862). Obviously this is just a “sophisticated” excuse for acting according to one’s own selfish interests.
2. Political nihilism is the theory that society is so corrupt and despicable that its complete and utter destruction is necessary, which means that even the wildest and most aimless eruptions of violence are justified and appropriate. Such views are generally popular only amoung those who have no idea how to go about changing society; i.e., a few disillusioned students of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois origin.

“NO INVESTIGATION, NO RIGHT TO SPEAK”

“Speaking specifically, people engaged in practical work must at all times keep abreast of changing conditions, and this is something for which no Communist Party in any country can depend on others. Therefore, everyone engaged in practical work must investigate conditions at the lower levels. Such investigation is especially necessary for those who know theory but do not know the actual conditions, for otherwise they will not be able to link theory with practice. Although my assertion, ‘No investigation, no right to speak’, has been ridiculed as ‘narrow empiricism’, to this day I do not regret having made it; what is more, I still insist that without investigation there cannot possibly be any right to speak.” —Mao, “Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys” (March-April 1941), Selected Works, vol. 3, p. 13.

NODAL POINT
[In Hegel’s philosophy:] A definite point where a qualitative change takes place as the result of the gradual accumulation of small quantitative changes. In other words, a point at which a qualitative leap occurs.

NOMENKLATURA
[To be added... ]

“NON-CAPITALIST PATH OF DEVELOPMENT”
A term used by the Soviet revisionists to describe the attempts by various originally pre-capitalist or semi-capitalist Third World countries, under Soviet tutelage, to build government-owned industry (i.e., state capitalism). While it seemed ridiculous even to the revisionists to actually call this sort of thing “socialism”, they tried to characterize it as having a “socialist orientation”, and hence supposedly not really capitalism either.

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION (NGO)
Local, national, or international organizations or associations which are not set up by governments. They may have been established for, and pursue, any sort of purpose or agenda, from health and charitable work, environmental causes, cultural pursuits, or more overtly political sorts of agendas. While these are not government organizations, it must not be forgotten that we live in a bourgeois world, and therefore most of these organizations are still financed and run primarily by the rich ruling bourgeois classes of the world, and serve the interests of the bourgeoisie of one or another country first of all. There are indeed health NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders, environmental NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth, and charitable NGOs such as Oxfam, which all do a lot of work for the benefit of the people. However, few if any of these sorts of NGOs make any real effort to change this capitalist-imperialist world which gives rise to the awful problems in the first place, the prolems which they are only attempting to ameliorate. But besides these well-intentioned (but largely ineffective) reformist NGOs, there are also much richer and far more influential NGOs such as the Ford Foundation, which in words support some of these same good causes, but whose actual primary focus and purpose is to keep the world pacified and under control of U.S. imperialism and their local agents. Because this is the real central core of contemporary NGOs in general, we revolutionary Marxists tend to be suspicious of NGOs, and even downright hostile and totally opposed to the most sinister of them like the Ford Foundation.

“The contemporary Indian economy is unduly influenced by the activities of carpetbaggers, a ruthless mafia, rapacious mining interests and giant speculators, all linked to the politics of criminality. The degeneration is so deep, the rot so acute that these same moneybags are floating thousands of non-government organizations (NGOs) in order to trivialise the ills of the system so that people are diverted from seeing that these are endemic to the very system itself and not due to just some bad individuals or policies.” —Azad, spokesperson for the Communist Party of India (Maoist), “Maoists in India: A Rejoinder”, Economic and Political Weekly, October 14, 2006.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Atom bombs (based on nuclear fission) and thermonuclear bombs (based on nuclear fusion), the most terrible weapons of mass destruction of our era.

“The complete banning and destruction of nuclear weapons is an important task in the struggle to defend world peace. We must do our utmost to this end.
         “Nuclear weapons are unprecidentedly destructive, which is why for more than a decade now the U.S. imperialists have been pursuing their policy of nuclear blackmail in order to realize their ambition of enslaving the people of all countries and dominating the world.
         “But when the imperialists threaten other countries with nuclear weapons, they subject the people in their own country to the same threat, thus arousing them against nuclear weapons and against the imperialist policies of aggression and war. At the same time, in their vain hope of destroying their opponents with nuclear weapons, the imperialists are in fact subjecting themselves to the danger of being destroyed.
         “The possibility of banning nuclear weapons does indeed exist. However, if the imperialists are forced to accept an agreement to ban nuclear weapons, it decidedly will not be because of their ‘love for humanity’ but because of the pressure of the people of all countries and for the sake of their own vital interests.” —A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement: The letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in reply to the letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of March 30, 1963 (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1963), p. 32.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS — America’s Use of in World War II

“Particularly important is the light shed on the American decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. At the time, the justifications were murky: some hoped the terrifying display would avoid what they feared would have been a bloody invasion. Others wanted to test the bombs on which so many billions of dollars had been spent. Still others had their eye on post-war diplomacy, seeking to intimidate the Soviet Union and secure American dominance. Newly declassified files show unambiguously that America was aware of Japanese attempts to sue for peace before the bombs were dropped, undermining the military reasoning for using the weapons.” —The Economist, “A Rush of Energy”, Aug. 27, 2009. [Even a reactionary publication like The Economist now implicitly agrees that this episode of imperialist mass murder and genocide must have been done primarily as a warning to the Soviet Union that U.S. imperialism would be the top dog in the post-World War II world. —S.H.]