Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

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TAOISM
[To be added...]
        See also: LAO ZI

TARGET RATE (Federal Reserve)
See: FEDERAL FUNDS RATE

TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program]
An emergency U.S. government bailout program for banks and other financial institutions which was passed in the fall of 2008 with an initial appropriation of 700 billion dollars. The name comes from the original idea that the money would be used primarily to buy up the “toxic assets” of the banks and Wall Street firms, such as their foolish investments in subprime mortgages and securities based on them. (The government bill used the euphemism “troubled assets” rather than the actual term being used by the public and Wall Street brokers themselves—“toxic assets”.) Actually, however, the government quickly changed its idea about what to do with all this money, and started using it to “recapitalize” these banks and other corporations. The aim was still to prop up these supposedly “private” corporations and keep them from going bankrupt, but the method was switched to simply giving them the money (in exchange for grossly overvalued stock certificates) instead of directly buying up their bad investments. This was a hidden form of bourgeois nationalization, in which the government “invested” in these financial institutions but did little to control or direct them, let alone to do so in the interests of the people.

TAYLORISM
[To be added...]
        See also: TIME AND MOTION STUDIES

TEBHAGA MOVEMENT
A militant peasant movement initiated in the Bengal region of British-controlled India in 1946 for the purpose of allowing share-cropping peasants to keep for themselves a larger share of the food they grew. This was near the end of a long period of British imperialist caused famine, and at a time when it was the usual practice of landlords to take 50% of the crops. This Tebhaga Movement, led by the Kisan Sabha [Peasant Council] front of the Communist Party of India, sought to reduce the share taken by the landlords from one half to one third.
        The landlords, and the colonial government, of course used force to try to stop this movement, and the ensuing violence forced many landlords to flee from the villages, leaving areas of the countryside under the control of the Kisan Sabha. One of the leaders of this great peasant struggle was Charu Mazumdar, who much later led the great peasant uprising in Naxalbari, and went on to found the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).
        To try to regain control of the situation, the Muslim League ministry in charge of the province passed the Bargadar Act, which legally set the maximum portion of the harvest that the landlords could take at one third of the total. However, once things settled down, the law was not fully enforced. Nevertheless, the Tebhaga Movement gave the Bengali peasants a taste of their own potential power, and helped set the stage for the later revolutionary movement.

TELEOLOGY
The religious or idealist philosophical view which holds that design, purpose and goals, analogous to those which exist in many human actions and activities (and those of other higher animals), can also be found in the world in general. Thus the idea that the sun exists in order to warm the earth is an example of a teleological view, as is the idea that the world was created for human beings (by some god). Of course the sun does warm the earth, but no force created the sun for that purpose. And, the earth is in general quite well suited for the existence of human beings and other animals, but this is because we have evolved to live under these conditions (such as this amount of gravitation force, this range of temperatures, etc.).
        [More to be added...]
        See also: ENTELECHY, FINAL CAUSES, PURPOSE

THAILAND — Communist Party of Thailand
The Communist movement in Thailand (still called Siam until 1939) had a slow and confused development, partly because of the complex ethnic make-up of the country. Initially it was composed mostly of ethnic Chinese and there were very few Communists of Thai ethnicity. Though this imbalanced diminished over time, it remained a major problem throughout the party’s history. The CPT was also primarily an urban party until the 1960s when, under repressive government attacks, it retreated to the forests and began an armed struggle. During the 1970s it rapidly expanded its revolutionary army (the People’s Liberation Army of Thailand), which reached a peak of between 12,000 and 20,000 soldiers by early 1979. There were guerrilla zones in more than 40 provinces, with CPT influences in thousands of villages with a total population of more than 3 million people.
        However, the CPT and PLAT then fell to pieces, primarily because of internal ideological and organizational weaknesses and poor leadership, and weak ties with the non-Chinese masses throughout much of the country. The rapidly developing revisionism in China after Mao’s death led to much less support and sympathy for the revolution in Thailand. During the period of hostility and conflict between China and Vietnam (1978-9 and later), the weapons supplied by China to the Thai national army to resist an expected Vietnamese invasion (which never occurred) were actually used against the PLAT revolutionaries. Because of poor leadership and ideological confusion the PLAT soldiers began surrendering to the government, often en masse. By the mid-1980s the revolutionary war was abandoned and the CPT itself disappeared from view. It will be up to a new generation of Thais to recreate a revolutionary communist party and carry out the still desperately needed social revolution in that country.
        For further information see: Pierre Rousset’s article on the Communist Party of Thailand at: http://links.org.au/node/1247 or http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article14956

THALES OF MILETUS   (625?-547? BCE)
Early Greek philosopher of the Ionian School, often called the “first philosopher”. In addition to that, he was credited by Aristotle with being the founder of physical science; he may have been the first person in recorded history to put forth materialist speculations about the physical nature of the world. (He believed that the most basic substance, and the ultimate constituent of all things, was water.) He is said to have predicted the solar eclipse on May 28, 585 BCE, and to have introduced the study of geometry to Greece from the Middle East.

THEORIES OF SURPLUS VALUE   [“Volume IV of Capital”]
A major part of the economic manuscripts left by Marx at his death which was intended to become volume IV of his great work Capital. Although the fourth volume of Capital that Marx hoped to publish was expected by him to be primarily historical, the actual manuscripts he left of TSV include many passages of great importance to the theory of Marxist political economy. TSV is thus an extremely important, though often neglected, part of Marx’s writings on political economy. It contains many points not fully elaborated in the first three volumes, as well as a detailed history and criticism of the crucially important topic of surplus value as it was originally developed by classical bourgeois economists.
        TSV was not published, even in German, until the first decade of the 20^th century. The first of the three volumes of TSV, which were all edited (poorly and tendentiously!) by Karl Kautsky, appeared in 1904, the second in 1905, and the third not until 1910. Prior to their publication other Marxist writers on political economy—including Lenin—did not have access to Marx’s complete theory on a number of key topics, most notably with regard to Marx’s criticism of “Say’s Law”. More accurate editions of the three volumes of TSV, based on Marx’s original manuscripts, were published in German in 1956, 1959 and 1962. The versions of these three volumes in English translation (from Progress Publishers in Moscow) did not appear until 1963, 1968 and 1971, respectively. The late publication of TSV, the dubious reliability of its first German edition, and its relative neglect even since its proper publication, have all created serious problems for Marxist political economy, especially in Britain and the United States.

“First, a manuscript entitled Zur Kritik der politishen Oekonomie, ... written in August 1861 to June 1863. It is the continuation of a work of the same title, the first part of which appeared in Berlin, in 1859.... The themes treated in Book II [volume II of Capital] and very many of those which are treated later, in Book III [volume III of Capital], are not yet arranged separately. They are treated in passing, to be specific, in the section which makes up the main body of the manuscript, viz., pages 220-972 (Notebooks VI-XV), entitled ‘Theories of Surplus-Value.’ This section contains a detailed critical history of the pith and marrow of Political Economy, the theory of surplus-value and develops parallel with it, in polemics against predecessors, most of the points later investigated separately and in their logical connection in the manuscript for Books II and III. After eliminating the numerous passages covered by Books II and III I intend to publish the critical part of this manuscript as Capital, Book IV. This manuscript, valuable though it is, could be used only very little in the present edition of Book II.” —Engels, Preface to Marx’s Capital, Vol. II, (International: 1967), p. 2. [Engels died before he was able to follow through with this plan to publish TSV as volume IV of Capital.]

[Speaking of Kautsky’s edition of TSV in 1904-1910:] “In this edition the basic principles of the scientific publication of a text were violated and there were distortions of a number of the tenets of Marxism.” —Footnote 36, Lenin: Selected Works, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress, 1967).

THEORY
See: CENTRAL ORGANIZING THEORY, MARXIST THEORY, REVOLUTIONARY THEORY, SCIENTIFIC THEORY

THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
The branch of philosophy which is concerned with the nature and extent of human knowledge, how we come to know things, the reliability of what we know, and so forth. Also known as epistemology in more pretentious language.
        See also: AGNOSTICISM, REFLECTION THEORY

“THESES ON FEUERBACH”   [Notes by Marx]
A set of 11 short theses (or principles) set down by Marx in the spring of 1845. They were just his own notes at the time. But they are so profound, and so concisely summarize the fundamental principles of the Marxist approach to philosophy and to social practice that they have become justly famous. Engels first published them in 1888 as an appendix to his book Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.
        The central theme in the “Theses on Feuerbach” is an elaboration of a scientific understanding of practice (social activity). Among the many important concepts and principles which may be found in an early and only partially developed form in the Theses is that of the mass line method of revolutionary leadership and having a mass perspective.
        But rather than read about the “Theses on Feuerbach”, people should just go read them! They are online at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm. See also: FEUERBACH, Ludwig

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” —Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”, Thesis XI.

THINK TANK
A nominally non-government institute which engages in political advocacy with respect to government policies in areas such as social issues, economics, international imperialist strategy, military issues, the best political strategy for the ruling class within the country (or often the best strategy for just for one section of that ruling class), and so forth, and which prepares “research studies” to support the views and policies it favors. Think tanks are therefore, and with only the rarest exceptions, operations run by and for the capitalist ruling class, or one of its contending sections. The government itself supports these think tanks in many ways, including through providing them with lucrative contracts for “research”, and by exempting them from paying taxes by calling them non-profit organizations (even when they openly work to promote greater profits for capitalist corporations). Sometimes the government will directly set up a think tank, or provide it with ongoing general funding under one pretext or another.
        One of the earliest think tanks was the Institute for Defence and Security Studies founded in London in 1831. But think tanks have truly mushroomed as key parts of the system of bourgeois rule mostly since World War II, and especially in the United States. The term “think tank” itself originated in American slang in World War II and came into general consciousness in the U.S. in the 1950s. The archetypical, and one of the most prominent think tanks, is the RAND Corporation, which was founded under the sponsorship of the U.S. Air Force as an offshoot of the Douglas Aircraft Corporation shortly after World War II. During the Cold War, and since then, the number of think tanks in the U.S. and around the world has skyrocketed; by 2006 there were at least 4,500 them in the world, mostly focused on international affairs, foreign policy, and “security” matters (military issues and how to keep the restless population under control).
        Some of the many prominent U.S. bourgeois think tanks include:
        *   American Enterprise Institute — A right-wing counterpart to the slightly “left”-wing Brookings Institution. One of the loudest proponents of neoliberalism.
        *   Brookings Institution (one of the oldest U.S. think tanks, founded in 1916) — Quintessentially an “establishment” institution which describes itself as non-partisan, but which sometimes seems to lean toward the Democratic Party.
        *   Cato Institute — Promotes dogmatic libertarian “free market” doctrines and policies.
        *   Center for American Progress — Promotes more politically liberal bourgeois policies than most think tanks.
        *   Heritage Foundation — Promotes right-wing “conservative” doctrines and policies.
        *   RAND Corporation — In effect this has been a major research arm of the U.S. government, focused especially on military and “security” matters, but extending far beyond that scope.

THIRD ESTATE
In feudal France (before the great French Revolution of 1789) society was characterized as being composed of three “estates”: The First Estate was the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church; the Second Estate was the nobility (the class of the feudal landlords); and the Third Estate was everyone else, including peasants, workers and capitalists (or bourgeoisie). However, it was the rising new class, the bourgeoisie, that dominated this Third Estate politically (though certainly not numerically). The Estates-Generales was a weak and very intermittent French national assembly that represented these three estates. In 1789 it was convened (after 175 years!) in order to deal with a major financial crisis of the state. But from the perspective of the ruling nobility, this assembly got quite out of hand! The bourgeois leaders of the Third Estate demanded much more power, and this precipitated the French Revolution.

THIRD INTERNATIONAL
See: COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL

“THIRD WORLD”
A term introduced by the French economist Alfred Sauvy in 1952 to refer collectively to all the non-industrial nations of the world. Due to the Cold War, many people soon reinterpreted the “Third World” to mean those countries which were aligned neither with the Western imperialist bloc (headed by the United States) nor with the “Socialist bloc” (headed by the Soviet Union). Under this interpretation the “Third World” became nearly synonymous with “non-aligned countries”. It was later during this Cold War period that the Communist Party of China put forward the incorrect “Three Worlds” Theory. Since at least Mao’s death, most revolutionary Marxists have rejected that theory. But because of its association with that erroneous theory, the term “Third World” was shunned by revolutionary Marxists for a long period.
        However, since the collapse of the revisionist Soviet Union and its bloc, and the end of the Cold War, the term “Third World” has begun shifting back to something closer to its original meaning: Those countries which are largely undeveloped economically. There have been attempts (by bourgeois writers) to replace the term “Third World” with the euphemistic term “developing countries”, but most such countries are not really “developing” economically very much at all since they remain so totally under the control of and exploitation by the imperialist nations. The term “undeveloped countries” would be better, but it also has some possible implications that these countries are culturally undeveloped which is totally false and slanderous. Thus many people are once again using the term “the Third World” to mean these economically undeveloped countries. Unfortunately, others still use the term in other ways, which means that it remains somewhat ambiguous.
        The term “semicolonial countries” is better, but somewhat outdated; more appropriate today would be “neocolonial countries”. But in many countries these terms are not widely understood by the masses.
        In short, there are difficulties in picking the most appropriate short terms or phrases to replace the “Third World” in the sense of meaning those countries which are largely undeveloped economically, or in the closely related sense of those countries which are exploited and oppressed by imperialism. Perhaps the most appropriate phrases today, depending on the precise sense we mean, are: 1) “the economically undeveloped countries”; 2) “the exploited and oppressed countries”; 3) “the neocolonies” or “the neocolonial countries”. When we still do use the term “Third World” we should be sure that our audience understands it in the same way we do.
        We should also be aware that there can be intermediate or transitional forms, between imperialist countries and countries exploited and oppressed by imperialism. China today, for example, is both exploited by foreign imperialism and at the same time a rising new imperialist power itself. It was once a “Third World” country; but though large sections of the population are still very poor, with the massive expansion of industry in China and the shift of so much world production to that country, that characterization no long seems appropriate.
        See also: DEPENDENT COUNTRIES

“THIRD WORLD” THEORY
See: “THREE WORLDS” THEORY

“THREE-EIGHT WORKING STYLE”
A term used in Maoist China (which in Chinese is written in three phrases and eight additional characters), for a manner of political work which consists of:
        A firm, correct political orientation;
        A plain, hard-working style;
        Flexibility in strategy and tactics; and
        Unity, alertness, earnestness and liveliness. (Note that despite the “three” and “eight” numbers in common, this is not the same thing as the THREE MAIN RULES OF DISCIPLINE AND EIGHT POINTS FOR ATTENTION described in an entry below.)

“THREE-IN-ONE” REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEES
A provisional form of revolutionary rule developed in China in 1968 during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, when political power was re-captured from the revisionists and capitalist-roaders within the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government. The three-in-one revolutionary committees consisted of a combination of revolutionary cadres, representatives of the People’s Liberation Army and representatives of the revolutionary masses.

“In every place or unit where power must be seized, it is necessary to carry out the policy of the revolutionary ‘three-in-one’ combination in establishing a provisional organ of power which is revolutionary and representative and enjoys proletarian authority. This organ of power should preferably be called the Revolutionary Committee.” —Mao, quoted in Peking Review, #43, Oct. 25, 1968, p. 21.

“There are three elements in the basic experience of the revolutionary committee: It embraces representatives of the revolutionary cadres, representatives of the armed forces and representatives of the revolutionary masses, constituting a revolutionary ‘three-in-one’ combination. The revolutionary committee should exercise unified leadership, eliminate duplication in the administrative structure, follow the the policy of ‘better troops and simpler administration’ and organize a revolutionized leading group which links itself with the masses.” —Mao, quoted in Peking Review, #43, Oct. 25, 1968, p. 21.

“THREE MAIN RULES OF DISCIPLINE AND EIGHT POINTS FOR ATTENTION”
These are rules of conduct that members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army were required to follow during the Mao era, and which helped the PLA to truly serve the interests of the masses and win their support during the Chinese Revolution. The three main rules of discipline were:
        1) Obey orders in all your actions;
        2) Don’t take a single needle or piece of thread from the masses;
        3) Turn in everything captured.
The eight points for attention were:
        1) Speak politely;
        2) Pay fairly for what you buy;
        3) Return everything you borrow;
        4) Pay for anything you damage;
        5) Don’t hit or swear at people;
        6) Don’t damage crops;
        7) Don’t take liberties with women;
        8) Don’t ill-treat captives.
(Despite the use of the same numbers, this is not the same thing as the “THREE-EIGHT WORKING STYLE” described in an entry above.)

“THREE OURS”, The (Of the RCP.)
This refers to the following set of three slogans formerly prominently promoted by the RCPUSA in its newspaper and on its web site:
        “Our ideology is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,
        Our vanguard is the Revolutionary Communist Party,
        Our leader is Chairman Avakian.”
There are obviously some serious problems with these slogans. The second, for example, proclaimed the RCP as the “vanguard”, when in fact it had not even begun to lead the American working class toward revolution in any noticeable way. And the third slogan set up Bob Avakian as the permanent and unchallengeable leader of the Party, which is both anti-scientific and anti-democratic. But strangely enough, it was discomfort about the first slogan that led the RCP to quietly drop the “Three Ours”, circa 2008. Instead of calling the science of revolution “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism”, as they formerly did, they now call it simply “communism”.
        The explanation for this change offered by Party members is that this does not mean that “Mao is being demoted”, but rather that this has to do with breaking with “religious trends in the ICM” that supposedly led communists to uncritically uphold Marx, Lenin and Mao, and never admit they made any errors. (This is quite ironic in light of the religious cult of personality around Avakian which the RCP has created, and their refusal to admit that Avakian ever makes any errors!) In addition, the RCP thought that the first slogan somehow implied that we don’t need to further develop our revolutionary science, while they believe that with the defeat of China we are in a new stage of development of communism as a science. The strong suspicion among some of those not in the RCP is that Avakian made this change because he knew they could not get away with calling his supposed “new synthesis” “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Avakianism”. This calls to mind the old principle of bourgeois success: “It is not enough that I am honored and raised up; others must also be knocked down!”

TIANANMEN INCIDENT (of 1976)
A reactionary demonstration in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on April 5, 1976 by demonstrators who gathered both in respect for Zhou Enlai (who had just died) and in opposition to the revolutionary line of Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The fact that both of these themes were combined together by the demonstrators led to further suspicions and criticisms (on the part of Maoist revolutionaries) of the role that Zhou Enlai had been playing during the GPCR.

TIME TRAVEL
Although “time travel” is a popular theme in science fiction (usually more aptly referred to as fantasy fiction) it is scientifically impossible, and even logically impossible.
        Of course people, and the world as a whole, are constantly “moving into the future” in their everyday existence. And something seemingly closer to the instantaneous effect imagined for time travel into the future could occur through methods such as biological stasis or hibernation for a certain period, which might conceivably allow a person’s consciousness to suddenly jump from one time period into a far future time period. But this is no more philosophically startling than the fact that when we go to sleep each night and then awaken in the morning our consciousness has jumped 7 or 8 hours “into a future time”.
        But time travel into the past is absolutely impossible. The standard refutation of the idea is the “grandfather paradox”: If it were possible to travel into the past it would then be possible to kill your grandfather in his youth, thus preventing your own birth and your ability to move backwards in time. In short, the idea leads to a logical contradiction. It assumes that the past was both a certain definite way (fixed), and also that it can “later” be changed into something different (which means that it was not fixed).
        Any sort of real time travel, either to the past or to a discontinuous future, involves breaking the chain of cause and effect in the development of the world, and is therefore a scientifically incoherent notion.

TO BE ATTACKED BY THE ENEMY IS A GOOD THING
On May 26, 1939, at a time when the Communist Party of China was under heightened attack by reactionaries, Mao Zedong wrote an influential three page article, “To Be Attacked by the Enemy is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing”. This article was later included in the Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung (Peking [Beijing]: 1971), and was also included in Volume 6 of the Selected Works of Mao Tsetung published in India. It is available online at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_32.htm
        The basic theme of that fine article is summed up in this paragraph:

“I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy. It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.” —Mao Zedong, SR, p. 160.

“TOO BIG TO FAIL”
Capitalism is an unstable system in many respects, and specifically competitive capitalism is unstable in that there are powerful forces which tend to transform it in the direction of monopoly, as Marx pointed out long ago. When severe economic crises develop, however, this creates additional major problems. It is no longer a question of a number of fairly inconsequential small companies going bankrupt, but now a question of some extremely large banks and other corporations failing. Some of these large corporations are now so important for the economy that their failure would lead to such drastic repercussions that the capitalist class in general has been forced to declare them “too big to fail”. In other words, it is forced to use its control of the state to bail out these giant banks and other corporations which it deems “too big to fail”.
        In the Panic of 2008-9, which is part of the overall still-developing profound world capitalist economic crisis, the U.S. government has already spent literally trillions of dollars in both temporary and permanent bailouts of banks and corporations which it considered “too big to fail”. This has become a major feature of the crisis and will remain so from now on.

“By dividing the whole circulation [of bank notes] into a greater number of parts, the failure of any one [banking] company, an accident which, in the course of things, must sometimes happen, becomes of less consequence to the public.” —Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book II, Ch. II, (Modern Library, 1937), p. 313. [What Adam Smith did not understand, however, is that the growth of monopoly is in the interests of the most important and influential capitalists, who therefore also normally control the bourgeois state. Thus even if there are nominal laws against monopoly, there will eventually come to be giant monopolistic (or at least oligopolistic) corporations whose failure would indeed be tremendously disruptive to the entire capitalist economy. Therefore it is inevitable that banks and corporations “too big to fail” arise, and that the bourgeois state will then bail them out and prop them up when they get into financial difficulty. It is today a petty-bourgeois pipe dream to think that corporations can be kept small and inconsequential enough so that their individual failures really do not matter.]

“TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY”
See: PRODUCTIVITY—“Total Factor”

“For a number of years the English workers’ movement has been going round and round bootlessly in a confined circle of strikes for wages and the reduction of working hours—not, mark you, as an expedient and a means of propaganda and organization, but as the ultimate aim. Both on principle and statutorily the trades unions actually exclude any political action and hence participation in any general activity on the part of the working class as a class. Politically the workers are divided into Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, into supporters of a Disraeli (Beaconsfield) administration and supporters of a Gladstone administration. So one can speak of a workers’ movement here only to the extent that strikes take place which, victorious or otherwise, do not advance the movement by one single step. In my view only harm can come of inflating strikes such as these into struggles of world-historical importance (as does the Freiheit here), strikes which were, moreover, as often as not deliberately engineered by the capitalists in the late years of depression so as to have an excuse for closing down their factories, strikes in which the working class makes no progress whatsoever. No attempt should be made to conceal the fact that at this moment a genuine workers’ movement in the continental sense is non-existent here...” —Engels, draft of a letter to Eduard Bernstein, June 17, 1879, MECW 45:360-1.

“... any subservience to the spontaneity of the mass movement and any degrading of Social-Democratic [Communist] politics to the level of trade-unionist politics mean preparing the ground for converting the working-class movement into an instrument of bourgeois democracy. The spontaneous working-class movement is by itself able to create (and inevitably does create) only trade-unionism, and working-class trade-unionist politics is precisely working-class bourgeois politics. The fact that the working class participates in the political struggle, and even in the [bourgeois democratic] political revolution, does not in itself make its politics Social-Democratic [socialist/communist] politics.” —Lenin, “What Is To Be Done?” (1902), LCW 5:437.

TRIAD, The
A term used by Samir Amin and others to refer collectively to the three dominant imperialist centers in the world as of the beginning of the 21st century: The United States, Japan and Northern Europe (Germany, Britain, France, etc.). With the rapid rise of China as a new imperialist power this term already seems out of date.

TRIBE
See: PRIMITIVE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

“Tropes—the designation for the reasons for doubt advanced by the ancient Skeptics (ten tropes) and later supplemented (five tropes) by Agrippa. By means of these reasons the Skeptics tried to prove the impossibility of cognizing things and the absolute relativity of all perceptions.” —Endnote 104, LCW 38.

TROTSKY, Leon [Lev Davidovich Bronstein]   (1879-1940)
Long-time centrist between Bolshevism and Menshevism and opponent of Lenin, who finally joined the Bolshevik Party not long before the October Revolution, and who played an important role in the Russian Revolution for a period of time. After Lenin’s death he led first the internal opposition, and later the external opposition from exile, against Stalin.
        In the 1905 Revolution Trotsky became president of the first Soviet in St. Petersburg. After joining the Bolsheviks in 1917 and taking part in the October Revolution he became commissar for foreign affairs and conducted negotiations with the Germans for the peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk. However Trotsky himself opposed that treaty. Later as commissar for war he led in expanding the Red Army from a small initial core into a large fighting force and in conducting the civil war against the Whites (anti-Bolshevik forces). In 1920-21 he opposed Lenin’s policy on the trade unions and engaged in harmful factional activity which threatened the unity of the Bolshevik Party. At the Tenth Party Congress, Lenin pushed through a resolution and change in the composition of the Central Committee which greatly weakened Trotsky’s position.
        After Lenin’s death in 1924, one of the central struggles was over the issue of “socialism in one country”. With the defeat of the socialist revolutions in the West (especially in Germany), it became necessary to try to consolidate socialism in Russia alone for a period, a policy which Stalin supported, but which Trotsky strongly opposed under the slogan of “permanent revolution”. This adventurist policy which Trotsky supported at the time would very likely have led to the early demise of revolutionary Russia. This program also cost Trotsky a lot of support in his leadership struggle with Stalin, and he soon lost out completely. In 1927 Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and in 1929 he was banished from the Soviet Union.
        In exile Trotsky tried to build up and lead a world revolutionary force (the “Fourth International”) in opposition to the Comintern and the Communist movement. Many of his accusations against Stalin, such as that Stalin was bureaucratic, anti-democratic and authoritarian were largely correct (although Trotsky had those same strong tendencies himself!). In 1940 a supporter of Stalin murdered Trotsky with a mountain-climber’s ice ax while he was in exile in Mexico.

“When he [Trotsky] was playing against this surreptitious master [Stalin], did he ever stand a chance? It is difficult to believe that he did. He was, as I have hinted, an intellectual’s politician, not a politician’s. He was arrogant, he was a wonderful phrase-maker, he was good at points of dramatic action. But, as with Churchill (there are some resemblances), his judgment, over most of his career, tended to be brilliantly wrong. In politics, particularly in the life-and-death politics of revolution, you can’t afford to be brilliantly wrong. He had opposed Lenin on most issues during the years before 1917. His colleagues hadn’t forgotten that anti-Bolshevik past. Further, he was liable to sway himself with his own eloquence.... He was a brave and dashing extemporizer: but when it came to steady administrative policies, he could suddenly swing into a bureaucratic rigidity stiffer than any of the others....
         “No, I don’t believe he could ever have made it. If by a fluke he had done, he wouldn’t have lasted long.” —C. P. Snow, Variety of Men (1971), p. 255.

In the last couple decades, however, within the very weak American revolutionary movement there has been a small tendency toward starting to reject some of the excessive organizational sectarianism of the past. (Possibly in part because of less firm ideological education in all the various left trends. In other words, there may also be a negative aspect to this!) And this has meant, in part, a toning down of mutually perceived insults such as “Trotskyite” and “Stalinist”. On the one hand we often do need to work together with people we strongly disagree with on other issues; on the other hand, there is a strong tendency toward liberalism (in the Maoist sense) in the contemporary revolutionary movement, a reluctance to make criticisms where they are actually appropriate, and to view just criticisms and accurate characterizations as “insults”. Personally, my old habit was to use the term “Trotskyite” rather than “Trotskyist”, but to be more polite I am trying to switch over to the latter. Still, for me, the connotations are exactly the same, whichever term is used!

TROY OUNCE
A unit of weight measurement in the old imperial system, now mostly used to measure the weight of gold and other precious metals. The Troy ounce is roughly 10% heavier than an avoirdupois ounce (which is much more broadly used in the U.S.). There are 12 Troy ounces in a Troy pound (as opposed to 16 avoirdupois ounces in an avoirdupois pound). The Troy ounce is now precisely defined as equal to 31.1034768 grams in the metric system, and there are 32.1507466 Troy ounces in 1 kilogram.
        For more details see the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_ounce

TRUDOVIKI
A petty-bourgeois group formed in Russia in 1906, and consisting of a section of the peasant members of the First State Duma (parliament) headed by intellectuals belonging to the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.

“TRUE” SOCIALISM
A form of socialist theory circulating in Germany in the 1840s, and which was especially associated with the philosopher Moses Hess. This early socialist theory promoted an abstract form of justice and humanity (a la Kant), and rejected any proletarian class perspective. The adherents of this trend called themselves “true” socialists because they opposed even a temporary alliance with the bourgeoisie against feudalism, and regarded capitalism as the main enemy at all times and places. (This notion sounds very much like what came to be popular a century later among Trotskyists, with their rejection of any two-stage revolution in countries like China!)
        Marx and Engels strongly criticized this trend in their early writings (including the Communist Manifesto). They regarded it as in effect opposing the struggle against feudalism and for democracy, and felt that it actually promoted the thinking of the German petty-bourgeoisie, rather than the revolutionary proletariat.

“Truth is a process. From the subjective idea, man advances towards objective truth through ‘practice’ (and technique).” —Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book The Science of Logic” (1914), LCW 38:

TRUTH — Abstract

TULIPMANIA
A wild speculative asset bubble that developed in Holland from 1636-37 with regard to rare tulip bulbs. At the peak of the madness, one single rare “Viceroy” tulip bulb was sold for two very large measures of wheat and four of rye, eight pigs, a dozen sheep, two oxheads of wine, four tons of butter, a thousand pounds of cheese, a bed, some clothing, and a silver beaker! [Charles Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, 3rd ed. (1996), p. 101.]

TUPAC AMARU SHAKUR
See: SHAKUR, Tupac Amaru

TWENTIETH CENTURY
        See: “SHORT TWENTIETH CENTURY”

TYPES/TOKENS
A distinction helpful in clarifying the relationship between different kinds of abstractions. Consider, for example, the sentence: “The bourgeoisie is the enemy.” In one sense there are 5 words in this sentence, but in another sense there are only 4 different words, since the word ‘the’ appears twice. In type/token terminology, there are two tokens of the type ‘the’ in that sentence, and just one token each for the other word types. Thinking of things as types and tokens can sometimes clear up confusions that people have, and resolve “philosophical” questions. (See AESTHETIC OBJECT for one example.)

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