FABIAN SOCIETY
British reformist “socialist” (social democratic) organization founded in 1884. “It was named
after the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus who earned the nickname Cunctator (the
Delayer) for his dilatory tactics and avoidance of a decisive encounter with Hannibal. Its
members were chiefly bourgeois intellectuals, scientists, writers and politicians (the Webbs,
Ramsay MacDonald, George Bernard Shaw and others). The Fabians rejected the need for the
workers to wage the class struggle and rejected the socialist revolution, maintaining that
transition from capitalism to socialism could be effected by petty reforms and gradual social
evolution. Lenin called Fabianism ‘an extremely opportunist trend’ [LCW 13:358]. In 1900 the
Fabian Society formed a part of the Labour Party. ‘Fabian socialism’ is a source of the
Labour Party’s [original] ideology.” [Note 62 from LCW 28:502.]
FALLING RATE OF PROFIT THEORY (For Capitalist Economic Crises)
[To be added... ]
FAMILY
Family relationships have been modified down through the course of history by many factors,
and especially by whichever form of socioeconomic system is dominant at the time. [More to
be added... ]
“The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has thus reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” —Marx & Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Ch. I: MECW 6:487.
FASCISM
The form of capitalist society in which the bourgeoisie rules by open, terroristic
violence against the people, as opposed to bourgeois
democracy. As an extreme form of bourgeois nationalist rule, fascism usually includes
rabid forms of racism, often to the point of genocide.
FATALISM
The view that one cannot choose between alternative actions, or that one’s choice is
“predetermined” (and hence not really genuine). Often confused with
determinism.
FEBRUARY REVOLUTION
The bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia which overthrew the Tsar. This actually
occurred starting with a demonstration in honor of International Women’s Day on March
8, 1917, but Russia was still using the old church calendar which gave the month as
February. [More to be added... ]
FENG YU-LAN (Or: Feng Youlan, Fung Yu-lan, Fung Yu-lin) (1895-1990)
“[He] is well known in the West for his classic two-volume History of Chinese Philosophy. He is an international figure, graduated from Peking and Columbia universities, who has taught at the universities of Hawaii and Pennsylvania. After the establishment of the People’s Republic, Fung, a professor at Peking University, participated enthusiastically in Maoist efforts at political and ideological reform, engaging in self-criticism to root out his own bourgeois ideas and to set a good example to other Chinese intellectuals. Eventually he became an ardent supporter of Mao Tse-tung thought and China’s leading critic of Confucius during the anti-Confucian campaign during the early 1970s. At this time he was an intellectual consultant to Mao’s wife, Chiang Ch’ing, and her friends, the group that later came to be called the ‘gang of four.’ Shortly after Mao’s death in 1976, Chiang and her group fell from power and were publicly disgraced, a disgrace in which Fung shared, bringing to a humiliating close a brilliant philosophical career.” —John M. Koller, Oriental Philosophies, 2nd ed., (Scribner, 1985), p. 338.
FEUDALISM
[To be added...]
FINANCE CAPITALISM
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FINANCIAL CRISES
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FISCAL POLICY
[In bourgeois economics:] The use of government expenditures, and budget deficits or
surpluses, in an attempt to direct and control the economy. In practice this mostly
means deciding whether or not to increase government deficits, and by how much. Thus at
the present time (early 2009) the U.S. government is projecting a mostly purposeful and
extraordinarily massive federal budget deficit of nearly $2 trillion dollars (!)
for this fiscal year alone, in an attempt to resolve the current economic crisis.
(Worse yet, this huge deficit will have only a moderate and relatively short-term
mitigating effect on the current economic crisis.)
See also:
KEYNESIAN DEFICITS.
FISCAL STIMULUS
The same thing as Keynesian deficits.
See also:
FISCAL POLICY above.
FISCAL YEAR
The annual budget and accounting period for an enterprise or country which may differ
from the calendar year. Thus the fiscal year for the U.S. government begins on October
1st and ends on the following September 30th.
“FOUR ALLS”
This is the name given by the Chinese during the Mao era to the following four points
which concisely and powerfully sum up the essence and meaning of communist revolution:
1) The abolition of class distinctions
generally.
2) The abolition of all the relations of
production on which they rest.
3) The abolition of all the social
relations that correspond to these relations of production.
4) The revolutionizing of all the ideas
that result from these social relations.
These four points are taken verbatim from a passage in Marx’s pamphlet, “The Class
Struggles in France” (1850), MECW 10:127.
“FOUR CLEAN-UPS”
A mass campaign in China, circa early 1966, as part of the Socialist Education Movement,
to clean up (i.e. remove bourgeois influences in) politics, ideology, organization and
the economy.
“FOUR FIRSTS”
Shorthand for a list of four priorities that members of the Communist Party of China
and the People’s Liberation Army were expected to keep in mind during the Mao era.
First place must be given:
1) To man (humans) in handling
the relationship between man and weapons;
2) To political work in handling
the relationship between political and other work;
3) To ideological work in
relation to other aspects of political work; and
4) In ideological work, to the ideas
currently in a person’s mind as distinguished from ideas in books.
“FOUR OLDS”
Shorthand for a set of ideological targets of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
in China: old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits.
FOURIER, François Marie Charles (1772-1837)
Important French utopian socialist.
FRANKFURT SCHOOL
[To be added... ]
“FREE MARKET”
The aspect of a capitalist economy wherein commodities are exchanged between buyers and
sellers, and the prices for these commodities are determined firstly, by the
value in them (the amount of socially necessary labor time
incorporated into their production), and secondly, by additional influences and
fluctuations around that value center of gravity based on such things as the varying
supply and demand.
The capitalists like the name “free
market”, rather than alternatives such as the “capitalist market”, or the “commodities
market”, since it suggests freedom, which is something that people view positively.
(In other words the term includes some bourgeois ideological indoctrination.) But behind
the “freedom” of this so-called “free market” is the system of production which involves
the enormous exploitation of human labor in order to produce the commodities which are
then freely sold by their expropriators (capitalist thieves) on this “free market”.
FREE RIDER PROBLEM
The strong tendency in bourgeois society for individuals to not in any way voluntarily
pay for goods and services which are available to them for free. Thus if the government
builds a road which any person can drive on for free, the only way the government can
pay for such a road is through taxes which the “public” (meaning, mostly the working
class) is forced to pay. Bourgeois ideologists use this argument to supposedly
“prove” that communism cannot work, since all the necessary
consumer goods will be available for free in communist society and money will not even
exist.
However, we Marxists know that both
society and individual people can be gradually changed, and people can eventually be
brought up in such a way that they willingly and enthusiastically donate their collective
labor to produce all the goods and services that society needs. This will become ever
more feasible as the further development of machinery and automation make the amount of
labor necessary from each person smaller and smaller, and the nature of that labor less
and less onerous—and even something which most often (instead of only rarely in this
society) leads to human enjoyment, satisfaction and fulfillment. In the meanwhile, after
the proletarian seizure of power, we will have to settle for an ever-improving (gradually
more communistic) socialist economy.
FREE WILL
The ability to act according to one’s inclinations or desires. This is opposed to
fatalism, but it is often erroneously imagined to also be
opposed to determinism.
See also:
Philosophical
doggerel about free will.
“FROM THE MASSES, TO THE MASSES”
The slogan, originated by Mao Zedong, summarizing the central concept of the
MASS LINE method of revolutionary
leadership.
FUNCTIONALISM
The theory of mind which says that mental processes are functions, actions,
aspects or characteristics of the brain (or an equivalent entity). There are both
materialist and idealist versions of functionalism. I believe that the dialectical
materialist theory of mind should be considered a form of materialist functionalism.
See also:
Philosophical
doggerel about functionalism.
FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION OF CAPITALISM
[To be added... ]
FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTIONS IN THE WORLD
See: WORLD CONTRADICTIONS
(Fundamental).
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF ETHICS (In Classless Society)
[To be added...]
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF ETHICS (In Class Society)
[To be added...]
FUNG YU-LAN
See: FENG YU-LAN.
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