Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

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“‘Without investigation, there is no right to speak.’ This was said to dogmatists. I still think this sentence is correct. Don’t be biased in your understanding of this sentence. Objective things are constantly developing and changing, and people’s understanding can never keep up with this change. Understanding always lags behind reality. If you require that everything be investigated before speaking or doing things, then you will never be able to speak or do anything. Once you understand the main situation and the essential situation, you can make a judgment and make up your mind.”   —Mao, “Conversation After the Restoration of the United Nations Seat”, section 2, November 8, 1971. This high quality machine translation was made by Nick G. of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), and the whole volume is available at: https://bannedthought.net/China/Individuals/MaoZedong/Books/1971-Writings-Mao-Eng.pdf

“Freedom of science is taken to mean that people write on every subject which they have not studied, and put this forward as the only strictly scientific method.” —Engels, criticizing Eugen Dühring and those like him, Anti-Dühring, Preface, 1878, MECW 25:6.

“In October 2016, the Sveriges Riksbank (Swedish Central Bank) Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel—commonly but incorrectly called the Nobel Prize in Economics—was awarded to two European-born, U.S.-based economists, Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström, for their work on contracts related to executive pay. Hart and Holmstroöm were lauded for having theorized what was thought to be the optimal mix of risk and incentives in pay packages for corporate executives, thereby determining the appropriate combination of basic salary, bonuses, and share options. In other words, they received the Riksbank Nobel Memorial Prize for their efforts to rationalize the exorbitant paychecks of CEOs and other corporate leaders—a direct service to big business. In most cases, however, the prize has not been given for such practical services to business, but has been granted rather to those extending neoclassical economic ideology.
         “In 1901, Alfred Nobel established five prizes: in physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. It was not until sixty years later, in 1969, that the Swedish Central Bank separately sponsored the economics prize, with the reluctant acquiescence of the Nobel family, which nevertheless insisted it be given a different name, to emphasize both the different source of funding and the fact that it was a memorial award ostensibly in Nobel’s honor (though in reality simply grabbing onto the prestige associated with the Nobel prizes), and not one of the original prizes.
         “The reasons for the funding of the economic prize were purely political. In 1968, neoclassical or ‘marginalist’ economics was threatened as never before. The Swedish Social Democratic Party was at its height. Meanwhile, rebellions were breaking out everywhere against orthodox economics. The Union of Radical Political Economics (URPE) was formed in the United States that year. The Riksbank, advised by a young Swedish Social Democrat turned conservative economist, Assar Lindbeck, opted to establish the prize as a device to enhance the prestige of neoclassical economics—giving it a monopoly over ‘economic science’—in its war against Swedish Social Democrats and radical economists. The original selection committee for the Riksbank Prize included two leading members of the Mont Pelerin Society (associated with arch-conservative economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman), but its driving force then and for the next quarter century was Lindbeck. In 1971, he published his most popular book, The Political Economy of the New Left (with a foreword by Paul Samuelson, who had received the prize the year before). Lindbeck’s book was directed against URPE, and focused its attacks on Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital and the radical economics of Monthly Review.
         [The editorial then goes on to document and complain about the fact that this so-called “Nobel Prize” in economics has been given almost exclusively to “right-wing, ‘free market’ Chicago School” economists, and that for the last 40 years, at least, not even social democrats or even genuine Keynesian economists have won the prize—let alone any supposedly real “leftists” like Joan Robinson or Paul Sweezy. —Ed.]
         “Economic historians Avner Offer and Gabriel Söderberg, in their valuable new book The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn (Princeton University Press, 2016), from which much of the above analysis is taken (see also Yasha Levine, ‘There is no Nobel Prize in Economics,’ Alternet, October 12, 2012), argue that the Riksbank Prize was embraced by the mainstream media and academia as a genuine Nobel Prize, carrying the same prestige as all the others. It paid off: the Riksbank and the conservative economists associated with it achieved their objectives to an extent that must have exceeded their wildest dreams. The prize has been enormously successful in narrowing the conception of what constitutes economics—a field that was previously much wider. The ideology of an economics serving the 1 percent has become entrenched in academic, policy, and media discourse, with all other approaches downgraded as eccentric and ‘non-scientific.’ Winners of the Riksbank Prize form a kind of ‘Nobelity’ in economics that has elevated some approaches while practically extinguishing others. Economics in its hegemonic version has turned quite blatantly and unashamedly into the ‘bad conscience and evil intent of apologetic,’ as Marx wrote of marginalist or ‘vulgar economics.’ An ideological coup indeed!”
         —“Notes from the Editors” [John Bellamy Foster], Monthly Review, December 2016. [It should be added that it has always gone without saying that no true Marxist economist could ever be considered for a moment as someone appropriate to award this “Nobel prize in economics” to. And perhaps it would only have served to further legitimize this totally pro-capitalist Riksbank prize if it had actually been awarded to a wider range of bourgeois economists, such as social democrats (in addition to the lone example of Gunnar Myrdal) or to genuine Keynesians like Joan Robinson. —Ed.]

A partial response to this could perhaps be sort of along these lines:
        It is true that if people, young or old, really do not care about some social problem or existing outrage, they will not want to discuss it, let alone participate in any activity or struggle against that particular injustice. This is why our approach to the masses is to first try to determine what issues particular people or groups of people do already care about, and try to draw them into struggle around those issues. As they then participate in that one or a few areas of struggle we try to get them to understand that it is the capitalist system which is responsible for not only the one or a few issues which do concern them, but for most of the other major problems in contemporary society as well. That is, we try to broaden and deepen their understanding, and develop them into people strongly opposed to the whole capitalist-imperialist system.
        However, we also understand that there are many people today who are not sufficiently concerned with any of the very serious problems and outrages in contemporary society to the point where they are even willing to investigate the causes of those problems let alone actively join the struggle against them. In a few cases these will be people who actually benefit from these injustices and will probably never come to be personally victimized by them nor come to oppose them. This includes members of the enemy bourgeoisie and those directly working for them (such as the police and most politicians), for example, but also some members of other classes, such as the petty bourgeoisie and even some of the better off working-class sections of the so-called “middle class”.
        But the largest part of those who today are apathetic toward injustice and other social problems will likely be forced by the evil workings of the capitalist system to eventually become very concerned indeed. If the capitalist system were really capable of satisfying the needs and interests of the great majority over the long run, then very few individuals would ever consider rising up against it. But the actual fact is that the ruling capitalist class, and their system, is in growing economic and political crisis and is driving more and more millions of people down in this country and around the world. (See for example the entry on BILLIONAIRES for one set of statistics about this.)
        For those who are not at present consciously victimized by the capitalist system, we will do what we can to raise their consciousness, but mostly we will just have to wait for the system which they do not yet recognize as their enemy to turn against them personally in a much more vicious way. And that day is rather quickly approaching. In the meanwhile we have to focus our attention on organizing and further politically educating the sections of the population who are already under attack economically, or because of national, racial, sexual or gender discrimination, or in the many other possible ways.
        It is true that bourgeois society does try, with considerable success, to get people to focus only on their own individual interests and to be concerned only with their own private lives. It tries to get them to push out of their minds the misery of other people in this country and around the world, to forget about U.S. imperialist wars, global warming and the growing environmental problems, the fact that the working class is being driven down with declining real wages and benefits and disappearing jobs. But people can no longer push these things out of their minds when it hits home to them personally, their family or their friends. And that is what is beginning to happen more and more at the present time.
        With regard to the youth specifically, there are already many youth who are starting to become politically concerned and active. Black and other minority youth cannot avoid racial discrimination or stop thinking about it even if they would like to. Still, it is true that many youth in this society at present—including quite a few who are out of school—are in a situation where they do not yet have to be concerned about finding a good job and supporting themselves, and who at present have little personal reason to be concerned about U.S. imperialist wars, environmental destruction, and other major problems of capitalist society. But most of them will soon be on their own and wondering what hit them as the current crises of the system intensify. At that point they will no longer be saying “nobody cares” about those problems, but rather “what in the hell can we do about all of these problems and disasters?” —S.H.

“When Guatemalan guerrillas enter a village, they don’t hand out tracts by Marx or Mao; instead they talk to the villagers about their own lives: about how they see themselves and how they came to be who they are, about their deepest longings and the things they’ve striven for and hope for, about the way in which their deepest longings were frustrated by the society in which they lived. Then the guerrillas encourage the villagers to talk about their lives. And then a marvelous thing begins to happen. People who thought that their deepest problems and frustrations were their individual problems discover that their problems and longings are all the same.... and, finally, that out of the discovery of their common humanity comes the decision that men must unite together in the struggle to destroy the conditions of their common oppression. That, it seems to me, is what we are about.” —Greg Calvert, National Secretary of SDS, in a 1967 speech, quoted in Steward Burns, Social Movements of the 1960s: Searching for Democracy (1990), p. 77.

NOM DE GUERRE
“War name”, or pseudonym used by a person during revolutionary work.
        See also: PARTY NAME

NOMENKLATURA   [In the U.S.S.R.]
        1.   [Originally:] A list of important government and industry positions requiring appointments by one or another committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
        2.   [Derived from the above, and more commonly:] The group of people holding one of these appointments, or in line to hold such an appointment, who thus held important positions in the Soviet government and/or the CPSU, and in the control and direction of economic production, and who therefore collectively constituted a powerful and privileged social stratum. While Stalin was alive, this stratum was kept under his control, working mostly for the benefit of the proletariat. But after Stalin’s death in 1953 the nomenklatura quickly reconstituted itself as the core of a new bourgeoisie, a class which then ruled the new state-capitalist Soviet Union completely for its own collective benefit and not for the central benefit of the working class. The takeover of the Soviet Union by this newly arisen bourgeoisie in the still nominally proletarian revolutionary party was, of course, a truly terrible historical disaster for the people of the Soviet Union and for the entire world.
        See also the entry below on the very serious matter of just how the nomenklatura was turned into a new bourgeois ruling class.

A vital, pervasive, and complex part of the Soviet system, nomenklatura was often spoken of as the list of positions under the control of the Communist Party but is more fully defined as the apparatus by which the party assigned jobs and distributed privileges (cars, apartments, travel, access to elite stores). Nomenklatura lists existed on the local as well as the republic and national levels and within individual organizations, such as the KGB and the Academy of Sciences, but the most significant list was that of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Actually, three lists were involved, all of them secret: one of jobs, one of candidates for jobs, and one of “reserve” candidates—those who, if lucky, would in due course be moved up to the candidate list.
        Every sort of position, from ambassador to Great Britain to metropolitan [a top leader] of the Orthodox Church to coach of a soccer team appeared on some nomenklatura listing. Essentially, the system was designed to enable the Communist Party to keep tight control over Soviet society by centering the dispensing of positions and privilege in party headquarters in Moscow. Inevitably, such a system encouraged bureaucratic conservatism and gave rewards to mediocrity.
        —Thomas Parrish, The Cold War Encyclopedia (NY: Henry Holt, 1996), pp. 238-9.

A striking Russian precedent for the nomenklatura system existed in the table of ranks established by Peter the Great in 1722; this listing set up 14 levels for military officers and civil servants, all of them under central control—in this case, the will of the czar. As the historian B. H. Sumner commented, the table of ranks “set the stamp on the hierarchical, bureaucratic ordering of the upper class in military and state service, which during the next two centuries became so prominent a feature of the social structure of Russia.”
        —Thomas Parrish, ibid., p. 239.
        [How very appropriate, indeed, that the organizational structure of the “new tsars” (as we term the Soviet revisionist rulers) followed the organizational example of the old tsars! However, the parallels here included not just appointment lists and people appointed from the top, but far more importantly the fact that those appointed were themselves either already, or soon became, part of a very privileged section of the upper crust of society! —Ed.]

NOMENKLATURA — Transformation Into a New Bourgeoisie
As the second quotation above from Thomas Parrish mentions, a precedent (of sorts) for the nomenklatura system and stratum of society in the revisionist Soviet Union can be traced as far back as Peter the Great in 1722. However, what is actually more important for anti-capitalist revolutionaries to come to specifically understand is just how such a stratum of people came to exist in the early revolutionary Soviet Union, and especially how that new governing stratum then got gradually transformed into the core of a new state-capitalist ruling class!
        Bourgeois commentators on the nomenklatura focus mostly on the fact that it was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) which set up the list of the most important government and industry positions and then which itself appointed the people to hold those positions. What these bourgeois commentators think was most centrally wrong with the nomenklatura system was the control of it by the CPSU. However Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, who champion the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat understand very well that the proletarian revolutionary party must in fact be the primary tool of the masses in creating and maintaining the dictatorship of the proletariat. (See: Dictatorship of the Proletariat—As the Dictatorship of the Communist Party) It is true that as socialist society advances, more and more direct roles and even some considerable spontaneous participation by the broader proletariat must come to directly run society. And it is quite reasonable and highly desirable that genuinely fair mass elections from among exclusively pro-socialist (and therefore pro-communist!) candidates will then also take place to fill more and more positions in government, the management of economic production, and within public organizations of all kinds. But this will not usually be fully possible in the very beginning of socialist society and in its earliest period. And, in any case, the overall guiding role of a (genuine!) Communist Party must continue throughout the entire socialist era.
        From the earliest days of their rule after the success of the October Revolution (though they were still in the desperate period of civil war), Lenin and the Bolsheviks employed the practice of appointing loyal and reliable Party members to key posts in the new revolutionary government and the management of the economy, and continued this policy from that point on. Lenin wrote that appointments were to take the following criteria into account: reliability, political attitude, qualifications, and administrative ability. In 1919-1922, as General Secretary of the CPSU, Stalin oversaw the creation of the Uchraspred, or Registration and Distribution Department within the CPSU’s Central Committee, along with similar agencies at lower levels, to manage the registration and appointment of officials. However, at this point being an official in the Party, government, or industry, in the midst of the chaos of revolution, the destruction caused by World War I, the Civil War, the terrible famine, and the foreign invasion by multiple imperialist countries, was by no means a cushy job. Quite the opposite! The tasks and the conditions were excruciatingly difficult.
        Contrary to what some people might suppose, Lenin’s original focus on staffing key positions with loyal Party members was not at all incorrect, nor was it in itself the source of the ultimate problem (i.e., of the eventual rise of the new bourgeoisie within the Party). Nor were Stalin’s efforts to continue Lenin’s appointment policies the problem. But as the early desperate conditions the Bolsheviks faced finally began to qualitatively ease, and things began to settle down, the overall situation began to gradually change.
        The real central problem—the desperately serious problem, as it turned out, with the nomenklatura system in the Soviet Union—was due to the ever-increasing wages and privileges which people in that strata were increasingly given over the years, especially from the mid-1930s on. Thus the problem was really that the people being put into positions of authority (in the Party, the government, economic production and elsewhere in society) were from that point on gradually being turned into a new privileged class because they were being given qualitatively higher incomes and all sorts of other privileges and advantages and special treatment for themselves and their families.
        This all started out as a temporary and partial expedient. Finding sufficient numbers of people who were both qualified administers or technicians and also working class and/or Marxist revolutionaries was in the early days often impossible. So, in effect, the new revolutionary Soviet government had to for a time “hire” a great many bourgeois administrators and specialists from the old regime, and that required hiring them at the going rate for salaries for those sorts of jobs. That is to say, at salaries far above those of ordinary workers. This of course went jarringly against the system promoted and established in the Paris Commune, where all officials of the government were to receive wages or salaries no greater than that of the average worker! So these high wages (and often accompanying privileges which the “hired” bourgeois administrators and technicians were to receive) was properly viewed as a mere short-term concession forced on the revolutionary regime by the backwardness of Russian and Soviet society.
        The compromise that was actually soon settled on was to set up a two-tiered wage system for government and industry employees. Bourgeoise experts, for the expected few years that they would still be needed, would indeed have to be paid wages greatly exceeding the wages of ordinary workers. But Party members holding jobs as officials would either be directly paid wages no greater than those of a skilled worker, or else (if their nominal wage along with other income, such as from paid writings for example) was greater, they would be expected and required to turn over to the Party most or all of their income greater than that of a skilled worker. This was called the “Party Maximum” policy. (See that entry for a lot more information.)
        However, no doubt many Party members really hated the fact that many members of the “overthrown” bourgeois class were now being paid a lot more than they were for doing essentially the same sort of work! Certainly, not all Party members could really be expected to fully understand, and completely support, the necessity for doing this, even for just a limited period.
        The plan was for the bourgeois experts to be gradually replaced by revolutionary proletarians (Party members or otherwise). But what actually happened was that, especially from the mid-1930s on, the Party members in official positions were economically raised up to be well-paid, privileged, and in effect often more and more bourgeois themselves in their objective position and in their thinking! Stalin definitely deserves the greatest blame for this, since he was in charge at the time. But even so, Stalin’s supervision and orders kept this growing new well-paid and ever more privileged nomenklatura strata from fully reconstituting itself as an actual openly functioning new bourgeoisie—as long as Stalin was alive and keeping an eye on them. But once Stalin died (in 1953) there was no stopping the political rise of the new state-capitalist bourgeois class headed by class traitors to the proletariat such as Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
        It is difficult to find reliable information about how effective this Party Maximum wage rate for government salaries was at different times even in the early years, or about how those salary rates actually compared with the wages of ordinary workers in different times. There is some evidence that this Party Maximum system was not as good of a restraint on bourgeois impulses as it initially sounds, even in the early days! Nevertheless, it does seem that this policy did at least for a decade or more serve to help prevent the development of a new relatively wealthy stratum within the Party, the government, and other social institutions in the new revolutionary society. However, the Party Maximum rule was formally abolished by the Politburo (in February 1932 we think), and was then further ignored and dismantled in actual practice over the next couple decades, for one section of the party elite after another.
        In addition to this basic problem of increasing wages or salaries for officials ever farther beyond those of ordinary workers, there was the accompanying factor of more and more special social privileges which this nomenklatura proto-class began to receive, and which became ever greater over the decades. Some of the more important of these privileges are further discussed below.
        Automobiles: In the Soviet Union during the revisionist or state-capitalist era from the late 1950s on, the new privileged class in society known as the nomenklatura had access to both chauffeur-driven government limousines and could also obtain private cars, bypassing the notoriously long waiting lists which ordinary people faced, even most of those relatively few with sufficient money. The type of vehicle depended on the individual’s rank and status within the new bourgeoisie.
        The top bureaucrats and Party leaders of course had almost immediate access to the fanciest chauffeur-driven limousines. The most high ranking officials were transported in luxurious ZIL and Chaika limousines, which were completely unavailable to the general public. Boris Yeltsin, for example, was driven around in a Chaika during his time as First Secretary of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Mid-level party and government officials typically had access to a chauffeured Volga, a still quite prestigious Soviet car. This limousine service was supposed to be for official use only, but in practice it was often for personal activities as well, and publicly demonstrated the power and status of their position.
        Private automobiles were difficult to obtain in the USSR, even well into the state-capitalist era (long after Stalin’s death). During the 1960s-1970s there was a many year waiting period in order to purchase a private car. However, those in the nomenklatura could skip the queue and obtain a private car through special, non-public channels. Even so, the ordinary Soviet citizen could not purchase a high-end Volga even if they did have the money. Someone who had connections in the nomenklatura also had a better chance to buy a used car. Even just having a used car was something of a luxury in the Soviet Union.
        Apartments and furnishings: In all class societies having either a large and expensive private home or a lavish and ritzy apartment tends to be something reserved for the very most upper crust of society. And this was certainly the case in the state-capitalist Soviet Union. By the time of Gorbachev, the nomenklatura lived in exclusive, very fancy housing that was far superior to anything the working class had available to it. This included luxury apartments in Moscow and private country estates called dachas in restricted areas such as Rublyovka (a scenic forested area west of Moscow) and the Crimean coast. The House on the Embankment, in downtown Moscow, was reserved for the housing of many of the top-ranking government and military officials. Other luxurious apartments in Moscow were in exclusive apartment complexes, such as along Kutuzovsky Avenue, a very prestigious road, where many of those of high status lived. All of this luxurious living contrasted sharply with the crowded communal apartments and mass-produced housing blocks occupied by ordinary citizens.
        Early in the state-capitalist era (after Stalin’s death) the ownership of a dacha (vacation home) in the countryside was one of the most exclusive perks for the nomenklatura elite, and something that dated back to the tsarist officials. But by the final Gorbachev era of the USSR the possession of dachas had become almost a “necessity” for the new ruling class to prove their “arrival”. Still, Gorbachev and the top figures in the nomenklatura had especially lavish dachas. His own dacha in Foros, on the Crimean coast, was built in 1988 and is said to have cost $20 million (which might be the equivalent of $50 million in today’s money). “This lavish residence, where he was held under house arrest during the 1991 coup attempt, featured marble floors, a billiard room, a movie theater, and a secluded grotto.” Not a bad place to spend a little home-jail time!
        All Soviet cities had quite high security and plentiful police forces to guard the new ruling class, especially in the exclusive (nomenklatura) neighborhoods. But there were also a number of “closed cities”, for those who were involved in sensitive work, such as the top scientists, military personnel, and those working on secret programs. Though their lives were quite restricted, the residents of these closed cities (such as Arzamas-16, now called Sarov), enjoyed a much better quality of life than most Soviet citizens, with a greatly superior access to housing, food and other goods.
        Special Stores for the Nomenklatura Only: In the U.S. and most capitalist countries, stores and shops are usually open to anyone with the money to buy the products there (even though vast numbers of people don’t have the necessary money!). However, because of the long-term economic difficulties (perpetual semi-stagnation of the state-capitalist economy) in the Soviet Union, a system of private stores (or special shops known as spetsraspredeliteli) was established to exclusively provide the nomenklatura with access to goods which were in short supply or off-limits to ordinary people. These shops sold a wide assortment of high-quality commodities, including imported goods and other scarce products. Moreover, these stores for the new ruling class were pleasant to visit and did not have the notorious long lines, frequent shortages of goods, and other inconveniences which ordinary people had to suffer in the stores for the masses.
        Why did the USSR have this system of special stores in the first place? Every ruling class needs to reinforce ruling class privilege; and these stores were one of many ways in which the rulers expressed their class solidarity against the working class, and proved to the nomenklatura that the Soviet system was in their own interests to support and continue. I.e., it was yet another method of expressing and rewarding nomenklatura class loyalty. While government propaganda directed at the masses constantly extolled “equality”, the existence of these much better stores exclusively for the new ruling class proved to them the real sort of privileged existence that they were given, and continually demonstrated to them their special status.
        Travel: The new ruling class in the nomenklatura had significantly more travel privileges than ordinary Soviet citizens. While travel for the general population was severely restricted, the elite enjoyed special access to foreign travel and high-quality vacation facilities within the USSR. (See also the reference to dachas above.) “Travel to Western countries was extremely rare and reserved for a very select group, often for work purposes and after heavy scrutiny by the KGB.” Pro-Soviet political reliability was very widely monitored in the USSR during the Cold War era. “For ordinary Soviet citizens, obtaining permission to travel outside the country, especially to the West, was an arduous and often impossible task. For the nomenklatura, however, travel was a major perk of their status.” (From a ChatGPT summary.) The members of the nomenklatura were almost automatically considered to be patriotic and “ideologically trustworthy”. This greatly smoothed their approval for foreign travel.
        Education and Rapid Advancement for Their Children: Although the general educational system in the USSR during the state-capitalist era was generally better than the poor average level in the U.S., there were still considerable difficulties for the children of workers to get into college, and to obtain good jobs. The children of the nomenklatura, on the other hand, had huge advantages in both respects, including even private schools for their children.
        Other Privileges, and Summary: Of course there were numerous other privileges which those who were part of the nomenklatura benefited from. For example, there was vastly superior medical care available for the elite, at special clinics and hospitals, just as there is for the ruling class in the United States. And an endless number of smaller things too, such as the kremlyovkas, or special food parcels frequently given to high party and government officials, usually at a symbolic price. Just being part of the trusted ruling strata of society had constant advantages in itself, especially for those looking for favors or special treatment. The great contrast between the living standards of the nomenklatura and the rest of society was clear enough to everyone, even during the supposed “glasnost” (openness) era under Gorbachev. The top rulers did, however, discourage the elite from openly flaunting their luxurious lifestyle to too great a degree! After all, you wouldn’t want to give the masses the idea that they needed another social revolution! But as things developed, the Soviet state-capitalist economic system failed first, even beating American style monopoly capitalism into the trash heap.
        [Note: ChatGPT was used to help research some of the specifics about nomenklatura privileges. —S.H. (Nov. 22, 2025)]

NOMINALISM
Originally a trend in medieval philosophy which asserted that (contrary to idealists like Plato) only individual things really exist. Plato held that in addition to individual chairs there also existed the idea or “form” of “chairness” which was the deeper and truer reality. As Marx noted (in The Holy Family), in rejecting such nonsense nominalism was the first expression of materialism during the Middle Ages.
        However the nominalists did not seem to understand that general concepts (abstractions) actually do reflect the real qualities of objectively existing individual things. The medieval nominalists, and their modern followers (especially bourgeois writers in the field of semantics), have often seemed unable to appreciate the power and importance of generalization and abstraction. Thus comments about chairs in general can actually be just as true statements about the world as are comments about individual chairs. “Chairs are for sitting on” is just as true and valid as “This chair is for sitting on”.

“NON-ALIGNED” MOVEMENT
[To be added... ]
        See also: BANDUNG CONFERENCE

NON-COGNITIVISM
A type of bourgeois ethical theory which—amazingly!—denies that moral judgments are meaningful and either true or false. Non-cognitivist ethical theories deny, for example, that saying “Genocide is wrong” is a meaningful statement, and also deny that the statement is true or false! The logical positivists, in particular, claimed this about moral judgments. Some people in this general positivist tradition, including Charles Stevenson, went on to claim that moral judgments are merely expressions of emotion and “commands” that others have the same emotional reaction to something as the speaker does. (Thus for them “murder is wrong” is roughly equivalent to “murder—UGH!—and that’s the way you should feel too!”) Another, much more widespread, variation of non-cognitivism is the notion that moral judgments merely express approval or disapproval, but are neither true nor false. This is the view of several influential British philosophers including John Austin and R. M. Hare, and—indoctrinated by them—the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary. Of course, according to our MLM ethical theory, moral statements are definitely meaningful, and are true or false. Thus we say that the statement “It will be a very good and important thing to overthrow imperialism and put an end to imperialist wars!” is both fully meaningful, and definitely true.

“NONFUNGIBLE TOKEN” (NFT)
An absurd ultra-bourgeois project to make digital versions of works of art, or anything else which is in digital form, into a guaranteed single individual copy, which can then be bought and sold for profit.
        Digital files, whether they represent images, music, documents, or anything else, can easily be reproduced at essentially no cost. If you have a digital file of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, for example, it can easily and cheaply be made available to everyone who wants a copy on their computer or other device. But in capitalist society the owners of expensive paintings, or music rights, etc., do not like this, nor do many of those who create new works of art or music in present-day capitalist society. The capitalist ideal for art, music, and anything else that can be put in digital form, is to find ways to profitably sell the digital copies (even if it costs virtually nothing to create those copies). Thus in capitalist society it is deemed a serious crime to make a digital copy of a book, photograph or piece of music without paying the copyright owners whatever they demand.
        But in the case of NFTs things go even beyond this. The idea here is to create one single digital file (such as one containing a new work of art, photograph, piece of music, etc.) which alone “is” the work of art, and to only allow another person to possess or even see that work (except perhaps for a crude rough image of it) if they buy it from the current owner! So nonfungible tokens are in fact bourgeois intellectual property gone absolutely mad! Only in bourgeois society would someone even think about doing something as wildly selfish as this.
        The method used to register the ownership of a particular NFT is though the distributed blockchain accounting scheme so beloved by cryptocurrency fans. In the same way that the ownership of Bitcoins can be tracked and proven through blockchains, so can the ownership and transfer of NFTs. And, presumably, only the owner will have the security code allowing them to view the work of art, listen to the music, etc.
        In early 2021, around when NFTs were first developed, there was an initial fad that arose. However, since then much of the buzz has disappeared, and they may now have diminished into a tiny corner of bourgeois snobbishness.

“Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, [are] the newest frontier in the cryptocurrency gold rush....
         “An NFT, in layman’s terms, is a new kind of digital collectible item that is stamped with a unique bit of code that serves as a permanent record of its authenticity and is stored on a blockchain, the distributed ledger system that underlies Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. These collectibles can be bought and sold like trading cards, and the nature of blockchain technology means that once a token is created, it can’t be deleted or counterfeited. That makes it useful for artists, musicians and others who want to create limited edition digital goods.
         “The NFT market is exploding right now, as early adopters and cryptocurrency enthusiasts try to cash in on the trend.”
         —Kevin Roose, “The Shift”, New York Times, March 25, 2021.
         [The printed copy of Mr. Roose’s full column that day was available to anyone with access to that issue of the New York Times. But, as an experiment, he prepared a digital version of the column as an NFT, and presumably “sold” that one-and-only digital NFT to some “collector” (with the funds going to charity). We haven’t heard of anyone else doing this, or caring whether or not they do so! —Ed.]

NON-OVERLAPPING MAGISTERIA
See: GOULD, Stephen Jay

“NON-PHYSICAL OBJECT”
See: “IMMATERIAL OBJECT”

NONPROFIT SECTOR (Of the U.S. Economy)
The nonprofit sector of the economy includes all sorts of organizations and bodies of many different types, including religious organizations, charitable groups, professional associations, business associations, lobbying associations, political pressure groups, political parties, organizations concerned with certain health issues, environmental (and anti-environmental!) groups, reactionary indoctrination groups, educational and scientific associations and many educational institutions themselves, think tanks, and on and on. And some nominally non-government organizations (NGOs) are actually de facto agencies of the U.S. government (and are largely funded by the government); some officially “nonprofit” health, insurance or other organizations are actually for-profit business organizations. (Their profits are distributed in the form of high salaries and perks for their top management, for example.)
        In an advanced capitalist-imperialist country such as the United States, the nonprofit sector is actually quite large. Many former governmental services are now left to be handled (often very inadequately) by nonprofits, for example. In 2009 the greatest portion of nonprofit expenditures (which are improperly included in the GDP statistical sub-category known as “Personal Consumption Expenditures”) came to about 2% of total GDP. However, a much larger section of the workforce is employed in the non-profit sector, around 10%. (See the quotation below.) This large nonprofit workforce is necessary to both further indoctrinate the population in views acceptable to the ruling bourgeoisie, and also to co-opt and buy-off a large number of those who would otherwise be dissidents and “trouble makers” agitating against the bourgeoisie. And this great expenditure on nonprofits is possible because of all the wealth being ripped off from both exploited American and foreign workers.

“According to a 2012 report by the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University, nonprofit employment represents 10.1 percent of total employment in the United States in 2010, with total employees numbering 10.7 million. The nonprofit workforce is the third largest of all U.S. industries behind retail trade and manufacturing.
         “During the Great Recession (2007 to 2009), the nonprofit sector gained jobs at an average rate of 1.9 percent per year, while the private sector lost jobs at a rate of 3.7 percent per year.
         “The average annual growth rate for employment has been higher for nonprofits during the 2000-2010 period at 2.1% whereas the for-profit sector shrank by -0.6%.
         “Nonprofit employment by sector is approximately 57% for health services, 15% for education, 13% for social assistance, 7% for civic associations, 4% for other, 3% for arts and culture, and 2% for professional services.” —From a posting on Grant Space/The Foundation Center, at http://www.grantspace.org (accessed April 23, 2013).

NONVIOLENCE
See also: SATYAGRAHA

“I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I’d say, okay, let’s get with it, we’ll all be nonviolent. But I don’t go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody’s going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I’ll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I’ll be nonviolent. But as long as you’ve got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don’t want anybody coming to me talking any nonviolent talk. I don’t think it is fair to tell our people to be nonviolent unless someone is out there making the Klan and the Citizens Council and these other groups also be nonviolent.” —Malcolm X, speech in New York City, Dec. 31, 1964; included in Malcolm X Talks to Young People (1969), p. 5.
         [Malcolm X was talking about the refusal of racist white America to be consistently nonviolent toward African-Americans and therefore the absurdity of African-Americans deciding to totally renounce violence in their own defense. In exactly the same way the working class as a whole—Black and white and all other components—cannot rationally embrace nonviolence in its class struggle with a vicious ruling class which absolutely refuses to renounce violence against us. —Ed.]

“NORMAL”
See: RETURN TO NORMAL

NORMATIVE ETHICS
The part of ethics (in the broad sense) which concerns what is actually right and wrong. In other words, what we more usually just call morality.

NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
See: NAFTA

NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION   (NATO)
An imperialist military alliance created and dominated by the United States, originally for the primary purpose of opposing and threatening the Soviet Union, and since the fall of the U.S.S.R. for more general imperialist hegemonic purposes. In the map at the right we see how this U.S.-dominated imperialist bloc has continued to expand to the east since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as part of its continued inter-imperialist contention with Russia. Two member countries not shown on the map are the U.S. and Canada. And since this map was drawn two more countries were brought into NATO in 2009: Croatia and Albania. As of early 2017, the comprador rulers of the small country of Montenegro are also seeking to join NATO.
        See also: CHINESE EMBASSY BOMBING BY U.S./NATO (1999)

“When NATO was founded, Lord Ismay, the distinguished British General who served as NATO’s first secretary general, said its purpose was ‘to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.’” —Scott Ritter, The Washington Spectator, Aug. 1, 2016, p. 1.

“It was always recognized [by the U.S. rulers] that Europe might choose to follow an independent course; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was partially intended to counter this threat. As soon as the official pretext for NATO dissolved in 1989 [with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its sphere of control], it was expanded to the east, in violation of verbal pledges to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It has since become a U.S.-run intervention force with far-ranging scope, as spelled out by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who informed a NATO conference that ‘NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West,’ and more generally protect sea routes used by tankers and other ‘crucial infrastructure’ of the energy system.” —Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World? (2016), p. 45.

NORTH KOREA
See: DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA,   KOREA—North vs. South,   KOREAN WAR

“NORTH” VERSUS “SOUTH” THEORY
A theory of the social world today which focuses on the exploitation and/or oppression of the “Southern” countries of the world by the “Northern” dominant countries. As with the alternative name, “Center” vs. “Periphery” Theory, it seems the terminology has been chosen in order to avoid the word ‘imperialism’.
        See also: DEPENDENCY THEORY,   Samir AMIN

“China likes to swaddle its overseas investments in speeches about ‘South-South’ cooperation—even though the country is well above the equator. Latin America should know from its experience with the U.S. that when you’re doing business with an 800-pound gorilla, rhetoric is less useful than a solid grounding in economic reality.” —“China’s Pivot to Latin America”, Bloomberg Businessweek, May 26, 2015, p. 12. [It is interesting that in their zeal to criticize competing imperialist powers like China, the U.S. imperialists sometimes even go so far as to hint at their own predations! —Ed.]

NORTHCOM
See: UNIFIED COMBATANT COMMAND

NORTHERN EXPEDITION   (Chinese History)
A major military campaign by the Guomindang led by Chiang Kai-shek, which included significant support from the Soviet Union and the Communists within China, and which defeated the warlords in the northern part of the country and more or less unified China. Nationalist troops set out from Guangdong (Canton) in 1926 and by 1928 most of China was under GMD control.

NOW: A Political and Cultural Weekly
A left-leaning magazine in Kolkatta [Calcutta], India which appeared from October 1964 to 1968. It was edited by Samar Sen, who was finally fired by the publisher for being too Left, and who then went on to found the weekly magazine Frontier. Many of the issues of Now are archived at: http://sanhati.com/now_archives/

NSS
See: NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY

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