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This glossary covers the basics of the three spheres of Marxism: Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism, and Marxist Economics. It won’t include every term you might find in a Marxist text, but if you come across a word you do not know, use this study guide to help you understand it. You can use Ctrl + F to search
Marxist Glossary (Simple + Modern Examples)
DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
(The philosophy and method Marxists use to understand how the world changes.)
Dialectical Materialism: A way of understanding the world as constantly changing through contradictions in material life.
· Example: Technology improves productivity but also creates layoffs and instability.
Science (Marxist sense): Studying society based on real evidence and laws of motion.
· Example: Analyzing economic crises instead of blaming individual failure.
Scientific Method: Testing ideas against reality, not beliefs or intentions.
· Example: Checking wage data instead of trusting political slogans.
Materialism: Understanding that real life conditions shape ideas and beliefs.
· Example: Economic stress leading to political anger.
Idealism: Believing ideas shape reality instead of material conditions.
· Example: Thinking changing language alone will end exploitation.
Empiricism: Only looking at surface facts without understanding deeper causes.
· Example: Saying people are poor because they “made bad choices.”
Pragmatism: The belief that an idea is “true” if it seems to work in the moment, rather than whether it is actually correct or principled.
· Example: Supporting a small workplace reform because it helps right now, even if it leaves the system that exploits workers unchanged.
Metaphysics: A way of thinking that treats things as fixed, separate, and unchanging instead of connected and developing.
· Example: Saying “this job has always paid badly and always will” without considering struggle or change.
Phenomena: What we can see or experience on the surface, not the deeper causes underneath.
· Example: Rising grocery prices are a phenomenon, while profit-seeking and supply chains are deeper causes.
Objective: Existing in the real world, independent of anyone’s opinions or feelings.
· Example: A factory’s unsafe conditions exist whether workers complain or not.
Subjective: Based on personal thoughts, feelings, or viewpoints.
· Example: A boss believing wages are “fair” because it feels reasonable to them.
Relative: True or meaningful only in relation to something else, not forever or in all situations.
· Example: A “good wage” is relative to the cost of living and time period.
Forces: Powers or pressures in society or nature that push things to change.
· Example: Workers organizing for higher wages is a force pushing against low pay.
Tendencies: Directions things usually move in over time, even if nothing changes all at once.
· Example: Capitalism has a tendency to concentrate wealth into fewer hands.
Unity and Struggle of Opposites: Opposing forces exist together and drive change.
· Example: Workers and bosses depend on each other but constantly clash.
Transformation of Quantity into Quality: Small changes build up until they cause a sudden break.
· Example: Rising rent increases eventually explode into mass protests.
Negation of the Negation: Development happens by replacing old systems with new ones, not by going backward.
· Example: Socialism overcomes capitalism just as capitalism replaced feudalism. A wheat germ is replaced by the full grain. It’s still the same molecular structure but now has changed form.
Contradiction: Two forces in a system that depend on each other but also fight against each other.
· Example: Companies need workers to make products, but they also try to pay workers as little as possible.
Antithesis: The opposing side or force that clashes with an existing condition.
· Example: Workers demanding control over their labor is the antithesis to bosses controlling everything.
Synthesis: The new situation that emerges from the struggle between opposing forces.
· Example: After struggle between workers and bosses, winning a union contract that changes how work is done.
Totality: Looking at the whole system instead of just one small piece of it.
· Example: Housing prices are connected to wages, banking, interest rates, construction, and global investment.
Abstract: Looking at something in a simple or basic way so we can understand the main idea first.
· Example: Talking about “workers” in general before looking at specific jobs like teachers, drivers, or warehouse workers.
Concrete: Looking at how something actually works in real life with all the details.
· Example: Studying how Amazon warehouse workers scan items, follow quotas, and are tracked by computers.
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
(How Marxism explains the development of human societies.)
Marxism: A way to understand how society works by looking at who owns things, who works, and how that creates conflict and change using socialist science.
· Example: Marxism helps explain why billionaires get richer while workers struggle to pay rent.
Historical Materialism: The method of understanding history through changes in material and economic conditions.
· Example: Capitalism replaced feudalism because new tools and trade made it possible.
Marxist Analysis: Analyzing society by examining class relations, material conditions, and contradictions.
· Example: Explaining housing crises as profit-driven, not personal failure.
Mode of Production: How a society organizes labor, tools, and ownership.
· Example: Capitalism is based on wage labor and private ownership.
Means of Production: The tools, land, factories, and technology used to produce goods.
· Example: Warehouses, farms, machines, software platforms.
Forces of Production: Everything society uses to produce goods and services. This includes workers, tools, machines, technology, and knowledge.
· Example: Delivery trucks, warehouse robots, software systems, and the workers who operate them.
Relations of Production: The rules about who owns things and who does the work.
· Example: Workers build products but the company owners keep the profits.
Base
The economic foundation of society: production, labor, ownership, and technology.
Cake Analogy – The Base:
Imagine you bake a cake.
The base is the ingredients and the recipe — flour, sugar, eggs, and instructions.
This sets the limits of what can exist. You will get a cake, not a sword or a car.
· Modern example: Factories, wages, and ownership structures shape society.
Superstructure
The political, legal, cultural, and ideological systems built on the base.
Cake Analogy – The Superstructure:
This is your oven, your skill, your timing, and random events.
Did the oven run hot? Did a cat jump on the counter? These affect the outcome but don’t change the ingredients.
· Modern example: Laws, media, education, religion, and politics.
Form
The specific shape an event or society takes due to the base, superstructure, and chance.
Cake Analogy – The Form:
The final cake that comes out.
Is it lopsided? Denser? A different flavor?
That specific result is the form — not the analysis.
· Modern example: Different revolutions look different depending on conditions.
Primitive Accumulation: The violent creation of capitalism by separating people from land and tools.
· Example: Colonial land theft and slavery.
Uneven and Combined Development: Different countries or regions develop at different speeds but are still connected through the global economy.
· Example: A city might have advanced smartphones and internet while nearby communities still struggle with poverty.
Class: A group defined by its relationship to the means of production.
· Example: Workers vs. corporate owners.
Bourgeoisie: The capitalist class who own the means of production.
· Example: Corporate owners and major shareholders of companies like Amazon or Tesla.
Proletariat: The working class who sell their labor for wages.
· Example: Warehouse workers, teachers, nurses, delivery drivers.
Lumpen Proletariat: People pushed outside stable production who lack a clear class role.
· Example: Groups disconnected from regular work and sometimes manipulated by elites. Can be sex workers, criminals, gang members, and the unemployed sometimes.
Petty Bourgeoisie: Small business owners who work for themselves and sit between capital and labor.
· Example: A shop owner who works full time but still owns the business. An artisan that makes art but owns their business selling art.
Class Consciousness: When workers recognize their shared exploitation and collective power.
· Example: Workers forming a union after realizing they all face the same conditions.
Rank-and-File: The ordinary workers in a workplace or union who do the actual labor and are not bosses or top leaders.
· Example: Warehouse workers organizing together to demand safer conditions, even when union leaders tell them to wait or stay quiet.
Communism: A future society after socialism with no classes, money, or state where everyone shares and produces based on need.
· Example: Food, housing, and healthcare are available because people need them, not because they are profitable.
Socialism: A transitional system after capitalism where workers own the means of production and run society through workers’ councils, workplace councils, and socialist federation government.
· Example: A factory is owned and democratically run by the workers who work there, not by shareholders. Every evening workers attend their workers council meeting after work to go over what needs to be fixed in their communities.
Democratic Socialist (older term): A historical term Marxists used before it was diluted into reform-only politics.
· Example: Early socialist parties used this term while advocating revolution.
Narodnik: Russian populists who believed peasants could skip capitalism entirely and engaged in adventurism. They believed the revolution could be forced.
· Example: Believing rural communities alone could create socialism without industry.
Syndicalism: The belief that unions alone can replace capitalism without political power.
· Example: Believing general strikes alone will end capitalism.
Fabianism: The idea that capitalism can be slowly reformed into socialism.
· Example: Hoping gradual policy changes will eliminate exploitation.
MARXIST ECONOMICS
(How Marxism explains capitalism and value.)
Commodity: A good or service produced for exchange on a market rather than for direct use.
· Example: Smartphones produced to be sold for profit.
Use Value: How useful something is.
· Example: A phone’s ability to make calls and send messages.
Exchange Value: What something is worth in money.
· Example: A phone costing $1,200 despite similar function.
Value: The socially necessary labor time embodied in a commodity.
· Example: The average labor required across society to produce a smartphone.
Socially Necessary Labor Time: The average time required to produce a commodity using normal technology and productivity.
· Example: If most factories can produce a shirt in 1 hour, that hour determines its value.
Abstract Labor: Labor reduced to a common social standard so different types of work can be compared in value.
· Example: A software engineer and warehouse worker perform different tasks but their labor can still be measured in labor time in the economy.
Living Labor: The labor currently performed by workers that creates new value.
· Example: A worker assembling electronics.
Dead Labor: Past labor embodied in machines, tools, and infrastructure.
· Example: The labor that built a factory or machine.
Commodity Fetishism: When people forget that products come from human labor and instead see them as just objects with prices.
· Example: Seeing a $1,000 iPhone as just a product instead of something made by thousands of workers around the world.
Reification: Treating systems created by humans as if they are natural laws that cannot be changed.
· Example: Saying “that’s just how the market works” as if humans didn’t create the system.
Price: The money expression of value in the market.
· Example: A product selling for $30.
Surplus Value (S): The extra value created by workers that capitalists keep.
· Example: A worker produces $300 of value but is paid $100.
Rate of Exploitation: How much extra value workers create compared to what they are paid.
· Example: If a worker produces $300 worth of products but is paid $100, the company keeps $200.
Law of Value: The idea that the value of things in capitalism mostly depends on how much labor time it takes to produce them.
· Example: If new machines make phones faster to produce, phone prices usually drop over time.
Reserve Army of Labor: A large group of unemployed or underemployed people that companies can hire when they need workers. This helps companies keep wages low.
· Example: Gig workers, part-time workers, and unemployed workers competing for jobs.
Constant Capital (C): Money companies spend on machines, buildings, and equipment. These help produce goods but do not create new value by themselves.
· Example: Warehouse robots, factory machines, and delivery trucks.
Variable Capital (V): Money companies spend on paying workers. Workers create new value when they work.
· Example: Wages paid to warehouse workers who pack orders.
Organic Composition of Capital: How much a company spends on machines compared to workers.
· Example: A modern tech company might spend billions on servers and data centers but employ far fewer workers.
Accumulation of Capital: When companies use their profits to grow bigger and make even more profit.
· Example: A corporation using profits to build new warehouses or buy new companies.
Concentration of Capital: When wealth and businesses become controlled by fewer and larger companies.
· Example: Amazon dominating online retail.
Centralization of Capital: When large companies buy smaller companies and merge them into one big company.
· Example: Tech companies buying smaller startups.
Finance Capital: When banks and big investors become closely tied to major corporations and control large parts of the economy.
· Example: Investment firms owning large shares of many major companies.
Economism: Focusing only on wages and reforms while ignoring political power and systemic change.
· Example: Fighting only for raises while leaving corporations in control.
Luddism: Blaming machines instead of capitalist ownership for workers’ problems. Someone who is anti-technology.
· Example: Destroying automation instead of changing who controls it.
Anarchic: No central coordination. No one is in charge of the whole system.
· Example: Tech companies producing huge numbers of devices without knowing if demand will match.
Crisis of Overproduction: When capitalism produces more goods than people can afford to buy.
· Example: Warehouses full of unsold products during recessions.
Falling Rate of Profit: A long-term trend where companies struggle to maintain high profits as they invest more in machines and technology.
· Example: Companies spending huge amounts on automation but still facing lower profit margins.
Planned Economy: Organizing production to meet human needs rather than profit.
· Example: Building housing because people need homes, not because it’s profitable.
Alienation: Feeling disconnected from your work, others, and yourself under capitalism.
· Example: Repeating meaningless tasks all day with no control or pride.
CORE FORMULAS
Rate of Exploitation (S / V):
How much unpaid labor workers do compared to what they are paid.
\frac{S}{V}
· Meaning (simple):
How much profit the boss makes off workers compared to wages.
· Example: If workers are paid $100 but produce $300 in value, the surplus ($200) divided by wages ($100) = 200%.
Organic Composition of Capital (C / V):
The ratio of money spent on machines compared to workers.
· Meaning (simple):
How “machine-heavy” a business is compared to how many workers it uses.
· Example: A fully automated warehouse with few workers has a high C/V ratio.
Rate of Profit (S / (C + V)):
How much profit is made compared to the total investment.
· Meaning (simple):
How much profit a company makes compared to everything it spent.
· Example: If a company spends $400 on machines (C) and $100 on wages (V), and makes $200 surplus (S), profit rate = 200 / 500 = 40%.
Counteracting Tendencies to the Falling Rate of Profit
Counteracting Tendencies to the Falling Rate of Profit:
Ways capitalists try to stop profits from falling when costs rise and machines replace workers.
· Example: Companies cutting wages, speeding up work, or moving production to cheaper countries to keep profits high.
1. Increasing Exploitation of Workers
Capitalists make workers produce more value without increasing wages (or even lowering them).
· Example: Warehouse workers are forced to meet higher quotas or work faster for the same pay.
2. Lowering Wages Below Value
Workers are paid less than what is needed for a normal standard of living.
· Example: Gig workers earning below minimum wage after expenses like gas and car maintenance.
3. Cheapening Constant Capital
Reducing the cost of machines, tools, or materials.
· Example: Companies buying cheaper parts or using lower-quality materials to cut costs.
4. Relative Overpopulation (Reserve Army of Labor)
Keeping a large pool of unemployed or underemployed workers to push wages down.
· Example: Many applicants competing for one job, allowing companies to offer lower pay.
5. Foreign Trade
Expanding into global markets to find cheaper labor and new buyers.
· Example: A company outsourcing production to another country where wages are much lower.
6. Increase in Stock Capital (Financial Expansion)
Using credit, loans, and financial markets to boost profits without directly increasing production.
· Example: Companies making profits through stock buybacks or financial investments instead of producing goods.
