Karl Marx
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Karl Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a pretty cool german dude who wrote some good books, i quite like him and i'm a left-communist myself, he's cool and i'm gonna put some definitions here to hopefully educate you.
Private property: Exclusive ownership of the means of production and property which is used to extract surplus value from workers.
Proletariat: Wage-workers, i.e. people in society who have no means of production to sustain their lives, and directly depend on their labor-power, which he sells in capitalist society, in order to live and survive in society.
Labor-power: The mental and physical capabilities/capacity for a person to engage in labor or engage in a specific type of labor.
Bourgeoisie: People who own private property in capitalist society, and employ proletarians (i.e., wage-workers) unto their private property in order to gain and secure a profit. The bourgeoisie directly depend on their ownership of private property and their employment of proletarians in order to live and survive in society.
Capitalism: A society in which
1) The Law of value operates
2) Commodity production exists
3) Private property exists
4) Classes and class struggle exists (which inevitable give rise to the state)
Abstract Labor: Labor that is employed or done in order to produce for exchange-value or to facilitate exchange-value.
Concrete Labor: Labor that is employed or done in order to produce for use-value or to facilitate use-value.
Socially Necessary Labor-Time (SNLT): The amount of time socially needed to produce something. It is what regulates the exchange-value of commodities in trade and consequently constrains producers in their attempt to economise on labour.
Commodity production: The production of commodities
Commodities: Products produced and exchanged based on exchange-value.
Class: A group’s social relation to the means of production.
Capital:
Accumulated labour that serves as a means to new production The social relation of production of bourgeois society Sum of commodities, i.e. sum of exchange-values (let’s not forget that labor, specifically labor-power, in capitalist society is also a commodity). An independent social power that must feed off direct, living labor power
In a word, Capital is the accumulation of labor and its products (its products, in capitalist society, being commodities).
Markets: Places where buyers and sellers go to exchange commodities. It is an area or arena in which commercial dealings are conducted.
Planned Economy: An economy in which Production and Exchange is done in accordance to a plan(s) rather than market forces.
Nationalism: Dedication and patriotism for one's nation state above all others.
Internationalism: Rejection of patriotism and the idea of nation states.
Class society: The existence of classes in society, in a structural hierarchy where one class rules over the others.
Left-wing of capital: A colloquialism to refer to a grouping of various tendencies that represent the left of the political spectrum. Oftentimes branding themselves as anti-capitalist, they miss the mark in aiming for its true abolition, usually either changing the way capital is managed or the advocacy of social programs to make capitalism more tolerable.
Anti-unionism: Opposition to unions being a method for revolution, and structure during the DoTP. Unions have lost their revolutionary potential and now are just a political tool used by the bourgeois to keep class consciousness low with reforms that appeal to capital’s interests in the long run.
Detournement: The appropriation of images or ideas and the changing of their intended meaning in a way that challenges the dominant culture.
Recuperation: The channeling of social revolution in a way that perpetuates capitalism.
Vanguard Party: A party that aims to seize power for and represent the working class.
Petty Bourgeoisie: A social class comprising semi-autonomous peasants and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological stance in times of socioeconomic stability is determined by reflecting that of the normal bourgeoisie, with which the petite bourgeoisie seeks to identify itself and whose bourgeois morality it strives to imitate.
Leftist Unity: The idea of unification of the whole left and ultra-left in taking action against capital. Ultra-leftists are opposed to this, as this would include such counter-revolutionary tendencies as Social Democracy, Stalinism, Maoism, etc.
Communism: A stateless, classless, and moneyless society where people produce, organize, and exchange based on free association and all social production is held communally, where goods are distributed based on need.
Socialism: A classless, and moneyless society where people produce, organize, and exchange based on free association and all social production is held communally, with a vestigial state which is in the process of withering away or about to start withering away, and goods are distributed based on labour input via labour notes.
The State: The product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. It’s one ruling class dominating and holds authority over another class or other classes in society. In capitalist society, the state is bourgeoisie ruling and dominating over the proletariat.
Organs of the state: The means by which the one ruling class dominates and holds authority over another class. In capitalist society, the bourgeoisie dominates and holds authority over the proletariat by the means of the police, military, bureaucracy, etc.
Law of value: Regulative principle of the economic exchange of the products of human work, namely that the relative exchange-values of those products in trade, usually expressed by money-prices, are proportional to the average amounts of human labor-time which are currently socially necessary to produce them. In a word, things are produced and exchanged based on exchange-value and socially necessary labor-time rather than directly based on use-value.
Exchange-value: the proportion in which use-values of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort. The exchange-value of a given commodity constantly changes with time and place. The exchange-values of two or more given commodities must be equal to each other or replaceable by each other in order for an exchange to happen. But when we only concern ourselves with the exchange of commodities, i.e., exchange-value, we end up abstracting from the use-value of a given commodity and only end up being concerned with the exchange-value of it. Because of this, there must be something that unites all the commodities together in order to be tradable with each other. What is the thing that universally unites all of these commodities together and is common amongst all of them? It is that they are all products of labor, specifically abstract human labor.
Use-value: the utility of a given thing. The way how a given thing possesses any use-value is by being able to satisfy the needs and/or desires of a person due to the abilities and/or properties inherent in the given thing. For example, a knife has use-value because it helps to satisfy people’s needs and desires due to the abilities and properties inherent in the knife (i.e., being able to allow people to effectively cut things, being able to allow people to cook things with it, etc.). We find out or discover the use-value of a given thing when we use it or consume it. Marx does not go into understanding the nature of these needs and desires in terms what they are and how they are satisfied nor does he go into understanding the abilities and/or properties inherent in the given thing, because it would go off topic and distract from the entire point Marx is trying to make which is that: having a use-value is an essential prerequisite for something to have in order for it to be commodity in the first place. If a given thing does not have any use-value to it, then it cannot be a commodity nor is there any point in talking about it. Trying to figure out what people’s needs/desires are and how to effectively satisfy those needs is the job of human society and human history to do rather than an individual man trying to uncover, understand and analyze what Capital is in order to effectively understand capitalist society. Use-values also constitute the substance of all wealth in society and has existed in all societies regardless of their political-economic system. In capitalist society use-value is the material depository of exchange-value.
Personal property: Goods, products, and property you use for your own personal liking and desires. Like a Computer, Car, House, TV, etc.