GLOSSARY
ALIENATION. Dispossession of the free use of the life - state and term generally understood as social in our theory. Synonym of heteronomy and antonym of autonomy.
ANTITHEOCRACY. Social organization which makes the free use of life possible. Synonym of autonomous society.
ANTITHEOCRATIC. Which allows or fights for the free use of life. Synonym of socially autonomous or of partisan of social autonomy.
ART. Alienation specific to the ludic aspect of human activity.
AUTONOMOUS. Which finds in itself the laws governing itself - state and term generally understood as social in our theory. Antonym of heteronomous and alienated.
AUTONOMY. Tne state of being autonomous. Antonym of heteronomy and alienation.
CAPITAL. Is capital all money which in its movement is transformed into commodities to then be retransformed into money ; buying to sell to create profit. Capital is money produced with money through commodified work : wage work, which is consubstantiel to it. The capital is a form of commodity economy, it does not coincide with the circulation of commodities and of currency but it is the logic of the commodity and the completion of its domination. It exists as an essentiel social force only when the mass is dispossessed of the material means of life (i.e. when it cannot any more sell the product of its work), when work becomes a commodity (or in other words when the dominated are transformed into the singular race of exchangers: the " free " the owners of their work force) and when production becomes industrial (when one capitalist exploits many workers at the same time) and it is only at this time that the commodity form becomes dominant.
CAPITALISM. Theocracy which alienates mainly through capital.
CLASS. Group of people who have the same function, interest or condition in the hierarchy of a society divided into classes.
COMMODITY. Which has an exchange value.
COMMUNE. Synonym of self-management, councils, democracy, direct democracy and soviets. See councils.
COUNCILS.
Form
of social organization which allows the sovereignty of the people. Synonym
of self-management, commune, democracy, direct democracy and soviets.
Note: the councils are necessary
but nonsufficient to abolish alienation because
for that they must not be the dictatorship of the majority but the majority
deciding to suppress all that exists independently of individuals (including
the dictatorship of the majority). The antitheocratic
theory of the councils rises from its practical draft in the experiences
of the popular insurrections os the XIXth and XXth centuries, in
the universal republic of the commune of Paris from March to May 1871;
in the soviets of peasants, workers and soldiers of the Russian revolutions
at the end of 1905 and from February 1917 until the crushing of Cronstadt
in March 1921 and the defeat of the makhnovtchina in August 1921; in the
German revolution of November 1918; in the republic of councils in Hungary
from April to July 1919; in the republic of councils in Bavaria from April
to May 1919; in Italy in September 1920; in the trade-union federations
and self-managed collectivities in Spain from July 1936 to August 1938
; in Hungary from October to November 1956; in Poland in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia
from April at August 1968.The council such as we define it is a sovereign
popular general assembly, i.e. which directly makes decisions about its
own affairs, formed geographically or according to an activity. If in the
experiences of passed history, the term council, when it was used, defined
councils of delegates, it appears that the popular general assemblies of
the base were almost always regarded as simple assemblies of voters, the
first degree of the " councils " and of effective power being thus above
it. This neo-state separation can be overcome only by turning the popular
general assembly itself into the council from which any delegation
should draw only an imperative mandate.
CURRENCY. General equivalent which is used to measure exchange value and to exchange commodities.
DEMOCRACY. Synonym of self-management, commune, councils, direct democracy and soviets. See councils.
DIRECT
DEMOCRACY. Synonym of self-management, commune, councils, democracy
and soviets. See councils.
Note: the addition of the adjective
" direct " to democracy makes it possible to distinguish the term from
state democracy which usually autoproclames itself simply " democracy "
without specifying that it is only an alienated
form of it.
EXCHANGE
VALUE. Abstracted quantifiable social value by which commodities
are measured and exchanged. Exchange value exists only through exchange,
is born only out of sale and purchase and thus is produced and determined
by the relation of supply and demand ; although it is quantifiable, it
is not a natural law and is thus extremely relative.
Note: a commodity which is
not sold looses all its value, no matter how much work
time it contains. But in current capitalistic production,
it is mainly work which creates the possibility of an exchange value and
a profit ; in this case it is work time which is proportional to and determines
the value of a commodity minus profit. The value of this work time is equivalent
to the expenditure made by the workers in order " to live ". This expenditure
varies enormously according to epochs and class and local differences (productive
and commercial power, level of class struggle and regulation of work).
Value relations are partly undetermined.
HETERONOMOUS. Which receives from outside itself the laws governing itself. Synonym of alienated and antonym of autonomous.
HETERONOMY. The state of being heteronomous. Synonym of alienation and antonym of autonomy.
IDEOLOGY. A set of ideas which refers to reality not to elucidate and transform it but to veil and justify it in the imagination, which makes it possible for people to say a thing and to do another.
MONEY. Synonym of currency. See currency.
PROLETARIAN. Person who has no other resources but the sale of his work force to secure himself a socially average or low level of subsistence.
PROLETARIAT. Class of proletarians.
SELF-MANAGEMENT. Synonym of commune, councils, democracy, direct democracy and soviets. See councils.
SEPARATION. The general form of the world produced by the paramount social separation in classes, between the minority which possesses the world and the majority which is submitted to it.
SOVIETS. Synonym of self-management, commune, councils, democracy and direct democracy. See councils.
THEOCRACY. Alienating social organization. Synonym of heteronomous society and antonym of autonomous society.
THEOCRATIC. Which alienates. Synonym of socially heteronomous and antonym of socially autonomous.
USE VALUE. If one wants to use the term in a non fetichist way then use value is not opposed to exchange value. In this case, there are two general forms of use value of, themselves multiple, theocratic use value (in which one finds exchange, hierarchical and religious value) and autonomous use value which is rather a anti-value. Exchange value is thus only one possible use and can be socially lived and perceived as a natural fact only because society is alienated. A use value is a social-historic construction.
WAGE. Name of the exchange value of work transformed into commoditiy.
WAGE-SYSTEM. System of the commodity-work.
WAGE WORKER. Person whose work is transformed into a commodity. Generally synonymous of proletarian.
WORK. In our time, all human activity alienated by the obligation for its actors to exchange it or exchange its products in a commodified form is work. In a general but approximate way one can say that any forced human activity is work.
