This page provides a glossary of terms beginning ‘C’. Each term usually provides links to other relevant materials on the FRAW site, and/or to Wikipedia and other on-line sources.
It’s impossible to summarize such abroad political philosophy in a paragraph, but… Under the Capitalist economic model a minority own ‘the means of production’ – resources, factories, intellectual property, etc. – and use that monopoly control to trade and extract value from their private rights. Workers are paid for their labour, but the true value of what they create using their labour is not repaid in proportion to the value they add to the materials they produce; and as workers have far less rights within this economic arrangement, they can be easily exploited, especially by making them compete with one another in order to increase the owner’s profits. That ‘classic’ view of capitalism is, in reality, rather dated. Today the financialization of global trade and commerce means many capitalists trade abstract or speculative values rather than actual, physical products – ‘making money out of money’. As such, the nature of modern capital markets has become increasingly abstract, and not tied to the national or global mechanics of trade or business which originally represented.
The political ‘Centre’ is most often associated with social liberalism or social democracy, being the hybrid of the two opposing political philosophies of the Left and Right – socialism and conservatism. In the Western democracies where most dominant parties represent various flavours of economic neoliberalism, the ‘Centre’ tends to represent a centre-right agenda rather than a ‘middle of the road’ position between the extremes of Left and Right. The ‘Centre’ usually represents those who have the greatest interest in the status quo, avoiding the sharp policy change created by repeated flips between the Left and Right. However, when liberal centrism becomes an ideology within itself, it can quickly descend into ‘Extreme Centrism’, where the efforts to avoid the policies of Left or Right becomes an irrational, bureaucratic pursuit for absolute stasis in public policy.
‘Extreme Centrism’ emerged in Western democracies at the end of the Twentieth Century as the traditional model of market liberalism failed to create economic growth, damaging the affluence of the middle class, which had been the norm for much of the Twentieth Century. While the Left’s response was to challenge the idea of capitalism itself with greater market intervention, and the Right sought to push capitalism to its ideological extreme through greater privatization and shrinking the state, ‘Centrism’ became obsessed with technocratic reforms (e.g., ‘The Third Way’), pursuing efficiency or innovation to try and improve both government and the business sector. Since the 2008 Crash, as the Left and Right push-back against neoliberal globalization, ‘Centrism’ has become a more ‘extreme’ reactionary ideology that seeks to reinforce liberal middle class values against accelerating economic and technological change – unable accept that the system itself is failing. In part, this endless and essentially meaningless continual call for ‘reform’ is what has driven the rise of populism in the West, and the liberal obsession with technocracy and bureaucracy has stoked the mistrust of government from both the populist Left and Right.
Where goods and social assets are held jointly by a group, and everyone works together to benefit all, that group forms ‘a collective’. Collectives differ from ‘mutual’ groups in that they have a direct relationship, and the value of the resources worked or created are shared directly without external financial values or trades. See, in contrast, ‘Mutualism’.
The reduction of an idea, or a thing, to an economic commodity on the mass market – usually involving marketing the symbolic value of the product while stripping it of any ‘radical’ meaning. First identified by figures such as Thorstein Veblen in the late Nineteenth Century, the Technological Revolution, mass production, and especially mass communications via radio and TV, elevated simple advertizing into ‘marketing’ – which gave goods higher value based around conspicuous consumption and brand identity. Through the commodification of goods or social values, especially via youth culture, consumerism acts as a defence against radical change: Neoliberalism, through the mass media narratives of consumerism, negates revolutionary and radical movements by seeming to adopt the acceptable parts of those movements’ symbolic identity, making them conform to the market principles at the heart of liberal economics.
Under advanced consumerism the possession of certain goods has become totemic, with their owner or user placing their identity wholly within the symbolic value of the product. Originating within the utilitarian origins of capitalism goods are not longer brought for practical use, but to signal to others the character or status of their owner – since the higher value of a person’s consumption under utilitarianism signalled a higher social value. Of course, as corporations, not individuals, design and market these signified attributes, increasingly people’s characters are defined not by uniquely who they are, or their social group, but by the values corporations signal through the manufacturing of certain products – for example ‘green’ or ‘ethical’ consumerism.
It’s impossible to summarize such abroad political philosophy in a paragraph, but… There is no one definition of communism. Generally this label refers to a Marxist, Leninist, or Maoist system, such as that of the Soviet Union or China – which arguably never progressed beyond the threshold of ‘state capitalism’ to create true communism. In fact there are various ‘communist’ systems which have been proposed over the years: From the primitive anarchism of The Diggers in Seventeenth Century England; to Leo Tolstoy’s attempts at forming Christian-anarchist communes; to the more anarchist-inspired communes of revolutionary Spain; and in the present-day the Zapatistas of Mexico, or Rojava in Kurdistan. As all true communist systems first require collectivizing the resources of the commune, over-riding the property rights of the wealthy elite – which is why in the Twentieth Century all models of Communism, to one extent or another, suffered repression by the promoters of Western liberal capitalism, in particular, the USA, who saw it as a national mission to destabilize any state promoting left-of-centre economic policies.
Different anarchist philosophies advocate (variously) local collectives, mutual societies, or unions, as the basis for organizing our needs directly. In order to co-ordinate and apply pressure at a higher-level, these local groups come together through representative regional or national ‘federations’ to promote shared platforms or values. How the decision-making relationship between the local groups and the federation operates is often what defines the different approaches of anarchist, socialists, or communist philosophies – in particular, whether decisions of the central federations dominate (as in Marxist-Leninism’s ‘democratic centralism’, where the central party rules), or whether local groups can refuse to enact decisions of the federation (as under Kropotkin or Proudhon’s conception of anarchism).
It’s impossible to summarize such a complex topic in a paragraph, but… Though there are varying forms of decision-making within anarchism, commonly decisions are expected to be arrived at by consensus rather than by a majority of the group. That means finding options which everyone agrees to, or that some are willing to pass even though they may not agree. The important feature is ‘blocking’: Where one person does not agree they can block any decision, even where they are a minority. The role of the block is critical to ensure that consensus can be reached through agreeable negotiation with all participants, and hence, that no one faction is able to dominate by weight of numbers.
It is difficult to describe such a broad philosophy in a single paragraph, but… Conservatism is a political philosophy which seeks to preserve not simply the economic status quo, but also the mythic traditions of the nation state and its historic legacy. For example, in countries which pursued colonial empires, this can mean celebrating the state’s past ‘greatness’ while deliberately ignoring the objective suffering that undertaking caused; likewise conservatism celebrates the past agricultural or industrial development of the state, valorizing the endeavours of the ruling elite, while ignoring the grinding poverty and exploitation of its own citizens. Conservatism is not necessarily an economic philosophy. It can celebrate the early feudal history of a state just as much as its capitalist exploits in the modern era. By differentiating political ‘conservatism’ from economic ‘conservatism’, and the competing economic interests of those across the ‘The Right’, current establishment/populist divides in Western states becomes easier to understand.
A trend in consumerism where the individual creates a social and political identity based upon the external/symbolic value of the products they buy, not their own unique value, attributes, or skills. Conspicuous consumption is a part of branding and modern marketing. First identified by figures such as Thorstein Veblen at the end of the Nineteenth Century, this trend has historically been one more popular bases of social criticism about the Consumer Society and the modern consumer economy.
Classically, consumerism is defined as a system where individuals associate their well-being as being primarily associated with the goods they buy, and the aspirational or symbolic value those goods add to their lives – and their economic and political views support this outlook. However, we prefer the definition, ‘The basic inability of a person to critically discern their needs from their wants under a systematized psychological assault on their freedom to choose’. Today the nature of consumption, and the environmental ‘noise’ both advertizing and the economic assault of a failing global economy create for most people, is creating a huge disconnect between objective reality and the messaging of both corporate and political ‘strategic communications’. Increasingly the messaging of consumerism is designed to maintain a seeming trance of belief about the world, and the gap between this belief system and people’s direct experience is creating increasing psychological stress and cognitive dissonance – leading to declining levels of mental health trending with the increasing economic pressures in the most affluent states.
Cornucopianism, often associated with a cult-like faith in ‘human progress’, is not simply a belief that ‘tomorrow will be better than today’; it is a far more Utopian idea that ‘things can only get better’ – that all the effort humankind puts into improving society, technology, and our culture, will always produce superior results. This viewpoint is based upon a deep denial of all negative news or evidence. It is not just that such arguments only ‘accentuate the positive’; even when evidence can be shown that the claims are physically impossible or ignore objective reality, the Cornucopian viewpoint will simply dismiss all such claims – arguing that even if such things do exist, they can be eliminated by continued pursuit of ‘progress’. Many forms of ecological and economic denial, and especially faith in technological innovation, often have a deep basis in Cornucopian thinking.
A market-based model of social-democratic and centre-left politics which accepts the trade and markets approach of liberal economics, alongside greater regulation and co-operation between business, trades unions, and public authorities in order to deliver social goals. It represents a compromise between the liberal economics of the centre-right, and the fully state-based economy proposed by socialism.
Credit ratings are a system of private corporate databases which track a person’s economic activity – especially debt, finance contracts, and actions by landlords or banks for non- or late-payment – used to determine a person’s eligibility to take-on more debt. Largely the ‘credit score’ is not related to total debt, but to the fraction of a person’s disposable income (often based upon a statistical model of the data collected about an idealized person ‘like them’) used to repay unsecured loans – such as payday loans, credit card debt, and increasing financial instruments such as rent agreements or mobile phone contracts. Having a bad score, or having no credit history because you never borrow money, is increasingly used by everyone from employers to potential landlords to decide if you can or can’t have or do something.
‘Critical Theory’ is a field of philosophical and social research which examines the formation of power and economic relations across society, seeking to deconstruct people’s everyday economic and social interactions and how they relate to these dynamic relationships of power, in order to determine the objective ‘truths’ of how societies form and change over time. While critical theory is practised to varying degrees by figures across the political spectrum, the public debate and demonization of ‘Critical Theory’ tends to target those on the Left because of their focus on historic and present-day social and economic inequality, and how these inequalities are not so much an unintended consequence of economics or ‘progress’, they are a conscious policy choice of the ruling elite. Over the Twentieth Century various phases of critical theory have arisen – from Modernism (or Structuralism), to Postmodernism, and most recently Metamodernism – which reflect society’s changing relations to economics, material production, and especially to technological change.