Glossary of Terms

The fourfold estrangement of workers under capitalism: from the products of their labor, from the labor process itself, from their species-being (human essence), and from other human beings.

A necessary moment in the development of Spirit (Geist), wherein consciousness externalizes itself into the world before returning to itself at a higher level of self-understanding.

The fundamental condition of human existence in an indifferent universe, experienced as meaninglessness, absurdity, or disconnection from authentic selfhood.

A form of power that emerged in the modern era focused on administering and optimizing life at the population level—managing birth rates, mortality, health, and sexuality. Unlike sovereign power's right to 'take life or let live,' biopower 'makes live and lets die.'

The mystification whereby social relations between producers take the form of relations between things (commodities), making the products of labor appear to govern human beings rather than the reverse.

The self-movement of thought through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, wherein contradictions drive the development of concepts, history, and Spirit toward absolute knowledge.

The materialist inversion of Hegel's dialectic: contradictions exist not in thought but in material reality, driving historical change through class struggle and economic transformation.

Negative dialectics: a dialectical thinking that refuses final synthesis, maintaining the non-identity between concept and object, and resisting the totalizing violence of systematic thought.

Cultural and intellectual leadership exercised by a dominant class through civil society institutions (schools, media, churches). The ruling class maintains power by making its particular interests appear universal, its values appear as common sense.

A discursive practice of articulation whereby political identities and social formations are constructed through chains of equivalence, always contingent and contestable rather than determined by economic base.

False consciousness: ideas that represent the interests of the ruling class as universal truths, inverting reality like a camera obscura to make historically contingent arrangements appear natural and inevitable.

The imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence, materially embodied in ideological state apparatuses (schools, churches, media) that interpellate subjects and reproduce social relations.

Not simply false belief but the fantasmatic structure that coordinates social reality itself. We know very well that things are not as they appear, yet we act as if we don't know—ideology operates through disavowed belief.

The dominant form of reason in modernity that treats everything—nature, human beings, culture—as objects to be manipulated, controlled, and exploited for efficiency. The Dialectic of Enlightenment argues this reduces reason to a tool of domination.

Goal-oriented rational action (Zweckrationalität) that calculates the most effective means to achieve given ends, contrasted with value-rational action oriented by intrinsic values.

The mechanism through which ideology 'recruits' subjects by hailing or calling out to individuals, who, by recognizing themselves as addressed, become subjects constituted through that recognition.

Revolutionary activity that transforms both the world and the subject engaging in it; the realization of philosophy through material action rather than abstract thought alone.

The philosophy of praxis—Gramsci's term for Marxism—emphasizing that ideas become material forces when they grip the masses and inform collective political action.

The extension of commodity fetishism to the totality of social life under capitalism, whereby all human relations become calculable, quantifiable, and thing-like. Consciousness itself becomes reified, unable to grasp the social totality.

The reduction of human beings, nature, and social processes to instrumental objects of manipulation, calculation, and control. Related to but distinct from alienation.

Humans are species-beings because they treat themselves as universal, free beings capable of making the species (humanity) their object of consciousness and action. Under capitalism, workers are alienated from their species-being, reduced to animal functions.

The category of totality is what distinguishes Marxism from bourgeois thought; it is the recognition that society forms an interconnected whole where each part can only be understood in relation to the entire system.

The false totality of administered society that appears to integrate all particulars but actually does violence to them; negative dialectics resists totality's claim to comprehend everything.