This page provides a glossary of terms beginning ‘M’. Each term usually provides links to other relevant materials on the FRAW site, and/or to Wikipedia and other on-line sources.
Often confused with public relations, marketing refers to the promotion of goods and services. A century ago this would have been in the form of simple print advertizing. Today marketing encompasses a much broader range of operations, often involving large databases which allow small groups of people to be microtargeted with unique messages, and operating across the mass and on-line media. Increasingly marketing also applies various models of behavioural economics and psychology to increase the effectiveness of influencing the target audience.
It’s impossible to summarize such a broad philosophy in a paragraph, but… Marxism is the economic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, later embellished by figures such as Lenin, Trotsky, and others. Though generally called ‘Communism’, or more broadly ‘Socialism’, arguably that has never been the product of this process; instead producing ‘state capitalist’ systems where the state owns all and the mass of the population are still treated as ‘employees’ with little say in policy. Marxist philosophy is ideologically ‘materialist’ – essentially little different to the industrialism of Western capitalism, while still creating the same kinds of ecological crises that result from the pursuit of materialist consumption. Marx’s ideas have contributed a significant part of Western economic theory, and have been revitalized recently with by economists such as Yanis Varufakis and Thomas Piketty. The general problem with the highly centralized state planning of Marxist/Leninist communism is that it is based upon the domination of a small, albeit different minority of people compared to the Western economic establishment (hence why Marxists and Anarchists have a long-standing enmity). Likewise, though the people of communist states such as Cuba or China may enjoy a relatively more developed economy today, the terms of that relationship are still dictated to from above like those living under ‘Western democracy’.
Materialism is a field of philosophy governing how we interpret the world around us. Materialism looks at the world as a series of physical processes, one interacting with another, which together define ‘reality’. A material view of the world sees technology, resources, and physical human interaction, as all working within natural physical laws. What is not considered significant are human conceptions of spirituality, aesthetics, and many aspects of our self-image – in other words, human thought, beliefs, and imagination. One notable criticism of the materialism would be, ‘economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing’ – because materialists are very good at identifying physical reality, that reality does not necessarily express the personal/emotional value that many people may feel. This is also why there has been a traditional disconnect between the arts and the sciences, as science is materialist, while the arts value non-material phenomena.
Metamodernism is the latest phase within critical theory which accepts the idealized ideas of modernist theory, and the criticism of modernist thinking from postmodernism, in a way that produces a more postive synthesis rather than postmodernism’s oft-criticized cynical irony. For example: Modernism still dominates society, especially in the politics of the Right which seek to preserve the simplicity and order that Twentieth Century modernism created in its pursuit of technological innovation; postmodernism is most often associated with the Left’s criticism of industrialism, and especially the technocratic systems which govern human affairs, and how that has effectively created a meaningless and mechanistic society where individuals no longer have agency; metamodernism seeks a synthesis of these views to objectively define structure and meaning, to provide a resolution which permits thinking beyond the environment which we inhabit today.
From advertizing, to political messaging, to deliberate disinformation campaigns, influencing public opinion increasingly relies upon databases of personal information which define a person’s interests or habits. What was once ‘public relations’ has now become ‘strategic communications’, as concentrated vested interests seek to manipulate both public opinion, politicians, and global financial markets, to promote their business plans. Using models of how different people respond to messages, especially on-line, agencies can target small groups with unique messages that seek to influence perceptions. This need not just be positive perceptions; increasingly ‘attack ads’ and other political messaging seeks to use ‘Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt’ (or ‘FUD’) to sow confusion to negate opposition to policies or parties. As digital technologies are intrinsically based more and more upon surveillance and data collection, so microtargeting becomes a more powerful tool for influencing public opinion.
Modernism arose in the early Twentieth Century as industrial society became less reliant upon spiritual/superstitious beliefs, and instead rationally pursued materialist goals using the new scientific and technical understand which arose around this time. Modernism is essentially the philosophy of human ingenuity expressed through technical innovation which reshaped the scale of human agency across the Twentieth Century – and the self-justifying belief that all such developments represented a positive good. In that sense it not only provided the mentality behind the shift from liberal to neoliberal economics, it also created people’s faith in technology and science. After the Second World War, as the scale of development and technological control became increasingly alienating, postmodernism arose as a critical response to modernism.
Literally, ‘the rule of one’. In reality true absolute monarchies are rare in the modern era because all political states, whoever rules, have bureaucracies and significant figures through whom the monarchy must exercise power. In Europe the rise of Industrialism went in parallel to the transition of absolute rulers into ‘constitutional monarchies’ – where the monarch may continue to exist though their power is framed by a constitutional Parliament. Though in the modern era most monarchs may have gone, the role of the bureaucratic state as an ‘absolute ruler’ has not; meaning that while government may be notionally elected by ‘the people’, once in place their exercise of power cannot be readily checked by the public.
There is no clear definition of what constitutes an economic monopoly. In general, the fewer companies control certain markets or economic sectors, the more likely that those companies can dictate the terms of trade – not only meaning they control prices, but also can lock-out alternative suppliers or technologies through their dominance of the market. Though Classical Liberal economics was very critical of monopolies, under the more concentrated economic power of neoliberalism the global market increasingly serves a global ‘oligopoly’ of corporate or state agencies which – from trade to humanitarian aid – work to the disadvantage of local producers.
In contract to collectivism, mutualism seeks to develop businesses or services which serve the needs of their members, but in a way which uses more conventional business practices to hold and exploit property and assets. Mutual societies are often based around models of services – such as insurance, or investing, or selling consumer goods – which seek to share the proceeds of trade more equitably but which do not automatically give members a voice or control of the business. Socialist political movements, built upon centralized ‘top-down’ state control, contain elements of mutuality – such as Britain’s National Health Service. Under this arrangement the rights of the citizen to the service have to be exercized via the central state bureaucracy, rather than having a direct voice in the provision of local services, and so provides no guarantee that the service meets local needs.