form, of the permanent arms economy.
Commercial capital: Investment aimed at making a profit from the buying and selling of goods as distinct from their production. Sometimes called merchant's capital.
Commodity: Something bought and sold on the market. Commodities are commonly called "goods" in English.
Concentration of capital: Growth in size of the individual competing capitals that make up the capitalist system.
Concrete labour: Refers to the specific characteristics of any act of labour-what distinguishes, for example, the labour of a carpenter from that of a bus driver.
Constant capital: Marx's term for a capitalist's investment in plant, machinery, raw material and components (in other words, the means of production), denoted by c.
Corey, Lewis: Also known as Louis Fraina, an early member of the American Communist Party who later wrote an important Marxist analysis of the slump of the 1930s.
CPSU: Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ruling party within USSR. Its general secretaries-Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and finally Gorbachev-ran the state.
Credit crunch: When buying and lending seizes up in the banking system and the wider economy.
Cultural Revolution: Political turmoil in China in the late 1 960s and early 1 970s.
Davos: Swiss ski resort where World Economic Forum of leading industrialists, financiers, government ministers and economists takes place each year.
Dead labour: Term used by Marx to describe commodities made in the past but used in production in the present.
Deficit financing: The method by which a government pays for the excess of expenditure over receipts from taxation by borrowing.
Deflation: A fall in prices, normally associated with impact of economic crisis.
Department One: Section of economy which is involved in turning out equipment and materials for further production (called by mainstream economists "capital goods").
Department Two: Section of economy concerned with turning out goods which will be consumed by workers (sometimes called "wage goods").
Department Three: Section of economy which turns out goods which will not be used as means and materials of production, and which will not be consumed by workers either-in other words the section that turns out "luxury goods" for consumption by the ruling class, armaments and so on. Sometimes referred to as Department 2a.
Dependency theory: Theory very widespread in 1950s and 1 960s which held that dependence of Third World economies on advanced economies prevented economic development.
Depreciation of capital: Reduction in the price of plant, machinery and so on during their period of operation. This can be due to wear and tear, or to the "devaluation" of capital (see below).
Derivatives: Financial contracts designed to allow investors to insure themselves against future changes in prices. Derivatives trading developed as a means of speculating on interest or exchange rates, and then into a form of financial gambling on changes in markets in general.
Devaluation of capital: Reduction in the value of plant, equipment and so on as technical advance allows a greater amount to be produced with a given quantity of labour time.
Glossary
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