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What is collectivism, in terms of grammar, of collectivisation?

Put another way:

Collectivism is the [which word?] of collectivisation?

Another example word pair might be centralism and centralisation.

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Neither word is derived from the other; both derive from collective (it would take considerable research to determine whether collectivize is intermediary to both), so they are technically cognates, although this is temporally a much closer relationship than those for which the term is usually employed. Coderivative might be a useful coinage. – StoneyB Nov 4 '12 at 17:52
It certainly looks as if collectivisation didn't really get started until the late 1920s, by which time collectivism had been around at least 30-40 years. – FumbleFingers Nov 4 '12 at 23:32

1 Answer

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I don't think there's a word describing either the relation of collectivism to collectivisation, or the reverse (the relation of collectivisation to collectivism).

They're both just alternative nominalizations — "a type of word formation in which a verb or an adjective (or other part of speech) is used as (or transformed into) a noun".

Noting this definition — "collectivization: the organization of a nation or economy on the basis of collectivism"— and the fact that "collectivism" gained currency first, I suppose one could argue that collectivization is a derivation (or derivative) of collectivism, rather than the other way around.

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I agree with FF's answer, but would like to add that different suffixes can be used to form nouns with different meanings. The -ism suffix is used to form a word that describes a system, a principle, or an ideology; -ation is used to make a word that describes a result or product of some action. Apart from the two words being derived from the same source, I'm not aware of any defined relationship that would describe a pair of words with these two particular suffixes on the same root. – J.R. Nov 5 '12 at 11:05
@J.R.: Actually, it seems to me that might represent another argument for saying collectivisation is a derivative of collectivism. If we allow that the "principle, school of thought" meaning arose first in sociopolitical terminology, it's probably reasonable to infer that collectivisation as "result of/movement towards collectivism" could be seen as a later term derived "directly" from the earlier one. – FumbleFingers Nov 5 '12 at 14:01
Perhaps so in this case, but, in the general -ism/-ation case, it might be hard to figure out which came first, or if one was directly derived from the other. For example, minimalism can refer to a lifestyle, or to an architectural style, yet an accountant may talk about the minimalization of taxes, and those two words aren't really derived from each other, they simply share a common root. – J.R. Nov 5 '12 at 14:59
@J.R.: Hmm. If my accountant said his business was minimalization of taxes, I'd just look for a better-educated accountant who talked of minimisation or minimising of taxes (and ideally, spelt it like that, so I'd know he was a Brit! :) – FumbleFingers Nov 5 '12 at 17:03
Please, don't overanalyze it, I was just trying to think of a pair of words to use as an example. (Nonetheless, I figured someone might call me out on that one, so I wasn't going to use it unless I actually knew for sure that at least one accountant used that term.) If you still don't like that example, though, we could just talk about mathematicians instead. – J.R. Nov 5 '12 at 17:13

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