SOCIAL CHAUVINISM
National chauvinism on the part of nominal (phony)
socialists. This term arose during World War I when Lenin and other revolutionaries
condemned those revisionist “socialists” of the Second International who betrayed the
international proletariat and openly supported their own bourgeoisies in waging war
against other nations. Later on, in the revisionist eras in the Soviet Union and
China, those countries also systematically followed social chauvinist policies.
“[In his work Socialism and War (1915), Lenin] shows that
the support of the war by the ‘socialists’ of the Second International was a
direct betrayal of socialism. He coins the phrase ‘social-chauvinism’ to denote
their policy. Social-chauvinism is defense of the fatherland in an unjust war
undertaken by people calling themselves socialists. Lenin calls for a break
with opportunism and social-chauvinism on an international scale, and the
setting up of a new Third International on a revolutionary basis.” —Maurice
Cornforth, Readers’ Guide to the Marxist Classics (1953), p. 52.
“The elements of opportunism that accumulated over the decades of
comparatively peaceful development have given rise to the trend of social-chauvinism
which dominates the offical socialist parties throughout the world. This
trend—socialism in words and [national] chauvinism in deeds ... [Lenin then lists
many of the specific social-chauvinist individuals in Russia, Germany France,
Belgium, and England —Ed.] ... is conspicuous for the base, servile adaptation of
the ‘leaders of socialism’ to the interests not only of ‘their’ national bourgeoisie,
but of ‘their’ state, for the majority of the so-called Great Powers have long been
exploiting and enslaving a whole number of small and weak nations. And the imperialist
war [World War I] is a war for the division and redivision of this kind of booty. The
struggle to free the working people from the influence of the bourgeoisie in general,
and of the imperialist bourgeoisie in particular, is impossible without a struggle
against opportunist prejudices concerning the ‘state’.” —Lenin, “The State and
Revolution” (August 1917), LCW 25:383-4.
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
The sum total of all the acquired ideas, opinions, views, concepts, knowledge,
theories, dispositions, feelings, moods, abilities, skills, arts, practices, habits,
customs and traditions that exist among the individuals in a society and which reflect
the social being of its members (the material conditions of their lives).
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
1. A form of the liberal capitalist welfare state mascarading as genuine socialism.
2. Political parties and movements which have this reformist accomodation with capitalism
as their highest goal.
See also:
COMMUNISM—Aims Of
“In the past, social democracy called for using the state to offset,
correct, regulate, and otherwise manage the workings of capitalism. It sought a
capitalism with a human face: one with fewer inequalities of wealth, income, power,
and access to culture. The state was to manage capital investment, regulate markets,
and shape the distribution of income and wealth: all in the interest of a society
with a deeper and more widely shared sense of community. Economic growth and efficiency,
attributed to capitalism, were to be supported while state policy would prevent or
counteract the socially undesirable consequences of private capitalist production and
commodity markets. State interventionist capitalism was the solution; private
capitalism free of state controls and interventions was the problem.
“The social democratic solution
thus constrained what private capitalists could do in their profit-driven competition
with one another and their profit-driven relations with employees and customers. But
it left them in the position of receiving and dispensing enterprise profits. Social
democracy thus left private capitalists with the incentive to weaken, deflect, or
remove those constraints. It also provided capitalists with the means—their retained
profits—to do so. In a sense, this was the historic capitalist-socialist compromise
of the 19th and 20th centuries. Capitalists could keep their positions as receivers
and dispensers of enterprise profits, but the conditions of those positions would be
constrained by social(ist) welfare state policies.
“Whatever the benefits, this
historic compromise set the stage for new struggles. Welfare states became contested
terrains: social democrats sought to strengthen and expand them, while capitalists
sought to reduce, weaken, or eliminate them. From gains, the trend moved in the
direction that favored capitalists. The trend turned into a rout in the 1970s and has
remained so ever since. The capitalists used their profits to improve their business
prospects and performance by, among other strategies, undoing welfare statism. By
lobbying, moving production outside national borders, immigration, common markets,
media campaigns, and countless other mechanisms, the capitalists succeeded in bringing
social democracy to its current sorry state.
“Even where trade unions and
socialist and communist parties were strong, they proved no match for the profits
capitalists could use against them.” —Richard D. Wolff, Capitalism Hits the Fan
(2010), pp. 36-37. This is an outline of both the theory of social democracy
and of how history has fully demonstrated the flaw in that theory. Social democracy
has clearly been proven to be a major mistake, and a complete dead-end, for the
working class. Of course this inevitable result was already obvious to revolutionary
Marxists such as Marx, Engels and Lenin even at the very start of this whole
disastrous social democratic experiment!
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION (Britain)
A socialist organization in Britain in the late 19th century which later merged
with other forces and eventually developed into the Communist Party of Great Britain.
“The Social-Democratic Federation was founded in 1884. Among
the leaders there were reformists (Hyndman & Co.),
anarchists and revolutionary Social-Democrats, supporters of Marxism (Harry Quelch,
Tom Mann, Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx and others); the last-named group constituted
the Left wing of the socialist movement in Britain. Engels criticized the Social-Democratic
Federation sharply for dogmatism and sectarianism and for its lack of contact with the
mass working-class movement in Britain and ignoring of the specific features of that
movement. In 1907 the Social-Democratic Federation was renamed the Social-Democratic
Party which in 1911, together with Left elements from the
Independent Labour Party, founded the
British Socialist Party; in 1920 most of the members of that party helped found the
Communist Party of Great Britain.” —Footnote 47, Lenin: SW I (1967).
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GERMANY — Dresden Congress (1903)
“The Dresden Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party was
held between September 13 and September 20, 1903. The main question discussed at the
Congress was the tactics of the Party and the struggle against revisionism. The
revisionist views of E. Bernstein, P. Göhre, E. David, Wolfgang Heine and a few
other German Social-Democrats were criticized by the Congress. A resolution adopted by
an overwhelming majority (288 against 11) said that the Party Congress most decisively
condemned the revisionist efforts to alter the former tried and tested tactics of the
Party, based on the class struggle, tactics that required the winning of political
power by the overthrow of the ruling classes and not by adaptation to the existing
system. The adoption of this resolution had a certain significance in the positive
sense. The Congress, however, was not consistent in the struggle against revisionism;
the revisionists among the German Social-Democrats were not expelled from the Party
and after the Congress continued to spread their opportunist views.” —Note 199,
Lenin: SW I (1967).
SOCIAL IMPERIALIST
Socialist (or Communist) in name, but imperialist in deeds. For example, the
Soviet Union, which was a genuine (if seriously flawed) socialist country while Stalin was
alive, became a social-imperialist country when the revisionists
came to power after Stalin’s death. The U.S.S.R. then engaged in a long inter-imperialist
struggle with the U.S. to see which of the two powers would control the world.
See also:
AFGHANISTAN—Soviet Social-Imperialist
Invasion Of
“Glossary: Social-Imperialism
“In [the Peking Review article]
‘Total Bankruptcy of Soviet Modern Revisionism,’ the August 23 article by Renmin Ribao
Commentator, there is this sentence: ‘The Soviet revisionist renegade clique has long ago
degenerated into a gang of social-imperialists.’ [See
Supplement to issue No. 34.]
“By social-imperialism is meant
imperialism flying the banner of ‘socialism.’ In lashing out at the revisionists of the
Second International who supported the imperialist and colonialist policies of the
bourgeoisie, the great Lenin pointed out that these renegades were a gang of
social-imperialists—‘socialism in words, imperialism in deeds, the growth of
opportunism into imperialism.’
“After usurping Party and state
leadership, the Soviet revisionist renegade clique has brought about a restoration of
capitalism in all spheres of endeavour in the Soviet Union. It has at the same time
frenziedly followed an imperialist policy abroad and redoubled its efforts to gang up
with U.S. imperialism in counter-revolutionary schemes in all parts of the world, vainly
hoping thus to redivide the world between them. Regarding a number of countries as
colonial possessions, the Soviet revisionist renegade clique has savagely plundered and
enslaved those countries, and by means of so-called economic and military ‘aid’ penetrated
into other countries and controlled them. Where these Kremlin traitors are concerned,
socialism is only a banner, the actual deed is imperialism. The current armed occupation
of Czechoslovakia is a total exposure of the Soviet revisionist renegade clique as a gang
of social-imperialists, a typical and concentrated exposure of its ugly features.
“Twenty-eight years ago our great
leader Chairman Mao pointed out: ‘... the proletariat of the capitalist countries is
steadily freeing itself from the social-imperialist influence of the social-democratic
parties and has proclaimed its support for the liberation movement in the colonies and
semi-colonies.’ The social-imperialism of the social-democrats has long been cast
into the dustbin by the proletariat and the broad masses of the revolutionary people. It
is certain that the social-imperialism of the Soviet revisionist renegade clique will go
the same way—completely bankrupt.” —Note in Peking Review, #36, Sept. 6, 1968,
p. 12.
SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE
Most human knowledge is social knowledge rather than individual knowledge. That
is to say, no individual knows all that much, often not even all that much about their own areas
of interest and work, their own specialities. But humanity in its collectivity knows a tremendous
amount. It possesses an astounding amount of social knowledge which is expanding every
single day, whether any one individual lives or dies.
Most people in modern society have some few
vague ideas about how internal combustion engines work, and automobile transmissions, and
perhaps even refrigerators, microwave ovens, TVs, and computers. But those who know anything
more than a few abstract principles about automobile transmissions are generally not the same
folks who know the basic principles about how a computer operating system works, let alone
how to cater a big festival or do successful brain surgery. It is almost certainly true that
there is no one single individual who could entirely by themselves design and successfully
build a modern airliner, or an economical and safe railroad bridge across a major river,
or—entirely with their own exclusive ideas—successfully lead a social revolution. Projects like
these require the knowledge of many people working together; they require social knowledge.
New knowledge is likewise most often
created collectively, in a social way. With the rarest of exceptions, no one genius entirely
figures out any entirely new thing or process. They are virtually always based on earlier steps
by others, and later on will virtually always have their ideas improved or extended by others.
This is true in science too. As brilliant as Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Marx were in their
various fields of science, many others came after them to improve upon and extend their work.
New knowledge, like existing knowledge, is largely social knowledge, and not the exclusive
property of any individual.
And yet, strangely enough, we humans often
tend to exaggerate our own individual knowledge and to deny the truly miniscule part of
social knowledge that any one of us actually possesses. No doubt this tendency is even more
pronounced in individualist bourgeois society which is so fixated on worshiping heroes. But
it is a problem in the revolutionary movement too, and a major reason why even the revolutionary
leaders need to regularly use the mass line to learn from the
masses!
“Do you know how a toilet works? What about a bicycle, or a zipper?
Most people can provide half answers at best. They struggle to explain basic inventions,
let alone more complex and abstract ones. Yet somehow, in spite of people’s ignorance,
they created and navigate the modern world. A new book, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We
Never Think Alone (2017) sets out to tackle this apparent paradox: how can human
thinking be so powerful, yet so shallow?
“Steven Slowman and Philip Fernbach,
two cognitive scientists, draw on evolutionary theory and psychology. They argue that the
mind has evolved to do the bare minimum that improves the fitness of its host. Because
humans are a social species and evolved in the context of collaboration, wherever possible,
abilities have been outsourced. As a result, people are individually rather limited thinkers
and store little information in their own heads. Much knowledge is instead spread through
the community—whose members do not often realize that this is the case.
“The authors call this the illusion of
understanding, and they demonstrate it with a simple experiment. Subjects are asked to rate
their understanding of something, then to write a detailed account of it, and finally to
rate their understanding again. The self-assessments almost invariably drop. The authors see
this effect everywhere, from toilets and bicycles to complex policy issues. The illusion
exists, they argue, because humans evolved as part of a hive mind, and are so intuitively
adept at co-operation that the lines between minds become blurred. Economists and
psychologists talk about the ‘curse of knowledge’: people who know something have a hard
time imagining someone else who does not. The illusion of knowledge works the other way
round: people think they know something because others know it.
“The hive mind, with its seamless
interdependence and expertise-sharing, once helped humans hunt mammoths and now sends them
into space. But in politics it causes problems. Using a toilet without understanding it is
harmless, but changing the health-care system without understanding it is not. Yet people
often have strong opinions about issues they understand little about. And on social media,
surrounded by like-minded friends and followers, opinions are reinforced and become more
extreme. It is hard to reason with someone under the illusion that their beliefs are thought
through, and simply presenting facts is unlikely to change beliefs when those beliefs are
rooted in the values and groupthink of a community.
“The authors tentatively suggest that
making people confront the illusion of understanding will temper their opinions, but this
could have the opposite effect—people respond badly to feeling foolish. Messrs Slowman and
Fernbach show how deep the problem runs, but are short on ideas to fix it....” —“Cognitive
Science: Mind Meld” [book review], The Economist, April 8, 2017, p. 75.
[The bourgeoisie worries about this
problem mostly because their primary concern is always to maintain their class in power by
controlling the ideas of the masses, which in some ways is becoming harder for them to do.
From the proletarian revolutionary perspective there is another factor here, however, which
the bourgeoisie of course tries to hide: Despite the limited individual knowledge and
understanding of society by the masses, people also do have a tendency to form a community
of understanding and action around an ever-deeper appreciation of their own group interests.
Once the political education and actions of the masses can be better guided by a political
party led by those whose own understanding of society and how to advance the struggles of
the masses is deeper and more scientific, and essential tools like the mass
line method of leadership can be systematically used, then finally the collective
social knowledge of the masses can be employed in a way which truly does advance
their real interests. The revolutionary party, too, must employ this wider political social
knowledge of the masses, and fortunately there are in fact ways to do this! —Ed.]
SOCIAL SECURITY PROGRAM (U.S.)
A government-run retirement program for workers in the U.S. which is paid for by deductions
from paychecks while people are working. The ruling class was forced to institute this plan
during the Great Depression of the 1930s as
part of their social welfare programs of the “New Deal” which allowed them to keep conrol
over society. And while it is quite pathetically inadequate, it does at least keep many people
from starving to death in their old age. The ruling class would very much like to get rid of
this and other social programs (see quote below), but it is so popular with the working class
that they have not so far been able to do so.
“When President George W. Bush had tried to privatize Social Security,
a plan pushed by the [ultra-conservative] Cato Institute, he had been forced to retreat
in the face of overwhelming public opposition. The reality was that despite mobilizing
the Tea Party [a rightist mass movement], the big conservative donors had a number of
different priorities from the less affluent followers. Tea Party leaders had deliberately
‘fudged’ their agenda on Social Security in order not to alienate the followers, according
to one study. They talked in vague terms about keeping America from ‘going broke’ but
avoided specifics. Meanwhile, not one grassroots Tea Party supporter encountered by the
study’s authors argued for privatizing Social Security. Entitlement programs aiding the
middle class were in fact so popular with most Americans that they were virtually
sacrosanct. While rich free-market enthusiasts often favored replacing these programs
with market-oriented [i.e., for profit] alternatives, polls showed that virtually
everyone was adamantly opposed to the kinds of changes that Newt Gingrich candidly called
‘right-wing social engineering.’” —Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the
Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016), p. 286.
“Start with Social Security, where the [2024] budget calls for raising the
retirement age—already set to rise to 67—to 69 or 70, with possible further increases as
life expectancy rises. Until Covid produced a huge drop, average U.S. life expectancy at age
65 was steadily rising over time. But there is a huge and growing gap between the number of
years affluent Americans can expect to live and life expectancy for lower-income groups,
including not just the poor but also much of the working class. So raising the retirement age
would fall hard on less fortunate Americans—precisely the people who depend most on Social
Security.” —Paul Krugman, New York Times, National Edition, Oct. 27, 2023.
SOCIAL SCIENCE
See also:
BOURGEOIS “SOCIAL SCIENCE”,
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM,
INTERESTS,
SOCIOLOGY
“Now—since the appearance of [Marx’s] Capital—the materialist
conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition.
And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning
and development of some formation of society—formation of society, mind you, and not
the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc.—another attempt just as
capable of introducing order into the ‘pertinent facts’ as materialism is, that is just
as capable of presenting a living picture of a definite formation, while giving it a
strictly scientific explanation—until then the materialist conception of history will
be a synonym for social science. Materialism is not ‘primarily a scientific conception
of history,’ as [the Narodnik] Mr. Mikhailovsky thinks, but the only scientific
conception of it.” —Lenin, “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are” (1894), LCW 1:142.
“SOCIAL STUDIES”
The name given to the political and social indoctrination of students in American high schools.
One major goal in these “social studies” classes is to get students to believe that the United
States is a “democracy”, and that the “people hold
power”, because formal elections are periodically held (and
despite the fact that these elections are virtually always controlled by the rich and the
media they own). Another primary goal is to instill a solid respect for U.S. laws and
government authorities, in order to make it easier for the ruling bourgeoisie to keep the
masses under control. And of course yet another major goal is to instill a strong sense of
patriotism among students with regard to the nation, including
a willingness to support its endless imperialist wars. Capitalism may also be talked
about, though only from a strongly positive viewpoint. Socialism, if it is mentioned,
will be totally distorted and lied about, and will be absolutely condemned. All this is what
is called a “social education” in American schools: It is basically lies piled upon lies.
“Social studies is not rocket science. It’s more difficult.” —Jim
Cameron, who led a committee charged with defining standards for Michigan’s social
studies curriculum, answering divisive questions like whether the U.S. is a democracy
or a republic, quoted in the New York Times, April 8, 2019, p. A3.
[Of course for the
bourgeoisie “social science” is harder than rocket science! It is, after all, a
determined effort to get students to believe things which are both ridiculous and false,
and which (for the largest part of the population) go against their own class interests.
—Ed.]
[Refer to large chart at the right:] This is a comparison of levels of equality and social
justice within the different member countries of the OECD. Of
course no country under capitalism, even the best of them, will have anything close to true
equality or genuine social justice. But this chart demonstrates that many countries,
including those in Scandinavia, rate much higher than the richest imperialist countries, and
especially as compared to the United States. The U.S., though the richest of all countries,
is one of the worst as far as the contrast of wealth and poverty goes; and the current
trend is for it to get worse yet.
Computer programs. That is, the code, or “instructions”, which control the operation of
computers. This is usually divided into two main categories, first, the system software
(or the operating system) which handles the most basic operations such as the overall
control of the computer and the input and output of data; and second, application
software—such as word processors, database programs, Internet browsers, photo editors,
etc.
A investment fund set up and owned by a sovereign nation. In the contemporary world some
countries—especially those enriched by their oil or other exports—accumulate massive amounts
of foreign currency and seek to invest that money in foreign assets (by buying corporations or
stocks and bonds of corporations and foreign governments). The chart at the right shows the
countries with the largest sovereign wealth funds as of December 2016, in trillions of U.S.
dollars. [From the Economist, Feb 25, 2017, p. 77.]
During the socialist era the Soviet Union had little foreign debt. But after socialism was
transformed into state capitalism by the Soviet revisionists economic problems gradually got
worse and worse. This necessitated the development of significant amounts of foreign debt.
As their economic crisis got really severe during the 1980s this debt began to grow in an
exponential fashion. The chart at the right shows the rapid expansion of the foreign debt of
the USSR during the period 1985-1991. The figures are in billions of U.S. dollars and do not
take into account the Soviet satelite countries of Eastern Europe (which were also in growing
economic crisis). [Source: S. Sinelnikov, Budgetary Crisis in Russia: 1985-1995 (Moscow:
1995).]