Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

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Notice! Because of its growing size, this file has been split into these separate files: HA.htm  Words and phrases starting with the letters Ha-Hd.

HE.htm  Words and phrases starting with the letters He-Hh.

HI.htm  Words and phrases starting with the letters Hi-Hn.

HO.htm  Words and phrases starting with the letters Ho-Ht.

HU.htm  Words and phrases starting with the letters Hu-Hx.

HY.htm  Words and phrases starting with the letters Hy-Hz. Although this older H.htm file still exists (in case there are still links to its contents),

all new entries and revisions to old entries are being made to the above files.

H-BOMB

See: HYDROGEN BOMB

HAI RUI DISMISSED FROM OFFICE [Old style: HAI JUI DISMISSED FROM OFFICE]

This is a stage play which was revised and reissued in 1961 by its author Wu Han, a Vice-Mayor of Beijing, for the political purposes of opposing Mao Zedong and his revolutionary line in China, of attempting to secure the rehabilitation of deposed Defense Minister Peng Teh-huai, and to encourage all those on the right in China who sought to criticize and discredit Mao and the Left.

Wu Han was a (non-Marxist) historian, and the play is nominally about a Ming Dynasty official, Hai Rui, who was unjustly dismissed from office by an arrogant emperor. In actuality the revised play was an allegory about the dismissal by Mao and the CCP of Peng Teh-huai as Defense Minister. The rightists and revisionists in the Party objected to that dismissal, and sought to force Mao to return Peng to power. (Peng sought to emulate the professional military policies in the Soviet Union, and opposed the emphasis that Mao and the Left wanted to continue putting on political education in the Peoples Liberation Army.)

However, a few years later, in November 1965, Yao Wenyuan wrote an important article entitled On the New Historical Drama Hai Jui Dismissed From Office which exposed the real right-wing political aims of that play. It was published in Shanghai, but suppressed in Beijing. This led to considerable political commotion throughout the country, which became one of the first battles of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. And it soon led to the fall of both Wu Han and the Mayor of Beijing, Peng Zhen [Peng Chen].

HAJJ

The pilgramage to Mecca which all Muslims are supposed to do once in their life. A hajji is a Muslim who has completed this pilgramage.

HAIRCUT [Capitalist Finance]

1. Bourgeois slang term for the amount of reduction in the value of an asset (usually in percentage terms), from its current market value, when it is being used as collateral for a loan (which in turn is usually taken out for the purposes of financial speculation). For example, if $1000 worth of U.S. Treasury Bills are being used as collateral there might be a 10% haircut, meaning that this collateral would only serve for a loan of $900. With $1000 worth of some riskier asset (such as stock options), the haircut might be much larger, say 30%, and suffice only to receive a loan of $700. However the lender has a lien on the entire asset (with a value of $1000 in these cases) in the event of a default on the loan. (Example taken from the Wikipedia.)

The size of the haircut is thus an important factor in the degree of leverage the speculator can arrange, and an increase in haircut percentages in times of financial instability can lead to greater degrees of peril for speculators in Repos and similar gambles.

2. More generally, any reduction in the value of an asset, or set of assets, forced by an outside agency (such as the government). For example: U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is faulted by critics for not imposing haircuts on AIGs counterparties (mostly big banks) as part of the insurance companys bail-out.... [Economist, Jan. 19, 2013, p. 32.]

HAMAGUCHI ASSASSINATION INCIDENT

The attempted assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Osachi Hamaguchi by fascist militarists on November 14, 1930.

The economic crisis of world capitalism in 1929 gave Japans economy some rude shocks. Industrial and agricultural production was seriously curtailed. Class contradictions in the country grew acute. The workers movement and peasants movement were surging forward. In these circumstances, the contradictions within the Japanese ruling circles were sharpening all the time. Right-wing fascist organizations which were unbridled in their activities stepped up their collusion with officialdom and the warlords.

Installed in June 1929, the Hamaguchi cabinet took over intact the reactionary policies at home and abroad of its predecessor the Tanaka cabinet. In the spring of 1930, the Hamaguchi cabinet signed the London Naval Treaty, after having arrived at a compromise with the United States and Britain on the llimitation of the strength of auxiliary vessels. The military authorities and reactionary Right-wing organizations considered the time most opportune for advocating militarism. They took advantage of the signing of the treaty to charge the government with weakness and incompetence and called for transformation of the domestic system to consolidate the reactionary military dictatorship.

On November 14 that year, members of the Right-wing organization Patriotic Society (Aikokusha) made an attempt on the life of Prime Minister Osachi Hamaguchi at Tokyo Station, seriously wounding him. At the end of the year, officers of the General Staff and Ministry of War organized the Cherry Club (Sakurakai). The following March, they plotted a coup detat to set up a transformation regime to be headed by War Minister Kazushige Ugaki. Internal strife killed the plan. Reijiro Wakatsuki, boss of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Minseito), assumed the premiership in April and the pace of preparations for unleashing a war of aggression was quickened. Meanwhile, he did his utmost to creat public opinion for aggression against China, and there was a great deal of ballyhoo at the time of Manchuria and Mongolia being the Japanese lifeline. In 1931, the September 18 Incident took place, and Japan invaded and occupied northeast China. For Your Reference note, Peking Review, #50, Dec. 11, 1970, pp. 13-14.

HAMPTON, Fred (1948-1969)

An important young African-American revolutionary and leading member of the Black Panther Party who was assassinated at the age of 21 by Chicago police and the FBI in a notorious joint attack on December 4, 1969. Hampton was an inspiring and effective revolutionary leader, and the U.S. government was desperate to put an end to his speaking and organizing work. Hampton had been drugged by an undercover FBI agent and was sound asleep when the attack on his apartment occurred:

At 4:00 a.m., the heavily armed police team arrived at the site, dividing into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45, they stormed in the apartment.

[Another Panther member] Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. He was killed instantly, firing off a single round which was later determined to be a reflexive reaction in his death convulsions after being shot by the raiding team; this was the only shot the Panthers fired.

Automatic gunfire then converged at the head of the bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to wake up as a result of the barbiturates that the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink. He was lying on a mattress in the bedroom with his pregnant girlfriend. Two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, and fellow Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:

Thats Fred Hampton.

Is he dead?... Bring him out.

Hes barely alive.

Hell make it.

Two shots were heard, which it was later discovered were fired point blank in Hamptons head. According to Deborah Johnson, one officer then said:

Hes good and dead now.

Hamptons body was dragged into the doorway of the bedroom and left in a pool of blood. The officers then directed their gunfire towards the remaining Panthers, who were hiding in another bedroom. They were wounded, then beaten and dragged into the street, where they were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and the attempted murder of the officers. They were each held on US $100,000 bail.

Wikipedia article on Fred Hampton, (accessed on Jan. 28, 2013). Further information about Fred Hampton and his murder is available there. For even more extensive information about Fred Hamptons life and his cowardly assassination by the government, see the book The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther (2010), by Jeffrey Haas.

We expected about twenty Panthers to be in the apartment when the police raided the place. Only two of those black niggers were killed, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. FBI Special Agent Gregg York, FBI Secrets: An Agents Expose, by M. Wesley Swearingen, (Boston: South End Press, 1995)

You can kill the revolutionary, but you cant kill the revolution. Fred Hampton

HAN CHAUVINISM [In China]

Beside the numerically overwhelmingly dominant Han nationality in China, there are more than 50 minority nationalities, who (in 1977) made up 6% of the total population, but who inhabited regions making up 50% to 60% of the total area of China. The Han nationality had a long history of chauvinism toward these other nationalities. The Guomindang [Kuomintang] denied that many minority nationalities existed in China, and labelled all those except the Han nationality as tribes who they attempted to forcibly assimilate into the Han culture, and at the same time oppressed and exploited them. This Han chauvinism was qualitatively lessened after the success of the 1949 Revolution, though by no means completely eliminated. Since the return to capitalism after Maos death, Han chauvinism has again been on the rise, in parallel with (and in large part leading to) rising minority nationalism especially in Tibet, Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu [Sinkiang], and other western provinces of China.

Eighth, we must go on opposing Han chauvinism. It is one kind of bourgeois ideology. The Han people are so numerous, they are liable to look down on the minority nationalities and not to help them wholeheartedly, so we must relentlessly fight Han chauvinism. Naturally, narrow nationalism may arise among the minority nationalities, that also is to be opposed. But of the two the chief one, the one to be opposed first, is Han chauvinism. So long as the comrades of Han nationality take the correct attitude and treat the minority nationalities with real fairness, so long as the nationality policy they follow and the stand they take on the question of nationality relations are entirely Marxist and do not reflect bourgeois viewpoints, that is to say, so long as they are free of Han chauvinism, it is comparatively easy to overcome narrow nationalist views among the minority nationalities. At present there is still a good deal of Han chauvinism, for example, monopolizing the affairs of the minority nationalities, showing no respect for their customs and folk-ways, being self-rightous, looking down on them and saying how backward they are. At the National Conference of our Party last March, I said that China could not do without its minority nationalities. There are scores of nationalities in China. The regions inhabited by the minority nationalities are more extensive in area than those inhabited by the Han nationality and abound in material wealth of all kinds. Our national economy cannot do without the economy of the minority nationalities. Mao, The Debate on the Co-Operative Transformation of Agriculture and the Current Class Struggle (Oct. 11, 1955), SW 5:229-230.

HANSEN, ALVIN (1887-1975)

An American bourgeois economist and follower of John Maynard Keynes, who not only popularized Keyness ideas in the United States, but also extended them to some degree. He taught at Harvard University and had many graduate students who themselves became well known Keynesian or semi-Keynesian (Bastard Keynesian) economists, including Paul Samuelson and James Tobin.

See also: STAGNATION THESIS

HARD WORK

See also: WORK (Revolutionary)

Hard work is like a load placed before us, challenging us to shoulder it. Some loads are light, some heavy. Some people prefer the light to the heavy; they pick the light and leave the heavy to others. That is not a good attitude. Some comrades are different; they leave ease and comfort to others and carry the heavy loads themselves; they are the first to bear hardships, the last to enjoy comforts. They are good comrades. We should all learn from their communist spirit. Mao, On the Chungking Negotiations (Oct. 17, 1943), SW 4:58.

HARMAD VAHINI

A term used in India: literally, army of thugs.

See also: HERMAD

HARTAL

A term used in India and south Asia, often even in English articles, for a labor strike.

See also: BANDH

HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS

See: UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

HEALTH INSURANCE  In the U.S.

According to a 2009 Harvard Medical School study, as many as 45,000 people die annually in the United States because they lack health insurance. As one of the studys coauthors pointed out, this works out to about one death every twelve minutes. Its unclear how President Obamas stunted 2010 health care law will change those numbers.... Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014), p. 105. [The study referred to is Andrew P. Wilper, et al., Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults, online at: http://www.pnhp.org/excessdeaths/health-insurance-and-mortality-in-US-adults.pdf]

HEDGE FUND [Capitalist Finance]

A private and aggressively speculative investment fund usually managed by Wall Street insiders for the benefit of themselves and other very rich investors. The first hedge funds were designed to try to preserve capital during economic and financial downturns, which is why they have that name. (Hedging against market downturns.) But the nature of most hedge funds today is that of highly speculative operations hoping to make profits far above those achievable through ordinary investments in stocks and bonds. They often speculate in foreign currencies and their exchange rates, the prices of bulk commodities, and in higher profit (but riskier) foreign investments. This leads them to shift large amounts of hot money rapidly from one investment to another, and from country to country. They frequently use sophisticated forms of arbitrage, sometimes based on complicated mathematical models. In addition they often rely on better financial information, on insider knowledge (though that is supposedly illegal), high-speed computers to make rapid market trades, and other methods whichin effectallow them to cheat other investors.

In most countries hedge funds are only very loosely regulated, if at all. They have grown rapidly in recent decades and are a major indication of the financialization of the U.S. and world capitalist economies. They are an additional destabilizing factor in contemporary capitalism. As of around 2010, U.S. hedge funds have assets under management estimated to be more than $1.9 trillion dollars.

See also: LONG-TERM CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

HEDONISM [In Ethics]

The view that good means pleasure (or relief from suffering), or that everything is (or should be) done for pleasure (or to relieve suffering).

Hedonism: Maximizing Pleasure and Minimizing Pain. Another very common ethical theory is that pleasure is the greatest good, and pain the greatest evil. Therefore, morality consists in striving to maximize the amount of pleasure for everyone, and striving to minimize the amount of pain. Like most ethical theories, this sounds fairly plausible at first, but cannot withstand even a cursory critical examination.

For one thing, human beings have many other needs and interests besides pleasure and avoiding pain, and far more than just those two things goes into making the good life.

Suppose some society could be constructed where everyone (or at least most people) were both very happy and as free of all pain as could reasonably be arranged. But suppose this society was also an authoritarian dictatorship, where people had no political freedom, no control over their own lives, were severely exploited, and so forth. Perhaps this might be some sort of fascist society where the people were nevertheless psychologically happy because of both extreme indoctrination and the liberal availability of hallucinatory drugs. Obviously this would be a nightmare society, and not at all a moral society. Even a somewhat milder version of this sort of thing, such as is pictured in Aldous Huxleys Brave New World (1932), is a horrible nightmare.

The roots of this ethical theory, too, go way back. Epicurus (341-270 BCE) held that the practical goal of philosophy was to secure happiness (or at least to avoid all discomfort), and that pleasure was the sum total of happiness. The modern theory of promote pleasure, minimize pain, however, derives primarily from the utilitarians (most of whom would be better called hedonists, if that did not have such negative connotations). Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), in particular, is responsible for giving utilitarianism its hedonistic twist. Utilitarianism, as its name suggests, was originally concerned more with utility or usefulness, but critics raised the question of useful for what?, and that led Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and other utilitarians into this very one-sided hedonist perversion of what was originally a much more sensible ethical theory. [...]

Experiments have been done on lab rats that clearly demonstrate that there is a whole lot more to the good life than merely experiencing even the most intense feelings of pleasure. In the brains of all higher animals (and perhaps many of the lower ones as well), there is a region known as the pleasure center. Tiny wires have been inserted into this region of a rats brain, and things set up so that when the rat pushes a lever, its pleasure center is stimulated. The pleasure is so intense that the rat keeps pushing the lever over and over again, until it is physically totally exhausted and unable to continue. It may not even eat, drink, or do anything else. And eventually it dies. Human drug addicts are sometimes perhaps in a similar situation, although they generally still have the sense to at least pull away for some food, water, and sleep once in a while. Nevertheless, it should be obvious from examples like this that the simple-minded theory that happiness and the avoidance of pain are all that matters cannot reasonably be considered to be the sole basis of either the good life or of any sort of morality. S.H., An Introduction to the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Class Interest Theory of Ethics, Chapter 1, section 1.2C, from the draft of 6/14/07 as posted at: http://www.massline.org/Philosophy/ScottH/MLM-Ethics-Ch1-2.pdf

HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831)

German idealist philosopher who conceived of the world as a single organism developing through stages via its own internal dialectical logic, and gradually coming to embody reason.

Hegels most important and positive contribution to philosophy was his development of dialectics, which was adopted by Marx and then reconstructed in a rational, materialist form.

In ethics, Hegel emphasized the collective nature of morality and argued that it could not be understood except in terms of the social relations within the family, among individuals, and within the state.

See also: Philosophical doggerel about Hegel.

Hegels logic cannot be applied in its given form, it cannot be taken as given. One must separate out from it the logical (epistemological) nuances, after purifying them from the mysticism of ideas: that is still a big job. Lenin, Conspectus of Hegels Book Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1915), LCW 38:266.

Although Hegel himself was an admirer of the autocratic Prussian state, in whose service he was as a professor at Berlin University, Hegels teachings were revolutionary. Hegels faith in human reason and its rights, and the fundamental thesis of Hegelian philosophy that the universe is undergoing a constant process of change and development, led some of the disciples of the Berlin philosopherthose who refused to accept the existing situationto the idea that the struggle against this situation, the struggle against existing wrong and prevalent evil, is also rooted in the universal law of eternal development. If all things develop, if institutions of one kind give place to others, why should the autocracy of the Prussian king or of the Russian tsar, the enrichment of an insignificant minority at the expense of the vast majority, or the domination of the bourgeoisie over the people, continue for ever? Hegels philosophy spoke of the development of the mind and of ideas; it was idealistic. From the development of the mind it deduced the development of nature, of man, and of human, social relations. While retaining Hegels idea of the eternal process of development, Marx and Engels rejected the preconceived idealist view; turning to life, they saw that it is not the development of mind that explains the development of nature but that, on the contrary, the explanation of mind must be derived from nature, from matter. Lenin, Frederick Engels (1896), LCW 2:21.

HEGELIAN DIALECTICS VS. MATERIALIST DIALECTICS

By the way, half intentionally and half from lack of insight, he [Dühring] practices deception [in his review of volume I of Marxs Capital]. He knows very well that my method of presentation is not Hegelian, since I am a materialist and Hegel is an idealist. Hegels dialectics is the basic form of all dialectics, but only after it has been stripped of its mystical form, and it is precisely this which distinguishes my method. Marx, Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, March 6, 1968, in Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence (Moscow: 1975), p. 187; in a slightly different translation in MECW 42:544.

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of the Idea, he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of the Idea. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.

The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticized nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of Das Kapital, it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre, epigones [inferior imitators] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel ... as a dead dog. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegels hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmation recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Afterward to the Second German Edition (Jan. 24, 1873), (International ed., pp. 19-20; Penguin ed., p. 102-3).

HEGELIAN TRIADS

A conception of dialectics in which an initial state or situation (the thesis) is transformed via its opposite (the antithesis) into a new state (the synthesis). Although this is sometimes a helpful way of looking at particular cases of dialectical development, it is also rather simplistic or misleading in other cases.

It is often stated that Hegel himself did not use this terminology, but at the very least the idea is frequently implicit in his writings. Similarly some Marxists have looked down on this terminology, though the creators of revolutionary Marxism have sometimes used these terms themselves.

See also: NEGATION (In Dialectics) (and especially the quote from Mao there), NEGATION OF THE NEGATION, SUBLATION

Triad (Greek, trias)in philosophy it is the formula of three-stage development. The idea of three-stage development was first formulated by the Greek Neo-Platonic philosophers, particularly by Proclus, and was expressed in the works of the German idealist philosophers Ficte and Schelling. The triad was, however, developed most fully in the idealist philosophy of Hegel, who considered that every process of development traverses three stagesthesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The second stage is the negation of the first, which transformed into its opposite by transition to the second stage. The third stage is the negation of the second, i.e., the negation of the negation, which means a return to the form existing at the outset that is now enriched by a new content and is on a higher level. Note 47, LCW 1. [The note goes on to state that (in some cases at least) this triad notion is a scheme into which reality has been forced quite artificially.]

And so [according to the Narodnik Mikhailovsky], the materialists rest their case on the incontrovertibility of the dialectical process! In other words, they base their sociological theories on Hegelian triads. Here we have the stock method of accusing Marxism of Hegelian dialectics, an accusation that might be thought to have been worn threadbare enough by Marxs bourgeois critics. Unable to advance any fundamental argument against the doctrine, these gentlemen fastened on Marxs manner of expression and attacked the origin of the theory, thinking thereby to undermine its essence. And Mr. Mikhailovsky makes no bones about resorting to such methods. He uses a chapter from Engelss Anti-Dühring as a pretext. Replying to Dühring, who had attacked Marxs dialectics, Engels says that Marx never dreamed of proving anything by means of Hegelian triads, that Marx only studied and investigated the real process, and that the sole criterion of theory recognized by him was its conformity to reality. If, however, it sometimes happened that the development of some particular social phenomenon fitted in with the Hegelian scheme, namely, thesisnegationnegation of the negation, there is nothing surprising about that, for it is no rare thing in nature at all. And Engels proceeds to cite examples from natural history (the development of a seed) and the social sphereas, for instance, that first there was primitive communism, then private property, and then the capitalist socialization of labor; or that first there was primitive materialism, then idealism, and then scientific materialism, and so forth. It is clear to everybody that the main weight of Engelss argument is that materialists must correctly and accurately depict the actual historical process, and that insistence on dialectics, the selection of examples to demonstrate the correctness of the triad, is nothing but a relic of the Hegelianism out of which scientific socialism has grown, a relic of the manner of expression. And, indeed, once it has been categorically declared that to prove anything by triads is absurd, and that nobody even thought of doing so, what significance can attach to examples of dialectical processes? Is it not obvious that this merely points to the origin of the doctrine and nothing more? Lenin, What the Friends of the People Are (1894), LCW 1:163-164.

[It should be noted that years later Lenin made a deeper investigation of Hegels dialectics, and at that time developed a further appreciation for the concepts of dialectical contradiction and negation, though of course he never adopted the simplistic notion that all phenomena must necessarily conform to the Hegelian triad scheme. S.H.]

HEGEMONY [Pronounced: huh-JEM-mah-nee]

Domination, or predominent influence over others, or over other countries. When Alexander the Great became Hegemon over the Greek world, that meant he was the big boss. In the modern capitalist-imperialist world, hegemony is a word often used to describe the domination by imperialist countries like the U.S. over Third World countries.

Hegemony is also a matter of concern in the ideological sphere, where preparing the ground for revolution means in considerable part undermining the current bourgeois ideological hegemony in the working class. (Antonio Gramsci is one person who talks a lot about this, though often in rather obscure ways.)

See also: NEO-COLONIALISM

HEIDEGGER, Martin (1889-1976)

German existentialist philosopher who was influenced by (and sympathetic to) Naziism. Many of the roots of his worldview go back to German Romanticism and to a focus on peoples conception of their place in the world. His book Sein und Zeit (1927) [Being and Time] attempts to discuss the very abstract concept of Being (or existencebut note the mystical capital B!) in the usual absurdly obscure and incoherent metaphysical way. According to Heidegger, modern humanity has lost the nearness and shelter of Being (whatever that means exactly!) and we are no longer at home in the world as primitive human beings were. This actually seems to be a reflection of bourgeois angst in the midst of their own decaying social world order.

Heideggers notorious 1933 speech, The Role of the University in the New Reich, called upon Germany to move itself upward into the primordial realm of the powers of Being (whatever that means!) under the leadership of the Nazi party. His seminars of 1933-35 likewise bring out the major Nazi influence on Heidegger. [ See: Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-35, Yale, 2009. ] Many adherents of Continental Philosophy, including some on the self-proclaimed Left, have tried to excuse Heidegger as having had only a minor flirtation with Naziism, but the evidence shows it was much more than that. (He was a member of the Nazi party from 1933 until 1945.) It is hard to understand what anyone can see of value in Heidegger, let alone what those into contemporary academic Marxism imagine that they see there!

HEISENBERG UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

A principle within quantum mechanics that states that certain complementary pairs of physical properties of particlessuch as position and momentumcannot both be precisely known at the same time. In other words, the more accurately one of the two complementary properties is known, the less accurately the other can be known at that time. According to Werner Heisenberg, the idealist German physicist who first formulated this principle, this is due to the supposed fact that that below very tiny thresholds the combination of these pairs of complementary properties actually have no well-defined values at all! A much more sensible (and more materialist) interpretation of this principle is just that it is not a statement about reality itself being undefined below tiny thresholds, but rather a statement about the limitation of the theory and equations of quantum mechanics itself to determine what that reality is below those tiny thresholds.

In much popular usage the term uncertainty principle is misused or abused, or at least is quite misleading. One example of this is the common confusion between the uncertainty principle and the related, but somewhat different, observer effectthat an act of observation or measurement itself has an effect on the properties of the thing being observed, or in other words changes it. Of course this is certainly not always the case in the macroworld, and recent research indicates that it may not always be the case in the microworld either.

HELIX

A coiled shape, such as that of a telephone cord; i.e., a spiral in three dimensions.

See NEGATION OF THE NEGATION for a pictorial illustration and further discussion in relation to DIALECTICS

Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes). Lenin, On the Question of Dialectics (1915), LCW 38:363. [A fuller version of this quotation is included in the entry for HUMAN KNOWLEDGE .]

HELVÉTIUS, Claude Adrien (1715-1771)

French materialist philosopher of the Enlightenment. Marx points out that Helvétius based his views on Locke, and summarized his philosophy as follows: The sensory qualities and self-love, enjoyment and correctly understood personal interest are the basis of all morality. The natural equality of human intelligences, the unity of progress of reason and progress of industry, the natural goodness of man, and the omnipotence of education, are the main features of his system. [MECW 4:130]

HERACLITUS OF EPHESUS (c. 535-c. 475 BCE)

Early Greek philosopher who emphasized many important dialectical themes such as the constancy of change. While Heraclitus himself seems to have understood the underlying unity of the world despite its pervasive and inherent dialectical contradictions, his later follower Cratylus put forward many idealistic views such as that there is no single ultimate reality.

It is not possible to step into the same river twice. Heraclitus, quoted by Plato in his dialog, Cratylus.

Conflict is the mother of all happenings. Heraclitus, illustrating his deep appreciation of dialectics.

Nature loves to hide. Heraclitus. [The profound idea here seems to be that the true and correct understanding of the world can only come over time though very extensive and careful investigations. S.H.]

HERITAGE FOUNDATION

See: THINK TANK

HERMAD or HARMAD

A term used in India for an armed goon or thug, often of lumpenproletarian origin. The revisionist and social-fascist so-called Communist Party of India (Marxist) [or CPM] has organized hermad gangs in the state of West Bengal to attack the masses and mass movements (such as those of the Adivasis in the Lalgarh area), and to serve as an auxiliary force to the police in working to suppress the rebellions of the people against their exploitive and oppressive rule on behalf of the capitalists and landlords.

HERZEN, Alexander [Aleksandr Ivanovich] (1812-1870)

Prominent Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher and author. He is sometimes called the father of Russian socialism, but was more clearly one of the fathers of Russian radical populism (the Narodniks and later the Socialist-Revolutionaries). He is credited with creating the political climate that led to the emancipation of the Russian serfs in 1861.

HIC RHODUS, HIC SALTUS!

[Latin: Here is Rhodes, here is where you jump!] An epigram which is the traditional Latin translation of the punchline from Aesops fable The Boastful Athlete . It is quoted by Hegel and then by Marx, and references the story of a man who boasted that when he was in Rhodes he performed a tremendous athletic leap that was witnessed there. The epigram calls his bluff: OK, lets say this is Rhodes; lets see you jump here and now! The idea is that we dont want to just hear you tell of all the wonders you can do, we want to see them for ourselves!

Hegel also gave a version of the same idea in German which translates roughly as: Here is the rose, here is where the dance should be. Marx quotes the epigram in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and also in the last sentence of Chapter 5 in Capital.

For a longer and more thorough explanation see: http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/h/i.htm

HIDDEN-VARIABLES INTERPRETATION (of Quantum Mechanics)

The view that while quantum mechanics correctly describes the probabilities affecting the behavior of particles in the micro-world based on the average behavior of individual particles, that there are nevertheless specific cause-and-effect processes at work which determine the behavior of each individual particle. Since these specific and deterministic causes are not yet known to us, they are called hidden-variables. This interpretation of quantum mechanics is, therefore, a materialist one (as opposed to the notorious Copenhagen Interpretation and the Many-Worlds Theory).

Albert Einstein promoted the Hidden-Variables theory: I am quite convinced that someone will eventually come up with a theory whose objects, connected by laws, are not probabilities but considered facts. [Quoted in Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way (1988).]

HIGH-YIELD DEBT

A common euphemism in contemporary bourgeois financial circles for junk bonds, thus making these highly risky investments more attractive to suckers (investors).

HIGHER EDUCATION FUNDING  U.S.

The long developing economic crisis of capitalism took a major turn for the worse beginning in 2008. This has affected more and more aspects of society. In the chart at the right, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, we see just one of the ways in which American education has been slashed because of the crisis, and the resolve of the ruling class to take out the crisis on the backs of the people rather than trim their record corporate profits. Only two states have been able to increase their higher education funding per student during this period, the two small states that have a (temporary) oil-shale boom.

In the past five years, state cuts to higher education funding have been severe and almost universal. After adjusting for inflation:

• States are spending $2,353 or 28 percent less per student on higher education, nationwide, in the current 2013 fiscal year than they did in 2008, when the recession hit.

• Every state except for North Dakota and Wyoming is spending less per student on higher education than they did prior to the recession.

• In many states the cuts over the last five years have been remarkably deep. Eleven states have cut funding by more than one-third per student, and two states  Arizona and New Hampshire  have cut their higher education spending per student in half.

Recent Deep State Higher Education Cuts May Harm Students and the Economy for Years to Come, by Phil Oliff, et al., of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 19, 2013. [The report goes on to point out that these cuts have led to huge increases in tuition costs, layoffs of large numbers of college teachers, reductions in courses offered, and other long-lasting harm to higher education in the U.S.]

HIJAB [Arabic]

1. A womans head scarf.

2. The doctrine among many Muslims that women should be required to dress very conservatively, often carried even to the male chauvinist extreme of demanding that women cover every inch of their body and completely hide their bodily form, as with the tent-like garment called the burqa.

HILFERDING, Rudolf (1877-1941)

A prominent Austrian-German semi-Marxist economist and social-democratic (revisionist) theoretician and politician, known especially for his 1910 book, Finance Capital, which Lenin made extensive use of in preparing his important work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. For a discussion of Hilferdings book, see the separate entry for Finance Capital.

Though trained as a medical doctor, Hilferding shifted more and more into writing for the Social-Democratic publications of Austria and Germany, especially on economic subjects. Karl Kautsky was his mentor, and Hilferding became one of the top leaders of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany.

In response to Eugen von Böhm-Bawerks bourgeois attack on Marxist economics, Hilferding wrote a widely read defense of Marx. But in other writings he disagreed with the many suggestions in Marx that capitalism might eventually suffer a catastrophic economic breakdown. Later on he carried that questionable opinion to a really ridiculous extreme when he suggested that modern finance capitalism, in the form of monopolistic trusts and cartels, had (or would soon) become so organized that it should be able to eliminate economic crises entirely! (See: Organized Capitalism) This showed that his understanding of the causes of capitalist economic crises was also incorrect. (He was a partisan of the falling rate of profit theory of economic crises.) However many of his conceptions of how capitalism had changed in the imperialist era, which he discussed at length in Finance Capital, were indeed basically correct.

After the defeat of Germany in World War I and the removal of the Kaiser (emperor), Hilferding was on two occasions the Finance Minister in the bourgeois social-democratic governments, including during the period of hyper-inflation, which he and the government were quite inept at dealing with. These Social-Democratic governments were also responsible for the policies that led to the murder of many genuine communist revolutionaries, including Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

Since Hilferding was a Jew (and at least nominally a socialist), he had to flee Germany when the Nazis came to power in 1933. He lived in Denmark, Switzerland and then France, where he was arrested and turned over to the Gestapo (German political police) during World War II. He died in 1941 while in their custody, almost certainly murdered by them.

HINDUTVA

A reactionary Hindu nationalist. In India there is a federation of Hindutva groups called the Sangh Parivar, which strongly leans towards fascism. Included in this federation are the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers Organization, or RSS), the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian Peoples Party, or BJP), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, or VHP), and the Bajrang Dal (the youth wing of the VHP). Gangs of individuals from these groups often operate as fascist thugs and attack not only communist revolutionaries, but also people adhering to different religions including Muslims and Christians.

HINTON, Joan (1921-2010)

American physicist who abandoned physics in outraged disgust after the U.S. used the atomic bomb to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, and who later became a Maoist and farmworker in China. She was the youngest scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project which produced the first atomic bombs, but was heartsick after the U.S. totally unnecessarily used the bombs to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians in Japan. She became an outspoken peace activist and opponent of nuclear weapons.

In 1948 Hinton went to China on what was initially intended to be just a prolonged visit. But she remained there the rest of her life, living in a rural cooperative and then in a village connected with a state farm. Together with her husband, Erwin Engst, an American dairy-cattle expert, she designed and constructed continuous-flow milk pasteurizers and other farm machinery. She was an ardent supporter of the Chinese revolution and Mao Zedong, and didnt waver in her revolutionary enthusiasm. In 2008 she said: Of course I was 100 percent behind everything that happened in the Cultural Revolution. It was a terrific experience.

Joan Hintons brother was the well-known writer about revolutionary China, William Hinton. (See below.)

HINTON, William (1919-2004)

[To be added... ]

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

Marxist social science; the science of society including its most general laws and features, its origin, the motive forces leading to its change and development; the application of dialectical materialism to society. The principles of historical materialism include (but are by no means limited to) the following important points:

1) That human society and history can be understood scientifically;

2) That, however, material production is the basis of social life, and social consciousness is the result of social being;

3) That people tend to believe that which is in their own material interests to believe;

4) But that the dominant ideas of any age are those of the ruling class;

5) That society and history are made by the people, by the masses of human beings;

6) That, however, the prevailing mode of production conditions and sets limits to the changes which can be made in society at any given time;

7) That human society is composed of social classes defined primarily by the relationships of different groups of people to the means of production;

8) That the history of society, since classes first developed in ancient times, is the history of class struggle;

9) That at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production.... From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters [Marx, Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Peking: 1976), pp. 3-4.];

10) That at that point an era of social revolution begins [Marx, ibid.];

11) That society must ultimately progress to the stage of communism where classes have ceased to exist;

12) That between capitalism and communism there must be an intervening transition period (socialism), which can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

There are whole areas of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory which are really subsidiary parts of historical materialism. One such is the MLM theory of ethics based on class interests; another such sphere is the mass line theory of revolutionary leadership.

In social science (properly so called), historical materialism is the central organizing theory, and very little in society makes any sense except in terms of it. The fact that (for ideological reasons) so few people in the U.S. today are at all acquainted with historical materialism thus explains why so many are utterly perplexed by what is happening in the social world all around them. Society, rich & poor, economic crises, politics in general, international wars, and so forth, are all quite mysterious to them because they lack this central organizing theory to make sense of it all.

See also: SOCIAL SCIENCE

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM [Book by Bukharin]

Nikolai Bukharin was reputed to be one of the leading theoreticians (after Lenin, of course) of the Bolshevik Party. In 1919 Bukharin and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky wrote a book called The ABC of Communism which was a commentary on, and a much more detailed exposition of, the Bolshevik Party programme adopted at the Eighth Party Congress in March of that year. That volume was meant to explain the Programme, its social context, and the reasons why it said what it did, to the workers and rank-and-file members of the Party. Just how good it was in doing this is open to debate. In any case, in 1921 Bukharin published his book Historical Materialism, which covered a lot of the same topics but in a much more abstract and theoretical sort of way. On the whole, this is a less successful and more philosophically and theoretically dubious book than the earlier volume.

While this book is called Historical Materialism, it does not do a very good job of bringing out and emphasizing the main principles of historical materialism [see entry above]. Bukharin took bourgeois sociology seriously, and studied it extensively. As his liberal bourgeois sympathizer, Alfred Meyer, notes, Bukharin sought to read, digest and incorporate in his writings a great deal of contemporary bourgeois sociology. This book shows that strong tendency, and it is in effect sort of a blend of Marxist points of view and bourgeois sociological views and ways of presenting things. This leads to a lot of verbiage, with the central ideas of historical materialism being somewhat lost or greatly deemphasized. Bukharin does criticize many specific statements by bourgeois sociologists, but at the same time he still takes their writings seriously overall and himself adopts many of their same modes of thinking.

Even Bukharins presentation of important Marxist ideas is done in an inept way. For example, his chapter on classes and class struggle comes at the very end of the book, when that should really be a much stronger central theme throughout the work.

Instead, a major theme throughout the book (and not just in the chapter on dialectical materialism) is Bukharins highly dubious equilibrium theory. His weak understanding of dialectics comes out in other ways as well, as in chapter VII where he presents four stages of revolution as being sequential, when in fact the mental revolution, the political revolution, the economic revolution and the technical revolution must quite clearly interpenetrate each other to considerable degrees. Other serious philosophical errors also occur in the book, as for example his treatment at several points of the very important concept of interests as being only a psychological question, and not an issue of what objectively benefits people. [Cf. p. 149 in the Ann Arbor paperback edition.] In general, the discussion of ethics is quite weak.

Bukharins Historical Materialism was viewed as an important presentation and defense of Marxist theory back in the 1920s, both in the Soviet Union and around the world. After that time, however, the book was pretty much forgotten, and this is just as well. Overall, students of MLM will miss little or nothing of value if they just skip this book. S.H.

HISTORICISM

[In the sense used and wrongly criticized by Karl Popper:] The view that history has a pattern, that laws or trends underlie its development, and that at least to some degree the future may be predicted and shaped once these patterns or laws are recognized.

See also: ANTI-HISTORICISM

HISTORY  As Comedy

History is thorough and goes through many phases when carrying an old form to the grave. The last phases of a world-historical form is its comedy. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right: Introduction (1843-44).

HISTORY  Made by Human Beings

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), online at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

HOBBES, Thomas (1588-1679)

English mechanical-materialist philosopher. He held the view that morality and law represented a precondition of civilization and the emergence of human beings from the natural, animal state (the war of all against all). Hobbes said that humans are selfish by nature, and therefore must be ruled by an absolute monarch. He claimed that people agree to this by accepting a social contract. His ethical theory was essentially one of crass expedience, and failed to recognize or explain altruism and kindness.

See also: Philosophical doggerel about Hobbes.

HOBSON, John A. (1858-1940)

An English bourgeois social reformer, liberal-pacifist, economist and prolific author, best known for his important book Imperialism.

In his earlier books Hobson favored an underconsumptionist explanation for capitalist economic crises and denied the truth of Says Law (long after Marx did so, but also long before Keynes). This made his views anathema to the bourgeois economics establishment which forced him out of his university position. He was then hired by the Manchester Guardian to be their South-African correspondent. While covering the Second Boer War, Hobson formed the idea that political imperialism is the direct result of the expansive forces of modern capitalism. When he returned to England he strongly condemned the Boer War and English imperialism in general in a series of articles and books. In 1902 he published his magnum opus, Imperialism, which made him world famous. Lenin made extensive use of this book when preparing his own very important work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916).

This author ... gives a very good and comprehensive description of the principal specific economic and political features of imperialism. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, LCW 22:195.

HOLBACH, Paul Henri Dietrich d (1723-1789)

French materialist philosopher and atheist.

HOLLOWING OUT OF THE LABOR FORCE

A bourgeois media euphemism for the fact that the working class in the U.S. (and many other countries) is being driven down in a major way, with real wages declining (especially for new jobs); health, retirement, and other benefits being slashed, or even entirely eliminated for many workers; more and more part-time work instead of full-time jobs with some limited security; the elimination of unions, and the decided weakening of those few which remain; and a generally continuing decline in the percentage of the population which even has a job at all.

See also: LOW WAGES IN NEW JOBS

HOLY FAMILY [Book by Marx & Engels]

[Full title in English: The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruo Bauer and Co.] This was the first joint work by Marx and Engels, and was written in the fall of 1844 and published (in German of course) in February 1845 in Frankfurt-am-Main.

The Holy Family is a mocking reference to the Bauer brothers and their followers grouped around the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (General Literary Gazette). While attacking the Bauers and the other Young Hegelians (or Left Hegelians), Marx and Engels at the same time criticized the idealist philosophy of Hegel.

Marx sharply disagreed with the Young Hegelians as early as the summer of 1842, when the club of The Free was formed in Berlin. Upon becoming editor of the Rheinische Zeitung (Rhine Gazette) in October 1842, Marx opposed the efforts of several Young Hegelian staff members from Berlin to publish inane and pretentious articles emanating from the club of The Free, which had lost touch with reality and was absorbed in abstract philosophical disputes. During the two years following Marxs break with The Free, the theoretical and political differences between Marx and Engels on the one hand and the Young Hegelians on the other became deep-rooted and irreconcilable. This was not only due to the fact that Marx and Engels had gone over from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democratism to communism, but also due to the evolution undergone by the Bauer brothers and persons of like mind during this time. In the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Bauer and his group denounced 1842 radicalicalism and its most outstanding proponentthe Rheinishe Zeitung. They slithered into vulgar subjective idealism of the vilest kindpropagation of a theory according to which only select individuals, bearers of the spirit, of pure criticism, are the makers of history, while the masses, the people, serve as inert material or ballast in the historical process.

Marx and Engels decided to devote their first joint work to the exposure of these pernicious, reactionary ideas and to the defense of their new materialist and communist outlook.

During a ten-day stay of Engels in Paris the plan of the book (at first entitled Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Co.) was drafted, responsibility for the various chapters apportioned between the authors, and the Preface written. Engels wrote his chapters while still in Paris. Marx, who was responsible for a larger part of the book, continued to work on it until the end of November 1844. Moreover, he considerably increased the initially conceived size of the book by incorporating in his chapters parts of his economic and philosophical manuscripts on which he had worked during the spring and summer of 1844, his historical studies of the bourgeois French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, and a number of his excerpts and conspectuses. While the book was in the process of being printed, Marx added the words The Holy Family to the title. By using a small format, the book exceed 20 printers sheets and was thus exempted from preliminary censorship according to the prevailing regulations in a number of German states. Note 2, LCW 38:563-4.

HOME EQUITY LOAN

A loan received from a bank or other financial institution either through taking out a second mortgage on your home, or else through refinancing (renewing the terms of your existing mortgage so that the bank owns more of your home and you own less of it). Often this also entails substantially higher mortgage payments.

During the housing bubble of the mid-2000s, the value of homes was rapidly rising, so many American home ownersat the predatory urging of the banksfoolishly took out home equity loans. Home equity loans peaked in the 4th quarter of 2005 at an annualized rate of one trillion dollars! This was a major boost to consumer spending and the economy. But when the bubble began to burst in 2007, and then developed into the Great Recession, many of these people lost their jobs, or were otherwise unable to meet their enlarged mortgage payments, and ended up losing their homes.

HOME OWNERSHIP

Until the early 1980s, homes in the US were mostly owned by the families living in them. By 2008, all that changed. Now US homes are actually ownedabout 60 percent of the average homeby mortgage lenders. The families in them own the other 40 percent of the homes value. The average US home owner actually owns less of his or her home than the mortgage lenders do. Home owners have become more like renters: owning ever less of their homes, they can remain only so long as they pay monthly to the lenders who own ever more. Richard D. Wolff, Capitalism Hits the Fan (2010), p. 145. [In the 1960s and 1970s Americans on average owned about two thirds of the market value of their homes. In the aftermath of the recent collapse of house prices, many home owners now now owe more on their home than it is worth! S.H.]