Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

—   H   —

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

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.

“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.

“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 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 often a helpful way of looking at dialectical development, it is also sometimes rather simplistic. (It is often stated that Hegel himself did not use this terminology, but at the very least the idea is implicit at times in his writings.)

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.

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]

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.

“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”).

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.

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 not 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 society and history are made by the people, by the masses of human beings;
        4) That, however, the prevailing mode of production conditions and sets limits to the changes which can be made in society;
        5) That classes exist through people’s relationship to the means of production;
        6) That the history of society, since classes first developed in ancient times, is the history of class struggle;
        7) 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.];
        8) That “at that point an era of social revolution begins” [Marx, ibid.];
        9) That society must ultimately progress to the stage of communism where classes have ceased to exist;
        10) That between capitalism and communism there must be an intervening transition period (socialism), which can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. [This list is taken from my book The Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement, chapter 3. —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.

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.

HOT MONEY
[Contemporary bourgeois economics:] Large (or “bulk”) deposits of money controlled by investment managers which are shifted rapidly from one bank or financial institution to another in search of the highest interest rates. This occurs not only within a single country, but in this age of more globalized finance, also internationally. The existence of trillions of dollars of “hot money” is one of the major factors leading to the intensification of financial crises in individual countries, partly by promoting speculation in various currencies. The flow of hot money into a country for a period can make it seem that its balance-of-payments situation is good, but also makes it vulnerable to a very sharp change in that regard if the money is suddenly pulled out of the country. Hot money is one of the many “innovations” of modern finance capitalism that tremendously amplifies the instability of the entire world capitalist economy.

HOUSING BUBBLE
An asset bubble in the prices of houses. In other words, a tremendous and unjustified rise in the prices of houses due to one form of speculation or another.
        In the 2003-2007 period in the U.S., for example, many speculators began buying houses—not in order to live in them themselves—but in order to sell them again later after the prices rose some more. This was pure speculation, which was promoted by banks and the government through low or non-existent down payments and very low interest rates. This particular housing bubble was also promoted by banks through securitization of mortgages in the form of CDOs. This allowed the banks to escape any risk on the mortgages they had already issued, and continue to issue new risky mortgages to those with “sub-prime” (poor) credit.
        Housing bubbles, like all asset bubbles, always pop eventually, and the 2003-2007 bubble began to pop in late 2007. (House prices actually peaked in 2006, but at first the declines were quite small.) However, even though episodes of bubble popping can be dramatic, it takes time for them to completely deflate. Sometimes they are even partially reinflated for a while. Thus while the recent U.S. housing bubble has considerably deflated from its peak, it is still a substantial bubble. For that reason, the government is going to great lengths (and great expense) to try to “prop up” the housing market, or, in other words to try to reinflate the present housing bubble. “The government is literally plowing trillions of dollars into the U.S. mortgage market to keep it afloat”, said Guy D. Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance in October 2009.
        Housing bubbles are a common development in advanced capitalist countries in the imperialist era. There was a huge housing bubble which popped in the Great Depression of the 1930s and a bigger bubble which popped in the late 1980s-early 1990s with the Savings & Loan Crisis. But by far the biggest housing bubble, especially in the U.S. but also in Britain, Spain and other countries, is the current one which is by no means resolved yet.

HUME, David   (1711-1776)
Scottish subjective idealist philosopher and historian. He was an extreme empiricist and philosophical agnostic. He was one of the originators of utilitarianism, but he also held (inconsistently) that moral beliefs cannot be rationally justified and are based on mere custom.
        In economics Hume put forward a quantitative theory of money and favored free trade. He was a friend and adviser to Adam Smith.
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Hume.

While certainly regretable, Hume’s “Paradox” should not be too surprising to Marxists who understand that one of the basic principles of historical materialism is that the dominant ideas of any age are those of the ruling class. While the rule of “the few” over “the many” can unfortunately last for a long time, in historical terms the rule of the exploiters and oppressors is still precarious. All it takes is one grand moment of revolution to topple the bastards!

HYNDMAN, Henry Mayers   (1842-1921)
A founder and leader of the Social-Democratic Federation in Britain and later one of the founders of the British Socialist Party. Hyndman was always one of the leaders of the Right wing of the socialist movement in Britain and a complete opportunist. In 1916 he was expelled from the BSP for putting out propaganda in support of the imperialist war. He was also hostile to the October Revolution in Russia and supported imperialist intervention by the West against Soviet Russia.

“Although Hyndman was a talented writer and public speaker, many members of the SDF questioned his leadership qualities. He was extremely authoritarian and tried to restrict internal debate about party policy. At an SDF meeting on 27 December 1884, the executive voted by a majority of two (10-8), that it had no confidence in Hyndman. When he refused to resign, some members, including William Morris and Eleanor Marx, left the party.
         “In the 1885 General Election, Hyndman and Henry Hyde Champion, without consulting their colleagues, accepted £340 from the Tories to run parliamentary candidates in Hampstead and Kensington, the objective being to split the Liberal vote and therefore enabling the Conservative candidate to win. This ploy failed, and the two SDF’s candidates won only a total of 59 votes. The story leaked out, and the political reputation of both men suffered from the idea that they were willing to accept ‘Tory Gold’.” —From the Wikipedia article on Hyndman (as of Feb. 28, 2010).

HYPERINFLATION
Very rapid and “uncontrollable” inflation. Of course inflation is always really controllable; the government just needs to stop the printing presses pooring out so much new currency. But this might in turn lead to the complete collapse of the government, which is why they are often reluctant to do so.

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