SINGER-PREBISCH THESIS
See: PREBISCH THESIS
SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
See: UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE
SINGULAR EVENT
An event which is “one of a kind” and is therefore often harder to analyze and understand
because there are no patterns to discern from multiple instances of similar events.
“For now, let’s just note that any proper account must explain why the evolution of complex life [on earth] happened only once: our explanation must be persuasive enough to be believable, but not so persuasive that we are left wondering why it did not happen on many occasions. Any attempt to explain a singular event will always have the appearance of a fluke about it. How can we prove it one way or another? There might not be much to go on in the event itself, but there may be clues concealed in the aftermath, a smoking gun that gives some indication of what happened.” —Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life (2015), pp. 50-51.
SINGULARITY
1. [Physics:] A time and place (or point in
space-time) where some physical quantity would appear to become infinite. This normally means
a point where the known laws of physics, or at least the equations used to express them, no
longer apply.
2. [More generally:] A point at which there
is a major qualitative leap in the state or condition of something. Although there are great
numbers of qualitative leaps occurring all around us, the term ‘singularity’ is mostly used
only for especially disastrous changes, particularly in human society. The possible future
advent of artificial intelligence on a level
that far exceeds that of human beings is often called a singularity in this sense.
SINKING FUND
1. A fund established, and then added to
(generally periodically), so that the necessary money will be available to pay off a loan
or other large debt when it comes due.
2. The similar retention or accumulation of
profits (or surplus value) by a company so that when the purchase of some major piece of
fixed capital (such as some expensive machinery or even a
whole new factory) becomes necessary the money will be available for that purpose.
In either case, if a sinking fund is
not established ahead of time to cover such a major outlay, the primary remaining option is
to borrow money from a bank or other source for the purpose. Of course in that case the
individual or company will have to pay the going rate of interest on that loan, which will
cut into future net income or profits.
SINO-SOVIET SPLIT
The major dispute and falling out between the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet
Union which first developed after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956. The dispute
spread from merely the appraisal of Stalin and the issue of cults
of personality to encompass many other ideological issues, the question of whether the
Soviet Union was still on the revolutionary path, and even territorial disputes. Though we
revolutionary Marxists may disagree with China on some secondary aspects of this great dispute
(especially with regard to Stalin and having cults of personality), overall we strongly side
with Mao and China, and condemn the revisionist and
social-imperialist nature of the U.S.S.R. in the
Khrushchev and later periods.
SISMONDI, Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de (1773-1842)
Swiss economist and historian. Considered by some to be sort of an early socialist.
Marxist attitudes towards Sismondi have varied tremendously. Lenin looked down upon him
as a vulgarizer of Ricardo. But Marx himself (in volume 3 of
TSV which was not available to Lenin at the time he made his judgments) had much more
sympathy toward Sismondi and viewed him as understanding some very fundamental points about
capitalism that Ricardo could not grasp or accept:
“Sismondi is profoundly conscious of the contradictions in capitalist production; he is aware that, on the one hand, its forms—its production relations—stimulate unrestrained development of the productive forces and of wealth; and that, on the other hand, these relations are conditional, that their contradictions of use-value and exchange-value, commodity and money, purchase and sale, production and consumption, capital and wage-labor, etc., assume ever greater dimensions as productive power develops. He is particularly aware of the fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, unrestricted development of the productive forces and increase of wealth which, at the same time, consists of commodities and must be turned into cash; on the other hand, the system is based on the fact that the mass of producers is restricted to the necessaries. Hence, according to Sismondi, crises are not accidental, as Ricardo maintains, but essential outbreaks—occuring on a large scale and at definite periods—of the immanent contradictions.” —Marx, TSV, 3:56.
Marx does go on to say that Sismondi “wavers constantly” on many issues, and that his ideas are anything but well-worked out. “He [Sismondi] forcefully criticizes the contradictions of bourgeois production but does not understand them, and consequently does not understand the process whereby they can be resolved.” [Ibid.] Nevertheless, Marx later says that “Sismondi was epoch-making in political economy because he had an inkling of this contradiction” (the profound difference between Labor and Capital in the capitalist production process), that Ricardo could not understand. [TSV, 3:259.]
SIV
See: STRUCTURED INVESTMENT VEHICLE
SKEPTICISM [General Concepts Of]
1. Questioning, or caution in accepting things as certainly true.
2. The view that human beings can attain no certain knowledge of the world; i.e.,
philosophical or epistemological agnosticism.
Sense #1 is clearly rational and scientific,
but sense #2 carries things to a ridiculous extreme.
For an essay discussing this matter in more
depth, see: “Do We Know For Certain that the Earth Goes Around the Sun?” at:
https://www.massline.org/Philosophy/ScottH/certain.htm. See also below and:
DOUBT,
UNCERTAINTY
SKEPTICISM [School of Philosophy]
An ancient Greek philosophical school or trend founded by Pyrrho (c. 365-275 B.C.). The
best-known of the ancient Skeptics were Aenesidemus and Sextus Empiricus (2nd century
A.D.).
Skepticism has also arisen anew from
time to time in later philosophy. Sometimes this has had a progressive effect (as when
it was used to oppose medieval Christian dogmas), but more often since the time of Kant
philosophical skepticism has been used for reactionary purposes (e.g., to oppose science
and materialism). One of the most recent forms that bourgeois skepticism and pessimism
has taken is in the school known as post-modernism.
See also:
TROPES
“Skepticism—a philosophical trend that casts doubt on the
possibility of knowing objective reality. It arose in ancient Greece as early as the
4th to 3rd centuries B.C. (Pyrrho, Aenesidemus, Sextus Empiricus). The adherents of
ancient skepticism drew agnostic conclusions from the premises of
sensationalism. Making the subjectivity of
sensation into an absolute, the skeptics insisted on the need to refrain from any
definite judgments about things. They considered that man cannot go beyond his
sensations and determine their truth.
“During the period of the
Renaissance, the French philosophers Michel Montaigne, Pierre Charron and Pierre
Bayle made use of skepticism for combating medieval
scholasticism and the Church.
“In the eighteenth century
skepticism was revived in the agnosticism of Hume and Kant, and an attempt to
modernize ancient skepticism was made by Gottlob Schulze ([in his book]
Aenesidemus). The arguments of skepticism were used by the Machists,
neo-Kantians and other idealist philosophical
schools from the middle of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth
century.” —Note 49, LCW 14.
SKILLS AND TASKS
See: MATCHING SKILLS AND
TASKS
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