ZARYA (“Dawn”)
“Zarya (Dawn)—a Marxist scientific and political journal
published by the Iskra editorial board in Stuttgart in
1901 and 1902. Four numbers appeared in three issues: No. 1 in April 1901 (it actually
appeared on March 23, New Style), No. 2-3 in December 1901 and No. 4 in August 1902.
“Zarya criticized international
and Russian revisionism and defended the theoretical postulates of Marxism. The journal
published articles by Lenin on this problem: ‘The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the
Hannibals of Liberalism’, ‘Messrs. the “Critics” on the Agrarian Qeustion’ (the first four
chapters of ‘The Agrarian Question and “Critics of Marx”’), ‘The Agrarian Programme of
Russian Social-Democracy’, and also Plekhanov’s articles: ‘Critique of Our Critics. Part
I. Mr. P. Struve in the Role of a Critic of the Marxist Theory of Social Development’ and
‘Cant against Kant, or the Testament of Herr Bernstein’.” —Note 95, Lenin SW I (1967).
ZEMSTVOS
The local self-government bodies in rural districts of tsarist Russia, which were set up in
the central gubernias (“provinces”) of the country in 1864. The Zemstvos were dominated
by the local nobility and were restricted to handling only local economic and welfare issues,
such as hospitals, road building, insurance, gathering statistics, etc. They were under the
control of the governors of the gubernias and the Ministry of the Interior which could veto any
decisions they found to be undesirable.
ZERO-SUM (Game or Situation)
[Game Theory:] A situation where a gain for one participant
necessarily involves an equivalent loss for one or more other participants. (I.e., where the
total gains and losses for all participants sum to zero.) Chess or poker are zero-sum games
because if one player wins, the other(s) must lose.
Bourgeois economists claim that
capitalism is “not” a zero-sum economic system, because even the workers come out of it with
something (generally enough to at least scrape by on). However, all the wealth
that any society produces ultimately comes from the labor of workers acting on the natural
products of the world. Under socialism or communism, all that wealth would belong to the
workers, either individually or collectively. Capitalism modifies this situation in a zero-sum
way; whatever the capitalists take from the workers in the form of open or concealed profits,
the workers lose completely. And this is the very definition of a zero-sum situation.
ZETKIN, Clara (1857-1933)
An important and influential German revolutionary socialist and then Communist leader, who
also helped to further develop and strengthen the struggle for women’s rights and equality,
including within the socialist and Communist movement itself. She was the leading organizer
of the first International Women’s Day in March
1911.
Zetkin joined the Socialist Workers’ Party in
1878, which was renamed the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
in 1890. With Bismarck’s ban on socialist activity in 1878 Zetkin went into exile in Zurich
and then Paris. (The Anti-Socialist Law lapsed in
1890.) Zetkin, along with her friend Rosa Luxemburg, soon
became one of the most prominent representatives of the revolutionary Left-wing of the SPD,
and she strongly criticized the revisionist ideas of
Eduard Bernstein.
Zetkin played a leading role in fighting for
equality for women including the right to vote, and was the leader in developing the
socialist women’s movement in Germany. From 1891 to 1917 she edited the SPD women’s
publication Die Gleichheit [“Equality”].
During World War I the SPD took on a social
chauvinist (pro-war) stance, voting for war spending and the policy of
Burgfrieden (truce with the bourgeoisie and promising
not to lead any labor strikes during the war). Zetkin, along with Luxemburg,
Karl Liebknecht, and other prominent Left-wing members
of the SPD very strongly opposed this pro-imperialist war position. Among other anti-war
efforts, Zetkin organized an international socialist women’s anti-war conference in Berlin in
1915. She was arrested several times during the war because of such activity.
In 1917 Zetkin, and many others who opposed
the dominant national chauvinist stance of the SPD during World War I, left to join the
new Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), and also
its most Left-wing faction, the Spartacus League which
she co-founded. In 1919 the Spartacus League broke with the centrist USPD to form the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and Zetkin became an important leader of that new
revolutionary party. From 1920 to 1933 when the Nazis took over, she represented the KPD in
the Reichstag (German parliament). She was also a member of the Central Committee of the KPD
from 1927 to 1929.
Zetkin also played a significant role in
international revolutionary politics. In 1920 she interviewed Lenin on “The Women’s Question”.
She was a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International (Comintern) from 1921 until her death. In 1933 after Hitler took power and
staged the Reichstag fire (falsely blamed on the Communists), Zetkin was forced into exile
once again, this time to the Soviet Union. Unfortunately she died later that same year at the
age of 76, and was buried near the wall of the Kremlin in Moscow.
[Much of the materal in this entry is taken
from the Wikipedia article on Clara Zetkin.]
ZIMMERWALD CONFERENCE
The first of two important international socialist conferences held in Switzerland in the early
years of World War I, and which attempted to address the question of what socialists should do
about the War.
See also:
KIENTHAL CONFERENCE
“The First International Socialist Conference met in Zimmerwald
(September 5-8, 1915), and was the scene of a struggle between the revolutionary
internationalists led by Lenin and the Kautsky majority. Lenin united the Left
internationalists into a group known as the Zimmerwald Left in which only the Bolshevik
Party advocated a correct and fully consistent internationalist anti-war policy.
“The conference adopted the Manifesto
‘To the European Proletariat’ which declared that the world war was an imperialist war,
condemned the conduct of the ‘socialists’ who voted for war credits and were members of
bourgeois governments, called upon the workers of Europe to develop the struggle against
the war and demand the conclusion of peace without annexations and indemnities.
“The conference also adopted a
resolution expressing sympathy with the victims of the war and elected an International
Socialist Committee.
“The significance of the Zimmerwald
Conference is described by Lenin in ‘The First Step’, and ‘Revolutionary Marxists at the
International Socialist Conference, September 5-8, 1915’ [LCW 21:383-88, 389-93.]”
—Note 333, Lenin SW I (1967).
ZINN, Howard (1922-2010)
A radical American historian best known for his excellent book, A People’s History
of the United States (1980). This volume appropriately focused on the ordinary people
of the country and their lives and struggles, and not the politicians, generals and
millionaires. Zinn taught for many years at Boston University and inspired many students
and readers of his works. He was also an ardent political activist, especially in the civil
rights and anti-war movements. On his last day of teaching at Boston University he ended
his class 30 minutes early so that he could join a picket line, and urged his students to
go along with him. One hundred of them did so.
“From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I
would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’;
I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to
relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice
wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.” —Howard Zinn,
in his autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (1994).
ZOMBIE BANK
A bank that for the time being appears to be healthy and operating
normally, but which is actually insolvent, and which will
eventually collapse (and either go bankrupt or be bailed out by the government). ‘Insolvent’
means having liabilities greater than the reasonable market value of the assets held. But the
trouble is that 1) the real market value of assets in turbulent economic times is difficult
to determine, and 2) the real market value of assets can rapidly drop when the
asset bubble of which they are a part suddenly pops. This is
what has been happening to banks and other financial institutions since the sub-prime mortgage
housing bubble began to pop in late 2007.
Although only 25 banks failed in the U.S. in
2008, and “only” another 100 had failed by mid-October of 2009, in February 2009 an expert in
this sphere estimated that as many as 1,000 more banks may fail over the next 3 to 5 years.
(And even that number may prove sanguine!) Thus at present there are a great many, and
actually a rapidly growing number of zombie banks in the U.S. and around the world.
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