Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

—   Se - Sg   —

SECOND INTERNATIONAL — Basel [Basle] Congress (1912)
        See also: BASEL MANIFESTO

“The Basle Congress of the Second International (November 24-25, 1912) was convened as an extraordinary congress in connection with the Balkan War and the menace of a European war. Its manifesto emphasized the imperialist nature of the impending world war and urged socialists everywhere to ‘take advantage of the economic and political crises’ the war would create to ‘accelerate the downfall of capitalism’. Kautsky, Vandervelde and other Second International leaders voted for this manifesto, but were deliberately oblivious to it when war broke out in 1914 and sided with their imperialist governments. [See: Lenin, LCW 21:208-17, 307-08.]” —Note 312, Lenin, SW I (1967).

SECRET POLICE
A government organization charged with spying on and eliminating or neutralizing dissent. Secret police are typical features of fascist regimes, but are also found in bourgeois democracies. The FBI, for example, acted as a secret police force during the 1960-1970s when it undertook a program known as COINTELPRO that was designed to infiltrate, disrupt and neutralize activist and militant groups (mostly left-wing and Black groups fighting for social justice and equality). As long as they still rule society, the bourgeoisie will continue to act in this way, at whatever level of spying and political suppression of the working class and masses that they deem “necessary”.
        While a secret police (of sorts!) may also be necessary to protect the revolutionary gains of the proletariat after they win power, it is absolutely essential that such an organization not be used to control or intimidate the proletariat itself, or to replace mass vigilance. As Mao insisted, the primary means of controlling any attempts by the old or new bourgeoisies to recapture state power must be through the enlightened vigilance and efforts of the masses themselves. The security agencies of the socialist state should be at most a supplement to the basic Marxist method of educating the masses in their own interests, and of organizing them to act to advance those interests through the democratic method of the mass line. —L.C.
        See also: KGB, OKHRANA, SOVIET UNION—Security Agencies

SECT   [In politics]
In the non-pejorative sense, a sect is simply “a group adhering to a distinctive doctrine or leader”. [Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10^th ed.] However, the word ‘sect’ also carries with it the connotation of small size, and being outside of the mainstream. Thus a revolutionary sect is a small group which is outside the mainstream of the revolutionary movement. All new political parties either start off as sects, or else form out of other parties or mass movements which themselves started out as sects. There is nothing necessarily wrong about starting out small and different from the mainstream; but it is foolish and self-defeating for any political group to permanently remain just a sect, i.e. a small group unconnected to the masses and the mass movement.
        See also SECTARIAN (below), and: CULT

“The International was founded in order to replace the socialist or semi-socialist sects by a real organization of the working class for struggle. The original Rules and the Inaugural Address show this at a glance. On the other hand, the International could not have asserted itself if the course of history had not already smashed sectarianism. The development of socialist sectarianism and that of the real labor movement always stand in indirect proportion to each other. So long as the sects are justified (historically), the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historical movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary....
         “And the history of the International was a continual struggle of the General Council against the sects and attempts by amateurs to assert themselves within the International itself against the real movement of the working class.” —Marx, Letter to Adolphe Hubert, Aug. 10, 1871, MECW 44:252.

SECTARIAN [Adj.]
[Primary sense in Marxist politics:] 1. Having and promoting ideas which prevent or obstruct a political group or party from connecting up with the masses and the mass movement, and from transforming existing reformist mass struggle into revolutionary mass struggle. (See also: mass perspective.)
[Secondary sense in Marxist politics:] 2. Being unwilling to work with individuals or groups (other than your own) for some common purpose, or obstructing such cooperation and “united fronts” through hostility and disrespect towards those with ideas differing from your own.

SECURITIZATION
[In contemporary financial capitalism:] The bundling together of numerous individual mortgages, or outstanding credit card debts, or auto loans, or other forms of debt into packages, against which bonds are sold to investors. This allows the banks or other financial companies which issued the loans to no longer care whether the loans are ever paid off, and therefore to escape the risk ordinarily involved in making such loans. Those foolish enough to buy the bonds, however, thereby take on risks which they have no real way of even properly evaluating. In short, securitization is a method for the banks and big financial corporations to cheat investors.
        See also: COLLATERIALIZED DEBT OBLIGATIONS (CDOs)

“SEEK TRUTH FROM FACTS”
A phrase from Mao’s writings, which was later given a perverted, revisionist interpretation by Deng Xiaoping. Deng distorted Mao’s meaning that revolutionaries must pay careful attention to objective conditions, into something very different—the assertion of an agnostic and opportunistic empiricism in which MLM theory is ignored and discarded.

“Secondly, there is the Marxist-Leninist attitude.
         “With this attitude, a person applies the theory and method of Marxism-Leninism to the systematic and thorough investigation and study of the environment. He does not work by enthusiasm alone... To take such an attitude is to seek truth from facts. ‘Facts’ are all the things that exist objectively, ‘truth’ means their internal relations, that is, the laws governing them, and ‘to seek’ means to study. We should proceed from the actual conditions inside and outside the country, the province, county or district, and derive from them, as our guide to action, laws which are inherent in them and not imaginary, that is, we should find the internal relations of the events occurring around us. And in other to do that we must rely not on subjective imagination, not on momentary entusiasm, not on lifeless books, but on facts that exist objectively; we must appropriate the material in detail and, guided by the general principles of Marxism-Leninism, draw correct conclusions from it. Such conclusions are not mere lists of phenomena in A, B, C, D order or writings full of platitudes, but are scientific conclusions. Such an attitude is one of seeking truth from facts not of currying favor by claptrap. It is the manifestation of Party spirit, the Marxist-Leninist style of uniting theory and practice. It is the attitude every Communist Party member should have at the very least.” —Mao, “Reform Our Study” (May 1941), SW3:22-23.

SEMANTICS
The branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of words and sentences. The sub-branch concerned with the meaning of words, specifically, is known as lexical semantics. Scientific semantics should not be confused with the bourgeois pseudo-scientific academic sect which goes by the name of General Semantics.

SEMI-PROLETARIAN
        1. A peasant who spends part of each year working as a wage worker in a town.
        2. A poor peasant who owns no land, and who must therefore work as an agricultural laborer for other (richer) peasants. Also often called a rural proletarian.

SENECA, Lucius Annaeus   (c. 4 BCE-65 CE)
Roman philosopher; one of the great representatives of Stoicism. He was the tutor of the young Nero and later his advisor when he became Emperor. Seneca was implicated (probably falsely) in a plot against the Emperor and was ordered by Nero to commit suicide—which he did.

SENSA
An ambiguous term in contemporary bourgeois philosophy which may refer either to those real objects in the world which are sensed (i.e., sensibilia def. 1), or else just the sensations themselves (i.e., sense data).

SENSATIONALISM or SENSATIONISM
The extreme empiricist theory associated with Ernst Mach that only sensations (or sense data) actually exists, or at least that this is all that human beings are capable of comprehending. According to this idealist theory, sensations are not only the source of all human knowledge, but may actually be all that really exists.
        This is similar to the idealist philosophical theory known as phenomenalism. See also: SENSUALISM, SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM

SENSATIONS   [Philosophy]
The mental processes (such as seeing, hearing, or smelling) which are the result of the immediate stimulation of one of the bodily senses. In everyday usage, we often refer to somewhat unusual, unexpected, or unexplained things, such as tickles, itches or pains, or sudden feelings of warmth or coldness, as “sensations”. However, the more abstract usage of the term (which is that found in philosophy) also covers the ordinary and routine seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling or tasting of things in the world around us.
        In philosophy there are various doctrines about the nature of sensations and how they fit in with our overall conception of the world. The materialist conception is that sensations are (typically at least) caused by the real physical world around us. (In exceptional cases sensations may be due to the malfunctioning of our bodies.) We understand that our perceptions inform us about the nature of the objective world, and that these sensations reflect the nature of the real physical things in the world. (See REFLECTION THEORY.)
        However, philosophical idealists often hold that our sensations are entirely mental phenomena which do not reflect the nature of the material world or inform us about the true nature of objective reality. In some cases they go so far as to claim that only mental sensations exist, and that there is no material world at all that lies behind these sensations! (This extreme viewpoint is known as “radical empiricism” or subjective idealism.)
        See also: SENSUALISM, SENSE DATA, SENSATIONALISM

SENSE DATA
Raw sensations, or the private “data” (or what we immediately perceive) from our senses. Thus, the sensory qualities of things (colors, shapes, smells, etc.) which we supposedly experience directly, without any rational interpretation, and without any consideration of the physical objects which may be causing them. Thus the concept of sense data, as it is most often used in philosophy, is one of a strongly empiricist and idealist character. Empiricists usually make “sense data” the foundation of their theory of knowledge.
        The traditional empiricist claim goes something along these lines: “We never see or otherwise perceive or sense, or at least directly perceive or sense, the real material objects of the world, but instead, only sense data, or our own ideas, impressions, sense-perceptions, or the like.” This notion is related to the silly Kantian theory that human beings are incapable of knowing anything about the true nature of any real world object, the so-called “ding-an-sich”. But by this strange logic, what would it even mean to “directly” perceive the world?! This could only be some sort of religious comprehension based not at all on any bodily senses.
        Modern science has demonstrated quite well that seeing is not like an automatic image forming in the brain (as in a camera), and that similarly all the other senses also involve complex computational processing in light of previous knowledge. We have evolved to survive in the world, and thus our senses must help us comprehend the objective world. Therefore no epistemological theory whose foundation is raw, unprocessed, subjective “sense data” can possibly be correct.
        See also: SENSIBILIA, QUALIA

SENSIBILIA
1. Those things which are sensed; the immediate objects of sense perception. The things in, or aspects of, objective reality that we sense. (This is a materialist conception.)
2. [In the philosophy of Bertrand Russell and some other extreme empiricists:] Those subjective entities (tastes, smells, images, etc.) which no one at the moment is directly sensing, but which are otherwise like the “sense data” that people have when they are sensing things. (This is an idealist conception.) This idealist concept of sensibilia, i.e., the notion of “unsensed sense data”, is obviously incoherent.

SENSUALISM   [Philosophy]
Another name which has been used for the basic doctrine that holds that sensations are the source of knowledge. Of course there is some truth to this idea if it is properly interpreted.
        If sensations are understood to be a reflection of the objective world, which are processed by the brain in light of previous knowledge and experience, then we have a materialist theory. This was more or less the path taken by the materialists of the Enlightenment (Holbach, Helvétius, and later by Feuerbach), and certainly by the most recent physiological science.
        On the other hand, if sensations are regarded as subjective impressions with no relationship to any objective world, we are on the path of subjective idealism, and idealist philosophers such as Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Mach, Avenarius and Bogdanov.
        Consequently, the recognition that knowledge of the world comes through sensation is by itself neither a materialist nor an idealist theory. It depends on what sensation is understood to be, and how it fits in with a broader understanding of reality.

SERF
An alternate name for peasant, especially in Europe.

“Peasant Reform—the emancipation of the serfs carried out by the tsarist government in 1861. The Reform was made necessary by the entire course of Russia’s economic development and by the growth of the mass movement among the peasantry against feudal exploitation. The Peasant Reform was a bourgeois reform carried out by serf-owners. Its bourgeois essence was the more obvious ‘the less the amount of land cut off from the peasants’ holdings, the more fully peasant lands were separated from the landed estates, the lower the tribute paid to the feudal landowners by the peasant (i.e., the lower the “redemption” payments)’ [Lenin, LCW 17:121] The Peasant Reform marked a step in Russia’s transformation into a bourgeois monarchy. In all, 22,500,000 serfs, formerly belonging to landlords, were ‘emancipated’. Landed proprietorship, however, remained. The peasants’ lands were declared the property of the landlords. The peasant could only get an allotment of land of the size established by law (and even then only with the landlord’s consent), and he had to redeem it, that is, pay for it.
         “The Peasant Reform merely undermined but did not abolish the old corvée system of farming. The landlords secured possession of the best parts of the peasants’ allotments (the ‘cut-off lands’—woods, meadows, watering places, grazing lands, and so on), without which the peasants could not engage in independent farming. Until the redemption arrangements were completed the peasants were considered ‘temporarily bound’ and either rendered corvée service to the landlord or paid quit-rent. The redemption of their own allotments was a direct plunder of the peasants by the tsarist government and the landowners. The peasants were compelled to pay hundreds of millions of rubles for their land and this led to the ruin of the farms and to mass impoverishment.
         “The Russian revolutionary democrats, headed by Nikolai Cheryshevsky, criticized the Peasant Reform for its feudal character. Lenin called the Peasant Reform of 1861 the first act of mass violence against the peasantry in the interests of the nascent capitalism in agriculture—the landowners were ‘clearing the land’ for capitalism.” —Note 56, Lenin SW I (1967).

SERVE THE PEOPLE
[To be added... ]
        See also: PATERNALISM

“The motive of serving the masses is inseparably linked with the effect of winning their approval; the two must be united. The motive of serving the individual or a small clique is not good, nor is it good to have the motive of serving the masses without the effect of winning their approval and benefiting them.” —Mao, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art” (May 1942), SW 3:88.

“SERVE THE PEOPLE”   [Speech by Mao]
A famous speech delivered by Mao Zedong on September 8, 1944, at a memorial meeting for Comrade Chang Szu-teh, which was held by the departments working directly under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. (Chang Szu-teh was born in a poor peasant family and joined the Red Army in 1933 at the age of 17. He took part in the Long March, and became a selfless Communist soldier in Yenan. He died in a kiln accident.) This work by Mao, along with two others (“In Memory of Norman Bethune” and “The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains”) were collectively known as the “three constantly read articles”. They promote the proletarian world outlook and firm devotion to the masses and the public interest.
        “Serve the People” is included in volume 3 of Mao’s Selected Works, and is available online at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_19.htm

SERVICE INDUSTRY
That part of the economy which provides services rather than producing articles for sale. As capitalism has developed, and (among other factors) productivity has tremendously increased in manufacturing, the proportion of the economy devoted to producing services rather than material commodities has greatly increased. (See: PETTY’S LAW.) As of 2010, about 83% of the workers in the private (non-governmental) sector in the U.S. were service workers. Of course, another reason for this change, which is very negative for the U.S., is that its manufacturing base is being rapidly moved overseas for the purpose of increasing profits through the extra exploitation of lower-wage foreign labor.

SEXISM
The view that one sex is superior to, or should be given social primacy over, the other. Since during all human history (at least of class society) men have dominated and oppressed women, in practice sexism almost always means views which support this domination and oppression of women. Sexists believe that there are “natural” intellectual and psychological differences between men and women which supposedly justify this domination and oppression, and special privileges for men. Revolutionary Marxism is of course totally opposed to any form of sexism. And we believe that whatever significant differences there are in average “intelligence” or psychology between men and women in the present society are due virtually entirely to the differences in the ways men and women are brought up and educated (or mis-educated).
        See also: WOMEN — Oppression Of

SEZ
See: SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE

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