Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

—   Ha - Hd   —

H-BOMB
See: HYDROGEN BOMB

HADRON
A composite particle in particle physics which is composed of quarks which are held together by the strong nuclear force (which only acts on quarks) in a similar way to which the atoms in molecules are held together by the electromagnetic force. There are two families of hadrons: the baryons which consist of three quarks, and the mesons which consist of one quark and one antiquark. All known hadrons are unstable with the exception of the proton and the neutron (when it is within an atom), and decay into other particles under normal conditions.

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].

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.]

“The United States invaded Haiti in 1915, after the assassination of President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam of Haiti that year, and stayed for nearly 20 years. It is one of the longest occupations in American history.”   —New York Times, National Edition, May 24, 2024, p. 3.
         [For a list of many other U.S. imperialist interventions and invasions in Haiti, see the chart in the entry for UNITED STATES IMPERIALISM—Invasions of Other Countries ]

“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.

HAN Suyin   (1916 (or 1917)-2012)
Well-known Eurasian novelist and biographer of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and a physician. “Han Suyin” was the pen name of Elizabeth Comber, whose birth name was Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou. Although she was born in China, she lived most of her life in other countries. Her father was a Chinese engineer educated in Belgium while her mother was Flemish. Her novels and other books, written in English and French, were mostly set in Asia. Her best-known novel was the autobiographical A Many-Splendoured Thing which was later made into a movie. [For more about her personal life and work as a novelist see the Wikipedia entry on her at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Suyin ]
        Although Han Suyin came to have the reputation as an ardent and eloquent supporter of Mao and the Chinese Revolution, the situation is more complex than that. Throughout her life she focused more on individual heroes than on political ideology. Partly as a consequence of this she, like many intellectuals, shifted her own stance along with the shifting political winds. In 1938 she married a Kuomintang [Guomindang] officer who became a general and who was killed in the civil war with the Communists. During this period she was an ardent admirer of Chiang Kai-shek. In 1942 she wrote that the reunification of China was “due to the genius of one man”, Chiang Kai-shek. And in regard to the war of resistence against the Japanese invasion of China she added:

“... he is there, Chiang Kai-shek, directing the war with steady unshaken resolve never to yield, in weakness and cowardice, to armed force.... Here is the determination that has stirred the whole country, willed China to rise from her torpor, given her consciousness of her past glory and future dignity and greatness. One man, yet not one man alone. A spiritual force, a symbol, an inspirtion to us all.” —Han Suyin, Destination Chungking (1942), p. 17.

This portrayal of Chiang Kai-shek as the savior of China was of course completely ridiculous! In reality Chiang prosecuted the war against Japan only belatedly and half-heartedly and was far more intent on saving his forces for a future showdown with the Communists—which most historians have acknowledged and which frustrated and extremely angered U.S. officers like Gen. Stilwell stationed in China during World War II.
        After the success of the Chinese Revolution and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China Han Suyin totally changed her tune. Perhaps more for nationalistic reasons than anything else she became an ardent admirer of Mao Zedong. Her two volume biography of Mao is quite good and is highly recommended: The Morning Deluge — Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution: 1893-1954 (1972) and Wind in the Tower — Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution: 1949-1975 (1976). However, make sure you get the First Edition of the second volume, because in the later revised edition Han Suyin once again changed her tune!
        After Mao’s death in 1976, when the capitalist-roaders seized power, Han Suyin sided with them. Since in this new milieu Mao could no longer be her unalloyed personal hero, she turned to Zhou Enlai [Chou En-lai, old style], and wrote a lionizing biography of him, which covered up his highly dubious role in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and completely distorted and condemned the GPCR itself: Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898-1976 (1994). Although Han Suyin was strongly supportive of the Chinese Revolution (at least once Liberation was achieved, and while for a period when Mao was still alive she played a very positive role in communicating the story of that Revolution to the world, she remained only a radicalized bourgeois intellectual and—it became all too clear—she was never really a Maoist.

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.

“HARIJANS”
Mohandas Gandhi’s term (literally “Children of God”) for what were then usually called “Untouchables”, and who are now referred to as Dalits, the name they have chosen for themselves. I.e., the lowest and most oppressed caste under the Hindu social system in India. The term “Harijans” is clearly condescending, while the term “Untouchables” is outrageously insulting.

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

HARVEY, William   (1578-1657)
The physician to the English King Charles I, who is most famous for discovering that the heart is essentially a pump which circulates the blood throughout all parts of the body. Harvey was an early promoter of empirical investigations of the human body, including through the use of dissections of cadavers, and made important contributions to anatomy and physiology. But his greatest contribution by far was the overthrow of the view of Galen that the blood surges in and out of the heart like a tide, and that instead the contractions of the heart cause the blood to flow out in a constant direction, out through the arteries and back via the veins.

“I profess to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books, but from dissections; not from the positions of philosophers, but from the fabric of nature.” —William Harvey, Movement of the Heart and Blood (1628).

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