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Habermas, Jürgen (1929 - )
German philosopher; one of the most infuential members of the Frankfurt School (See Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin); his major work concerned the process of formation of public opinion and ideas as to how rational discussion was possible in a modern, developed society; Habermas could be seen as a modern-day advocate of the Enlightenment.
In his 1962 Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit, he showed that the bourgeois conception of democracy was nothing more than a translation of the relations of buying and selling into politics. As in the market, a monopoly was inevitably cornered by the ruling interests.
In his 1968 Knowledge and Human Interest Habermas distinguished between the technical interests which motivated empirical-analytic enquiry, the practical (in the Kantian sense) interests which motivated huamnistic sciences, which he saw as concenred with communicative action, and the emancipatory interests which motivated philosophical enquiry, whose objective is to lay bare how consensus is obstructed by various forces, be they psychological or social.
Habermas quite consciously tried to develop a form of Marxism which was eclectic and able to draw on insights coming from other directions. As an advocate of “networking” and dialogue, his ideas about democracy and and rational decision-making have been influential in many social movements.
At the time of writing, Habermas is still living in Germany.
Haldane, John Burton Sanderson [J B S] (1892-1964)
British biologist, philosopher of science and Marxist.
Haldane was born into an aristocratic intellectual Scottish family, educated at Eton College and at New College, Oxford. His father was a scientist, a philosopher and a liberal, but his mother was an ardent Tory. During the First World War, he served with the Black Watch in France and Iraq, and whilst in the army, became a socialist.
Between 1919 and 1922 he was a fellow of New College, then moved to Cambridge University until 1932. He then moved to University College, London where he spent most of the remainder of his academic career. In 1924, Haldane met Charlotte Burghes (née Franken) and the two later married.
In his earliest excursions into the realm of the philosophy of science, Haldane had held while materialism had been the most appropriate philosophy for the science of the Newtonian era, Kantianism was the appropriate philosophy of science of the Einsteinian era, for which the laws of natural science were merely forms of human perception.
But in 1928, Haldane, went to the Soviet Union, where he encountered Marxist philosophy of science for the first time, although it would be several years yet before he would come to embrace it as his own.
His father, John Scott Haldane, had also indulged in philosophical speculation on the natural sciences, somewhat along Hegelian lines, he sought to undermine materialism as a philosophy of science. JBS took the further step from Hegel to Marx, but saw his work as a continuation of his father’s.
JBS Haldane’s famous book, The Causes of Evolution (1932), was a major work of what came to be known as the “modern evolutionary synthesis,” re-establishing natural selection as the premier mechanism of evolution by explaining it in terms of the mathematical consequences of Mendelian genetics.
As one of many “fellow-travellers” of the Communist Party among the British intelligentsia in the 1930s, he wrote many articles for The Daily Worker, but only joined the Communist party in 1937. He left in 1950, shortly after having considered standing as a Communist Party candidate for Parliament. The rise of Lysenko’s pseudo-science, with the overt support of Stalin was the principal factor which turned Haldane away from the Communist Party.
In his essay, On Being the Right Size, Haldane put forward the thesis that the simple size of an animal determined much of its nature: “Insects, being so small, do not have oxygen-carrying bloodstreams. What little oxygen their cells require can be absorbed by simple diffusion of air through their bodies. But being larger means an animal must take on complicated oxygen pumping and distributing systems to reach all the cells.” This idea has been referred to as “Haldane’s principle.”
Haldane was friends with the author Aldous Huxley, and was the basis for the biologist Shearwater in Huxley’s novel Antic Hay. Ideas from Haldane’s Daedalus, or, Science and the Future, written before Haldane had visited the Soviet Union, such as ectogenesis (the development of foetuses in artificial wombs), also influenced Huxley’s Brave New World.
In one of the last speeches of his life, Biological Possibilities for the Human Species of the Next Ten Thousand Years in 1963, he coined the word “clone,” from the Greek word for twig.
Hall, Stuart (1932- )
Stuart Hall was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1932. He moved to England with his mother in 1951. They lived in Bristol before Hall entered Merton College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He wrote his PhD on American literature, but it was his informal education at Oxford that introduced Hall to nationalist West Indian thought, left-wing British History, international socialist politics, and continental philosophy.
A socialist, in the 1950s he joined forces with Charles Taylor, Raphael Samuel, and Gabriel Pearson to launch the journal Universities and New Left Review, later merging with E. P. Thompson’s The New Reasoner to become the New Left Review.
In 1964, he co-wrote The Popular Arts, resulting in him being invited to join the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University, where he became Director in 1974. Hall was one of those who defined “Cultural Studies” as an academic discipline.
In these years, he wrote several books including Situating Marx: Evaluations and Departures (1972), Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse (1973), Reading of Marx's 1857 Introduction to the Grundrisse (1973) and Policing the Crisis (1978).
In 1979 Hall was appointed as Professor of Sociology at the Open University and retired from the Open University in 1997 to sit on the Runnymede Trust's Commission on the Future of Multi-ethnic Britain.
Hall is faithful to a Marxist, democratic tradition, and is committed to investigating a rapidly changing British society. He criticized the New Right during the 1980s, and in the 1990s criticized New Labour for what he perceived to be their lack of principle. He has been active in a number of social movements, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
His works include Policing the Crisis (1978), New Ethnicities (1988), The Hard Road to Renewal (1988), Resistance Through Rituals (1989), Modernity and Its Future (1992), What is Black in Popular Culture? (1992), Cultural Identity and Diaspora (1994), Questions of Cultural Identity (1996), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (1996), Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997) and Visual Cultural (1999).
Hallas, Duncan (1925-2002)
Born into a working class family in Manchester, Duncan Hallas joined the Trotskyist Workers International League while still a young worker during World War II. Conscripted into the army in 1943 he was involved in the great mutiny in Egypt after the end of the War.
Back in Britain he was one of the small number of comrades who rallied around Tony Cliff’s critique of “orthodox” Trotskyism and was a founder member of the Socialist Review Group, the forerunner of today’s British Socialist Workers Party and the International Socialist Tendency.
During the long boom of the 1950s and early 1960s he lost contact with the group although he remained politically active in the teachers’ union and elsewhere. During the great upheaval of 1968 he rejoined the International Socialists, as the organisation was then called. From that time he was a leading member of the organisation, a great populariser of Marxism and an inspired speaker, until ill health forced him out of active politics in 1995.
Handal, Schafik Jorge (1930-2006)
General Secretary of the Communist Party of El Salvador, and guerrilla commander in the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in the 1980s. After the peace accords signed in the early 1990s, he led the FMLN in its transition to a peace-time party, and was elected to the Salvadoran Congress.
See Schafik Jorge Handal Archive.
See also: Greenleft Weekly biography and Washington Report.
Haase, Hugo (1863-1919)
Lawyer of Jewish origin. German Social Democrat. Member international Socialist Bureau and Reichstag Deputy 1897-1918. Succeeded Bebel as leader of SD Parliamentary fraction 1913. Opposed voting for war credits within the Party but succumbed to Majority decision. Founder and leader of Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) 1916. Minister of Foreign Affairs and Colonies in Ebert’s "Socialist" Coalition November 1918. Resigned. December 29, 1918. Shot on the steps of the Reichstag by a Monarchist officer.
Hardie, Kier (1856-1915)
Prominent British labour movement leader. Lanarkshire coal miner from age of 10, and organized for his trade union. Influenced by the ideas of Henry George. Established Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party in 1888, elected to Parliament from East London in 1892. Founded ILP in 1893. MP for Merthyr Tydfil from 1900. Visited Australia in 1908 in support of the anti-conscription movement.
Hamid II, Abdul (1842-1918)
Reigned from 1876 to 1909, when he was deposed by the Young Turks.
Harney, George Julian (1817-97)
Radical Chartist leader (1842-48). Editor of the Chartist paper The Northern Star. In this capacity he came into close connection with Marx and Engels. He came out in favour of the use of force ("physical force man") and a revolutionary representation of the people. At the Chartist Convention he opposed the exclusive use of legal methods of struggle. It was Harney who maintained the contact between the Chartists and the Continental workers and revolutionaries. In 1845 Harney founded a London branch of the international society known as the Fraternal Democrats: Marx and Engels both spoke at a meeting organised by this society in Drury Lane, London, on November 29, 1847, the anniversary of the polish revolution of 1830. Harney was a member of the Communist Correspondence Committee set up in London. Harney and Jones met Marx in Paris in March 1848 after Marx’s expulsion from Belgium. The first English translation of the Communist Manifesto, was published in The Red Republican in 1850. Owing to proceedings taken against it under the Stamp Act, this paper changed its name to The Friend of the People in December 1850. Later on, Harney became a member of the First International but was not further prominent politically. He lived in the USA from 1863-88.
Harrington, James (1611-1677)
James Harrington was an English political philosopher, best known for his controversial work, Oceana.
He was born of an old Rutland family, the son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington of Rand, Lincolnshire, and great-nephew of the first Lord Harington of Exton (d. 1615).
In 1629 he entered Trinity College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner. One of his tutors was the famous William Chillingworth. After several years spent travelling, and a period as a soldier in the Dutch army, he returned to England and lived quietly till 1646, when he was appointed to accompany King Charles I, who was being taken from Newcastle as a prisoner. Though republican in his ideas, Harrington won the king’s regard and esteem, and accompanied him to the Isle of Wight. He aroused the suspicion of the parliamentarians and was dismissed: it is said that he was punished for declining to swear to refuse assistance to the king should he attempt to escape.
After Charles’s death Harrington devoted his time to the composition of his Oceana, a work which pleased no one. By order of Oliver Cromwell, it was seized when passing through the press. Harrington, however managed to secure the favour of the Protector’s favourite daughter, Mrs Claypole; the work was restored to him, and appeared in 1656, dedicated to Cromwell. The views embodied in Oceana, particularly that bearing on vote by ballot and rotation of magistrates and legislators, Harrington and others (who in 1659 formed a club called the “Rota”) endeavoured to push practically, but with no success.
In November 1661, by order of Charles II, Harrington was arrested on a charge of conspiracy, and was thrown into the Tower of London. Despite his repeated request no public trial took place, and when at length his sisters obtained a writ of habeas corpus he was secretly moved to St Nicholas Island off Plymouth. There his health gave way owing to his drinking guaiacum on medical advice, and his mind appeared to be affected. Careful treatment restored him to bodily vigour, but his mind never wholly recovered. Some time after his release he married – the date does is not known. Following his death, he was buried next to Sir Walter Raleigh in St Margaret’s, Westminster.
Harrington’s writings consist of the Oceana, and of papers, pamphlets, aphorisms, even treatises, in defence of the Oceana. His Works were edited with biography by John Toland in 1700; Toland’s edition, with additions by Thomas Birch, appeared in 1747, and again in 1771. Oceana was reprinted by Henry Morley in 1887. See Dwight in Political Science Quarterly (March, 1887). Harrington has often been confused with his cousin Sir James Harrington, a member of the commission which tried Charles I, and afterwards excluded from the acts of pardon.
See Utopian Socialism Subject Archive.
Source: 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Hasselmann, Wilhelm (born 1844)
Lassallean: One of the representatives of the General Association of German Workers in the negotiations for unity--co-reporter on the programme question at the Unity Congress of the Party at Gotha (1875) Member of the Reichstag 1874-76 and 1878-80. After resigning from the editorial board of Vorwärts he founded an organ of his own in Elberfeld---Die Rote Fahne--in which he attacked the Party leadership from the "Left." He gradually went over to open anarchism and, together with Most, was therefore expelled from the Party at the Wyden Congress (1880). He then emigrated to America.
Havel, Vaclav (b. 1936)
Playwright; longstanding dissident in Czechoslovakia; the movement in his defence built up to bring down the Stalinist regime in 1989, and Havel was elected President.
Hayes, Max S. (1866-1945)
Hayes was a printer by trade and an active member of the Typographical Union. Hayes was founder and editor of the Cleveland Citizen, 1891. Hayes served as Secretary of Local Cleveland SLP in 1890s and was head of the SLP’s Board of Appeals during the bitter 1899 split of the so-called “Kangaroos,” actively supporting the anti-DeLeon insurgency. Hayes was an arch opponent of Samuel Gompers in the AFL. In 1900, Hayes was nominated for Vice President of the United States by the Rochester SDP, but he withdrew in favor of Job Harriman, who ran with Eugene V. Debs on a SDP unity ticket. Hayes was a vehement opponent of IWW from its founding in 1905. In 1911 Hayes challenged Gompers for AFL presidency, polling 30 percent of the convention vote in a losing effort. Hayes resigned from the SPA on May 7, 1919. In 1920 he was nominated by the new Labor Party for Vice President of the United States, running on a ticket headed by Parley Parker Christensen. Hayes was active in the Conference for Progressive Political Action, 1922-24 and he continued as editor of the Cleveland Citizen until stepping down in 1939. Max S. Hayes died in Cleveland at the age of 79.
Haymarket Martyrs (1887)
On a May 4, 1886, a Chicago rally called to protest the killing of two workers by police, turned into a violent clash after a bomb was thrown. The chaotic scene that left several workers and seven policemen dead, and the legal aftermath, was to become known as the Haymarket Affair. Two of the leaders who spoke at the rally, Albert Parsons, and August Spies, as well as fellow anarchists George Engel and Adolph Fisher, were arrested, tried and executed by the state in 1887. Louis Lingg was condemned to death, but killed himself in prison. Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden and Oscar Neebe were pardoned in 1893.
Further Reading:
The Haymarket defendant’s speeches in court
Subject: May Day.
Haywood, (Big) Bill
General Secretary of US Western Federation of Miners, presided at Founding Convention of the IWW in 1905, where he anticipated the approaching Russian Revolution in his address. Along with Vincent StJohn, Eugene Debs and Daniel De Leon, one the of principal leaders of the IWW. Haywood was in prison at time of 2nd Convention, but his ally Vincent StJohn led a split in defence of the IWW’s revolutionary perspective against the syndicalists. His own union supported the syndicalists however. The IWW split at its Fourth Congress in 1908, ridding itself of the narrow doctrinairism of De Leon’s SLP. Removed from the National Executive of the SP in 1912, Haywood became General Secretary of the IWW in 1914. In 1917, most of the IWW leaders were jailed. In 1920, the Communist International addressed an Open Letter to the IWW invited them to join the Comintern. Hayward said of this letter: ‘After I had finished reading it I called Ralph Chaplin and said to him: "Here is what we have been dreaming about; here is the IWW all feathered out!"’. Haywood went to the USSR to escape repression, "to end his days in the stuffy rooms of the Lux Hotel, among Marxists, not one of whom tried to understand him" (Serge).