Social-Chauvinism

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Social-Chauvinism is a term created by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, to criticise those in the Second International who supported their country's involvement in World War I. Lenin viewed such support as deviating from the socialist ideal of international solidarity of the proletariat, and in his eyes those who supported such were devaluing the notion of social-democracy.

Lenin first came up with the term in his 1915 pamphlet Socialism and War, in which he was particularly critical of figures such as the German Social Democrat, Karl Kautsky. At this stage Lenin and the Bolsheviks still called themselves Social-Democrats, as they were members of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, but Lenin's view that the Second International had failed devalued the term for him somewhat.

Lenin moved for a name change for the Bolshevik party in his April Theses of 1917, and eventually they evolved into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

See also chauvinism