'Social-Chauvinism' is a term created by
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the
Bolshevik leader, to criticise those in the
Second International who supported their countries 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