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Social Democracy

Social democracy

Social democracy is a political ideology that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from supporters of Marxism. Initially, social democratic parties included revolutionary socialists, such as Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Lenin alongside those who advocated a gradualist, evolutionary approach, such as Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky and Jean Jaures. After World War I and the Russian Revolution, social democracy became exclusively associated with the non-revolutionary approach. Modern social democracy emphasises a program of gradual legislative reform of the capitalist system in order to make it more equitable and humane, with the theoretical end goal of building a socialist society either de-emphasised or limited in scope. The term social democracy can also refer to the particular kind of society that social democrats advocate. The Socialist International (SI) - the worldwide organisation of social democratic and democratic socialist parties - defines social democracy as an ideal form of representative democracy, that may solve the problems found in a liberal democracy. The SI emphasizes the following principles: Firstly, freedom - not only individual liberties, but also freedom from discrimination and freedom from dependence on either the owners of the means of production or the holders of abusive political power. Secondly, equality and social justice - not only before the law but also economic and socio-cultural equality as well, and equal opportunities for all including those with physical, mental, or social disabilities. Finally, solidarity - unity and a sense of compassion for the victims of injustice and inequality. See [http://www.socialistinternational.org/4Principles/dofpeng2.html the SI's Declaration of Principles]

Social democratic political parties

Social democratic political parties are a feature of many democratic countries. Over the course of the twentieth century, parties such as the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, the German SPD and many other such parties throughout Europe, Canada (New Democratic Party), Australia (Labor Party) and New Zealand (Labour Party) stood in elections on political platforms that included policies such as stronger labor laws, nationalization of major industries, and a strong welfare state. During the later part of the century, most of the aforementioned parties gradually distanced themselves from socialist-style economics (and socialism in general). At present, social democrats generally do not see a conflict between a capitalist market economy and their goals. A great many social democratic parties have adopted policies of the centrist Third Way, which supports a deregulated economy and emphasises equality of opportunity as the benchmark for social equity. Modern social democrats have also broadened their social goals to encompass aspects of feminism, racial equality and multiculturalism. Whether this modern form of social democracy can properly be described as "socialist" is a matter of dispute. Many social democrats do not see themselves as socialist. Most social democratic parties are members of the Socialist International, which is a successor to the Second International. See also List of social democratic parties

"Democratic socialism" versus "Social democracy"

Democratic socialism or reformism arguably forms a distinct current of thought from social democracy, in that self-described democratic socialists still see themselves as working towards the establishment of a socialist society with a socialist economic system. Many separate parties calling themselves "social democrats" have sought to distance themselves from their democratic socialist counterparts. Naturally, there is some degree of overlap, and some self-professed democratic socialists remain associated with social democratic parties in an effort to render them more avowedly socialist. In most cases, those who merely want to improve capitalism have kept the name "social democrats" while those who want to gradually abolish capitalism through democratic means are called "democratic socialists". In other cases, particular names are used solely by historical accident.

History

Many parties in the second half of the 19th century described themselves as social democratic, such as the British Social Democratic Federation, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In some cases these were revolutionary socialist or Marxist groups, who were not only seeking to introduce socialism, but also democracy in undemocratic countries. The modern social democratic current came into being through a break within the socialist movement in the early 20th century, between two groups holding different views on the ideas of Karl Marx. Many related movements, including pacifism, anarchism, and syndicalism, arose at the same time (often by splitting from the main socialist movement) and had various quite different objections to Marxism. The social democrats, who were the majority of socialists at this time, did not reject Marxism (and in fact claimed to uphold it), but wanted to reform it in certain ways and tone down their criticism of capitalism. They argued that socialism should be achieved through evolution rather than revolution. Such views were strongly opposed by the revolutionary socialists, who argued that any attempt to reform capitalism was doomed to fail, because the reformers would be gradually corrupted and eventually turn into capitalists themselves. Two key figures within the socialist movement at this time were César de Paepe of the Belgian International Working Men's Association, and Jean Jaures (who led the French Socialist Party until his assassination on July 31, 1914, one day before the general mobilization of forces that began World War I). Despite their differences, the reformist and revolutionary branches of socialism remained united until the outbreak of World War I. The war proved to be the final straw that pushed the tensions between them to breaking point. The reformist socialists supported their respective national governments in the war, a fact that was seen by the revolutionary socialists as outright treason against the working class (since it betrayed the principle that the workers of all nations should unite in overthrowing capitalism). Bitter arguments ensued within socialist parties, as for example between Eduard Bernstein (reformist socialist) and Rosa Luxemburg (revolutionary socialist) within the SPD in Germany. Eventually, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, most of the world's socialist parties fractured. The reformist socialists kept the name "social democrats", while the revolutionary socialists began calling themselves "communists", and soon formed the modern communist movement. (See also Comintern) Since the 1920s, differences between social democrats and communists have been constantly growing (although it should be noted that the communists themselves are far from doctrinally unified on the best way to achieve socialism). Following the split between social democrats and communists, another split developed within social democracy, between those who still believed it was necessary to abolish capitalism (without revolution) and replace it with a socialist system through democratic parliamentary means, and those who believed that the capitalist system could be retained but simply needed adjustments and improvements such as the nationalization of large businesses, the implementation of social programs (public education, universal healthcare, etc.) and the (partial) redistribution of wealth through a welfare state, in order to make capitalism more humane. Eventually, most social democratic parties have come to be dominated by the latter position and, in the post World War II era, have abandoned any real commitment to abolish capitalism. For instance, in 1959, the Social Democratic Party of Germany adopted the Godesberg Program which rejected class struggle and Marxism. In response, supporters of the former position - that is, those who wish to abolish capitalism rather than merely "improving" it - have taken to calling themselves democratic socialists and have either split from the social democratic parties or formed dissenting factions within them. Since the late 1980s, most social democratic parties have adopted the "Third Way" - either formally or in practice. Modern social democrats are generally in favor of a mixed economy, which should be mainly capitalistic but with governmental provision of certain social services. Many social democratic parties have shifted emphasis from their traditional goals of social justice to human rights and environmental issues. In this, they are facing increasing challenge from Greens, who view ecology as fundamental to peace, and require reform of money supply and safe trade measures to ensure ecological integrity. In Germany in particular, Greens, Social Democrats, and other left-wing parties have cooperated in so-called Red-Green Alliances. A number of the policies advocated by social democrats have become permanent in the countries where they have been implemented, in the sense that they are now supported by all mainstream political parties. Such policies include the progressive income tax and publicly funded medicine. Other measures, however, (such as tuition-free university education) have sometimes been overturned, occasionally by social democratic governments themselves. Social democrats have, for the most part, also abandoned the concept of nationalization and have instead fully or partly privatised state owned industry and services. These changes have been seen in the governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in Australia, that of Tony Blair in the United Kingdom, Gerhard Schröder in Germany, Göran Persson in Sweden, and the Rogernomics of David Lange and Finance Minister Roger Douglas in New Zealand. In general, these reversals in policy are supported more by the party leadership and far less by the average members of social democratic parties and their voter base. Many have claimed that the present leadership of the social democratic movement is corrupt and has abandoned social democracy in practice; to which 'modernizing' social democrats counter that their 'new' social democracy is an adaptation of those historic principles to the reality of the modern world. When discussing the recent reversal of social democratic policy it is important to bear in mind that what many people refer to as 'traditional' social democracy is now generally regarded to have been possible only because of the prevailing international climate - the post-war Bretton Woods consensus. What is of interest to contemporary social democrats, therefore, is why this consensus itself collapsed, whether it would be possible to rebuild it, and how. Some social democratic parties have at some point in their history been supporters of free trade, on the grounds that limiting international trade harms the poor by raising prices and reducing incomes: for example the Labour Party first came to government in the UK in 1924 after their opponents had lost the 1923 election by proposing protectionism. See also History of Socialism.

Views of Social Democrats today

In general, contemporary Social Democrats support:
- Regulatory systems over private enterprise in the interests of workers, consumers and small enterprise.
- A Social Market Economy over a Free market.
- Advocacy of Fair trade over Free trade.
- An extensive system of social security (though usually not to the extent advocated by democratic socialists or other socialist groups), notably to counteract the effects of poverty and to insure the citizens against loss of income following illness or unemployment. (See welfare state)
- Government-owned or subsidised programs of education, health care, child care, etc. for all citizens.
- Moderate to high levels of taxation to fund government expenditure and a progressive taxation system.
- A system of industrial regulation (statutory minimum wages, working conditions, protection against arbitrary dismissal).
- Environmental protection laws (although not to the extent advocated by Greens).
- Immigration and multiculturalism.
- A secular and progressive social policy, although this varies markedly in degree. Some social democrats support gay marriage, abortion and a liberal drug policy, while others are either non-committed or openly opposed to these policies.
- A foreign policy supporting multilateralism and international institutions such as the United Nations.

Criticism of social democracy

Most criticism of social democracy comes from the right wing. Conservatives typically argue that social democratic systems are too restrictive on individual rights, particularly economic freedom, and that individual choice is not as great in systems that provide state-run schools, health care, child care and other services. Social democrats usually retort by arguing that their policies are in fact enhancing individual rights, by raising the standard of living of the vast majority of the population and eliminating the threat of extreme poverty. Economic conservatives and classic liberals argue that social democracy interferes with market mechanisms and hurts the economy by encouraging large budget deficits and restricting the ability of entrepreneurs to invest as they see fit. Social democrats might respond to this argument by observing that right-wing governments have also built up large budget deficits in recent years, notably the Reagan and Bush, Jr. administrations in the USA and the Thatcher government post-1987 in the UK. The modern liberal critique of social democracy is centred on its willingness to restrict the political and legal rights of the individual in favour of a perceived social good. For example, the debate over detention of terrorist suspects without trial in the UK in 2004-05 pitted the Liberal Democrat party, who supported the right to a fair trial, against the Labour government, who argued that curtailing human rights was justified if it served a social end. However, this critique assumes that the British Labour Party has remained true to it's social democratic ideals, see the following paragraph, and ignores similar terrorism laws introduced by the Liberal Party of Australia in late 2005. There is also extensive criticism against social democracy coming from many segments of the Left. Democratic socialists and revolutionary socialists criticise social democrats for being so dependent on the capitalist system that they become indistinguishable from modern liberals. Many social democrats explicitly renounce the label "socialist" and the goal of achieving a socialist state. This willingness to work within the capitalist system rather than trying to overturn it leads many on the left to accuse modern social democratic parties of betraying their principles out of corruption and a desire to placate business lobbies and other interest groups. Left critics allege that some professed social democrats, such as Tony Blair, Göran Persson and Gerhard Schröder, end up doing the work of the capitalists by implementing tax cuts, cuts in social programs, privatisations, industrial deregulation, and a rolling back of the welfare state rather than extending it.

Social democrats

- Karl Ast
- Paul Axelrod
- Tony Blair
- Fedor Dan
- Toomas Hendrik Ilves
- Jack Layton
- Mihkel Martna
- Julius Martov
- Aleksandr Martynov
- Georgi Plekhanov
- August Rei
- Vera Zasulich

External link

- [http://www.socialistinternational.org/ Socialist International]
- [http://www.socialdemocrat.org/ Socialdemocrat.org] Category:Political parties by ideology Category:Political theories Category:Social democracy ja:社会民主主義

Political ideology

This is an overview of the ideologies of parties. Many political parties base their political action and programme on an ideology. In social studies, a political ideology is a certain ethical, set of ideals, principles, doctrines, myths or symbols of a social movement, institution, class, or large group that explain how society should work, and offer some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order. A political ideology largely concerns itself with how to allocate power and to what ends it should be used. It can be a construct of political thought, often defining political parties and their policy. The popularity of an ideology is in part due to the influence of moral entrepreneurs, who sometimes act in their own interests. Political ideologies have two dimensions: #How society should work (or be arranged). #The rules (blueprint) most appropriate to achieving the ideal arrangement. :More information about political ideologies can be found in the article on ideology. The following list attempts to divide the ideologies found in practical political life into a number of groups; each group contains ideologies that have a certain theme or idea in common. Note that one ideology can belong to several groups, and there is sometimes considerable overlap between related ideologies. Also, keep in mind that the meaning of a political label can differ per country and that parties often subscribe to a combination of ideologies.

20th century

The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar. Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from 1900 to 1999, but this is incorrect since counting of calendar years begins with the year 1. The 20th century is also sometimes known as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). Decades are almost always considered as starting with the "0" year and named accordingly ("1960s", etc.). However, a number of arguments have been used to justify the common usage. One was advanced, erroneously, by Stephen Jay Gould. He claimed that the first decade had only nine years, thus contradicting the definition of decade equaled 10 years. Another argument is that the astronomical year numbering system for years does have a year zero, the year normally known as 1 BC. In 2000 the International Organization for Standardization clarified ISO 8601 to use the astronomical year numbering system, which could be interpreted as retrospectively endorsing all the people who had celebrated the new century a few months earlier. The term is also used to describe various periods that overlap with the calendar definition, most notably the Short twentieth century, which claims that the 20th Century spanned from 1914 to 1989, rendering the pre-WWI 1900s into the 19th Century and putting the 1990s at the beginning of the 21st Century. Indeed, the part of the 20th Century before World War I is quite identical to the late 1800s culturally and technologically and the 1990s decade pointed in many ways (such as the rise of the Internet) to the 21st Century and is seen by some as not being truly a part of the 20th Century.

Overview

The twentieth century saw a remarkable shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of technological, medical, social, ideological, and political innovations. Terms like ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war entered common usage and became an influence on the lives of everyday people. War reached an unprecedented scale and level of sophistication; in the Second World War (1939-1945) alone, approximately 57 million people died, mainly due to massive improvements in weaponry. The trends of mechanization of goods and services and networks of global communication, which were begun in the 19th century, continued at an ever-increasing pace in the 20th. In spite of the terror and chaos, the 20th century saw many attempts at world peace. As the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy said: :What kind of peace do we seek? I am talking about a genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal. Virtually every aspect of life in virtually every human society changed in some fundamental way or another during the twentieth century and for the first time, any individual could influence the course of history no matter their background. Arguably, the 20th century re-shaped the face of the planet in more ways than any previous century.
- Death rates
- Infant mortality
- Infectious disease
- Life expectancy
- Maternal death rates
- Battles Scientific discoveries such as relativity and quantum physics radically changed the worldview of scientists, causing them to realize that the universe was much more complex than they had previously believed, and dashing the hopes at the end of the preceding century that the last few details of knowledge were about to be filled in. For a more coherent overview of the historical events of the century, see The 20th century in review. The 20th century has sometimes been called, both within and outside the United States, the American Century, though this is a controversial term.

Important developments, events and achievements

Science and technology

- The assembly line and mass production of motor vehicles and other goods allowed manufacturers to produce more and cheaper products. This allowed the automobile to become the most important means of transportation.
- The invention of heavier-than-air flying machines and the jet engine allowed for the world to become "smaller". Space flight increased knowledge of the rest of the universe and allowed for global real-time communications via geosynchronous satellites.
- Mass media technologies such as film, radio, and television allow the communication of political messages and entertainment with unprecedented impact
- Mass availability of the telephone and later, the computer, especially through the Internet, provides people with new opportunities for near-instantaneous communication
- Applied electronics, notably in its miniaturized form as integrated circuits, made possible the above mentioned rise of mass media, telecommunications, ubiquitous computing, and all kinds of "intelligent" appliances; as well as many advances in natural sciences such as physics, by the use of exponentially growing calculation power (see supercomputer).
- The development of Nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides resulted in significantly higher agricultural yield.
- Advances in fundamental physics through the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics led to the development of nuclear weapons (known informally as "the Bomb" and dropped on the industrial town of Hiroshima and the historic one of Nagasaki), the nuclear reactor, and the laser. Fusion power was studied extensively but remained an experimental technology at the end of the century.
- Inventions such as the washing machine and air conditioning led to an increase in both the quantity and quality of leisure time for the middle class in Western societies.
- Most influential inventions in the 20th century: antibiotics, oral contraceptives, new plastics, transistors, Internet
- More...

Wars and politics

- Democratic nations began to extend voting privileges to all adults.
- Rising nationalism and increasing national awareness were among the causes of World War I, the first of two wars to involve all the major world powers including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and the British Commonwealth. World War I led to the creation of many new countries, especially in Eastern Europe. Ironically, it was said by many to be the 'War to end all Wars'.
- The economic and political aftermath of World War I led to the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe, and shortly to World War II. This war also involved Asia and the Pacific, in the form of Japanese aggression against China and the United States. While the First World War mainly cost lives among soldiers, civilians suffered greatly in the Second -- from the bombing of cities on both sides, and in the unprecedented German genocide of the Jews and others, known as the Holocaust.
- During World War I, in Russia the Bolshevik putsch led to the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the Soviet Union's involvement in World War II, Communism became a major force in global politics, spreading all over the world: notably, to Eastern Europe, China, Indochina and Cuba. This led to the Cold War and proxy wars with the western world, including wars in Korea (1950-53) and Vietnam (1957 - 75).
- The "fall of Communism" in the late 1980s freed Eastern and Central Europe from Soviet supremacy. It also led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia into successor states, many rife with ethnic nationalism, and left the United States as the world's superpower.
- Through the League of Nations and, after World War II, the United Nations, international cooperation increased. Other efforts included the formation of the European Union, leading to a common currency in much of Western Europe, the euro around the turn of the millennium.
- The end of colonialism led to the independence of many African and Asian countries. During the Cold War, many of these aligned with the USA, the USSR, or China for defense.
- The creation of Israel, a Jewish state in a mostly Arab region of the world, fueled many conflicts in the region, which were also influenced by the vast oil fields in many of the Arab countries.
- The term Southeast Asia coined.

Culture and entertainment

- Movies, music and the media had a major influence on fashion and trends in all aspects of life. As many movies and music originate from the United States, American culture spread rapidly over the world.
- After gaining political rights in the United States and much of Europe in the first part of the century, and with the advent of new birth control techniques women became more independent throughout the century.
- Rock and Roll and Jazz styles of music are developed in the United States, and quickly become the dominant forms of popular music in America, and later, the world. The Beatles, a 1960s British Rock and Roll band, becomes one of the most successful acts of all time, and is credited, in their experimental later albums, with permanently changing what was thought possible in popular music.
- Modern art developed new styles such as expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.
- The automobile provided vastly increased transportation capabilities for the average member of Western societies in the early to mid-century, spreading even further later on. City design throughout most of the West became focused on transport via car. The car became a leading symbol of modern society, with styles of car suited to and symbolic of particular lifestyles.
- Sports became an important part of society, becoming an activity not only for the privileged. Watching sports, later also on television, became a popular activity.

Disease and medicine

- Although the availability and quality of medicine continued to improve, epidemic diseases continued to spread, aided by modern transportation. An influenza pandemic, the Spanish Flu, killed 25 million between 1918 and 1919, while AIDS is yet uncured and treatments remain too expensive for wide use in developing countries.
- Advances in medicine, such as the invention of antibiotics, decreased the number of people dying from diseases. Contraceptive drugs and organ transplantation were developed. The discovery of DNA molecules and the advent of molecular biology allowed for cloning and genetic engineering.

Natural resources and the environment

- The widespread use of petroleum in industry -- both as a chemical precursor to plastics and as a fuel for the automobile and airplane -- led to the vital geopolitical importance of petroleum resources. The Middle East, home to many of the world's oil deposits, became a center of geopolitical and military tension throughout the latter half of the century. (For example, oil was a factor in Japan's decision to go to war against the United States in 1941, and the oil cartel, OPEC, used an oil embargo of sorts in the wake of the Yom Kippur War in the 1970s).
- A vast increase in fossil fuel consumption leads to depletion of natural resources, while air pollution has led to the develoment of an ozone hole and, many believe, global warming and both local and global climate change. The problem is increased by world-wide deforestation, also causing a loss of biodiversity. The problem of a depletion of natural resources is decreased by advances in drilling technology which led to a net increase in the amount of fossil fuel that is readily obtainable at the end of the century, as compared with the amount considered obtainable at the beginning of the century.

Significant people

World leaders

- Africa
- Gnassingbe Eyadema, Togo
- Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d'Ivoire
- Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia
- Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya
- Idi Amin, Uganda
- Nelson Mandela, South Africa
- Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe
- Gamal Abdal Nasser, Egypt
- Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana
- Julius Nyerere, Tanzania
- Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia
- Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya
- Haile Selassie, Ethiopia
- Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal
- Ahmed Sékou Touré, Guinea
- Americas
- Juan Perón, Argentina
- Eva Perón, Argentina
- Getúlio Vargas, Brazil
- Luis Carlos Prestes, Brazil
- Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazil
- Wilfrid Laurier, Canada
- William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada
- Pierre Trudeau, Canada
- Salvador Allende, Chile
- Augusto Pinochet, Chile
- Fidel Castro, Cuba
- Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Argentina/Cuba
- Emiliano Zápata, Mexico
- Pancho Villa, Mexico
- Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, Mexico
- Augusto César Sandino, Nicaragua
- Fernando Belaúnde Terry, Peru
- Alberto Kenya Fujimori, Peru
- Theodore Roosevelt, USA
- Woodrow Wilson,USA
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, USA
- Harry S Truman, USA
- Dwight Eisenhower, USA
- John F. Kennedy, USA
- Lyndon B. Johnson, USA
- Richard Nixon, USA
- Ronald Reagan, USA
- Bill Clinton, USA
- George H. W. Bush, USA
- José Batlle y Ordóñez, Uruguay
- Romulo Betancourt, Venezuela
- Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi, India
- Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore
- Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippines
- Corazon Aquino, the Philippines
- Mao Zedong, People's Republic of China
- Deng Xiaoping, People's Republic of China
- Pol Pot, Cambodia
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan
- Indira Gandhi, India
- Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia
- Jawaharlal Nehru, India
- Emperor Hirohito, Japan
- Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
- Sun Yat-sen, Republic of China
- Chiang Kai-shek, Republic of China
- Achmad Sukarno, Indonesia
- Suharto, Indonesia
- Australia and Oceania
- Edmund Barton, Australia
- Sir Robert Menzies, Australia
- Peter Fraser, New Zealand
- Michael Joseph Savage, New Zealand
- David Lange, New Zealand
- Europe
- Franz Joseph of Austria, Austria-Hungary
- Václav Havel, Czech Republic
- Franjo Tuđman, Croatia
- Archbishop Makarios III, Cyprus
- Urho Kekkonen, Finland
- Philippe Pétain, France
- Charles de Gaulle, France
- Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, France
- François Mitterrand, France
- Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany
- Friedrich Ebert, Germany
- Adolf Hitler, Germany
- Konrad Adenauer, West Germany
- Walter Ulbricht, East Germany
- Erich Honecker, East Germany
- Willy Brandt, West Germany
- Helmut Kohl, Germany
- Gerhard Schröder, Germany
- Eleftherios Venizelos, Greece
- Ioannis Metaxas, Greece
- Konstantinos Karamanlis, Greece
- Andreas Papandreou, Greece
- Miklós Horthy, Hungary
- Imre Nagy, Hungary
- Benito Mussolini, Italy
- Aldo Moro, Italy
- Eamon de Valera, Ireland
- Einar Gerhardsen, Norway
- Józef Piłsudski, Poland
- Lech Wałęsa, Poland
- António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal
- Mário Soares, Portugal
- Nicolae Ceauşescu, Romania
- Milan Kučan, Slovenia
- Francisco Franco, Spain
- Felipe González, Spain
- Adolfo Suárez, Spain
- Olof Palme, Sweden
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey
- Neville Chamberlain, United Kingdom
- Winston Churchill, United Kingdom
- Margaret Thatcher, United Kingdom
- Tony Blair, United Kingdom
- Josip Broz Tito,Yugoslavia
- Slobodan Milošević, Yugoslavia
- Russia and Soviet Union
- Czar Nicholas II
- Vladimir Lenin
- Joseph Stalin
- Leon Trotsky
- Nikita Khrushchev
- Leonid Brezhnev
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- Boris Yeltsin
- Middle East
- Reza Shah Pahlavi, Iran
- Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran
- Mohammad Mosaddeq, Iran
- Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran
- Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran
- Mohammad Khatami, Iran
- Abdul Nasser, Egypt or United Arab Republic
- Anwar Sadat, Egypt or United Arab Republic
- David Ben-Gurion, Israel
- Golda Meir, Israel
- Menachem Begin, Israel
- Yitzhak Rabin, Israel
- Hafez el Assad, Syria
- Saddam Hussein, Iraq
- King Hussein, Jordan
- Yassar Arafat, Palestine

Scientists

; Biology and Anthropology
- Norman Borlaug
- Francis Crick
- Theodosius Dobzhansky
- Paul Ehrlich
- Jane Goodall
- Stephen Jay Gould
- Hans Adolf Krebs
- Ernst Mayr
- John Maynard Smith
- Albert Szent-Györgyi
- James Watson ; Chemistry
- Elias Corey
- Maria Skłodowska-Curie
- Pierre Curie
- Fritz Haber
- Stanley Miller
- Linus Pauling
- Ernest Rutherford
- J.J. Thomson
- Harold Urey ; Computer Science
- John Backus
- Edsger Dijkstra
- Richard Matthew Stallman
- Linus Torvalds
- Grace Murray Hopper
- John von Neumann
- Claude Shannon
- Alan Turing
- William Gates III ; Mathematics
- Paul Erdős
- Kurt Gödel
- David Hilbert
- Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov
- Benoit Mandelbrot
- John Nash
- John von Neumann ; Medicine and Pharmacy
- Carl Djerassi
- Alexander Fleming
- Howard Walter Florey
- Ma Haide (George Hatem)
- Jonas Salk ; Physics and Astronomy
- Abdus Salam
- Niels Bohr
- Paul Dirac
- Freeman Dyson
- Albert Einstein
- Enrico Fermi
- Richard Feynman
- Stephen Hawking
- Werner Karl Heisenberg
- Edwin Hubble
- Wolfgang Pauli
- Max Planck
- Carl Sagan
- Erwin Schrödinger ; Psychology
- Aaron T. Beck
- Mary Whiton Calkins
- Albert Ellis
- Sigmund Freud
- Carl Jung
- Alfred Kinsey
- Stanley Milgram
- Ivan Pavlov
- Jean Piaget
- B.F. Skinner
- John B. Watson

Humanities

- Art and Literary Theory
- Rudolf Arnheim
- Clive Bell
- Fredric Jameson
- Pauline Kael
- Siegfried Kracauer
- Raymond Williams
- Civil Rights
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Economics
- John Maynard Keynes
- John Kenneth Galbraith
- Milton Friedman
- Ludwig von Mises
- History
- Stephen Ambrose
- Charles A. Beard
- Marc Bloch
- Fernand Braudel
- Lucien Febvre
- Jacques Le Goff
- Philosophy
- Theodor Adorno
- Louis Althusser
- Hannah Arendt
- Gaston Bachelard
- Walter Benjamin
- Henri Bergson
- Gilles Deleuze
- Michel Foucault
- Jürgen Habermas
- Martin Heidegger
- W. V. Quine
- John Rawls
- Bertrand Russell
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Political Science
- Robert A. Dahl
- Maurice Duverger
- Francis Fukuyama
- Arend Lijphart
- C. Wright Mills

Business

- Paul Allen
- Warren Buffett
- Walt Disney
- Henry Ford
- Bill Gates
- Howard Hughes
- Steve Jobs
- Linus Torvalds
- Donald Trump
- Sam Walton
- Thomas J. Watson

Aerospace pioneers

- Alberto Santos-Dumont
- Robert Goddard
- Wernher von Braun
- Neil Armstrong
- Louis Bleriot
- Yuri Gagarin
- Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov
- Freddie Laker
- Charles Lindbergh
- Ron McNair
- Ellison Onizuka
- Herman Potočnik Noordung
- Alan Shepard
- Valentina Tereshkova
- Wright Brothers
- Chuck Yeager

Military leaders

- Moshe Dayan
- Dwight Eisenhower
- Sir Bernard Freyberg
- Charles de Gaulle
- Vo Nguyen Giap
- Che Guevara
- Douglas Haig
- Paul von Hindenburg
- Erich Ludendorff
- Douglas MacArthur
- Rudolf Maister
- Bernard Montgomery
- Chester Nimitz
- George Patton
- Colin Powell
- Erwin Rommel
- Franc Rozman Stane
- Leon Trotsky
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Spiritual figures

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Artists

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Music

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Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg (March 5, 1870 or 1871 – January 15, 1919, in Polish language Róża Luksemburg) was a Polish-born German Marxist political theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary. She was a social democratic theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and later the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. She started the newspaper The Red Flag, and cofounded the Spartakusbund, a Marxist revolutionary group that became the Communist Party of Germany and took part in an unsuccessful revolution in Berlin in January, 1919. The uprising was carried out against Rosa's advice, and crushed by the remnants of the monarchist army and freelance right-wing militias collectively called the Freikorps. Luxemburg and hundreds of others were captured, tortured, and killed; Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht attained great symbolic status amongst Marxists. Today, the party foundation of the german Left Party (Germany) is dedicated to Rosa Luxemburg.

Life

Poland

Rosa Luxemburg was born Rosalia Luxenburg on March 5, 1870 or 1871 in Zamość near Lublin in the then Russian-controlled Congress Poland. She was born to a Jewish family. Sources differ on the year of her birth - she gave her birth year as 1871 on her CV for Zürich University, but her 1887 Abitur certificate says she was 17, in which case she was born in 1870. She was the fifth child of the Jewish wood trader/timber trader Eliasz Luxemburg III and his wife Line (maiden name: Löwenstein). Rosa had a growth defect and was physically handicapped all her life. After her family moved to Warsaw, Rosa attended a girl's Gymnasium there from 1880. Even in those early days she was a member of the "Proletariat", a left-wing Polish party, from 1886. The Proletariat had been founded in 1882, twenty years before the Russian workers' parties, and started off by organising a general strike. As a result, four of its leaders were put to death and the party was broken up. Some of its members managed to meet in secret; Rosa joined one of these groups. In 1887 Rosa passed her Abitur with flying colours. After fleeing to Switzerland from imminent detention in 1889, she attended Zurich University, along with other socialist figures such as Anatoli Lunacharsky and Leo Jogiches. She studied philosophy, history, politics, economics and mathematics simultaneously. Her specialised subjects were Staatswissenschaft (the science of forms of state), the Middle Ages and economic and stock exchange crises. In 1890, Bismarck's laws against social democracy were annulled and the SPD was legally able to gain seats in the Reichstag. But despite their revolutionary talk, the socialist members of parliament focused more and more on gaining further parliamentary rights and on material wealth. Rosa Luxemburg, on the contrary, stuck to her revolutionary Marxist principles. In 1893, along with Leo Jogiches and Julian Marchlewski (alias Julius Karski), she founded the newspaper Sprawa Robotnicza ("The Workers' Cause"), in opposition to the nationalist policies of the Polish Socialist Party. Luxemburg believed that an independent Poland could only come about through revolutions in Germany, Austria, and Russia. She maintained that the struggle should be against capitalism itself, and not for an independent Poland. Luxemburg denied the right of self-determination for nations under socialism, which later caused tensions with Vladimir Lenin. With Leo Jogiches, she co-founded the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), which was later to become the Socialist Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) by merging with Lithuania's social democratic organisation. Despite living in Germany for most of her adult life, Luxemburg was to remain the principal theoretician of the Polish Social Democrats, and led the party in a partnership with Jogiches, its principal organiser.

Germany

In 1898, Luxemburg obtained German citizenship by her marriage to Gustav Lübeck, and moved to Berlin. She became active in the left wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), where she sharply defined the border between her faction and the Revisionism Theory of Eduard Bernstein, attacking him in 1899 in a brochure entitled "Social reform or revolution?". Luxemburg's grasp of rhetoric soon made her a leading spokesperson for the party. Overall, she denounced the increasingly conformist parliamentary course of the SPD in the face of the increasingly obvious likelihood of war. Luxemburg insisted that the critical difference between capital and labour could only be countered if the proletariat took over power and revolutionary changes in the whole environment of production methods occurred. She wanted the Revisionists to leave the SPD. This did not take place, but at least Karl Kautsky's party leadership kept Marxism on the programme, even if his main aim was to improve the number of seats the party held in the Reichstag. From 1900, Rosa Luxemburg voiced her opinions on current economic and social problems in various newspaper articles all over Europe. Her attacks on German militarism and imperialism became heftier as she foresaw the approach of war, and she tried to persuade the SPD to steer in the opposite direction. Luxemburg wanted to organise a general strike to rouse the workers into solidarity and prevent war, but the party leadership refused, and in 1910 she split off from Kautsky. Between 1904 and 1906 her work was interrupted by three prison terms for political activities. Nonetheless, Luxemburg kept up her political activities; in 1907 she took part in the Russian Social Democrats' Fifth Party Day in London, where she met Vladimir Lenin. At the Second International (Socialist) Congress, in Stuttgart, she suggested a resolution, which was accepted, that all European workers' parties should unite in their attempts to stop the war. At this time, Luxemburg began teaching Marxism and Economics at the SPD party training centre in Berlin. One of her students was the later leader of the SPD, the first president of the Weimar Republic Friedrich Ebert. In 1912 her position as a representative of the SPD took Luxemburg to European Socialists congresses such as that in Paris. Along with the French socialist Jean Jaurès, she ensured that in case of war breaking out, the European workers' parties were committed to a general strike. When the crisis in the Balkans came to a head in 1914, war seemed even more inevitable and she organised demonstrations (e.g. in Frankfurt) calling for conscientious objection to military service and refusal to obey orders. Because of this, she was accused of "enciting to disobedience against the authorities' law and order" and sentenced to a year in prison. Her detention did not begin directly, however, so she was able to take part in a meeting of the Socialist Office in July. She was devastated to recognise there that the workers' parties' nationalism was stronger than their class consciousness. On July 28, World War I started when Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia. On August 3 1914 the German Empire declared war against Russia. The following day, the Reichstag unanimously agreed to finance the war by war bonds. All SPD representatives voted in favour of this bill and the party also agreed to a truce ("Burgfrieden") with the government, promising to refrain from any strikes during the war. For Luxemburg, this was a personal catastrophe which even led her to briefly contemplate suicide: Revisionism, which she had fought against since 1899, had triumphed, and war was on its way. Together with Karl Liebknecht and some others such as Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring, Luxemburg created the Internationale group on 5 August 1914. This became the Spartacist League on January 1, 1916. They produced a number of illegal pamphlets signed "Spartacus" after the Thracian gladiator who tried to free slaves from the Romans. Luxemburg herself took on the name "Junius" after Lucius Junius Brutus, who was said to have founded the Roman Republic. The group rejected the SPD's 'ceasefire' with the German government under Kaiser Wilhelm II in the question of endorsing World War I, and fought against it vehemently, trying to lead back towards a general strike. As a result, as early as 28 June 1916 Luxemburg was sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment, at almost the same time as Karl Liebknecht. During her stay in the penitentiary she was relocated twice, first to Poznań (Posen) and then to Wrocław (Breslau). During this time she wrote several articles, using the name "Junius", which her friends smuggled out and published illegally. These included The Russian Revolution, which criticised the Bolsheviks on a number of scores, and presciently warned of the danger that a dictatorship would develop under Bolshevik rule. (She nonetheless continued to call for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" on the Bolshevik model.) It was in this context that she famously wrote ""Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" (Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.) Another publication, in June 1916, was Die Krise der Sozialdemokratie (The crisis of social democracy). In 1917, when the USA joined the war, the Spartacist League affiliated to the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), another group of anti-war ex-SPD members, founded by Karl Kautsky. On 9 November 1918 the USPD were catapulted into power as rulers of the new republic alongside the SPD, after the abdication of the Kaiser. This followed an uprising (the German revolution) which had begun in Kiel on 4 November 1918, when forty thousand sailors and marines took over the port in protest at a proposed engagement with the British Navy by German Naval Command, despite the fact it was clear that the war had been lost. By 8 November, Workers' and Soldiers' Councils had seized most of western Germany, laying the foundations for the so-called Räterepublik ("Council Republic"), modelled on the system of Soviets seen in Russia in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Luxemburg was released from prison in Wrocław on 8 November and Liebknecht had also recently been freed and reorganised the Spartacus League. Together they now produced Die rote Fahne (the Red Flag) newspaper. In one of the first articles she wrote, Luxemburg demanded an amnesty for all political prisoners and called for an end to capital punishment. However, the united front disintegrated in late December 1918 as the USPD left the coalition in protest at perceived SPD compromises with the (capitalist) status quo. On 1 January 1919 the Spartacus League together with other socialist and communist groups (including the International Communists of Germany, IKD) created the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), above all on the initiative of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg supported the KPD's involvement in the national constitutional assembly which ultimately was to found the Weimar Republic; but she was outvoted. In January a second revolutionary wave swept Germany, which some of the KPD leadership, including Luxemburg, was reluctant to encourage, foreseeing it ending badly (though others sought to exploit it). In response, the Social Democratic leader, Friedrich Ebert employed nationalist militia, the Freikorps, to suppress the uprising. Both Luxemburg and Liebknecht were captured in Berlin by the Freikorps on 15 January 1919 and murdered on the same day. Luxemburg was battered to death with rifle butts and thrown into a nearby river and Liebknecht was shot in the back of the head then deposited as an unknown body in a nearby mortuary. Hundreds of KPD members were similarly killed, and the councils suppressed.

Dialectic of Spontaneity and Organization

The central feature of her thought was the Dialectic of Spontaneity and Organization, in which spontaneity can be considered akin to a "grass roots" (or even anarchistic) approach, and organisation to a more bureaucratic or party-institutional approach to the class struggle. According to this Dialectic, spontaneity and organization are not two separable or even separate things, but rather different moments of the same process, so that one cannot exist without the other. These theoretical insights arise from the elementary and spontaneous class struggle; and through these insights, the class struggle develops to a higher level.

"The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles... Social democracy.. is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh. Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone." (In a Revolutionary Hour: What Next?, Collected Works 1.2, p. 554)

Spontaneity is always mediated by organization, just as organization must be mediated by spontaneity. Nothing could be more wrong than to accuse Rosa Luxemburg of holding the idea of an abstract "spontaneism". She developed the Dialectic of Spontaneity and Organization under the influence of a wave of mass strikes in Europe, especially the Russian Revolution of 1905. Unlike the social democratic orthodoxy of the Second International, she did not regard organization as the product of scientific-theoretic insight into historical imperatives, but rather as the product of the struggles of the working classes.

"Social democracy is simply the embodiment of the modern proletariat's class struggle, a struggle which is driven by a consciousness of its own historic consequences. The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process. The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands. And as the entire social democracy movement is only the conscious advance guard of the proletarian class movement, which in the words of the Communist Manifesto represent in every single moment of the struggle the permanent interests of liberation and the partial group interests of the workforce vis à vis the interests of the movement as whole, so within the social democracy its leaders are the more powerful, the more influential, the more clearly and consciously they make themselves merely the mouthpiece of the will and striving of the enlightened masses, merely the agents of the objective laws of the class movement." (The Political Leader of the German Working Classes, Collected Works 2, p. 280)

and:

"The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a