Origins of the term, "Politically Correct"

[HamdenRice]

As many of you know, the bizarre claim by Dinesh D'Souza, that he coined the term, "politically correct," has spawned several discussions about the origins of the term. I posted this in response to one thread, but thought it might be useful to some of you younger whipper snappers who never experienced far left politics of the 1970s so I am shamelessly starting a new thread.

Originally the term was used earnestly and seriously by some leftist factions, especially certain Marxist-Leninists and Maoists. Recall that Marxist-Leninism was also called "scientific socialism." They believed that their theory was as scientific as, say, physics.

In the social sciences and liberal politics people can have different opinions and come to different conclusions, but in hard sciences there are right and wrong -- or correct and incorrect -- answers to questions.

Believing their theory to be as objective and rigorous as hard sciences, these Marxists would say there are "correct" and "incorrect" political stances, as in "comrade, you analysis is not politically correct." Kruchev, for example, used a Russian expression, in his famous speech denouncing Stalinism, that could be translated, "politically correct." I believe Angela Davis used to use that kind of language in the late 1960s, from whence it was adopted mainly by certain elements of identity politics, especially feminists:

From an old listserve discussion:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9411a&L=linguist&P=2602

"Dolphin states that its first use in the U.S. was by Angela Davis in 1971 when she argued that there could be no "opposing argument to an issue which has only one correct side." Then in 1975, the then-president of the National Organization of Women said that organization was moving in "the intellectually and politically correct direction." The 1971 quotation seems to confirm Mark's view that only those who accept political authority over the quest for truth could use the term
with no ironic intent."

I think that the listserve discussion incorrectly concludes that people who used the term unironically believed that "correctness" came from political authority (as in, "comrade, the party has already decided the issue, which is now the politically correct line"), while I think they (mistakenly) believed that correctness came from scientific, objective analysis (as in "logic, comrade, and scientific socialist political economy dictate there is only one politically correct answer to this question"). On the other hand, for orthodox communists, the Central Committee of the Communist Party was, in fact, responsible for dictating the politically correct line and the party was capable of making about face moves, such as embracing and then rejecting the Hitler Stalin alliance, or Mao's reversals during the Cultural Revolution, which gave Marxist political correctness an Orwellian maleability.

Most of the liberal and progressive left did not share that kind of certainty, and therefore did not use that kind of language.

It was only in the 1970s and 1980s as a response to the most strident leftists on campuses, that progressives began to use the term ironically and then soon after, right wingers began to use the term derisively.