A NOTE ON THE ORIGIN OF THE EXPRESSION “POLITICALLY CORRECT.”

    Frank Young
    June 2006

The expression “politically correct” is a Marxist-Leninist phrase which describes the Official Party Line following the Russian Revolution of 1917.  


The following quote is from Doris Lessing:  “I'm just going to mention political correctness in passing because there's nobody here, I'm sure, who hasn't been involved in the debates about it. I don't want to talk about the actual "party line," as it were, but what it derives from. Political correctness, to my mind, stems straight from the old Communist Party. The mere words "correct," "incorrect," the "correct approach," the "incorrect approach," and so on. It is Party language, and it is bullying. But what has happened is that yet again we have enormous numbers of people all over the world sharing a readiness to accept a particular dogma, as if they have no critical faculties. I'm well aware that I'm skating over some dangerous ground, but this is how I see it. I think it's probably the most astonishing phenomenon of our time, that from one end of the world to the other you will hear people murmuring, "It's politically correct" or "It's not politically correct." Who ordered them to do this? And why? Why does everyone fall on their backs and wave their little paws in the air? Why do we do it? Why don't we say to these bullies, "Go back and torment your friends with this nonsense and leave us in peace"? The whole world is now mouthing these little cliches. I do not understand it. I think it is utterly astounding that this should have happened. We lost one dogma, the Communists dogma, the Party line in literature -- which went far beyond the Party and the Left and affected all kinds of people far removed from the left wing -- but we so love our chains that we instantly drag on a new set. That is how I see it.”  From An Evening with Doris Lessing Published in the Partisan Review, Winter 1998.. or drag to move.