The Mass Strike

[Bilan]

What do people of the theory of the Mass Strike, as articulated by Rosa Luxemburg in her book of the same name.
Primarily, (not the history of the mass strike as such, though this does prove the inevitablity and revolutionary nature of the mass strike) the third last chapter, on the role of the organised and unorganised masses in the proletarian revolution.

The people Rosa attacks in the article hold views that are certainly not uncommon today.



The attitude of many trade-union leaders to this question is generally summed up in the assertion: “We are not yet strong enough to risk such a hazardous trial of strength as a mass strike.” Now this position is so far untenable that it is an insoluble problem to determine the time, in a peaceful fashion by counting heads, when the proletariat are “strong enough” for any struggle. Thirty years ago the German trade-unions had 50,000 members. That was obviously a number with which a mass strike on the above scale was not to be thought of. Fifteen years later the trade-unions were four times as strong, and counted 237,000 members. If, however, the present trade-union leaders had been asked at the time if the organisation of the proletariat was then sufficiently ripe for a mass strike, they would assuredly have replied that it was still far from it and that the number of those organised in trade-unions would first have to be counted by millions.

Today the number of trade-unionists already runs into the second million, but the views of the leaders are still exactly the same, and may very well be the same to the end. The tacit assumption is that the entire working class of Germany, down to the last man and the last woman, must be included in the organisation before it “is strong enough” to risk a mass action, which then, according to the old formula, would probably be represented as “superfluous.” This theory is nevertheless absolutely utopian, for the simple reason that it suffers from an internal contradiction, that it goes in a vicious circle. Before the workers can engage in any direct class struggle they must all be organised. The circumstances, the conditions, of capitalist development and of the bourgeois state make it impossible that, in the normal course of things, without stormy class struggles, certain sections – can be organised at all.

However, the primary focus here, is with this:



Mass strikes and political mass struggles cannot, therefore, possibly be carried through in Germany by the organised workers alone, nor can they be appraised by regular “direction” from the central committee of a party. In this case, again – exactly as in Russia – they depend not so much upon “discipline” and “training” and upon the most careful possible regulation beforehand of the questions of support and cost, as upon a real revolutionary, determined class action, which will be able to win and draw into the struggle the widest circles of the unorganised workers, according to their mood and their conditions.

The overestimate and the false estimate of the role of organisations in the class struggle of the proletariat is generally reinforced by the underestimate of the unorganised proletarian mass and of their political maturity. In a revolutionary period, in the storm of great unsettling class struggles, the whole educational effect of the rapid capitalist development and of social democratic influences first shows itself upon the widest sections of the people, of which, in peaceful times the tables of the organised, and even election statistics, give only a faint idea.

Thoughts?

[davidasearles]

And the purpose of such strike would be?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I would like to reply by re-posting a Left Communist discussion thread exposing the mass strike strategy and soviets emerging from such as a sham:

Reform coalition, or mass strike? (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/618/McNair%20-%20Strategy3.htm)


The proposal of the left was that the International could take the political initiative by extending the use of the strike weapon in support of the demands of the minimum programme. As the working class was increasingly able to win victories by this weapon, its confidence and political self-assertiveness would grow, culminating (perhaps) in a general strike which challenged for power - either demanding the transfer of political power to the working class or (in the most Bakuninist form) immediately beginning the creation of the new society out of the free cooperation begun in the strike movement.

A range of theoretical grounds have been offered for this strategic line, from theoretical anarchist reasonings, through varieties of Hegelian Marxism, to interpretations of Trotsky’s Transitional programme. As with the right, the theoretical arguments need not be considered here. Like that of the right, the strategic line of the left involved both a positive predictive claim and a negative one. The negative claim was that the method of electoral struggle and coalitions - or even the effort to build permanent mass workers’ organisations, as opposed to ad hoc organisations of mass struggle like strike committees - necessarily led to corruption of the workers’ representatives and organisations and the evolution of these organisations into mere forms of capitalist control of the working class. The positive claim was that the method of the strike struggle could be extended and generalised. Experience has something to tell us about the value of these claims.

[...]

The trouble is that if the negative claim is taken seriously to be absolutely proved, it is self-defeating. The implication is that nothing can be done until the masses move into a mass strike wave, because to organise in any other situation would imply the struggle for reforms, including electoral activity’ coalitions, and organisational forms which turn out to be corrupt. Unfortunately, however - as we will see in a moment - when a mass strike wave does break out, this in itself immediately poses the questions of government and forms of authority. Under these conditions, the unorganised advocates of the mass strike as an alternative to permanent organisation and the struggle for reforms are marginalised by the organised parties. Like the Russian anarchists in the summer and autumn of 1917, the anarchist CNT trade union confederation in the Spanish revolution, the Bolivian Trotskyists in 1951 and the Portuguese far left in 1974-76, they will be driven to give support to some contender for governmental power, and lose any political initiative.

[...]

Now, of course, what the advocates of the mass strike strategy were calling for was not such a truly all-out indefinite general strike called by the political party. The reality of mass strike movements is something a great deal more messy, of the sort described, for Russia, in Luxemburg’s The mass strike, but seen since then in many different countries at different times. The political regime falls into crisis. Some spark sets off the mass movement. Rather than a single, planned, truly all-out, indefinite general strike, there is a wave of mass strikes - some protest actions for political demands; some partial struggles for economic demands. They begin to overlap and are accompanied by political radicalisation.

[...]

A strike wave or revolutionary crisis can last longer than a truly all-out indefinite general strike, but it cannot last longer than a period of months - at most a couple of years. In this situation, if the workers’ movement does not offer an alternative form of authority - alternative means of decision-making which are capable of running the economy - the existing social structures of authority are necessarily reaffirmed. Either the military moves in (Spain in 1873-74 and 1936, etc) or the reformists, put in power, re-establish capitalist order (Ebert-Scheidemann in 1918; everywhere in Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War II; in a much weaker sense, the 1974-79 Wilson government in Britain).

[...]

Lenin in 1917 believed that the Russian working class had found in the soviets - workers’ councils - the solution to the strategic problem of authority posed by the mass strike movement. Growing out of the strike movement itself, the soviets created a form of authority which shared the characteristics of democracy and accountability from below which Marx described in the Paris Commune. Communism could therefore take the political form of the struggle for soviets and for soviet power.

In fact, as I have argued before, this belief was illusory. Almost as soon as the Bolsheviks had taken power, they were forced to move from a militia to a regular army, and with it came logistics and the need for a state bureaucracy. The soviets and militia could not perform the core social function of the state, defending the society against external attack. The problem of authority over the state bureaucracy was unsolved. Lenin and the Bolsheviks fell back on the forms of authority in their party and, as these proved a problem in the civil war, almost unthinkingly militarised their party and created a corrupt bureaucratic regime.

But ‘All power to the soviets’ was also illusory in another sense. Even before they withered away into mere fronts for the Russian Communist Party, the soviets did not function like parliaments or governments - or even the Paris Commune - in continuous session. They met discontinuously, with executive committees managing their affairs. Though the Bolsheviks took power in the name of the soviets, in reality the central all-Russia coordination of the soviets was provided by the political parties - Mensheviks and SRs, and later Bolsheviks.



Also, when it came down to who best predicted the "new era of wars and revolutions," Kautsky and not Luxemburg won hands down, through his grossly underrated The Road to Power.

[which doctor]

And the purpose of such strike would be?
To incite a revolutionary situation.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Or to con the masses into taking power when they clearly aren't ready. :(

[Bilan]

Or to con the masses into taking power when they clearly aren't ready. :(

That's not what the Mass Strike is in anyway, shape or form, and that is an absolutely gross misrepresentation of what the Mass Strike is.
The Mass Strike, as Rosa wrote of it, and described it, does not indicate that the "Masses are being conned into taking power", but that the Mass Strike is a historical inevitablity; an inevitable series of events (as it is not just one big bust, but a series) admist the growing struggle.
In no way is it "conning" the masses. It is not "brought on", but occurs.



If, therefore, the Russian Revolution teaches us anything, it teaches above all that the mass strike is not artificially “made,” not “decided” at random, not “propagated,” but that it is a historical phenomenon which, at a given moment, results from social conditions with historical inevitability. It is not, therefore, by abstract speculations on the possibility or impossibility, the utility or the injuriousness of the mass strike, but only by an examination of those factors and social conditions out of which the mass strike grows in the present phase of the class struggle – in other words, it is not by subjective criticism of the mass strike from the standpoint of what is desirable, but only by objective investigation of the sources of the mass strike from the standpoint of what is historically inevitable, that the problem can be grasped or even discussed.

...
If anyone were to undertake to make the mass strike generally, as a form of proletarian action, the object of methodological agitation, and to go house-to-house canvassing with this “idea” in order to gradually win the working-class to it, it would be as idle and profitless and absurd an occupation as it would be to seek to make the idea of the revolution or of the fight at the barricades the object of a special agitation.


So, no. That is not true.

[Bilan]

And the purpose of such strike would be?

It's not a "called" strike, but waves of strikes which are inevitable. The mentioned text describes the events of Russian in 1890-1905 (particular focus on 03, 04, 05), in which the Mass Strike first occured.

[ComradeOm]

It's not a "called" strike, but waves of strikes which are inevitable. The mentioned text describes the events of Russian in 1890-1905 (particular focus on 03, 04, 05), in which the Mass Strike first occured.Well Rosa was writing in 1906 but this is still hardly the most jaw-dropping of revelations. Granted, its been some time since I read Mass Strike but IIRC the two primary conclusions, in regards theory, were:

1) Mass strikes occur in revolutionary situations
2) These cannot be controlled by any one political party or trade union

Now these are extremely debatable (as later history was to show) but on a theoretical level they are sound, if fairly banal. Crucially, again IIRC, Luxemburg refrained from making the connection of the mass strike as a revolutionary tool (a la syndicalism and Sorel) although her work undoubtedly contributed to that fetish for 'revolutionary strikes'. That is, she was was far too much of a good Social-Democrat to completely dismiss the role of the party ("vanguard of the proletariat")

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ See, even she regarded the SPD as a vanguard party at the time of writing. ;)

[Bilan]

It was a vanguard party at that point. That was before it deteriorated, before it supported the WWI, before it murdered her, and what have you.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Now, I wonder why Trots, "Marxist-Leninists," etc. can't acknowledge that fact. ;)

[Seriously, this "neo-Kautskyist" read the ICC's articles on the pre-WWI SPD and Kautsky, and those articles are more respectful of them than Trotskyist, "Marxist-Leninist," and Maoist positions.]

[ComradeOm]

Just to note, Luxemburg's thoughts on the SPD have to be qualified by the fact that she spent most of her adult life within its structures and was very much a creature of the party. The degree to which she was attached to it is evident in that she did not leave of her own accord but was rather expelled by the SPD executive. Rosa may have criticised tendencies within the party but for a critique of the whole she is hardly reliable

[Tower of Bebel]

Or to con the masses into taking power when they clearly aren't ready. :(
The Belgian working class used the mass strike and gained the right to vote (for men). The mass strike proved to be a worthy tactic. The party's leadership however never really supported the mass strike because - indeed - it offered a window of opportunity for the working class to organize itself combatively, maybe even revolutionary, around certain political and economic demands. Rosa Luxemburg refered to the Belgian example, and I think it should be aknowledged that this way of organizing the working class is superior to some ideas of the Kautsky-Bebel center. Kautsky reflected the words of the right wing ("the working class is not ready"), while Bebel wanted to use the mass strike only to defend certain achievements (like the right to vote). Of course the Belgian (and Russian) example also shows us that spontaneity per sé - i.e. not dialectically related to forms of organization - cannot deliver on it's own.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The Belgian working class used the mass strike and gained the right to vote (for men). The mass strike proved to be a worthy tactic. The party's leadership however never really supported the mass strike because - indeed - it offered a window of opportunity for the working class to organize itself combatively, maybe even revolutionary, around certain political and economic demands. Rosa Luxemburg refered to the Belgian example, and I think it should be acknowledged that this way of organizing the working class is superior to some ideas of the Kautsky-Bebel center. Kautsky reflected the words of the right wing ("the working class is not ready"), while Bebel wanted to use the mass strike only to defend certain achievements (like the right to vote). Of course the Belgian (and Russian) example also shows us that spontaneity per sé - i.e. not dialectically related to forms of organization - cannot deliver on it's own.

Comrade, as you yourself have noted, the mass strike is a worthy tactic, especially in the initial struggle for politico-ideological class independence.

["Broad Economism" quote: "As indicated in my earlier work, however, the full range of “direct action,” from mass strikes to publicized civil disobedience, does have its place in the revolutionary process." So it's not just mass strikes that are worthy tactics later on, especially given the precedent set by the US civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s. ;) ]

Kautsky himself was kinder to the usage of the mass strike in The Social Revolution (the "political strike"), when the worker-class movement was still in the upswing in Germany (again, in the earlier stage). When it encompasses a majority or so, that's when other tactics have to come into the forefront, otherwise the mass strike course changes from the level of tactics to the level of strategy ("con the masses to power"):

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1902/socrev/pt1-3.htm#s7


Naturally, I am not using the idea of a general strike in the sense that the anarchists and the French trade unionists use the word. To these latter the political and especially the Parliamentary activity of the proletariat is to be Supplemented by the strike and it is to become a means to throw the social order overboard.

That is foolish. A general strike in the sense that all the laborers of the country at a given sign shall lay down their labor presupposes a unanimity and an organization of the laborers which is scarcely possible in present society, and which if it were once attained would be so irresistible that no general strike would be necessary. Such a strike mould, however, at one stroke render impossible the existence not simply of existing society but all existence, and that of the proletarians long before that of the capitalist, and must consequently collapse uselessly at just the moment when its revolutionary virtue began to develop.

The strike as a political weapon will scarcely ever, certainly not in any time now visible, take on the form of a strike of all the laborers of a country. It can also not have the purpose of displacing the other means of political struggle but only of supplementing and strengthening them. We are now entering upon a time where opposed to the overwhelming power of organized capital an isolated non-political strike will be just as hopeless as is the isolated parliamentary action of the labor parties opposed to the pressure of the capitalistically dominated governmental powers. It will be ever more necessary that both should grow and draw new strength from co-operation.

As is the case with all new weapons the best manner to use a political strike must first be learned. It is not a cure-all as the anarchists announce it, and it is not an infallible means, under all conditions, as they consider it. It would exceed my purposes to investigate here the conditions under which it is applicable. Considering the latest events in Belgium I might observe that these have shown how very much it demands its own peculiar methods which do not favorably combine with other methods, as for example, with alliances with Liberals. I do not necessarily reject such an alliance under all conditions. It would be foolish for us not to utilize the disagreements and divisions of our opponents. But one should not expect more from the Liberals than they are able to grant. In the field of proletarian activity it may be easily possible under certain conditions that the opposition between them and us in regard to this and that measure may be less than between them and our bourgeois opponents. At such a time an alliance may have a place. But outside of the parliamentary field any effort for a revolutionary demand cannot be fought with Liberal aid. To seek to strengthen proletarian powers in such a struggle by a Liberal alliance is to attempt to use the weapons for a purpose that are ordinarily used to defeat that purpose. The political strike is a powerful proletarian weapon that is applicable only in a battle which the proletariat fights alone and in which it enters against the total bourgeois society. In this sense it is perhaps the most revolutionary weapon of the proletariat.

I do see one key area in society where the mass strike tactic may still be valid later on: in the military. In this Caesarian sense, at least the economy isn't disrupted to the levels that CPGB comrade Macnair rightfully complained about.

The only justification for civilian mass strikes later on is if the worker-class movement has also built a substantial cooperative network for basic needs and other stuff (as emphasized online by one Arthur Bough) - to which it can retreat for jobs while "mass striking" elsewhere.

[Bilan]

Comrade, as you yourself have noted, the mass strike is a worthy tactic, especially in the initial struggle for politico-ideological class independence.

I don't think you understand what the Mass Strike is. It is not a tactic employed by revolutionaries at any given moment as they see fit. It is not something which is "called on" by the Trade Unions, the Proletarian party or whatever, but a historical inevitablity.
Not a "tactic".




Kautsky himself was kinder to the usage of the mass strike in The Social Revolution (the "political strike"), when the worker-class movement was still in the upswing in Germany (again, in the earlier stage). When it encompasses a majority or so, that's when other tactics have to come into the forefront, otherwise the mass strike course changes from the level of tactics to the level of strategy ("con the masses to power"):

You're not understanding, comrade. It is not a "means" of conning the masses into power (Though I find such a statement rather ironic from a communist), its not something is employed, but something which occurs. Scientists don't choose when the sun rises in a given place, nor where it sets, it does so by itself, it is inevitable, and they understand how and why it occurs, but they don't choose it. The Mass Strike is the same.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1902/socrev/pt1-3.htm#s7


That is deeply reformist.

[Tower of Bebel]

I don't think you understand what the Mass Strike is. It is not a tactic employed by revolutionaries at any given moment as they see fit. It is not something which is "called on" by the Trade Unions, the Proletarian party or whatever, but a historical inevitablity.
Not a "tactic".
Am I right to say that your discourse shows us your emphasis on spontaneity? In the Belgian case, which was used as an example by Rosa Luxemburg, the strike was called upon by the party. They did so several times. in Ghent the workers had banners saying: "rulers, no universal suffrage means no labour - (signed:) the Belgian people". Yet the reason why it was called upon was because the fact that the working class demanded something to be done about the social conditions coincided with the labour aristocracy's reactionary dreams of gradual integration through parliament. This is a somewhat negative example of the relation between organization and the "historical" inevitability of such a spontanious uprising.

A more positive example would be the attitude of the Bolshevik party during the july days and especially in the period from september to october.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Also consider the US civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s.


That is deeply reformist.

Considering that Lenin had high regards for this work even after Kautsky became a senile renegade, I'm not so sure. I've outlined elsewhere notable shortcomings in The Social Revolution (such as conflating "bourgeois revolution" with democracy and the uncompleted anti-feudal revolution).

[Bilan]

Considering that Lenin had high regards for this work even after Kautsky became a senile renegade, I'm not so sure. I've outlined elsewhere notable shortcomings in The Social Revolution (such as conflating "bourgeois revolution" with democracy and the uncompleted anti-feudal revolution).

That doesn't mean its not deeply reformist. Lenin was a great revolutionary, but he wasn't always right.


Am I right to say that your discourse shows us your emphasis on spontaneity?

Yes, and no. I don't consider the Mass Strike as a tactic employed by revolutionary, but a historical inevitability. That doesn't mean revolutionaries are alienated from it, but drive it on, as Rosa describes.
I don't support its spontaneity, but recognize its an inherent part of it. For example, the Paris 68 revolt.


In the Belgian case, which was used as an example by Rosa Luxemburg, the strike was called upon by the party. They did so several times. in Ghent the workers had banners saying: "rulers, no universal suffrage means no labour - (signed:) the Belgian people". Yet the reason why it was called upon was because the fact that the working class demanded something to be done about the social conditions coincided with the labour aristocracy's reactionary dreams of gradual integration through parliament. This is a somewhat negative example of the relation between organization and the "historical" inevitability of such a spontanious uprising.

This is of course true, but represents a blurring of the concepts of the General Strike and the Mass Strike.



The social democrats are the most enlightened, most class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat. They cannot and dare not wait, in a fatalist fashion, with folded arms for the advent of the “revolutionary situation,” to wait for that which in every spontaneous peoples’ movement, falls from the clouds. On the contrary, they must now, as always, hasten the development of things and endeavour to accelerate events. This they cannot do, however, by suddenly issuing the “slogan” for a mass strike at random at any odd moment, but first and foremost, by making clear to the widest layers of the proletariat the inevitable advent of this revolutionary period, the inner social factors making for it and the political consequences of it. If the widest proletarian layer should be won for a political mass action of the social democrats, and if, vice versa, the social democrats should seize and maintain the real leadership of a mass movement – should they become, in a political sense, the rulers of the whole movement, then they must, with the utmost clearness, consistency and resoluteness, inform the German proletariat of their tactics and aims in the period of coming struggle.

Although, I can't find the reference to the Belgian strikes, but it does sound familiar none the less.

[Tower of Bebel]

Although, I can't find the reference to the Belgian strikes, but it does sound familiar none the less.
It's in "The Political Mass strike (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/07/22.htm)" published in "Vorwaerts" much later.


If we consider the present discussion, we see on the one hand ardent advocates of the mass strike who are in favour of the party conference, in consultation with the General Commission of the trade unions, empowering the Party Executive to prepare the way for the mass strike. Indeed, they also demand that we should begin to educate the workers for the mass strike. They further advise the preparation of the mass strike according to the Belgian model. These are the demands made by one group. Another group immediately expressed the strongest reservations against any ‘flirting with the idea of the mass strike’. They said that this is extremely dangerous to our party life, for we in Germany are far from ready to participate in a mass strike. The party would suffer a defeat, their argument continued, from which it would not recover for decades.

[...]

The Belgian movement is a storehouse of information on the problem of the mass strike. After they had abolished the plural vote by means of the mass strike, our Belgian comrades centred their efforts on parliament. This meant that the mass strike was put on ice. All proletarian actions were suspended as part of an overall plan to combine with the bourgeois Left in order to achieve universal suffrage. But the election of 1912 brought about the complete collapse of liberalism, and what remained of it went over to the camp of reaction. Then a storm of indignation broke out. Immediately following the elections the question of the mass strike reappeared. But the leaders of Belgian Social Democracy, who had based their policy on co-operation with the liberals, endeavoured to placate the masses by promising to arrange for the mass strike later. Then began the systematic postponement of the mass strike. Instead of an elemental eruption, a new tactic was begun; preparations were made for a new mass strike to be held in one month. After preparations lasting nine months, the masses could no longer be restrained. The strike finally broke out and for ten days was carried on with admirable discipline. The result was this: the strike was discontinued upon the first illusory concession made, a concession which represented a gain of virtually nothing. The Belgian comrades did not feel that they had achieved a victory. We see then, that the mass strike, employed in conjunction with the policy of a grand coalition resulted in nothing but set-backs. In view of this, we will reject any possible recommendation that we form a grand coalition in the south while at the same time starting a mass strike in Prussia.

[...]

During the ten-day general strike in Belgium, at least two-thirds of the strikers were not organized. Of course one must not conclude from this that the organization was of no significance. The organization’s power lies in its understanding of how to draw the unorganized into the action at the right time. The exploitation of such situations is a method of bringing about a huge growth in the organizations of the party and trade unions. Recruitment to the strong organizations must be based on a large-scale and forward-looking policy; otherwise the organizations will quietly decay. The history of the party and the trade unions demonstrates that our organizations thrive only on the attack. For then the unorganized flock to our banner. The type of organization that calculates in advance and to the nearest penny the costs necessary for action is worthless; it cannot weather the storm. All this must be made clear, and the dividing line must not be drawn so nicely between the organized and the unorganized.

[davidasearles]

to provoke a revolutionary situation?

I'm pretty sure that the owners could outlast a strike, longer than workers can.

Waves of strikes? makes no difference, the owners can outlast worker in waves of strikes as well.

The goal is a revolutionary situation? Right now the market capitalization of General motors, the largest corporation in the world at one time is just over a thousand million dollars U.S. one per cent of that of Google. Isn't that a revolutionary situation? If it isn't please tell me what specifically constitutes a revolutionary situation, and why would it be desirable?

[Bilan]

David, read it before you start making wild presumptions.

[davidasearles]

Which David, read what, and what speculations?

The strength of the workers is AT THE POINT OF PRODUCTION. Why should it be espoused that the workers leave to go on strike? Revolutionary situation without a specific plan, let alone a goal for the workers to collectively control the industrial means of production? Seems pretty well planned to result in a rout of the workers to me.

[Bilan]

You David, as it is in your user title.
And again, you have no idea what you're critiquing, you're just making silly accusations against it, though you have no idea what it is. Again, read it, then judge it.

[davidasearles]

You David, as it is in your user title.
And again, you have no idea what you're critiquing, you're just making silly accusations against it, though you have no idea what it is. Again, read it, then judge it.

And in your phrase "read it" what does "it" refer to?

[Bilan]

"It" refers to The Mass Strike by Rosa Luxemburg, written in 1906, and was translated by Patrick Lavin.
Here is the link. (http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike/index.htm)

[Pogue]

"It" refers to The Mass Strike by Rosa Luxemburg, written in 1906, and was translated by Patrick Lavin.
Here is the link. (http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike/index.htm)

Could you perhaps summarise some of the key points for us in this thread so we can all get a more general jist of it please?

[Bilan]

I summarised the key issues I wanted to address in my first post, and also in a few other posts in response to Richter.
nevertheless, the book itself is rather short. A summary wouldn't do it justice, or explain it properly.

[Tower of Bebel]

I revived this because I wanted to stress the context again.

These otherwise uncharacteristic omissions make sense when we consider that Luxemburg’s argument against centralization was shaped more by the German than the Russian context. The SPD was a broad church organization, within which coexisted the revolutionary Left, the reformist right wing, and the center which formally sanctioned but actually tolerated the latter. As Carl Shorske elaborates in his detailed history of its foundation and development, the SPD over two decades developed a massive bureaucracy of paid functionaries oriented on parliament and increasingly hostile to radical change.10 Luxemburg’s role was that of revolutionary critic of reformism and bureaucratization. When she writes “social democratic organizational form cannot be based on blind obedience and on the mechanical subordination of the party militants to some centralized power,” she is protesting a tendency in her own organization rather than anything in Lenin’s account. Indeed many of her formulations are very close to Lenin’s:
Social Democratic centralism...can be nothing but the imperative summation of the will of the enlightened and fighting vanguard of the working class as opposed to its individual groups and members. This is, so to speak, a “self-centralism” of the leading stratum of the proletariat; it is the rule of the majority within its own party organization.11Compare this definition provided by Luxemburg with Paul LeBlanc’s crystallization of the model presented by Lenin in What Is to Be Done?: “a serious ‘organization of real revolutionaries,’ a ‘body of comrades in which complete, mutual confidence prevails’ and in which all ‘have a lively sense of their responsibility.’”12The revolution of 1905 brought Lenin and Luxemburg together personally and politically. Luxemburg crossed the border at great risk in order to participate, and largely supported Lenin and the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks. In the course of the uprising their views “came so close that there hardly seemed to be any difference between them,” in the words of Frölich. After the defeat of the revolution, Luxemburg joined Lenin in Finland and they established a close and enduring alliance based on great mutual respect.
Luxemburg’s The Mass Strike draws out the lessons of the 1905 revolution for the German working class movement, and contains moving and inspiring descriptions of the wave of strikes and protests that shook tsarism. She says of the St. Petersburg uprising that it,
awoke class feeling and class consciousness in millions upon millions as if by an electric shock...the proletarian mass, counted by millions, quite suddenly and sharply came to realize how intolerable was that social and economic existence which they had patiently endured for decades in the chains of capitalism. Thereupon, there began a spontaneous general shaking of and tugging at these chains.13She witnessed revolutionary action accomplish more in a flash than could be achieved in a lifetime of trade union and parliamentary activity. In the same way, Lenin said of bloody Sunday that, “‘the revolutionary education of the proletariat made more progress in one day than it could have made in months and years of drab, humdrum, wretched existence.’”14Far from fetishizing spontaneity, Luxemburg’s focus, like Lenin’s, is constantly on the interaction between the spontaneous and the conscious: “If...the direction of the mass strike...is a matter of the revolutionary period itself, the directing of the mass strike becomes...the duty of Social Democracy and its leading organs...the Social Democrats are called upon to assume political leadership in the midst of the revolutionary period.”15 When she depicts leadership as a block on mass self-activity, her target again is not the revolutionary vanguard but the bureaucratic centralism of the trade unions and parliamentarians. In 1913 she wrote:
Leaders who hang back will certainly be pushed aside by the storming masses. However, just to sit back and wait calmly for this gratifying result as a sure indication that ‘the time is ripe’ may be all right for a lonely philosopher, but for the political leadership of a revolutionary party it would be a sign of poverty, of moral bankruptcy. The task of Social Democracy and its leaders is not to be dragged along by events, but to be consciously ahead of them, to have an overall view of the trend of events, to shorten the period of development by conscious action, and to accelerate its progress.16This is strikingly close to Lenin in What Is to Be Done?: (using Lars Lih’s translation that replaces “spontaneous” with the Russian word, “stikhiinyi”)
But isn’t this the role of Social Democracy—to be a “spirit” that does not merely brood above the stikhiinyi movement but lifts up this movement to “its program”? Its role is certainly not to drag along in the tail of the movement: this is useless for the movement in the best case and extremely harmful in the worst case.17Both figures warned against opportunism and sectarianism, the dual perils of any socialist formation: either abandoning principles to adapt to prevailing consciousness, or developing shibboleths that prevent contact with radicalizing workers. They agreed that revolutionaries had to be where the masses are but to lead rather than follow, and they also for a long time agreed that the open democracy of the SPD constituted the ideal means to achieve this.
Lenin and Luxemburg (http://www.isreview.org/issues/59/feat-lenin.shtml)

And translated roughly from Hetmann's biography of Luxemburg:

She visits Parvus who experienced the revolution in St. Petersburg and was inprisoned in the Peter and Paul fortress. From there he was to be banned to Siberia. She also finds the time to write on here brochure Massenstreik, Partei un Gewerkschaft. The subject seems for her of great importance because the union bureaucrats in Germany tended to avoid political strikes in the wake of the Russian Revolution and denounced them as revolutionary romantics. Rosa tries to analyse what happens in such a mass strike.

[...]

She came to the conclusion that the struggle on the barricades has been the most important form of bourgeois revolution, that this method of struggle is replaced by the mass strike and that this is characteristic of and even necessary for revolutions of the new age.
Focusing on the revisionists she explains that in a revolutionary period economic and political struggle influence each other.

[...]

Formulated in other words: In this brochure she also determines her ideas about what she expects from the revolution. She says: It wont happen so fast. The masses learn, also from failures, and before the big breakthrough the masses will suffer many defeats.
The most important thing in here eyes is that the mass strike develops class consciousness.

[...]

The trade union leaders [in Germany] cling to their fundamental rejection of the political strike. This was clearly visible during a trade union congress in Cologne (1905), which had as its slogan: "The unions need for most absolute tranquility!". [...]
'The reason for this (as put forward by the trade union leadership)', writes Froelich, 'was clear. They were afraid to lose their tactical independence from the party, the were afraid of losing the large amount of money they had gathered, they were afraid to lose their organization because of reaction'.
From this point of view Rosa's brochure is an assault on revisionism within the trade unions. The progressive section of the SPD in Hamburg ordered her to put her thoughts on paper. The brochure had to be published to provoke some serious debate on the party congress of Mannheim in 1906."
[...]
On the 23rd of september she's in Mannheim. The party congress begins. [...] In the Sozialistische Monatshefte [...] she has read: 'The short flowering of revolutionism is over. With a united spirit and all her might the party can finally focus on the extension of her parliamentary powers.'

[Die Neue Zeit]

I realize the context of the tred-iunionisty's economism, and have responded accordingly in the other thread.

[Little Red Robin Hood]

So, for anyone who has read much about it, and has also read Rosa's work, how does the Seattle general strike of 1919 compare to Rosa's conception of the mass strike?