Rosa Luxemburg supported national liberation movements in the Balkans?!?!

[Zanthorus]

Rosa Luxemburg made an excellent analysis of the new conditions in the Balkans since the time of Marx. She concluded first that the liberation of the Balkan nations suppressed by the Turks would rouse the nations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The end of the Turkish Empire in Europe would also mean the end of the Hapsburg Empire. Secondly, she argued that since Marx’s time the national movement of the Balkans had come under the dominion of the bourgeoisie, and hence any continuation of Russian influence was due only to suppression by Turkey. The liberation of the Balkan peoples from the Turkish yoke would not enhance the influence of Tsarism, but would weaken it, as these peoples would be under the leadership of a young and progressive bourgeoisie which would clash more and more with reactionary Tsarism. Thus, in the case of the Balkan nations, Rosa Luxemburg’s attitude to their national strivings differed greatly from her attitude to Poland.

This passage is from Tony Cliff's pamphlet on Luxemburg (The chapter is quite predictably entitled 'Rosa Luxemburg and the national question). What he is saying, if true, certainly casts the Lenin/Luxemburg debate on the national question in a different light, since it would mean that Luxemburg was neither the nihilist envisaged by her detractors nor the pure anti-nationalist of her defenders. The problem is I can't seem to find any independent verification of this. The entire paragraph is unsourced. From the foreword, it seems that at the time very little of her writing was translated, but that Cliff could read German well enough to get his information from the source (Or had someone else in the IS skilled at German help him). I can't think of any reason Cliff would've had to make Luxemburg appear to lean one way or the other on the national question, and the passage seems detailed enough to be a convincing account of an original piece or pieces by Luxemburg. It's probable that what he mentions is contained in as-of-yet untranslated works by Luxemburg, but I'm having trouble finding any confirmation in other secondary works online through google searching. Any help here (Proving or disproving the accuracy of the passage) would be appreciated.

[A Marxist Historian]

This passage is from Tony Cliff's pamphlet on Luxemburg (The chapter is quite predictably entitled 'Rosa Luxemburg and the national question). What he is saying, if true, certainly casts the Lenin/Luxemburg debate on the national question in a different light, since it would mean that Luxemburg was neither the nihilist envisaged by her detractors nor the pure anti-nationalist of her defenders. The problem is I can't seem to find any independent verification of this. The entire paragraph is unsourced. From the foreword, it seems that at the time very little of her writing was translated, but that Cliff could read German well enough to get his information from the source (Or had someone else in the IS skilled at German help him). I can't think of any reason Cliff would've had to make Luxemburg appear to lean one way or the other on the national question, and the passage seems detailed enough to be a convincing account of an original piece or pieces by Luxemburg. It's probable that what he mentions is contained in as-of-yet untranslated works by Luxemburg, but I'm having trouble finding any confirmation in other secondary works online through google searching. Any help here (Proving or disproving the accuracy of the passage) would be appreciated.

Can;t give you a ref I'm afraid, but this would not be at all inconsistent for Rosa Luxemburg.

She did not accept the concept of national self-determination, as advocated by Kautsky, Lenin and many others.

However she *did* oppose Marx's simple position in the 19th century frame that everything Russian was bad, and that therefore all opponents of the Tsarist Empire should be given support, whether Polish nationalists or the Ottoman Empire.

Marx was quite unsympathetic to Balkan nationalist movements, as he felt that the Ottoman Empire was a necessary barrier to the Tsarist Empire, which he regarded as the main obstacle to historical progress in Europe.

This is a position that arguably made quite a lot of sense while Marx was alive, but made no sense by the twentieth century.

Rosa's counterposition, namely that Polish and even more so Ukrainian independence should be opposed so as to maintain the revolutionary integrity of the Russian Empire, now the main fount of revolution not reaction in Europe, is arguably quite consistent with Marx's methodology, if not his position.

However, on this one the Second International, not just Lenin and Kautsky but even people like Jean Jaures, was actually advancing Marxist thinking for once, rather than revising it out of existence a la Bernstein.

-M.H.-

-M.H.-

[Zanthorus]

Just bumping this to say I found the clear evidence that Luxemburg did support national liberation in the Balkan region in her own words. For anyone interested:

Now what can be the position of Social Democracy towards the events in Turkey? In principle, Social Democracy always stands on the side of aspirations for freedom. The Christian nations, in this case the Armenians, want to liberate themselves from the yoke of Turkish rule, and Social Democracy must declare itself unreservedly in support of their cause.

Of course, in foreign politics – just as in domestic questions – we should not see things too schematically. The national struggle is not always the appropriate form for the struggle for freedom. For example, the national question takes a different form in Poland, Alsace-Lorraine or Bohemia. In all these cases, we are faced with a directly opposing process of capitalist assimilation of the annexed lands to the dominant ones, which condemns the separatist efforts to impotence, and it is in the interests of the working-class movement to advocate the unity of forces, and not their fragmentation in national struggles. But in the question of the revolts in Turkey, the situation is different: the Christian lands are bound to Turkey only by force, they have no working-class movement, they are declining by virtue of a natural social development, or rather dissolution, and hence the aspirations to freedom can here make themselves felt only in a national struggle; therefore our partisanship cannot and must not admit of any doubt... For us, the question in this situation is above all the general standpoint, and this requires us to stand for the insurgents and not against them.

[...]

To imagine distant political conjectures in detail is a fantasy. But it is far from impossible that the resistance of liberated Turkey and the liberated Balkan lands could frustrate the Russian advance for so long that Russian absolutism would not live to see the final solution of the Constantinople question and would have to die, to the benefit of the peoples, without being able to participate in the settlement of this question of universal concern.

Thus our practical interests completely coincide with the principled standpoint, and hence we recommend that the following propositions be adopted for the present stance of Social Democracy on the Eastern Question.

We must accept the process of the disintegration of Turkey as a permanent fact, and not get it into our heads that it could or should be stopped.

We should give our fullest sympathy to the aspirations of the Christian nations for autonomy.

We should welcome these aspirations above all as a means of fighting against Tsarist Russia, and emphatically advocate their independence from Russia, as well as from Turkey.From here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1896/10/10.htm).

[HEAD ICE]

Just bumping this to say I found the clear evidence that Luxemburg did support national liberation in the Balkan region in her own words. For anyone interested:

Now what can be the position of Social Democracy towards the events in Turkey? In principle, Social Democracy always stands on the side of aspirations for freedom. The Christian nations, in this case the Armenians, want to liberate themselves from the yoke of Turkish rule, and Social Democracy must declare itself unreservedly in support of their cause.

Of course, in foreign politics – just as in domestic questions – we should not see things too schematically. The national struggle is not always the appropriate form for the struggle for freedom. For example, the national question takes a different form in Poland, Alsace-Lorraine or Bohemia. In all these cases, we are faced with a directly opposing process of capitalist assimilation of the annexed lands to the dominant ones, which condemns the separatist efforts to impotence, and it is in the interests of the working-class movement to advocate the unity of forces, and not their fragmentation in national struggles. But in the question of the revolts in Turkey, the situation is different: the Christian lands are bound to Turkey only by force, they have no working-class movement, they are declining by virtue of a natural social development, or rather dissolution, and hence the aspirations to freedom can here make themselves felt only in a national struggle; therefore our partisanship cannot and must not admit of any doubt... For us, the question in this situation is above all the general standpoint, and this requires us to stand for the insurgents and not against them.

[...]

To imagine distant political conjectures in detail is a fantasy. But it is far from impossible that the resistance of liberated Turkey and the liberated Balkan lands could frustrate the Russian advance for so long that Russian absolutism would not live to see the final solution of the Constantinople question and would have to die, to the benefit of the peoples, without being able to participate in the settlement of this question of universal concern.

Thus our practical interests completely coincide with the principled standpoint, and hence we recommend that the following propositions be adopted for the present stance of Social Democracy on the Eastern Question.

We must accept the process of the disintegration of Turkey as a permanent fact, and not get it into our heads that it could or should be stopped.

We should give our fullest sympathy to the aspirations of the Christian nations for autonomy.

We should welcome these aspirations above all as a means of fighting against Tsarist Russia, and emphatically advocate their independence from Russia, as well as from Turkey.From here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1896/10/10.htm).

Of all people, here is Amadeo Bordiga, writing against support for Balkan national independence and "wars for independence" in general (though he later did support anti-colonial national movements of "the colored people"). Luxemburg's support seems very confused.


Though we can't yet evaluate the historical consequences of the slaughter, as it draws to a close we can at least examine it somewhat objectively from the socialist standpoint.

It is said that the Balkan peoples are fighting for the cause of civilisation, liberty and the independence of peoples; it is accepted as indisputable dogma that the disappearance of Turkey from the map of Europe will be a sound basis for eastern economic and social development, and so must be welcomed by socialists. Before an astonished Europe, the fine gesture of the four statelets took on the historic physiognomy of a crusade and a revolution at the same time. It enraptured Christians and republicans, nationalists and socialists, who vied in applauding the war.

But the rivers of blood and fire which welled up from countries devastated by one of the most murderous wars on record, while exhilarating for the nationalists and the theoreticians of massacre only make us curse, and serves us as warning for the future.

• • •

Here the historical problem is set before us in all its gravity: What stance must the socialists take on so-called «wars of independence», which aspire to the liberation of an oppressed nationality from the foreign yoke?

Some would say: as history teaches us that national freedom is a pre-condition for the development of the capitalist bourgeoisie, and for the consequent class struggle which leads to socialism, socialists must look favourably on wars for independence.

We will discuss this conclusion, which is almost a sophism, with the very modest aim of unsettling the foundations of a too commonly-accepted prejudice.

First of all, the premise that the bourgeoisie needs «national freedom» for its development is not exact. The bourgeoisie only needs to take the State away from the feudal oligarchies and install a democratic political regime. The collaboration of the masses being necessary for this, the bourgeoisie tries to make this struggle popular by giving it, in cases where the aristocracies belong to a non-indigenous nation or race, a patriotic content.

So for example in Italy and Germany where, as an extra-national question, the conquest of power by the bourgeoisie was resolved with the wars of '59 and '66. In France on the other hand, the struggle between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie had a revolutionary character, and a fundamental physiognomy of civil war. Be it understood that these examples have a relative value, since historical facts are not so neatly classified or catalogued.

Moreover, as the concepts of race and nationality are so elastic historically and geographically, they're always welladapted to the interests of oligarchic capitalist groups, according to the needs of their economic development. Only after the event can sycophantic history reconstruct fantastic, sentimental motives, and create the patriotic and national tradition, which serves the shrewd bourgeoisie so well as an antidote to the class struggle.

But the Party which represents the working class has to look a bit closer. We see irredentism as no more than a cunning reactionary ploy. Even from the viewpoint - we'll now re-examine it - which says the bourgeoisie needs to pursue its development, etc., irredentism is not justified. Nice and Trieste are more industrialised than much of Italy.

• • •

We're not making a comparison here with the Balkan regions. We accept as a fact that Bulgaria, Serbia, etc. are more civilised than Turkey. On that basis, is there perhaps some kind of right to armed conquest of territory subject to the less-civilised state?

We're not raising the question of whether the war is just or unjust in such a case; history isn't justified, it's just observed. We're merely discussing the position a revolutionary class party has to take in these conflicts.

Does the party have to support the war, in order to accelerate the development of the bourgeoisie in a country that is still feudal?

Our answer is no, and we applaud the heroic attitude of those Serb and Bulgarian comrades who opposed the war.

In fact, this is the first reason: the war could possibly be favourable to the more advanced people, but the inverse is also possible, with opposite results; even according to the theory of warmongering socialists (?) of the Bissolati type. This uncertainty alone would suffice to turn every true friend of progress against the armed conflict. Provided, that is, they don't still believe in God. But democracy, given time and... venality, even sinks that low.

On the other hand, even if the solution of the conflict were to be such as to give greater freedom to the peoples of the conquered territory, nothing proves that a better position would be obtained for the development of socialism. This is why:
1. The increased prestige of the dynastic, military and sometimes priestly oligarchies (in the nations that waged war).
2. The intensification of nationalism and patriotism, which delays the organisation of the proletariat into an internationalist class party.
3. In the defeated country, the intensification of racial hatreds, and of the desire for revenge against the race that was once dominant and is now oppressed, assuming it hasn't been totally destroyed.
4. The very grave fact of the degeneration of the races after healthy men have been decimated by war, the depopulation caused by massacres, sickness, hunger, etc., and the immense destruction of wealth, with the consequent economic crisis, and the impossibility of developing industry and agriculture through lack of capital and labour.

Therefore the idea that war accelerates the coming of socialist revolution is a vulgar prejudice. Socialism must oppose all wars, avoiding captious distinctions between wars of conquest and wars of independence.

There remains a sentimental objection to remove: But then you want to prolong the present state of affairs, and the Turkish oppression of the Christians? But that's the socialism of reactionaries!

• • •

In general, one mustn't discuss history on the basis of sentimental prejudices. Nevertheless, we'll counter these with some considerations. Evils are remedied by removing their causes. Now, it's an exaggeration to say that the cause of the Balkan disorder is Turkish rule. There are many other causes. The ambition of the foremost of the vile old states, which have always stirred the fires of racial hatred. The intervention of civilised Europe, which has spewed friars, priests and unscrupulous profiteers down there, causing the Muslim reaction. But the cause is race hatred, which can't be eliminated by means of wars. Just as the Bulgarians and Greeks have hushed up their ferocious mutual loathing, so they were able to attempt a general Balkan agreement. Can it be asserted that the Turkish oligarchy was more opposed to this agreement than the ambitious oligarchies of the four little states?

Anyway our assertion, based on socialist principles, is this: socialists have to oppose this war. If it had been strong enough to avoid the war, the International would also have the strength to resolve the Balkan question without massacres.

In declaring ourselves against wars of independence, we don't mean to defend racial oppression.

Marx said that being opposed to the constitutional regime was not the same as supporting absolutism.

And we can accept the formula - which seems to make up half all the vast diplomatic lucubrations we've read in a month - the Balkans for the Balkan peoples. But, we ask, to which people? To those who emerge from the mutual slaughter, to the orphans, the cripples, and the victims of cholera! This time, the statistics show clearly what effects war has! The losses are such that it isn't hyperbole to assert that the race will be drained of blood and sterilised for a long time to come!

The fields of devastation will remain to four gratified petty tyrants.

If tomorrow in Santa Sofia the czar, in eighteenth-century style, puts on the bloody crown of the Byzantine Empire, we hope there won't be any socialists among those who rummage among the historical trash of a clownish history and literature, seeking a few lines for the hymn to the victor!

In the name of a greater civilisation, we curse those who for the sake of their ambitious dreams, brought about the massacre of so many young lives!

No matter how brutal the crime, you'll always get glorification of its heroism and tradition from the eunuchs of bourgeois culture!

Amadeo Bordiga

[Devrim]

But in the question of the revolts in Turkey, the situation is different: the Christian lands are bound to Turkey only by force, they have no working-class movement,

I think that this is quite an important point in Luxemburg's analysis. Earlier she talks about the interests of the working class movement:


In all these cases, we are faced with a directly opposing process of capitalist assimilation of the annexed lands to the dominant ones, which condemns the separatist efforts to impotence, and it is in the interests of the working-class movement to advocate the unity of forces, and not their fragmentation in national struggles.

In the absence of a working class, she sees the situation in the Ottoman Empire as different.

This brings up two questions, first of all was she factually right about the abscence of a working class.

Recent articles from the ICC (not in English sorry) suggest that she was wrong:

http://tr.internationalism.org/ekaonline-2000s/ekaonline-2011/osmanli-imparatorlugu-nda-sosyalizm-ve-isci-hareketi-1
http://tr.internationalism.org/ekaonline-2000s/ekaonline-2011/osmanli-imparatorlugu-nda-sosyalizm-ve-isci-hareketi-2
http://tr.internationalism.org/ekaonline-2000s/ekaonline-2011/osmanli-imparatorlugu-nda-sosyalizm-ve-isci-hareketi-3

If she had made a mistake on the actual facts, the second question is whether she would be right in that case.

Devrim

[Ocean Seal]

I believe that if Rosa Luxemburg supported national liberation in the Balkans region it was probably because of the current state that they were in at the time. The rather large differences in the Yugoslavian kingdom and the potential for ethnic warfare might have led to her conclusions. In any case I support national liberation, but I'm curious as to why Luxemburg would as well.

[Devrim]

I believe that if Rosa Luxemburg supported national liberation in the Balkans region it was probably because of the current state that they were in at the time. The rather large differences in the Yugoslavian kingdom and the potential for ethnic warfare might have led to her conclusions.

The text is from 1896. there was no 'Yugoslavian kingdom'.

Devrim

[S.Artesian]

Except "nationalism" was quite foreign to the Balkan lands of the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism was introduced by the Austro-Hungarian empire in the attempt to weaken the Ottoman.

[Die Neue Zeit]

In the absence of a working class, she sees the situation in the Ottoman Empire as different.

This brings up two questions, first of all was she factually right about the absence of a working class.

Recent articles from the ICC (not in English sorry) suggest that she was wrong:

http://tr.internationalism.org/ekaonline-2000s/ekaonline-2011/osmanli-imparatorlugu-nda-sosyalizm-ve-isci-hareketi-1
http://tr.internationalism.org/ekaonline-2000s/ekaonline-2011/osmanli-imparatorlugu-nda-sosyalizm-ve-isci-hareketi-2
http://tr.internationalism.org/ekaonline-2000s/ekaonline-2011/osmanli-imparatorlugu-nda-sosyalizm-ve-isci-hareketi-3

If she had made a mistake on the actual facts, the second question is whether she would be right in that case.

Devrim

The Balkans may have had workers here and there at the time, but did they have proletarian demographic majorities? I'm pretty sure this was the question she was grappling with, considering that Russia itself didn't have such.

[Ocean Seal]

The text is from 1896. there was no 'Yugoslavian kingdom'.

Devrim
Oh sorry my bad, didn't see that there. But in any case, what I said about Yugoslavia could also be applied to the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Austrian Empire or whatever it was at the time.

[Jose Gracchus]

The Balkans may have had workers here and there at the time, but did they have proletarian demographic majorities? I'm pretty sure this was the question she was grappling with, considering that Russia itself didn't have such.

How did you come to that conclusion, given that no such concern on her part appears, to my knowledge, in even a single one of her writings regarding Russia?

[Zanthorus]

The Balkans may have had workers here and there at the time, but did they have proletarian demographic majorities? I'm pretty sure this was the question she was grappling with, considering that Russia itself didn't have such.

As TIC said, Luxemburg in the 1905-07 period came round to the crazy sloganeering 'civil war with the peasantry' yadda yadda yadda and whatever else you've come up with to throw at Trotsky theory of permanent revolution:


In 1905, with the outbreak of the first Russian Revolution, she wrote a series of articles and pamphlets for the Polish party, in which she developed the idea of the permanent revolution, which had been independently developed by Trotsky and Parvus but was held by few Marxists of the time. While both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, despite the deep cleavage between them, believed that the Russian Revolution was to be a bourgeois democratic one, Rosa argued that it would develop beyond the stage of bourgeois democracy and would either end in workers’ power or complete defeat. Her slogan was “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat based on the peasantry.” (It was not for nothing that Stalin denounced Luxemburg posthumously in 1931 as a Trotskyist.)

From Cliff's biographical sketch of Rosa.

So your attempt to push your anachronistic criteria back onto Rosa's work fails here as always.

[Die Neue Zeit]

As TIC said, Luxemburg in the 1905-07 period came round to the crazy sloganeering 'civil war with the peasantry' yadda yadda yadda and whatever else you've come up with to throw at Trotsky theory of permanent revolution

I consider Witnesses to Permanent Revolution more credible than Cliff's anecdotes.

[A Marxist Historian]

I consider Witnesses to Permanent Revolution more credible than Cliff's anecdotes.

For Rosa Luxemburg, the best source is always, always Peter Nettl's classic biography.

According to Nettl, Luxemburg went "part of the way with Trotsky" on this questions, but had serious questions about "the full doctrine of permanent revolution."

Her position was more or less halfway between Trotsky's and Lenin's.

Source: footnote 1 on p. 156 of the abridged English edition.

-M.H.-