Luexmbourgism.

[eric922]

I was just wondering if anyone could recommend me some of the basic Luexmburgist texts to read and could answer a few questions?

I also have question about Luexmburgism and it's relation to Trotskyism. I used to consider myself a Trotskyist, and a lot of Trotskyists I talked to were influenced strongly by Luexmurg's writings and I was just wondering if there was a link between the two movements?

I understand that Luxemburgisim is more libertarian than Leninism, which is what first attracted me to it, so would Luexmburgism be considered a form of Left Communism?

[Binh]

There's no such thing as Luxemburg-ism.

I recommend Reform and Revolution, The Mass Strike, and the Junius Pamphlet. Her articles for the German Communist Party's newspaper, Red Flag, are also excellent. If I had time I would read her Accumulation of Capital but it's one of the many Marxist works that I haven't had time to read.

[DarkPast]

Here's Tony Cliff's summary of her works, if you just want an overview:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1959/rosalux/index.htm

Rosa's own works are here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/index.htm

I'll second "The Mass Strike" btw.

EDIT: Also, here's something from Trotsky himself on the subject of "Luxemburgism":
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/06/lux.htm

[Die Rote Fahne]

Here is the internet archive. (http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/index.htm)

The top reads would be:
- Leninism or Marxism?
- The Russian Revolution
- The Mass Strike
- The National Question
- Reform or Revolution
- The Junius Pamphlet
- etc...

I would read them yourself...you really don't need Tony Cliff's summaries.

[Die Rote Fahne]

There's no such thing as Luxemburg-ism.

I recommend Reform and Revolution, The Mass Strike, and the Junius Pamphlet. Her articles for the German Communist Party's newspaper, Red Flag, are also excellent. If I had time I would read her Accumulation of Capital but it's one of the many Marxist works that I haven't had time to read.
There is, in fact, such a thing as "Luxemburgism".

[Q]

There is an ideology based around a mini-state between Belgium, France and Germany?

But seriously, Rosa Luxemburg didn't start a her own distinct ideological tendency and she died before the KPD could be well off the ground, leaving it to the cludges of Moscow's counterrevolution. She was on the left of Orthodox Marxism, often put in the "general strike strategists" wing of the movement. She had a clear polemical position and often battled it out with the other "greats" of the day. Posters before me already gave some of those products.

I haven't read her theoretical work on capital, is it worth persuing?

[Die Rote Fahne]

There is an ideology based around a mini-state between Belgium, France and Germany?

But seriously, Rosa Luxemburg didn't start a her own distinct ideological tendency and she died before the KPD could be well off the ground, leaving it to the cludges of Moscow's counterrevolution. She was on the left of Orthodox Marxism, often put in the "general strike strategists" wing of the movement. She had a clear polemical position and often battled it out with the other "greats" of the day. Posters before me already gave some of those products.

I haven't read her theoretical work on capital, is it worth persuing?
She was, in fact, just an Orthodox Marxist. She was NOT left of it. That's one issue I have with some people, they think she's glorious LEFT COMMUNIST HERO!

[Kosakk]

International Luxemburgist Network: http://www.luxemburgism.lautre.net/?lang=en

http://luxemburgism.forumr.net/

[Q]

She was, in fact, just an Orthodox Marxist. She was NOT left of it. That's one issue I have with some people, they think she's glorious LEFT COMMUNIST HERO!

I believe she was already dead before left-communism made its entrance. In any case that was not what I meant. The pre-1914 Marxist movement had several wings. From this article (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1001753):


(a) Right syndicalists or ‘non-political’ trade-unionists. The most important element was the right wing in the British trade union movement, but the trend was also found elsewhere in Europe, and within Germany under the banner of the SPD, as well as in the catholic and other trade union organisations. The Russian ‘economists’ were ideological representatives of this trend with a Marxist coloration. This tendency held that it was sufficient to defend the immediate economic interests of workers in the direct struggle with their employers - primarily through trade union action, but also through seeking pro-worker legislation.

(b) Non-Marxist socialists. The usual ‘representative figure’ is Bernstein, because he was an ex-Marxist, relatively ‘sophisticated’ in his writings and engaged in argument by the German centre and left. In fact Bernstein is not particularly representative: there were various other forms of non-Marxist socialism, like those of the English Fabians and Independent Labour Party or the semi-Radical trend in France led by Jean Jaurès. This tendency argued, on very various grounds, that the task of the movement simply was to fight within the existing state order for reforms which shifted society towards socialist ‘values’. Its direct inheritors are the modern socialist parties.

(c) The ‘Kautskyan Marxist’ centre, mainly based in the SPD but also found in France (where the most prominent leader was Jules Guesde) and elsewhere; the Russian Iskra tendency around 1900, and hence both the Bolsheviks and part of the Mensheviks, were part of this tendency. This tendency had generally Marxist reference points. It foresaw a decline of capitalism and a revolution at some point in the future, but was ambiguous as to the role in this of the parliamentary-constitutional state. Its main focus in practice was on ‘preparatory tasks’: ie, building up the organised workers’ movement, including trade unions and cooperatives, but particularly building an organised workers’ political party which would take on all political questions posed for the society as a whole.

(d) A ‘Hegelian Marxist’ and semi-syndicalist left tendency within the International. Prominent leaders or writers included Antonio Labriola in Italy, Herman Gorter in the Netherlands and Rosa Luxemburg in Poland and Germany. This tendency argued that the International should not merely prepare for the revolution, but should fight for it by promoting strike action and the general strike, which was seen as the means by which the proletariat escaped from the dynamics of commodity fetishism and began to emancipate itself; it tended to deprioritise or reject electoral and parliamentary activity. Luxemburg’s pamphlet The mass strike is part of the ongoing polemics of this tendency against the right and centre round the ‘strategy’ of the general strike. Trotsky seems to have been intermediate between this position and the centre.

(e) Outright left anarcho-syndicalists were outside the International, but, as can be seen from (d), their ideas had significant indirect influence within it; they were strongest in Italy, Spain and France (another Hegelian Marxist, Georges Sorel, was a theoretician of revolutionary syndicalism in France). They were also present in the USA and Britain (International Workers of the World and De Leonist Socialist Labour Parties).

We can thus see a ‘right’, ‘centre’ and ‘left’ of the workers’ movement. The Bolsheviks, however, were part of the centre. With Kautsky, they emphasised the construction of workers’ institutions under capitalism and especially of a workers’ political party, which should attempt to take the lead in all the questions affecting society as a whole and hence should fight for political goals and make whatever use it could of parliamentary, etc, institutions. They did not adhere to the ‘general strike’ strategy, or to the Hegelian ‘voluntarism’ (insistence on the role of the subjective and the ‘act of will’) of the left, as can be seen in Lenin’s Materialism and empirico-criticism (1909).

I've seen it argued sometimes that she in fact wasn't a proponent of the mass strike strategy, but haven't seen convincing argumentation of it so far.

[Tim Finnegan]

In my experience, "Luxumburgism" is either A) an attempt to find a concise label for the ideas espoused by the left wing of the early KPD before council communism emerged as a distinct tendency, or B) something that some Trotskyists affix to their self-identification to take the edge off the bitter taste of Trotsky's actual conduct as a revolutionary. Identification as that and that alone is something that I've ever only seen from individuals and online, which I don't think qualifies it for status as an actually existing tendency within the socialist movement.

Of course, I could be wrong.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I believe she was already dead before left-communism made its entrance. In any case that was not what I meant. The pre-1914 Marxist movement had several wings. From this article (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1001753):

Pre-1914 workers movement, not "Marxist" movement ;)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Though I propagate her tendency in my username, it's difficult to ascribe as a significant tendency, Luxemburgism. Partly because her important, impressive and wide-ranging critique of the Russian Revolution, cut short as her pamphlet of the same name was released, was stopped in its tracks by her murder. It is likely that she would have effected a theoretically honest, less opportunistic opposition to the USSR than the Trotskyists did.

Ideologically, however, Rosa Luxemburg contributed much to the Marxist movement. The Mass Strike is essential reading to anybody tempted to side with Trade Unionism or the 'economist' left-wing, and provides a strong outline of the Mass Strike's importance, as well as a historically prescient understanding of the character of the Russian working clas s and revolution.

By the release of The Russian Revolution, it is clear that Rosa Luxemburg was to the left of the movement, of Kautsky and the Bolsheviks.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Ideologically, however, Rosa Luxemburg contributed much to the Marxist movement. The Mass Strike is essential reading to anybody tempted to side with Trade Unionism or the 'economist' left-wing, and provides a strong outline of the Mass Strike's importance, as well as a historically prescient understanding of the character of the Russian working clas s and revolution.

By the release of The Russian Revolution, it is clear that Rosa Luxemburg was to the left of the movement, of Kautsky and the Bolsheviks.

I don't know. For those on the left of the movement, things ranging from The Mass Strike to Bakunin and Sorel on the insurrectionary general strike were a reaction to those on the right of the movement who advocated reform coalitions. I just don't see that work as "essential" to combating tred-iunionizm, reform coalitions, or Bakunin-Sorel syndicalism.

Specifically on the question of democracy, during the Russian Revolution she wasn't exactly "to the left of the movement." The consensus in German Social Democracy was that the disbandment of the Constituent Assembly was, at the very least, not something virtuous, which totally ignores the later suppression of non-Bolshevik soviets.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

She was certainly to the left of Kautsky and the Bolsheviks. I'm not an expert on German Social Democracy of the time, unfortunately.

The Russian Revolution pamphlet took the experience of the event of the same name and codified it. For me, it was a major work as it showed an alternative to both bourgeois 'democracy' and 'proletarian' dictatorship. No doubt, if Luxemburg would have lived longer, this pamphlet would have been merely the beginning in a longer cycle of works elucidating a democratic Marxism/communism in opposition to the party-dictatorship of the USSR.

Of course I am merely guesstimating as to her future views. As a dialectic proponent herself, Luxemburg would no doubt say something like the apparent continuity of her views is intertwined with many great about-turns in her viewpoints regarding Bolshevism etc. However, it seems as though, based on her views particularly related to Russia, she would have continued on a path that was at least left-of-centre. It's not difficult to imagine that the ban on factions, NEP and post-Lenin acts would have pushed Luxemburg into a genuine left opposition position based on her theory (as opposed to the opportunistic left oppositions that arose inside the Bolshevik clan.

[Iron Felix]

Yes, she was left of the Bolsheviks and Kautsky, but Marx and Engels were left of of them too. I consider Luxumberg among the most Orthodox Marxists to follow Marx and Engels.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

She was not in league with the vulgar Marxism of the pre-war SPD, however. She had theoretical positions far more advanced and closer to Marx's own conceptions of revolution and of Socialism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

She was not in league with the vulgar Marxism of the pre-war SPD, however. She had theoretical positions far more advanced and closer to Marx's own conceptions of revolution and of Socialism.

Excuse me, but the Orthodox Marxism of the pre-war SPD wasn't "vulgar Marxism." The latter refers to an academic school of thought that subscribes to "economic determinism." :glare:

[Q]

Excuse me, but the Orthodox Marxism of the pre-war SPD wasn't "vulgar Marxism." The latter refers to an academic school of thought that subscribes to "economic determinism." :glare:

Ah, you know, it's all in a day's worth of Kautsky and Bolshevik bashing.