Rosa Luxemborg - To idealistic?

[Evo2]

I have recently been reading Rosa Luxemborg, and of course came across these quotes


Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of a party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter. Not because of the fanaticism of "justice", but rather because all that is instructive, wholesome, and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effects cease to work when "freedom" becomes a privilege.[22]

"Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element".


Is this too idealistic? What I mean is that wouldn't this system allow opportunistic capitalist's to influence the workers state, and potentially lead to its downfall? Wouldn't this also allow fascists to campaign as well?

Though I should post here as I'm still new

[Loony Le Fist]

Is this too idealistic? What I mean is that wouldn't this system allow opportunistic capitalist's to influence the workers state, and potentially lead to its downfall? Wouldn't this also allow fascists to campaign as well?


This is a really great question that gets to the heart of what freedom means.

I might be overly idealistic myself. I feel that if you have a worker's state where democracy is functioning properly, while a fascist or right-winger might campaign, they wouldn't win. In a functioning democracy you would have informed voters that wouldn't feel the need to give up the benefits of egalitarianism over the promises of an authoritarian social stratificationist. I feel that popular uprisings of fascism and right-wing ideas are a symptom of people's needs not being met. If you have a governing structure that meets the needs of the majority of the people, it would mute the power of these movements. People need to be able to voice their disagreements with government in order to change it. Otherwise that would just create another tyranny. I doubt anyone wants to live where they feel that those that make societal decisions on their behalf don't listen to them. It would just breed the same isolationism that gives rise to right-wing ideology in the first place.

However, I'm not so idealistic about the initial phases of a transition to a worker's state. Perhaps in the transitional stages there would be a greater need for society to push back against those that would seek to lead us astray towards these grotesque ideas before the societal ills that give rise to them are properly handled. In any given existing capitalist society, a transition to a workers state will be met with fierce opposition. There would definitely be a need to push back against capital interests that would seek to undermine any movement of this kind. Providing citizens with a powerful voice to oppose these interests will be necessary.

In any case, freedom of speech cannot be completely unrestricted. But I believe the ideas of the left speak to the population at large than right-wing ideology. It's just that currently that money and power buys speech in capitalist plutocracies. True freedom of speech would guarantee everyone a voice in influencing government within reason. An informed electorate after experiencing the power of being listened to would understand which ideologies that would seek to restrict their voice and say in government and would not allow them to arise.

I am not an expert political theorist, but that is just my two cents. And for purposes of disclosure, I do have a soft-spot for Rosa Luxembourg's ideas. Especially her criticisms of capitalist economic theory.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I'd say she was correct and even prescient.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Having principles doesn't make you a starry-eyed idealist.

[Geiseric]

I don't think she was talking about the bolsheviks, if that's what OP was referring to, because she herself was part of the Spartacus league which was the precurser to the KPD. The Spartaucus league was also in the third international.

[Chris Hansen]

I don't think she was talking about the bolsheviks, if that's what OP was referring to, because she herself was part of the Spartacus league which was the precurser to the KPD. The Spartaucus league was also in the third international.
No? The Comintern was founded in the Spring of 1919. Luxemburg was killed in January, several months before. The Spartacus League itself ceased existing when it merged with other sects to form the Communist Party of Germany on New Year's 1918.

Of all the leftards, Trotskyists seem to be the most liberal with facts when it comes to history.

[Devrim]

I don't think she was talking about the bolsheviks,

What on earth do you think she was talking about then? Of course she is talking about the Bolsheviks. Both of the quotations used above come from a piece entitled 'The Russian Revolution', which give us some part of a clue to what she is discussing, but with the second quotation if we look at the complete paragraph from which it comes, she refers to Lenin and Trotsky directly:


When all this is eliminated, what really remains? In place of the representative bodies created by general, popular elections, Lenin and Trotsky have laid down the soviets as the only true representation of political life in the land as a whole, life in the soviets must also become more and more crippled. Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously – at bottom, then, a clique affair – a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense, in the sense of the rule of the Jacobins (the postponement of the Soviet Congress from three-month periods to six-month periods!) Yes, we can go even further: such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shooting of hostages, etc. (Lenin’s speech on discipline and corruption.)

I think that she was completely wrong with regards to parliament, but it is very clear that she was referring to Bolshevik strategy in Russia.

Devrim

[Brotto Rühle]

What on earth do you think she was talking about then? Of course she is talking about the Bolsheviks. Both of the quotations used above come from a piece entitled 'The Russian Revolution', which give us some part of a clue to what she is discussing, but with the second quotation if we look at the complete paragraph from which it comes, she refers to Lenin and Trotsky directly:



I think that she was completely wrong with regards to parliament, but it is very clear that she was referring to Bolshevik strategy in Russia.

Devrim

My understanding was that she also dropped her view of parliament, even going as far as to say that anyone who wishes to keep it were enemies.

[Devrim]

My understanding was that she also dropped her view of parliament, even going as far as to say that anyone who wishes to keep it were enemies.

I was referring to her view at that time. I don't know if she changed it. As far as I am aware, she supported a parliamentary tactic at the founding congress of the KPD, and died shortly afterwards. I could be wrong though.

Devrim

[Brotto Rühle]

I was referring to her view at that time. I don't know if she changed it. As far as I am aware, she supported a parliamentary tactic at the founding congress of the KPD, and died shortly afterwards. I could be wrong though.

Devrim

Tactics, yes, you're right. I was thinking of that she dropped support for the existence of parliament during the dotp. Iirc. Which was the case as I just read.

[Thirsty Crow]

Tactics, yes, you're right. I was thinking of that she dropped support for the existence of parliament during the dotp. Iirc. Which was the case as I just read.
As far as I'm aware, the programmatic text of the Spartacus current (therefore, a document preceeding the formation of KPD) explicitly calls for workers' councils power (I can't recall the title, and in addition i read it in Serbo-Croatian), which only complicates the matter.

EDIT: Remembered it, it is "What does the Spartacus League Want?" (December 1918):


The establishment of the socialist order of society is the mightiest task which has ever fallen to a class and to a revolution in the history of the world. This task requires a complete transformation of the state and a complete overthrow of the economic and social foundations of society.

This transformation and this overthrow cannot be decreed by any bureau, committee, or parliament. It can be begun and carried out only by the masses of people themselves.
In all previous revolutions a small minority of the people led the revolutionary struggle, gave it aim and direction, and used the mass only as an instrument to carry its interests, the interests of the minority, through to victory. The socialist revolution is the first which is in the interests of the great majority and can be brought to victory only by the great majority of the working people themselves.
The mass of the proletariat must do more than stake out clearly the aims and direction of the revolution. It must also personally, by its own activity, bring socialism step by step into life.
The essence of socialist society consists in the fact that the great laboring mass ceases to be a dominated mass, but rather, makes the entire political and economic life its own life and gives that life a conscious, free, and autonomous direction.


From the uppermost summit of the state down to the tiniest parish, the proletarian mass must therefore replace the inherited organs of bourgeois class rule – the assemblies, parliaments, and city councils – with its own class organs – with workers’ and soldiers’ councils. It must occupy all the posts, supervise all functions, measure all official needs by the standard of its own class interests and the tasks of socialism. Only through constant, vital, reciprocal contact between the masses of the people and their organs, the workers’ and soldiers’ councils, can the activity of the people fill the state with a socialist spirit.


http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/14.htm

[Fourth Internationalist]

She wasn't doing a thorough critique of the Bolsheviks, as some think, as much as merely stating general ideals for the workers' state in Russia. While she recognized that the bad elements were an inevitable part of the Russian revolution, and therefore she constantly critiqued them, she believed that the Bolsheviks were the only genuinely revolutionary party in Russia, and that they did the best that they could to promote the cause of proletarians in the backwards situation they faced. The piece itself is filled with constant praise of the Bolsheviks (which many ultra-lefts tend to ignore)


The party of Lenin was the only one which grasped the mandate and duty of a truly revolutionary party and which, by the slogan – “All power in the hands of the proletariat and peasantry” – insured the continued development of the revolution.

Thereby the Bolsheviks solved the famous problem of “winning a majority of the people,” which problem has ever weighed on the German Social-Democracy like a nightmare. As bred-in-the-bone disciples of parliamentary cretinism,[3] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch01.htm#n3) these German Social-Democrats have sought to apply to revolutions the home-made wisdom of the parliamentary nursery: in order to carry anything, you must first have a majority. The same, they say, applies to a revolution: first let’s become a “majority.” The true dialectic of revolutions, however, stands this wisdom of parliamentary moles on its head: not through a majority, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority – that’s the way the road runs.

Only a party which knows how to lead, that is, to advance things, wins support in stormy times. The determination with which, at the decisive moment, Lenin and his comrades offered the only solution which could advance things (“all power in the hands of the proletariat and peasantry”), transformed them almost overnight from a persecuted, slandered, outlawed minority whose leader had to hid like Marat in cellars, into the absolute master of the situation.

Moreover, the Bolsheviks immediately set as the aim of this seizure of power a complete, far-reaching revolutionary program; not the safeguarding of bourgeois democracy, but a dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose of realizing socialism. Thereby they won for themselves the imperishable historic distinction of having for the first time proclaimed the final aim of socialism as the direct program of practical politics.

Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary far-sightedness and consistency in an historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and all the other comrades have given in good measure. All the revolutionary honor and capacity which western Social-Democracy lacked was represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution; it was also the salvation of the honor of international socialism.

Everything that happens in Russia is comprehensible and represents an inevitable chain of causes and effects, the starting point and end term of which are: the failure of the German proletariat and the occupation of Russia by German imperialism. It would be demanding something superhuman from Lenin and his comrades if we should expect of them that under such circumstances they should conjure forth the finest democracy, the most exemplary dictatorship of the proletariat and a flourishing socialist economy. By their determined revolutionary stand, their exemplary strength in action, and their unbreakable loyalty to international socialism, they have contributed whatever could possibly be contributed under such devilishly hard conditions. The danger begins only when they make a virtue of necessity and want to freeze into a complete theoretical system all the tactics forced upon them by these fatal circumstances, and want to recommend them to the international proletariat as a model of socialist tactics. When they get in there own light in this way, and hide their genuine, unquestionable historical service under the bushel of false steps forced on them by necessity, they render a poor service to international socialism for the sake of which they have fought and suffered; for they want to place in its storehouse as new discoveries all the distortions prescribed in Russia by necessity and compulsion – in the last analysis only by-products of the bankruptcy of international socialism in the present world war.

Let the German Government Socialists cry that the rule of the Bolsheviks in Russia is a distorted expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it was or is such, that is only because it is a product of the behavior of the German proletariat, in itself a distorted expression of the socialist class struggle. All of us are subject to the laws of history, and it is only internationally that the socialist order of society can be realized. The Bolsheviks have shown that they are capable of everything that a genuine revolutionary party can contribute within the limits of historical possibilities. They are not supposed to perform miracles. For a model and faultless proletarian revolution in an isolated land, exhausted by world war, strangled by imperialism, betrayed by the international proletariat, would be a miracle.


What is in order is to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, the kernel from the accidental excrescencies in the politics of the Bolsheviks. In the present period, when we face decisive final struggles in all the world, the most important problem of socialism was and is the burning question of our time. It is not a matter of this or that secondary question of tactics, but of the capacity for action of the proletariat, the strength to act, the will to power of socialism as such. In this, Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first, those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world; they are still the only ones up to now who can cry with Hutten: “I have dared!”


This is the essential and enduring in Bolshevik policy. In this sense theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the head of the international proletariat with the conquest of political power and the practical placing of the problem of the realization of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the settlement of the score between capital and labor in the entire world. In Russia, the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to “Bolshevism.”


All of the critiques like the one in the OP in her piece are what she views as an ideal situation, and is what all genuine communists view as an ideal situation also. Her praise for the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution, though, outnumber her almost-somewhat-of-a-partial-critique of the Bolsheviks.

[Thirsty Crow]

The piece itself is filled with constant praise of the Bolsheviks (which many ultra-lefts tend to ignore)

Do you really think this is the topic of the thread at hand? Or do you feel the need for taking a jab?

[Devrim]

All of the critiques like the one in the OP in her piece are what she views as an ideal situation, and is what all genuine communists view as an ideal situation also.

It is not what I view as an ideal situation. I think that all 'genuine communists' think that parliament has to be suppressed.

Devrim

[Fourth Internationalist]

Do you really think this is the topic of the thread at hand? Or do you feel the need for taking a jab?

Someone mentioned that these "critiques" of hers were aimed at the Bolsheviks. I am allowed to disagree and will post my thoughts on that claim. Feel free to take jabs, that's what debates and critiques of others ideas are for.

[Fourth Internationalist]

It is not what I view as an ideal situation. I think that all 'genuine communists' think that parliament has to be suppressed.

Devrim

These partial-"critiques" do not mention parliament much. They are usually talking about how we need a workers' state of democratic debate, and that without that, a bureaucracy will develop. Surely that is something all communists can agree on?


Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of “justice” but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when “freedom” becomes a special privilege.
But socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land after the foundations of socialist economy are created; it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the socialist party. It is the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class – that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people.

Are these not all things all communists can agree on?

EDIT: I do not know how to get rid of that IMG thing below. It won't let me delete it and I didn't put it there.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/data:image/gif,GIF89a%12%00%12%00%B3%00%00%FF%FF%FF%F7%F7%EF% CC%CC%CC%BD%BE%BD%99%99%99ZYZRUR%00%00%00%FE%01%02 %00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%0 0%00%00%00%00!%F9%04%04%14%00%FF%00%2C%00%00%00%00 %12%00%12%00%00%04X0%C8I%2B%1D8%EB%3D%E4%00%60(%8A %85%17%0AG*%8C%40%19%7C%00J%08%C4%B1%92%26z%C76%FE %02%07%C2%89v%F0%7Dz%C3b%C8u%14%82V5%23o%A7%13%19L %BCY-%25%7D%A6l%DF%D0%F5%C7%02%85%5B%D82%90%CBT%87%D8i7 %88Y%A8%DB%EFx%8B%DE%12%01%00%3B

[Devrim]

These partial-"critiques" do not mention parliament much. They are usually talking about how we need a workers' state of democratic debate, and that without that, a bureaucracy will develop. Surely that is something all communists can agree on?

She believed that there should be a constituent assembly. That is what the second quote in the OP is refering to when it talks about general elections.

I don't think that is something that all communists can agree on.

Devrim

[Fourth Internationalist]

She believed that there should be a constituent assembly. That is what the second quote in the OP is refering to when it talks about general elections.

I don't think that is something that all communists can agree on.

Devrim

Fair enough. But would you agree with all the other stuff about public life and the bureaucracy?

[Blake's Baby]

In defence of Aang: I think the idea that Rosa was anti-Bolshevik is widespread; I also think this thread is a demonstration it.

Both 'anti-Bolsheviks' (for example, the 'Luxemburgist Network' who regard themselves as 'Libertarian Communists' and indeed Dauve, who sees Luxemburg as a Libertarian Communist precursor) and 'pro-Bolsheviks' (who see Luxemburg's criticism of the Bolsheviks as being a sign of her idealism, disloyalty and fundamentaly bourgeois/liberal approach) buy into this.

I think Aang's right - Luxemburg was pro-Bolshevik; critically pro-Bolshevik, because to be uncrtitically pro-Bolshevik the stupidest position immaginable.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

This has to be read in context. It was part of an attack on the statist, anti-democratic direction of the Russian Revolution. And, Rosa, as a polemicist, was naturally prone to polemic, which is what I view this as.

I wouldn't read it absolutely literally - I don't think any communist would support absolute freedom, just like no capitalist does, no democrat does, no liberal does and even no libertarian does. There is no such thing as 'absolute freedom'. Freedoms are fought for and won, not instituted from up on high. I interpret this great text from Rosa Luxemburg as being a strong attack on the outcome of the Russian Revolution, on its anti-democratic character and its denigration of liberty, and indeed one could say that, writing in the late 1910s, Rosa was extremely prescient.