Rosa Luxemburg: sectarian?

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/revolutionary-strategy/


If you think the fruits of Luxemburg’s policy - the SDKPiL hyper-centralist sect in Poland, no *organised* left in Germany before the war broke out - or those of Trotsky’s policy - the August bloc, perhaps? - are comparable to the construction of the Bolshevik party to the point where it had the majority in the workers’ curia before the outbreak of war and still had tens of thousands of members, under complete illegality, at the outbreak of the February revolution - then you are certainly no Trotskyist, since Trotsky criticised both himself and Luxemburg for their attitude to the party question before 1917 (e.g. on himself, in My Life, in several places)

Can someone please enlighten me on Luxemburg's Polish politics? Thanks.

[Yehuda Stern]

Luxemburg was in the PPS, the same party that was home to many Polish nationalists, including Jozef Pilsudski, later the leader of the Polish anti-Bolshevik campaign and the head of a vicious semi-fascist military dictatorship. Rosa Luxemburg's mistake on the party was the same as that of Kautsky and the rest of the international, even though she was far better than them in any other sense - the opposition to a vanguard party and instead the adoption of a broad party model. This would eventually cost Luxemburg her own head, unfortunately, as the party that she had created could not be centrally controlled and failed to overthrow the bourgeois state.

[Yehuda Stern]

Hmm. For some reason I was sure she was a member of the PPS at some. Oh well. At any rate, I'm pretty sure that Trotsky criticized her and himself for the same thing - accepting the organizational form of the Second International's parties instead of that proposed by Lenin. I may be wrong, though.

[Tower of Bebel]

I think Luxemburg advocated the same type of party; yet she did not involve herself in the process of building one.

Lenin and Luxemburg

By HELEN SCOTT

IN A 1961 introduction to two of her essays, Bertram Wolfe argues that Rosa Luxemburg opposed Lenin “till the end” of her life: A democratic worshiper of “spontaneity,” she rejected Lenin’s “authoritarian centralism,” blamed him for splitting the international, and predicted that his “penchant for personal dictatorship” would pave the way for Stalinism and fascism.

Although Wolfe’s propaganda piece is a particularly crude version, the basic components of his polemic have become received common sense. Sexist condescension is customary: Wolfe tells us that Luxemburg was driven by emotion more than politics (she had a “longing to conquer in storm and passion”), that her body was “slight and weak,” and that she had “large, expressive...beautiful eyes.” This motif of the “kinder, gentler revolutionary” persists: it can be seen, for example, in Jonathan Rabb’s recent novel Rosa. In the course of the narrative, which turns the circumstances surrounding Luxemburg’s death into a murder mystery, the detective “finds” the real woman behind the communist, through reading her poetry collections and journal, and talking with her lover, Leo Jogiches.

But sexism is only one aspect of the “good socialist/bad socialist” opposition that is projected on to Luxemburg and Lenin. For example, a recent Retort book, Afflicted Powers, calls Rosa Luxemburg an inspiration and her Juniusbrochure an exemplary indictment of “war in relation to the capitalist state.” Lenin, however, serves only as a negative example: The Leninist vanguard party is “a militant, secretive, unicellular band of brothers...the deepest and most destructive illusion of the Left;” and far from offering an alternative, it is, like al-Qaeda, in its “narrowness and secretiveness and merciless instrumentalism” an understandable but disastrous response to the challenges of history.

Such accusations rest on a wildly false version of Lenin, and obscure what the two had in common: they were the figureheads of social democracy’s international Left, sharing an enduring faith in working-class self-emancipation, a commitment to revolution, an understanding of socialists as the tribune of the oppressed, and were principled opponents to imperialism and war. They were frequently allied in the struggle against reformism; they collaborated in Finland after the defeat of the 1905 revolution; they co-authored the antiwar amendment at the Stuttgart congress of 1907; and they famously denounced the Second International’s betrayal in 1914, when the vast majority of parties abandoned international working-class solidarity to support the war efforts of their respective nations.

There were significant disagreements between them, perhaps most stubbornly over the question of how socialists should relate to struggles for national liberation. (And without taking up this question, it is worth pointing out that Lenin was the one championing democratic rights here.) But the organizational question is at the heart of most attempts to pit them against one another. The received wisdom is that Luxemburg opposed Lenin’s project of building a centralized vanguard organization, and that she saw this project as antithetical to the spontaneous revolutionary activity of the working class.

The first thing to note is that Lenin and Luxemburg both spent their lives building socialist organizations. This obvious point bares reiteration because “worship of spontaneity” implies that she was against organization per se. Whereas, in the words of her main biographer, Paul Frölich: “Luxemburg was in agreement with Lenin that the revolutionary party had to be the vanguard of the working class, that it had to be centralistically organized, and that the will of its majority could be carried out by means of strict discipline in its activities.” Lenin and Luxemburg, along with the entire Second International, looked to Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD)—based on the 1891 Erfurt Program’s dual commitment to the minimum program (the project of winning reforms under capitalism) and the maximum program (socialist revolution)—as the model through which to achieve socialism.

Since the repeal of the anti-socialist laws, German social democracy had functioned in public using all the institutions of bourgeois democracy. In Russia, where no such political freedoms existed, socialists faced the challenge of maintaining an organization rooted in the working class under the constant threat of arrest and deportation. Debates within the Russian party about how best to do this provide the backdrop for Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, written before and after the 1903 dispute between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks over the definition of membership. Luxemburg’s polemic against him in 1904, “Organizational questions of Russian social democracy,” is the ubiquitous source for anti-Leninists: it was even renamed, long after the author’s death, “Leninism or Marxism?” In this essay she asserts that Lenin’s “ultra-centralism” is based, “1) on the blind subordination of all party organs in the smallest detail of their activity to a central power which, alone, thinks, plans, and decides for all; and 2) the sharp separation of the organized kernel of the party from the surrounding revolutionary milieu.”

Luxemburg’s straw-man version of Lenin’s party bears no resemblance to anything he actually advocated. Lars Lih and Paul LeBlanc have separately taken up both what is false in this essay’s portrayal of Lenin and in the standard accounts of it. There is no evidence that Luxemburg had in fact even read What Is to Be Done?, and she doesn’t engage with the actual content of One Step Forward. Lih suggests that she relied on secondary accounts supplied by his critics; Certainly Lenin responded to her essay by showing point by point how she misrepresents him.

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. 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.
Compare 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.’”

The 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."

She 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.’”

Far 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.” 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."

This 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.

Both 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.

But that model had to be adapted in Russia, where socialist activity was illegal and so necessitated constant vigilance against police infiltration and repression. Luxemburg faced the same conditions in the country of her birth, Poland: she was one of a small nucleus of revolutionaries who, despite their geographic dispersal, led the underground Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania. According to Max Shachtman, even the Menshevik Theodore Dan held that “the Polish social-democracy of the time shared in its essentials the organizational principles of Lenin.” However, her biographer J.P. Nettl notes that Luxemburg “[did] not concern herself with organizational matters at all,” especially after 1901, even while she continued to provide political guidance to the Polish party.

Lenin, on the other hand, decisively “concerned himself” with the practical as well as the political details of a socialist organization able to assure effective democracy while mitigating against infiltration and arrest: methodically building a cadre of experienced members based on a shared commitment to a revolutionary program, and who were able to win leadership within specific workplaces. Georg Lukács captures the essence of the model in a short book written soon after Lenin’s death:

"[T]he strictest selection of party members according to clarity of class-consciousness and unconditional devotion to the cause of the revolution must be combined with their equal ability to merge themselves totally in the lives of the struggling and suffering masses. All efforts to fulfill the first of these demands without its corollary are bound, even where groups of good revolutionaries are concerned, to be paralyzed by sectarianism."

Having effectively operated as a faction for a decade, after the decisive split in 1912 the Bolsheviks proved able to weather these twin perils of opportunism and sectarianism; they forged a serious working-class organization that in turn endured the shock of the First World War and the collapse of the Second International, and went on to lead the revolution in 1917.

In Germany, Luxemburg and other revolutionaries remained dispersed within the broad membership of the SPD not only through 1914, but even after the right wing of the party forced a split in 1917, when they stayed in the expelled opposition. When the SPD leadership succumbed to opportunism, historian of the German Revolution Pierre Broué writes, “German revolutionaries found themselves completely atomized. They were, moreover, to learn to their cost that, in a party which they still regarded as being theirs, they would be subjected to repression which reinforced that of the state and the police.” Lacking a clear political program, seasoned cadre, and centralized organizational apparatus, the German leftists were effectively isolated from the broader working class, despite a substantial following. In January 1919, in the face of the brutal crushing of the Berlin uprising, Luxemburg wrote in the paper Die Rote Fahne: “If the cause of the Revolution is to advance, if the victory of the proletariat, of socialism, is to be anything but a dream, the revolutionary workers must set up leading organizations able to guide and to utilize the combative energy of the masses.” In other words, Germany needed a party akin to the Bolsheviks in Russia.

When they launched the German Communist Party at the end of 1918, Lenin hailed Luxemburg and her comrades as “world-known and world-famous leaders...[and] staunch working-class champions.” Luxemburg was murdered before she could complete her life’s task, but in one of her final major works, the Russian Revolution, she wrote:

"Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary far-sightedness and consistency in an historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and 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."

It is a travesty that these revolutionary allies have been cast as opponents, and it is indicative of how those opposed to far-reaching social change appropriate history for their own uses. A reassessment of that history is a crucial part of the continuing struggle against the wars, inequities, and crises of global capitalism in our own time.

[ComradeOm]

Hmm. For some reason I was sure she was a member of the PPS at someI'd be surprised if that were the case. Luxembourg was a typical Social Democrat in more ways than one and she had absolutely no time for Polish nationalism. As far as she was involved in Polish politics I believe it was a member of the SDKPL, a rival of the PPS

[Yehuda Stern]

It seems you're right, but I used to think that either the PPS had a Marxist left-wing or that the Polish social-democrats came from a split from the PPS. Now I see that that's not the case.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'd be surprised if that were the case. Luxembourg was a typical Social Democrat in more ways than one and she had absolutely no time for Polish nationalism. As far as she was involved in Polish politics I believe it was a member of the SDKPL, a rival of the PPS

The organization and politics of the SDKPL is, as noted above in the OP, what I'm more concerned about. Comrade Rakunin's lengthy quote didn't address CPGB comrade Mike Macnair's assertion on sectarianism.

[Bilan]

She probably was. Who cares?
Find me a socialist who isn't.

[Tower of Bebel]

The organization and politics of the SDKPL is, as noted above in the OP, what I'm more concerned about. Comrade Rakunin's lengthy quote didn't address CPGB comrade Mike Macnair's assertion on sectarianism.
To build on my previous comment that Luxemburg was not that much involved with building a party both in Germany and in Poland I quote Mary-Alice Waters, who writes in "Rosa Luxemburg Speaks" that it was not Luxemburg but Jochiges who organized the Polish socialists:
Rosa was always an orator and writer and her public role placed her continually in the spotlight, but she was not an organizer. She had virtually no interest in the details of party functioning, finances, underground work, the complications of getting literature published, etc. - all the thousands of details and problems which must be dealt with if an effective organization is to be built. Such things she left to Jogiches, who from all accounts was competent but also rather domineering and and sometimes autocratic. He kept out of public eye, organizing the SDKPiL, and, during the war, the Spartacus League, with quiet efficiency. Jochiges was a sharp political thinker, however, and served as Rosa's "sounding board" for years. Undoubtedly many of Rosa Luxemburg's ideas were worked out in conversation and debate with him, and he was always one of her severest critics. Although he has been overshadowed by Rosa, his own role in the international socialist movement of the early twentieth century was an important one.

[ComradeOm]

To build on my previous comment that Luxemburg was not that much involved with building a party both in Germany and in Poland I quote Mary-Alice Waters, who writes in "Rosa Luxemburg Speaks" that it was not Luxemburg but Jochiges who organized the Polish socialists:Of course Jochiges was not much of a 'party-builder' either. He was one of the principal opponents of the foundation of the KPD(S), like Luxembourg herself, struggling in vain to maintain unity with the USPD

[Tower of Bebel]

Of course Jochiges was not much of a 'party-builder' either. He was one of the principal opponents of the foundation of the KPD(S), like Luxembourg herself, struggling in vain to maintain unity with the USPD
Well, I think we can conclude that Luxemburg suffered from what Lenin calls a child disease of the communist movement (a "childish disorder")? Not due to sectarianism itself (theory), but due to a lack of experience (practice). At a certain moment of time, this started to affect her writings (I think it happened around 1910 - and I don't think that this date is a coincidence), yet her death in 1919 abruptly ended this process.

[ComradeOm]

Well, I think we can conclude that Luxemburg suffered from what Lenin calls a child disease of the communist movement (a "childish disorder")? Not due to sectarianism itself (theory), but due to a lack of experience (practice). At a certain moment of time, this started to affect her writings (I think it happened around 1910 - and I don't think that this date is a coincidence), yet her death in 1919 abruptly ended this process.I've always found Luxembourg to be something of an enigmatic figure in this regard. Politically her work, especially with the Spartakists, was undoubtedly ultra-leftist (the 'infantile disorder' of the communist movement) in character and this led to clashes with Lenin. Yet she argued strenuously in favour of communists remaining in first the SPD and then the USPD. So she didn't really display the rabid sectarianism that marked out the rest of the German ultra-leftist movement. I've always felt that this was an odd contradiction

[Tower of Bebel]

After reading this interesting article (http://faculty.goucher.edu/history231/steenson.htm)on Kautsky, Bernstein and Luxemburg (personifications of the center, right and left within the SPD) I think I have a more detailed view of Rosa's position towards party functioning.
One reason for her lack of experience with building a party was the fact that right-wing party officials tried ot isolate the left wing, while the party's leadership (Bebel and kautsky) did "nothing" to support the revolutionary left at that moment. This isolation of proletarian internationalists, which started just after the repeal of the anti-socialist laws and especially the revolution of 1905, caused her to search for working class radicalism as the final solution to the bureaucratisation of the workers movement/party.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Interesting, comrade, that the article noted Bebel's key theoretical blunder as a revolutionary centrist:


Led by Georg von Vollmar [praised excessively by the "Marxist-Leninist" Ludo Martens for his theoretical conception of "socialism in one country," expanded further upon by Bukharin and ultimately adopted by Stalin and co.], the south German forces gained sufficient support to get the 1894 Frankfurt party congress to pass a resolution calling for the adoption of an agrarian policy to be grafted onto the Erfurt program. Two things about the campaign particularly rankled Kautsky. One was the almost vituperatively anti-theoretical posture of the major proponents of the agrarian program. Over and over again these people scornfully rejected any theoretical objections to including peasants and small farmers among party membership and to making special programmatic concessions to try to win their votes. Quite naturally Kautsky resented this attack on his special bailiwick. Kautsky also opposed the suggestion that the exclusively worker character of the party should be violated. This was contrary to what was for him the most important basic political principle of any socialist party.

For a time it seemed that perhaps Kautsky had chosen the wrong side on this issue because Bebel sided with Vollmar and the south Germans. Actually Bebel had never been entirely happy with the exclusively worker party; he had tried to keep worker out of the name of both the SDAP and the SAPD to avoid offending possible non-worker followers. But the issue did not come up again in the intervening period, largely because of the radicalizing impact of the anti socialist law. In 1894 Bebel was securely in control of the party, and the number of issues on which he lost at parts congresses was very small.

In the end, however, Bebel, not Kautsky, chose the wrong side this time. Even though a major theoretical dispute on the agrarian question preceded the 1895 Breslau congress at which the new policy was voted on, the issue was not so much one of facts and theories as it was an emotional one. At Breslau the agrarian commission selected the previous year presented its report to the delegates, and Kautsky offered a counter-resolution calling for the rejection of the commission's proposal. Vollmar was unable to attend the congress, so Bebel delivered the major attack on Kautsky's resolution, arguing primarily that even if the agrarian program was ineffective, it did not cost the workers anything, and it might win the party some new supporters.

Clara Zetkin and Kautsky both gave strong speeches in favor of preserving the proletarian purity of the party. Zetkin met with prolonged stormy applause when she closed her presentation with a stirring call for the party to reject the agrarian program and thereby "hold firmly to the revolutionary character of our party." Kautsky conceded that the new program might win the SPD some voters but added that such followers would only desert the party "at the decisive moment." He concluded with an emotional appeal to revolutionary solidarity: "We face great and difficult battles, and must train comrades-in-arms who are resolved to share everything with us and to fight the great fight to the end." Such entreaties got a sympathetic response from the delegates, most of whom shared the prejudice of urban dwellers against what Marx referred to in the Communist Manifesto as "the idiocy of rural life." By a vote of 158 to 63, Kautsky's resolution passed.

On the other hand, Lenin was key in drafting the agrarian section of the RSDLP's program.

[Tower of Bebel]

^^^ Interesting, comrade, that the article noted Bebel's key theoretical blunder as a revolutionary centrist:
But it also points to another interesting fact :tt2::

Finally, the coalition opposed to Bernstein was much too powerful for him to overcome without much more solid and extensive support than he had. Not only was revisionism attacked from within the party by the devoted Marxists, led by Parvus (pseudonym of the Russian Alexander Helphand) and Rosa Luxemburg, but foreigners outside of Germany also joined the assault, with Georgi Plekhanov, the "father" of Russian Marxism, and the very widely respected leader of the Austrian socialist party, Victor Adler, eventually joining the ranks. However, the single most important opponent Bernstein had was not a theoretician at all, but a socialist politician of the first rank, August Bebel. Bernstein was genuinely puzzled by the vehemence of Bebel's opposition, since the party leader seemed so reasonable when it came to practical political matters. But Bebel played a central role in the critique of revisionism because his constant goading kept Kautsky involved w hen the party theoretician would have liked to let the matter drop.
When Bernstein was defeated, Kautsky and Bebel were much criticized by Luxemburg after the Revolution of 1905 for their tactical mistakes. Bebel stayed with the radicals until his death in 1913, but Luxemburg's letter to Zetkin in 1907 upon her return from Russia leads us to Bebel's pragmatism. Quoted from Mary-Alice Waters' Rosa Luxemburg speaks:

"Since my return from Russia I feel rather isolated... I feel the pettiness and the hesitanicy of our party regime more clearly and more painfully than ever before. However, I can't get so exited about the situation as you [Clara Zetkin] do, because I see with depressing clarity that neither things nor people can be changed - until the whole situation has changed, and even then we shall just have to reckon with inevitable resistance if we want to lead the masses on. I have come to that conclusion after mature reflection. The plain truth is that August [Bebel], and still more so the others, have completely pledged themselves to parliament and parliamentarianism, and whenever anything happens which transcends the limits of parliamentary action they are hopeless - no, worse than hopeless, because they then do their utmost to force the movement back into parliamentary channels, and they will furiously defame as as 'an enemy of the people' anyone who dares to venture beyond their own limits. I feel that those of the masses who are organized on the party are tired of parliamentarianism, and would welcome a new line in party tactics, but the party leaders and still more the upper stratum of opportunist editors, deputies, and trade-union leaders are like incubus. We most protest vigorously against this general stagnation, but it is quite clear that in doing so we shall find ourselves against the opportunists as well as the party leaders and August [Bebel]. As long as it was a question of defending themselves against Bernstein and his friends, August&Co. were glad of our assistance, because they were shaking in their shoes. But when it is a question of launching an offensive against opportunism then August and the rest are with Ede [Bernstein], Vollmar and David against us. That's how I see matters, but the chief thing is to keep your chin up and not get too exited about it. Our job will take years."

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I wonder, comrade, who in the future will step up to the plate and "critique" class-strugglist / "orange" reformism (as opposed to the typical Bernstein-Mussolini class collaborationism) when every class-strugglist by then will be operating in a single organization.

Back to the historical stuff, how the f****** hell did Ebert get to succeed Bebel, anyway (besides the right's organizational prowess)? How many class-collaborationists were on the SPD's executive committee?

[Tower of Bebel]

^^^ I wonder, comrade, who in the future will step up to the plate and "critique" class-strugglist / "orange" reformism (as opposed to the typical Bernstein-Mussolini class collaborationism) when every class-strugglist by then will be operating in a single organization.

Back to the historical stuff, how the f****** hell did Ebert get to succeed Bebel, anyway (besides the right's organizational prowess)? How many class-collaborationists were on the SPD's executive committee?
I think the proposals of the Reichtag's socialist MP's were decisive. And Bernstein was one of them. The "radicals", like Luxemburg but surprisingly (for some of us) also Bebel and Kautsky, were isolated from the rest of the party. I think their anti-war position from 1909 on was an important factor. Only the fact that Bebel was the party's leader remained a fortress to be dealt with. The death of Bebel (1913) was the final end of Kautsky as the theoretical leader of the party, and also the end of the left wing as a tolerated opposition against the war.
From then on things happened to go fast (the outbreak of the first imperialist war in 1914!). The International's left wing was severely weakened by the right wing (capital's left wing to be more precise). This case also shows what I mean:

Some of Bernstein's points were based on well-nigh irrefutable facts that proved particularly troublesome for the defenders of orthodoxy to counter. For instance, both the obvious prosperity and stability of capitalism for the two decades before the First World War and the extent to which the vast majority of the workers of the industrialized world shared in this prosperity stumped orthodox Marxists for along time. Not until the various forms of the imperialism critique began to appear-from Rudolf Hilferding in 1910, Rosa Luxemburg in 1913, and Lenin in 1917- was a reasonably satisfying Marxian explanation offered.

[BobKKKindle$]

The main problem with Rosa Luxemburg was tat she wasn't sectarian enough. The KPD was only formed in 1918 as a result of the split from the main party in Germany, the SPD, but by that stage the workers in Germany had already overthrown the Kaiser and it was clear that Germany would soon be approaching a revolutionary situation which would allow a vanguard party to take the leading role and ultimately challenge the capitalist system, including the SPD bureaucrats - and yet the absence of a vanguard party with strong links in the working class meant the opportunity was missed and the SPD preserved the rule of the bourgeoisie by selling out the workers.

[Chapaev]

There were errors in Luxemburg’s economic concepts. She believed that the accumulation of capital under capitalism was only possible through the expansion of the sphere of exploitation of the “noncapitalist environment,” such as the economy of the peasants and craftsmen. She defined imperialism as the policy of struggle of the capitalist states for what was left of the “worldwide noncapitalist environment.”

Luxemburg deviated from the materialist dialectic and committed metaphysical errors. She had an incorrect treatment of the national question in her denial of the rights of peoples to self-determination. She also underestimated the revolutionary potential of the peasants. She did not understand the relationship between opportunism and imperialism or the need to create a new type of party. Up to the November Revolution, she did not see the need for a break with opportunism.

[Tower of Bebel]

Luxemburg deviated from the materialist dialectic and committed metaphysical errors. She had an incorrect treatment of the national question in her denial of the rights of peoples to self-determination. She also underestimated the revolutionary potential of the peasants. She did not understand the relationship between opportunism and imperialism or the need to create a new type of party. Up to the November Revolution, she did not see the need for a break with opportunism.
Yes, but revolutionary marxism only started to formulate the much needed answers to the decay of social-democracy during the First World War. Luxemburg died in 1919. So I wouldn't focus too much on the "negative" aspects of Luxemburg's revolutionary life. But you're right when you criticize her, of course.

[BobKKKindle$]

Yes, but revolutionary marxism only started to formulate the much needed answers to the decay of social-democracy during the First World War.

Nonsense, Lenin had already identified the existence of an "economist" movement which focused solely on economic issues at the expense of the ultimate question of state power before the war took place, when he was writing 'What is to be done?' in 1902. WW1 merely confirmed Lenin's view that revolutionary socialists should build their own organizations and develop a coherent revolutionary program instead of remaining inside other organizations which do not have radical objectives and aim to achieve reforms within the framework of capitalism instead of working towards the overthrow of capitalism.

Please, don't use the made-up words of JR, they add nothing to the debate and are generally useless. Revolutionary Marxism is a tautology - if you are a Marxist then it necessarily follows that you support the abolition of capitalist society by revolutionary means because one of the basic ideas within Marxism is the recognition that the bourgeois state cannot be peacefully taken over and used to transfer property to the workers - it must be smashed through revolutionary struggle. If you reject this, then you are not a Marxist.

[Tower of Bebel]

Nonsense, Lenin had already identified the existence of an "economist" movement which focused solely on economic issues at the expense of the ultimate question of state power before the war took place, when he was writing 'What is to be done?' in 1902. WW1 merely confirmed Lenin's view that revolutionary socialists should build their own organizations and develop a coherent revolutionary program instead of remaining inside other organizations which do not have radical objectives and aim to achieve reforms within the framework of capitalism instead of working towards the overthrow of capitalism.
But didn't Lenin agree (sometime just after 1902) with the 2nd International that revisionists like Bernstein were allowed to stay as long as they would base their views on "principles of marxism"? It is in such a context that I used the term revolutionary marxism; not as an opposition to Trotskyism or another current of the revolutionary left.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Comrade, the problem is that Bernstein did NOT base his revisionism on the "principles of Marxism." The very notion of abandoning the concept of class struggle itself placed him outside the merger of socialism and the worker movement. By this time, Bernstein had a merger formula of his own: a vague concept of "evolutionary socialism" and popular/peoples' movements:


Towards the end of the 19th century, he attacked the concept of class struggle. A little over 20 years later, the superstitious notion of cross-class unity found for itself the first of many hosts: colonial fascism! Today, its host can be found amongst the highly emotional national-chauvinists who shout “class warfare” when even the liberal class divide (based on income) is brought up by the politically correct “progressives” and “social-democrats” – the latter with their host of “socialist,” “democratic-socialist,” “social-democratic,” “labour” and “worker” parties – who themselves reject the concept of class struggle in favour of more abstract, ivory-tower notions like “class conflict.”

Logically speaking, it is possible to be a reformist socialist who believes that even one's own reform demands can only be achieved through class struggle. There folks, today dubbing themselves as "revolutionary reformists," are a very minute minority today.

[Junius]

I'll limit my comments to Luxemburg's conflict primarily with the PPS which ultimately revolved around the issue of the self-determination of Poland. I think it would be fair to say, however, that Luxemburg was only second to Lenin in the number of disputes she got into, and that was only because Lenin lived through the revolution.

Luxemburg, in analyzing Poland's development, came to the conclusion that the independence of Poland would be a retrogressive step:


If one looks deeper into the situation, one must arrive at the conclusion that Poland, in economic terms, not only does not have any separation from Russia in store, but, rather, the tendencies arising from the general internal nature of large-scale capitalist production itself are binding Poland much more strongly to Russia with every passing year. It is an immanent law of the capitalist method of production that it strives to materially bind together the most distant places, little by little, to make them economically dependent on each other, and eventually transform the entire world into one firmly joined productive mechanism. This tendency, of course, works most strongly within one and the same state, within the same political and tariff borders. The capitalist development of Poland and Russia has yielded this result. As long as both countries were predominantly agricultural and indeed natural-economy countries, thus until the 1860s, they remained economically foreign to each other and each represented for itself a closed whole with particular economic interests. Since factory production began here and there on a larger scale, however, since natural economy gave way to money economy, since industry became a determining factor in the social life of both countries, the self-containment of their material existence has more and more disappeared. Exchange and the division of labor have strung thousands of threads between Russia and Poland, and these manifold economic interests are so intertwined that the Polish and Russian economies today form more and more one complicated mechanism.

The process portrayed above is mirrored in many different ways in the consciousness of the different factors in Polish public life. The Russian government sees Poland as a tool for its plans for rule, believes that Poland has been unconditionally surrendered up to its power and that it has founded a thousand-year empire of despotism. The Polish bourgeoisie sees in this a fundamental of its own class rule in the country and an inexhaustible source of riches; it indulges in the sweetest dreams of the future in its thoughts about Asia and believes itself able to build a thousand-year empire of capital. The various nationalist elements of Polish society perceive the entire social process as a unique, great national misfortune, which mercilessly shattered their hopes for the reconstruction of an independent Polish state. They sense instinctively the power of the economic bonds which capitalism has created between Poland and Russia and, without being able to hold back the fatal process in reality, they can at least put an end to it in their own imagination; they cling in desperation to this illusion and expect the Russian government itself to nullify Poland's hated capitalist development with its own hands and so recreate a basis for nationalism.

We believe that the Russian government, the Polish bourgeoisie, and the Polish nationalists have all equally been struck with blindness, and that the capitalist fusion process between Poland and Russia also has an important dialectical side that they have completely overlooked. This process is bringing to fruition in its own womb the moment when the development of capitalism in Russia will be thrown into contradiction with the absolute form of government, and when Czarist rule will be brought down by its own works. Sooner or later, the hour will strike when the same Polish and Russian bourgeoisie which is today pampered by the Czarist government will become weary of their political attorney - Absolutism - and will checkmate the king. Moreover, this capitalist process is moving with impetuous haste toward the moment when the development of the productive forces in the Russian Empire becomes irreconcilable with the rule of capital and when, in the place of private commodity economy, a new social order based on planned, cooperative production will appear. The Polish and Russian bourgeoisies are hastening this moment with their combined forces; they cannot make one step forward without increasing and pushing forward the Polish and Russian working classes. The capitalist fusing of Poland and Russia is engendering as its end result that which has been overlooked to the same degree by the Russian government, the Polish bourgeoisie, and the Polish nationalists: the union of Polish and Russian proletariats as the future receiver in the bankruptcy of, first, the rule of Russian Czarism, and then the rule of Polish-Russian capital.

The Industrial Development of Poland (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1898/industrial-poland/ch11.htm)

Indeed, Poland benefited more proportionately from the economic boom in the Russian empire; the industrial development of Poland proceeded at a greater pace than Russia's. By the beginning of the twentieth century the average wage of an industrial worker in Russian Poland was still a quarter lower than that of a Polish miner in Silesia, though he was the lowest paid worker in Prussia. The result of this is that Russia Poland became the center of the industrial development in Russia - Lodz was referred to as the 'Manchester of the East.'

Nationalism, hence, was completely beneficial to the petty bourgeoisie whom despised the Russian investment in Poland which hurt their hold on the market. The independence movement hence, failed from the perspective of the bourgeoisie because it was a reactionary step in closing the market and failed the workers because it distracted them from their emancipation.


Luxemburg was in the PPS, the same party that was home to many Polish nationalists, including Jozef Pilsudski, later the leader of the Polish anti-Bolshevik campaign and the head of a vicious semi-fascist military dictatorship.

Luxemburg left the PPS, formed the SDKP with Jogiches, Marchlewski and others, which later united into the SDKPiL. Luxemburg strongly argued against the nationalism of the PPS. However, Lenin, Martov, Kautsky, Plekhanov, and indeed the Second International, supported the PPS in its argument for self-determination. Clearly Lenin did not keep good company.

So let's examine what the PPS did to determine whether Luxemburg was right in her analysis of it.

In 1905, so strong was the PPS's hatred of Russia, that they supported Japan in the conflict - Josef Pilsudski, actually went to Japan to win support for his plan to stage an insurrection for Polish independence! Japan, doing what any good capitalist nation would do, gave Pilsudski 20,000 pounds, which Pisudski used to place direct attacks on Russian 'occupiers' and set up a paramilitary. We also saw that Pilsudski side against Russia during the First World War.

All in the name of the self-determination of Poland!

Meanwhile, the sensible members of the PPS and the SDKPiL - called in 1905 for a general strike; over 400,000 workers were involved.

On the other hand, we can see how much fascists hated the SDKPiL's stance, and held the same stance as that of the PPS!

For example, one of the leaders of the Black Hundreds, Andrzej Niemojewski, identified Rosa Luxemburg particularly with the reprehensible Jewish efforts to seduce Polish workers:

'The Jews agitated among our workers to cause them to consider Socialism as the equivalent of hating one's fatherland...What Rosa Luxemburg and her supporters feed the workers is nothing but the intoxication of scribbling...The devilish work of destruction carried on by the Jewish excrement under the guise of the working class, turns out to be nothing less than the murder of Poland; as all Jews hate non-Jews, so Luxemburg's Social Democrats have a passionate hatred for Poland.'


It seems you're right, but I used to think that either the PPS had a Marxist left-wing or that the Polish social-democrats came from a split from the PPS. Now I see that that's not the case.

Luxemburg split from the PPS.

The PPS had a left-wing which argued against the nationalism, they latter allied with Luxemburg in 1918.


I've always found Luxembourg to be something of an enigmatic figure in this regard. Politically her work, especially with the Spartakists, was undoubtedly ultra-leftist (the 'infantile disorder' of the communist movement) in character and this led to clashes with Lenin. Yet she argued strenuously in favour of communists remaining in first the SPD and then the USPD. So she didn't really display the rabid sectarianism that marked out the rest of the German ultra-leftist movement. I've always felt that this was an odd contradiction


Well, I think we can conclude that Luxemburg suffered from what Lenin calls a child disease of the communist movement (a "childish disorder")? Not due to sectarianism itself (theory), but due to a lack of experience (practice). At a certain moment of time, this started to affect her writings (I think it happened around 1910 - and I don't think that this date is a coincidence), yet her death in 1919 abruptly ended this process.

You think that supporting an internationalist stance, i.e. not agreeing with the nationalism of the PPS (which the Second International did) is a 'child-like' disorder?

History proved that Luxemburg was completely correct in attacking the struggle for self-determination in Poland.

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/sep/00.htm


The old Economism of 1894–1902 reasoned thus: the Narodniks have been refuted; capitalism has triumphed in Russia. Consequently, there can be no question of political revolution. The practical conclusion: either “economic struggle be left to the workers and political struggle to the liberals”—that is a curvet to the right—or, instead of political revolution, a general strike for socialist revolution. That curvet to the left was advocated in a pamphlet, now forgotten, of a Russian Economist of the late nineties.

Now a new Economism is being born. Its reasoning is similarly based on the two curvets: “Right”—we are against the “right to self-determination” (i.e., against the liberation of oppressed peoples, the struggle against annexations—that has not yet been fully thought out or clearly stated). “Left”—we are opposed to a minimum programme (i. e., opposed to struggle for reforms and democracy) as “contradictory” to socialist revolution.

This little known "decadence period" work of Lenin that I've read recently has turned me further away from "left-wing childishness."

[Junius]

I don't understand what you are trying to say, nor am I really motivated to reply if you think that proletarian internationalism is a childish position to hold; I have demonstrated that the PPS, the key supporter of Polish independence, was in practice fiercely anti-worker, fiercely patriotic and fiercely imperialist. We base our ideas not on theoretical principles worked out from long steps of abstraction, but based on over a hundred years of class struggle and all the history that goes with that.

I am not sure why Left Communism is described as a childish position - it is mature, serious and realistic about the world. Personally, I have never met a Left-Communist younger than myself - all have been adults. Once again, I don't see the point in debating if someone's arguments are brushed aside with a 90-odd-year old slur.

[Tower of Bebel]

I am not sure why Left Communism is described as a childish position - it is mature, serious and realistic about the world. Personally, I have never met a Left-Communist younger than myself - all have been adults. Once again, I don't see the point in debating if someone's arguments are brushed aside with a 90-odd-year old slur.
I may want to comment on your positions later on, but I'll I want to say now is that childishness refers to the fact that left-communism in Europa was a new and unexperienced current within the workers movement. It also had many workers who were new to class struggle and class politics because of the revolution.

[Junius]

The SDKPiL was formed prior to the Bolsheviks splitting (formed in 1893 from memory).

The party also had a role in the 1905 Revolution...and the 1917 Russian Revolution and the German Revolution; in Poland, Germany and Russia. This was not an organization which was 'new' to class struggle.

(However, I don't think that the SDKPiL would be labeled a Left Communist party per se - although Luxemburg certainly holds a defining part in the Left Communist tradition - I don't think, for example, it is possible to be a Trotskyist and be a follower of Luxemburg, since the stance against national liberation was what defined Luxemburg - and her views on the nature of imperialism which linked it).

[Die Neue Zeit]

My apologies for my emotional response up above. Now I know why Macnair called the SDKPiL a sect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democracy_of_the_Kingdom_of_Poland_and_Lith uania


Consistent with its self conception as a geographic unit of an All-Russian Social Democratic party the SDKPiL attended the 1903 Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) held in London at which the famous division occurred between the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions. The delegation from the SDKPiL was concerned chiefly with maintaining its own autonomy within the party as a whole

How ironic that this party, which was opposed to Polish national liberation, behaved in a Bundist fashion? :(

[ComradeOm]

You think that supporting an internationalist stance, i.e. not agreeing with the nationalism of the PPS (which the Second International did) is a 'child-like' disorder?No, I think that Luxembourg's conception of the revolutionary party (plus its role) and her actions during the German Revolution mark her out as an ultra-leftist. Her policies regarding Poland make her a social-imperialist

[Tower of Bebel]

Sorry for reviving this thread, but I wanted to share this piece:

Behind Luxemburg’s Anti-Leninist Polemic

Rosa Luxemburg’s "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy," published in the SPD theoretical journal Neue Zeit and the Menshevik Iskra, is probably the most intrinsically significant of the anti-Lenin polemics following the 1903 split. It stands back from the immediate issues and personal recriminations of the split, and it does not engage in superficial unity mongering. Luxemburg’s differences with Lenin exist both at the level of the problems, tasks and perspectives of the Russian movement and of the organizational nature of social democracy in general. In both the Russian and general cases these differences center on the nature of opportunism and how to combat it.

Their differences over social-democratic opportunism in Russia can be briefly expressed as follows. Before the 1905 Revolution, Lenin saw the main opportunist danger as adaptation to tsarist absolutism; Luxemburg saw it as the subordination of the Russian proletariat to revolutionary bourgeois democracy out of power. For Lenin, a social-democratic opportunist was a dilettante quick to make a personal peace with tsarist society, and perhaps an aspiring trade-union official. For Luxemburg, a social-democratic opportunist was a bourgeois radical demagogue actually striving for governmental power, a Russian version of the French Radical leader Georges Clemenceau, an ex-Blanquist.

For Lenin from 1901 through 1904, and for the Iskra tendency as a whole, the main expression of Russian social-democratic opportunism was Economism, an amalgam of minimalist trade-union agitation, passive adaptation to liberal tsarism, organizational localism and individualistic functioning. Luxemburg was no less opposed to pure-and-simple trade unionism than was Lenin, but evidently did not regard Economism as a serious opportunist current in Russia, as a serious contender for influence over the working class. As for the circle spirit and anarchistic individualism which Lenin took as his main enemy at the organization level, Luxemburg seemed to consider these traits an unavoidable overhead cost at the given stage of the social-democratic movement in Russia. When the socialist proletariat is small, believed Luxemburg, a loose movement of localized propaganda circles is the normal and, in a sense, healthy organizational expression of social democracy:

"How to effect a transition from the type of organization characteristic of the preparatory stage of the socialist movement--usually featured by disconnected local groups and clubs, with propaganda as a principal activity--to the unity of a large, national body, suitable for concerted political action over the entire vast territory ruled by the Russian state? That is the specific problem which the Russian Social Democracy has mulled over for some time.

"Autonomy and isolation are the most pronounced characteristics of the old organizational type. It is, therefore, understandable why the slogan of the persons who want to see an inclusive national organization should be ‘Centralism!’...

"The indispensable conditions for the realization of Social-Democratic centralism are: 1. The existence of a large contingent of workers educated in the political struggle. 2. The possibility for the workers to develop their own political activity through direct influence on public life, in a party press, and public congresses, etc.

"These conditions are not yet fully formed in Russia. The first—a proletarian vanguard, conscious of its class interests and capable of self-direction in political activity—is only now emerging in Russia. All efforts of socialist agitation and organisation should aim to hasten the formation of such a vanguard. The second condition can be had only under a regime of political liberty." [our emphasis]
—Luxemburg, "Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy"

Luxemburg’s belief in the gradual transition from a movement of localized circles to a centralized, unitary party was not only counterposed to Leninism, but logically placed her outside and to the right of the pre-split Iskra tendency as a whole.

The view expressed above is at some variance with Luxemburg’s actual organizational practice in the Polish part of the Russian empire. The Luxemburg/Jogiches Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) was a very small, but highly centralized, propaganda organization. And, unlike Lenin’s Bolsheviks, Luxemburg’s SDKPiL made serious sectarian and ultraleft errors (see "Lenin vs. Luxemburg on the National Question," WV No. 150, 25 March 1977).

Mention of the SDKPiL is a reminder that one cannot simply take "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy" at face value. Though from very different motivations, Luxemburg’s Polish social democracy was just as protective of its organizational autonomy as was the Bund. The SDKPiL sent two observers to the Second RSDRP Congress, where they negotiated for broad autonomy within an all-Russian party. Lenin’s advocacy of a centralized party of all social democrats in the Russian empire challenged, at least in principle, the highly valued organizational perogatives of Luxemburg’s SDKPiL.

Luxemburg looked for Russian social-democratic opportunism in exactly the opposite direction than did Lenin. Luxemburg feared that the Russian social-democratic intelligentsia would give rise to a radical bourgeois party using socialist rhetoric, and thus suppress the development of political class consciousness among the Russian proletariat. With this prognosis, Luxemburg saw in Lenin’s centralism, rather than in Menshevism, the most likely source of opportunism (i.e., adaptation to the bourgeoisie). Lenin’s insistence on the leading role of social democracy in the struggle against absolutism and on the leading role of professional revolutionaries in the party appeared to Luxemburg (and not only to her) as characteristic of a bourgeois radical party.

In fact, it was common in Menshevik circles in this period to accuse the Leninists of being bourgeois radicals in social-democratic clothing. The leading Menshevik, Potresov, for example, likened the Bolsheviks to Clemenceau’s Radicals. Luxemburg saw in Lenin’s "Jacobinism" the unconscious desire of radical bourgeois intellectuals to suppress their working-class base after overthrowing tsarism and coming to power. She advocated a broad, loose social-democratic movement as a curb on radical bourgeois demagogues à la Clemenceau the ex-Blanquist:

"If we assume the viewpoint claimed as his own by Lenin and we fear the influence of intellectuals in the proletarian movement, we can conceive of no greater danger to the Russian party than Lenin’s organizational plan. Nothing will more surely enslave a young labor movement to an intellectual elite hungry for power than this bureaucratic strait jacket....

"Let us not forget that the revolution soon to break in Russia will be a bourgeois and not a proletarian revolution. This modifies radically all the conditions of proletarian struggle. The Russian intellectuals, too, will rapidly become imbued with bourgeois ideology. The Social Democracy is at present the only guide of the Russian proletariat. But on the day after the revolution, we shall see the bourgeoisie, and above all the bourgeois intellectuals, seek to use the masses as a steppingstone to their domination.

"The game of bourgeois demagogues will be made easier if at the present stage, the spontaneous action, initiative, and political sense of the advanced sections of the working class are hindered in their development and restricted by the protectorate of an authoritarian Central Committee." [our emphasis]
–Ibid.

A central premise of Luxemburg’s 1904 anti-Leninist polemic was that tsarist absolutism would soon be replaced by bourgeois democracy ("the revolution soon to break out in Russia will be bourgeois"). That is why she anticipated that radical parliamentarian demagogy would be the principal expression of social-democratic opportunism. The revolution of 1905 proved Luxemburg’s prognosis wrong. The revolution demonstrated that bourgeois liberalism was totally cowardly and impotent. It also demonstrated that social democracy was the only consistently revolutionary-democratic force in the Russian empire.

During the revolution, Luxemburg condemned the Mensheviks for tailing the constitutional monarchists (the Cadets) and moved close to the Bolsheviks. Agreeing with Lenin on the leading role of the proletarian party in the antitsarist revolution, Luxemburg/Jogiches’ SDKPiL formed an alliance with the Bolsheviks in 1906, an alliance which lasted until 1912 and gave Lenin leadership of the formally unitary RSDRP. At the Fifth RSDRP Congress in 1907, Luxemburg defended the narrowness and intransigence of the Bolsheviks, albeit with "soft" reservations:

"You comrades on the right-wing complain bitterly about the narrowness, the intolerance, the tendency toward mechanical conception in the attitudes of the Bolsheviks. And we agree with you.... But do you know what causes these unpleasant tendencies? To anyone familiar with party conditions in other countries, these tendencies are quite well known: it is the typical attitude of one section of Socialism which has to defend the independent class interests of the proletariat against another equally strong section. Rigidity is the form adopted by Social Democracy at one end when the other tends to turn into formless jelly, unable to maintain any consistent course under the pressure of events."
—quoted in J.P. Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg (1966)
Liberals and social democrats have systematically suppressed reference to Luxemburg’s close alliance with Bolshevism from the revolution of 1905 until 1912 and again from the outbreak of World War I until her assassination during the Spartacus uprising in 1919. They have, however, fully exploited her 1904 polemic in the service of anticommunism. Thus, the widely-circulated Ann Arbor Paperbacks for the Study of Communism and Marxism reprinted "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy" under the slanderous title "Leninism or Marxism?"

No less pernicious have been the efforts of many left-reformists and centrists to portray the Leninist democratic-centralist vanguard party as valid only for backward countries, while solidarizing with Luxemburg’s 1904 anti-Bolshevik position for advanced capitalist countries. We have already noted that this was exactly the position of the reformist-workerist Tony Cliff, before "hard" Leninism became fashionable among radical youth in the late 1960s.

It is to be expected that an outright revisionist like Cliff would solidarize with Luxemburg against Lenin. What is not expected is that an ostensibly orthodox Trotskyist (i.e., Leninist) organization would adopt the "Luxemburgist" line as valid for advanced countries. Yet this is just what the French Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (OCI) does. In an introduction to a popular French edition of What Is To Be Done? OCI leader Jean-Jacques Marie dismisses Lenin’s advocacy of a democratic-centralist vanguard as peculiar to early twentieth-century Russia, and asserts that Luxemburg’s 1904 position is appropriate to an advanced country with a highly developed workers movement.

"The centralist rigidity of What Is To Be Done? is linked to the particular characteristics of the Russian proletariat; that is to say, of a nascent proletariat which had just recently come out of the countryside impregnated with the traits of the Middle Ages, lacking education, crushed by conditions of existence similar to those of the French or English proletariat at the beginning of the nineteenth century....

"The role of the revolutionary intelligentsia as a factor of organization and consciousness, such as Lenin depicted it, is thus proportional to the degree of relative backwardness of a proletariat legally deprived of any form of trade-union or political organization.

"Thus the conflict between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, for example, appears—if you leave aside their personal traits-as the expression of the enormous difference which separated one of the most uneducated proletariats in Europe and the German proletariat, at that time the most powerful and politically most vigorous and mature in the world....

"If the struggle for the socialist revolution is international in essence, its immediate forms and also the means to lead it depend on numerous factors, among them the national conditions in which each party matures."
—introduction to Que Faire? (Paris, 1966)

The viewpoint which J.-J. Marie here attributes to Luxemburg is so diametrically opposed to her actual position it is hard to believe he has ever read "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy." As we have seen, Luxemburg’s opposition to Leninist centralism for Russia was predicated precisely on the underdevelopment of the proletarian movement. In 1904, Luxemburg was a centralizer and disciplinarian in the German party because the revisionist right was formally a minority. And this is explicitly stated in "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy":

"The Social Democracy must enclose the tumult of the non-proletarian protestants against the existing society within the bounds of the revolutionary action of the proletariat....

"This is only possible if the Social Democracy already contains a strong, politically educated proletarian nucleus class conscious enough to be able, as up to now in Germany, to pull along in its tow the declassed and petty-bourgeois elements that join the party. In that case, greater strictness in the application of the principle of centralization and more severe discipline, specifically formulated in party bylaws, may be an effective safeguard against the opportunist danger. That is how the revolutionary socialist movement in France defended itself against the Juaresist confusion. A modification of the constitution of the German Social Democracy in that direction would be a very timely measure." [our emphasis]

Luxemburg’s pressure for greater centralization in the SPD was successful at the radical-dominated 1905 Jena Congress, which adopted a genuinely centralist organizational structure. For the first time the officers of the basic party unit were made responsible to the national executive. Later on, of course, the SPD’s famous centralized apparatus was used to suppress the revolutionary left led by Rosa Luxemburg.

The heart of the differences between Luxemburg and Lenin in 1904 and also later did not center on the degree of centralization, but on the nature of opportunism and how to combat it. The question of centralism and discipline derives its significance only in that context.

Luxemburg’s 1904 anti-Lenin polemic was strongly conditioned by frustration at her essentially hollow victory over Bernsteinian revisionism. Revisionism was formally rejected by the SPD, the opportunists changed their tack and the party political activities continued much the same as before, in the spirit of passive expectancy. Not long after writing "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy," Luxemburg expressed in a letter (14 December 1904) to the Dutch left socialist Henriette Roland-Holst her disillusionment with internal factional struggle in general:

"Opportunism is in any case a swamp plant, which develops rapidly and luxuriously in the stagnant waters of the movement; in a swift running stream it will die of itself. Here in Germany a forward motion is an urgent, burning need! And only the fewest realize it. Some fritter away their energy in petty disputes with the opportunists, others believe that the automatic, mechanical increase in numbers (at elections and in the organizations) is progress in itself!"
—quoted in Carl E. Schorske, German Social Democracy 1905-1917 (1955)
Luxemburg’s belief that an upsurge of militant class struggle would naturally dispel the opportunist forces in the SPD proved very wrong. In 1905 and again in 1910 a rising line of mass agitation against restricted suffrage was effectively suppressed on the initiative of the trade-union bureaucracy. In 1910 the Neue Zeit, under Kautsky’s editorship, even refused to publish Luxemburg’s article advocating a general strike.

In concluding "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy," Luxemburg develops a theory of the inevitability of opportunism and even opportunist phases in a social-democratic party. Attempts to preserve the party against opportunism through internal organizational means will, she contends, only reduce the party to a sect. Herein lies Luxemburg’s fundamental difference with Lenin in 1904 and later:

"It follows that this movement can best advance by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers by which it is constantly threatened. One is the loss of its mass character; the other, the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger of sinking back to the condition of a sect; the other, the danger of becoming a movement of social reform.

"That is why it is illusory, and contrary to historic experience, to hope to fix, once for always, the direction of the revolutionary socialist struggle with the aid of formal means, which are expected to secure the labor movement against all possibilities of opportunist digression.

"Marxist theory offers us a reliable instrument enabling us to recognize and combat typical manifestations of opportunism. But the socialist movement is a mass movement. Its perils are not the insidious machinations of individuals and groups. They arise out of unavoidable social conditions. We cannot secure ourselves in advance against all possibilities of opportunist deviation. Such dangers can be overcome only by the movement itself—certainly with the aid of Marxist theory, but only after the dangers in question have taken tangible form in practice.

"Looked at from this angle, opportunism appears to be a product and an inevitable phase of the historic development of the labor movement."

Due to attempts by semi-syndicalist and ultraleft communist elements (e.g., "council communists") to claim Rosa Luxemburg as one of their own, it is often ignored that her polemic against Lenin on the organizational question was rooted in orthodox social-democratic concepts. The above-quoted passage is ultra-Kautskyan in identifying the social-democratic party with the entire labor movement. From the premise of Kautsky’s "party of the whole class," Luxemburg’s logic is unassailable. Not only is there an opportunist wing of a social-democratic party, but there must be periods in which the influence of this wing is expanding.

From her German vantage point, Luxemburg saw that to form a Leninist party must mean a break with significant working-class tendencies under opportunist leadership and influence. This anti-social-democratic conclusion was blocked from Lenin’s view by the unorganized state of the Russian party. In contrast to Luxemburg, Lenin was not faced with opportunist social-democratic tendencies which enjoyed a mass base. He believed the Mensheviks to be an intellectualist tendency incapable of building a mass workers movement.
Lenin and the vanguard (http://www.bolshevik.org/Pamphlets/LeninVanguard/LVP%202.htm)

[Junius]

Due to attempts by semi-syndicalist and ultraleft communist elements (e.g., "council communists") to claim Rosa Luxemburg as one of their own, it is often ignored that her polemic against Lenin on the organizational question was rooted in orthodox social-democratic concepts.

It is also ignored that Luxemburg saw, via the experience of 1905, that revolutionary action had eclipsed the unions. It is also ignored that Luxemburg opposed self-determination; the defining feature of her politics. It is also ignored that Luxemburg had an alternate concept of capitalist accumulation. It is also ignored that Luxemburg criticized the substitutionist role which the Bolsheviks postulated and their role in the state.

Why, apart from that, she may even be a Trotskyist!

[Tower of Bebel]

It is also ignored that Luxemburg saw, via the experience of 1905, that revolutionary action had eclipsed the unions. It is also ignored that Luxemburg opposed self-determination; the defining feature of her politics. It is also ignored that Luxemburg had an alternate concept of capitalist accumulation. It is also ignored that Luxemburg criticized the substitutionist role which the Bolsheviks postulated and their role in the state.

Why, apart from that, she may even be a Trotskyist!
Not everything you say goes against orthodox social democracy. It was a feature of the 2nd International (at that time) that such opinions were tolerated. But did she argue against working in and with trade unions (in general), or did she argue against bureaucracy and opportunism? Because only the former would be an argument against orthodox social-democracy

[Devrim]

But did she argue against working in and with trade unions (in general), or did she argue against bureaucracy and opportunism? Because only the former would be an argument against orthodox social-democracy

She argued that the unions had to be smashed:


[the unions] are no longer workers' organisations; they are the most solid defenders of the state and bourgeois society. Consequently it follows that the struggle for socialisation must entail the struggle to destroy the unions. We are all agreed on this point.

Devrim

[Junius]

Not everything you say goes against orthodox social democracy.

Apart from...opposing unions, opposing self-determination...?


It was a feature of the 2nd International (at that time) that such opinions were tolerated.Okay so they were tolerated...so was Bernstein.


But did she argue against working in and with trade unions (in general), or did she argue against bureaucracy and opportunism?She provided a critique of unions.

For example:


Bernstein rejects the "theory of collapse" as an historic road toward socialism. Now what is the way to a socialist society that is proposed by his "theory of adaptation to capitalism"? Bernstein answers this question only by allusion. Konrad Schmidt, however, attempts to deal with this detail in the manner of Bernstein. According to him, "the trade union struggle for hours and wages and the political struggle for reforms will lead to a progressively more extensive control over the conditions of production," and "as the rights of the capitalist proprietor will be diminished through legislation, he will be reduced in time to the role of a simple administrator." "The capitalist will see his property lose more and more value to himself" till finally "the direction and administration of exploitation will be taken from him entirely" and "collective exploitation" instituted.

Therefore trade unions, social reforms and, adds Bernstein, the political democratisation of the State are the means of the progressive realisation of socialism.

But the fact is that the principal function of trade unions (and this was best explained by Bernstein himself in Neue Zeit in 1891) consists in providing the workers with a means of realising the capitalist law of wages, that is to say, the sale of their labour power at current market prices. Trade unions enable the proletariat to utilise at each instant, the conjuncture of the market. But these conjunctures–(1) the labour demand determined by the state of production, (2) the labour supply created by the proletarianisation of the middle strata of society and the natural reproduction of the working classes, and (3) the momentary degree of productivity of labour–these remain outside of the sphere of influence of the trade unions. Trade unions cannot suppress the law of wages.

Under the most favourable circumstances, the best they can do is to impose on capitalist exploitation the "normal" limit of the moment. They have not, however, the power to suppress exploitation itself, not even gradually.

Schmidt, it is true, sees the present trade union movement in a "feeble initial stage." He hopes that "in the future" the "trade union movement will exercise a progressively increased influence over the regulation of production." But by the regulation of production we can only understand two things: intervention in the technical domain of the process of production and fixing the scale of production itself. What is the nature of the influence exercised by trade unions in these two departments? It is clear that in the technique of production, the interest of the capitalist agrees, up to a certain point, with the progress and development of capitalist economy. It is his own interest that pushes him to make technical improvements. But the isolated worker finds himself in a decidedly different position. Each technical transformation contradicts his interests. It aggravates his helpless situation by depreciating the value of his labour power and rendering his work more intense, more monotonous and more difficult.

Insofar as trade unions can intervene in the technical department of production, they can only oppose technical innovation. But here they do not act in the interest of the entire working class and its emancipation, which accords rather with technical progress and, therefore, with the interest of the isolated capitalist. They act here in a reactionary direction. And in fact, we find efforts on the part of workers to intervene in the technical part of production not in the future, where Schmidt looks for it, but in the past of the trade union movement. Such efforts characterised the old phase of English trade unionism (up to 1860), when the British organisations were still tied to medieval "corporative" vestiges and found inspiration in the outworn principle of "a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s labour," as expressed by Webb in his History of Trade Unionism.

On the other hand, the effort of the labour unions to fix the scale of production and the prices of commodities is a recent phenomenon. Only recently have we witnessed such attempts–and again in England. In their nature and tendencies, these efforts resemble those dealt with above. What does the active participation of trade unions in fixing the scale and cost of production amount to? It amounts to a cartel of the workers and entrepreneurs in a common stand against the consumer and especially rival entrepreneurs. In no way is the effect of this any different from that of ordinary employers’ associations. Basically we no longer have here a struggle between Labour and Capital, but the solidarity of Capital and Labour against the total consumers. Considered for its social worth, it is seen to be a reactionary move that cannot be a stage in the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat, because it connotes the very opposite of the class struggle.

Considered from the angle of practical application, it is found to be a utopia which, as shown by a rapid examination, cannot be extended to the large branches of industry producing for the world market.

So that the scope of trade unions is limited essentially to a struggle for an increase of wages and the reduction of labour time, that is to say, to efforts at regulating capitalist exploitation as they are made necessary by the momentary situation of the old world market. But labour unions can in no way influence the process of production itself. Moreover, trade union development moves–contrary to what is asserted by Konrad Schmidt–in the direction of a complete detachment of the labour market from any immediate relation to the rest of the market.
Emphasis mine, Reform or Revolution. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch03.htm)

Today we see that trade unions are barely able to defend workers against capitalist attacks on workers' conditions, let alone advance the class struggle. They have become an appendage for the capitalist state.

As for whether she argued on 'working in trade unions' her position seems to be little different to the social-democratic opinion on parliamentarianism; this was one of the few things that Luxemburg differs from us. However, it is clear from such a critique of unions that it is not a matter of simply a bureaucracy or the leadership of the union making the union ineffective, but it is the union itself; the buearcracy being a symptom not a cause of the reactionary nature of unions. I am also unsure what you understand by 'working within the union.' Would this include arguing for workers to form independent strike committees or what? Because it is conceivable to 'work within the union' to do just that; but that would be anti-union. We also see her support for Soviets and independent proletarian organisations of power which is part of the Left Communist position, and of course other tendencies.

[Junius]

Where did Luxemburg say that, Devrim?

[Devrim]

Where did Luxemburg say that, Devrim?

Leo knows, ask him. I don't remember.

Devrim

[Junius]

Leo knows, ask him. I don't remember.

Devrim

Okay.

More to the point about trade unions. I wonder why leftists are so anxious to work in them. In most countries union membership makes up a minority of the working population. Closed shops are things of the past, if not now illegal. Its a matter of arguing for struggle in the workplace as a whole, not confining it to a particular group of workers. Union membership should not be a precondition for class struggle. Left Communists are criticized for alienating ourselves from workers, when we see that the unions themselves are alienated from the workers. Hence, it is natural that a class struggle approach must go beyond the union (to say the least).

Unions Against the Working Class. (http://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/unions.htm)

[Die Neue Zeit]

It is true that struggle has to go beyond tred-iunionizm. However, the best way to do that is NOT through the Left-economist maximum-only programme (the sectarianism keeps socialism from worker movements, while the economism keeps worker movements from socialism). The elevation of the minimum wage and unemployment insurance benefits to living wage levels, coupled with the universalization of "cost of living adjustments" (wages, salary/contract equivalents, and benefits), forces whatever unions there are left to rethink their whole purpose.

At least for red unions (syndicates, "socialist industrial unions," etc.), the discussion can shift to workplace management more easily (I daresay that workers' councils these days CANNOT be formed outside of either red unions or the class party). :)

[Junius]

Why would Left-Communists argue for such positions - social democrats already do so - and argue against them when it suits them. There is not much can be set in concrete in a capitalist state which is where minimum wages and the types of reforms you argue for are set. Workers, however, can always struggle in the workplace and all the leaps of consciousness that that provides, as well as real social benefits.

As for your point on red 'unions' I don't understand what you are saying.

[Leo]

her position seems to be little different to the social-democratic opinion on parliamentarianism; this was one of the few things that Luxemburg differs from us.

Even that position of Luxemburg changed later on:

In the text called What Does the Spartacus League Want?, Luxemburg is calling for: "Elimination of all parliaments and municipal councils, and takeover of their functions by workers' and soldiers' councils, and of the latter's committees and organs."

It is even more clear in Order Prevails in Berlin, where she writes "The revolutionary struggle is the very antithesis of the parliamentary struggle. In Germany, for four decades we had nothing but parliamentary 'victories'. We practically walked from victory to victory. And when faced with the great historical test of August 4, 1914, the result was the devastating political and moral defeat, an outrageous debacle and rot without parallel. To date, revolutions have given us nothing but defeats. Yet these unavoidable defeats pile up guarantee upon guarantee of the future final victory."


Where did Luxemburg say that?

If I remember correctly it was from something like the foundation congress of the KPD.

[Tower of Bebel]

Well, now I understand. She made those claims during a period of wars and revolutions. This thread focuses more on the period before the war.

[Junius]

Leo, I stand corrected! :)

However, Luxemburg said that in the context of a revolution; the elimination of the parliaments being one revolutionary demand of many. We would expect to see such a slogan from any revolutionary organization worth its name. The second quote is more interesting, in that it seems to recognize the futile nature of parliamentary participation, but was it really a complete rejection of parliamentary participation, or more of a promotion of revolution? I mean, even various Trotskyists point out the futile nature of electioneering, but they do it because they argue by showing that it is a futile endeavor, workers will come to see revolution as the only possible solution (one wonders why the lesson needs to be repeated ad nauseum).

For example, Luxemburg promoted such a position in 1900 (revised in 1908):


Upon the first comparison, the party practice resulting from Bernstein’s theory does not seem to differ from the practice followed by the Social Democracy up to now. Formerly, the activity of the Social-Democratic Party consisted of trade union work, of agitation for social reforms and the democratisation of existing political institutions. The difference is not in the what, but in the how.

At present, the trade union struggle and parliamentary practice are considered to be the means of guiding and educating the proletariat in preparation for the task of taking over power. From the revisionist standpoint, this conquest of power is at the same time impossible or useless. And therefore, trade union and parliamentary activity are to be carried on by the party only for their immediate results, that is, for the purpose of bettering the present situation of the workers, for the gradual reduction of capitalist exploitation, for the extension of social control.

So that if we don not consider momentarily the immediate amelioration of the workers’ condition–an objective common to our party program as well as to revisionism–the difference between the two outlooks is, in brief, the following. According to the present conception of the party, trade-union and parliamentary activity are important for the socialist movement because such activity prepares the proletariat, that is to say, creates the subjective factor of the socialist transformation, for the task of realising socialism. But according to Bernstein, trade-unions and parliamentary activity gradually reduce capitalist exploitation itself. They remove from capitalist society its capitalist character. They realise objectively the desired social change.

Examining the matter closely, we see that the two conceptions are diametrically opposed. Viewing the situation from the current standpoint of our party, we say that as a result of its trade union and parliamentary struggles, the proletariat becomes convinced, of the impossibility of accomplishing a fundamental social change through such activity and arrives at the understanding that the conquest of power is unavoidable. Bernstein’s theory, however, begins by declaring that this conquest is impossible. It concludes by affirming that socialism can only be introduced as a result of the trade-union struggle and parliamentary activity. For as seen by Bernstein, trade union and parliamentary action has a socialist character because it exercises a progressively socialising influence on capitalist economy.

We tried to show that this influence is purely imaginary. The relations between capitalist property and the capitalist State develop in entirely opposite directions, so that the daily practical activity of the present Social Democracy loses, in the last analysis, all connection with work for socialism. From the viewpoint of a movement for socialism, the trade-union struggle and our parliamentary practice are vastly important in so far as they make socialistic the awareness, the consciousness, of the proletariat and help to organise it as a class. But once they are considered as instruments of the direct socialisation of capitalist economy, they lose out not only their usual effectiveness but also cease being means of preparing the working class for the conquest of power. Eduard Bernstein and Konrad Schmidt suffer from a complete misunderstanding when they console themselves with the belief that even though the program of the party is reduced to work for social reforms and ordinary trade-union work, the final objective of the labour movement is not thereby discarded, for each forward step reaches beyond the given immediate aim and the socialist goal is implied as a tendency in the supposed advance.

That is certainly true about the present procedure of the German Social Democracy. It is true whenever a firm and conscious effort for conquest of political power impregnates the trade-union struggle and the work for social reforms. But if this effort is separated from the movement itself and social reforms are made an end in themselves, then such activity not only does not lead to the final goal of socialism but moves in a precisely opposite direction.

Konrad Schmidt simply falls back on the idea that an apparently mechanical movement, once started, cannot stop by itself, because "one’s appetite grows with the eating," and the working class will not supposedly content itself with reforms till the final socialist transformation is realised.

Now the last mentioned condition is quite real. Its effectiveness is guaranteed by the very insufficiency of capitalist reforms. But the conclusion drawn from it could only be true if it were possible to construct an unbroken chain of augmented reforms leading from the capitalism of today to socialism. This is, of course, sheer fantasy. In accordance with the nature of things as they are the chain breaks quickly, and the paths that the supposed forward movement can take from the point on are many and varied.

What will be the immediate result should our party change its general procedure to suit a viewpoint that wants to emphasise the practical results of our struggle, that is social reforms? As soon as "immediate results" become the principal aim of our activity, the clear-cut, irreconcilable point of view, which has meaning only in so far as it proposes to win power, will be found more and more inconvenient. The direct consequence of this will be the adoption by the party of a "policy of compensation," a policy of political trading, and an attitude of diffident, diplomatic conciliation. But this attitude cannot be continued for a long time. Since the social reforms can only offer an empty promise, the logical consequence of such a program must necessarily be disillusionment.

It is not true that socialism will arise automatically from the daily struggle of the working class. Socialism will be the consequence of (1), the growing contradictions of capitalist economy and (2), of the comprehension by the working class of the unavailability of the suppression of these contradictions through a social transformation. When, in the manner of revisionism, the first condition is denied and the second rejected, the labour movement finds itself reduced to a simple co-operative and reformist movement. We move here in a straight line toward the total abandonment of the class viewpoint. The question is, of course, whether Luxemburg abandoned such opinions in view of the betrayal of the Social Democrats and the German Revolution. Your quotes seem to indicate such.

[Leo]

Well, now I understand. She made those claims during a period of wars and revolutions.

Well yes, obviously her positions changed in relation to the changing general period.


This thread focuses more on the period before the war.

Does it?

[Leo]

However, Luxemburg said that in the context of a revolution; the elimination of the parliaments being one revolutionary demand of many. We would expect to see such a slogan from any revolutionary organization worth its name.

Yes, this of course is true.


The second quote is more interesting, in that it seems to recognize the futile nature of parliamentary participation, but was it really a complete rejection of parliamentary participation, or more of a promotion of revolution?

The impression I've got is that it is a rejection of parliamentary participation, and possibly quite a recently changed position in the face of the bloodthirsty monster that was created by the opportunism of social democracy.


I mean, even various Trotskyists point out the futile nature of electioneering, but they do it because they argue by showing that it is a futile endeavor, workers will come to see revolution as the only possible solution (one wonders why the lesson needs to be repeated ad nauseum). For example, Luxemburg promoted such a position in 1900:

Yes, on the other hand at the beginning of the century, this was the argument of the left wing in the social democratic movement. While the logic there is indeed flawed, as your quote makes clear there is an awareness of the fact that "this attitude cannot be continued for a long time". Actually if I remember correctly in Mass Strike, for instance, Luxemburg came very close to rejecting trade unions while comparing the situation of proletarian struggle in Russia where unions had little significance and in Germany where they were massive. During the revolutionary wave, she did eventually end up rejecting what was called "the minimum program", so she saw that what was on the agenda was really the destruction of parliaments and unions by revolutionary proletarian struggle. Thus her main point was that the issues of participation were unimportant since for her the main point was the destruction of such organs by the proletarian revolution.