Rosa Luxemburg’s concept of Democracy

I post here a link to a interesting text of the argentine conrade Pablo Slavin (in english and spanish)
Pongo aquÃ* el enlace a un interesante artÃ*culo del camarada argentino Pablo Slavin (en castellano y en inglés)

In English - en inglés:
http://www-bunken.tamacc.chuo-u.ac.j...ers/Slavin.pdf

In Spanish - en castellano:
http://marxismolibertario.blogspot.c...cracia-en.html

SALUD

No sabia que japon tuviera marxistas libertarias...

“…Esta dictadura debe ser obra de la clase y no de una pequeña minorÃ*a de dirigentes en nombre de la clase, vale decir, debe salir al encuentro de la participación activa de las masas, estar bajo su influencia directa, someterse al control de una publicidad completa, emerger de la instrucción polÃ*tica acelerada de las masas populares.”[21]
En vista de la profunda crisis por la que atraviesa actualmente el sistema de Partidos PolÃ*ticos en general, y la Socialdemocracia en particular, las palabras de Rosa Luxemburgo cobran una dimensión que debemos revalorar.

Pero cual son las formas concretas que podemos cambiar nuestros practicos para asegurar la posicion de la clase (y no de la minoria) en nuestro movimiento???
Del dicho al hecho, hay mucho trecho...

Nos correspnde a todos como partes de la clase averiguarlo. Ninguno de manera aislada (como creÃ*an y creen los bolcheviques) tenemos fórmulas mágicas. Y será en la propia lucha, motivada por la necesidad y por la imposibilidad de abstenernos de los problemas (las crisis) donde las masas decidan (y nosotros como parte de ellas) qué hacemos.
En mi opinión, hay que tratar de hacer ahora dos cosas al menos:
1. No repetir viejos errores. Para eso sirve la Historia. Creo que a estas alturas deberÃ*amos saber identificar algunas prácticas que la Historia ya demostró que no conducÃ*an a nada que se pareciera ni lo más mÃ*nimo al socialismo.
2. Extender, en la medida de nuestras posibilidades, ideas que hagan que nuestros iguales tomen conciencia de la necesidad de tomar en sus manos su futuro. No sólo desde el punto de vista teórico, sino en cada lucha concreta y práctica en nuestros centros de trabajo o de residencia. AhÃ* está la militancia real (por más que esto de internet esté muy bien a nivel teórico y de difusión de planteamientos).
SALUD

But, until Socialist Democracy had not been accomplished, Rosa Luxemburg thought that formal democracy, as bourgeois democracy used to be called, should be defended and preserved.

My only problem with this statement, Comrade LUXEMBURGUISTA, is this:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/economism-...798/index.html

Given recent developments surrounding the question of post-representative participatory democracy, merely defending "formal democracy" as it stands could be tantamount to "broad economism."

http://www.revleft.com/vb/done-chall...557/index.html

Furthermore, a specific form of reformism known as “Economism” – the diversion of the working class from, in Kautsky’s broader indictment (not just against proponents of exclusively labour struggles), “the struggle to win [democratic] freedoms and to extend them” – was widespread, and the very localized nature of the Marxist circles prevented them from combating reformism effectively.

Si no he entendido mal, camarada Jacob, lo que planteas es el peligro de caer en el reformismo economicista, aplicado a las cuestiones polÃ*ticas (como único objetivo de la polÃ*tica). ¿Es asÃ*?

Mi opinión es que no se trata de defender la "democracia formal", sino de democratizar todos los ámbitos de la sociedad. Nosotros (los luxemburguistas) no estamos de acuerdo con la pervivencia de los estados (como tampoco lo estaban Marx y Engels). Por tanto, tampoco consideramos que las formas estatales (la democracia representativa o formal) deban existir tras la revolución. La pregunta es: ¿Cómo desaparecen? ¿Qué lo sustituye?

Podemos intuir cosas, hacer propuestas (como cualquier otro proletario o grupo de proletarios). Pero no podemos dar una respuesta definitiva a cómo se desarrollará concretamente el proceso revolucionario. Será en el mismo proceso cuando el proletariado en su conjunto definirá esas cuestiones, responderá a esas preguntas.

De todas formas, también hay que plantearse cómo actuar hoy, cómo avanzar hacia ese proceso revolucionario. Y ahÃ* es necesario defender también la democratización y denunciar todo lo que sea antidemocrático.

No se si he respondido a lo que planteas. Espero que sÃ*.

SALUD

The Democracy Question



[Note: This unabashedly borrows from, in order: Kautsky’s The Class Struggle (Erfurt Programme), the First International's Resolution of the [1871] London Conference on Working Class Political Action, the actual Erfurt Programme, Aristotle’s Politics, Marx’s The Civil War in France, and the programme of the historic French Workers’ Party.]



The more completely the various divisions of the working class unite into a single worker-class movement, the more the struggles against bourgeois-capitalist exploitation of their labour must necessarily take on a political character. Every open class struggle is a political struggle, when considering that the bare requirements of the economic struggles force groups of workers to make political demands, and when considering that the constitution of the vast majority of the working class into the aforementioned “party� – distinct from and opposed to all non-worker parties and class-accommodationist parties, given their disposition towards maintaining the repressive instruments for the rule of minority classes – is indispensable in order to ensure the aforementioned emancipation. Without political rights and especially real political enfranchisement, the working class cannot carry on its economic struggles and develop its economic organization.

There can be no parliamentary, pseudo-representative, liberal, or other non-class-strugglist roads to the aforementioned emancipation of the working class. All Social-Labourists seek to delegitimize further these dead ends which have, time and again, compromised the politico-ideological independence of the working class and have been delegitimized by that class itself through abstention, having been disenfranchised in all but the formality of universal suffrage.

The only road to the aforementioned emancipation of the working class by that class itself is necessarily class-strugglist – rife with necessarily sharpened class antagonisms – but also necessarily participatory-democratic. The highest form of this class-strugglist democracy comes into existence when the worker-class supermajority captures the authority to rule – whereas under the current oligarchy this authority is in the hands of the bourgeoisie, who along with other non-worker classes are a minority – and also when these minimum demands, among others, are met:

1) All assemblies of the remaining representative democracy and of an expanding participatory democracy are to become working bodies, not parliamentary talking shops, being legislative and executive-administrative at the same time and checked and balanced by judicial review;
2) All public offices are to be assigned by lot, since the elections of such would be in fact oligarchic in the classical sense;
3) All public offices are to be free of any formal or de facto qualifications based on property or wealth;
4) All public offices are to be compensated at the same level as an average worker; and
5) All public offices are to be subject to immediate recall in cases of abuse of office.

Class-strugglist democracy, although not yet functioning on the principles of social labour, transforms political enfranchisement from a mere gauge of worker-class maturity at best and an instrument of deception at worst – through oligarchic selections held once every few years to decide which individuals, particularly non-workers, would misrepresent the worker-class supermajority in the various legislatures – into a necessarily class-antagonistic instrument of emancipation for the worker-class supermajority.

It´s a very good commentary.
SALUD