The Rome Theses

  1. Brosa Luxemburg
    Brosa Luxemburg
  2. The Intransigent Faction
    The Intransigent Faction
    Hey, so I'm not sure if this is the right place to post since it would 'necro' an old thread, but I couldn't think of anywhere better:

    I just read the Rome Theses, and there's a lot which is not only agreeable, but still applicable.
    There's one thing I'm not entirely clear on, though:

    The demands put forward by the left parties, and especially by the social-democrats, are often of a sort that it is appropriate to urge the proletariat to move directly to implement them; since if a struggle did get underway the inadequacy of the means by which the social-democrats proposed to arrive at a programme of benefits for the proletariat would at once become apparent.


    So, what happens when social-democrats put forward and succeed in winning watered-down "partial and immediate demands" which are achievable and which present some degree of immediate "payoff"?

    Sure, an independent Communist party can then, without opposing such reforms, say "This is not enough," but how can it draw workers' support through this position?

    Faced with minimal reforms which in workers' eyes have less impact than maximum demands would, but a greater likelihood of tangible results, how can workers ever be convinced its sensible to risk those lesser gains for possible greater gains? Sure, I can see this as a situational possibility, but generally workers would be more conservative.

    This:

    Clearly the exploitation of such an experience will only be effective to the extent that the Communist Party has denounced the government’s failure in advance, and preserved a strong independent organisation around which the proletariat can regroup, after it is forced to abandon the groups and parties which it would have partly supported in their government experiment,


    seems irreconcilable with the idea that we should ever "
    urge the proletariat to move directly to implement social democrats' demands]" just so we can say "See? It's not enough. We told you so!" At other points in the Theses, of course, he rejects actively joining the ranks of reformist parties or even forming a coalition with them. Yet, even an "independent" Communist Party urging workers to push for reforms in this way breaks an otherwise consistent revolutionary line. It's not about being armchair socialists, either. It's about rejecting reforms from the outset. He makes a great point in saying the best way to demonstrate the failure of reforms is by practical example, not "puritanical apriorism", but we have evidence of this failure already in our current conditions after past reformist struggles.

    Thanks!