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إصلاح اجتماعي أم ثورة ؟
قد يثير عنوان هذا الكتاب الدهشة أول وهلة. أيمكن أن تكون الاشتراكية الديموقراطية ضد الإصلاحات؟ هل يمكننا أن نعارض الإصلاحات الاجتماعية بالثورة الاجتماعية، أي بتغيير النظام القائم، هدفنا النهائي؟ كلا بالتأكيد. فالنضال اليومي من أجل الإصلاحات ومن أجل تحسين وضع العمال ضمن إطار النظام الاجتماعي القائم، ومن أجل المؤسسات الديموقراطية هو سبيل الاشتراكية الديموقراطية إلى خوض الحرب الطبقية البروليتارية باتجاه الهدف النهائي - الظفر بالسلطة السياسية وإلغاء العمل المأجور.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1900
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About the author
Rosa Luxemburg
421 books770 followersRosa Luxemburg (Rosalia Luxemburg, Polish: Róża Luksemburg) was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen. She was successively a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Social Democratic Party of Germany(SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Germany.
In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she co-founded, with Karl Liebknecht, the anti-war Spartakusbund (Spartacist League). On 1 January 1919 the Spartacist League became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In November 1918, during the German Revolution she founded the Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement.
She regarded the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 in Berlin as a blunder, but supported it after Liebknecht ordered it without her knowledge. When the revolt was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps (WWI veterans defending the Weimar Republic), Luxemburg, Liebknecht and some of their supporters were captured and murdered. Luxemburg was drowned in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. After their deaths, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht became martyrs for Marxists. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht continues to play an important role among the German far-left.
In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she co-founded, with Karl Liebknecht, the anti-war Spartakusbund (Spartacist League). On 1 January 1919 the Spartacist League became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In November 1918, during the German Revolution she founded the Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement.
She regarded the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 in Berlin as a blunder, but supported it after Liebknecht ordered it without her knowledge. When the revolt was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps (WWI veterans defending the Weimar Republic), Luxemburg, Liebknecht and some of their supporters were captured and murdered. Luxemburg was drowned in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. After their deaths, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht became martyrs for Marxists. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht continues to play an important role among the German far-left.
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February 16, 2025
Rosa was amazingly prescient. .She predicted that imperialists would continue to impose their style of democracy in the 3rd world where the rich are the only ones who get freedom. That they would continue to destroy whoever gets in their way: ie. military /CIA coups. That even in the 1st world, capitalism would capitalize on anything to pick apart our rights. Homeland security, the war on drugs, whatever excuse they can come up with. Liberals (blair, obama are no different and will we ever learn?) are often equally as guilty.
Her comments on imperial war, mass murder , expansion of capitalism , how war is essential to capitalist development make us realize how relevant her views were to today, as we watch wars with Iraq, Afghanistan, (Iran?)…
Rosa also writes of the use of credit to expand the working class’s purchasing power. She heavily criticizes this idea, of credit as an “adaptation” of capitalism, as a boon to the working class. Today, as we suffer through this grand world crisis, we can see how credit has abused the working class. Banks gave credit to those who had no business getting credit, knowing full well that they wouldn't be able to pay.
Essential reading. Even better read with The Mass Strike (get the Essential Rosa Luxemburg published by Haymarket Books).
Her comments on imperial war, mass murder , expansion of capitalism , how war is essential to capitalist development make us realize how relevant her views were to today, as we watch wars with Iraq, Afghanistan, (Iran?)…
Rosa also writes of the use of credit to expand the working class’s purchasing power. She heavily criticizes this idea, of credit as an “adaptation” of capitalism, as a boon to the working class. Today, as we suffer through this grand world crisis, we can see how credit has abused the working class. Banks gave credit to those who had no business getting credit, knowing full well that they wouldn't be able to pay.
Essential reading. Even better read with The Mass Strike (get the Essential Rosa Luxemburg published by Haymarket Books).
January 16, 2023
Deciphering a classic...
The Missing:
--My main complaint has nothing to do with Luxemburg and her arguments; she wrote this as a critique of Bernstein, whereas my purpose for reading this is to learn about “Reform or Revolution”. Thisbook pamphlet is too specific to serve as an introduction, and too condensed to be a go-to resource (such few words for such big ideas!).
--These are accessible introductions to build introductory context:
1) What is Marxism/scientific socialism? Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
2) Marxist economics 101? Wage Labour and Capital
3) Modern interpretation of capitalism and its contradictions?
-applying theory to reality: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-real-world conditions: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
4) Reformist economics? Other schools of economics? Modern economy? Economics: The User's Guide
--It is sad to read this passionate defense of Marxism, knowing in hindsight the fate of her and the proletariat movements in developed capitalist countries.
The Good:
--In terms of building a mass movement for class struggle, it should be obvious that engaging centrists/reformists is essential. Much of this group is composed of casual political spectators (as opposed to actors) who start as centrists by default, since we are all compelled to acclimate to the supposed social norms.
--So, it is a treat to read the legendary Rosa Luxemburg methodically dismantle reformist Eduard Bernstein over 100 years ago. Highlights:
1) Will State reforms evolve into socialism? Luxemburg notes that, in 1899, capitalism has reached a stage of conflicts, evidenced by nationalist tariffs and militarism. (This sets the stage for Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism).
2) The resilience of capitalism? Reformism often stems from the perception of the resilience/adaptions of capitalism, thus rejecting the crises/collapse of capitalism that Luxemburg cites as a pillar of Marxism. I do not find it a comfort that capitalism survived its 20th century’s imperialist WWI, reactionary WWII, and imperialist Cold War; resilience at the cost of humanity?
3) So, what’s the big deal with this Marx? Luxemburg touches on key distinctions from other prior forms of socialism that were predicated on moral notions of justice, struggle on mode of distribution (rather than production), and class antagonism as rich versus poor (as opposed to relationship of capitalists versus workers). For dive into Marx's political economy: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
4) Credit system innovations solving capitalist crises? Ha! This was easy pickings for Luxemburg. Every time and age there is a plethora of shills; in our age, we have Alan Greenspan. For more:
-And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
-dive: The Bubble and Beyond
--Luxemburg only offered a few lines on these:
5) Can’t we just have “democracy”? The varied history of democracy; how suffrage was used to unify nationalism.
6) Can’t we just have more cooperatives? Cooperatives in a capitalist system are still subject to the same ruthless market competition (even worse, as the capitalist system discourages cooperatives). Those that secure their own market (“consumer cooperatives”) are mostly restricted to immediate consumer needs (i.e. food) and mostly smaller scale. This is the difficulty with relying on micro solutions (Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism), as they need to be synthesized with macro solutions (Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present)
The Missing:
--My main complaint has nothing to do with Luxemburg and her arguments; she wrote this as a critique of Bernstein, whereas my purpose for reading this is to learn about “Reform or Revolution”. This
--These are accessible introductions to build introductory context:
1) What is Marxism/scientific socialism? Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
2) Marxist economics 101? Wage Labour and Capital
3) Modern interpretation of capitalism and its contradictions?
-applying theory to reality: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-real-world conditions: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
4) Reformist economics? Other schools of economics? Modern economy? Economics: The User's Guide
--It is sad to read this passionate defense of Marxism, knowing in hindsight the fate of her and the proletariat movements in developed capitalist countries.
The Good:
--In terms of building a mass movement for class struggle, it should be obvious that engaging centrists/reformists is essential. Much of this group is composed of casual political spectators (as opposed to actors) who start as centrists by default, since we are all compelled to acclimate to the supposed social norms.
--So, it is a treat to read the legendary Rosa Luxemburg methodically dismantle reformist Eduard Bernstein over 100 years ago. Highlights:
1) Will State reforms evolve into socialism? Luxemburg notes that, in 1899, capitalism has reached a stage of conflicts, evidenced by nationalist tariffs and militarism. (This sets the stage for Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism).
2) The resilience of capitalism? Reformism often stems from the perception of the resilience/adaptions of capitalism, thus rejecting the crises/collapse of capitalism that Luxemburg cites as a pillar of Marxism. I do not find it a comfort that capitalism survived its 20th century’s imperialist WWI, reactionary WWII, and imperialist Cold War; resilience at the cost of humanity?
3) So, what’s the big deal with this Marx? Luxemburg touches on key distinctions from other prior forms of socialism that were predicated on moral notions of justice, struggle on mode of distribution (rather than production), and class antagonism as rich versus poor (as opposed to relationship of capitalists versus workers). For dive into Marx's political economy: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
4) Credit system innovations solving capitalist crises? Ha! This was easy pickings for Luxemburg. Every time and age there is a plethora of shills; in our age, we have Alan Greenspan. For more:
-And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
-dive: The Bubble and Beyond
--Luxemburg only offered a few lines on these:
5) Can’t we just have “democracy”? The varied history of democracy; how suffrage was used to unify nationalism.
6) Can’t we just have more cooperatives? Cooperatives in a capitalist system are still subject to the same ruthless market competition (even worse, as the capitalist system discourages cooperatives). Those that secure their own market (“consumer cooperatives”) are mostly restricted to immediate consumer needs (i.e. food) and mostly smaller scale. This is the difficulty with relying on micro solutions (Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism), as they need to be synthesized with macro solutions (Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present)
December 16, 2018
I was very touched by the story of Rosa's tragic death when I read about it the first time. Almost 10 years later, on the first day of my visit to Berlin in 2005, i asked Denis, my dear german friend, to guide me to where Rosa and Leibnekht were assassinated by the proto-Nazi Freikorps and thrown into Berlin’s Landwehr Canal(*) , even before I head on to the museum to admire Nefertiti's bust (because my dear dad wears it as a gold chain around his neck, my mom's gift to him 42 years ago, so I affectionally associate the artifact to him), or to start my planned long daily walks (for long hours during 4 consecutive days) to discover and to photograph the areas around the falling separation wall (obviously, I'm passionate about Egyptology and the history of the WWII).
Rosa was a brilliant marxist theorist. Reform or Revolution was written when she was 27 years old, only a year later after her graduation from the University of Zurich.
Written in the defense of the scientific Socialism against what she has considered a revisionist doctrine of Marxism, her aim was to demonstrate the fallacy of Reformism preached by Bernstein and to expose its irreconcilability with Marxism.
Intrepid, smart and passionate, Rosa took the initiative to publicly confront the leaders of the SPD and to debunk their theoretical justifications for Reformism. She courageously stood up against the intellectuals and the leaders of the Party, whom Engels contemptuously branded as the “armchair socialists", whereas most of her comrades chickened out or discretely rebuked Bernestein's opportunistic doctrine (Later, even Kautsky will reveal his opportunism and support Bernstein).
On the following congresses of the Party, Rosa (along with Karl Leibnekht) will lead what will become a minority current within the Party that hitherto proclaimed its adherence to the orthodox Marxism, in opposition to the majority wing that approved the doctrine of Reformism. The latter one has attracted the larger number of new adherences to the Party.
On a side note, whether you are a leftist activist in India, Lebanon, Norway or elsewhere, I am sure that you have took part to this theoretical and political debate.. (**)
In her pamphlet, Rosa will strongly defend the same 'revolutionary theory' advocated by Lenin in his famous pamphlet What is to be done? :
“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.”
Throughout her analysis, Rosa will debunk, point by point, the political and the economic assumptions made by Bernstein in his articles, collected under the title "The Preconditions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy".
Bernstein argued that the Party must adopt gradual parliamentary reforms for a progressive transition to Socialism, which for Luxemburg is "an attempt to group these currents into a general theoretic expression, an attempt to elaborate its own theoretical conditions and the break with scientific socialism."
Even though she was a foe of reformist socialism advocated by the leadership of the SPD who participated in the parliamentary process, Luxembourg opposed demands for the Spartacists (***) to emulate the Bolcheviks and seize power by force, which will lead to tyranny and the dictatorship of one man (which was the cause of her major dispute with Lenin). Instead, she supported the participation of the party in the Weimar elections.
Lenin will later support her ideas in his famous pamphlet The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, in which he harshly criticizes the Social Democrat's distortion of Marx's ideas on democracy.
Furthermore, he writes in a letter to Shlyapnikov after the assassination of Rosa:
“I hate and despise Kautsky now more than anyone, with his vile, dirty, self-satisfied hypocrisy ... Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote, long ago, that Kautsky has the ‘subservience of a theoretician’ – servility, in plainer language, servility to the majority of the Party, to opportunism”..
Bernstein's arguments in favor of Reformism:
- In Opposition to Marx, he deduces that the capitalist system has shown its adaptability by improving the economic, social and political conditions of the working class. Also, the social contradictions between the classes were decreasing as the middle class was growing, which, according to him, is verified by the absence of recent major violent clashes between the classes.
- the Cartels, trusts and credit institutions are capable to gradually regularize the anarchic nature of the system and to alleviate the antagonisms in capitalism.
- The function of the credits is to expand production and facilitate exchange. They are powerful instruments that have the ability to circumvent the capitalist crisis.
- he argues that parliamentarism and bourgeois legality meant the end of violence as a factor in historical development. Therefore, the Party must renounce the use of violence in order to reach socialism.
- He looked upon the trade unions as a weapon capable of weakening capitalism.
To Bernstein's twaddle, Luxembourg put forward strong arguments to refute with incisiveness his outlook on Socialism:
- The Cartels fail to attenuate the contradictions of capitalism. On the contrary, they aggravate the antagonism existing between the mode of production and exchange. "They aggravate, furthermore, the antagonism existing between the mode of production and the mode of appropriation by opposing, in the most brutal fashion, to the working class the superior force of organised capital, and thus increasing the antagonism between Capital and Labour."
- The role of credits in encouraging speculation, is another factor increasing the instability of the capitalist mode of production.
- The trade unions, Co-operatives and reform movements are unable to oust capitalism.
- The struggle for reforms cannot alter the slave position of the working class, for that the State is a class State, established by the capitalist class and carried on in its interests: “... the present State is not ‘society’ representing the ‘rising working class’. It is itself the representative of capitalist society. It is a class State”.
- The capitalist system can not be superseded by means of the legal forms established by itself, but only by revolution: "The use of violence will always remain the ultima ratio for the working class, the supreme law of the class struggle, always present, sometimes in a latent, sometimes in an active form. And when we try to revolutionise minds by parliamentary and other activity, it is only in order that at need the revolution may move not only the mind but also the hand."
Thus, the workers should not abandon the conquest of political power and are compelled to resort to revolutionary violence against exploitation and oppression.
- The labors unions are not a substitute for the liberation of the working class.
I have read these pamphlets in Arabic 20 years ago. I have Re-read the first one in English when a friend borrowed me the edition with the introduction by Helen Scott.
This book is interesting. I recommended it even if you don't share her political views. Rosa's pertinent and perceptive writings and the ideas they evoke are as relevant today as when they were written more than a century ago.
It is also an enjoyable read for the witty remarks, her writing style and 'sens de la formule' (even though the economical subjects are never amusing, not a single bit).
Reading how Luxembourg has ripped off Bernstein's theoretical eccentricities and ridiculing him was as entertaining as watching Lisa Lampanelli aka the Queen of Mean (however more articulate, less vulgar) roasting a politician:
"For these reasons, we must say that the surprising thing here is not the appearance of an opportunist current but rather its feebleness. as long as it showed itself in isolated cases of the practical activity of the party, one could suppose that it had a serious political base. but now that it has shown its face in Bernstein’s book, one cannot help exclaim with astonishment, “What? Is that all you have to say?” Not the shadow of an original thought! Not a single idea that was not refuted, crushed, reduced into dust by marxism several decades ago!
It was enough for opportunism to speak out to prove it had nothing to say. In the history of our party that is the only importance of Bernstein’s book.
Thus saying goodbye to the mode of thought of the revolutionary proletariat, to dialectics and to the materialist conception of history, Bernstein can thank them for the attenuating circumstances they provide for his conversion. For only dialectics and the materialist conception of history, magnanimous as they are, could make Bernstein appear as an unconscious predestined instrument, by means of which the rising working class expresses its momentary weakness but which, upon closer inspection, it throws aside contemptuously and with pride."
(Mic drop)
(*)
At 21 years old, the great writer Brecht wrote this Epitaph in her memory
And now red Rosa has disappeared,
Where she lies nobody knows.
To the poor the truth she taught
The rich hunted and out of this world she was brought
Brecht will write later another poem titled About the drowned girl in homage to her, inspired by Rimbaud’s poem Ophelia [the analogy is obvious, as Rimbaud refers to Ophelia in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet , who also drowned in the river] :
As she drowned, she swam downwards and was borne,
From the smaller streams to the larger rivers,
In wonder the opal of the heavens shone,
As if wishing to placate the body that was hers.
Catching hold of her were the seaweed, the algae,
Slowly she became heavy as downwards she went,
Cool fish swam around her legs, freely,
Animals and plants weight to her body lent.
Dark light smoke in the evenings the heavens grew,
But early in the morning the stars dangled, there was light,
So that for her, there remained too,
Morning and evening, day and night.
Her cold body rotted in the water there,
Slowly, step by step, god too forgot,
First her face, then her hands, and finally her hair
She became carrion of which the rivers have a lot.
Btw, the great poet Paul Celan also wrote a poem dedicated to Rosa. The amazing Anne Carson analyses its symbols and metaphors extensively in her book “Economy Of The Unlost”.
(**) This theoretical and political debate among the leftists was common to all the socialist movements and is still going on over a century later, leading to the schism of major leftist parties.
Exhibit A: France. 120 years ago, after the fall of the Commune de Paris, the FSWF was characterized as "Possibilist" for promoting gradual reforms, before it split few years later into different parties, whereas the famous french Marxist, Blanqui, created the CRC. Then a debate took place about the socialist participation in a "bourgeois government", pushing J. Jaurés to leave the Party and found the FSP.. In 1920 during the Tours Congress the left wing broke away from the SFIO and founded the more radical FSCI to join the Third International. Later the FSCI will become the French Communist Part (FCP). In 1969 the Socialist Party (SP) replaces the SFIO.
The same political oppositions rose among the leftist parties after the disastrous results and consequences of the presidential elections in 2002 for the Left.
So many examples can be cited of the consequences of this ideological debate between the 'moderate' reformists and the radical marxists on the international level: The devisions of the leftist factions in Greece after WWII; in Peru; in Spain; in Algeria between the nationalist factions during the French colonization; and even the Black movement in USA during the 60s/70s. In his autobiography Seize the Time, Bobby Seale narrates how HP Newton and him founded the vanguard Black Panthers Party upon their fierce opposition to MLK's Pacifism and the Reformists' discourse. Later, Angela Davis, a modern day Rosa Luxembourg, Assata Shakur, and many other black activists will opt for violence and join even more radicalized leftist movements.
***)
The Spartacus League was a Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. The League was named after Spartacus, leader of the largest slave rebellion of the Roman Republic. It was founded by Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, and others. The League subsequently renamed itself the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), joining the Comintern in 1919. Its period of greatest activity was during the German Revolution of 1918, when it sought to incite a revolution by circulating the newspaper Spartacus Letters. [source: Wikipedia]
Rosa was a brilliant marxist theorist. Reform or Revolution was written when she was 27 years old, only a year later after her graduation from the University of Zurich.
Written in the defense of the scientific Socialism against what she has considered a revisionist doctrine of Marxism, her aim was to demonstrate the fallacy of Reformism preached by Bernstein and to expose its irreconcilability with Marxism.
Intrepid, smart and passionate, Rosa took the initiative to publicly confront the leaders of the SPD and to debunk their theoretical justifications for Reformism. She courageously stood up against the intellectuals and the leaders of the Party, whom Engels contemptuously branded as the “armchair socialists", whereas most of her comrades chickened out or discretely rebuked Bernestein's opportunistic doctrine (Later, even Kautsky will reveal his opportunism and support Bernstein).
On the following congresses of the Party, Rosa (along with Karl Leibnekht) will lead what will become a minority current within the Party that hitherto proclaimed its adherence to the orthodox Marxism, in opposition to the majority wing that approved the doctrine of Reformism. The latter one has attracted the larger number of new adherences to the Party.
On a side note, whether you are a leftist activist in India, Lebanon, Norway or elsewhere, I am sure that you have took part to this theoretical and political debate.. (**)
In her pamphlet, Rosa will strongly defend the same 'revolutionary theory' advocated by Lenin in his famous pamphlet What is to be done? :
“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.”
Throughout her analysis, Rosa will debunk, point by point, the political and the economic assumptions made by Bernstein in his articles, collected under the title "The Preconditions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy".
Bernstein argued that the Party must adopt gradual parliamentary reforms for a progressive transition to Socialism, which for Luxemburg is "an attempt to group these currents into a general theoretic expression, an attempt to elaborate its own theoretical conditions and the break with scientific socialism."
Even though she was a foe of reformist socialism advocated by the leadership of the SPD who participated in the parliamentary process, Luxembourg opposed demands for the Spartacists (***) to emulate the Bolcheviks and seize power by force, which will lead to tyranny and the dictatorship of one man (which was the cause of her major dispute with Lenin). Instead, she supported the participation of the party in the Weimar elections.
Lenin will later support her ideas in his famous pamphlet The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, in which he harshly criticizes the Social Democrat's distortion of Marx's ideas on democracy.
Furthermore, he writes in a letter to Shlyapnikov after the assassination of Rosa:
“I hate and despise Kautsky now more than anyone, with his vile, dirty, self-satisfied hypocrisy ... Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote, long ago, that Kautsky has the ‘subservience of a theoretician’ – servility, in plainer language, servility to the majority of the Party, to opportunism”..
Bernstein's arguments in favor of Reformism:
- In Opposition to Marx, he deduces that the capitalist system has shown its adaptability by improving the economic, social and political conditions of the working class. Also, the social contradictions between the classes were decreasing as the middle class was growing, which, according to him, is verified by the absence of recent major violent clashes between the classes.
- the Cartels, trusts and credit institutions are capable to gradually regularize the anarchic nature of the system and to alleviate the antagonisms in capitalism.
- The function of the credits is to expand production and facilitate exchange. They are powerful instruments that have the ability to circumvent the capitalist crisis.
- he argues that parliamentarism and bourgeois legality meant the end of violence as a factor in historical development. Therefore, the Party must renounce the use of violence in order to reach socialism.
- He looked upon the trade unions as a weapon capable of weakening capitalism.
To Bernstein's twaddle, Luxembourg put forward strong arguments to refute with incisiveness his outlook on Socialism:
- The Cartels fail to attenuate the contradictions of capitalism. On the contrary, they aggravate the antagonism existing between the mode of production and exchange. "They aggravate, furthermore, the antagonism existing between the mode of production and the mode of appropriation by opposing, in the most brutal fashion, to the working class the superior force of organised capital, and thus increasing the antagonism between Capital and Labour."
- The role of credits in encouraging speculation, is another factor increasing the instability of the capitalist mode of production.
- The trade unions, Co-operatives and reform movements are unable to oust capitalism.
- The struggle for reforms cannot alter the slave position of the working class, for that the State is a class State, established by the capitalist class and carried on in its interests: “... the present State is not ‘society’ representing the ‘rising working class’. It is itself the representative of capitalist society. It is a class State”.
- The capitalist system can not be superseded by means of the legal forms established by itself, but only by revolution: "The use of violence will always remain the ultima ratio for the working class, the supreme law of the class struggle, always present, sometimes in a latent, sometimes in an active form. And when we try to revolutionise minds by parliamentary and other activity, it is only in order that at need the revolution may move not only the mind but also the hand."
Thus, the workers should not abandon the conquest of political power and are compelled to resort to revolutionary violence against exploitation and oppression.
- The labors unions are not a substitute for the liberation of the working class.
I have read these pamphlets in Arabic 20 years ago. I have Re-read the first one in English when a friend borrowed me the edition with the introduction by Helen Scott.
This book is interesting. I recommended it even if you don't share her political views. Rosa's pertinent and perceptive writings and the ideas they evoke are as relevant today as when they were written more than a century ago.
It is also an enjoyable read for the witty remarks, her writing style and 'sens de la formule' (even though the economical subjects are never amusing, not a single bit).
Reading how Luxembourg has ripped off Bernstein's theoretical eccentricities and ridiculing him was as entertaining as watching Lisa Lampanelli aka the Queen of Mean (however more articulate, less vulgar) roasting a politician:
"For these reasons, we must say that the surprising thing here is not the appearance of an opportunist current but rather its feebleness. as long as it showed itself in isolated cases of the practical activity of the party, one could suppose that it had a serious political base. but now that it has shown its face in Bernstein’s book, one cannot help exclaim with astonishment, “What? Is that all you have to say?” Not the shadow of an original thought! Not a single idea that was not refuted, crushed, reduced into dust by marxism several decades ago!
It was enough for opportunism to speak out to prove it had nothing to say. In the history of our party that is the only importance of Bernstein’s book.
Thus saying goodbye to the mode of thought of the revolutionary proletariat, to dialectics and to the materialist conception of history, Bernstein can thank them for the attenuating circumstances they provide for his conversion. For only dialectics and the materialist conception of history, magnanimous as they are, could make Bernstein appear as an unconscious predestined instrument, by means of which the rising working class expresses its momentary weakness but which, upon closer inspection, it throws aside contemptuously and with pride."
(Mic drop)
(*)
At 21 years old, the great writer Brecht wrote this Epitaph in her memory
And now red Rosa has disappeared,
Where she lies nobody knows.
To the poor the truth she taught
The rich hunted and out of this world she was brought
Brecht will write later another poem titled About the drowned girl in homage to her, inspired by Rimbaud’s poem Ophelia [the analogy is obvious, as Rimbaud refers to Ophelia in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet , who also drowned in the river] :
As she drowned, she swam downwards and was borne,
From the smaller streams to the larger rivers,
In wonder the opal of the heavens shone,
As if wishing to placate the body that was hers.
Catching hold of her were the seaweed, the algae,
Slowly she became heavy as downwards she went,
Cool fish swam around her legs, freely,
Animals and plants weight to her body lent.
Dark light smoke in the evenings the heavens grew,
But early in the morning the stars dangled, there was light,
So that for her, there remained too,
Morning and evening, day and night.
Her cold body rotted in the water there,
Slowly, step by step, god too forgot,
First her face, then her hands, and finally her hair
She became carrion of which the rivers have a lot.
Btw, the great poet Paul Celan also wrote a poem dedicated to Rosa. The amazing Anne Carson analyses its symbols and metaphors extensively in her book “Economy Of The Unlost”.
(**) This theoretical and political debate among the leftists was common to all the socialist movements and is still going on over a century later, leading to the schism of major leftist parties.
Exhibit A: France. 120 years ago, after the fall of the Commune de Paris, the FSWF was characterized as "Possibilist" for promoting gradual reforms, before it split few years later into different parties, whereas the famous french Marxist, Blanqui, created the CRC. Then a debate took place about the socialist participation in a "bourgeois government", pushing J. Jaurés to leave the Party and found the FSP.. In 1920 during the Tours Congress the left wing broke away from the SFIO and founded the more radical FSCI to join the Third International. Later the FSCI will become the French Communist Part (FCP). In 1969 the Socialist Party (SP) replaces the SFIO.
The same political oppositions rose among the leftist parties after the disastrous results and consequences of the presidential elections in 2002 for the Left.
So many examples can be cited of the consequences of this ideological debate between the 'moderate' reformists and the radical marxists on the international level: The devisions of the leftist factions in Greece after WWII; in Peru; in Spain; in Algeria between the nationalist factions during the French colonization; and even the Black movement in USA during the 60s/70s. In his autobiography Seize the Time, Bobby Seale narrates how HP Newton and him founded the vanguard Black Panthers Party upon their fierce opposition to MLK's Pacifism and the Reformists' discourse. Later, Angela Davis, a modern day Rosa Luxembourg, Assata Shakur, and many other black activists will opt for violence and join even more radicalized leftist movements.
***)
The Spartacus League was a Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. The League was named after Spartacus, leader of the largest slave rebellion of the Roman Republic. It was founded by Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, and others. The League subsequently renamed itself the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), joining the Comintern in 1919. Its period of greatest activity was during the German Revolution of 1918, when it sought to incite a revolution by circulating the newspaper Spartacus Letters. [source: Wikipedia]
June 29, 2016
Rosa Luxemburg was a firebrand socialist, a pioneering political woman and Marxist theorist. She was a member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD, the same ones in coalition with Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats over a century later!) and later the Communist Party of Germany. In 1919 Luxemburg was killed by German paramilitaries after a failed socialist uprising.
Luxemburg wrote Reform or Revolution as a reaction to a book by Eduard Bernstein, another leading figure in the SPD, who argued that parliamentary democracy was the only way to achieve socialism through incremental change. Luxemburg ripped him to shreds here. It's impossible to rate this on content, but for the soundness of Luxemburg's argument it easily deserves a 5/5. Whatever your political beliefs, Reform or Revolution merits close reading and interpretation.
Is social democracy horrible? To Luxemburg yes, and man, does she make a fantastic argument. She instead believed in prolonged, armed mass struggle, a violent war against the evil capitalists of the bourgeoisie. If you want to read a forceful, passionate, well-researched polemic, this is it. Here are some edited notes I took of Rosa's (not my) ideas in the Google search bar in my Firefox browser when I was reading. They're more of a reference for me than anything else, but here we go:
Monopolization leads to less innovation from small businesses. Big business destroys small businesses by mowing them down faster and faster as capitalism and creative destruction accelerate.
Credit is bad because it creates crises through fake, propped-up money and keeps capital exclusively among capitalists. They just lend to keep each other afloat.
The theory of collapse is real and social democracy/adaptation will take us nowhere, yo, because capitalism's fall is inevitable, so we might as well prepare for said collapse.
Trade unions aren't the answer to everything because they don't control the means of production, so they can only demand certain, too gradual change and can't change capital ownership.
"Basically we no longer have here a struggle between labour and capital, but the solidarity of capital and labour against the total consumers." This is not socialist, and labor union reforms aren't enacted by the proletariat but by the capitalists themselves. Labor union gains are only "the regulation of exploitation".
Tariffs are horrible because they lead to inefficiency and prop up outdated methods of production, ergo little innovation. They're used by capitalists to fight other foreign capitalists.
Militarism is good for the capitalist class and bad for the proletarians. Capitalists control militarism, and the state values the capitalist class first and economic progress second because of concentrated capitalist power, so parliaments support the capitalist class structure.
Parliaments don't actually represent what's best for the people because they are run by the bourgeoisie.
Screw revisionism because an unbroken chain of reforms that keeps up the momentum necessary for real change is impossible, and workers will lose the desire. They will be sated by tiny reforms.
Crises are organic to capitalism because unlimited desire for growth hits limited boundaries. (YES)
"Their cessation — not temporary cessation, but their total disappearance in the world market — would not lead to the further development of capitalist economy. It would destroy capitalism."
Capitalism is now more collective because of stock ownership and has become socialized, but that collective only expands the capitalists and doesn't affect the proletarians.
Cooperatives force partners to treat each other like exploited workers, so they fail. Unions can only help to get the most benefits from the current system and cannot facilitate real change.
Capitalism does not always mean democracy. Look at the rise of authoritarian capitalist regimes (note: look at Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy later. Does this undermine the neocon democratic peace theory?!).
Socialism is the only way that democracy is guaranteed (note: I think this is a little more than misguided).
Reforms can be revoked in democracy: "Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages" (note: fantastic use of language!).
Reform can only make changes based on the last, inferior revolution/constitution, and that's why revolution is needed for real change to socialism.
Reform is not slow revolution, and revolution is not fast reform; they have different end goals. Capitalism is different than feudalism because inequalities are not mandated by law.
"How can wage slavery be suppressed in a “legislative way” if wage slavery is not expressed in laws?" (note - Whoa.)
Democracy is vital to the socialist cause because the bourgeoisie doesn't like it. Therefore it can be used to reinforce class strife.
The proletariat will be inevitably repulsed a few times, and these setbacks will help mature the movement - so of course the movement will never be ready for power.
Opportunism is incompatible with socialism. On Bernstein's whole idea of reform, not revolution: "'What? Is that all you have to say?' Not the shadow of an original thought! Not a single idea that was not refuted, crushed, reduced into dust by Marxism several decades ago!"
What a cool, principled, articulate revolutionary.
Luxemburg wrote Reform or Revolution as a reaction to a book by Eduard Bernstein, another leading figure in the SPD, who argued that parliamentary democracy was the only way to achieve socialism through incremental change. Luxemburg ripped him to shreds here. It's impossible to rate this on content, but for the soundness of Luxemburg's argument it easily deserves a 5/5. Whatever your political beliefs, Reform or Revolution merits close reading and interpretation.
Is social democracy horrible? To Luxemburg yes, and man, does she make a fantastic argument. She instead believed in prolonged, armed mass struggle, a violent war against the evil capitalists of the bourgeoisie. If you want to read a forceful, passionate, well-researched polemic, this is it. Here are some edited notes I took of Rosa's (not my) ideas in the Google search bar in my Firefox browser when I was reading. They're more of a reference for me than anything else, but here we go:
Monopolization leads to less innovation from small businesses. Big business destroys small businesses by mowing them down faster and faster as capitalism and creative destruction accelerate.
Credit is bad because it creates crises through fake, propped-up money and keeps capital exclusively among capitalists. They just lend to keep each other afloat.
The theory of collapse is real and social democracy/adaptation will take us nowhere, yo, because capitalism's fall is inevitable, so we might as well prepare for said collapse.
Trade unions aren't the answer to everything because they don't control the means of production, so they can only demand certain, too gradual change and can't change capital ownership.
"Basically we no longer have here a struggle between labour and capital, but the solidarity of capital and labour against the total consumers." This is not socialist, and labor union reforms aren't enacted by the proletariat but by the capitalists themselves. Labor union gains are only "the regulation of exploitation".
Tariffs are horrible because they lead to inefficiency and prop up outdated methods of production, ergo little innovation. They're used by capitalists to fight other foreign capitalists.
Militarism is good for the capitalist class and bad for the proletarians. Capitalists control militarism, and the state values the capitalist class first and economic progress second because of concentrated capitalist power, so parliaments support the capitalist class structure.
Parliaments don't actually represent what's best for the people because they are run by the bourgeoisie.
Screw revisionism because an unbroken chain of reforms that keeps up the momentum necessary for real change is impossible, and workers will lose the desire. They will be sated by tiny reforms.
Crises are organic to capitalism because unlimited desire for growth hits limited boundaries. (YES)
"Their cessation — not temporary cessation, but their total disappearance in the world market — would not lead to the further development of capitalist economy. It would destroy capitalism."
Capitalism is now more collective because of stock ownership and has become socialized, but that collective only expands the capitalists and doesn't affect the proletarians.
Cooperatives force partners to treat each other like exploited workers, so they fail. Unions can only help to get the most benefits from the current system and cannot facilitate real change.
Capitalism does not always mean democracy. Look at the rise of authoritarian capitalist regimes (note: look at Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy later. Does this undermine the neocon democratic peace theory?!).
Socialism is the only way that democracy is guaranteed (note: I think this is a little more than misguided).
Reforms can be revoked in democracy: "Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages" (note: fantastic use of language!).
Reform can only make changes based on the last, inferior revolution/constitution, and that's why revolution is needed for real change to socialism.
Reform is not slow revolution, and revolution is not fast reform; they have different end goals. Capitalism is different than feudalism because inequalities are not mandated by law.
"How can wage slavery be suppressed in a “legislative way” if wage slavery is not expressed in laws?" (note - Whoa.)
Democracy is vital to the socialist cause because the bourgeoisie doesn't like it. Therefore it can be used to reinforce class strife.
The proletariat will be inevitably repulsed a few times, and these setbacks will help mature the movement - so of course the movement will never be ready for power.
Opportunism is incompatible with socialism. On Bernstein's whole idea of reform, not revolution: "'What? Is that all you have to say?' Not the shadow of an original thought! Not a single idea that was not refuted, crushed, reduced into dust by Marxism several decades ago!"
What a cool, principled, articulate revolutionary.
January 23, 2019
حدود سال ۱۹۰۰ است و رزا لوکزامبورگ سعی میکند به کسانی که تئوریهای مارکس را شکستخورده میدانند، پاسخی دندانشکن بدهد. کسانی که اصلاح کردن سیستم سرمایهداری را به جای انقلاب سوسیالیستی علیه آن ترجیح میدهد.
لوکزامبورگ از دیدگاه اقتصاد سیاسی نشان میدهد که حرفهای مارکس درست بود و اتحادیههای کارگری و تعاونیها و اعتبارات و مجلس سوسیال-دموکرات و بحرانهای سرمایهداری، اتفاقا باعث بقای بیشتر آن و ناسوسیالیست شدنش میشوند.
میگوید اینطور نیست که چون سرمایهگذاران بیشتر شدهاند، پس اجتماعیشدنِ سرمایه دارد بیشتر میشود. او میگوید مارکس درست گفت که ثروت مدام متمرکزتر میشود و این سرمایهگذاران جدید، صرفا حق «مالکیت» دارند و نه «تولید». پس خردهبورژوازی هم اختلاف طبقاتی را از بین نمیبرد.
در واقع مشکل تعاونیهای تولیدی (که خود کارگران عنانش را در دست میگیرند) این است که باید خود را از قوانین رقابت [با شرکتهای بزرگ] آزاد کنند. در نتیجه باید مصرفکنندهی ثابت و تضمینی داشته باشند؛ یعنی ناچارا به تولیدات بومی (مثلا مواد غذایی) روی بیاورند و نه صنایع و معادن در ابعاد جهانی. پس این راهحل (که به زعم لوکزامبورگ به اقتصاد تجاری سدههای میانه میماند) نمیتواند تحول اجتماعی عمومی ایجاد کند.
اما در کل، استدلالهای لوکزامبورگ --که مدام هم در طول کتاب تکرار میشوند-- برای من چندان قانعکننده و کافی نیستند؛ حتا اگر تحول کپیتالیسم را در این صد ساله در نظر بگیریم.
مثلاً اینکه میگوید پرولتاریا تا موقعیت پیدا کرد باید براندازی کند و حتا اگر شکست هم بخورد، این شورش باعث آگاهی پرولتاریا و افزایش شانس موفقیت در تلاشهای آتی میشود. (ص ۱۰۸)
لوکزامبورگ از دیدگاه اقتصاد سیاسی نشان میدهد که حرفهای مارکس درست بود و اتحادیههای کارگری و تعاونیها و اعتبارات و مجلس سوسیال-دموکرات و بحرانهای سرمایهداری، اتفاقا باعث بقای بیشتر آن و ناسوسیالیست شدنش میشوند.
میگوید اینطور نیست که چون سرمایهگذاران بیشتر شدهاند، پس اجتماعیشدنِ سرمایه دارد بیشتر میشود. او میگوید مارکس درست گفت که ثروت مدام متمرکزتر میشود و این سرمایهگذاران جدید، صرفا حق «مالکیت» دارند و نه «تولید». پس خردهبورژوازی هم اختلاف طبقاتی را از بین نمیبرد.
در واقع مشکل تعاونیهای تولیدی (که خود کارگران عنانش را در دست میگیرند) این است که باید خود را از قوانین رقابت [با شرکتهای بزرگ] آزاد کنند. در نتیجه باید مصرفکنندهی ثابت و تضمینی داشته باشند؛ یعنی ناچارا به تولیدات بومی (مثلا مواد غذایی) روی بیاورند و نه صنایع و معادن در ابعاد جهانی. پس این راهحل (که به زعم لوکزامبورگ به اقتصاد تجاری سدههای میانه میماند) نمیتواند تحول اجتماعی عمومی ایجاد کند.
اما در کل، استدلالهای لوکزامبورگ --که مدام هم در طول کتاب تکرار میشوند-- برای من چندان قانعکننده و کافی نیستند؛ حتا اگر تحول کپیتالیسم را در این صد ساله در نظر بگیریم.
مثلاً اینکه میگوید پرولتاریا تا موقعیت پیدا کرد باید براندازی کند و حتا اگر شکست هم بخورد، این شورش باعث آگاهی پرولتاریا و افزایش شانس موفقیت در تلاشهای آتی میشود. (ص ۱۰۸)
July 2, 2015
Bernstein got #rekt
March 8, 2021
Short, iconic, and thoroughly enjoyable, Rosa Luxemburg's takedown of Eduard Bernstein's reformism is still well worth reading.
While the work is essentially a philippic against Bernstein, it does still deal with prescient questions:
Is reform enough? Should we aim merely to make 'the poor rich', or should we change the structure of society? Should we strive to transcend capitalism for moral reasons or is it a matter of necessity? Is capitalism capable of being tamed? Is it adapting faster and in more ways than Marx could have predicted?
Rosa Luxemburg comes down firmly on the side of revolution, Marxism, and the absolute necessity of socialism. In the process of dismantling Bernstein's work, she articulates her own understanding of capitalism and the historic task of the labour movement. There is also a good deal of Marxist theory here, and I'm really glad I had read about half of Capital Volume 1 before this.
I would imagine this book has had a very interesting life since it was published more than a century ago. During WW1, the Great Depression, and the rise of fascism, Rosa's arguments were vindicated. During the golden age of Keynesianism and the New Deal, I suspect Bernstein's followers felt that they had gained the upper hand. However, that period represented an "attack on the twigs of the capitalist tree" rather than a revolutionary project, a fact that may have laid the foundation for its disintegration. Knowing that, coupled with the rise of the right and the climate breakdown that is already upon us, the question posed by Rosa Luxemburg more than a century ago seems worth asking once more: Reform or Revolution?
While the work is essentially a philippic against Bernstein, it does still deal with prescient questions:
Is reform enough? Should we aim merely to make 'the poor rich', or should we change the structure of society? Should we strive to transcend capitalism for moral reasons or is it a matter of necessity? Is capitalism capable of being tamed? Is it adapting faster and in more ways than Marx could have predicted?
Rosa Luxemburg comes down firmly on the side of revolution, Marxism, and the absolute necessity of socialism. In the process of dismantling Bernstein's work, she articulates her own understanding of capitalism and the historic task of the labour movement. There is also a good deal of Marxist theory here, and I'm really glad I had read about half of Capital Volume 1 before this.
I would imagine this book has had a very interesting life since it was published more than a century ago. During WW1, the Great Depression, and the rise of fascism, Rosa's arguments were vindicated. During the golden age of Keynesianism and the New Deal, I suspect Bernstein's followers felt that they had gained the upper hand. However, that period represented an "attack on the twigs of the capitalist tree" rather than a revolutionary project, a fact that may have laid the foundation for its disintegration. Knowing that, coupled with the rise of the right and the climate breakdown that is already upon us, the question posed by Rosa Luxemburg more than a century ago seems worth asking once more: Reform or Revolution?
Read
March 17, 2020Supposedly a Marxist classic, although it's hard to see why. This is a riposte to Edouard Bernstein, and, guess what, people remember Rosa Luxemburg, they don't remember Bernstein, so it's kind of hard to figure out what exactly Luxemburg is responding to specifically. The follow-up question to Luxemburg is what real revolution would look like -- I think it's safe to say that socialism won't be achieved exclusively through parliamentary means, but it's hard to imagine that not playing a vital role (raise your hand if you think that anything resembling a cohesive armed revolt could have even the remotest shot at success in contemporary America, especially given the atomized, immiserated state that we would have to reach to even contemplate it, which would sap our will to live long before it prompted us to rebel). She may well have been fully right in the context of early 20th Century Europe, but shit's gotten weird, and I'm still trying to figure out what revolution can look like in the 21st Century.
Read
April 6, 2021**SPOILER ALERT**
It’s Revolution.
It’s Revolution.
July 4, 2023
The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin. Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order. And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution.
Legal reform and revolution are not different methods of historical progress that can be picked out at pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. They are different moments in the development of class society which condition and complement each other, and at the same time exclude each other reciprocally as eg: the north and the south poles, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Legal reform and revolution are not different methods of historical progress that can be picked out at pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. They are different moments in the development of class society which condition and complement each other, and at the same time exclude each other reciprocally as eg: the north and the south poles, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
March 23, 2024
You know, I keep joking that I'm not smart enough to read this type of theory (my brain really has trouble with abstract concepts sometimes), but I really liked this, surprisingly! And I understood a lot more than I though I would. My appreciation for Rosa increased even further and I'll enjoy my walks around Rosa Luxemburg Platz even more now. This is a critique of reformism, and I was easy - I already don't believe we can reform capitalism, so it was very up my alley already, but I enjoyed it when Rosa was throwing shade at this reformist Bernstein guy (and others):
Hugging their brain-child, Bernstein, Böhm and Jevons, and the entire subjective fraternity, can remain twenty years or more before the mystery of money, without arriving at a solution that is different from the one reached by any cobbler, namely that money is also a “useful” thing.
I listened to it as an audiobook and the narrator was okay, but I would have preferred a spirited woman to tell it to me in my ear. For part of it, I also was following it along here.
Read as part of a birthday month project to try stuff from authors I share a birthday with! And proud to share a birthday with Rosa Luxembourg! (Also very much recommend this graphic novel about her life: Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg
Assassin’s Apprentice
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
Almanac of the Dead
Also sharing a birthday with, but not part of this project:
House of Leaves
Hugging their brain-child, Bernstein, Böhm and Jevons, and the entire subjective fraternity, can remain twenty years or more before the mystery of money, without arriving at a solution that is different from the one reached by any cobbler, namely that money is also a “useful” thing.
I listened to it as an audiobook and the narrator was okay, but I would have preferred a spirited woman to tell it to me in my ear. For part of it, I also was following it along here.
Read as part of a birthday month project to try stuff from authors I share a birthday with! And proud to share a birthday with Rosa Luxembourg! (Also very much recommend this graphic novel about her life: Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg
Assassin’s Apprentice
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
Almanac of the Dead
Also sharing a birthday with, but not part of this project:
House of Leaves
December 4, 2012
A well written critique of Eduard Bernstein's reformist social democracy (or "evolutionary socialism"). Despite my disagreements with Luxemburg's starry-eyed adherence to Marxist doctrine, her discipleship does not dull her wit or make her pen run any less sharply across the yellowy page in condemnation of suspected bourgeois heresies. Highly recommended as a good summary of highly evolved Marxist dogma - in the form of "scientific socialism" - for any student of history.
It should be remembered that Marxism used to be a comprehensive doctrine, a solid edifice, on the basis of which hundreds of thousands of lives, upon questionable interpretations, were molded, improved and/or destroyed during the 20th century.
Rosa Luxemburg is one of that tradition's absolute luminaries. A great figure and a good writer, even for a non-Marxist. Look no further for a systematic exposition of the great conflict between revolutionary and reformist socialism.
It should be remembered that Marxism used to be a comprehensive doctrine, a solid edifice, on the basis of which hundreds of thousands of lives, upon questionable interpretations, were molded, improved and/or destroyed during the 20th century.
Rosa Luxemburg is one of that tradition's absolute luminaries. A great figure and a good writer, even for a non-Marxist. Look no further for a systematic exposition of the great conflict between revolutionary and reformist socialism.
June 13, 2019
Rosa does a great job of busting Bernstein’s position on reforming capitalism. Too bad the party marginalized her views. Most of her arguments are disturbingly relevant to today’s political and economic situation but sadly, today like in 1900 when she wrote it at 27 years old, overthrowing capitalism doesn’t capture the imagination of those who reap the benefits of it, and thus the armchair liberals/socialists continue to push a reformist agenda of change.
January 29, 2023
Pues una dura la rosi que decir. Gora mugimendu sozialista❤️
Read
April 12, 2022Sarjassani hampaankolossa vuodesta 2018: minä, politiikan ja viestinnän 1. vuoden opiskelija luonnollisesti 1. vuoden politiikan ja viestinnän opiskelijan ominaisuudessa tuon keskusteluun parlamentarismin näkökulman. Keskustelukumppani todella monta:
- vuotta filosofiaa opiskelleena
- alkoholijuomaa nauttineena
väsynein sanankääntein lopettaa keskustelun alkuunsa ehdottamalla Rosa Luxemburgin lukemista, josko liberaalidemokraattinen hömppä sillä hälvenisi. Kismitti. Kiitos talosta poismuuttaneen punkkarin ja tämän, rapun muuttojen myötä kasautuvalle, taakse jätettyjen tavaroiden ja ajatusrakennelmien installaatiolle hyljätyn läpyskän, sain katarsikseni tuon keskenjääneen keskustelun osalta.
Usko eduskuntainstituutioon ei ottanut romahtaakseen, mutta sen sijaan käsillä oli kiehtova interventio erään opportunismista syytetyn Bernsteinin kirottuihin kirjoitteluihin, tämä kun oli vähittäisen uudistustyön kannalla vallankumouksen kustannuksella.
Päivänpolttavuus reippaasti yli sadan vuoden takaa avaa paremmin kuin mikään silmät oman historiallisen hetken ohikiitävyydelle, s. 81-82: "Opportunistisilla virtauksilla on liikkeessämme jo varsin vanhat perinteet, jos ottaa huomioon hajanaiset ilmaukset, kuten tunnetussa höyrykonesubventiokysymyksessä." Tunnetussa höyrykonesubventiokysymyksessä! Sama kohtalo on tunnetun Kulmunin viestintäskandaalikysymyksen, laajasti debatoidun Suomen NATO-kannan muodostamiskysymyksen, maankuulun hoitajien työmarkkinatilanteen ratkaisemisen kysymyksen... "Hajanaiset ilmaukset" yhdistää kuitenkin. Täytyy koittaa muistaa kirjoittaa oman ajankohdan ohikiitävyyden muistaen, vuosilukuja ja alaviitteitä viljellen.
Ja se eduskunnan ongelma: kapitalistisia etuja ilmentävässä valtiossa ei sosiaalidemokraattinen fraktio pysty näennäisesti demokraattisessa muodossakaan muuttamaan sitä kapitalististen etujen sisältöä, jota valtio edustaa. Vähittäinen muutos ja keinoihin keskittyminen sosialismin väistämättömän ja historiallisesti määräytyvän päämäärän unhoittaen ei käy Luxemburgin mukaan päinsä, koska kapitalistiset instituutiot sopeuttavat sosialismin eikä toisinpäin, ja lisäksi reformointi ja suitsinta (osuuskunnat ja muut) eivät kriisitendenssiä kumoa.
Muistakaa suhtautua hellyydellä, armolla ja ymmärryksellä vasta-alkajien palavin silmin ja sydämin toimitettuihin monologeihin,vaikka ne eivät olisikaan täysimääräisesti sitoutuneet historialliseen materialismiin <3
P. S. Hyvänä kuriositeettina aina tällaisten kirjojen tapauksessa sen sarjan konteksti, jossa ne on julkaistu. Vähän värähdytti "SEURAAVANA ILMESTYVÄT" -osiossa "Pentagonin paperit." Revoluutio taikka reformi, sydäntä lämmittää väärinkäytösten ja kaikkinaisten kieroilujen ja kepulikonstien paljastaminen pyyteettömästi, jotta muutoksella ylipäätään olisi lähtökohtansa tiedossa ja parantamisen vara paikannettuna.
- vuotta filosofiaa opiskelleena
- alkoholijuomaa nauttineena
väsynein sanankääntein lopettaa keskustelun alkuunsa ehdottamalla Rosa Luxemburgin lukemista, josko liberaalidemokraattinen hömppä sillä hälvenisi. Kismitti. Kiitos talosta poismuuttaneen punkkarin ja tämän, rapun muuttojen myötä kasautuvalle, taakse jätettyjen tavaroiden ja ajatusrakennelmien installaatiolle hyljätyn läpyskän, sain katarsikseni tuon keskenjääneen keskustelun osalta.
Usko eduskuntainstituutioon ei ottanut romahtaakseen, mutta sen sijaan käsillä oli kiehtova interventio erään opportunismista syytetyn Bernsteinin kirottuihin kirjoitteluihin, tämä kun oli vähittäisen uudistustyön kannalla vallankumouksen kustannuksella.
Päivänpolttavuus reippaasti yli sadan vuoden takaa avaa paremmin kuin mikään silmät oman historiallisen hetken ohikiitävyydelle, s. 81-82: "Opportunistisilla virtauksilla on liikkeessämme jo varsin vanhat perinteet, jos ottaa huomioon hajanaiset ilmaukset, kuten tunnetussa höyrykonesubventiokysymyksessä." Tunnetussa höyrykonesubventiokysymyksessä! Sama kohtalo on tunnetun Kulmunin viestintäskandaalikysymyksen, laajasti debatoidun Suomen NATO-kannan muodostamiskysymyksen, maankuulun hoitajien työmarkkinatilanteen ratkaisemisen kysymyksen... "Hajanaiset ilmaukset" yhdistää kuitenkin. Täytyy koittaa muistaa kirjoittaa oman ajankohdan ohikiitävyyden muistaen, vuosilukuja ja alaviitteitä viljellen.
Ja se eduskunnan ongelma: kapitalistisia etuja ilmentävässä valtiossa ei sosiaalidemokraattinen fraktio pysty näennäisesti demokraattisessa muodossakaan muuttamaan sitä kapitalististen etujen sisältöä, jota valtio edustaa. Vähittäinen muutos ja keinoihin keskittyminen sosialismin väistämättömän ja historiallisesti määräytyvän päämäärän unhoittaen ei käy Luxemburgin mukaan päinsä, koska kapitalistiset instituutiot sopeuttavat sosialismin eikä toisinpäin, ja lisäksi reformointi ja suitsinta (osuuskunnat ja muut) eivät kriisitendenssiä kumoa.
Muistakaa suhtautua hellyydellä, armolla ja ymmärryksellä vasta-alkajien palavin silmin ja sydämin toimitettuihin monologeihin,vaikka ne eivät olisikaan täysimääräisesti sitoutuneet historialliseen materialismiin <3
P. S. Hyvänä kuriositeettina aina tällaisten kirjojen tapauksessa sen sarjan konteksti, jossa ne on julkaistu. Vähän värähdytti "SEURAAVANA ILMESTYVÄT" -osiossa "Pentagonin paperit." Revoluutio taikka reformi, sydäntä lämmittää väärinkäytösten ja kaikkinaisten kieroilujen ja kepulikonstien paljastaminen pyyteettömästi, jotta muutoksella ylipäätään olisi lähtökohtansa tiedossa ja parantamisen vara paikannettuna.
February 3, 2021
Rosa ends the book with a stirring defence of the importance of the dialectical method for the victory of the working class but by then it's barely necessary. The book itself is a masterwork of dialectics in application as she leaps from contradiction to contradiction, themselves framed in larger contradictions and so on and so in, painting a more and more coherent picture of whether the question of whether reform or revolution needs to be adopted as the path to socialism. And it becomes clear that the question itself is wrong. Reform doesn't look to push towards the transformation of the mode of production but the amelioration of conditions within it, which in turn requires capitalism to revert its development, which will not happen.
June 2, 2017
Rosa Luxemburgo, no solo una gran intelectual revolucionaria, que hablaba hasta 11 idiomas, sino que comprometida de manera activa con los movimientos populares de su época. En los tiempos en que las mujeres eran doblemente explotadas (y siguen, solo en menor grado): por ser mujeres, y por ser pobres. La Rosa Roja se imponía no solo como un ejemplo para su género, sino para la humanidad. En éste texto su pensamiento político aparece más que claro: la igualdad solo se alcanza superando el sistema anterior, no reformandolo.
Fue asesinada de un culatazo en la cabeza, y tirada al rio.
Fue asesinada de un culatazo en la cabeza, y tirada al rio.
October 19, 2021
Hefði viljað aðeins almennari umfjöllun á þessu málefni. Þetta er í raun svar við annari bók sem ég hef ekki lesið og því vantaði soldið upp á skýringar og umfjöllun á ýmsum hugtökum eins og hver munurinn á byltingu og endur bótum sé. En annar mjög beitt gagnrýni á endurbóta stefnu og kosti hennar.
April 1, 2024
Luxemburg is an extremely precise writer. The clearest of all the major socialist thinkers and frankly the most relevant. Chapters 3 and 4 are especially crucial reads
April 19, 2023
no me gustaría nada ser enemiga de rosa luxemburgo
October 4, 2013
Pretty good polemic, but falls in the awkward position of not being a real introduction because it uses Marxist terms on the regular and is only really understandable from that perspective while also not really saying anything new to someone who's familiar with Marxism. There are quite a lot of good quotes that give good explanations for why x view is wrong - not comprehensively, but enough to give you a good idea *if* you're familiar with Marxism. Sometimes the writing is a bit bad and I had a lot of trouble understanding exactly what she was saying. There's also quite a bit which is just polemic and doesn't really explain anything apart from saying "dude's bad". Which is to be expected really. Her idea of trade unions maintaining market wages is kind of weird.
Ultimately it's a pretty good but non-essential essay that gives you good ideas against reformism. It's interesting and sad how dominant it's become and how many Marxists fall into the same traps.
Ultimately it's a pretty good but non-essential essay that gives you good ideas against reformism. It's interesting and sad how dominant it's become and how many Marxists fall into the same traps.
May 12, 2018
An excellent little read that is specifically a retort to Eduard Bernstein's writings on "evolutionary" socialism and more broadly a takedown of the ideas that with some labor law reform and the running of co-ops we can move from a capitalist, bourgeois political system to a liberated, socialist system. Luxemburg proves pretty completely here that reformism within the system is bunk.
"Luxemburg understood that revolutionaries had to fight for reforms. But this fight cannot be an end to itself; revolutionaries must bring the most militant methods of struggle to the fore in order to help the working class acquire the self-confidence, organisation and militancy it requires if it is to make a revolution."
"Luxemburg understood that revolutionaries had to fight for reforms. But this fight cannot be an end to itself; revolutionaries must bring the most militant methods of struggle to the fore in order to help the working class acquire the self-confidence, organisation and militancy it requires if it is to make a revolution."
September 18, 2016
Read this book to understand why economic reforms cannot kill capitalism. She accurately predicted the fall of middle class due to their credit usage. It is okay if you don't understand the jargons, because you will understand it. It will click in your head. This is a must read for all budding leftists.
August 11, 2024
like yeah, this is just her beefing with bernstein but it's also so masterful as a socialist text?
The production relations of capitalist society approach more and more the production relations of socialist society. But on the other hand, its political and juridical relations established between capitalist society and socialist society a steadily rising wall. This wall is not overthrown, but is on the contrary strengthened and consolidated by the development of social reforms and the course of democracy. Only the hammer blow of revolution, that is to day, the conquest of political power by the proletariat can break down this wall.
December 30, 2020
braba demais
February 24, 2025
i was reading this yesterday while i had a fever and felt like i was hallucinating at point. i think much of the latter half might have gone over my head because of this. anyways eduard bernstein you dumb as hell boi
November 16, 2013
Fuck you Bernstein!!!
February 23, 2022
Tout d'abord, il existe des éditions plus lisibles et récentes de ces deux textes fondamentaux de Rosa Luxemburg mais jamais compilés ensemble en français et c'est ce qui m'intéressait ici. La préface contextualise bien la pensée de Rosa Luxemburg qui n'est pas ici à proprement parlée dans la pure théorie économique marxiste/marxienne (comme dans l'Accumulation du Capital ou dans son Introduction à l'économie politique), mais plutôt dans une critique militante et donc bien plus accessible et encore pertinente pour tou.tes les militant.es. A hauteur par exemple de 2 chapitres par jour, vous le finirez en moins de 10 jours, le premier article étant le plus percutant et pertinent à mes yeux.
Les deux textes, tout particulièrement le premier "Réforme sociale ou révolution?" (1899), détaillent implacablement le danger de la tendance la plus réformiste de son parti qui se veut alors encore révolutionnaire en Allemagne (SPD) et, avec "Grève de masse, parti et syndicats" (1906), elle tente de répondre à l'exemple de la Révolution russe de 1905 sur le nouveau choix radical de la "grève de masse" comme arme principale du prolétariat.
Il faut préciser d'entrer les termes qu'elle utilise que l'on peut anachroniquement interpréter : la social-démocratie n'est pas du tout un gros mot alors, au contraire et il est utilisé comme LE cadre révolutionnaire vers ce qu'elle nomme la "dictature du prolétariat" par la prise du pouvoir, aussi bien "politique" (assemblées) qu'économique (usines et autres), même si c'est une distinction artificielle qu'elle rejette tout à fait. Il ne s'agit pourtant pas d'une vision autoritaire car elle intègre pleinement l'idée propre aux courants libertaires d'auto-formation politique par la révolution des non-encarté.es et des non-formé.es théoriquement et défend les prises d'initiatives prolo à soutenir plutôt qu'à diriger ; mais la centralité du parti demeure, ainsi que sa méthode et son avant-garde enseignante et accompagnante. Ca reste très orthodoxe bien qu'elle en sera probablement de plus en plus critique dans un premier temps après la trahison pro-militariste de son parti en 14-18 puis avec l'accaparement bolshevik du pouvoir en janvier 1919 au détriment des soviets libres.
La réponse à Bernstein (réformiste du SPD) qui brade la nécessité de l'implosion du prolétariat dans les rues et dans les usines et toute la théorie marxiste/marxienne de la nécessité de rompre une bonne fois pour toute avec le capitalisme, au profit d'une réforme socialiste étape par étape via le parlementarisme bourgeois et donc en vue de la seule adaptation de la "social-démocratie" au capitalisme est sans concession et sans retour possible. Chaque article fait progresser sa pensée en démontrant les renoncements pas seulement rhétoriques de la doctrine (que l'on qualifie du coup comme révisionniste) de Bernstein mais bien salement capitaliste. On peut très bien lire ce texte autrement qu'une simple querelle de spécialistes de tendances du début du XXe s. au sein d'un parti majeur de la classe ouvrière d'alors ; lisons-le aussi comme la mise en garde tout à faire actuelle des principales apories de toute l'extrême-gauche électorale encore actuelle, bien plus réformiste que révolutionnaire, qui n'entend plus rompre avec le capital mais plutôt par exemple le taxer, nationaliser le capital et prétendre qu'il s'agirait là d'un changement de paradigme époustouflant.
La critique dans "Grève de masse, parti et syndicats" commence par une attaque assez hypocrite de l'usage de la grève générale par les anarchistes, pour avancer vers une remise en cause du dogme d'alors de mise à même hauteur des syndicats et du Parti dans le rôle qu'ils ont à jouer dans la victoire et l'émancipation du prolétariat. Si sa démolition de la vision de Bernstein est totale, sa construction en revanche d'une différenciation des principes d'une "grève de masse" d'avec la "grève générale" anarchiste est beaucoup plus faible : son seul argument véritable consiste à expliquer que les grèves générales ne se déclarent pas sans quoi elles sont artificielles et romantiques. Par contre, elle ne remet pas en cause dans ces défaites assurées l'absence de soutien des principaux partis ouvriers en voie de légalisation, citoyennisme et socdémisation progressive à ces tentatives de grèves insurrectionnelles de la fin du XIXe siècle, qui dépassent les seul.es anars. Si son apport majeur à ce sujet est la revalorisation de la stratégie de la grève dans le camp social-démocrate et pour tout particulièrement pour l'Allemagne, elle va encore plus loin en suggérant que la grève de masse est plus qu'un simple outil, même très performant, de lutte des classes mais un synonyme même de la période révolutionnaire.
Son article a le mérite de s'appuyer d'une connaissance des terrains cités impressionnante, qui s'attache à tous les foyers de combats prolétaires de toute l'Europe de l'Est (elle est juive polonaise, parlait yiddish, russe, allemand). Cependant, et c'est le plus étonnant, elle ne dit pas encore un mot de la formation historique sur des bases syndicalistes révolutionnaires par des anarchistes, de la CGT en France et ses premières batailles (Il semble qu'elle écrira plutôt positivement à ce sujet plus tard, à suivre !), qui par la Charte d'Amiens et le voeu d'indépendance radicale des partis politiques change totalement la donne en 1906, avant son ralliement piteux à l' "union sacrée" et le ralliement des anarcho-syndicalistes à des structures comme la CNT.
Les deux textes, tout particulièrement le premier "Réforme sociale ou révolution?" (1899), détaillent implacablement le danger de la tendance la plus réformiste de son parti qui se veut alors encore révolutionnaire en Allemagne (SPD) et, avec "Grève de masse, parti et syndicats" (1906), elle tente de répondre à l'exemple de la Révolution russe de 1905 sur le nouveau choix radical de la "grève de masse" comme arme principale du prolétariat.
Il faut préciser d'entrer les termes qu'elle utilise que l'on peut anachroniquement interpréter : la social-démocratie n'est pas du tout un gros mot alors, au contraire et il est utilisé comme LE cadre révolutionnaire vers ce qu'elle nomme la "dictature du prolétariat" par la prise du pouvoir, aussi bien "politique" (assemblées) qu'économique (usines et autres), même si c'est une distinction artificielle qu'elle rejette tout à fait. Il ne s'agit pourtant pas d'une vision autoritaire car elle intègre pleinement l'idée propre aux courants libertaires d'auto-formation politique par la révolution des non-encarté.es et des non-formé.es théoriquement et défend les prises d'initiatives prolo à soutenir plutôt qu'à diriger ; mais la centralité du parti demeure, ainsi que sa méthode et son avant-garde enseignante et accompagnante. Ca reste très orthodoxe bien qu'elle en sera probablement de plus en plus critique dans un premier temps après la trahison pro-militariste de son parti en 14-18 puis avec l'accaparement bolshevik du pouvoir en janvier 1919 au détriment des soviets libres.
La réponse à Bernstein (réformiste du SPD) qui brade la nécessité de l'implosion du prolétariat dans les rues et dans les usines et toute la théorie marxiste/marxienne de la nécessité de rompre une bonne fois pour toute avec le capitalisme, au profit d'une réforme socialiste étape par étape via le parlementarisme bourgeois et donc en vue de la seule adaptation de la "social-démocratie" au capitalisme est sans concession et sans retour possible. Chaque article fait progresser sa pensée en démontrant les renoncements pas seulement rhétoriques de la doctrine (que l'on qualifie du coup comme révisionniste) de Bernstein mais bien salement capitaliste. On peut très bien lire ce texte autrement qu'une simple querelle de spécialistes de tendances du début du XXe s. au sein d'un parti majeur de la classe ouvrière d'alors ; lisons-le aussi comme la mise en garde tout à faire actuelle des principales apories de toute l'extrême-gauche électorale encore actuelle, bien plus réformiste que révolutionnaire, qui n'entend plus rompre avec le capital mais plutôt par exemple le taxer, nationaliser le capital et prétendre qu'il s'agirait là d'un changement de paradigme époustouflant.
La critique dans "Grève de masse, parti et syndicats" commence par une attaque assez hypocrite de l'usage de la grève générale par les anarchistes, pour avancer vers une remise en cause du dogme d'alors de mise à même hauteur des syndicats et du Parti dans le rôle qu'ils ont à jouer dans la victoire et l'émancipation du prolétariat. Si sa démolition de la vision de Bernstein est totale, sa construction en revanche d'une différenciation des principes d'une "grève de masse" d'avec la "grève générale" anarchiste est beaucoup plus faible : son seul argument véritable consiste à expliquer que les grèves générales ne se déclarent pas sans quoi elles sont artificielles et romantiques. Par contre, elle ne remet pas en cause dans ces défaites assurées l'absence de soutien des principaux partis ouvriers en voie de légalisation, citoyennisme et socdémisation progressive à ces tentatives de grèves insurrectionnelles de la fin du XIXe siècle, qui dépassent les seul.es anars. Si son apport majeur à ce sujet est la revalorisation de la stratégie de la grève dans le camp social-démocrate et pour tout particulièrement pour l'Allemagne, elle va encore plus loin en suggérant que la grève de masse est plus qu'un simple outil, même très performant, de lutte des classes mais un synonyme même de la période révolutionnaire.
Son article a le mérite de s'appuyer d'une connaissance des terrains cités impressionnante, qui s'attache à tous les foyers de combats prolétaires de toute l'Europe de l'Est (elle est juive polonaise, parlait yiddish, russe, allemand). Cependant, et c'est le plus étonnant, elle ne dit pas encore un mot de la formation historique sur des bases syndicalistes révolutionnaires par des anarchistes, de la CGT en France et ses premières batailles (Il semble qu'elle écrira plutôt positivement à ce sujet plus tard, à suivre !), qui par la Charte d'Amiens et le voeu d'indépendance radicale des partis politiques change totalement la donne en 1906, avant son ralliement piteux à l' "union sacrée" et le ralliement des anarcho-syndicalistes à des structures comme la CNT.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 11, 2023
“There was no doubt for Marx and Engels about the necessity of having the proletariat conquer political power. It is left to Bernstein to consider the poultry-yard of bourgeois Parliamentarism as the organ by which we are to realize the most formidable social transformation of history, the passage from capitalist society to Socialism.”
This is an impressive work that demonstrates Luxemburgs' ability to give form to the highest idea grasped, even in our time, of the objective development of Geist in this world and the political tendency that must be assumed to realise it. She writes it in equal part as: organizer, theorist, polemicist and naturally, the firebrand revolutionary that has now been broadly accepted to have formulated the orthodox Marxist line on revolutionary tactic.
The debate had between Bernstein and Luxemburg is really the debate that can only really be had in the context of a party with the strength of the SPD at the time, that is, an SPD with revolutionary potential it had before the split with the Communist faction as a result of WWI. Recognition of that fact whilst reading this text a quarter into the 21st cenury is what it means to recognize the work historically as a signpost of a failure in terms of a road not taken. But as Luxemburg points out herself in the Junius Pamphlet published in 1915, an eventful 15 years down the line, a failure is only a defeat if we do not honestly measure the depth of our fall. I feel this is also something that is left as our task on the left today, the theoretics of Bernstein and Luxemburgs argument aside, the demonstration of the historical development of the now widely celebrated democratic socialism that shaped the late 20th century of the Western world is fascinating to behold in its bare contingency and betrayal of some of the core tenets of Marxist thought. This is the point that Luxemburg makes at the start of the work, and develops in economic and political terms across its multiple sections; that promoting parliamentary reform does not just change the tactics for socialism, but in making it no longer objectively necessary, changes its very nature. The loss of a historical element in the analysis of capitalism, which then makes the endeavour of socialism an idealist and purely moral or utopian affair, removes the justification for organizing for it by taking advantage of the contradictions and eventual crisis of that capitalism will come to.
As she perniciously points out to Bernstein the gradual promotion of the welfare state and the consequential mystification of the amelioration of 'state' and 'society', does nothing to further the cause of socialism, in fact it impedes it. The state's interests, insofar as it is a Bonapartist instrument to resolve the immediate conflict between Capital and Labour, lies with the accumulation of Capital. This is not mutually exclusive of the bettering of working conditions and concessions to Trade Unionist demands, in fact, as evidenced by the period of growth and betterment of living conditions after WWII in the modern attempt to evade the resultant crisis of the late 19th centuries 'Belle Epoque', the strengthening of a consumerist class only concretizes capitalist relations of production. Each age has a manner to align the interests of the free labourer with that of Capitalism, or increasing the state, in the early days of workers movements it was imperialism, then the growth of the managerial class, and now arguably the financialization of capital assets both cultural and monetary.
This raises the point through which Reform or Revolution can still be seen as relevant, the avoidance of an equivalency on the Left between trade unionist and political vanguardist consciousness. The two are married in tactic and theory but separate in history, one works as the engine of the other, but alone as one would have it in a social democracy, they devolve into statism or utopian socialism. The trade unionist consciousness works within the economic logic of capitalism, the political class consciousness recognizes the eventual historical necessity of the overthrow of this logic. This is not to say that we must blindly take on Luxemburgs communist line in this time and age, a healthy party is one that considers the popular state of trade unionism in tactic and analyses real historical conditions in theory combining them to organize effectively for socialism, despite the fact that the Left is dead this still remains our task today, to recognize the emancipatory possibilities of the future and to fail better.
This is an impressive work that demonstrates Luxemburgs' ability to give form to the highest idea grasped, even in our time, of the objective development of Geist in this world and the political tendency that must be assumed to realise it. She writes it in equal part as: organizer, theorist, polemicist and naturally, the firebrand revolutionary that has now been broadly accepted to have formulated the orthodox Marxist line on revolutionary tactic.
The debate had between Bernstein and Luxemburg is really the debate that can only really be had in the context of a party with the strength of the SPD at the time, that is, an SPD with revolutionary potential it had before the split with the Communist faction as a result of WWI. Recognition of that fact whilst reading this text a quarter into the 21st cenury is what it means to recognize the work historically as a signpost of a failure in terms of a road not taken. But as Luxemburg points out herself in the Junius Pamphlet published in 1915, an eventful 15 years down the line, a failure is only a defeat if we do not honestly measure the depth of our fall. I feel this is also something that is left as our task on the left today, the theoretics of Bernstein and Luxemburgs argument aside, the demonstration of the historical development of the now widely celebrated democratic socialism that shaped the late 20th century of the Western world is fascinating to behold in its bare contingency and betrayal of some of the core tenets of Marxist thought. This is the point that Luxemburg makes at the start of the work, and develops in economic and political terms across its multiple sections; that promoting parliamentary reform does not just change the tactics for socialism, but in making it no longer objectively necessary, changes its very nature. The loss of a historical element in the analysis of capitalism, which then makes the endeavour of socialism an idealist and purely moral or utopian affair, removes the justification for organizing for it by taking advantage of the contradictions and eventual crisis of that capitalism will come to.
As she perniciously points out to Bernstein the gradual promotion of the welfare state and the consequential mystification of the amelioration of 'state' and 'society', does nothing to further the cause of socialism, in fact it impedes it. The state's interests, insofar as it is a Bonapartist instrument to resolve the immediate conflict between Capital and Labour, lies with the accumulation of Capital. This is not mutually exclusive of the bettering of working conditions and concessions to Trade Unionist demands, in fact, as evidenced by the period of growth and betterment of living conditions after WWII in the modern attempt to evade the resultant crisis of the late 19th centuries 'Belle Epoque', the strengthening of a consumerist class only concretizes capitalist relations of production. Each age has a manner to align the interests of the free labourer with that of Capitalism, or increasing the state, in the early days of workers movements it was imperialism, then the growth of the managerial class, and now arguably the financialization of capital assets both cultural and monetary.
This raises the point through which Reform or Revolution can still be seen as relevant, the avoidance of an equivalency on the Left between trade unionist and political vanguardist consciousness. The two are married in tactic and theory but separate in history, one works as the engine of the other, but alone as one would have it in a social democracy, they devolve into statism or utopian socialism. The trade unionist consciousness works within the economic logic of capitalism, the political class consciousness recognizes the eventual historical necessity of the overthrow of this logic. This is not to say that we must blindly take on Luxemburgs communist line in this time and age, a healthy party is one that considers the popular state of trade unionism in tactic and analyses real historical conditions in theory combining them to organize effectively for socialism, despite the fact that the Left is dead this still remains our task today, to recognize the emancipatory possibilities of the future and to fail better.
December 19, 2024
Yo estaba interesado en la cuestión marxista y me lo recomendó una amiga que ya estaba metida en el estudio. Me lo compré antes de verano y fue una lectura que se me hizo complicada, no porque genuinamente lo fuera sino porque no tenía ni idea de la materia. Fui bastante poco a poco con el libro, me lo tomé con calma. Una vez acabado a finales de verano puedo decir que es uno de los mejores (sino el mejor) textos para entender la cuestión de la necesidad de la ruptura con la socialdemocracia y el utopismo reformista.
Este libro cambió mi manera de entender la política de pies a cabeza. Es una de las dos recomendaciones que doy a personas que se quieren adentrar en el marxismo, además de Estado y Revolución de Lenin.
Este libro cambió mi manera de entender la política de pies a cabeza. Es una de las dos recomendaciones que doy a personas que se quieren adentrar en el marxismo, además de Estado y Revolución de Lenin.
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