Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)
2012
Luxemburg is central to the revolutionary Marxist tradition.
Those claiming to use the ideas of Karl Marx in the struggle for freedom, justice, and socialism have been called Marxists.
Rosa Luxemburg was born into a well-to-do, highly cultured family with strongly humanistic values. Such values, combined with the realities of class oppression and conflict, contributed to a critical-mindedness and bent toward activism as she matured.
With the development of industrial capitalism, militancy and solidarity grew within the growing working class. This resulted during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in mass labor movements and large socialist workers’ parties influenced by the ideas of Marx. Militancy
Solidarity
As a teen-age student radical, she was drawn to the socialist movement in her native Poland.
She was a brilliant intellectual and at the same time a passionate activist, who proved to be absolutely committed to the cause of the working class. As in much of the world today, it was unusual for a woman to assume the role that she was destined to play.
The German Social-Democratic Party attracted millions to the socialist cause – whose victory was seen by many as a manifestation of “inevitable progress.” For many years it was seen as a model for socialists influenced by Marx – other labor and social-democratic parties arose in many lands.
The leaders of the Social-Democratic Party seemed powerful representatives of “Marxist orthodoxy” – yet over time they were increasingly inclined to make far-reaching compromises with bureaucratic and non-revolutionary forces in the party. August Bebel – “grand old man of the German Social-Democracy”
Karl Kautsky – “pope of Marxism”
Luxemburg decided to move to Germany to join the massive German Social Democratic Party, to help build the workers’ movement, and to help develop Marxist perspectives, in this industrial capitalist center. Bebel admired her – but also felt uneasy with the brilliance of this revolutionary firebrand. She would soon prove herself as a revolutionary leader.
Luxemburg became especially close to Clara Zetkin, the leader of the women’s rights struggle in the German socialist movement. Luxemburg supported Zetkin’s work – but she refused to channel her own energies into efforts around “the Woman Question.” Her theoretical and activist focus was drawn into what were considered to be more central issues being debated within the movement.
Above all, she was a revolutionary activist. More than once she did time in prison.
For several years, Luxemburg was an impressive and valued teacher in the school for workers and activists run by the German Social Democratic Party.
She wrote regularly for the German socialist press, including important articles in the leading Marxist theoretical journal, Die Neue Zeit, and one of the leading figures in regular attendance at congresses of the Socialist International (Second International). Die Neue Zeit (New Times), outstanding Marxist magazine edited by Karl Kautsky.
Rosa Luxemburg at the 1904 congress of the Socialist International – behind Sen Katayama (Japan) and George Plekhanov (Russia); Victor Adler (Austria) and Karl Kautsky stand behind and to her left.
She was an innovative and creative Marxist theorist, developing path-breaking studies of imperialism and the dynamics of the capitalist economic system.
She was also an important lecturer who toured Germany to speak to working-class audiences.
Luxemburg was also one of the most brilliant and formidable polemicists in the Marxist movement, capably and insightfully debating issues of theory, strategy and tactics.
The growing success and power of the Social-Democratic Party caused some of its members to focus only on election gains, union gains, and modest reforms – forgetting about overthrowing capitalism (which would “inevitably” be replaced by socialism in the distant future). Eduard Bernstein argued that Marx’s theories should be revised.
It would be possible to gradually reform capitalism’s evils out of existence.
ROSA LUXEMBURG’S
COMMITMENT TO THIS PARTY FORCED HER TO BECOME SHARPLY CRITICAL NOT ONLY OF REFORMISTS BUT ALSO OF THOSE CLAIMING TO BE “ORTHODOX”.
Comforting “orthodox” dogmas are not adequate.
Marxism must continue to develop as revolutionary theory and practice – helping to deepen knowledge and criticalmindedness. .
Luxemburg labored tirelessly to analyze trends in capitalism – and to prepare the workers’ movement for new developments. •
Focusing on modest reforms and expecting a future “inevitable” revolution is not enough.
•
Reform must be integrated with revolutionary strategy.
•
Democracy and mass action must overcome bureaucratic and conservative tendencies in the workers’ movement.
MASS ACTION
(which Luxemburg also referred to as the MASS STRIKE) involves spontaneous explosions of anger among the oppressed which the workings of capitalism sometimes generate.
Luxemburg developed this conception based on the revolutionary uprisings and mass struggles, in which she participated, that swept Eastern Europe in 1905 and 1906.
“Political and economic strikes, mass strikes and partial strikes, demonstrative strikes and fighting strikes, general strikes of individual branches of industry and general strikes in individual towns, peaceful wage struggles and street massacres, barricade fighting – all these rub side by side, cross one another, flow in and over one another – it is a ceaselessly moving, changing sea of phenomena.”
Luxemburg envisioned a dynamic interplay between such mass energy and insurgency with the organized socialist movement, which must help prepare and advance consciousness, help provide resources and organization, and offer focus and leadership in the struggle.
The socialist movement, “the most enlightened, most class-conscious vanguard of the working class,” she argued, “dare not wait, in a fatalist fashion, with folded arms, for the advent of ‘the revolutionary situation’,” but “must now, as always, hasten the development of things and endeavor to accelerate events.”
Luxemburg believed the alternatives were
SOCIALISM OR BARBARISM
Socialism will not be the result of “inevitable progress.”
She predicted • capitalists would not allow democracy to lead gradually to socialism, •
workers’ reforms would be eroded, and
• imperialism and militarism would bring a horrendous world war.
Capitalism will not be replaced unless the working class actively brings that about.
As Luxemburg predicted, the First World War (1914-1918) erupted – what many socialists called the “war of imperialist slaughter.”
German Socialist “leaders” such as Friedrich Ebert (who headed the Social Democratic Party after Bebel’s death in 1913) and Phillip Scheidemann strongly supported the German war effort and insisted that their party display a similar “patriotism”.
Luxemburg was imprisoned for opposing the war – but her opposition continued, enhanced by links with revolutionary comrades outside prison walls and illuminated by her uncompromising analyses. The cover of this pamphlet containing some of Luxemburg’s prison letters reproduces a self-portrait that she painted.
Surveying this “total war,” Luxemburg commented: “Another such war, and the hope of socialism will be buried under the ruins of imperialistic barbarism.” She noted that of the casualties, “nine-tenths … come from the working class of the cities and the farms.”
“It is the mass destruction of the European proletariat. Millions of human lives were destroyed. Millions have been hopelessly crippled.�
“It is our strength, our hope that was being mowed down there, day after day, before the scythe of death. They are the best, the most intelligent, the most thoroughly schooled forces of international socialism . . . the modern labor movement . . . the workers of England, Belgium, Germany and Russia who are being gagged and butchered in masses.�
Yet the horrors of the war generated mass anger and radicalization.
In Russia – suffering under the yoke of absolute monarchy and the terrible new calamities of World War – insurgent forces were about to change history.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had worked hard, and creatively in Russia, developing Marx’s thought to advance the cause of the working class and to bring about a radical democracy, workers’ power, and socialism. He gave special attention to building an organization of revolutionaries.
Revolutionary Internationalism The Russian Communists who followed Lenin were convinced that they would not triumph unless there were worldwide revolutionary upsurges – sweeping away rule by kings and capitalists.
Luxemburg and Liebknecht were expelled from the German Social Democratic Party for organizing against the war through the Spartacus Bund (named after the leader of the great slave revolt in ancient Rome). This would become the German Communist Party.
With the collapse of the German war effort in 1918, the German monarchy – the regime of the Kaiser – was overthrown amid a revolutionary upsurge.
The working-class came close to taking power in Germany. Karl Liebknecht addressing working-class crowds
Revolutionary crowds rallying for socialism in Berlin
The German upper classes scurried to make a deal with the moderate leaders of the German Social Democrats – declaring a new republic.
The Social Democratic Party, led by Friedrich Ebert, would head up the German republic. The payback was that German capitalism would not be replaced by socialism: the new regime would commit itself to capitalism’s preservation – with social reforms permitted, of course.
Luxemburg and other revolutionaries believed that the Ebert compromise was a stab in the back to the German workers’ revolution. There was a militant mobilization by the Spartakusbund to win back the revolution.
Luxemburg and Liebknecht gave all that they had in the struggle to make socialism a reality in Germany.
Luxemburg saw the future society she was fighting for as a living reality that must be made real by masses of individual people. She argued that “socialism will not be and cannot be inaugurated by decrees . . . . Socialism must be created by the masses, must be made by every worker.�
BUT THE REVOLUTIONARY UPSURGE OUTSIDE OF RUSSIA WAS DEFEATED. In Germany, right-wing and militaristic elements (many would later become the base of Hitler’s Nazi movement) helped to smash the revolutionaries, with lethal brutality.
The paramilitary Freikorps captured both Luxemburg and Liebknecht and murdered them. The great German artist Käthe Kollwitz produced a print “Memorial for Karl Liebknecht.”
“Martyrdom from Hell” was Otto Dix’s Expressionist commentary when Luxemburg’s body was finally retrieved from the Landwehr Canal.
Their comrades from the newly-formed German Communist Party, and others as well, rallied to pay homage to the martyrs. A memorial was designed by renowned architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1926, though it was destroyed by the Nazis seven years later.
If Luxemburg had survived, she could have helped provide the leadership that revolutionary workers in Germany needed in order to triumph.
The victory of the German working class would have prevented the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party. It could be argued that the destruction of Luxemburg helped bring about the barbarism she warned against.
The triumph of a workers’ revolution and a genuine socialist democracy in Germany could have prevented some of the worst disasters of the 20th century.
Before her death, even as she supported the revolution of Lenin and Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg challenged their most serious mistake. Dictatorial measures – emergency measures used in the face of immense calamities – were generalized as revolutionary virtues.
“Socialist democracy does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators.”
For Luxemburg, genuine Socialism or Communism meant rule by the people permeated by freedom. “Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the socialist party. It is the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat.�
She warned: “Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element . . . at bottom, then, a clique affair – a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians . . .” “Freedom must always be freedom for those who think differently.”
On the other hand, Luxemburg insisted, “whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary far-sightedness and consistency in an historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and all the other comrades have given in good measure.” She added that “there is no doubt either . . . that Lenin and Trotsky on their thorny path beset by traps of all kinds, have taken many a decisive step only with the greatest inner hesitation and with the most violent inner opposition.”
“The fate of the revolution in Russia depended fully upon international events,” she stressed. “That the Bolsheviks have based their policy entirely upon the world proletarian revolution is the clearest proof of their political far-sightedness and firmness of principle and of the bold scope of their policies.”
In Luxemburg’s opinion, a workers’ victory in Germany would relieve the terrible pressures that were blocking socialist democracy in Russia.
The isolation of revolutionary Russia resulted (as Lenin was dying, in the early 1920s) in the rise of a bureaucratic dictatorship under Josef Stalin. Stalin carried out the modernization of Russia by using extreme violence against peasants, workers, intellectuals, and even Communists – all in the name of “Marxism”.
Some versions of “Marxism” are absolutely incompatible with each other. Rosa Luxemburg – passionate partisan of human freedom and socialist democracy.
Joseph Stalin – tyrannical leader of a murderous and bureaucratic dictatorship.
Stalin himself insisted that Luxemburg was definitely not his kind of Marxist. In a 1931 article “Some Questions Concerning the History of Bolshevism” he criticized the leftwing current that Luxemburg helped lead in the German Social Democracy as “a weak and powerless group, a group without organisational shape, ideologically ill-equipped.”
In Stalin’s judgment, she “proved to be too immature to follow in the footsteps of the Russian Bolsheviks.”
Rosa Luxemburg’s orientation was certainly incompatible with Stalin’s – she was an anti-authoritarian who stood for socialist democracy, and more, she was a consistently revolutionary socialist.
She also represented something far more revolutionary than what came to be known as “Social Democracy� in the mid-to-late 20th century.
Social-Democracy
The Socialist International (or Second International) had collapsed during World War I, regrouped afterward, was devastated by World War II, again regrouped. Its moderate-socialist and labor parties wrestled with their relationship to Marx’s ideas – tending to embrace the reformism that had been represented by Eduard Bernstein.
After World War II, Social-Democracy surged forward – claiming to offer a “middle way” between capitalism and Communism, in the form of the welfare state. Cold War confrontations in Berlin and elsewhere saw Social-Democratic Parties lining up with “the West” against Communism.
Clement Atlee led the British Labor Party in a landslide 1945 election victory– rousing great expectations (never realized) that socialism would be ushered in.
Moderate Socialist, Social-Democratic, and Labor parties have, over the years, won elections in many countries. Despite a strong Marxist background of some of their leaders (such as Aneurin Bevan and Willy Brandt), the parties never seriously challenged capitalism – preferring the reformist gradualism earlier advocated by Eduard Bernstein. Hugh Gaitskill, waving a hat, was challenged from the left (for a time) by the hand-waving Aneurin Bevan.
Willy Brandt, Olaf Palme, and Bruno Kreisky – Social-Democratic leaders of West Germany, Sweden and Austria in the 1980s.
The welfare state conception of providing a “social safety net” for all has commonly been tagged by conservatives as “socialism,” however, and accused of taking money from those who have it to benefit those who don’t.
This common misconception has little to do with actual socialism. As Rosa Luxemburg argued, Bernstein’s reformist perspective for Social-Democracy -- reflected in the welfare state -only added up to a reform of capitalism, not the economic working-class democracy of socialism.
She argued that global capitalism is too volatile to stay so nicely reformed.
Actual socialism would involve a more fundamental redistribution of economic power and well-being, as illustrated by this Chilean cartoon of the early 1970s. .
Hoy (today) is capitalism, maĂąana (tomorrow) is socialism.
To prevent this, the Chilean upper classes, with the help of the military, overthrew a democratically-elected Marxist president, Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, killing thousands of his supporters and imprisoning many thousands more, and a brutal right-wing dictatorship was imposed for 17 years. (The U.S. government fully supported this coup and dictatorship – and helped to bring them about.)
In the early 21st century, Social Democracy has proved less “radical� than ever, often helping to impose policies that hurt workers in order to save capitalism. George Papandreau (center), Prime Minister of Greece and President of the Socialist International, consulting with conservative European leaders on how to deal with the crisis of capitalism.
Greek workers, students, others protesting against austerity policies and capitalist crises that have devastated their living standards and quality of life.
Rosa Luxemburg continues to inspire those who oppose the oppressive realities of the present.
The defeat of 1919 was described by Luxemburg herself in a way that illuminates the present:
“The whole road of socialism – so far as revolutionary struggles are concerned – is paved with nothing but thunderous defeats. . . . Where would we be today without those ‘defeats,’ from which we draw historical experience, understanding, power and idealism? . . . We can not do without any of them, because each one contributes to our strength and understanding. . . . Yet these unavoidable defeats pile up guarantee upon guarantee of the future final victory.”
“Tomorrow the revolution will rise up again, and it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!�
This wonderful revolutionary thinker and activist is worth remembering . . . and worth learning from as we struggle for a better world.