Rosa Luxemburg and the Struggle for Democratic Renewal

Jon Nixon

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781786802279
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What can contemporary activists and political theorists learn from the life and work of Rosa Luxemburg? Examining her contribution to radical democracy and revolutionary socialism, Jon Nixon shows why Red Rosa's legacy lives on. Luxemburg's political and intellectual formation was in itself a 'long revolution', conceived of over time and in response to world events; her groundbreaking ideas around internationalism and spontaneity were formulated in the context of revolution. Returning to her thinking on global capitalism, democratic renewal, state militarism, and the social question, Nixon draws out the enduring nature of her work, using her framework of ideas as a lens through which to view the contemporary debates. By establishing a rich and distinctive account of Luxemburg, Nixon makes the argument for why her struggle for democratic renewal is as relevant as ever.

PART I

Taking History as it Comes

And finally, one must take history as it comes, whatever course it takes

Rosa Luxemburg, 11 January 1919, letter to Clara Zetkin (R: 492)

1

The Long Apprenticeship

FORMATIVE YEARS

She was born on 5 March 1871, in the small town of Zamość in the province of Lublin, part of Russian-occupied Poland near to the border of Ukraine. It had for centuries been on the vital trade route from northern Europe to the Black Sea. The large Jewish population was subject to special laws, excluded from most professions and in the main ghettoised. As her contemporary and collaborator, Paul Frölich put it: ‘It was an out-of-the-way, backward world, a world of resignation and want’ (2010[1939]: 1). Luxemburg’s family – although Jewish – was set apart from this world by its comparative financial security and its educational aspirations. Her paternal grandfather had achieved a certain level of prosperity and financial independence through his involvement in the timber trade, which had taken him to Germany where her father had been educated and had become acquainted with liberal ideas and Western European literature. Her mother was also well read in both Polish and German literature. So, Luxemburg, the youngest of five children, was brought up within a family that – notwithstanding the general poverty of the local Jewish community – was comparatively stable, secure and secular.

In 1873, the family moved to Warsaw. She had a pronounced limp and in 1876 was wrongly diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis. The wrong diagnosis led to the wrong treatment. As a consequence, she was confined for a year in a heavy plaster cast, which had no remedial effect whatsoever on her shrunken and misshaped leg. Indeed, her year-long confinement may well have prevented her body from adjusting to what seems in retrospect to have been a case of congenital hip dysplasia. Nevertheless, her early childhood seems to have been relatively happy. She rarely referred to these early years in later life but one might assume that, as the youngest in what seems to have been a caring and close-knit family, she was the focus of much attention from her older siblings and her parents. Her year-long confinement within the culturally and linguistically rich environment of her family may also have helped ensure that by the time she entered her teens she could read, speak and write in Russian, Polish, Hebrew and German.

The most highly regarded school in Warsaw was reserved for Russian children. So in 1884, Luxemburg applied for and won a scholarship to the Second Gymnasium – a single sex high school – where a limited number of places were allocated to Jews. All lessons and conversations within the school were conducted in Russian and the use of the Polish language – which for most pupils was their mother tongue – was strictly forbidden. After three years, she graduated with As in 14 subjects and Bs in five. This was an outstanding achievement that distinguished her academically from her fellow pupils. However, the gold medal that she would normally have been awarded as a mark of her distinction was withheld on the grounds that she had shown a rebellious attitude. To be labelled rebellious was – for a 16-year-old Jewish, Polish girl living in a deeply anti-Semitic, authoritarian and patriarchal society within Russian-occupied Poland – a serious matter. Luxemburg was already defining herself – and being defined – as an outsider.

Poland was in political turmoil. During the 1880s, the dominant revolutionary party was the Narodnaya Volya (‘People’s Will ’), which had developed as a terrorist organisation from an earlier populist grouping. Narodnaya Volya was inspired by a utopian vision of Polish national regeneration through the peasantry. Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, a new party was founded – Proletariat (‘Polish People’) – with a view to creating a broad base of support, instead of relying exclusively on acts of individual terrorism. Proletariat was Poland’s first socialist party and – following its foundation by Ludwik Waryński in 1881 – organised strikes in Warsaw and Łódź and a general strike in Żyradów in 1883. Large-scale arrests followed and in 1884 – the year Luxemburg entered high school – leading members of Proletariat were imprisoned. Four of the leaders were subsequently hanged in Warsaw, and Waryński was sentenced to 16 years’ hard labour. Having survived three years of his sentence, he died in custody as Luxemburg was graduating from high school.

The savage sentences meted out to the leaders of Proletariat destroyed the party’s existing support base and caused it to disband. A number of small groups continued to function: among them the Union of Polish Workers, the Association of Workers and the Second Proletariat. Although these were in the main disparate groupings, they shared with the now defunct Proletariat a determination to break with the terrorist tactics associated with the earlier Narodnaya Volya. By the time Luxemburg left school, she was in all likelihood already affiliated to socialist groups that were to form the nucleus of the Second Proletariat. To be associated with such groups – all of which operated beneath the radar screen of state surveillance – was a very risky business. From the perspective of her high school teachers, Luxemburg was – to draw on a contemporary analogy – at risk of ‘radicalisation’.

For the next two years, she gained her political education – informally and covertly – through groups associated with the Second Proletariat. We know little about this phase of her life. But presumably, she was involved in both theoretical and tactical discussions around key issues of the day: for example, the relation between nationalism and socialism and the appropriate means of organising resistance within occupied territory. These discussions are likely to have been well informed and intellectually challenging. Luxemburg would have been in the company of socialists, who were well versed across a range of Marxist and socialist literatures and well practised in the organisational tactics of resistance. Although we know little of how she related to her family during this period – or of how they related to her – there is no evidence of any serious rupture. It is likely, therefore, that she continued to draw on the cultural richness of her own family background and perhaps, in particular, her mother’s love of German literature.

She was coming under increasing state surveillance. This was undoubtedly a major push factor in her move to Zurich in 1889. She was clearly in danger. But there were also significant pull factors – not least the attraction of the University of Zurich as one of the few universities that admitted women. In addition, Zurich had a vibrant émigré community of political exiles and intellectual dissidents to which she would have been drawn. To head off alone and at the age of 19 for a new life in a new country must – even for someone who was fluent in three languages – have required immense chutzpah. There are tall tales of her crossing the border in a hay cart as a means of escape from political persecution. For all their romantic appeal, these apocryphal stories miss the point. She needed to get to Zurich to go on learning, to extend her intellectual reach, to achieve her academic potential and to be part of what for her was the vibrant centre of socialist debate. It is to the credit of her family that – as far as we know – they placed no obstacles in the way of what for her was both a welcome escape and an amazing opportunity.

Her move to Zurich coincided with the formation of the Second International (1889–1916): a key moment in the development of international socialism. The Second International provided an organisational framework – and a platform – for Luxemburg to sharpen her thinking, hone her rhetorical skills and assume a public presence on the radical left. Its collapse in 1916, following the outbreak of the First World War, was for Luxemburg and many of her comrades a personal tragedy as well as a political catastrophe. But in 1889, the world was all before her. Hers was no romantic vision whereby the collapse of capitalism would inevitably lead to the emergence of socialism. On the contrary, capitalism’s inevitable collapse – as she saw it – would lead to barbarism unless the conditions necessary for socialism had been put in place. The Second International provided a forum within which socialists were able to debate what constituted those conditions and how they might be established.

At the University of Zurich, she enrolled initially in the faculty of philosophy and pursued courses in the natural sciences and mathematics. Within the field of natural sciences, she specialised in biology and zoology. Later she switched to the faculty of law – which included the social sciences – but her interest in the natural sciences remained with her throughout her life. Her facility – and delight – in mathematics combined with her studies in the social sciences led her into the field of economics and provided the focus for her doctoral research into industrial development within Poland. Twenty years later, she would build on the insights gained from this earlier analysis and make a major contribution to economic theory through her work on capital accumulation.

She also fell in love – deeply and complicatedly in love – with someone as emotionally complex and intellectually uncompromising as herself. Leo Jogiches was born in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. He was four years older than Luxemburg. He was a superb tactician and had at his disposal the financial resources to fund the projects that would steer the Second International in what he believed to be the right direction. Throughout his life, he operated below the radar screen. He was undoubtedly a bit of a loner and no doubt politically and personally quite a controlling person. He possibly recognised in her the theoretician he might never be; she recognised in him the superb tactician of the Left from whom she needed to learn. Both probably perceived in the other something of what each possessed in abundance: the capacity for immense mental and physical courage.

In 1893, Luxemburg addressed the third congress of the Second International Congress in Zurich. She used the opportunity to distance herself from the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), which had been founded the previous year. Opposing the PPS, she argued against Polish independence and for collaboration between the Polish and Russian working class. In the same year, Jogiches established the journal Sprawa Robotnicza (‘The Workers’ Cause’), which was published in Paris. For the next five years, Luxemburg contributed regularly to the journal and made frequent visits to Paris to oversee its publication. She also used these visits to pursue her studies in the Polish libraries located in Paris. In 1894, Jogiches and Luxemburg – together with Julian Marchlewski and Adolph Warszawski – founded the Social Democracy and the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP) party as a breakaway from PPS. Sprawa Robotnicza became the main policy organ of SDKP, with Luxemburg (using the pseudonym R. Krusznyska) as its overall editor and one of its main contributors.

The final issue – Issue 24 – of Sprawa Robotnicza appeared in 1896. In its brief three-year publication span, it had mounted a sustained campaign against Polish nationalism and in support of international socialism. It had also helped to establish the SDKP as a political force within the Second International and to launch Luxemburg as a figure to be reckoned with in any debate on Polish nationalism and on the broader issue of the relation between nationalism and socialism. As a consequence, Luxemburg led the SDKP delegation at the Fourth Congress of the Second International in London. There she came under fierce personal attack, but the SDKP’s existence as a separate member of the Second International was established and with it her own reputation as a serious political activist and tactician.

The following year she submitted her doctoral thesis, The Industrial Development of Poland, for examination (See CW I: 1–78). This was approved and Luxemburg became one of the first women in Europe to obtain a PhD in economics. Her thesis provided a detailed analysis of the development of capitalism in Poland and highlighted the impact of the global economy on industrialisation. She concluded,

It is an inherent law of the capitalist method of production that it strives to materially bind together the most distant places, little by little, to make them economically dependent on each other, and eventually transform the entire world into one firmly joined productive mechanism.

(CW I: 73)

Having already established herself as a serious activist, she was now beginning to gain recognition as a significant theorist within the context of the Second International – an intellectually challenging and politically charged context in which, as Tony Judt put it, ‘you could not be important unless you were of theoretical standing’ (Judt with Snyder 2012: 90).

Luxemburg’s central insight into the global workings of the capitalist economy had implications that she would seek to elaborate for the rest of her life. Eventually it would enable her to theorise capitalism as inherently rapacious and exploitative, and to develop tactics of resistance based on the international solidarity of the working class and its capacity for collective action. By 1897, she had laid the foundations for these later achievements: she had gained academic recognition; she had learned how to edit, communicate in several languages, and manage complex printing schedules; how to speak publically; how to persuade and how to face down hostile criticism. She had also fallen in love with a man whom she respected but to whom she was financially and to some extent emotionally dependent and whose emotional detachment was a source of both fascination and frustration.

Zurich had served her well, but it was time to move on.

STRUGGLES WITHIN SOCIALISM

Berlin – the world’s most industrialised city and the centre of European socialist politics – was the obvious destination. But there were practical problems to be overcome, not least of which was obtaining a residential permit. She speedily resolved this problem with the assistance of her friend Olympia Lübeck, whose son, Gustav, was persuaded by his mother to marry Luxemburg. The marriage, which was entirely one of convenience with the couple parting company on the doorstep of the registry office immediately after the ceremony, automatically granted her German citizenship. The other pressing problem was finding somewhere to live. This problem was exacerbated by her financial situation. Luxemburg had neither independent means nor a steady income and had relied heavily on Jogiches for financial support during her time in Zurich. In moving to Berlin, she would have to continue to rely on that support, at least for the foreseeable future. This placed her in the awkward position of relying financially on Jogiches and at the same time determining on a course of action that would require them to be physically apart from one another for significant stretches of time.

She remained deeply attached to Jogiches. A letter dated 17 May 1898 and written shortly after her arrival in Berlin expressed a torrent of conflicting emotions. The problem of finding somewhere permanent to live was clearly at the forefront of her concerns: ‘The rooms are generally dreadfully expensive everywhere’ (L: 39). Attempting to justify her expenditure, she goes into details regarding the relative costs of different rented accommodation in different parts of the city. She then shifts to her own sense of isolation: ‘I feel as though I have arrived here as a complete stranger and all alone, to “conquer Berlin”, and having laid eyes on it, I now feel anxious in the face of its cold power, completely indifferent to me’ (L: 40). She describes how she had been reflecting on their time together in Switzerland: ‘when I turned my thoughts back for a moment to what I had left behind, what I saw was – an empty space … We neither lived together nor did we find joy in one another’ (L: 41). She writes of his ‘stony heart’ that is ‘as constant and reliable as a cliff, but also just as hard and inaccessible’. Yet, in spite of thes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• A Note to the Reader
• Part I Taking History as it Comes
• Part II The World Upside Down
• Part III Thinking Differently
• Coda: ‘I Was I Am I Shall Be’
• Glossary: Dates and Events, Organisations and People
• Notes
• References
• Index