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Living Flame
The Revolutionary Passion of Rosa Luxemburg
Paul Le Blanc
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Living Flame
The Revolutionary Passion of Rosa Luxemburg
Paul Le Blanc
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About This Book
Rosa Luxemburg, brilliant early 20th century German revolutionary, comes alive in a rich set of essays on her life, ideas, and lasting influence. The essays deal not only with her remarkable contributions to political, social and economic theory, but also touch on her vibrant personality and intimate friendships. This collection, the fruit of more than four decades of involvement with Luxemburg's work, simultaneously showcases her penetratingly intellectual, political and deeply humanistic qualities.
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Haymarket BooksISBN
9781642590906
1
ROSA LUXEMBURG
(1871â1919)
(1871â1919)
Rosa Luxemburg was born in a Poland divided under German and Russian domination, and she played a role in the revolutionary movement of each country. Her influence has been global, however, since her contributions place her within the very heart of the Marxist tradition.
Part of a cultured and well-to-do family in Warsaw, Luxemburg was an exceptionally bright child who was encouraged to pursue an education in Poland and then at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, where she received a doctorate in economics with a dissertation titled âThe Economic Development of Poland.â She became active in the revolutionary socialist movement while still in her teens, soon rising into the leadership circle of the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland, a militant group whose antinationalist orientation caused it to be outpaced by other currents emphasizing the cause of Polish independence.
Luxemburgâs working-class internationalism, however, prompted her move to Germany in order to play a more substantial role in the massive and influential Social Democratic Party (SPD) there. Luxemburg soon occupied a place in the revolutionary wing of the socialist movement, gaining considerable respect and also attracting considerable hostility.
QUALITY OF MARXISM
Among Luxemburgâs best known early writings are her polemic Reform or Revolution? (1899) and her more reflective âStagnation and Progress of Marxismâ (1903), both of which give a sense of the quality of her Marxism.1 The first involves a debate with a prominent SPD theoretician, Eduard Bernstein. The revolutionary approach of Karl Marx, according to Bernstein, was no longer relevant to modern capitalism and new German realities; he was convinced that the trade unions and reform efforts within the German parliament, both associated with the practice of the SPD, promised the piecemeal elimination of various oppressive aspects of capitalism and a gradual evolution to socialism. This approach was consistent with the actual practice of the SPD, he argued, not the commitment to the old notion that the working class should take political power in order to inaugurate the socialist transformation. In his view, this was related to a natural tendency in capitalist development for the economy to become socially organized and therefore to evolve in a socialist direction.
Luxemburg sharply challenged this view. She scoffed at Bernsteinâs method of âweighing minutely the good and bad sides of social reform and social revolution ⊠in the same manner in which cinnamon or pepper is weighed out.â This method of analysis, in which one could select methods of historical development âout of pleasure from the historical counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages,â constituted the abandonment of âdialectics and ⊠the materialist conception of historyâ that had guided Marx for an inferior method leading in the opposite directionâpushing âthe labor movement into bourgeois pathsâ and âparalyze completely the proletarian class struggle.â Following this method, the SPD program would become ânot the realization of socialism, but the reform of capitalism.â The very nature of capitalismâat the heart of the functioning of the capitalist economyâinvolved maximizing profits for the capitalist minority through a relentless exploitation of the working-class majority. It is true, she noted, that under capitalism âproduction takes on a progressively increasing social character,â but the capitalist form of this âsocial characterââincluding the rise and incredible expansion of powerful economic corporationsâwould mean that âcapitalist antagonisms, capitalist exploitation, the oppression of labor-power, are augmented to the extreme.â2
Luxemburg insisted that Marxâs insightâthat âcapitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossibleââremained as valid as ever. This would cause capitalismâs defenders to resist and push back both social reforms and the increasingly âinconvenientâ democratic forms that had been conceded in the face of previous revolutionary struggles. She was quite critical of the undemocratic limitations of Germanyâs parliamentary systemâhobbled by the power of monarchy, aristocracy, and big businessâand she dismissed Bernsteinâs notion that this âpoultry-yard of bourgeois parliamentarismâ could be utilized âto realize the most formidable social transformation of history, the passage from capitalism to socialism.â It would become necessary for the workers to push past these limitations, in the direction of genuine ârule by the peopleâ (that is, to political rule by the working class). âIn a word, democracy is indispensable not because it renders superfluous the conquest of political power by the proletariat, but because it renders this conquest both necessary and possible.â3
Arguing that the socialist movement must fight for âthe union of the broad popular masses with an aim reaching beyond the existing social order, the union of the daily struggle with the great world transformationâ from capitalism to socialism, Luxemburg saw revolutionary Marxism as the most effective means for helping the labor movement to avoid two negative extremes: âabandoning the mass character of the [SPD] or abandoning its final aim [and] falling into bourgeois reformism âŠâ4
On the other hand, Luxemburg warned that, to a large extent, what passed for âMarxismâ in the mass socialist movement was far more limited and dogmatic than the far more complex and nuanced body of thought of Marx (âhis detailed and comprehensive analysis of capitalist economy, and ⊠his method of historical research with its immeasurable field of applicationâ). She argued that much of this had gone beyond the initial practical needs of the working-class movement, and that âit is not true, as far as the practical struggle is concerned, Marx is out of date, that we have superseded Marx. On the contrary, it is because we have not yet learned to make adequate use of the most important mental weapons in the Marxist arsenal ⊠[because the labor movement had not felt] the urgent need of them in the earlier stages of our struggle.â5
Luxemburgâs belief was that developments of the twentieth century would create such an âurgent need,â and that rather than allowing the limited âorthodox Marxismâ to co-exist with the reformist practice hailed by Bernstein, the SPD and the world socialist movement would need to be revitalized with the more profoundly revolutionary orientation represented by Marxâs actual perspectives. At the same time, the spread of the critical Marxist approach (what she termed âthe Marxist method of research [being] socializedâ) would help theorists and activists in the workersâ movement to come to grips with the new developments confronting them, with innovative analyses, strategies, and tactics.
ANALYSES OF CAPITALISM AND IMPERIALISM
Applying the dialectical approach to her economic studies, Luxemburg understood capitalism as an expansive system driven by the dynamic of accumulation. Capital in the form of money is invested in capital in the form of raw materials and tools and labor-power, which is transformedâby the squeezing of actual labor out of the labor-power of the workersâinto capital in the form of the commodities thereby produced, whose increased value is realized through the sale of the commodities for more money than was originally invested, which is the increased capital out of which the capitalist extracts his profits, only to be driven to invest more capital for the purpose of achieving ever greater capital accumulation.
Luxemburgâs analysis of the capital accumulation process involves a complex critique of the second volume of Marxâs Capital. As part of her resolution of what she considers to be an underdeveloped and incomplete aspect of Marxâs analysis of how surplus value is realized, she focuses on the global dynamics of the capitalist system and argues that imperialism is at the heart of capitalist development.
In her classic The Accumulation of Capital (1913) she offers an incisive economic analysis of imperialism. There are several distinctive features of Luxemburgâs theory of imperialism that sets it off from that of other leading Marxists. She makes a great deal of the co-existence in the world of different cultures, different types of society, and different modes of production (i.e., different economic systems). Historically the dominant form of economy worldwide was the communal hunting and gathering mode of production, which was succeeded in many areas by a more or less communistic agricultural form of economy (which she characterized as a primitive âpeasant economyâ). This was succeeded in some areas by nonegalitarian societies dominated by militarily powerful elites, constituting modes of production that she labeled âslave economyâ and âfeudalism.â Sometimes coexisting with, sometimes superseding, these modes of production was a âsimple commodity productionâ in which artisans and farmers, for example, would produce commodities for the market in order to trade or sell for the purpose of acquiring other commodities that they might need or want. This simple commodity mode of production is different from the capitalist mode of production, which is driven by the already-described capital accumulation process, overseen by an increasingly wealthy and powerful capitalist minority.
Three features especially differentiate the analysis in The Accumulation of Capital from the perspectives of other prominent Marxists.
1.Luxemburg advances a controversial conceptualization of imperialismâs relationship to the exploitation of the working class in advanced capitalist countries. Because workers receive less value than they create, they are unable to purchase and consume all that is produced. This underconsumption means that capitalists must expand into noncapitalist areas, seeking markets as well as raw materials and investment opportunities (particularly new sources of labor) outside of the capitalist economic sphere.
2.Another distinctive quality of her conceptualization of imperialism is that it is not restricted to âthe highest stageâ or âlatest stageâ of capitalism. Rather, imperialism is something that one finds at the earliest beginnings of capitalismâin the period of what Marx calls âprimitive capitalist accumulationâ6âand which continues nonstop, with increasing and overwhelming reach and velocity, down to the present. Or as she puts it, âcapitalism in its full maturity also depends in all respects on non-capitalist strata and social organizations existing side by side with it [and] since the accumulation of capital becomes impossible in all points without non-capitalist surroundings, we cannot gain a true picture of it by assuming the exclusive and absolute domination of the capitalist mode of production.â7
3.Another special feature of Luxemburgâs contribution is her anthropological sensitivity to the impact of capitalist expansion on the rich variety of the worldâs peoples and cultures. The survey of capitalist expansionismâs impact in her Accumulation of Capital includes such examples as the destruction of the English peasants and artisans; the destruction of the Native American peoples (the so-called Indians); the enslavement of African peoples by the European powers; the ruination of small farmers in the midwestern and western regions of the United States; the onslaught of French colonialism in Algeria; the onslaught of British colonialism in India; British incursions into China, with special reference to the Opium Wars; and the onslaught of British colonialism in South Africa (with lengthy reference to the three-way struggle of Black African peoples, the Dutch Boers, and the British).
No less dramatic is Luxemburgâs perception of the economic role of militarism in the globalization of the market economy. âMilitarism fulfils a quite definite function in the history of capital, accompanying as it does every historical phase of accumulation,â she commented, noting that it was decisive in subordinating portions of the world to exploitation by capitalist enterprise. It played an increasingly explosive role in rivalry between competing imperialist powers. More than this, military spending âis in itself a province of accumulation,â making the modern state a primary âbuyer for the mass of products containing the capitalized surplus value,â although in fact, in the form of taxes, âthe workers foot the bill.â8
REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY AND ORGANIZATION
Luxemburg was profoundly critical of conservative developments in the SPD. An increasingly powerful tendency inside the party and trade union leadership was quietly moving along the reformist path outlined by Bernstein. This path, she prophetically insisted, would not lead gradually to socialism at all, but to the gradual accommodation and subjugation of the socialist movement to the authoritarian proclivities, the brutal realities, and the violent dynamics of the capitalist system.
Luxemburgâs revolutionary orientation resonated throughout much of the German labor movement. There were, however, powerful trade union leaders who despised her. They were insulted by her comment, in The Mass Strike: The Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906), that trade union struggles can only be like the labor of Sisyphus (rolling the boulder up a hill, only to have capitalist dynamics push the gains back down again) and that only socialism will secure permanent gains for the working class. Although she argued that it is necessary for trade unions to wage that struggle in order to defend and improve the workersâ conditions in the here-and-now, this did not soften her barbed observation that âthe specialization of professional activity as trade-union leaders, as well as the naturally restricted horizon which is bound up with disconnected economic struggles in a peaceful period, leads only too easily, among trade union officials, to bureaucratism and a certain narrowness of outlook.â9
As Luxemburg explained it, the workings and contradictions of capitalism can sometimes result in what she called a âviolent and sudden jerk which disturbs the momentary equilibrium of everyday social life,â aggravating âdeep-seated, long-suppressed resentmentâ among workers and other social layers, resulting in an explosive and spontaneous reaction on a mass scaleâin the form of strikes spreading through an industry and sometimes involving many, most, or all occupations and workplaces in one or more regions. Such mass strikes can go far beyond economic issues, sometimes involving whole communities in mass demonstrations and street battles, and are the means by which workers seek to âgrasp at new political rights and attempt to defend existing ones.â10 Once such strikes begin, there can occur tremendous solidarity, discipline, and effective organization. But they have an elemental quality, which defies any notion of revolutionary blueprints being drawn up in advance.
Luxemburg believed that what she defined as âthe most enlightened, most class-conscious vanguard of the proletariatâ (among whom she included the SPD in Germany, along with organized socialist parties of other countries) should play an active role not only when such explosions occur, but also beforehand in helping to educate and organize more and more workers in preparation for such developments, which would enable socialist parties to assume leadership of the whole movement. She did not think such upsurges would necessarily result in socialist revolution, but she believed that they would become âthe starting point of a feverish work of organizationâ that would embrace more of the working class, enabling it to fight for reforms in a manner that would help prepare it for the revolutionary struggle: âFrom the whirlwin...