Socialist Kshama Sawant launches re-election campaign
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Sunday, January 27, 2019
Stand with the Atomic Bomb Survivors: Hibakusha Appeal to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons Monday, January 28 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm: Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St, Copley Square
Dear Nuclear Disarmament and Faith Communities teams,
Formerly Boston-based, now Hiroshima-based, young disarmament activist Mary Popeo will speak at Community Church Monday evening about the Hibakusha Appeal to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons.
Mary and Christian will be in town the whole week and if there is interest in organizing another gathering, please reply. (Additionally, note a talk by James Carroll at BU on Tuesday afternoon: http://masspeaceaction.org/event/james-carroll-a-new-religious-call-for-the-elimination-of-nuclear-weapons/)
Stand with the Atomic Bomb Survivors: Hibakusha Appeal to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
Monday, January 28 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm: Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St, Copley Square
Mary Popeo
In what may be their last large effort to eliminate nuclear weapons, the atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have united to gather millions of endorsements from people like you! To date, they have gathered 8 million!
Mary Popeo and Christian Ciobanu, two young activists, will tell you about the Appeal and how you can get involved!
Sponsored by PEAC Institute, Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, Veterans for Peace, Memory Productions, and International Physicials for the Prevention of Nuclear War
About Mary Popeo and Peace Culture Village
To introduce Mary properly I think it’s fitting to first introduce Steve Leeper, former U.S. Assistant to the Mayor of Hiroshima who founded the world wide peace initiative, Mayors for Peace. With Steve, Mary is the co-founder of Peace Culture Village in Hiroshima. Together they are collaborating with Japanese Hibakusha in the monumental movement, HIBAKUSHA APPEAL TO END NUCLEAR WEAPONS NOW!
Hibakusha groups in Japan have come together in a united front to gather a billion signatures world-wide to once and for all end the threat of nuclear war. This is no idle daydream. The hibakusha, long devoted to the abolition of nuclear weapons, are in their 80’s and 90’s. Their time is running short. They realize their power and have united as never before in a major push to reach their goal.
I can’t stress enough how powerful this particular movement is and how its success may impact on the future of world peace for generations to come.
The energy is there. The momentum is building day by day, hour by hour. The hibakusha, after 72 years of suffering, will not be denied. They have already gathered 7 million signatures.
– David Rothauser
Steven LeeperFoundersteve@peacinstitute.org
Steve has spent about half of his 70 years in Japan. In both countries he has worked as a counselor (10 years), management consultant (14 years), translator (30 years) and peace activist (18 years). He suspects that he has translated, edited and interpreted more atomic bomb victim testimonies than anyone in the world, other than his wife, Elizabeth. From 2002 to 2007, he was the US representative for Mayors for Peace. From 2007-2013 he was chairman of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, the peace and international relations arm of the city of Hiroshima. He is a visiting professor at Hiroshima Jogakuin University and Nagasaki University. He has a Master’s degree in clinical psychology from West Georgia University. His books include Hiroshima Resolution (in Japanese and English), Nihon ga Sekai wo Suku and Amerikajin ga tsutaeru Hiroshima (both in Japanese only).
Mary Popeo
Executive Directormary@peaceculturevillage.org
Executive Directormary@peaceculturevillage.org
As a student at Boston College, Mary had two opportunities to visit Japan. During her trips, she conducted independent research on Hiroshima, interviewed 25 people familiar with nuclear issues, interned at the World Friendship Center, participated in the World Conference Against A & H Bombs, and helped organize the YMCA’s International Youth Peace Seminar. Returning to Boston profoundly influenced, Mary began volunteering with organizations like the American Friends Service Committee and Global Zero. In 2015, she participated in the Japan Council Against A & H Bomb’s annual Peace March as an international youth relay marcher, walking from Okayama to Hiroshima to spread awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons. Her dream was to move to Hiroshima, and after hearing about PCV she was determined to live there.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Virginia Pratt < pratvirg@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 5:28 PM
Subject: Fwd: Hibakusha Appeal
To: joan ecklein < joanecklein@comcast.net>, Eileen Kurkoski < eileen4wilpf@gmail.com>, Marie-Louise Jackson-Miller < marieljm1961@yahoo.com>, Ausra Kubilius < ausmkub@gmail.com>, Paula Sharaga < morethanpaula@gmail.com>, Paul Shannon < pshannon@afsc.org>, Cole Harrison <cole@masspeaceaction.org>, David ROTHAUSER < drothauser@gmail.com>, Guntram Mueller < guntrammueller1@gmail.com>, Dean Stevens <dean@deanstevens.com>, Tilly Texeira < tillyruth@aol.com>
From: Virginia Pratt < pratvirg@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 5:28 PM
Subject: Fwd: Hibakusha Appeal
To: joan ecklein < joanecklein@comcast.net>, Eileen Kurkoski < eileen4wilpf@gmail.com>, Marie-Louise Jackson-Miller < marieljm1961@yahoo.com>, Ausra Kubilius < ausmkub@gmail.com>, Paula Sharaga < morethanpaula@gmail.com>, Paul Shannon < pshannon@afsc.org>, Cole Harrison <cole@masspeaceaction.org>, David ROTHAUSER < drothauser@gmail.com>, Guntram Mueller < guntrammueller1@gmail.com>, Dean Stevens <dean@deanstevens.com>, Tilly Texeira < tillyruth@aol.com>
Please see information on Mary Popeo's availability in late January and early Feb. I am hoping we might be willing to host a joint sponsored event.
Virginia
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mary Popeo < mary@peaceculturevillage.org>
Date: Thursday, January 10, 2019
Subject: Hibakusha Appeal
To: Virginia Pratt < pratvirg@gmail.com>
Cc: Christian Ciobanu < christian@peacinstitute.org>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mary Popeo < mary@peaceculturevillage.org>
Date: Thursday, January 10, 2019
Subject: Hibakusha Appeal
To: Virginia Pratt < pratvirg@gmail.com>
Cc: Christian Ciobanu < christian@peacinstitute.org>
Hi Virginia,
I hope you had a restful holiday! My colleague Christian and I will be in Boston from January 28 through February 2 to organize and speak about the Hibakusha Appeal! Let me know if WILPF might be available to speak with us somewhere in the time period mentioned above.
Thanks, and I hope to meet you soon.
Mary
--
Virginia
Not one step back
Cole Harrison
Executive Director
Massachusetts Peace Action - the Commonwealth's largest grassroots peace organization
11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138
617-354-2169 w
617-466-9274 m
Facebook: facebook.com/masspeaceaction
Twitter: masspeaceaction
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Environmental protection we can do RootsAction Team
Environmental protection we can do
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Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-HONOR LENIN, LUXEMBURG AND LIEBKNECHT- THE THREE L’S-Honor Karl Liebknecht! -Karl Liebknecht Condemned by His Party for Voting "No" on December 2, 1914, and His Answer
Markin comment
EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. HERE’S WHY WE HONOR KARL LIEBKNECHT
*******
Karl Liebknecht
The Future Belongs to the People
Karl Liebknecht Condemned by His Party for Voting "No" on December 2, 1914, and His Answer
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN December, 1914, the Social-Democratic representation of the Reichstag censured Karl Liebknecht for voting "No" in the open meeting of the Reichstag.
At a meeting on February 2, 1915, the Reichstag Socialists adopted a resolution condemning his stand and repudiating alleged misleading information he had spread about the Party. To this Liebknecht answered in the Vorwärts of February 5, 1915, as follows:
BERLIN, February 5, 1915.
Editor Vorwärts,
BERLIN.
DEAR COMRADE: –
Concerning the resolution adopted by the Social-Democratic Deputies of the Reichstag I wish to remark: (1) I voted against the war credits because the vote for the war credits is in my opinion in sharp contradiction not only to the interests of the proletariat, but also to the resolutions of the Social-Democratic Party and of the International Socialist Convention. And the Social-Democratic Deputies in the Reichstag are not justified in recommending a violation of the Program and party decisions.
In a letter of Dec. 3, 1914, addressed to the Chairman of the Social-Democratic Deputies of the Reichstag I made my stand clear.
(2) Misleading information about the Party I have not given out. The Social-Democratic Deputies in the Reichstag, who are not the proper authorities for such decisions, voted down my motion to postpone making any decision on this point until a thorough discussion had taken place.
KARL LIEBKNECHT.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents | Next
EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. HERE’S WHY WE HONOR KARL LIEBKNECHT
*******
Karl Liebknecht
The Future Belongs to the People
Karl Liebknecht Condemned by His Party for Voting "No" on December 2, 1914, and His Answer
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN December, 1914, the Social-Democratic representation of the Reichstag censured Karl Liebknecht for voting "No" in the open meeting of the Reichstag.
At a meeting on February 2, 1915, the Reichstag Socialists adopted a resolution condemning his stand and repudiating alleged misleading information he had spread about the Party. To this Liebknecht answered in the Vorwärts of February 5, 1915, as follows:
BERLIN, February 5, 1915.
Editor Vorwärts,
BERLIN.
DEAR COMRADE: –
Concerning the resolution adopted by the Social-Democratic Deputies of the Reichstag I wish to remark: (1) I voted against the war credits because the vote for the war credits is in my opinion in sharp contradiction not only to the interests of the proletariat, but also to the resolutions of the Social-Democratic Party and of the International Socialist Convention. And the Social-Democratic Deputies in the Reichstag are not justified in recommending a violation of the Program and party decisions.
In a letter of Dec. 3, 1914, addressed to the Chairman of the Social-Democratic Deputies of the Reichstag I made my stand clear.
(2) Misleading information about the Party I have not given out. The Social-Democratic Deputies in the Reichstag, who are not the proper authorities for such decisions, voted down my motion to postpone making any decision on this point until a thorough discussion had taken place.
KARL LIEBKNECHT.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents | Next
Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Honor 1920s German Left Communist Leader Karl Korsch-On Materialist Dialectic (1924)
Markin comment:
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to American Communist party founder and later Trotskyist leader, James P. Cannon, Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, and German Left Communist Karl Korsch.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
*******
Karl Korsch 1924
On Materialist Dialectic (1924)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First published: in Internationale, 1924
Translated by Karl-Heinz Otto
Source: Class Against Class;
Transcribed: by Zdravko Saveski, for marxists.org 2009.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vladimir Ilich Lenin declared two years ago in his article "Under the Banner of Marxism," published in issue no. 21 of the journal Communist International, that one of the two great tasks which communism must deal with in the field of ideology is "to organize a systematic study of Hegel’s dialectic from a materialist standpoint; that is to say, the dialectic which Marx so successfully employed in a concrete manner not only in Capital but also in his historical and political works." Lenin then did not share the great anxiety that someone just might "via the idealist philosophy of neo-Hegelianism" smuggle "ideological byways" into Marxist-communist theory-an anxiety which is commonly voiced today by many of our leading comrades as soon as anyone at any time tries to undertake a practical attempt to engage himself in this program of Lenin's. A few examples might prove this contention: when a year ago, for the first time in 80 years, the Meiner Publishing Company published an edition of the larger Hegelian Logic, a formal warning appeared in the Red Flag, May 20, 1923, of the danger this new Hegel would pose to all those who, in studying Hegel's dialectic, "lacked a critical knowledge of the whole history of philosophy and moreover an accurate familiarity with the main results and methods of the natural sciences since Hegel's time". Eight days later, in the Red Flag of May 27, 1923, another representative of the faction then practically and theoretically dominant in the KPD formally condemned Georg Lukacs for his attempt, by way of a collection of essays, to "provide the beginning or even just the occasion for a genuinely profitable discussion of dialectical method." The scientific journal of the German party, the Internationale, completely ignored the whole book by Lukacs for reasons of simplicity. Bela Kun, in his essay on "The Propagation of Leninism" in the latest issue (no. 33) of the Communist International, not only draws attention to deviations already current but moreover observes that "some Communist publicists, as yet without a political name, could deviate in the near future into revisionist bylaws, departing from orthodox Marxism." (!)
After these examples, of which there are many, one might suggest that the detailed demand-which Lenin raised earlier and lastly in the essay of 1922-that in our work of Communist enlightenment we must organize a systematic study from a materialist standpoint, not only of the dialectical method of Marx and Engels but also of "Hegel's dialectic," did not meet with very much understanding in the leading theoretical circles of the Comintern, and still less among the theoreticians of the German Communist party. When we look for the causes of this phenomenon we must make distinctions. To one faction (typified by Bukharin's book The Theory of Historical Materialism) the whole of "philosophy" has fundamentally already reached a point that in reality it was to reach only in the second phase of Communist society after the full victory of the proletarian revolution, viz. the transcended standpoint of an unenlightened past. These comrades believe that the question of "scientific" method is solved once and for all in the empirical methods of the natural sciences and the corresponding positive-historical method of the social sciences. Little do they realize that just this method, which was the war-cry under which the burgher class undertook its struggle for power from the beginning, is also today still the specific bourgeois method of scientific research, which, it is true, is sometimes theoretically renounced by the representatives of modern bourgeois science in the present period of the decline of bourgeois society, but which in practice will be clung to.
To the other faction this matter is more complicated. Here people see a "danger" in a however "materialistically" turned occupation with Hegel’s dialectical method for the reason that they know only too well this danger from their own experience, and indeed secretly become its victims as often as they are exposed to it. This perhaps somewhat bold sounding assertion will not only be illustrated but proven outright by the example of a little article, "On the Matter of Dialectic," by A. Thalheimer, published in International S, no. 9 (May 1923), and at the same time also in the information sheets of the Communist Academy in Moscow. In this article, Comrade Thalheirner links up with Franz Mehring's thesis-which I share and hold tenable-that from the Marxist dialectical-materialist standpoint it is no longer practical and factually not even possible to deal with this "materialist dialectical" method separated from a concrete "matter." Comrade Thalheimer declares that although Mehring's rejection of an abstract treatment of the dialectical method represents as such a correct nucleus, it nevertheless "oversteps its goal." To work out a dialectic is "an urgent necessity," inter alia, because "in the most progressive parts of the world proletariat the need arises to create a comprehensive and orderly world-view (!), something that lies beyond the practical demands of the struggle and the building of socialism," and this, furthermore, contains within itself "the demand for a dialectic." Comrade Thalheimer then goes on that in composing such a dialectic one ought to critically link up with Hegel "not only in relation to the method, but also to the matter." The genial progressiveness of Hegel is his demand that "the inner, all-embracing systematic connection of all categories of thinking be revealed." This task would apply equally to the materialist dialectic. Hegel's method need only be turned over; by which a materialist dialectic would emerge that would determine not reality by thought but rather thought by reality.
We believe that in all their brevity these words of Comrade Thalheimer prove conclusively that he is altogether incapable of imagining the dialectical method in any other way than an Hegelian-idealist one. Nevertheless far be it from us to say that Comrade Thalheimer is an idealist dialectician. We have stated elsewhere ("Lenin and the Comintern") that Comrade Thalheimer avows an apparently materialistic-dialectical method in a later essay which is in reality not dialectical at all but is pure positivism. We can here supplement this statement by saying that as far as Comrade Thalheimer is a dialectician he is an idealist dialectician and conceives the dialectical method in no other than its Hegelian-idealist form. And the proof thereof we wish to arrive at positively by stating what in our conception constitutes the essence of materialist dialectic, that is, Hegel’s dialectic applied materialistically by Marx and Lenin. In doing so, we connect with the results of our earlier published investigations on the relation of Marxism and Philosophy.
It is high time to dispense with the superficial notion that the transition from the idealist dialectic of Hegel to the materialist dialectic of Marx would be such a simple matter as to he achieved by a mere "overturning," a mere "turning upside down," of a method remaining other' wise unaltered. There are certainly some generally known passages in Marx where he himself characterized in this abstract way the difference of his method from Hegel's as a mere contrast. However, whoever does not determine the meaning of Marx's method from these quotations, but instead delves into Marx's theoretical practice, will soon easily see that this "transition" in method, like all transitions, represents not a mere abstract rotation, but rather has a rich concrete content.
At the same time as classical economics developed the theory of value in the "mystified" and abstract unhistorical form of Ricardo, classical German philosophy also made the attempt, in a likewise mystical and abstract manner, to break through the barriers of bourgeois philosophy. Like Ricardo's theory of value, the "dialectical method" developed at the same time in the revolutionary epoch of bourgeois society, and already shows in its consequences the way beyond bourgeois society (just as the practical revolutionary movement of the bourgeoisie also partly aimed beyond bourgeois society before and until the proletarian revolution movement was to confront it "independently"). But all these perceptions brought forward by bourgeois economics and bourgeois philosophy had yet to remain in the last instance "pure" perceptions, their concepts the "reconstituted being," their theories nothing but passive "reflections" of this being, real "ideologies" in the narrow and more precise sense of this Marxian expression. Bourgeois economics and bourgeois philosophy could well recognize the "contradictions," the "antinomies" of the bourgeois economy and bourgeois thought, and could even illuminate them with the greatest of clarity, yet in the end the contradictions prevailed. It is only the new science of the proletarian class which can break this ban, a science that unlike bourgeois science is no longer just "pure" theoretical science, but is revolutionary practice at the same time. The political economy of Karl Marx and the materialist dialectic of the proletarian class lead in their practical application to a dissolution of these contradictions in the reality of social life, and thereby at the same time in the reality of thought which is a real component of this social reality. It is thus we must understand Karl Marx when he credits proletarian class consciousness and his materialist-dialectical method with a power that the method of bourgeois philosophy never possessed, not even in its last, richest and highest Hegelian development. Just for the proletariat, just for it and only for it, will it be possible, through the development of its class consciousness become practical in tendency, to overcome that fetter of a still remaining "immediacy" or "abstraction" which for all purely perceiving behavior, for Hegel's idealist dialectic as well, clearly remains standing in the final analysis in insuperable "contradictions." It is here, and not in a merely abstract "inversion" or "turning upside down," that lies the revolutionary further development of the idealist dialectic, of classical bourgeois philosophy, into that materialist dialectic which has been theoretically conceptualized by Karl Marx as the method of a new science and practice of the proletarian class, and has been applied in theory and practice alike by Lenin.
When we look at the "transition" from Hegel's bourgeois dialectic to the proletarian dialectic of Marx-Lenin from this historical viewpoint, we immediately grasp the complete absurdity of the notion that an independent "system" of materialist dialectic is possible. Only an idealist dialectician could undertake an attempt to free the totality of forms of thought (determinations of thought, categories)-which are in part consciously applied in our practice, science, and philosophy, and in part move through our minds instinctively and unconsciously-from the material which is the subject of our intuiting, imagining and yearning, and in which they are otherwise shrouded, and then to examine it as a separate material in itself. The last and greatest of the idealist dialecticians, the burgher Hegel, had already partly seen through the "untruth" of this standpoint and had "introduced content into logical reflection (see his preface to the second Lasson edition of the Logic, p. 6). But this abstract method is completely absurd for the materialist dialectician, Apart from its respective concrete historical content a real "materialist" dialectic can state nothing at all about the determinations of thought and the relations between them. Only from the standpoint of the idealist and thus bourgeois dialectic is it possible to fulfill Thalheimer's demand according to which dialectics would have to map out the connection of the determinations of thought as an "inner, all-round, systematic connection of all the categories of thought." Rather, from the standpoint of the materialist dialectic that sentence which Karl Marx once voiced in relation to "economic categories" is to be applied to the connection of categories or determinations of thought in general: they stand to one another not in a connection "in the idea" (for which "washed out notion" Marx thrashed Proudhon!), not in an "inner systematic connection," but even their apparently purely logical and systematic sequence is "determined through the relations which they have to one another m modern bourgeois society." With the alteration of historical reality and practice the determinations of thought and all their connections also alter. To overlook their historical context and to wish to bring the determination of thought and their abstract relations into a system means the surrender of the revolutionary proletarian materialist dialectic in favor of a mode of thought which is only "materialistically" inverted in theory, but which in practical reality remains the old, unchanged, "idealist" dialectic of bourgeois philosophy. The "materialist dialectic" of the proletarian class cannot be taught as a practical "science" with its own particular abstract "material," nor by so-called examples. It can only be applied concretely in the practice of the proletarian revolution and in a theory which is an immanent real component of this revolutionary practice.
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to American Communist party founder and later Trotskyist leader, James P. Cannon, Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, and German Left Communist Karl Korsch.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
*******
Karl Korsch 1924
On Materialist Dialectic (1924)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First published: in Internationale, 1924
Translated by Karl-Heinz Otto
Source: Class Against Class;
Transcribed: by Zdravko Saveski, for marxists.org 2009.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vladimir Ilich Lenin declared two years ago in his article "Under the Banner of Marxism," published in issue no. 21 of the journal Communist International, that one of the two great tasks which communism must deal with in the field of ideology is "to organize a systematic study of Hegel’s dialectic from a materialist standpoint; that is to say, the dialectic which Marx so successfully employed in a concrete manner not only in Capital but also in his historical and political works." Lenin then did not share the great anxiety that someone just might "via the idealist philosophy of neo-Hegelianism" smuggle "ideological byways" into Marxist-communist theory-an anxiety which is commonly voiced today by many of our leading comrades as soon as anyone at any time tries to undertake a practical attempt to engage himself in this program of Lenin's. A few examples might prove this contention: when a year ago, for the first time in 80 years, the Meiner Publishing Company published an edition of the larger Hegelian Logic, a formal warning appeared in the Red Flag, May 20, 1923, of the danger this new Hegel would pose to all those who, in studying Hegel's dialectic, "lacked a critical knowledge of the whole history of philosophy and moreover an accurate familiarity with the main results and methods of the natural sciences since Hegel's time". Eight days later, in the Red Flag of May 27, 1923, another representative of the faction then practically and theoretically dominant in the KPD formally condemned Georg Lukacs for his attempt, by way of a collection of essays, to "provide the beginning or even just the occasion for a genuinely profitable discussion of dialectical method." The scientific journal of the German party, the Internationale, completely ignored the whole book by Lukacs for reasons of simplicity. Bela Kun, in his essay on "The Propagation of Leninism" in the latest issue (no. 33) of the Communist International, not only draws attention to deviations already current but moreover observes that "some Communist publicists, as yet without a political name, could deviate in the near future into revisionist bylaws, departing from orthodox Marxism." (!)
After these examples, of which there are many, one might suggest that the detailed demand-which Lenin raised earlier and lastly in the essay of 1922-that in our work of Communist enlightenment we must organize a systematic study from a materialist standpoint, not only of the dialectical method of Marx and Engels but also of "Hegel's dialectic," did not meet with very much understanding in the leading theoretical circles of the Comintern, and still less among the theoreticians of the German Communist party. When we look for the causes of this phenomenon we must make distinctions. To one faction (typified by Bukharin's book The Theory of Historical Materialism) the whole of "philosophy" has fundamentally already reached a point that in reality it was to reach only in the second phase of Communist society after the full victory of the proletarian revolution, viz. the transcended standpoint of an unenlightened past. These comrades believe that the question of "scientific" method is solved once and for all in the empirical methods of the natural sciences and the corresponding positive-historical method of the social sciences. Little do they realize that just this method, which was the war-cry under which the burgher class undertook its struggle for power from the beginning, is also today still the specific bourgeois method of scientific research, which, it is true, is sometimes theoretically renounced by the representatives of modern bourgeois science in the present period of the decline of bourgeois society, but which in practice will be clung to.
To the other faction this matter is more complicated. Here people see a "danger" in a however "materialistically" turned occupation with Hegel’s dialectical method for the reason that they know only too well this danger from their own experience, and indeed secretly become its victims as often as they are exposed to it. This perhaps somewhat bold sounding assertion will not only be illustrated but proven outright by the example of a little article, "On the Matter of Dialectic," by A. Thalheimer, published in International S, no. 9 (May 1923), and at the same time also in the information sheets of the Communist Academy in Moscow. In this article, Comrade Thalheirner links up with Franz Mehring's thesis-which I share and hold tenable-that from the Marxist dialectical-materialist standpoint it is no longer practical and factually not even possible to deal with this "materialist dialectical" method separated from a concrete "matter." Comrade Thalheimer declares that although Mehring's rejection of an abstract treatment of the dialectical method represents as such a correct nucleus, it nevertheless "oversteps its goal." To work out a dialectic is "an urgent necessity," inter alia, because "in the most progressive parts of the world proletariat the need arises to create a comprehensive and orderly world-view (!), something that lies beyond the practical demands of the struggle and the building of socialism," and this, furthermore, contains within itself "the demand for a dialectic." Comrade Thalheimer then goes on that in composing such a dialectic one ought to critically link up with Hegel "not only in relation to the method, but also to the matter." The genial progressiveness of Hegel is his demand that "the inner, all-embracing systematic connection of all categories of thinking be revealed." This task would apply equally to the materialist dialectic. Hegel's method need only be turned over; by which a materialist dialectic would emerge that would determine not reality by thought but rather thought by reality.
We believe that in all their brevity these words of Comrade Thalheimer prove conclusively that he is altogether incapable of imagining the dialectical method in any other way than an Hegelian-idealist one. Nevertheless far be it from us to say that Comrade Thalheimer is an idealist dialectician. We have stated elsewhere ("Lenin and the Comintern") that Comrade Thalheimer avows an apparently materialistic-dialectical method in a later essay which is in reality not dialectical at all but is pure positivism. We can here supplement this statement by saying that as far as Comrade Thalheimer is a dialectician he is an idealist dialectician and conceives the dialectical method in no other than its Hegelian-idealist form. And the proof thereof we wish to arrive at positively by stating what in our conception constitutes the essence of materialist dialectic, that is, Hegel’s dialectic applied materialistically by Marx and Lenin. In doing so, we connect with the results of our earlier published investigations on the relation of Marxism and Philosophy.
It is high time to dispense with the superficial notion that the transition from the idealist dialectic of Hegel to the materialist dialectic of Marx would be such a simple matter as to he achieved by a mere "overturning," a mere "turning upside down," of a method remaining other' wise unaltered. There are certainly some generally known passages in Marx where he himself characterized in this abstract way the difference of his method from Hegel's as a mere contrast. However, whoever does not determine the meaning of Marx's method from these quotations, but instead delves into Marx's theoretical practice, will soon easily see that this "transition" in method, like all transitions, represents not a mere abstract rotation, but rather has a rich concrete content.
At the same time as classical economics developed the theory of value in the "mystified" and abstract unhistorical form of Ricardo, classical German philosophy also made the attempt, in a likewise mystical and abstract manner, to break through the barriers of bourgeois philosophy. Like Ricardo's theory of value, the "dialectical method" developed at the same time in the revolutionary epoch of bourgeois society, and already shows in its consequences the way beyond bourgeois society (just as the practical revolutionary movement of the bourgeoisie also partly aimed beyond bourgeois society before and until the proletarian revolution movement was to confront it "independently"). But all these perceptions brought forward by bourgeois economics and bourgeois philosophy had yet to remain in the last instance "pure" perceptions, their concepts the "reconstituted being," their theories nothing but passive "reflections" of this being, real "ideologies" in the narrow and more precise sense of this Marxian expression. Bourgeois economics and bourgeois philosophy could well recognize the "contradictions," the "antinomies" of the bourgeois economy and bourgeois thought, and could even illuminate them with the greatest of clarity, yet in the end the contradictions prevailed. It is only the new science of the proletarian class which can break this ban, a science that unlike bourgeois science is no longer just "pure" theoretical science, but is revolutionary practice at the same time. The political economy of Karl Marx and the materialist dialectic of the proletarian class lead in their practical application to a dissolution of these contradictions in the reality of social life, and thereby at the same time in the reality of thought which is a real component of this social reality. It is thus we must understand Karl Marx when he credits proletarian class consciousness and his materialist-dialectical method with a power that the method of bourgeois philosophy never possessed, not even in its last, richest and highest Hegelian development. Just for the proletariat, just for it and only for it, will it be possible, through the development of its class consciousness become practical in tendency, to overcome that fetter of a still remaining "immediacy" or "abstraction" which for all purely perceiving behavior, for Hegel's idealist dialectic as well, clearly remains standing in the final analysis in insuperable "contradictions." It is here, and not in a merely abstract "inversion" or "turning upside down," that lies the revolutionary further development of the idealist dialectic, of classical bourgeois philosophy, into that materialist dialectic which has been theoretically conceptualized by Karl Marx as the method of a new science and practice of the proletarian class, and has been applied in theory and practice alike by Lenin.
When we look at the "transition" from Hegel's bourgeois dialectic to the proletarian dialectic of Marx-Lenin from this historical viewpoint, we immediately grasp the complete absurdity of the notion that an independent "system" of materialist dialectic is possible. Only an idealist dialectician could undertake an attempt to free the totality of forms of thought (determinations of thought, categories)-which are in part consciously applied in our practice, science, and philosophy, and in part move through our minds instinctively and unconsciously-from the material which is the subject of our intuiting, imagining and yearning, and in which they are otherwise shrouded, and then to examine it as a separate material in itself. The last and greatest of the idealist dialecticians, the burgher Hegel, had already partly seen through the "untruth" of this standpoint and had "introduced content into logical reflection (see his preface to the second Lasson edition of the Logic, p. 6). But this abstract method is completely absurd for the materialist dialectician, Apart from its respective concrete historical content a real "materialist" dialectic can state nothing at all about the determinations of thought and the relations between them. Only from the standpoint of the idealist and thus bourgeois dialectic is it possible to fulfill Thalheimer's demand according to which dialectics would have to map out the connection of the determinations of thought as an "inner, all-round, systematic connection of all the categories of thought." Rather, from the standpoint of the materialist dialectic that sentence which Karl Marx once voiced in relation to "economic categories" is to be applied to the connection of categories or determinations of thought in general: they stand to one another not in a connection "in the idea" (for which "washed out notion" Marx thrashed Proudhon!), not in an "inner systematic connection," but even their apparently purely logical and systematic sequence is "determined through the relations which they have to one another m modern bourgeois society." With the alteration of historical reality and practice the determinations of thought and all their connections also alter. To overlook their historical context and to wish to bring the determination of thought and their abstract relations into a system means the surrender of the revolutionary proletarian materialist dialectic in favor of a mode of thought which is only "materialistically" inverted in theory, but which in practical reality remains the old, unchanged, "idealist" dialectic of bourgeois philosophy. The "materialist dialectic" of the proletarian class cannot be taught as a practical "science" with its own particular abstract "material," nor by so-called examples. It can only be applied concretely in the practice of the proletarian revolution and in a theory which is an immanent real component of this revolutionary practice.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
*In Honor Of Rosa Luxemburg- The Rose Of The Revolution- LENIN AND ROSA LUXEMBURG By Max Shachtman
Markin comment:
This is from the days when old Max Shachtman knew how to "speak" Marxism. A couple of years later, when it mattered, mattered a lot, when the defense of the Soviet Union was on the line he lost his tongue.
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From Issue no.3, of the Marxist Discussion journal What Next? By kind permission of the editor Bob Pitt, 24 Georgiana St, London, NW1 0EA, email wh@tnext.freeserve.co.uk.
LENIN AND ROSA LUXEMBURG
Max ShachtmanFrom The New International, May 1938
Two legends have been created about the relationship between the views of Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. Despite their antagonistic origins and aims, they supplement each other in effect. Neither one of the myth-makers approaches the extremely interesting and instructive subject from an objective historical standpoint. Consequently, the analysis made by each of them reduces itself to an instrument of factional politics which is, in both cases, the politics of reaction.
One school of thought, if such a term is permissible here, is headed by the faculty of Stalinist falsification. It covers up its reactionary objectives by posing as critics of Luxemburg and proponents of Lenin. A discussion of its arguments is rendered impossible by the very nature of its position, which formally prohibits both argument and discussion. Its scientific value is summarised in a few sentences from the papal bull issued by Stalin in 1932 in connection with the luckless Slutsky’s study on Lenin’s incorrect appraisal of Kautsky and Luxemburg: ‘You wish to enter into discussion against this Trotskyist thesis of Slutsky’s? But what is there to discuss in this? Is it not plain that Slutsky is simply slandering Lenin, slandering the Bolsheviks? Slander must be branded, not transformed into a subject for discussion.’ The Stalinists have the Catholics’ attitude toward their dogmas: they assume what is to be proved; their arbitrary conclusions are presented as their premises; their statement of the problem is at the same time their answer – and it brooks no discussion. ‘Bolshevism’ is absolutely and at all points and stages irreconcilable with ‘Luxemburgism’ because of the original sin of the latter in disputing the ‘organisational principles’ of the former.
The other school of thought is less authoritarian in tone and form, but just as rigid in unhistorical dogma; and if, unlike the Stalinists, it is not wholly composed of turncoats from revolutionary Marxism, it has a substantial sprinkling of them. Their objectives are covered-up by posing as critics of Lenin and defenders of Luxemburg. They include anachronistic philosophers of ultra-leftism and express-train travellers fleeing from the pestilence of Stalinism to the plague of Social Democracy. Bolshevism, they argue, is definitely bankrupt. The horrors of Stalinism are the logical and inevitable outcome of Lenin’s Centralism’, or – as it is put by a recent critic, Liston Oak, who seeks the ‘inner flaws of Bolshevism’ – of Lenin’s ’totalitarianism’. Luxemburg, on the other hand, stressed the democratic side of the movement, the struggle, the goal. Hence, ‘Luxemburgism’ is absolutely irreconcilable with ‘Bolshevism’ because of the original sin of the former in imposing its Jacobin, or bourgeois, or super-centralist, or totalitarian ‘organisational principles’.
The use of quotation marks around the terms employed is justified and necessary, for at least in nine cases out of ten the airy analysts have only the vaguest and most twisted idea of what the disputes between Luxemburg and Lenin really were. In just as many cases they have revealed a cavalier indisposition to acquaint themselves with the historical documents and the actual writings of the two great thinkers. A brief survey will disclose, I believe, the superficiality of the arguments which, especially since the obvious putrescence of Stalinism, have gained a certain currency in the radical movement.
Nothing but. misunderstanding can result from a failure to bear in mind the fact that Lenin and Luxemburg worked, fought and developed their ideas in two distinctly different movements, operating within no less different countries, at radically different stages of development; consequently, in countries and movements where the problems of the working class were posed in quite different forms. It is the absence of this concrete and historical approach to the disputes between Lenin, of the Social-Democratic Labour Party of Russia, and Luxemburg, of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, that so surely brings most critics to grief.
The ‘organisational dispute’ between Lenin and Luxemburg did not originate in the former’s insistence on a break with Kautsky and the centrists before the war. When Stalin thunders against anyone ‘who can doubt that the Bolsheviks brought about a split with their own opportunists and centrist-conciliators long before the imperialist war (1904-12) without at the same time pursuing a policy of rupture, a policy of split with the opportunists and centrists of the Second International’ – he is simply substituting ukase for historical fact.
The truth is that Rosa Luxemburg reached a clear estimate of Kautsky and broke with his self-styled ‘Marxian centre’, long before Lenin did. For many years after the turn of the century, Kautsky’s prestige among all the factions of the Russian movement was unparalleled. The Menshevik Abramovich does not exaggerate when he writes that
’A West-European can hardly imagine the enormous authority which the leaders of the German Social Democracy, the Liebknechts, the Bebels, the Singers, enjoyed in Russia. Among these leaders, Karl Kautsky occupied quite a special place ... serving for all the Russian Marxists and Social Democrats as the highest authority in all the theoretical and tactical questions of scientific socialism and the labour movement. In every disputed question, in every newly-arisen problem, the first thought always was: What would Kautsky say about this? How would Kautsky have decided this question?’
Lenin’s much-disputed What is to be Done? held up, as is known, the German Social Democracy and its leader, Bebel, as models for the Russian movement. When Kautsky wrote his famous article, after the 1905 revolution in Russia, on the Slavs and the world revolution, in which, Zinoviev writes, under Luxemburg’s influence, he advanced substantially the Bolshevik conception, Lenin was highly elated. ‘Where and when,’ he wrote in July 1905, in a polemic against Parvus, ‘have I characterised the revolutionism of Bebel and Kautsky as “opportunism”? Where and when have I presumed to call into existence in the international Social Democracy a special tendency which was not identical with the tendency of Bebel and Kautsky.’ A year and a half later, Lenin wrote that ‘the vanguard of the Russian working class knows Karl Kautsky for some time now as its writer’. and a month later, in January 1907, he described Kautsky as ‘the leader of the German revolutionary Social Democrats’. In August 1908, Lenin cited Kautsky as his authority on the question of war and militarism as against Gustave Hervé, and as late as February 1914, he invoked him again as a Marxian authority in his dispute with Rosa Luxemburg on the national question. Finally, in one of his last pre-war articles, in April 1914, Wherein the German Labour Movement Should Not Be Imitated, speaking of the ’undoubted sickness’ of the German Social Democracy, he referred exclusively to the trade union leaders (specifically to Karl Legien) and the parliamentary spokesmen, but did not even mention Kautsky and the centrists, much less raise the question of the left wing (also unmentioned) splitting with them.
It is this pre-war attitude of Lenin towards the German centre – against which Luxemburg had been conducting a sharp frontal attack is early as 1910 – that explains the vehemence and the significant terminology of Lenin’s strictures against Kautsky immediately after the war broke out, for example, his letter to Shlyapnikov on 27 October 1914, in which he says: ‘I now despise and hate Kautsky more than all the rest.... R. Luxemburg was right, she long ago understood that Kautsky had the highly-developed “servility of a theoretician”...’
In sum, the fact is that by the very nature of her milieu and her work before the war, Rosa Luxemburg had arrived at a clearer and more correct appreciation of the German Social Democracy and the various currents within it than had Lenin. To a great extent, this determined and explained her polemic against Lenin on what appeared to be the ‘organisational questions’ of the Russian movement.
The beginning of the century marked the publication of two of Lenin’s most audacious and stirring works, One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward, and its forerunner, What Is to be Done? The Russian movement was then in no way comparable to the West-European, especially the German. It was composed of isolated groups and sections in Russia, more or less autonomous, pursuing policies at odds with each other and only remotely influenced by its great revolutionary Marxists abroad – Plekhanov, Lenin, Martov, Potresov, Trotsky and others. Moreover, the so-called ‘Economist’ tendency was predominant it laid the greatest stress on the element of spontaneity in the labour struggle and underrated the element of conscious leadership.
Lenin’s What is to be Done? was a merciless criticism of ‘Economism’, which he identified with ‘pure-and-simple trade unionism’, with khovstism (i.e., the policy of ragging at the tail of events, or of the masses), with opportunism. Social Democracy, he argued, is not a mere outgrowth of the spontaneous economic struggles of the proletariat, nor is it the passive servant of the workers; it is the union of the labour movement with revolutionary socialist theory which must be brought into the working class by the party, for the proletariat, by itself, can only attain a trade-union and not a socialist consciousness. In view of the dispersion of the movement in Russia, its primitive and localistic complexion, an all-Russian national party and newspaper had to be created immediately to infuse the labour movement with a socialist, political consciousness and unite it in a revolutionary struggle against Tsarism. The artificers of the party, in contrast with the desultory agitators of the time, would be the professional revolutionists, intellectuals and educated workers devoting all their time and energy to revolutionary activity and functioning within an extremely centralised party organisation. The effective political leadership was to be the editorial board of the central organ, edited by the exiles abroad, and it would have the power to organise or reorganise party branches inside Russia, admit or reject members, and even appoint their local committees and other directing organs. ‘I differ with the Mensheviks in this respect,’ wrote Lenin in 1904:
‘The basic idea of comrade Martov ... is precisely a false “democratism”, the idea of the construction of the party from the bottom to the top. My idea, on the contrary, is “bureaucratic” in the sense that the party should be constructed from above down to the bottom, from the congress to the individual party organisations.’
It should be borne in mind that, despite subsequent reconsideration, all the leaders of the Iskra tendency in the Russian movement warmly supported Lenin against the Economists. ‘Twice in succession,’ wrote A.N. Potresov, later Lenin’s furious enemy, ‘have I read through the booklet from beginning to end and can only congratulate its author. The general impression is an excellent one – in spite of the obvious haste, noted by the author himself, in which the work was written.’ At the famous London Congress in 1903, Plekhanov spoke up in Lenin’s defence: ‘Lenin did not write a treatise on the philosophy of history, but a polemical article against the Economists, who said: We must wait until we see where the working class itself will come, without the help of the revolutionary bacillus.’ And again: ‘If you eliminate the bacillus, then there remains only an unconscious mass, into which consciousness must be brought from without. If you had wanted to be right against Lenin, and if you had read through his whole book attentively, then you would have seen that this is just what he said.’
It was only after the deepening of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks (Plekhanov included) that the latter launched their sharp attacks on Lenin’s polemical exaggeration – that is what it was – of the dominant role of the intellectuals as professional revolutionists, organisers and leaders of the party, and of the relationship between spontaneity and the element of socialist consciousness which can only be introduced into the labour movement from without. Lenin’s defence of the ideas be expressed in 1902 and 1904 on these questions and on centralism, is highly significant for an understanding of the concrete conditions under which they were advanced and the concrete aim they pursued.
In The Fruits of Demagogy, an article written in March 1905 by the Bolshevik V. Vorovsky (read and revised by Lenin), the author quotes Plekhanov’s above cited praise of Lenin’s What is to be Done? and adds:
’These words define perfectly correctly the sense and significance of the Lenin brochure, and if Plekhanov now says that he was not in agreement, from the very beginning, with its theoretical principles, it only proves how correctly he was able to judge the real significance of the brochure at a time when there was no necessity of inventing “differences of opinion in principle” with Lenin. In actuality. What is to be Done? was a polemical brochure (which was entirely dedicated to the criticism of the khvostist wing in the then Social Democracy, to a characterisation and a refutation of the specific errors of this wing). It would be ridiculous if Lenin, in a brochure which dealt with the “burning questions of our movement” were to demonstrate that the evolution of ideas, especially of scientific socialism, has proceeded and proceeds in close historical connection with the evolution of the productive forces (in close connection with the growth of the labour movement in general). For him it was important to establish the fact that, nowhere has the working class yet worked itself up independently to a socialist ideology, that this ideology (the doctrine of scientific socialism) was always brought in by the Social Democracy ...’
In 1903, at the Second Congress itself, Lenin had pointed out that the Economists bent the staff towards the one side. In order to straighten it out again, it had to ‘be bent towards the other side and that is what I did’, and almost two years later, in the draft of a resolution written for the Third Congress, he emphasised the non-universality of his organisational. views by writing that ‘under free political conditions our party can and will be built up entirely upon the principle of electability. Under absolutism, this is unrealisable for all the thousands of workers who belong to the party.’ Again, in the period of the 1905 revolution, he showed how changes in conditions determined a change in his views:
’At the Third Congress I expressed the wish that in the party committees there should be two intellectuals for every eight workers. How obsolete is this wish’ Now it would be desirable that in the new party organisations, for every intellectual belonging to the Social Democracy there should he a few hundred Social-Democratic workers.’
Perhaps the best summary of the significance of the views he set forth at the beginning of the century is given by Lenin himself in the foreword to the collection, Twelve Years, which he wrote in September 1907:
’The basic mistake of those who polemicise against What is to be Done? today, is that they tear this work completely out of the context of a definite historical milieu, a definite, now already long-past period of development of our party ... To speak at present about the fact that Iskra (in the years 1901 and 1902!) exaggerated the idea of the organisation of professional revolutionists, is the same as if somebody had reproached the Japanese, after the Russo-Japanese war, for exaggerating the Russian military power before the war, for exaggerated concern over the struggle against this power. The Japanese had to exert all forces against a possible maximum of Russian forces in order to attain the victory. Unfortunately. many judge from the outside, without seeing that today the idea of the organisation of professional revolutionists has already attained a complete victory. This victory, however, would have been impossible if, in its time, this idea had not been pushed into the foreground, if it had not been preached in an “exaggerated” manner to people who stood like obstacles in the way of its realisation ... What is to be Done? polemically corrected Economism, and it is false to consider the contents of the brochure outside of its connection with this task.’
The ideas contained in What is to be Done?, which should still be read by revolutionists everywhere – and it can be read with the greatest profit – cannot, therefore, be understood without bearing in mind the specific conditions and problems of the Russian movement of the time. That is why Lenin, in answer to a proposal to translate his brochure for the non-Russian parties, told Max Levien in 1921: ‘That is not desirable; the translation must at least be issued with good commentaries, which would have to be written by a Russian comrade very well acquainted with the history of the Communist Party of Russia, in order to avoid false application.’
Just as Lenin’s views must be considered against the background of the situation in Russia, so must Luxemburg’s polemic against them he viewed against the background of the situation in Germany. In her famous review in 1904 of Lenin’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward (an extension of the views of What is to be Done?), Luxemburg’s position was decisively coloured by the realities of the German movement. Where Lenin stressed ultra-centralism, Luxemburg stressed democracy and organisational flexibility. Where Lenin emphasised the dominant role of the professional revolutionist, Luxemburg countered with emphasis on the mass movement and its elemental upsurge.
Why? Because these various forces played clearly different roles in Russia and in Germany. The professional revolutionists whom Luxemburg encountered in Germany were not as in Russia, the radical instruments for gathering together loose and scattered local organisations, uniting them into one national party imbued with a firm Marxian ideology and freed from the opportunistic conceptions of pure and-simple trade unionism. Quite the contrary. In Germany, the ‘professionals’ were the careerists, the conservative trade union bureaucrats, the lords of the ossifying party machine, the reformist parliamentarians, the whole crew who finally succeeded in disembowelling the movement. An enormous conservative power, they weighed down like a mountain upon the militant-minded rank and file. They were the canal through which the poison of reformisin seeped into the masses. They acted as a brake upon the class actions of the workers, and not as a spur. In Russia the movement was loose and ineffectual, based on circles, as Lenin said, ‘almost always resting upon the personal friendship of a small number of persons’. In Germany, the movement was tightly organised, conservatively disciplined, routinised, and dominated by a semi-reformist, centralist leadership. These concrete circumstances led Luxemburg to the view that only an appeal to the masses, only their elemental militant movement could break through the conservative wall of the party and trade-union apparatus. The ‘centralism’ of Lenin forged a party that proved able to lead the Russian masses to a victorious revolution; the ‘centralism’ that Luxemburg saw growing in the German Social Democracy became a conservative force and ended in a series of catastrophes for the proletariat. This is what she feared when she wrote against Lenin in 1904:
‘... the role of the Social-Democratic leadership becomes one of an essentially conservative character, in that it leads to working out empirically to its ultimate conclusions the new experience acquired in the struggle and soon to converting it into a bulwark against a further innovation in the grand style. The present tactic of the German Social Democracy, for example, is generally admired for its remarkable manifoldness, flexibility and at the same time certainty. Such qualities simply mean, however, that our party has adapted itself wonderfully in its daily struggle to the present parliamentary basis, down to the smallest detail, that it knows how to exploit the whole field of battle offered by parliamentarism and to master it in accordance with given principles. At the same time, this specific formulation of tactics already serves so much to conceal the further horizon that one notes a strong inclination to perpetuate that tactic and to regard the parliamentary tactic as the Social-Democratic tactic for all time.’
But it is a far cry from the wisdom of these words, uttered in the specific conditions of Luxemburg’s struggle in Germany, to the attempts made by syndicalists and ultra-leftists of all kinds to read into her views a universal formula of rejection of the idea of leadership and centralisation. The fact of the matter is that the opportunistic enemies of Luxemburg, and her closest collaborator, Leo Jogiches (Tyszka), especially in the Polish movement in which she actively participated, made virtually the same attacks upon her ‘organisational principles’ and ‘régime of leadership’ as were levelled against Lenin. During the war, for example, the Spartakusbund was highly centralised and held tightly in the hands of that peerless organiser, Jogiches. The Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania, which she led, was, if anything, far more highly centralised and far more merciless towards those in its ranks who deviated from the party’s line, than was the Bolshevik party under Lenin. In his history of the Russian movement, the Menshevik Theodore Dan, who did not spare Lenin for his ’organisational régime’, and sought to exploit Luxemburg’s criticism of Lenin for his own ends, nevertheless wrote that the Polish Social Democracy of the time
‘... shared in its essentials the organisational principles of Lenin, against which Rosa Luxemburg had polemised at the birth of Bolshevism; it also applied these principles in the practise of its own party, in which a rigid, bureaucratic centralism prevailed and people like Radek, Zalevsky, Unschlicht and others, who later played a leading role in the Communist Party, were expelled from the party because of their oppositional stand against the party executive.’
‘Bureaucratic centralism’, was (and is) the term generally applied by Dan and Mensheviks of all stripes to Lenin and Luxemburg and all others who seriously sought to build up a purposeful party of proletarian revolution, in contrast to that ‘democratic’ looseness prevalent in the Second International which only served as a cover behind which elements alien to the revolution could make their way to the leadership of the party and, at crucial moments, betray it to the class enemy. The irreconcilable antagonism which the reformists felt towards Lenin and Luxemburg is in sharp and significant contrast to the affinity they now feel towards the Stalinist International, in which full-blooded and genuine bureaucratic centralism has attained its most evil form. It is not difficult to imagine what Rosa Luxemburg would have written about the Stalin regime had she lived in our time; and by the same token it is not difficult to understand the poisonous campaign that the Stalinists have conducted against her for years.
The years of struggle that elapsed since the early polemics in the Russian movement, the experiences that enriched the arsenal of the great revolutionists of the time, and above all the Russian Revolution itself, undoubtedly served to draw the political tendency of Rosa Luxemburg closer to that represented with such genius by Lenin. Had she not been cut down so cruelly in the prime of her intellectual power, there is little doubt in my mind that she would have become one of the greatest figures and champions of the Communist International – not of the horribly twisted caricature that it is today, but as it was in the early years. ‘It does not even occur to me’experiences that enriched the arsenal of the great revolutionists of the time, and above all the Russian Revolution itself, undoubtedly served to draw the political tendency of Rosa Luxemburg closer to that represented with such genius by Lenin. Had she not been cut down so cruelly in the prime of her intellectual power, there is little doubt in my mind that she would have become one of the greatest figures and champions of the Communist International – not of the horribly twisted caricature that it is today, but as it was in the early years. ‘It does not even occur to me’, wrote Karl Kautsky, her bitter foe, in 1921, ‘to deny that in the course of the war Rosa drew steadily closer to the Communist world of thought, so that it is quite correct when Radek says that “with Rosa Luxemburg there died the greatest and most profound theoretical head of Communism”.’
The judgement is a correct one and doubly valid because it comes from a political opponent who knew her views so well. It is worth a thousand times more than all the superficial harpings on the theme of the irreconcilability of Marxism’s greatest teachers in our time.
NOTES
1. So as not to clutter up the text with references, I am including all the works from which I quote in this article, in a single footnote. They are: Lenin, Collected Works [in German], vols.IV, VI, VII, VIII, X, XII. – Luxemburg, Collected Works [in German], vols.III, IV. – Radek, Rosa Luxemburg Karl Licbknecht, Leo Jogiches. – Martov and Dan, Die Geschichte der russischen Sozialdemokratie. – Die Neue Zeit, 1904, 1910. – Protocol No.1, Session of Bolshevisation Commission, ECCI, 1925. – Der Kampf, 1921, 1924. – Lenin Anthology [in Russian], vol.II. – Henriette Roland-Holst, Rosa Luxemburg: Haar Leven en werken. – Stalin, Kaganovich, Postyshev, Questions Concerning the History of Bolshevism.
This is from the days when old Max Shachtman knew how to "speak" Marxism. A couple of years later, when it mattered, mattered a lot, when the defense of the Soviet Union was on the line he lost his tongue.
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From Issue no.3, of the Marxist Discussion journal What Next? By kind permission of the editor Bob Pitt, 24 Georgiana St, London, NW1 0EA, email wh@tnext.freeserve.co.uk.
LENIN AND ROSA LUXEMBURG
Max ShachtmanFrom The New International, May 1938
Two legends have been created about the relationship between the views of Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. Despite their antagonistic origins and aims, they supplement each other in effect. Neither one of the myth-makers approaches the extremely interesting and instructive subject from an objective historical standpoint. Consequently, the analysis made by each of them reduces itself to an instrument of factional politics which is, in both cases, the politics of reaction.
One school of thought, if such a term is permissible here, is headed by the faculty of Stalinist falsification. It covers up its reactionary objectives by posing as critics of Luxemburg and proponents of Lenin. A discussion of its arguments is rendered impossible by the very nature of its position, which formally prohibits both argument and discussion. Its scientific value is summarised in a few sentences from the papal bull issued by Stalin in 1932 in connection with the luckless Slutsky’s study on Lenin’s incorrect appraisal of Kautsky and Luxemburg: ‘You wish to enter into discussion against this Trotskyist thesis of Slutsky’s? But what is there to discuss in this? Is it not plain that Slutsky is simply slandering Lenin, slandering the Bolsheviks? Slander must be branded, not transformed into a subject for discussion.’ The Stalinists have the Catholics’ attitude toward their dogmas: they assume what is to be proved; their arbitrary conclusions are presented as their premises; their statement of the problem is at the same time their answer – and it brooks no discussion. ‘Bolshevism’ is absolutely and at all points and stages irreconcilable with ‘Luxemburgism’ because of the original sin of the latter in disputing the ‘organisational principles’ of the former.
The other school of thought is less authoritarian in tone and form, but just as rigid in unhistorical dogma; and if, unlike the Stalinists, it is not wholly composed of turncoats from revolutionary Marxism, it has a substantial sprinkling of them. Their objectives are covered-up by posing as critics of Lenin and defenders of Luxemburg. They include anachronistic philosophers of ultra-leftism and express-train travellers fleeing from the pestilence of Stalinism to the plague of Social Democracy. Bolshevism, they argue, is definitely bankrupt. The horrors of Stalinism are the logical and inevitable outcome of Lenin’s Centralism’, or – as it is put by a recent critic, Liston Oak, who seeks the ‘inner flaws of Bolshevism’ – of Lenin’s ’totalitarianism’. Luxemburg, on the other hand, stressed the democratic side of the movement, the struggle, the goal. Hence, ‘Luxemburgism’ is absolutely irreconcilable with ‘Bolshevism’ because of the original sin of the former in imposing its Jacobin, or bourgeois, or super-centralist, or totalitarian ‘organisational principles’.
The use of quotation marks around the terms employed is justified and necessary, for at least in nine cases out of ten the airy analysts have only the vaguest and most twisted idea of what the disputes between Luxemburg and Lenin really were. In just as many cases they have revealed a cavalier indisposition to acquaint themselves with the historical documents and the actual writings of the two great thinkers. A brief survey will disclose, I believe, the superficiality of the arguments which, especially since the obvious putrescence of Stalinism, have gained a certain currency in the radical movement.
Nothing but. misunderstanding can result from a failure to bear in mind the fact that Lenin and Luxemburg worked, fought and developed their ideas in two distinctly different movements, operating within no less different countries, at radically different stages of development; consequently, in countries and movements where the problems of the working class were posed in quite different forms. It is the absence of this concrete and historical approach to the disputes between Lenin, of the Social-Democratic Labour Party of Russia, and Luxemburg, of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, that so surely brings most critics to grief.
The ‘organisational dispute’ between Lenin and Luxemburg did not originate in the former’s insistence on a break with Kautsky and the centrists before the war. When Stalin thunders against anyone ‘who can doubt that the Bolsheviks brought about a split with their own opportunists and centrist-conciliators long before the imperialist war (1904-12) without at the same time pursuing a policy of rupture, a policy of split with the opportunists and centrists of the Second International’ – he is simply substituting ukase for historical fact.
The truth is that Rosa Luxemburg reached a clear estimate of Kautsky and broke with his self-styled ‘Marxian centre’, long before Lenin did. For many years after the turn of the century, Kautsky’s prestige among all the factions of the Russian movement was unparalleled. The Menshevik Abramovich does not exaggerate when he writes that
’A West-European can hardly imagine the enormous authority which the leaders of the German Social Democracy, the Liebknechts, the Bebels, the Singers, enjoyed in Russia. Among these leaders, Karl Kautsky occupied quite a special place ... serving for all the Russian Marxists and Social Democrats as the highest authority in all the theoretical and tactical questions of scientific socialism and the labour movement. In every disputed question, in every newly-arisen problem, the first thought always was: What would Kautsky say about this? How would Kautsky have decided this question?’
Lenin’s much-disputed What is to be Done? held up, as is known, the German Social Democracy and its leader, Bebel, as models for the Russian movement. When Kautsky wrote his famous article, after the 1905 revolution in Russia, on the Slavs and the world revolution, in which, Zinoviev writes, under Luxemburg’s influence, he advanced substantially the Bolshevik conception, Lenin was highly elated. ‘Where and when,’ he wrote in July 1905, in a polemic against Parvus, ‘have I characterised the revolutionism of Bebel and Kautsky as “opportunism”? Where and when have I presumed to call into existence in the international Social Democracy a special tendency which was not identical with the tendency of Bebel and Kautsky.’ A year and a half later, Lenin wrote that ‘the vanguard of the Russian working class knows Karl Kautsky for some time now as its writer’. and a month later, in January 1907, he described Kautsky as ‘the leader of the German revolutionary Social Democrats’. In August 1908, Lenin cited Kautsky as his authority on the question of war and militarism as against Gustave Hervé, and as late as February 1914, he invoked him again as a Marxian authority in his dispute with Rosa Luxemburg on the national question. Finally, in one of his last pre-war articles, in April 1914, Wherein the German Labour Movement Should Not Be Imitated, speaking of the ’undoubted sickness’ of the German Social Democracy, he referred exclusively to the trade union leaders (specifically to Karl Legien) and the parliamentary spokesmen, but did not even mention Kautsky and the centrists, much less raise the question of the left wing (also unmentioned) splitting with them.
It is this pre-war attitude of Lenin towards the German centre – against which Luxemburg had been conducting a sharp frontal attack is early as 1910 – that explains the vehemence and the significant terminology of Lenin’s strictures against Kautsky immediately after the war broke out, for example, his letter to Shlyapnikov on 27 October 1914, in which he says: ‘I now despise and hate Kautsky more than all the rest.... R. Luxemburg was right, she long ago understood that Kautsky had the highly-developed “servility of a theoretician”...’
In sum, the fact is that by the very nature of her milieu and her work before the war, Rosa Luxemburg had arrived at a clearer and more correct appreciation of the German Social Democracy and the various currents within it than had Lenin. To a great extent, this determined and explained her polemic against Lenin on what appeared to be the ‘organisational questions’ of the Russian movement.
The beginning of the century marked the publication of two of Lenin’s most audacious and stirring works, One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward, and its forerunner, What Is to be Done? The Russian movement was then in no way comparable to the West-European, especially the German. It was composed of isolated groups and sections in Russia, more or less autonomous, pursuing policies at odds with each other and only remotely influenced by its great revolutionary Marxists abroad – Plekhanov, Lenin, Martov, Potresov, Trotsky and others. Moreover, the so-called ‘Economist’ tendency was predominant it laid the greatest stress on the element of spontaneity in the labour struggle and underrated the element of conscious leadership.
Lenin’s What is to be Done? was a merciless criticism of ‘Economism’, which he identified with ‘pure-and-simple trade unionism’, with khovstism (i.e., the policy of ragging at the tail of events, or of the masses), with opportunism. Social Democracy, he argued, is not a mere outgrowth of the spontaneous economic struggles of the proletariat, nor is it the passive servant of the workers; it is the union of the labour movement with revolutionary socialist theory which must be brought into the working class by the party, for the proletariat, by itself, can only attain a trade-union and not a socialist consciousness. In view of the dispersion of the movement in Russia, its primitive and localistic complexion, an all-Russian national party and newspaper had to be created immediately to infuse the labour movement with a socialist, political consciousness and unite it in a revolutionary struggle against Tsarism. The artificers of the party, in contrast with the desultory agitators of the time, would be the professional revolutionists, intellectuals and educated workers devoting all their time and energy to revolutionary activity and functioning within an extremely centralised party organisation. The effective political leadership was to be the editorial board of the central organ, edited by the exiles abroad, and it would have the power to organise or reorganise party branches inside Russia, admit or reject members, and even appoint their local committees and other directing organs. ‘I differ with the Mensheviks in this respect,’ wrote Lenin in 1904:
‘The basic idea of comrade Martov ... is precisely a false “democratism”, the idea of the construction of the party from the bottom to the top. My idea, on the contrary, is “bureaucratic” in the sense that the party should be constructed from above down to the bottom, from the congress to the individual party organisations.’
It should be borne in mind that, despite subsequent reconsideration, all the leaders of the Iskra tendency in the Russian movement warmly supported Lenin against the Economists. ‘Twice in succession,’ wrote A.N. Potresov, later Lenin’s furious enemy, ‘have I read through the booklet from beginning to end and can only congratulate its author. The general impression is an excellent one – in spite of the obvious haste, noted by the author himself, in which the work was written.’ At the famous London Congress in 1903, Plekhanov spoke up in Lenin’s defence: ‘Lenin did not write a treatise on the philosophy of history, but a polemical article against the Economists, who said: We must wait until we see where the working class itself will come, without the help of the revolutionary bacillus.’ And again: ‘If you eliminate the bacillus, then there remains only an unconscious mass, into which consciousness must be brought from without. If you had wanted to be right against Lenin, and if you had read through his whole book attentively, then you would have seen that this is just what he said.’
It was only after the deepening of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks (Plekhanov included) that the latter launched their sharp attacks on Lenin’s polemical exaggeration – that is what it was – of the dominant role of the intellectuals as professional revolutionists, organisers and leaders of the party, and of the relationship between spontaneity and the element of socialist consciousness which can only be introduced into the labour movement from without. Lenin’s defence of the ideas be expressed in 1902 and 1904 on these questions and on centralism, is highly significant for an understanding of the concrete conditions under which they were advanced and the concrete aim they pursued.
In The Fruits of Demagogy, an article written in March 1905 by the Bolshevik V. Vorovsky (read and revised by Lenin), the author quotes Plekhanov’s above cited praise of Lenin’s What is to be Done? and adds:
’These words define perfectly correctly the sense and significance of the Lenin brochure, and if Plekhanov now says that he was not in agreement, from the very beginning, with its theoretical principles, it only proves how correctly he was able to judge the real significance of the brochure at a time when there was no necessity of inventing “differences of opinion in principle” with Lenin. In actuality. What is to be Done? was a polemical brochure (which was entirely dedicated to the criticism of the khvostist wing in the then Social Democracy, to a characterisation and a refutation of the specific errors of this wing). It would be ridiculous if Lenin, in a brochure which dealt with the “burning questions of our movement” were to demonstrate that the evolution of ideas, especially of scientific socialism, has proceeded and proceeds in close historical connection with the evolution of the productive forces (in close connection with the growth of the labour movement in general). For him it was important to establish the fact that, nowhere has the working class yet worked itself up independently to a socialist ideology, that this ideology (the doctrine of scientific socialism) was always brought in by the Social Democracy ...’
In 1903, at the Second Congress itself, Lenin had pointed out that the Economists bent the staff towards the one side. In order to straighten it out again, it had to ‘be bent towards the other side and that is what I did’, and almost two years later, in the draft of a resolution written for the Third Congress, he emphasised the non-universality of his organisational. views by writing that ‘under free political conditions our party can and will be built up entirely upon the principle of electability. Under absolutism, this is unrealisable for all the thousands of workers who belong to the party.’ Again, in the period of the 1905 revolution, he showed how changes in conditions determined a change in his views:
’At the Third Congress I expressed the wish that in the party committees there should be two intellectuals for every eight workers. How obsolete is this wish’ Now it would be desirable that in the new party organisations, for every intellectual belonging to the Social Democracy there should he a few hundred Social-Democratic workers.’
Perhaps the best summary of the significance of the views he set forth at the beginning of the century is given by Lenin himself in the foreword to the collection, Twelve Years, which he wrote in September 1907:
’The basic mistake of those who polemicise against What is to be Done? today, is that they tear this work completely out of the context of a definite historical milieu, a definite, now already long-past period of development of our party ... To speak at present about the fact that Iskra (in the years 1901 and 1902!) exaggerated the idea of the organisation of professional revolutionists, is the same as if somebody had reproached the Japanese, after the Russo-Japanese war, for exaggerating the Russian military power before the war, for exaggerated concern over the struggle against this power. The Japanese had to exert all forces against a possible maximum of Russian forces in order to attain the victory. Unfortunately. many judge from the outside, without seeing that today the idea of the organisation of professional revolutionists has already attained a complete victory. This victory, however, would have been impossible if, in its time, this idea had not been pushed into the foreground, if it had not been preached in an “exaggerated” manner to people who stood like obstacles in the way of its realisation ... What is to be Done? polemically corrected Economism, and it is false to consider the contents of the brochure outside of its connection with this task.’
The ideas contained in What is to be Done?, which should still be read by revolutionists everywhere – and it can be read with the greatest profit – cannot, therefore, be understood without bearing in mind the specific conditions and problems of the Russian movement of the time. That is why Lenin, in answer to a proposal to translate his brochure for the non-Russian parties, told Max Levien in 1921: ‘That is not desirable; the translation must at least be issued with good commentaries, which would have to be written by a Russian comrade very well acquainted with the history of the Communist Party of Russia, in order to avoid false application.’
Just as Lenin’s views must be considered against the background of the situation in Russia, so must Luxemburg’s polemic against them he viewed against the background of the situation in Germany. In her famous review in 1904 of Lenin’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward (an extension of the views of What is to be Done?), Luxemburg’s position was decisively coloured by the realities of the German movement. Where Lenin stressed ultra-centralism, Luxemburg stressed democracy and organisational flexibility. Where Lenin emphasised the dominant role of the professional revolutionist, Luxemburg countered with emphasis on the mass movement and its elemental upsurge.
Why? Because these various forces played clearly different roles in Russia and in Germany. The professional revolutionists whom Luxemburg encountered in Germany were not as in Russia, the radical instruments for gathering together loose and scattered local organisations, uniting them into one national party imbued with a firm Marxian ideology and freed from the opportunistic conceptions of pure and-simple trade unionism. Quite the contrary. In Germany, the ‘professionals’ were the careerists, the conservative trade union bureaucrats, the lords of the ossifying party machine, the reformist parliamentarians, the whole crew who finally succeeded in disembowelling the movement. An enormous conservative power, they weighed down like a mountain upon the militant-minded rank and file. They were the canal through which the poison of reformisin seeped into the masses. They acted as a brake upon the class actions of the workers, and not as a spur. In Russia the movement was loose and ineffectual, based on circles, as Lenin said, ‘almost always resting upon the personal friendship of a small number of persons’. In Germany, the movement was tightly organised, conservatively disciplined, routinised, and dominated by a semi-reformist, centralist leadership. These concrete circumstances led Luxemburg to the view that only an appeal to the masses, only their elemental militant movement could break through the conservative wall of the party and trade-union apparatus. The ‘centralism’ of Lenin forged a party that proved able to lead the Russian masses to a victorious revolution; the ‘centralism’ that Luxemburg saw growing in the German Social Democracy became a conservative force and ended in a series of catastrophes for the proletariat. This is what she feared when she wrote against Lenin in 1904:
‘... the role of the Social-Democratic leadership becomes one of an essentially conservative character, in that it leads to working out empirically to its ultimate conclusions the new experience acquired in the struggle and soon to converting it into a bulwark against a further innovation in the grand style. The present tactic of the German Social Democracy, for example, is generally admired for its remarkable manifoldness, flexibility and at the same time certainty. Such qualities simply mean, however, that our party has adapted itself wonderfully in its daily struggle to the present parliamentary basis, down to the smallest detail, that it knows how to exploit the whole field of battle offered by parliamentarism and to master it in accordance with given principles. At the same time, this specific formulation of tactics already serves so much to conceal the further horizon that one notes a strong inclination to perpetuate that tactic and to regard the parliamentary tactic as the Social-Democratic tactic for all time.’
But it is a far cry from the wisdom of these words, uttered in the specific conditions of Luxemburg’s struggle in Germany, to the attempts made by syndicalists and ultra-leftists of all kinds to read into her views a universal formula of rejection of the idea of leadership and centralisation. The fact of the matter is that the opportunistic enemies of Luxemburg, and her closest collaborator, Leo Jogiches (Tyszka), especially in the Polish movement in which she actively participated, made virtually the same attacks upon her ‘organisational principles’ and ‘régime of leadership’ as were levelled against Lenin. During the war, for example, the Spartakusbund was highly centralised and held tightly in the hands of that peerless organiser, Jogiches. The Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania, which she led, was, if anything, far more highly centralised and far more merciless towards those in its ranks who deviated from the party’s line, than was the Bolshevik party under Lenin. In his history of the Russian movement, the Menshevik Theodore Dan, who did not spare Lenin for his ’organisational régime’, and sought to exploit Luxemburg’s criticism of Lenin for his own ends, nevertheless wrote that the Polish Social Democracy of the time
‘... shared in its essentials the organisational principles of Lenin, against which Rosa Luxemburg had polemised at the birth of Bolshevism; it also applied these principles in the practise of its own party, in which a rigid, bureaucratic centralism prevailed and people like Radek, Zalevsky, Unschlicht and others, who later played a leading role in the Communist Party, were expelled from the party because of their oppositional stand against the party executive.’
‘Bureaucratic centralism’, was (and is) the term generally applied by Dan and Mensheviks of all stripes to Lenin and Luxemburg and all others who seriously sought to build up a purposeful party of proletarian revolution, in contrast to that ‘democratic’ looseness prevalent in the Second International which only served as a cover behind which elements alien to the revolution could make their way to the leadership of the party and, at crucial moments, betray it to the class enemy. The irreconcilable antagonism which the reformists felt towards Lenin and Luxemburg is in sharp and significant contrast to the affinity they now feel towards the Stalinist International, in which full-blooded and genuine bureaucratic centralism has attained its most evil form. It is not difficult to imagine what Rosa Luxemburg would have written about the Stalin regime had she lived in our time; and by the same token it is not difficult to understand the poisonous campaign that the Stalinists have conducted against her for years.
The years of struggle that elapsed since the early polemics in the Russian movement, the experiences that enriched the arsenal of the great revolutionists of the time, and above all the Russian Revolution itself, undoubtedly served to draw the political tendency of Rosa Luxemburg closer to that represented with such genius by Lenin. Had she not been cut down so cruelly in the prime of her intellectual power, there is little doubt in my mind that she would have become one of the greatest figures and champions of the Communist International – not of the horribly twisted caricature that it is today, but as it was in the early years. ‘It does not even occur to me’experiences that enriched the arsenal of the great revolutionists of the time, and above all the Russian Revolution itself, undoubtedly served to draw the political tendency of Rosa Luxemburg closer to that represented with such genius by Lenin. Had she not been cut down so cruelly in the prime of her intellectual power, there is little doubt in my mind that she would have become one of the greatest figures and champions of the Communist International – not of the horribly twisted caricature that it is today, but as it was in the early years. ‘It does not even occur to me’, wrote Karl Kautsky, her bitter foe, in 1921, ‘to deny that in the course of the war Rosa drew steadily closer to the Communist world of thought, so that it is quite correct when Radek says that “with Rosa Luxemburg there died the greatest and most profound theoretical head of Communism”.’
The judgement is a correct one and doubly valid because it comes from a political opponent who knew her views so well. It is worth a thousand times more than all the superficial harpings on the theme of the irreconcilability of Marxism’s greatest teachers in our time.
NOTES
1. So as not to clutter up the text with references, I am including all the works from which I quote in this article, in a single footnote. They are: Lenin, Collected Works [in German], vols.IV, VI, VII, VIII, X, XII. – Luxemburg, Collected Works [in German], vols.III, IV. – Radek, Rosa Luxemburg Karl Licbknecht, Leo Jogiches. – Martov and Dan, Die Geschichte der russischen Sozialdemokratie. – Die Neue Zeit, 1904, 1910. – Protocol No.1, Session of Bolshevisation Commission, ECCI, 1925. – Der Kampf, 1921, 1924. – Lenin Anthology [in Russian], vol.II. – Henriette Roland-Holst, Rosa Luxemburg: Haar Leven en werken. – Stalin, Kaganovich, Postyshev, Questions Concerning the History of Bolshevism.
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