Luxemburgism
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Luxemburgism (also written Luxembourgism) is a specific revolutionary theory within communism, based on the writings of Rosa Luxemburg. According to M. K. Dziewanowski, the term was originally coined by Bolshevik leaders denouncing the deviations from traditional Leninism of Luxemburg 's followers, but it has since been adopted by her followers themselves.
Luxemburgism is an interpretation of Marxism which, while supporting the Russian Revolution, as Rosa Luxemburg did, agrees with her criticisms of the politics of Lenin and Trotsky; she did not see their concept of "democratic centralism" as democracy.
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[edit] Luxemburgism As Democratic Revolutionary Socialism
The chief tenets of Luxemburgism are commitment to democracy and the necessity of the revolution taking place as soon as possible. In this regard, it is similar to Council Communism, but differs in that, for example, Luxemburgists don't reject trade unions or elections by principle. It resembles anarchism in its insistence that only relying on the people themselves as opposed to their leaders can avoid an authoritarian society, but differs in that it sees the importance of a revolutionary party, and mainly the centrality of the working class in the revolutionary struggle. It resembles Trotskyism in its opposition to the totalitarianism of Stalinist government while simultaneously avoiding the reformist politics of modern Social Democracy, but differs from Trotskyism in arguing that Lenin and Trotsky also made undemocratic errors.
In "The Russian Revolution", written in a German jail during WWI, Luxemburg critiqued Bolsheviks' absolutist political practice and opportunist policies--i.e., their suppression of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, their support for the partition of the old feudal estates to the peasant communes. She derived this critique from Marx's original concept of the "revolution in permanence." Marx outlines this strategy in his March 1850 "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League." As opposed to the Bolsheviks neo-Blanquist interpretation of permanent revolution, Marx argued that the role of the working class revolutionary party was not to create a one-party state, nor to give away land--even in semi-feudal countries like Germany in 1850--or Russia in 1917--where the working class was in the minority. Rather, Marx argued that the role of the working class was, WITHIN structures of radical democracy, to organize, arm and defend themselves in workers councils and militias, to campaign for their own socialist political program, to expand workers rights, and to seize and farm collectively the feudal estates. Because the Bolsheviks failed to fullfill this Marxian program, Luxemburg argued, the Revolution bureaucratized, the cities starved, the peasant soldiers in the Army were demoralized and deserted in order to get back home for the land grab. Thus the Germans easily invaded and took the Ukraine. They justified this, during the Brest Litovsk treaty negotiations, in the very same terms of "national self-determination" (for the Ukrainian bourgeoisie) that the Bolsheviks had promoted as an aid to socialist revolution, and that Luxemburg critiqued, years earlier, in her "The National Question," and in this document.
Luxemburg criticized Lenin's ideas on how to organize a revolutionary party as likely to lead to a loss of internal democracy and the domination of the party by a few leaders. Ironically, in her most famous attack on Lenin's views, the 1904 Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy, or, Leninism or Marxism? [1], a response to Lenin's 1903 What Is To Be Done?, Luxemburg was more worried that the authoritarianism she saw in Leninism would lead to sectarianism and irrelevancy than that it would lead to a dictatorship after a successful revolution - although she also warned of the latter danger. Luxemburg died before Stalin's assumption of power, and never had a chance to come up with a complete theory of Stalinism, but her criticisms of the Bolsheviks have been taken up by many writers in their arguments about the origins of Stalinism, including many who are otherwise far from Luxemburgism.
Luxemburg's idea of democracy, which Stanley Aronowitz calls "generalized democracy in an unarticulated form", represents Luxemburgism's greatest break with "mainstream communism", since it effectively diminishes the role of the Communist Party, but is in fact very similar to the views of Karl Marx ("The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves"). According to Aronowitz, the vagueness of Luxembourgian democracy is one reason for its initial difficulty in gaining widespread support. However, since the fall of the Soviet Union, Luxemburgism has been seen by some socialist thinkers as a way to avoid the totalitarianism of Stalinism.
[edit] Other Luxemburg Criticisms Of Lenin and Trotsky
Rosa Luxemburg also criticized Lenin's views on the right of the oppressed nations of the former Czarist Empire to self-determination. She saw this as a ready-made formula for imperialist intervention in those countries on behalf of bourgeois forces hostile to socialism. Proponents of Lenin's position on the nationalities argue that it was in fact what brought many members of the different nationalities of the former Czarist Empire together in supporting the Bolshevik-led revolution.
[edit] Luxemburgism As Opposition To Imperialist War and Capitalism
While being critical of the politics of the bolsheviks, Rosa Luxemburg saw the behavior of the Social Democratic Second International as a complete betrayal of socialism. As she saw it, at the outset of the First World War the Social Democratic Parties around the world betrayed the world's working class by supporting their own individual bourgeoisies in the war. This included her own Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the majority of whose delegates in the Reichstag voted for war credits.
Rosa Luxemburg opposed the sending of the working class youth of each country to what she viewed as slaughter in a war over which of the national bourgeoisies would control world resources and markets. She broke from the Second International, viewing it as nothing more than an opportunist party that was doing administrative work for the capitalists. Rosa Luxemburg, with Karl Liebknecht, organized a strong movement in Germany with these views, but was imprisoned and, after her release, killed for her work during the failed German Revolution of 1919 - a revolution which the German Social Democratic Party violently opposed.
[edit] Present-day Luxemburgism
While there are presently very few active Luxemburgist revolutionary movements; there is widespread interest in her ideas particularly among feminists and Trotskyists as well as among leftists in Germany. In 2002 ten thousand people marched in Berlin for Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht and another 90,000 people laid carnations on their graves.[2]
To many socialists, whether they see themselves as Luxemburgists or not, Rosa Luxemburg is a hero who stood up to the barbarism of capitalism and imperialist war, as well as the many opportunists who falsely claimed to be socialists. And for Luxemburgists, these stands against capitalism and for socialist democracy unify two important ideas that are viewed as complementary rather than contradictory.
[edit] Some Luxemburgists
- Rosa Luxemburg
- Karl Liebknecht
- Paul Frölich
- René Lefeuvre
- Daniel Singer
- Alain Guillerm
- Eric Chester
- Ethem Nejat
[edit] See also
- Spartacist League (Spartakusbund)
- Socialist Party USA - contains a strong Luxemburgist current. Luxemburgism/Councilism is mentioned in its handbook.
- Liberation News (Internationalist)
- Spontaneism
Note: many socialist organisations today, particularly Trotskyist ones, consider Rosa Luxemburg an important influence on their theory and politics, though those organisations are not "Luxemburgist."
[edit] References
- Aronowitz, Stanley. "Postmodernism and Politics." Social Text, No. 21: Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism (1989), pp. 46-62.
- Dziewanowski, M. K. "Social Democrats Versus "Social Patriots": The Origins of the Split of the Marxist Movement in Poland." American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Feb., 1951), pp. 14-25.
- LeBlanc, Paul (1993). Lenin and the Revolutionary Party. Prometheus Books. ISDN 157392427X.
[edit] External links
- Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive
- Feminist account of Luxemburg's importance by Beverly G. Merrick
- Libertarian Communist Library Archive
- Democratie Communiste (french luxemburgist group) (in french)
- Workers Democracy Network (possibly a US Luxemburgist organization.)
