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The revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg
On 15 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl
Liebknecht, the finest brains of the German working class and its most
heroic figures, were brutally murdered by the bloodthirsty, defeated
German military, backed to the hilt by the cowardly social-democratic
leaders. On this important anniversary, PETER TAAFFE looks at
Luxemburg’s inspirational, revolutionary legacy.
THE MURDERS OF Luxemburg and Liebknecht were
decisive in the defeat of the German revolution. They were also linked
to the victory of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in 1933. Wilhelm Canaris,
the naval officer who assisted the escape of one of Rosa’s murderers,
was to command the Abwehr, the Nazis’ military intelligence. Other
luminaries of the Nazi regime were similarly blooded at this time for
the future murderous activities in Germany and throughout Europe.
Wilhelm von Faupel, the officer who tricked the delegates to the
recently-formed workers’ and soldiers’ councils, was Hitler’s ambassador
to Franco’s Spain, 20 years later. The political power behind the throne
was Major Kurt von Schleicher, the German chancellor in 1932 who opened
the door for the Nazis. But, in all probability, had the German
revolution triumphed, history would not have known these figures or the
horrors of fascism. Rosa Luxemburg, as a top leader and Marxist
theoretician, could have played a crucial, even decisive, role in events
up to 1923 and the revolution had she not been cruelly cut down.
Karl Liebknecht is correctly bracketed with
Luxemburg as an heroic mass figure. He stood out against the German war
machine and symbolised to the troops in the blood-soaked trenches – not
just Germans, but French and others – an indefatigable, working-class,
internationalist opponent of the first world war. His famous call, ‘The
main enemy is at home’, caught the mood, particularly as the mountain of
corpses rose.
But Rosa Luxemburg deserves special attention
because of the colossal contribution she made to the understanding of
Marxist ideas and their application to movements of the working class.
Many have attacked Rosa Luxemburg for her ‘false methods’, particularly
her alleged lack of understanding of the need for a revolutionary party
and organisation. Among them were Joseph Stalin and Stalinists in the
past. Others claim her as their own because of her emphasis on the
spontaneous role of the working class. That seems to correspond to an
anti-party mood, particularly among the younger generation – a product
of the revulsion at the bureaucratic heritage of Stalinism and its
echoes in the ex-social democratic parties. But an all-sided analysis of
Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas, taking into account the historical situation in
which they developed, demonstrates that the claims of both these camps
are false.
Of course, she made mistakes: ‘Show me someone who
never makes a mistake and I will show you a fool’. Yet there is a body
of work which remains fresh and relevant, particularly when contrasted
to the stale ideas of the tops of today’s labour movement. For instance,
her pamphlet, Reform and Revolution (1899), is not just an exposition of
the general ideas of Marxism counterposed to reformist, incremental
change to effect socialist change. It was written in opposition to the
main theoretician of ‘revisionism’, Eduard Bernstein. Like the labour
and trade union leaders today – although he was originally a Marxist, a
friend of the co-founder of scientific socialism, Friedrich Engels –
Bernstein, under the pressure of the boom of the late 1890s and early
20th century, attempted to revise the ideas of Marxism. In effect, this
would have nullified them. His famous aphorism, "The movement is
everything, the final goal nothing", represented an attempt to reconcile
the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with what was an expanding
capitalism at that stage.
Rosa Luxemburg – as had Vladimir Lenin and Leon
Trotsky – refuted his ideas and adds to our understanding of capitalism
then, and to some extent now, by analysing the relationship between
reform and revolution (which should not be counterposed to each other,
from a Marxist point of view) and many other issues. She wrote: "What
proves best the falseness of Bernstein's theory is that it is in the
countries having the greatest development of the famous ‘means of
adaptation’ – credit, perfected communications and trusts – that the
last crisis [1907-08] was most violent". Shades of today’s world
economic crisis as it affects the most debt-soaked economies of the US
and Britain?
Social democracy supports the war
MOREOVER, LUXEMBURG WAS among the very few who
recognised the ideological atrophy of German social democracy prior to
the first world war. This culminated in the catastrophe of SPD deputies
voting for war credits for German imperialism in the Reichstag
(parliament) – originally, with the single exception of Karl Liebknecht,
joined later by Otto Rühle. The SPD and trade union leaders had become
accustomed to compromise and negotiations within the framework of rising
capitalism. This meant that the prospects for socialism, specifically
socialist revolution, were relegated to the mists of time in their
consciousness.
This was reinforced by the growth in the social
weight of the SPD. It was virtually a state within a state, with over
one million members in 1914, 90 daily newspapers, 267 full-time
journalists, 3,000 workers, and managers and representatives. It had
over 110 Reichstag deputies, 220 deputies in the Landtags (state
parliaments), and almost 3,000 municipal councillors.
The SPD seemed to progress remorselessly in
elections. This was, in the words of Ruth Fischer, a later leader of the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD), a "way of life… The individual worker
lived in his party, the party penetrated into the workers’ everyday
habits. His ideas, his reactions, his attitudes, were formed out of the
integration of his personal and his collective". This represented a
strength and a weakness. The increasing power of the working class was
reflected in the SPD and the unions. But this was combined with the
smothering and underestimation of this power by the SPD leaders, indeed,
a growing hostility to the revolutionary possibilities which would
inevitability break out at some future date.
Rosa Luxemburg increasingly came into collision with
the SPD machine, whose stultifying effect she contrasted to the social
explosions in the first Russian revolution of 1905-07. Luxemburg was a
real internationalist, participating in the revolutionary movements in
three countries. Originally a Pole, she was a founder of the Social
Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), a participant in the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a naturalised German and
prominent member of the SPD. She compared the flair and energy from
below in Russia, witnessed at first hand, to the increasingly
bureaucratic machine of the party and unions in Germany. She argued that
this could become a colossal obstacle to the working class taking power
in the event of a revolutionary eruption.
In this sense, she was more farsighted even than
Lenin, who was passionately absorbed in Russian affairs and saw the SPD
as the model for the parties of the Second International – and its
leaders, such as Karl Kautsky, as teachers. Trotsky wrote: "Lenin
considered Kautsky as his teacher and stressed this everywhere he could.
In Lenin’s work of that period and for a number of years following, one
does not find a trace of criticism in principle directed against the
Bebel-Kautsky tendency".
Indeed, Lenin thought that Luxemburg’s increasing
criticisms of Kautsky and the SPD leadership were exaggerated. In fact,
in Two Tactics of Russian Social Democracy (1905), Lenin wrote: "When
and where did I ever call the revolutionism of Bebel and Kautsky
‘opportunism’?... When and where have there been brought to light
differences between me, on the one hand, and Bebel and Kautsky on the
other?... The complete unanimity of international revolutionary Social
Democracy on all major questions of programme and tactics is a most
incontrovertible fact".
Lenin recognised that there would be opportunist
trends within mass parties of the working class but he compared the
Mensheviks in Russia with the right-wing revisionism of Bernstein, not
with Kautskyism. That lasted up to the SPD’s vote in favour of war
credits on 4 August 1914. Indeed, when Lenin saw an issue of the SPD
paper, Vorwärts, supporting war credits, initially he considered it a
forgery by the German general staff. Rosa Luxemburg was not so
unprepared as she had been involved in a protracted struggle with
right-wing SPD leaders, but also with ‘left’ and ‘centrist’ elements
like Kautsky.
Trotsky, in Results and Prospects (1906), in which
the theory of the permanent revolution was first outlined, also had a
perception of what could take place: "The European Socialist Parties,
particularly the largest of them, the German Social-Democratic Party,
have developed their conservatism in proportion as the great masses have
embraced socialism and the more these masses have become organised and
disciplined… Social Democracy as an organisation embodying the political
experience of the proletariat may at a certain moment become a direct
obstacle to open conflict between the workers and bourgeois reaction".
In his autobiography, My Life (1930), he wrote: "I did not expect the
official leaders of the International, in case of war, to prove
themselves capable of serious revolutionary initiative. At the same
time, I could not even admit the idea that the Social Democracy would
simply cower on its belly before a nationalist militarism".
Spontaneous mass action
IT WAS THE immense power of the SPD, and the inertia
of its top-heavy bureaucracy in the face of looming sharp changes in
Germany and Europe, which led to one of Luxemburg’s best-known works,
The Mass Strike (1906). This was a summing up of the first Russian
revolution from which Luxemburg drew both political and organisational
conclusions. It is a profoundly interesting analysis of the role of the
masses as the driving force, of their spontaneous character, in the
process of revolution. In emphasising the independent movement and will
of the working class against "the line and march of officialdom", she
was correct in a broad historical sense.
Many revolutions have been made in the teeth of
opposition and even sabotage by the leaders of the workers’ own
organisations. In the revolutionary events of 1936 in Spain, while the
workers of Madrid initially demonstrated for arms, which their socialist
leaders refused to supply, the workers of Barcelona rose spontaneously
and smashed Franco’s forces within 48 hours. This ignited a social
revolution which swept through Catalonia and Aragon to the gates of
Madrid, with four fifths of Spain temporarily in the hands of the
working class. In Chile in 1973, on the other hand, where the workers
listened to their leaders and remained in the factories as Augusto
Pinochet executed his coup, they were systematically rounded up and
slaughtered.
We also saw a spontaneous revolutionary explosion in
France in 1968 when ten million workers occupied the factories for a
month. The leaders of the Communist Party and the ‘Socialist’
Federation, rather than seeking victory through a revolutionary
programme of workers’ councils and a workers’ and farmers’ government,
lent all their efforts to derailing this magnificent movement. In
Portugal in 1974, the revolution swept away the Marcelo Caetano
dictatorship and, in its first period, gave an absolute majority of
votes to those standing under a socialist or communist banner. In 1975,
this led to the expropriation of the majority of industry. The Times
declared: "Capitalism is dead in Portugal". This was not so because the
initiatives by the working class from below and the opportunities they
generated were squandered. This was because there was no coherent and
sufficiently influential mass party and leadership capable of drawing
all the threads together and establishing a democratic workers’ state.
These examples show that the spontaneous movement of the working class
is insufficient to guarantee victory in a brutal struggle against
capitalism.
The spontaneous character of the German revolution
was evident in November 1918. This mass eruption flew in the face of
everything that the SPD leaders wanted. Even the creation before this of
the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) – out of a split in the
SPD in 1917 – did not arise from any conscious policy of its leaders,
including Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding and the revisionist Bernstein. It
developed because of the revolt by the working class at the throttling
of any objections to the SPD leadership’s policy on the war. This split
was neither prepared nor desired by these ‘oppositionists’.
Nevertheless, they took with them 120,000 members and a number of
newspapers.
The general strike
CONNECTED TO ROSA Luxemburg’s emphasis on
spontaneity was the issue of the general strike. Basing herself on the
mass strikes of the Russian revolution, she nevertheless adopted a
certain passive and fatalistic approach. To some extent, this later
affected the leaders of the KPD after her death. Rosa Luxemburg
correctly emphasised that a revolution could not be made artificially,
outside of a maturing of the objective circumstances that allowed this
possibility.
However, the role of what Marxists describe as the
‘subjective factor’, a mass party, far-sighted leadership, etc, is
crucial in transforming a revolutionary situation into a successful
revolution. So is timing, as the opportunity for a successful social
overturn can last for a short time. If the opportunity is lost, it may
not recur for a long time, and the working class can suffer a defeat.
Therefore, at a crucial time, a definite timeframe, a correct leadership
can help the working class to take power. Such was the role of the
Bolsheviks in the 1917 Russian revolution.
The opposite was the case in 1923 in Germany. The
opportunity of following the example of the Bolsheviks was posed but
lost because of the hesitation of the KPD leaders supported, among
others, by Stalin. This was partly conditioned by historical experience
which, until then, had featured partial general strike action in the
working-class struggles prior to the first world war. In this period,
there were instances where the government took fright at the general
strike at its very outset and made concessions, without carrying the
masses to open class conflict. This was the situation following the
Belgian general strike of 1893, called by the Belgian Labour Party, with
300,000 workers participating, including left-wing Catholic groups and,
on a much bigger scale, in October 1905 in Russia. Under the pressure of
the strike, the tsarist regime made constitutional ‘concessions’ in
1905.
The situation following the first world war, a time
of revolution and counter-revolution, was entirely different, with the
general strike posing more sharply the question of power. The issue of
the general strike is of exceptional importance for Marxists. In some
instances, it is an inappropriate weapon. At the time of General Lavr
Kornilov’s march against Petrograd in August 1917, for example, neither
the Bolsheviks nor the soviets (workers’ councils) thought of declaring
a general strike. On the contrary, the railway workers continued to work
so that the opponents of Kornilov could be transported to derail his
forces. Workers in the factories continued to work, too, except those
who had left to fight Kornilov. At the time of the October revolution
there was no talk of a general strike. The Bolsheviks enjoyed mass
support and, under those conditions, a general strike would have
weakened themselves, not the capitalist enemy. On the railways, in the
factories and offices, the workers assisted the uprising to overthrow
capitalism and establish a democratic workers’ state.
In today’s era, a general strike usually is an
either/or issue, where an alternative workers’ government is implicit in
the situation. In the 1926 general strike in Britain, the issue of power
was posed and dual power existed for nine days. In 1968 in France, the
biggest general strike in history posed the question of power but the
working class did not seize it.
The German revolution of 1918-24 also witnessed
general strikes and partial attempts in this direction. The Kapp putsch
in March 1920 – when the director of agriculture of Prussia, who
represented the Junkers and highly-placed imperial civil servants, took
power with the support of the generals – was met with one of the most
complete general strikes in history. The government ‘could not get a
single poster printed’ as the working class paralysed the government and
state. This putsch lasted for a grand total of 100 hours! Yet, even with
this stunning display of working-class power, it did not lead to a
socialist overturn, precisely because of the absence of a mass party and
leadership capable of mobilising the masses and establishing an
alternative democratic workers’ state. The erstwhile followers of
Luxemburg in the newly-formed KPD made ultra-left mistakes in not
initially supporting and strengthening the mass action against Kapp.
The role of a revolutionary party
THE ISSUE OF leadership and the need for a party is
central to an estimation of Rosa Luxemburg’s life and work. It would be
entirely one-sided to accuse her, as has been attempted by some critics
of her and Trotsky, of underestimating the need for a revolutionary
party. Her whole life within the SPD was bent towards rescuing the
revolutionary kernel within this organisation from reformism and
centrism. Moreover, she had built a very rigid, independent organisation
– a party – with her co-worker Leo Jogiches in Poland. However, her
revulsion at the ossified character of the SPD and its centralism meant
that she did, on occasion, bend the stick too far the other way. She was
critical of Lenin’s attempt in Russia to create a democratic party, but
one that was centralised.
On the split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
she was a conciliator – as was Trotsky (shown in his participation in
the August Bloc) – seeking unity between them in Russia. But, after the
Bolsheviks had won four fifths of the organised workers in Russia by
1912, a formal split with the Mensheviks took place. Lenin understood
before others that the Mensheviks were not prepared for a struggle going
beyond the framework of Russian landlordism and capitalism. His approach
was vindicated in the Russian revolution, with the Mensheviks ending up
on the other side of the barricades. Following the Russian revolution,
Rosa Luxemburg came close to Bolshevism and became part of its
international trend, as did Trotsky.
The main charge that can be made against Luxemburg
is that she did not sufficiently organise a clearly delineated trend
against the right-wing of the SPD and the centrists around Kautsky.
There were some criticisms at the time and later that Luxemburg and her
Spartacist followers should have immediately split with the SPD leaders,
certainly following their betrayal at the outset of the first world war.
Indeed Lenin, as soon as he was convinced of the betrayal of social
democracy, called for an immediate split, accompanying this with a call
for a new, Third International. A political split was required, both
from the right and ‘left’ SPD. Rosa did this, characterising the SPD as
a "rotten corpse".
The organisational conclusion from this, however,
was of a tactical rather than a principled character. Moreover,
hindsight is wonderful when dealing with real historic problems. Rosa
Luxemburg confronted a different objective situation to that facing the
Bolsheviks in Russia. Spending most of their history in the underground,
with a relatively smaller organisation of cadres, the Bolsheviks
necessarily acquired a high degree of centralisation, without abandoning
strong democratic procedures. There was also the tumultuous history of
the Marxist and workers’ movement in Russia, conditioned by the
experience of the struggle against Narodya Volya (People’s Will), the
ideas of terrorism, the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, the split between the
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, the first world war, etc. These had prepared
a steel-hardened layer of advanced workers by the time of the
revolution. Rosa Luxemburg confronted an entirely different situation as
a minority, and was somewhat isolated in a legal, mass party.
Although she was a naturalised German, she was
considered an outsider, particularly when she came into conflict with
the SPD leadership. Despite this, her courage shines through when one
reads the speeches and criticisms that she made of the party leadership
over years. She criticised the "clinging mists of parliamentary
cretinism", what would be called electoralism today. She even lacerated
August Bebel, the party leader who increasingly "could only hear with
his right ear". Accompanied by Clara Zetkin, she said to Bebel: "Yes,
you can write our epitaph: ‘Here lie the last two men of German social
democracy’." The achievements of Rosa, particularly in the field of
ideas, of Marxist theory, were remarkable in themselves, but even more
so as a woman in what was still a heavily male-dominated society, which
affected also the SPD. She castigated the SPD’s trailing after
middle-class leaders in an excellent aphorism appropriate to those who
support coalitionism today. She wrote that it was more necessary "to act
on progressives and possibly even liberals, than to act with them".
But a vital element of Marxism in developing
political influence through a firm organisation or party was not
sufficiently developed by Rosa Luxemburg or her supporters. This does
not have to take the form on all occasions of a separate party. But a
well-organised nucleus is essential in preparing for the future.
Luxemburg did not achieve this, which was to have serious consequences
with the outbreak of the German revolution. Rosa Luxemburg and Jogiches
correctly opposed premature splits. She wrote: "It was always possible
to walk out of small sects or small coteries and, if one does not want
to stay there, to apply oneself to building new sects and new coteries.
But it is only an irresponsible daydream to want to liberate the whole
mass of the working class from the very weighty and dangerous yoke of
the bourgeoisie by a simple ‘walk-out’."
Working in mass organisations
SUCH AN APPROACH is justified when a tactic is
pursued by Marxists within mass parties. Such was the approach in
Britain of Militant, now the Socialist Party, when it worked within the
Labour Party, in which by the 1980s we had established perhaps the most
powerful position of Trotskyism in western Europe – at least, probably,
since Trotsky’s Left Opposition.
But such an approach, justified in one historical
period, can be a monumental error when conditions change, particularly
when abrupt revolutionary breaks are posed. Rosa Luxemburg and Jogiches
could not be faulted for seeking to organise within the SPD for as long
as possible and, for that matter, the USPD later. Indeed Lenin, in his
eagerness to create mass communist parties after the Russian revolution,
was sometimes a little impatient in his suggestions for splitting from
social-democratic organisations. He proposed a rapid split of the
communists from the French Socialist Party in 1920 but changed his mind
after Alfred Rosmer, in Moscow at the time, suggested that the Marxists
needed more time to bring over the majority to the stand of the
Communist (Third) International.
Lenin, moreover, while proposing the formation of
the Third International as a split from the Second International, was
prepared to amend his position if events did not work out as he
envisaged. He wrote: "The immediate future will show whether conditions
have already ripened for the formation of a new, Marxist International…
If they have not, it will show that a more or less prolonged evolution
is needed for this purging. In that case, our party will be the extreme
opposition within the old International – until a base is formed in
different countries for an international working men’s association that
stands on the basis of revolutionary Marxism". When the floodgates of
revolution were thrown open in February 1917 in Russia, and the masses
flooded onto the political arena, even the Bolsheviks – despite their
previous history – had about 1% support in the soviets, 4% by April.
The real weakness of Luxemburg and Jogiches was not
that they refused to split but that, in the preceding historical period,
they were not organised as a clearly-defined trend in social democracy
preparing for the revolutionary outbursts upon which Rosa Luxemburg’s
work for more than ten years was based. The same charge – only with more
justification – could be levelled at some of those left and even Marxist
currents that work or have worked in broad formations, sometimes in new
parties. They have been indistinguishable politically from the reformist
or centrist leaders. This was the case in Italy in the PRC, where the
Mandelites (now organised outside in Sinistra Critica) were supporters
of the Fausto Bertinotti majority until they left the party. The SWP’s
German organisation (Linksruck, now Marx 21) pursues a similar policy,
as the left boot within The Left party today. Consequently, it will not
gain substantially.
Politically, Luxemburg did not act like this. But
neither did she draw all the organisational conclusions in preparing a
steeled cadre, a framework for a future mass organisation, in
preparation for the convulsive events in Germany. It was this aspect
that Lenin criticised in his comments on Rosa Luxemburg’s Junius
pamphlet (1915). Lenin conceded that this was a "splendid Marxist work",
although he argued against confusing opposition to the first world war,
which was imperialist, and legitimate wars of national liberation. But
Lenin also comments that it "conjures up in our mind the picture of a
lone man [he did not know Rosa was the author] who has no
comrades in an illegal organisation accustomed to thinking out
revolutionary slogans to their conclusion and systematically educating
the masses in their spirit".
Lenin systematically trained and organised the best
workers in Russia in implacable opposition to capitalism and its shadows
in the labour movement. This necessarily involved clearly organising a
grouping, a faction that was organised as well as being based on firm
political principles, ready for future battles including the revolution.
Rosa Luxemburg was an important figure in all the
congresses of the Second International and generally carried the votes
of the Polish Social Democratic party in exile. She was also a member of
the International Socialist Bureau. However, as Pierre Broué points out:
"She was never able to establish within the SPD either a permanent
platform based on the support of a newspaper or a journal or a stable
audience wider than a handful of friends and supporters around her".
Growing opposition to the war, however, widened the
circle of support and contacts for Luxemburg and the Spartacist group.
Trotsky sums up her dilemma: "The most that can be said is that in her
historical-philosophical evaluation of the labour movement, the
preparatory selection of the vanguard, in comparison with the mass
actions that were to be expected, fell too short with Rosa; whereas
Lenin – without consoling himself with the miracles of future actions –
took the advanced workers and constantly and tirelessly welded them
together into firm nuclei, illegally or legally, in the mass
organisations or underground, by means of a sharply defined programme".
After the revolution of November 1918, however, she did begin her
"ardent labour" of assembling such a cadre.
A programme for workers’ democracy
MOREOVER, SHE POSED the ideological tasks very
clearly: "The choice today is not between democracy and dictatorship.
The question which history has placed on the agenda is: bourgeois
democracy or socialist democracy, for the dictatorship of the
proletariat is democracy in a socialist sense of the term. The
dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean bombs, putsches, riots or
‘anarchy’ that the agents of capitalism claim". This answers those who
seek to distort the idea of Karl Marx when he spoke about the
‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. In today’s terms, as Luxemburg
pointed out, this means workers’ democracy. Marxists have to try to
reach the best workers, and should avoid language which can give a false
idea of what we intend for the future. Because of its connotations with
Stalinism, therefore, we no longer use the term ‘dictatorship of the
proletariat’. The same idea is expressed in our call for a socialist,
planned economy, organised on the basis of workers’ democracy.
The German revolution not only overthrew the Kaiser
but posed the germ of this programme through the network of workers’ and
soldiers’ councils on the lines of the Russian revolution. A period of
dual power was initiated and the capitalists were compelled to give
important concessions to the masses, such as the eight-hour day. But SPD
leaders, like Gustav Noske and Philipp Scheidemann, conspired with the
capitalists and reactionary scum in the Freikorps, predecessors of the
fascists, to take revenge. General Wilhelm Groener, who led the German
army, admitted later: "The officer corps could only cooperate with a
government which undertook the struggle against Bolshevism… Ebert [the
SPD leader] had made his mind up on this… We made an alliance against
Bolshevism… There existed no other party which had enough influence upon
the masses to enable the re-establishment of a governmental power with
the help of the army". Gradually, concessions to the workers were
undermined and a vitriolic campaign against ‘Bolshevik terror’, chaos,
the Jews, and particularly ‘bloody Rosa’, was unleashed. The
Anti-Bolshevik League organised its own intelligence service and set up,
in its founder’s words, an "active anti-communist, counter-espionage
organisation".
In opposition to the slogan, ‘All power to the
soviets’ (from the Russian revolution), the reaction led by Noske’s SPD
mobilised behind the idea of ‘All power to the people’. This was their
means of undermining the German ‘soviets’. A constituent assembly was
posed as an alternative to Luxemburg and Liebknecht’s idea of a national
council of soviets to initiate a workers’ and farmers’ government.
Unfortunately, the muddled centrist lefts, whose USPD party grew
enormously as the SPD leaders lost support, let slip the opportunity to
create an all-Germany council movement.
The discontent of the masses was reflected in the
January 1919 uprising. Such stages are reached in all revolutions when
the working class sees its gains snatched back by the capitalists and
comes out onto the streets: the Russian workers in the July days of
1917, the May days in Catalonia in 1937 during the Spanish revolution.
(The events of the German revolution are dealt with in Socialism Today
No.123, November 2008, and The Socialist 555, 4 November 2008.)
The July days came four months after the February
revolution. In Germany, the uprising took place a mere two months after
the revolutionary overturn of November 1918. This is an indication of
the speed of events. Given the isolation of Berlin from the rest of the
country, at that stage, a setback or defeat was inevitable. This became
all the greater for the working class with the murder of Liebknecht and
Luxemburg. It was as if both Lenin and Trotsky had been assassinated in
July 1917, removing the two leaders whose ideas and political guidance
led to the success of the October revolution. Lenin – extremely modest
on a personal level – was aware of his own vital political role and took
steps, by going into hiding in Finland, to avoid falling into the hands
of the counter-revolution.
Despite the urging of those like Paul Levi to leave
Berlin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht remained in the city, with the terrible
consequences that followed. There is no doubt that Luxemburg’s political
experience would have been a powerful factor in avoiding some of the
mistakes – particularly ultra-left ones – which were subsequently made
in the German revolution. In the convulsive events of 1923, Rosa
Luxemburg, with her keen instinct for the mass movement and ability to
change with the circumstances, would probably not have made the mistake
made by Heinrich Brandler and the KPD leadership when they let slip one
of the most favourable opportunities in history to make a working-class
revolution and change the course of world history.
Luxemburg and Liebknecht are in the pantheon of
Marxist greats. For her theoretical contribution alone, Rosa Luxemburg
deserves to stand alongside Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Those who
try and picture her as a critic of the Bolsheviks and the Russian
revolution are entirely false. Initially she criticised the policies of
the Bolsheviks in 1918, in isolation from her prison cell, but was
persuaded not to publish her comments by her closest supporters at the
time. Yet still in her most erroneous work she wrote of the Russian
revolution and the Bolsheviks: "Everything that a party could offer of
courage, revolutionary farsightedness, and consistency in a historic
hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure…
Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian
revolution; it was also the salvation of the honour of international
socialism". Only malicious enemies of the heroic traditions of the
Bolshevik party used this material after her death in an attempt to
divide Luxemburg from Lenin, Trotsky, the Bolsheviks and Russian
revolution.
She made mistakes on the issue of Polish
independence. She was wrong on the differences between the Bolsheviks
and the Mensheviks, even in July 1914 supporting the opportunists who
stood for ‘unity’ between them. As Lenin pointed out, she was also wrong
on the economic theory of accumulation. But, also in the words of Lenin,
"In spite of her mistakes she was – and remains for us – an eagle". So
should say the best workers and young people today who have occasion to
study her works in preparation for the struggle for socialism.
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