Jörn Schütrumpf and Rosa Luxemburg: The Breakdown of Unity in the RSDLP

Jörn Schütrumpf discusses Rosa Luxemburg: The Breakdown of Unity in the RSDLP.

Lenin, by the way, was not innovative at all in this work. He merely repeated positions advocated by Marx and Engels 60 years earlier. By contrast, in 1922, three years after Rosa Luxemburg’s death, Lenin became quite enterprising and joined the list of male authors (other genders have probably signed up since) who hide behind Rosa Luxemburg quotes that they themselves made up: “‘German Social-Democracy has been a stinking corpse since 4 August 1914’ — this statement will make Rosa Luxemburg’s name go down in the history of the international working-class movement.’”

Although it is obvious that a Polish intellectual would never allow herself to come across in such a “Russian” way, unfortunately we must acknowledge that Lenin’s forgery was a successful one. Rosa Luxemburg has in fact gone down in history with this mindless nonsense, and on a global scale at that. Poor Rosa.

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Schütrumpf obviously sides with Luxemburg against Lenin. Schütrumpf and Luxemburg accuses Leninism of promoting fractionalism. Schütrumpf argues that Lenin has defamed Luxemburg in order to deflect Luxemburg's accusation.

Rosa Luxemburg writes:

Experience had convinced the overwhelming majority of Bolsheviks that the Leninist policy of organizational withdrawal into a narrow circle was extremely conducive to opportunism and detrimental to the revolutionary wing of Social Democracy: instead of attaining commanding influence over the whole party and rally it behind them, the Bolsheviks erect a factional wall that cuts them off from the party, thus condemning themselves to impotence.

Lenin’s organizational views, which had been swept from the face of Russian Social Democracy by the revolution and by the restoration of party unity, could only thrive again in an atmosphere of party disintegration, generated by the counterrevolution in general and by the liquidators in the ranks of the party in particular. Leninism, in its narrowness and with its sectarian organizational views, knows no other means of combating opportunism than to expel from the party anyone who disagrees. This is why Leninism is by its nature a policy of perpetual splits.

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When Luxemburg wrote this (1912), Lenin and the Bolsheviks were indeed swept from the vanguard of the revolutionary movement. It was only after the July days in 1917 that Lenin was able to lead the Bolsheviks to the forefront of the revolutionary movement. Between July and October 1917, the Bolsheviks emerged as the face of the revolution. The other revolutionary factions had faded or merged them selves into the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP (especially Trotsky).

Luxemburg concludes (in July 1912):

The reunification of Social Democracy into one single party at the Stockholm Party Congress was the product and achievement of the 1905–6 revolution. Like many other accomplishments of the proletariat, this fruit of the revolution was wrested from us by the triumph of counterrevolution. The liquidationist tendency emerged and grew stronger under the impact of counterrevolution; mindless Leninism also thrived again, and the two tendencies have together brought about the collapse of party unity.

But now, a revolutionary movement has arisen among the working masses. And this movement is the surest guarantor of the imminent resurrection of the RSDLP under the banner of revolutionary Marxism.

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Luxemburg's hope were dashed by the events of 1917. Factions and persons that seemed revolutionary prior to 1917 faded or failed to maintain or adjust their revolutionary positions in reaction to the progress of the Russian Revolution.

Because of her murder during the German Revolution of 1918–1919, we don't know if Luxemburg would have reconsidered her position on Leninism in the aftermath of the October Revolution. If the German Revolution had succeeded, and a German Soviet Republic managed to survived, it is more likely the focus of the worldwide Communism would be in Berlin rather than in Moscow. Luxemburg's opinions would then have more weight than Lenin's.

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Renfrey Clarke: Should socialists support a Green New Deal?

Renfrey Clarke asks, “Should socialists support a Green New Deal?”.

Meanwhile, working people are well able to see that the demands the bosses denounce and ridicule are emphatically in the public interest and essential for human survival.

If capitalists refuse to enact measures needed for humanity to survive, what does this say about capitalism?

The effect of this situation is to redirect popular thinking in ways that abstract political lectures by the left could never do. Whether or not the people leading the Green New Deal campaign have illusions in capitalism is not the point: the demands themselves have a powerful radicalising dynamic, that leads far beyond capitalism’s bounds.

Campaigning around demands such as those of the Green New Deal, contributors to the Adelaide forum explained, can act as a vital bridge allowing workers and their allies to move beyond a general anger and disillusionment, to an understanding of the need to challenge class society itself.

Socialists therefore have to be right in the thick of Green New Deal-style campaigns. They have to push the demands of these campaigns, draw people into broad protest actions, and as the opportunity presents itself, explain their own anti-capitalist perspectives.

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As Rosa Luxemburg wrote in “The Junius Pamphlet”:

Friedrich Engels once said: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” What does “regression into barbarism” mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. In this war imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.

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Capitalists will mock us for predicting the collapse of Capitalism in the century since those words were written despite the Great Depression, another world war, several genocides, several famines, the Great Financial Crisis, and now Climate Change. There are Capitalists who say “Better dead than red!” Unfortunately, that is now a distinct possibility.

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Socialists and World War I: Turn the imperialist war into a civil war

Doug Enaa Greene writes about Socialists and World War I: Turn the imperialist war into a civil war.

And as opposed to fellow revolutionaries such as Trotsky, Bukharin, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Radek, Lenin was able to see the potential for anti-colonial national liberation movements to bring capitalism to its knees. Lenin scoffed at those revolutionaries who saw the revolution where “one army lines up in one place and says, “We are for socialism”, and another, somewhere else and says, “We are for imperialism”, and that will be a social revolution!”

Rather, Lenin had a much more dialectical view of the possibilities for revolution. He believed that revolution would not strictly confined to workers against capitalists in the heartlands of capitalism, but that:

The revolutionary movement in the advanced countries would actually be a sheer fraud if, in their struggle against capital, the workers of Europe and America were not closely and completely united with the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of 'colonial' slaves who are oppressed by capital.

And too many sections of the left, even those who proclaim fidelity to Lenin forget these words:

To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc.—to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution.

This perspective of Lenin would guide the Bolshevik Party during the Russian Revolution of 1917 — which was not just the overturn of Tsarist Absolutism and feudalism along with being the world's first socialist revolution — one of history's most successful anti-war movements.

Lenin, and other socialists and communists, were in a minority in their opposition to World War I — they were imprisoned, denounced and killed by the imperialist rulers and their social democratic lapdogs. Yet we should remember this — it was Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg, and all the others who were proven right. They were correct to not only oppose the war, but to expose the system that spawned the slaughter and to organise to bring capitalism down. On this centennial of the First World War, we should remember their struggles, sacrifices and lessons.

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We, workers, should not be dogmatic about how a social revolution develops; but, rather, be open to anyone who agitates against the current system.

However, there is definitely a problem of working with avowed racists, sexists, xenophobes, and homophobes. For these people, by their nature, are not for an inclusive society of equals.

On the other hand, working with people who are ignorant of their racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia, enables an open discussion about such issues when they interfere with political action and debate.

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