Gesellschaftsanalyse Und Linke Praxis

STOP OR WE WILL SHOOT! WHY THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF 1918/19 HAD TO END IN POLITICAL REVOLUTION AND ULTIMATELY LOST IT AS WELL by Ingar Solty, Uwe Sonnenberg, Jörn Schütrumpf...... 2

A NEW CIVILIZATION by Alex Demirović...... 10

ROSA LUXEMBURG AS A SOCIALIST FEMINIST by Drucilla Cornell...... 18

‘NO SENTIMENTALITY PLEASE’ AN ISRAELI PERSPECTIVE ON ROSA LUXEMBURG by Gal Hertz...... 26

LETTER TO SOPHIE LIEBKNECHT by Rosa Luxemburg...... 32

INNER COLONIES THE CARE SECTOR AS A PLACE OF ‘NEW LANDNAHME’ by Tove Soiland...... 38

ORDER REIGNS IN BERLIN by Rosa Luxemburg...... 44

REVOLUTIONARY REALPOLITIK by Michael Brie | Mario Candeias...... 52

ROWING AGAINST THE CURRENT TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH ROSA LUXEMBURG by Miriam Pieschke...... 60

‘NO COWARDICE BEFORE THE FRIEND!’ HOW DO WE CRITIQUE REVOLUTIONS? by Lutz Brangsch...... 66

AUTHORS...... 72 With the exception of the articles by Rosa Luxemburg and Drucilla Cornell, this brochure, a compilation of texts from the 3/2018 ICH WERDE SEIN issue of the LuXemburg Magazine, has been translated from German by Tim Jack, Phillipa Hare and Sally MacPhail for lingua•trans•fair. IMPRINT

LuXemburg. Gesellschaftsanalyse und linke Praxis, 2019, ISSN 1869-0424

Publisher: Board of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Managing Editor: Barbara Fried [email protected] Tel: +49 (0)30 443 10-404

Editorial Board: Harry Adler, Lutz Brangsch, Michael Brie, Mario Candeias, Judith Dellheim, Alex DemiroviĆ, Barbara Fried, Corinna Genschel, Christiane Markard, Ferdinand Muggenthaler, Miriam Pieschke, Katharina Pühl, Rainer Rilling, Thomas Sablowski, Hannah Schu- rian, Jörn Schütrumpf, Ingar Solty, Uwe Sonnenberg, Moritz Warnke and Florian Wilde

Contact: [email protected] Editorial Office:Harry Adler [email protected] Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, 10243 Berlin Telefon: +49 (0)30 443 10-157 Fax: +49 (0)30 443 10-184 www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de

Copyleft: All content, unless otherwise stated, is subject to the terms of the Creative Commons license

Graphic Design & Layout: Matthies & Schnegg – The reproductions of the collages and paintings Ausstellungs- und Kommunikationsdesign in this issue are part of the art project ‘A New Dress www.matthies-schnegg.com for Rosa’. It was created by students of the Athens School of Fine Arts in cooperation with the office Print: Hinkelstein-Druck, Berlin, Germany of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Greece Title picture: on the occasion of the 100 th anniversary of Rosa Roland Matticzk, Agentur Sehstern Luxemburg’s death.

EDITORIAL

Rosa Luxemburg is one of the iconic faces who think differently’ have made it into of the socialist movement. She is also the political mainstream, and have been one of the few women, possibly the only expropriated and re-interpreted as anti- women, whose key role in the movement socialist slogans. With this anniversary is unquestioned. She continues to impress issue, we hope to revive Luxemburg’s us to this day as a brilliant author and thinking and political action. What can she clear-sighted theoretician; she was an offer in the face of today’s challenges? In inspirational speaker, artistic chronicler the struggle against the right-wing, the and passionate comrade. Rosa Luxemburg deep crisis of the political and the great represents a stance that brings together weakness of the Left? resolute dedication to political struggle and How did Luxemburg conceive of ‘tender humanity’. the relationship between party and Luxemburg is not only the eponym movement? What did she make of of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, but internationalism? Was she a feminist – also the inspiration for this journal. Her or how can we, as left-wing feminists, unique way of combining theory and refer to her? Many today continue to practice, analysis and transformation, wear themselves out haggling over small strategy and active intervention in her political differences, as well as in large life is what the LuXemburg Magazine and significant struggles. What stance aspires to, as the mouthpiece of a left- did Luxemburg take when confronted wing project for society. by such challenges? How did she 100 years after her murder, almost deal with the paradox of reform and everybody today knows who Luxemburg revolution? And what can we learn from was, and many are familiar with her her on the decisive question of political dictums. However, even among the Left, organisation? few people actually study her writings We follow her firm conviction that our more than superficially, and hardly any society can and must change – and courses focus on her works, which are her optimism that a future of radical rarely discussed in detail. Some of her emancipation is possible, even in the face quotes, such as ‘the freedom of those of political defeats: I was, I am, I SHALL BE!

PREFACE 1 STOP OR WE WILL SHOOT! WHY THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF 1918/19 HAD TO END IN POLITICAL REVOLUTION AND ULTIMATELY LOST IT AS WELL

INGAR SOLTY, UWE SONNENBERG, JÖRN SCHÜTRUMPF

One of the most vivid images of the events movement demands such as universal surrounding the 1918/19 revolution in and women’s suffrage and the eight-hour Germany is that of soldiers holding up day. Within hours an entire order seemed a sign with the unambiguous message: to tumble. Economic power and property ‘Stop or we will shoot!’ STOP! they call relations remained intact, yet within while cordoning off public spaces. This is a matter of a few hours, by adopting a the reality in Germany after January 1919. new form of government; Germany had become a republic. ‘BROTHERS! DON’T SHOOT!’ For this November 1918, the Just two months before nobody could pictorial memory of the revolution still have seen this coming. People had danced reminds us of the urgent plea: ‘Brothers! celebrating the end of the devastating war. Don’t shoot!’. In stark contrast to the On 9 November 1918, Germany’s emperor atrocities and violence of the First World had abdicated and, fearing prosecution, War, the revolution by and large began fled to the Netherlands. The young peacefully with the Kiel sailors’ mutiny republic, depleted of resources by the war, on 3 November 1918, and the (double) would later send him a substantial part declaration of the republic by Philipp of his private fortune, a unique feature in Scheidemann and Karl Liebknecht on the history of Europe’s way of dealing with 9 November. Yet on 6 December 1918, toppled monarchs. The rapidly established the military commander of Berlin, Otto Council of People’s Representatives Wels (SPD), positioned machine guns on implemented long-standing worker Berlin’s Chausseestraße street, and let

2 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE guard fusiliers open fire on an authorised a peaceful revolution to the outbreak demonstration. Simultaneously, counter of massive violence over the following revolutionary units in the city centre months? And what – beyond accusing attempted to arrest the Executive Council individuals of having committed treason – of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils – since can help us understand why the governing 10 November the revolution’s highest Majority Social Democrats, after they organ – and proclaim the councillor of had striven to change capitalism through the people’s representative Friedrich revolution before the war, now in coalition Ebert (SPD) as ‘President’ by granting with anti-democratic forces opposed the him dictatorial powers. When both of revolution in an authoritarian way? them failed, the marauders moved on to After 1910 at the latest a revolution the office of Rote Fahne, the paper of the was no longer on the SPD’s agenda. Spartacus League, although at the time Instead, the SPD in coalition with an independent organisation, but still the other more or less liberal parties organised within the USPD (Independent represented in the Reichstag focused on Social Democratic Party of Germany) the role of the monarchy in parliament. which had split from the SPD due to its In early October 1918, these efforts had at opposition to the war. This would not least succeeded in toppling Ludendorff’s be the last visit. The tensions between military dictatorship. Initially, this was revolutionary and reactionary forces grew, all the majority of social democrats had the readiness to use force was growing intended. People like Rosa Luxemburg on the side of counterrevolutionaries. and Karl Liebknecht who clung to the Three weeks later, the skirmishes at the Marxian heritage and the prospect of Berlin Schloss occurred, followed by the revolution, were gradually pushed to the Spartacus Uprising 1919 and the state- SPD’s margins during the war and forced ordered massacres during the general out of the party. Like Rosa Luxemburg strike in March resulting in over 1,200 herself they were sent to jail, organised dead workers and sailors. Finally, in April themselves as the Zimmerwald movement and May, this set the scene for the military (1915) or the Spartacus League (1916), quashing of the Council Republics that and finally in 1917 as the cross-spectrum had been established during the course anti-war USPD. The Council of People’s of the revolution on German soil (cf. Representatives established after 9 Demirović in this edition). November 1918 with an equal number But how did it come to this outbreak of representatives from the SPD and of violence? How can we explain the shift USPD was worse than a marriage of from the slogan ‘Brothers, don’t shoot’ to convenience. It was quite simply a forced ‘Stop, or we will shoot!’, the move from marriage coerced by the revolutionary

INGAR SOLTY, UWE SONNENBERG, JÖRN SCHÜTRUMPF 3 wave which either the election of a republic and create the foundations for National Assembly or a good marital row transformation into a socialist society. needed to dissolve. When the coalition in the Council of However, the road to this National Peoples Representatives collapsed, the Assembly was neither predetermined nor USPD proved unable to defend itself and was it direct. It had to be cleared first. The ultimately resigned itself to its fate. German November Revolution 1918 was At the same time, the Spartacus driven by an idea which was inspired by League split from the USPD and became Russia: Across the country, in a matter one of the source groups of the KPD which of fact way which is hard to understand was founded on 30 December 1918. By nowadays, councils arose as mostly this time, however, the counterrevolution exclusively proletarian ruling bodies. They had also gained strength. On 1 December were the symbols and banner-bearers of the Anti-Bolshevist League, which was the revolution. Five weeks later however financed by industrial magnates and the vast majority of delegates at the banks, and its “General Secretary for first All-German Congress of Workers’ Studying and Combatting Bolshevism” and Soldiers’ Councils (from 16 to 20 was launched. In mass publications it December) decided to hold elections for a clamoured for the murder of Liebknecht constituent national assembly. Unwittingly, and Luxemburg. Only later would the with this decision the councils had decided alliance which dated back to the early to give up their power. days of the revolution between Ebert and The refusal by the paramilitary lieutenant general Wilhelm Groener acting Volksmarinedivision (People’s Navy on behalf of the Supreme Command of the Division) to clear the Berlin Schloss German Army (OHL) become known. De and the subsequent assault ordered facto, this alliance had pulled the strings by Friedrich Ebert on Christmas Eve behind the scenes since the beginning, was the perfect excuse for the SPD not least by its joint agreement to stop people’s delegate to dissolve the unloved left forces from driving the revolution partnership with the USPD and to forward by force if necessary. In other promote the development of often extreme words: hardly one day after calling to right-wing Freikorps paramilitary groups soldiers at the Garde-Ulanen barracks – on top of the inferior regular troops. for fraternisation with ‘Brothers! Don’t The USPD, in turn, could have become shoot!’ behind the scenes the slogan was the natural hegemon of the revolution. already: ‘Stop or we will shoot!’ The call to Yet, after 9 November, like the other renounce from violence was therefore only revolutionary forces, the USPD had no valid for as long as Ebert saw himself on idea how to pave the way into the new the defensive and the revolution did not go

4 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE beyond the limits of a political revolution. democratic historiography exaggerate the However, the active revolutionaries did not role played by Luxemburg and Liebknecht know about this. as well as the Spartacus League or the KPD On 15 January 1919 after the quashing in the January 1919 Spartacus Uprising. of the Spartacus uprising, members of They created the myth of an adventurism the Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division bent on liberating a bloody civil war in murdered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Germany to establish a dictatorship of the Liebknecht on the order of the German proletariat based on the Russian model. officer Waldemar Pabst. How deeply Analysing the Spartacus uprising the interim government was involved as an expression of revolutionary in the assassination can no longer be adventurism is, however, a disastrous, fully reconstructed. It is only certain that historically powerful legend. The Gustav Noske (SPD), first as a people’s November Revolution actually comprises a representative councillor and later as longer cycle. It neither ends in November minister of defence, covered for Pabst and 1918, nor with the National Assembly that the justice system did a great deal to elections on 19 January 1919, and nor prevent the case from being solved. with the coming into force of the Weimar Republic constitution on 14 August 1919. BEYOND THE HYPOTHESIS OF BETRAYAL: In a historically relatively open situation, ROSA LUXEMBURG, TRASFORMISMO AND it continued with the second revolution THE QUESTION OF THE USE OF FORCE until 1920 at the latest, if not indeed until The question as to why the SPD ended 1923. It was more than a merely political up allying itself to the old elites during revolution; it was social in nature and the revolution to prevent a fundamental anchored in the masses. Moreover, it was transformation of society remains a not limited to Germany, but embedded legitimate one. For a long time, social within a global revolutionary cycle, which democratic historiography justified the – as revolutions historically often correlate murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, with wars and in particular lost wars – as the clearest example of the shift from stretched geographically from Ireland and ‘Brothers! Don’t shoot!’ to ‘Stop or we the uprising against British colonial rule will shoot!’ with the need to prevent (1916) to central Asia, where, in February a Russian-style civil war. However, 1917 the Uzbeks, Kirgiz, Turkmens and not only social democratic, but also Kazaks stood up to compulsory Russian bourgeois conservative and communist military service. historiography have all distorted history in The effects of the myth of the their own way. In all three narratives, they Spartacus Uprising, however, continued die as bolshevists. Conservative and social to be felt right into the 1930s and 1940s.

INGAR SOLTY, UWE SONNENBERG, JÖRN SCHÜTRUMPF 5 In conjunction with the ‘stab-in-the-back’ November revolution was subsequently myth that explained Germany’s defeat in interpreted as a bourgeois revolution the First World War as a consequence of through proletarian means. a ‘Judaeo-Bolshevist conspiracy’ by the In reality, however, Luxemburg had enemy within, it was allegedly ‘again’ been against a civil war. She distrusted the the case in 1944/45 to prevent a socialist evolutionism of the centrists surrounding revolution behind the front lines of the Karl Kautsky, who had come out with the nation at war. Following the defeat of slogan that the SPD was ‘a revolutionary fascism and the onset of the Cold War, this party but not one that leads revolutions’ position of the Nazis regarding the 1918 before the First World War. Luxemburg revolution, also referred to as the November also recognised what Gramsci would Syndrome, was transformed in the German later call trasformismo, i.e. the gradual Federal Republic’s national conservative inscription and co-optation of the social historiography into the narrative that the democratic opposition into the existing end of the Weimar Republic was not due to ruling system. The SPD as well as the the counter revolution started in 1918 and unions became subject to it in the process the SPD’s alliance with the reactionary old of their institutionalisation. It was precisely elites, but rather that it had been crushed this development that caused the party from both the Left and the Right. It was leadership to break with the anti-war not until the 1960s that a new generation internationalism of the socialist movement of historians discovered the council in 1914, and the process also helps movement’s democratic potential and understand, why the SPD and the unions began to ask new questions regarding the with their millions of members maintained history of this revolution. the status quo with the ancien régime for In communist historiography, so long, even after, hegemony-politically Luxemburg and Liebknecht appear as the speaking, the war on the home front had great leaders of an uprising against the been lost in 1916 due to the catastrophic SPD’s betrayal of the revolution and its food situation, which also lead to the butter alliance with the powers of the old regime. uprisings of 1915. It suggests that it was only because a strictly The large mass strike movements hierarchical communist cadre party was not between June 1916 and 9 November 1918 in existence that the January 1919 uprising highlighted this context. They nurtured had been defeated. Not two weeks after its Luxemburg’s hopes of overturning founding, the KPD simply did not yet have capitalism and ending the imperialist war, that kind of revolutionary organisation. as well as for a socialist transformation As defeated socialist revolutions could not of society. She trusted the spontaneity of exist in communist historiography, the the democratically active or potentially

6 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE active masses. However, she envisaged ‘Brothers don‘t shoot!’, Calling for fraternization the transition to socialism, among in front of the Garde Ulanen barracks on 9 November 1918, © SPK/ Bildstelle GStA PK other things, through the process of compensated expropriations. She probably strike and an overthrow of the Ebert and correctly judged that the revolution in the Scheidemann government, she opposed capitalist-developed West with its broader him. She was nonetheless murdered and scope for political integration as well as the according to the dominant narrative died power resources of the state, meant that as a bolshevist. a revolution would have to develop in a The course of events of January 1919, different way to that under the conditions however, did not depend on Luxemburg of the authoritarian czarist state brought and Liebknecht. The historic events, down by the Leninist-conspiratorial avant- from the mass mobilisation of Berlin garde party (see Demirović and Pieschke workers, the occupations of the newspaper in this edition). Had she believed that civil quarter and train stations, the use of war was the only option to further the military force, through to the massacres revolution, Luxemburg herself would not of revolutionaries would probably – even have opposed a revolutionary civil war and though the demonisation of Liebknecht would even have fought it. Yet, when on 6 and Luxemburg likely lowered the January 1919 Liebknecht followed the call reservations against the use of military of the Revolutionary Stewards for a general force – also have occurred without them.

INGAR SOLTY, UWE SONNENBERG, JÖRN SCHÜTRUMPF 7 Only two KPD members, Liebknecht THIS IS GOING TOO FAR! and Wilhelm Pieck, formed part of the After the First World War, with its millions revolutionary committee established of victims, socialism was on the agenda. on 5 January. Politically speaking, the The second revolution, borne out of protesting masses tended to be behind the disappointment of the results so the USPD. Compared to the KPD’s circa far, was able to count on a broad social- 300 supporters, the USPD had around revolutionary mass basis for its demands 200,000 supporters in Berlin. After (democratisation of state structures, the extreme violence of the Christmas expropriation of the nobility, co- uprising in 1918 and the – SPD ordered determination in companies, socialisation – dismissal of the police chief and USPD activities, transition to a socialist mode of member Emil Eichhorn on 4 January production, as well as cultural, sexual and 1919, the USPD, too, became more radical. artistic emancipation). This momentum, Looking back at history, Rosa to go ahead now and not only secure the Luxemburg was right but it cost her her results of the revolution, but further the life. She died due to the existing power revolution itself, is found also at trade relations: an eroded hegemony called unions and in their discussions about for revolution and socialism as a current possible bases for a new economic and in society still had a mass basis at this social order. time, but the integration of the SPD With its firm resolve to prevent and the party’s corresponding alliance further steps towards revolution, the with the ancien régime blocked such Weimar Coalition then really unleashed a transformation. The German writer counterrevolutionary violence. During Arnold Zweig (1919, 75) probably the general strike of March 1919, which expressed this best in his text Graveside around one million workers from Berlin Speech to Spartacus, where he described took part in, at the order of the government Luxemburg after her murder as the Freikorps paramilitary troops killed at least bearer of an unfulfilled vision (for the 1,200 workers in the Lichtenberg district, future): ‘As an antipode to violence, the most of them without trial. Many of them idea prevails by sacrificing one of its were simply lynched. These unprecedented bearers […]. Alongside the victims of events were accompanied by unparalleled December and January, the bodies of Karl mendacious propaganda, including the Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg lie at claim that the planes that the government the foundations of the German Republic, used to bomb the heart of the revolt in the socialist freedom. The republic will East Berlin had actually been flown by need great achievements to prove itself Spartacists. Yet, both in Berlin, and in the worthy of them.’ military quashing of the Bavarian Council

8 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE Republic, previously unthinkable violence pits, monopoly corporations and other was unleashed against the population. companies ripe for socialisation it would In this case too, most of the victims were have appeased significant distrust and taken summarily shot or murdered after the the wind out of the sails of Bolshevism.’ events, in excess of ninety per cent of cases What Ströbel and others could not have by government troops. This exterminatory known was that the fateful alliance between violence, officially legitimised by Gustav Ebert and the old elites of the emperor’s Noske’s state of emergency, which was army ruled out any progress from the exercised in the name of reason of state, outset, and this implied that anybody who against chaos and for peace and order and did try to take steps in this direction, would in particular against demonised minorities be shot. and the political opposition, anticipated in The resulting persistent mutual hate the eyes of many historians the violence of between the two wings of the workers’ the Nazis. movement prepared the ground as much The acts of government socialists for the KPD’s social fascism theory after its significantly contributed to cementing bolshevization in 1928, as it did the SPD’s the fatal split between the social democrat position of red-equals-brown. In 1920, workers’ movement and communists. ‘Only after they managed to put down the Kapp- with the help of the emperor’s generals Putsch, both of their stances prevented were the social democrats Ebert and Noske the workers’ movement from stopping able to quash the Spartacist revolts in the transfer of power to Hitler. They were 1918/19. From this moment on, a deep now more engrossed in fighting each other blood filled divide split the German workers than fighting their shared enemy together. that subsequently proved impossible After 1933, they would wake up in the same to bridge’, writes for example Wilhelm concentration camps. Hoegner (1945, 22). Contemporaries such as the left-wing social democrat Heinrich Ströbel (1919, 275) – who was fired as REFERENCES editor-in-chief of Vorwärts in 1916 for Hoegner, Wilhelm (alias Rudolf Ritter), 1945: Lehren der Weimarer Republik, in: Schweizer his critique of Burgfrieden and had been Monatshefte 25/1, 14–34 a member of the revolutionary Prussian Ströbel, Heinrich, 1919: Moskau gegen Weimar, cabinet until 4 January 1919 – very early in: Die Weltbühne, 15/1. and 2., 73–279 Zweig, Arnold, 1919: Grabrede auf Spartacus, in: expressed his desperation over the split: Die Weltbühne, 15/1. and 2., 75– 78 ‘The mistake is […] that the government’s concessions came far too late. It should 1 Högner was Minister President of Bavaria have shown its goodwill for socialisation between 1945 and 1946 and again from 1954 to months ago. If it had nationalised 1957 for the social democrats.

INGAR SOLTY, UWE SONNENBERG, JÖRN SCHÜTRUMPF 9 A NEW CIVILIZATION

ALEX DEMIROVIĆ

Rosa Luxemburg continues to provoke not […] been murdered, she would hardly irreconcilably controversial reactions have enjoyed the kind of nearly panegyric even today. Many within the SPD adoration she then enjoyed.’ (Jesse 2008, leadership believed she was too radical 83) Her extremism is not compatible with and democratic. The same can be said of the maxims of a democratic constitutional many of those who followed her in the state – the November Revolution in KPD leadership. Ruth Fischer discredited conclusion should therefore not be seen as Luxemburg’s understanding of freedom an opportunity lost, but rather as catastrophe as the freedom of those who think prevented. (ibid., 79). differently as asyphilis bacillus. From the same reasoning, Ernst Thälmann fully THE WHOLE AND THE PARTS agreed with Stalin that Luxemburgism In The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg, established a bridge to bourgeois ideology Georg Lukács presents one of his central and social fascism, and therefore needed ideas: it is not the primacy of economic to be rooted out (Bierl 1993, 9f). motives to explain historical processes In turn, the extremism studies expert which distinguishes Marxism from and political scientist, Eckhard Jesse, put bourgeois thought, but the point of forward the critical view that Luxemburg’s view of totality. (Lukács 1971, 27). At the critique of Lenin has caused many on the end of the text Lukács attempts to gain Left to see her as a kind of shining light benefit from the consideration that the and representative of democratic socialism. totality is of greater importance than the But many were merely deluded. ‘Had she individual, to draw something positive

10 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE from Luxemburg’s murder. He does it would have been more important for not deny that her death is linked to the Luxemburg to survive because it could defeat of the January 1919 revolutionary have opened up scope for revolutionary struggles, however, he views her death democracy in Germany, have kept strategic as ‘the crowning pinnacle of her thought options open and have given the process and life’. The standpoint of totality a different direction. The term totality is provides the methodological certainty used in conclusion. It renders the text that the historical process ‘regardless of strangely callous. all temporary defeats and setbacks’ (ibid., Does Lukács do Luxemburg’s theory 216) will come to fruition. and political practice justice? Yes and no. Lukács was obviously endeavouring Rosa Luxemburg knew that as a fighter for to prevent any feelings of resignation from proletarian freedom she could end up in taking hold in the movement in Germany jail, yes, she even anticipated her murder. following the murder of one of the leading For her, this was all part of the struggle figures of revolutionary social democracy. (Caysa 2002, 30). She would not have left He opposed the opportunist point of Germany even if threatened to be hanged view whereby, due to the weakness of – ‘for the simple reason that I believe that the labour movement, the attempt at a it may well be necessary to make our party revolutionary transformation should not get used to the idea that sacrifices are part have been made in the first place. Despite of being a socialist’ (Luxemburg 1914, impending defeat, Luxemburg’s readiness 339f). In a similar situation in the summer to stand her ground with the masses and of 1917, Lenin had taken a different share their fate was consistent with the decision and fled because he thought that unity of theory and practice – or, in other to continue the revolution it was more words, a justified and meaningful sacrifice important for him to live. In Luxemburg’s for the whole (which was still to come). case, the Vorwärts, which had contributed to This argument which aims to embolden the general atmosphere of lynching, would people, but fails to consider the full probably have laughed about her cowardice, potential of Luxemburg’s specific political nevertheless it would probably have been work and ignores her as an individual, better for her to have gone into hiding. at the same time suggests that theorists dispose of this Whole, and have the right TENDER HUMANITY … to mandate over individuals in its name. Lukács again fails to recognise the Not for one moment does he grant any dialectics at work in Luxemburg’s consideration to the strategic thought thinking. A few days after being released that her death had actually contributed to from jail in November 1918, she delivered irreversible defeat and that, put differently, on her promise to her fellow prisoners

ALEX DEMIROVIĆ 11 by publishing a text in the Rote Fahne in negligence and indifference out of respect which she demanded the abolishment for the individual, ‘Ruthless revolutionary root and branch of the existing justice energy and tender humanity – this alone system that only breathes the barbarism is the true essence of socialism.’ (ibid.) of capitalism. As this would require a I interpret humanity as an awareness new economic and social foundation, she for the individual parts that withdraws demanded at least a sweeping reform of legitimacy from the crime of indifference the penal system and the abolition of the that can be committed in the name of the death penalty. When the government, totality. Luxemburg (1971, 369) unites the workers and soldiers councils, failed approaches that are not easy to bring to act accordingly, Luxemburg (1918a, together in one sentence, a rigorous 405) interpreted this as an indication of transformatory practice, ‘the highest their true nature: ‘Alas, how German this idealism in the interest of the collectivity’ revolution is! How prosaic and pedantic and the strictest attentiveness to the it is, how lacking in verve, in lustre, in individual part. How does that work? The greatness! The forgotten death penalty totality needs to be changed ruthlessly is only one small feature. But how often precisely to withdraw the foundations precisely such small features betray from this cold lack of sympathy and bring the inner spirit of the whole.’ This is the individual parts to the fore at the diametrically opposed to Lukács’ way of global historic level. Luxemburg (1917, thinking. Luxemburg’s point of reference 177) feels as much sympathy with the is not the totality, it does not cross her pain of the Jews in the ghetto as with the mind that a change to the penal system victims of German warfare in Southwest could wait until the whole system has Africa: ‘I feel at home in the entire world, changed. On the contrary, the fact that a wherever there are clouds and birds and small feature is not considered becomes human tears’. a measure of the whole. During the war, imperial genocide had shed so much … BUT STILL MAINTAINING A DISTANCE blood already. This should therefore not Luxemburg therefore consciously be allowed to continue. ‘One world must navigates within contradictions. And now be destroyed, but each tear that there are more of them: spontaneity might have been avoided is an indictment; and party organisation, between the and a man who hurrying on to important laws of history and the intervening deeds inadvertently tramples underfoot will, between the rigorous rejection of even a poor worm, is guilty of a crime.’ war, terror, ‘murder’ and revolutionary (ibid. 406) Therefore the totality needs to violence (1918b. 446f). How to deal change in order to prevent the offences of with these contradictions, when the

12 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE one side is relevant or when the other political leader. A leader with quality of is relevant remains unclear. Luxemburg greatness applies tactics, not according to did not elaborate a materialistic theory of the momentary mood of the masses but dialectics, but her position is clear: she according to higher laws of development, does not uphold one side at the cost of and sticks firmly to those tactics despite the other, but rather defends the need to all disappointments and, for the rest, work with the tensions resulting from calmly allows history to bring its work to the contradiction between totality and fruition.’ (ibid, 374) Luxemburg repeatedly its individual parts. Appreciating small refers to an objective logic of history that pleasures, rejoicing in the magic of life must be given time. She firmly believes from the smallest things, submerging in the need for patience. She believes in oneself in the details of revolutionary sovereignty vis-à-vis external forces, a transformation, living without expecting sense of wider developments. Restlessness historic justice or a higher meaning, and fuss about trivialities were not useful. simply the way one feels is right, she She called for the calm of a scientist in nonetheless makes a claim to maintain research and observation (ibid, 322). a distance and not to overestimate the Luxemburg’s trust in history, in actions of individuals. When the world revolution, is not based on a mechanistic descends into chaos, she wants to make understanding of the development of sense of it instead of moaning and society (Luxemburg 1899, 64). It would complaining. She sees theory as a part of be wrong to accuse her of a wait-and-see the struggle. The concept helps to gain a attitude. She has a specific view of the posture and sovereignty that allows her class-struggle efforts made by the working to reject the hold of power on her person, class. These do not take place at the feelings, mood and thinking. ‘A fighter final moment, when the conditions are is precisely a person who must strive to ripe; they always occur too early. As the rise above things, otherwise one’s nose class struggle is not separate from social will get stuck in every bit of nonsense.’ developments, these non-synchronised (Luxemburg 1917, 367) It is a specific interventions impact the historic process way of maintaining distance to everyday and create the conditions for success in events, lest you are sucked into history as the long term. It was precisely this lack of it occurs, into fear, routine, parliamentary overlap which convinced Rosa Luxemburg cretinism, party misery, which cloud that dramatic turning points are always political judgement, but to keep focused possible. Even when the situation were on the long-term aim. ‘“Disappointment to appear hopeless and desperate, with the masses” is always the most fundamental, well-hidden springs could reprehensible quality to be found in a cause fortuitous processes, for which one

ALEX DEMIROVIĆ 13 should ready oneself. She said that the correction of all the innate shortcomings masses are always on the verge of becoming of social institutions. That source is something totally different from what they the active, untrammeled, energetic appear to be (Luxemburg 1917, 176). political life of the broadest masses of the people.’ (Luxemburg 1918c, 356) In the THE PULSE-BEAT OF THE POLITICAL LIFE weeks following Germany’s November OF THE MASSES revolution, however, she firmly opposed Numerous statements reflect a national assembly. She argued that Luxemburg’s radical democratic as a vestige of the bourgeois revolution resolve. Peter Bierl (1993, 78f) argues this form of democracy was now that almost until the last day of her obsolete. Everyday parliamentary politics, life, Rosa Luxemburg considered that concerned as it is with majorities and the democratic republic was the most compromises in which the bourgeoisie suitable institutional form for the always prevails and without a directly transformation to socialism. However, active working class, corresponds to a she does not explain how she sees balance between classes. Luxemburg the relation between council and maintained that the November revolution parliamentary democracy. She rejected had put an immediate transition the dissolution of the Russian constituent to socialism on the agenda, merely assembly by Trotsky and Lenin. She instituting a national assembly would expected the representative body to therefore be a step backwards. As far as provide ground for the productivity of she was concerned this was the time for joint actions and public discussions over rule by the people. Initially she argued collective decisions to flourish: ‘And the in favour of a worker’s parliament, later more democratic the institutions, the for councils. Immediately before the livelier and stronger the pulse-beat of 1st German Congress of Workers and the political life of the masses, the more Soldiers Councils in mid-December direct and complete is their influence […]. 1918, she drew up the basic outlines of a To be sure, every democratic institution council democracy. Workers’ and soldiers’ has its limits and shortcomings, things councils would replace parliaments which it doubtless shares with all other and municipal councils, delegates from human institutions. But the remedy the local councils would elect a central which Trotsky and Lenin have found, council for Germany, which, in turn, the elimination of democracy as such, would elect an executive council with is worse than the disease it is supposed legislative and executive powers. The to cure; for it stops up the very living total population of adult-aged city and source from which alone can come rural workers of both genders would hold

14 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE voting rights for the workers councils and soldiers with the exception of officers would have the right to vote for the soldiers’ councils. The delegates of the central council, which would have control over the executive council, would be recallable (Luxemburg 1971, 372). Only two weeks later, at the KPD founding meeting, she again advocated participation in the national assembly elections because of the broad support it enjoyed among workers and the fact that another decision had marginalised the party. Depending on the constellation, she reaches different assessments.This suggests that she did not care too much about the concrete political form – parliament, workers’ parliament, or council – her concern was a basis for democracy which was as broad as possible: ‘The Spartacus League will never take over governmental power except in response to the clear, unambiguous will of the great majority of the proletarian mass of all of Germany [.]’ (ibid., 450) © Vassiliki Koukou, Letters by Rosa, 2018. wood, canvas, paper, ink, 100 x 150 cm AUTONOMY Radically fighting for each individual individual from the estates enabling part, for the democratisation of the them to conceive of themselves as free social conditions people create through and equal, with their own mind and their work, living with contradictions – reason, these conditions nonetheless all of this prepares the ground for a set limits to individuation. Competition, ‘new Marxism’ (Caysa 2002, 34). Rosa the state and modern bourgeois law Luxemburg’s thinking was far ahead of individuate and individualise individuals: that of her comrades and the politics of they gain rights, an identity and are the time, she anticipated civilizational encouraged to see themselves as progress which has not yet been fulfilled. sovereign in deciding their actions and Whereas bourgeois society freed the are attributed to them. However, they

ALEX DEMIROVIĆ 15 only enjoy their rights negatively, as them their life opportunities and creative rights that distinguish them from others, capacity. In Luxemburg’s view (1918d, suggesting to them to be indifferent, 436), this is what socialism opposes and cold and hard to the consequences of aims for something completely new in competition and the exploitation of the history of civilisation: zest for life, arising ‘opportunities’, their own failure beauty, dignity, responsibility, glow, and that of others. enthusiasm for the common good, inner Notwithstanding the negative clarity, compassion, courage, resilience consequences, bourgeois society and endurance in the face of the toughest continues to navigate within the tight odds. She hints at such a perspective – confines of this concept of freedom. autonomous collective living: ‘The The opportunities to widely expand the essence of socialist society consists in the realm of freedom – to overcome violence, fact that the great laboring mass ceases to poverty and hunger and establish a life be a dominated mass, but rather, makes of idleness and pleasure – were and the entire political and economic life its continue to be wasted. In the Marxist own life and gives that life a conscious, tradition, cooperation is the decisive free, and autonomous direction.’ criterion to envision successful collective (Luxemburg 1971, 368) Co-operation is forms of living. Humans co-operate and to be liberated, individuals individuated they survive as a species only in this far beyond the capacity of bourgeois way, only collectively can they create society. Marx and Engels conceived of objects that go beyond their individual freedom in a new way when they wrote: or group skills. Over millennia, this ‘In place of the old bourgeois society, co-operative potential was harnessed by with its classes and class antagonisms, a few for their own ends and developed we shall have an association, in which quite unilaterally. That’s because they the free development of each is the also had to ensure that those who condition for the free development of co-operated did not do so freely and all.’ (Marx/Engels 1848, 62) In this autonomously. To appropriate the end vision individual freedom is the basis of results and determine the forms of everything. However, the focus is on the co-operation, co-operation had to be development of individual freedom by put under the rule of power and its promoting the freedom of the associated productivity limited. Individuals were others and not self-realisation of the subjugated under the forceful laws of potential within the individual. In the history and universalities (the market, socialist tradition, such an understanding state, nation and religion) to lead them of freedom remained marginal. Like and strip them of their freedom and rob Lukács, many were willing to subordinate

16 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE the individual to the collective, with in an authoritarian way, but rather the promise that everybody would then depends on the beliefs and practices of be better off. The idea of freedom was the overwhelming majority of people reduced to a variable of political rule. (Schütrumpf 2018). ‘Freedom cannot represent a value in itself (any more than socialisation). Freedom must serve the rule of the proletariat, not the other way round.’ (Lukács 1971, 292) The critique aimed REFERENCES mainly at Luxemburg’s phrase that Bierl, Peter, 1993: Alle Macht den Räten. Rosa Luxemburg: Rätedemokratie und freedom is always the freedom of those Sozialismus, Köln who think differently Luxemburg( 1918c, Brie, Michael, 2002: Freiheit ist immer 359). This would grant those aiming for die Freiheit der Anderen. Die sozialphilosophische Dimension von Rosa a fundamental social transformation Luxemburgs Kritik an den Bolschewiki, in: to make a claim for this freedom. Kinner/Seidel, 66–69 Caysa, Volker, 2002: Rosa Luxemburg – das However, Luxemburg was opposed to a Leben als Werk, in: Kinner/Seidel, 11–36 tactical relation with freedom. Hers was Jesse, Eckhard, 2008: Demokratie oder expressly not a liberal approach based Diktatur? Luxemburg oder der Luxemburgismus, in: Diktaturen in on any norm of justice, which becomes Deutschland. Diagnosen und Analysen, clear when she wrote that freedom could Baden-Baden, 61 – 85 not be the privilege of any single person, Kinner, Klaus/Seidel, Helmut (Ed.), 2002: Rosa Luxemburg. Historische und aktuelle but that it had to be granted precisely to Dimensionen ihres theoretischen Werkes, those who think differently. Only this Berlin way could freedom be the freedom of Lukács, Georg, 1971: History and Class Consciousness (trans. by Rodney each and everyone (cf Brie 2002, 66f). Livingstone), Cambridge MA Only then can freedom prove itself and Luxemburg, Rosa 1899: Reform or Revolution, permit autonomy. ‘All that is instructive, Mineola NY 2006 —. 1914: Briefe, Bd. 5 wholesome and purifying in political —. 1917: Briefe, Bd. 5 freedom’ would be lost, ‘if it became a —. 1918a: Eine Ehrenpflicht, GW 4, 404–406 —. 1918c: The Russian Revolution, in: The Rosa privilege’ (Luxemburg 1918c, 359). In Luxemburg Reader, Hudis, Peter/Anderson making use of freedom, the co-operative, Kevin B. (Ed.) New York 2004, 281–311 communicative productivity that is a —. 1918d: Die Sozialisierung der Gesellschaft, GW 4, 433–436 constituent element of a free association —. 1971: Selected Political Writings, Monthly can flourish. This is based on the Review Press, 366 –376 aforementioned democratic theoretical Marx, Karl/Engels, Friedrich, 1848: Communist Manifesto, Verso, London New York, 2012 and political conviction that socialism Schütrumpf, Jörn, 2018: Rosa Luxemburg oder: cannot be brought about and maintained Der Preis der Freiheit, Berlin

ALEX DEMIROVIĆ 17 ROSA LUXEMBURG AS A SOCIALIST FEMINIST

DRUCILLA CORNELL

If there is a basic theme in Rosa beyond the reach of supposed humanity Luxemburg, it is the rebellion against (Benhabib 1994). the domination of Man1 and Man2, My central argument will be that what Wynter calls ‘genre trouble,’ rather Luxemburg’s debates on how we are to than ‘gender trouble.’ (Wynter 2003) think of socialist transformation are both Luxemburg’s contribution is that genre a challenge to Man1 and Man2 and the and gender trouble are inextricably tied racism inherent in both. There are not two together and therefore her thinking struggles, one feminist and one anti-racist, on how we might practice socialism is for they are tied together in the challenge to inseparable from what the great Jamaican Man1 and Man2. Luxemburg was way ahead philosopher Sylvia Wynter much later will of her time in calling for solidarity with call the challenge to Man1 and Man2 in women in the Global South. But let us turn the name of the practice of the human that first to her writings on women. would free the human from its connection Luxemburg agrees with Charles to imperialism, colonialism, and, of Fourier, ‘the degree of female emancipation course, capitalism. is the natural measure of the general I am going to defend Luxemburg emancipation. This is completely true for as an ethical feminist, in the sense that our present society’ (Luxemburg 1912, 242). I have defined it, in that feminism is not She was a tireless advocate of universal simply about the struggle for the rights of suﬀrage, which would of course include women but it is also about the challenges suﬀrage for all women. She made class to Man that allow any one of us to be distinctions between women arguing

18 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE that bourgeois women were primarily in socialism domestic labor would be consumers and therefore, in a sense, socialized. The entire family structure, parasites. These were the women who had which inevitably includes the oppression a class interest in voting against socialism. of women, would have to be transformed. Even so, the proletarian women, who have For Luxemburg socialism would demand during Luxemburg’s lifetime gained the radical transformation of all human right to unionize and to assemble, had relationships. And this is why as we will see shown a political maturity which put them she always insists that when a communist on the side of socialist politics. Their votes party seizes power, it must implement the would outweigh those of bourgeois women. most sweeping forms of democracy that She was well aware that proletarian women can be imagined. As a result, yes, there will would become immediately concerned with be socialization of what is now privatized. the absurd reality in capitalist that women’s ‘As a modern female proletarian, the work in the home created no value for the woman becomes a human being for the capitalism system. To quote Luxemburg, first time, since the [proletarian] struggle is ‘From this point of view, the music-hall the first to prepare human beings to make dancer whose legs sweep profit into her a contribution to culture, to the history employer’s pocket is a productive worker, of humanity. For the property-owning whereas all the toil of the proletarian bourgeois woman, her house is the world. women and mothers in the four walls of For the proletarian woman, the whole their homes is considered unproductive. world is her house, the world with its This sounds brutal and insane, but sorrow and joy, with its cold cruelty and its corresponds exactly to the brutality and raw size.’ (ibid., 243) Given Luxemburg’s insanity of our present capitalist economy. insistence on class diference, the debate And seeing this brutal reality clearly and between feminists in the 1990s and early sharply is the proletarian woman’s first 2000s over the relationship between task.’ (ibid., 241) justice and care would have been oﬀ point. Luxemburg’s own radicalism about the need DOMESTIC LABOR, OR: for thoroughgoing erotic transformation WOMEN’S LIFE UNDER CAPITALISM would not have allowed her to idealize the The demand for wages for housework put values that come out of women’s domestic forth by some socialist feminists would labor under capitalism. There is as much never have been accepted by Luxemburg. abuse as there is care in women’s domestic Such a demand would inevitably falter labor under capitalism, and Luxemburg because of the laws of capitalism itself. For oftentimes uses words to describe women’s Luxemburg, and this is particularly evident home life under capitalism as ‘stuﬀy, in her letters, it would not just follow that narrow, miserable, and petty.’ (ibid., 241)

DRUCILLA CORNELL 19 GENDER, RACE, AND CLASS capitalist class rule, and therefore there is no Class solidarity for Luxemburg always such being as a woman who is not always included uniting with women in the Global already racialized. The debates about gender, South whose oppression was integral to race, and class, and which comes first, miss imperial domination. Given her insistence Luxemburg’s fundamental argument that as that imperialism is inevitable under long as there is capitalism there will be war, capitalism, and therefore war also, it is not imperialism, and therefore the fight against surprising for Luxemburg to emphasize militarism is always part of the socialist this solidarity. ‘A world of female misery is struggle. waiting for relief. The wife of the peasant Here we come back to why I have moans as she nearly collapses under life’s called Luxemburg an ethical feminist in that burdens. In German Africa, in the Kalahari her anti-elitism is integral to her argument Desert, the bones of defenseless Herero that there are not gold and silver people, women are bleaching in the sun, those who including an oppressive hierarchy between were hunted down by a band of German nations. But she takes her anti-elitism soldiers and subjected to a horrific death into a critique of Trotsky and Lenin’s idea of hunger and thirst. On the other side of of a vanguard party. The party, in order the ocean, in the high cliﬀs of Putumayo, to lead, has to be deeply embedded in the the death cries of martyred Indian women, day-to-day struggles of the masses of people ignored by the world fade away in the and this was why she rejected Vladimir rubber plantations of the international Lenin’s own conception of centralization. capitalists. Proletarian women, the poorest To quote Luxemburg, ‘Let us speak plainly. of the poor, the most disempowered of the Historically, the errors committed by a truly disempowered, hurry to join the struggle revolutionary movement are infinitely more for the emancipation of women and of fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest humankind from the horrors of capitalist Central Committee.’ (Luxemburg 1904, 97) domination! Social Democracy has assigned In more contemporary psychoanalytic terms, to you a place of honor. Hurry to the front Luxemburg criticism of Lenin and Trotsky lines, into the trenches!’ (ibid., 245) The and their notion of the party in relation to demand for peace can create solidarity the masses is rooted in a phallic fantasy: between women who live in the metropole a tiny group of men exercising supreme and women in the Global South. Luxemburg power to keep the messy movement from was one of the first then to recognize that falling into opportunism and other forms of the oppression of black people, and people imperfection. of color more generally, is not an aside to Luxemburg’s criticized certain basic capitalism but is fundamental to class rule, policies after the Bolsheviks seized power as is militarism. Racism is then integral to in 1917, specially their policy of national

20 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE self-determination. Her point was that made no sense at all because given mass nationalism was often a perfect way for the unemployment the only people who could defeated bourgeoisie in those nations given vote were those who lived by their own the ‘right’ to self-determination to come to labor. For Luxemburg, revolutionaries have power in such a way as to assert nationalist to risk – and yes, it is a risk – universal class rule against the new revolution. In suffrage even as she recognized that certain language reminiscent of Frantz Fanon’s own members of the ruling class might have to critique of the nationalist bourgeoisie in the be disenfranchised for a certain period of liberation struggles against colonization, the time. But both Trotsky and Lenin ultimately problem with the nationalist bourgeoisie concluded that the mechanism of democratic was that they sought only to replace white institutions should itself be called into leaders with themselves – which did not in question. Luxemburg summarizes Trotsky’s any way challenge the basic conditions of own view as follows: ‘According to Trotsky’s capital exploitation and colonization (Fanon theory, every elected assembly reflects once 1963). Of course, Luxemburg’s critique of and for all only the mental composition, the Bolsheviks party’s policy of national self- political maturity and mood of its electorate determination was done in part because this just at the moment when the latter goes kind of nationalism for her was inseparable to the polling place. According to that, a from imperial militarism. But this policy is democratic body is the reflection of the by no means the only one that Luxemburg masses at the end of the electoral period critiqued. […] Any living mental connection between the representatives, once they have been FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY elected, and the electorate, any permanent Famously in the months before their interaction between one and the other, is seizure of power the Bolsheviks had been hereby denied.’ (Luxemburg 1918, 301) But at the forefront of the demand for an for Luxemburg the opposite is the case. She elected Constituent Assembly. The election did not think that the current Constituent took place but many who voted did not Assembly should stand, given that the even know that the Bolsheviks had seized Bolsheviks had achieved state power. But on power. As a result, the Bolsheviks did the other hand, she did not agree with its not achieve the hoped-for majority in the dispersal by armed force. Instead she argued Constituent Assembly that was elected. that they should call for a new election and Their response was to shut it down with spend the necessary organizational time military force, under the slogan ‘All Power to win workers and peasants over to the to the Soviets.’ But then when the Soviets new dispensation. She argues that masses got too uppity, they shut them down too. of people involved in electoral politics can As Luxemburg points out, their voting law often lead to new forms of revolutionary

DRUCILLA CORNELL 21 consciousness. Luxemburg’s criticism order. Violence carries within it the danger takes us to her deepest understanding that of rephallicization; macho men strutting we really have no idea of what socialism is around with guns. and how radical the transformation would For Luxemburg, the basic democratic have to be in each one of us for us to be rights such as freedom of the press, part of a socialist society. The powerful freedom to assemble, freedom to unionize, argument of Wynter is that we are materially are absolutely essential as we transform immersed in Man 1 and Man 2 and all the ourselves to beings that can live beyond forms of elitism, racism, and sexism that relations of exploitation. For Luxemburg, a they manifest not as some outside ideology freedom that is only for those who support but in the materialization of the ways we the communist party is not freedom at all live and work together. Lenin thought that and it blocks the imaginary and the effort it would be possible to take over the brutal to create new institutions and new forms disciplinary structure of the capitalist factory of life that would be worthy of the name and use it to get the masses and workers to socialism: ‘Freedom only for the supporters stay on a rigorous production schedule. But of the government, only for the members Luxemburg completely disagreed; work, the of one party – however numerous they organization of the work place, families, how may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is we even thought and talked to one another always and exclusively freedom for the one could not remain the same. Socialism is who thinks differently. Not because of any simply unknowable to those of us who grew fanatical concept of “justice” but because all up in a capitalist society. So, the only way that is instructive, wholesome and purifying forward is to create the greatest and most in political freedom depends on this sweeping democratic forms possible so that essential characteristic, and its effectiveness we could begin to not only dream together vanishes when “freedom” becomes a special but to realize new ways of being and living privilege.’ (ibid., 305) together. Without that, the revolution will What Luxemburg continuously be stifled by the very Central Committee emphasizes is the need for thoroughgoing that believes itself to be promoting a transformation of all social relations, but we revolutionary program. simply cannot know in advance of the actual Famously, Lenin truly believed that creative historical processes of the masses the socialist state would simply be the of people. ‘The tacit assumption underlying capitalist state turned on its head. This the Lenin-Trotsky theory of the dictatorship kind of inversion is exactly what Fanon is this: that the Socialist transformation warns against and even the greatest fighters is something for which a ready-made of the liberation struggle might not be formula lies completed in the pocket of the the best leaders in the new revolutionary revolutionary party, which needs only to be

22 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE carried out energetically in practice. This is, Lenin and Trotsky the solution could not be unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – not the increase of party control and measures the case. Far from being a sum of ready- such as the implementation of martial law. made prescriptions which have only to be Instead, the revolution had to unleash the applied, the practical realization of Socialism idealism of the people and this could only as an economic, social and juridical system happen if their creativity was respected as is something which lies completely hidden the very heartbeat of the revolution. We in the mists of the future. What we possess need to be clear here that Luxemburg was in our program is nothing but a few main a great supporter of the bravery and the signposts which indicate the general daring of Lenin and Trotsky. Her criticisms direction in which to look for the necessary were directed at two comrades and were measures, and the indications are mainly not naïve. She knew the extreme difficulties negative in character at that. Thus, we know that the Bolsheviks faced. At the heart of more or less what we must eliminate at her argument was that the Bolsheviks had the outset in order to free the road for a turned necessity into a virtue and a general Socialist economy.’ (ibid.) As Luxemburg theory into what was demanded by the continues, the concept of dictatorship transition to socialism. adapted by Lenin and Trotsky counterpoises dictatorship to democracy. The phrase “the ETHICAL FEMINISM AND THE POWER dictatorship of the proletariat” was first used OF GENTLENESS by Friedrich Engels in his writings on the But the deeper question is why is her Paris Commune. The Paris Commune of criticism of Lenin and Trotsky considered by course had the most sweeping democratic me to be feminist? I have argued that she is institutions which included socialized what I have called an ethical feminist in that childcare but under collective management all forms of reinstating the division of gold of the women workers themselves. The and silver people, including through the rule Commune clearly unleashed the creativity of an elite party. In this sense, her trust in of the masses of people who participated the masses is a feminist principle. Her vision in its day-to-day activities. For its short life, of socialism is one of endless transformation it was indeed a permanent revolution and of all of us from the ego-driven creatures we participatory democracy. So, for Luxemburg have become under capitalism to the human it is both a theoretical and practical mistake beings who could live together in respect to counterpoise dictatorship to democracy. and what I am now going to call, following Corruption results from the kind of the philosopher Dufourmantelle, “the power centralization of the party in which loyalty of gentleness.” To quote Dufourmantelle on to the party is the basis of favors and this gentleness, which in her writing is neither ultimately creates hierarchies. So, unlike a philosophical construct nor a sociological

DRUCILLA CORNELL 23 relationality but rather an evocative notion form of humanist hubris (Braidotti 2013). that points to a different relationship Often, their criticism emphasizes, to between humans and the entire world paraphrase Marx, that ‘under socialism in which we live: ‘Gentleness invents an nature will be humanized and humans expanded present. We talk about gentleness, will be naturalized’. The alienation of acknowledging it, delivering it, collecting it, capitalism would be overcome. But the hoping for it. It is the name of an emotion of focus is purportedly on human-to-human which we have lost the name, coming from relations, and the dominion of humans a time when humanity was not dissociated over the rest of nature is not challenged. from the elements, from animals, from But in gentleness, understood as a power light, from spirits. At what point did the and indeed an exercise of power, we come human race become aware of it? What was to have a very different meaning that the gentleness opposed to when life and would reject any notion of the dominion survival were merged?’ (Dufourmantelle of humans over other forms of being. To 2018, 10) Ethical feminism is about aspiring quote Luxemburg: I know that for every to a nonviolent relationship to the other. person, for every creature, one’s own life is But Dufourmantelle is too sophisticated to the only single possession one really has, simply endorse an ethics of nonviolence; and with every little fly that one carelessly sometimes violence is a tragic necessity as swats and crushes, the entire world comes to it has been in almost all colonial situations. an end, in the refracting eye of the little fly But it should not be idealized, nor should it it is the same as if the end of the world had be seen as the work of a tiny sect of macho destroyed all life. No, the reason I tell you men whom Fanon long ago saw engaged in about other women is precisely so that you the process of rephallicization. The fantasy will not underestimate and disregard your is that we will take the phallus from the own pain, so that you won’t misunderstand white Man and seize “ownership” by the yourself and have a distorted picture of who oppressed but male colonized. And it is just you are. Oh, how well I understand that for that: a fantasy. And one that often promotes you every lovely melody, every flower, every counter-revolutionary politics. spring day, every moonlit night represents Originally in Feminist Contentions, when a longing for, an allurement toward the I first defended ethical feminism, it was greatest beauty the world has to offer.’ more limitedly about relations between (Luxemburg 2013, 449) humans. But I would now include the I bring up insects, although Luxemburg power of gentleness. Indeed, gentleness is has also written beautifully about oxen an important feminist answer to critiques literally being worked to death as she saw of Marxism by the posthumanists. They them in the prison yard and embraced them. have accused Marxism as being just another But many of us are afraid of insects and

24 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE look very diﬀerently at killing them than we Instead she should be read against the class, do in killing sentient beings like animals, and yes race, privilege of women in the but as we see with the example of the wasp, metropole. She did not live long enough Luxemburg was diﬀerent. ‘And now I have to see the struggles of the transgendered, work to do, as I do every summer: I have to gays and lesbians, but the sweep of her climb up on a chair and, however far up it is, vision would clearly be against anyone being reach to the upper windowpane, take hold thrown under the bar of humanity because of the wasp ever so carefully, and deliver it of how they lived their life as erotic and once to freedom, because otherwise it would sexuate beings. She was way ahead of her torment itself against the glass until it was time in envisioning a new practice of the half dead. They don’t do anything to me; out human. in the open they even land on my lips, and that’s very ticklish; but I’m worried about This article was first published by the doing harm to the wasp when I take hold of RLS New York Office. We are printing a it. In the end it all worked out, and suddenly shortened version. it’s completely quiet here in the room. Yet in my ear and heart a sunny echo still keeps REFERENCES buzzing.’ (Luxemburg 1917, 389) Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, It is this gentleness that Luxemburg Nancy Fraser, 1994: Feminist Contentions. A Philosophical Exchange, New York over and over again in her letters ascribes Braidotti, Rosi, 2013: The Posthuman, Cambridge to the practice of being human, a practice Dufourmantelle, Anne, 2018: The Power of Gentleness. Meditations on the Risk of Living, we have to live out now even when living in New York the brutal reality. So, her ethical feminism is Fanon, Frantz, 1963: The Wretched of the Earth, integral to all of her writings on nationalism, New York Luxemburg, Rosa, 1912: The Rosa Luxemburg militarism, and her vision of socialism Reader, Hudis, Peter/Anderson, Kevin B. (Ed.), which challenges not only the barbarism of New York 2004 capitalism but also the elitism which inhered —. 1904: Reform or Revolution and Other Writings, Dover 2006 in the Bolsheviks policies in the Russian —. 1917: Letter to Hans Diefenbach, April 5 1917, in: Revolution. Her feminism challenges us The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, Adler, Georg/ to think much more broadly about what Laschitza, Annelies (Ed.), New York 2013 —. 1918: The Russian Revolution, in: The Rosa feminism is and that it clearly goes way Luxemburg Reader, Hudis, Peter/Anderson, beyond the struggle for so-called formal Kevin B. (Ed.), New York 2004 —. 2013: The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, Adler, equality and is part of the new practice of Georg/Laschitza, Annelies (Ed.), New York the human which can only be opened up Wynter, Sylvia, 2003: Unsettling the Coloniality through revolutionary struggle. Her biting of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom. Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – remarks against bourgeois feminism should An Argument, in: The New Centennial Review, not be taken as a critique of feminism itself. 3 (3/2003)

DRUCILLA CORNELL 25 ‘NO SENTIMENTALITY PLEASE’ AN ISRAELI PERSPECTIVE ON ROSA LUXEMBURG

GAL HERTZ

In June 1916, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl typically programmatic revolutionary tone Liebknecht, the founders of the Spartacist in analyses of Karl Marx’s Capital such as League, were arrested for unpatriotic Reform or Revolution (1899) or The Crisis in actions during the First World War. After the German Social-Democracy (1916) gives being sentenced to two and a half years way to a markedly poetic style. Prison was in prison Luxemburg commented on the the place where a deep soul, which was devastation the war had caused, published open to the sound of life, raised its voice. in the Junius Pamphlet: ‘But here is proof At Christmas 1917 she wrote: ‘[…] on the also that the war is not only a grandiose ceiling can be seen reflections coming murder, but the suicide of the European through the window from the lanterns that working class. The soldiers of socialism, the burn all night in front of the prison. From workers of England, of France, of Germany, time to time one hears, but only in quite of Italy, of Belgium are murdering each a muffled way, the distant rumbling of a other at the bidding of capitalism, are train passing by or quite nearby under the thrusting cold, murderous irons into each windows the whispering of the guards on others’ breasts, tare tottering over their duty at night, who take a few steps slowly graves, grappling in each others’ death- in their heavy boots to relieve their stiff bringing arms.’ (Luxemburg 1916, 127) legs. The sand crunches so hopelessly During her imprisonment in Breslau, under their heels that the entire hopeless Luxemburg corresponded with the art wasteland of existence can be heard in this historian Sophie Liebknecht, the wife damp, dark night. I lie there quietly, alone, of Karl Liebknecht. In these letters, her wrapped in these many-layered black veils

26 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE of darkness, boredom, lack of freedom, has spent his last 30 years in prison in and winter – and at the same time my Israel. In spite of his life sentence, and heart is racing with an incomprehensible, no means left to appeal, Walid Dakka has unfamiliar inner joy as though I were not only kept his hope, for over 15 years walking across a flowering meadow in now he has been a vociferous critique radiant sunshine. And in the dark I smile of the national liberation struggle. From at life, as if I knew some sort of magical speaking with numerous suicide bombers secret that gives the lie to everything evil that survived their attack Dakka concludes and sad and changes it into pure light that the driving force behind the national and happiness.’ (Luxemburg 1917, 455; liberation struggle is not simply devotion reprinted in this edition, 34 – 39) and faith but also contempt for life and So how do we interpret this side of a culture of death. He asks, how this can Luxemburg’s work? What link is there ever provide a basis for a perspective between her inner experience as a prisoner, for the future. One hundred years after the emotive descriptions of nature, Luxemburg, Dakka again teaches us that a flowers, i.e. her poetry, and her struggle place that initially appears to be a dead end, for liberation and revolution? What would does not inevitably have to be a breeding it mean if we saw in these descriptions of ground for hate and desperation but can a creature’s suffering and her compassion lead to new ways of seeing the other and life not mere escapism or naïve sentimentality instead despite the circumstances. but a critical, moral position? In May 1920, when Karl Kraus The hopelessness of prison is no discovers Luxemburg’s letter in Vienna’s reason for Rosa Luxemburg to despair or Arbeiter-Zeitung, he immediately decides give up on herself. Rather, it creates space to use it in his lectures. Two months for observations that seem to precede any later, in July, he publishes the letter in his ideological position. The magical secret journal Die Fackel, including a foreword she writes about expresses an existential that stresses the document’s importance: perspective that not only allows criticism “I left the strongest impression ever in of nationalist ideology, but also becomes the hall when I read aloud the letter by the basis for fresh hope, alternative Rosa Luxemburg, which I discovered in relationships and solidarity. the Arbeiter-Zeitung on Pentecost and In a comparative approach we could had taken with me on my journey. In apply Luxemburg’s experience to the the Germany of independent socialists current situation in Israel by comparing the letter was still completely unknown. it to the case of the Palestinian prisoner Shame on and disgrace to any republic Walid Dakka. For his part in the murder of that does not, in defiance of all spelling the Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam, Dakka book and ‘yellow cross’ Christianity, print

GAL HERTZ 27 © Stavroula Mihalopoulou, Beehive, 2018. refer to a personal and intimate letter that Printed images, 51 x 71 x 7 cm superficially deals with remote questions this document of humanity and poetry such as the suffering of a buffalo by between Goethe and Claudius in its one of the First World War’s foremost schoolbooks and to their horror about critics as a document of humanitarianism mankind of this time, does not, tell the and poetry? A closer look at one section youth growing out of it that the body of Luxemburg’s letter clarifies this. that had enclosed such a divine soul, From her prison cell she observes the had been slain by rifle butts. The entire arrival of heavily laden military wagons living literature of Germany does not delivering torn military uniforms – some provoke a tear and a pause for breath bloodstained – which the prisoners have after the description of the buffalo hide, to patch. Luxemburg’s eyes are on the which had been broken, like this Jewish water buffalo harnessed to the heavy revolutionary can. (Kraus, 1920, 6) wagons – spoils of war from Romania, and Kraus’s words take us back to the domesticated by being badly beaten. She question of the relationship between describes how on arriving at the entrance moral critique and poetry. How can Kraus gate one buffalo could not pull the wagon

28 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE any further and a soldier remorselessly pause and attempt to understand how this flailing it with ’the blunt end of his whip‘. violence has already shaped us. Poetry is The blows are so hard that the buffalo such an attempt, the perceptions and its hide, splits open despite its ‘proverbial forms of expression point to these volatile thickness and toughness’ and begins to and seemingly meaningless incidences bleed, and ‘had been broken’. Seeing the of violence. Nevertheless, poetry is not injured animal causes Rosa Luxemburg merely an expression of humanism, and to feel deep compassion: ‘Oh, my poor should not be reduced to an accusation buffalo, my poor, beloved brother! We both of lack of humanity. Poetry calls on us to stand here so powerless and mute, and analyse incidences of violence critically are as one in our pain, impotence, and and not in a sentimental way. yearning.’ (Luxemburg 1917, 458) It is precisely this link between The breaking of the buffalo’s hide is sentimentality and violence which in the image Luxemburg has of the ‘entire August 1920 is addressed, in a reader’s panorama of the war’ (ibid.) passing her letter from a woman from Innsbruck to by. Instead of battlefields and canons, Kraus’s Fackel, which derides Luxemburg’s gas and death in the trenches as symbols ‘lachrymose descriptions’ and Kraus’s of destruction, she uses a random act admiration. Let us now for a moment of violence directed at nothing other turn to a present day reader’s letter to than nature itself. This moment caused the Haaretz newspaper during the last Luxemburg to reflect on the significance Gaza war (2014). Following the killing of war and violence. Neither does she of uninvolved civilians in an airstrike on make an attempt to expose the general Gaza during operation Protective Edge 18, immorality of war, nor does she demand the well-known Israeli journalist, Gideon an end to all wars. Her reflection Levy, published the article entitled Lowest focuses on the bleeding buffalo, whose Deeds From Loftiest Heights (Haaretz, 15 suffering cannot be captured, justified or July 2014), in which he accuses the pilots compensated for by any political position. of being nothing more than cogs in Israel’s There is no proportionality in violence. war machine. Levy’s text, like many of his Innocent victims of violence are not previous and subsequent texts, is part of stronger indicators of people’s loss of a his project to testify on a weekly basis about moral compass than guilty victims. the violence of the ongoing occupation, Through the mute suffering of the thus exposing the policy of the Israeli beast, Luxemburg shows that violence government that always justifies military overrides perception and concepts, it violence as a means of last resort and as destroys and breaks. Before we start to a necessary reaction to enemy attacks justify or condemn violence, we need to from outside. His article triggered a

GAL HERTZ 29 wave of furious reactions by Haaretz murdered, is sent to jail for slapping readers. On 23 July 2014 the letter by Kobi someone in the face (Nebi Salach, January Richter, a former pilot and arms industry 2018). Levy’s stories are an archive of this businessman, was published. Richter said order grounded in state violence – an order he felt ‘ashamed’ of Levy’s irresponsible always justified by the distinction between lack of judgement. illegitimate and legitimate violence and Based on a paternalistic rhetoric where we are made to believe that only the of security he argues that we need to Palestinians ever break the order. Violence understand the circumstances correctly. does not need any aims, reasons or He speaks of a highly organised system of explanations, it is never a means to an end military decision-making that – if only they but rather creates a self-referencing sphere had a deeper understanding of security which re-organises perceptions, desires questions – even the bombed citizens of and senses. We cannot base a criticism Gaza would approve of. By pretending that of violence on sentimental empathy. other options do not exist, Richter’s letter Instead, our critique should attempt to call does more than merely legitimise the use into question the order underlying this of force in Gaza, it reveals the endemic violence. violence latent within the social order of Kraus helps us understand that a society still only barely held together by Rosa Luxemburg’s letter does not reveal democratic structures. a defeatist stance, but to recognise an The example of Israeli fighter jet attempt to develop an alternative morality, pilots highlights a fundamental problem whose starting point is not the imperative for any criticism of violence. Authors such of reason but a different relationship to as Walter Benjamin can teach us that a ‘creatureliness’: If we understand moral critique cannot be built on the distinction as a hierarchic order that structures between justified violence (in defence and subdues nature and morality as the of the country) and unjustified violence obedience by which we submit to this (killing of uninvolved civilians). Violence order, then the act of blind violence in is never proportionate and undermines Luxemburg’s example of the maltreated any possibility for such a distinction. It buffalo is precisely the result of such a destroys the houses of civilians; instead of system. In her text, however, the moment armed fighters it kills unarmed Palestinian where these normative ideals become police officers (Gaza, July 2014); from a meaningless and a morality built on crowd of demonstrators it kills a disabled reason gives way to excessive violence, person in a wheelchair (Gaza, December is also the moment when true morality 2017); it is also violence, when 16-year- emerges: the capacity to assess the old Ahed Tamimi, whose cousin was normative order based on how it treats its

30 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE creatures; and an opportunity to recognise worse and as a matter of principle be the violent consequences such an order sorry for people (and animals) without a permanently produces. clear understanding of the circumstances. Why can such a position not simply This can do more evil than good’. – Kraus be described as humanism? Because exposes the absurdity of her position. compassion here does not correspond to Within theatrical moments such as this ideals. Through its focus on the suffering inversion, he shows that it is nonsensical of a creature, it breaks out of its self- to denounce bourgeois-conservative centredness. Such a critique of morals morality, if the language itself is already is not merely concerned with care and corrupted and renders impossible any philanthropy, it is a position that can expose possibility of compassion. Literary and undermine the existence and violent descriptions such as those of Rosa nature of social matters of fact. The critique Luxemburg can nevertheless achieve this. formulated in Luxemburg’s letter is a call They can expose fissures and ruptures in to not only revisit the hierarchies between the ideological discourse and offer starting people, but also to call into question and points for a critique of morality. re-define the division between man and creature (cf Cornell in this edition). This text is based on a talk held on the Before we can even think of taking on occasion of the publication of ‘Die Kreaturen, a moral position, we are confronted by the der Krieg und die Zukunft der Dichtung: fundamental problem that the social order Karl Kraus und Rosa Luxemburg’ at the and the ideological discourse that supports Israel office of Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung it prevent us from recognising social ills (16 February 2018). and therefore feeling compassion. For Kraus the reader’s letter he received as a reaction to Luxemburg’s account is a convincing example. We should not REFERENCES Kraus, Karl, 1920a: Brief Rosa Luxemburgs, in: understand his dissection of the letter as Die Fackel, No. 546 – 550, June 1920, 6 – 9 a dismissive polemic, instead he reveals Kraus, Karl, 1920b: Antwort an Rosa Luxemburg himself to be fascinated by the skewed von einer Unsentimentalen, 25. August 1920, in: Die Fackel, No. 554 – 556, November 1920 argumentation and the indifferent, hateful Luxemburg, Rosa, 1899: Reform or Revolution, tone with which the author ridicules the Mineola NY 2006 —. 1916: The Crisis in the German Social- compassion Luxemburg feels for the beast. Democracy (the “Junius” Pamphlet), New York By quoting the mean, core statement of 1919 the letter and laying it into the mouth —. 1917: To Sophie Liebknecht, in: Adler, Georg/ Hudis, Peter/Laschitza, Annelies (Ed.): The of the beast, which ‘could now itself be Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, (trans. by George killed – one needn’t always expect the Shriver), London/New York 2011, 453 – 458

GAL HERTZ 31 ROSA LUXEMBURG TO SOPHIE LIEBKNECHT

BRESLAU, BEFORE DECEMBER 24, 1917 […] It has now been a year that Karl has been sitting in Luckau.1 I have often thought about that during this month. And exactly one year ago you were with me at Wronke, and you gave me a beautiful Christmas tree as a gift… This year I have had one purchased for me here, but they brought me a completely shabby one with scraggly, skinny branches – there is no comparison with last year’s. I bought eight little lights, but I don’t know how I’m going to put them on it. This is my third Christmas in the clink, but you should certainly not take that tragically. I am as calm and cheerful as ever. Yesterday I lay awake for a long time – these days I can’t fall asleep before 1 a.m., but I have to go to bed at 10, because the light goes out then, and then I dream to myself about various things in the dark. Last night this is what I was thinking: how odd it is that I’m constantly in a joyful state of exaltation – without any particular reason. For example, I’m lying here in a dark cell on a stone-hard mattress, the usual silence of a church cemetery prevails in the prison building, it seems as though we’re in a tomb; on the ceiling can be seen reflections coming through the window from the lanterns that burn all night in front of the prison. From time to time one hears, but only in quite a muffled way, the distant rumbling of a train passing by or quite nearby under the windows the whispering of the guards on duty at night, who take a few steps slowly in their heavy boots to relieve their stiff legs. The sand crunches so hopelessly under their heels that the entire hopeless wasteland of existence can be heard in this damp, dark night. I lie there quietly, alone, wrapped in these many-layered black veils of darkness, boredom, lack of freedom, and winter – and at the same time my heart is racing with an incomprehensible, unfamiliar inner joy as though I were walking across a flowering meadow in radiant sunshine. And in the dark I smile at life, as if I knew some sort of magical secret that gives the lie to everything evil and sad and changes it into pure light and happiness. And all the while I’m searching within myself for some reason for this joy, I find nothing and must smile to myself again – and laugh at myself. I believe that the secret is nothing other than life itself; the deep darkness of night is so beautiful and as soft as velvet, if one only looks at it the right way; and in the crunching of the damp sand beneath the slow, heavy steps of the sentries a beautiful small song of life is being sung – if one only knows how to listen properly. At such moments I think of you and I would like so much to pass on this magical key to you, so that always and in all situations you would be aware of the beautiful and the joyful, so that you too would live in a joyful euphoria as though you were walking across a multi-colored meadow. I am certainly not thinking of foisting off on you some sort of asceticism or made-up joys. I don’t begrudge you all the real joys of the senses that you might wish for yourself. In addition, I would only like to pass on to you my inexhaustible inner cheerfulness, so that I could be at peace about you and not worry, so that you could go through life wearing a cloak covered with stars, which would protect you against everything petty and trivial and everything that might cause alarm. I’m interested that in Steglitz Park you picked a beautiful bouquet of black and pinkish-purple berries. The black ones must have been either elderberries – they hang in heavy, thick clusters among large feathered (pinnate) leaf fronds, surely you know them – or they were privet berries: slender, petite, upright panicles amid long, narrow, small green leaves. The reddish-purple berries hidden under little leaves could have been those of dwarf medlar: actually they are usually red, but often so late in the year, they are a bit overripe and starting to rot, and thus appear reddish-purple; the leaves are similar to those of myrtle, small, with pointed tips, dark-green, leathery above and rough underneath. Sonyusha, do you know Platen’s Fatal Fork? Can you send it or bring it to me? Karl once mentioned that he had read it at home. The poems by [Stefan] George are lovely; now I know where that line comes from that you used to recite when we were walking in the fields: “And underfoot the rustling of rusty stalks of grain”. When you get a chance, can you write out a copy for me of “New Amadis”?2 I love that poem so much – naturally thanks to the song Hugo Wolf composed from it – but I don’t have it here. Are you reading further in The Lessing Legend?3 I’ve taken up Lange’s History of Materialism again, it always stimulates and refreshes me. I’d like so much for you to read it someday. Oh, Sonyichka, I’ve lived through something sharply, terribly painful here. Into the courtyard where I take my walks there often come military supply wagons, filled with sacks or old army coats and shirts, often with bloodstains on them… They’re unloaded here [in the courtyard] And the entire marvellous panorama of the war passed before my eyes.

Germany is defeated.

141

ARTWORK_Red Rosa.indd 141 2/25/16 11:25 PM and distributed to the prison cells, [where they are] patched or mended, then loaded up and turned over to the military again. Recently one of these wagons arrived with water buffaloes harnessed to it instead of horses. This was the first time I had seen these animals up close. They have a stronger, broader build than our cattle, with flat heads and horns that curve back flatly, the shape of the head being similar to that of our sheep, [and they’re] completely black, with large, soft, black eyes. They come from Romania, the spoils of war… The soldiers who serve as drivers of these supply wagons tell the story that it was a lot of trouble to catch these wild animals and even more difficult to put them to work as draft animals, because they were accustomed to their freedom. They had to be beaten terribly before they grasped the concept that they had lost the war and that the motto now applying to them was “woe unto the vanquished” [vae victis]… There are said to be as many as a hundred of these animals in Breslau alone, and on top of that these creatures, who lived in the verdant fields of Romania, are given meager and wretched feed. They are ruthlessly exploited, forced to haul every possible kind of wagonload, and they quickly perish in the process. – And so, a few days ago, a wagon like this arrived at the courtyard [where I take my walks]. The load was piled so high that the buffaloes couldn’t pull the wagon over the threshold at the entrance gate. The soldier accompanying the wagon, a brutal fellow, began flailing at the animals so fiercely with the blunt end of his whip handle that the attendant on duty indignantly took him to task, asking him: Had he no pity for the animals? “No one has pity for us humans,” he answered with an evil smile, and started in again, beating them harder than ever… The animals finally started to pull again and got over the hump, but one of them was bleeding… Sonyichka, the hide of a buffalo is proverbial for its toughness and thickness, but this tough skin had been broken. During the unloading, all the animals stood there, quite still, exhausted, and the one that was bleeding kept staring into the empty space in front of him with an expression on his black face and in his soft, black eyes like an abused child. It was precisely the expression of a child that has been punished and doesn’t know why or what for, doesn’t know how to get away from this torment and raw violence… I stood before it, and the beast looked at me; tears were running down my face – they were his tears. No one can flinch more painfully on behalf of a beloved brother than I flinched inmy helplessness over this mute suffering. How far away, how irretrievably lost were the beautiful, free, tender-green fields of Romania! How differently the sun used to shine and the wind blow there, how different was the lovely song of the birds that could be heard there, or the melodious call of the herdsman. And here – this strange, ugly city, the gloomy stall, the nauseating, stale hay, mixed with rotten straw and the strange, frightening humans – the beating, the blood running from the fresh wound… Oh, my poor buffalo, my poor, beloved brother! We both stand here so powerless and mute, and are as one in our pain, impotence, and yearning. – All this time the prisoners had hurriedly busied themselves around the wagon, unloading the heavy sacks and dragging them off into the building; but the soldier stuck both hands in his trouser pockets, paced around the courtyard with long strides, and kept smiling and softly whistling some popular tune to himself. And the entire marvelous panorama of the war passed before my eyes. Write soon. I embrace you, Sonyichka. Your R.

Sonyichka, dearest, in spite of everything be calm and cheerful. Life is like that, one must take it as it is, [and remain] brave, undaunted, and smiling – in spite of everything. Merry Christmas! … R.

Luxemburg, Rosa, 1917: To Sophie Liebknecht, in: Adler, Georg/Hudis, Peter/Laschitza, Annelies (Ed.): The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg (trans. by George Shriver), Verso, London/ New York 2011, 454 – 458

Image, p. 32: Women’s prison Barnimstraße, Berlin 1918, © Bildarchiv Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin Image, p. 35: © Kate Evans, Red Rosa. A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg, London 2015

1 Karl Liebknecht was sent to the Luckau penitentiary on December 8, 1916, after having been sentenced earlier in 1916 to confinement in a penitentiary for four years and one month. 2 A poem by Goethe. 3 One of Franz Mehring’s best-known works. INNER COLONIES THE CARE SECTOR AS A PLACE OF ‘NEW LANDNAHME’

TOVE SOILAND

Neoliberalism is more than merely Mascha Madörin (2019) points out, the privatisation of railways, electricity that, ‘Even today the care sector remains suppliers and postal services. Nor can it a sector dominated by women, while be reduced to labour market deregulation, men dominate accumulation-oriented global trade liberalisation and the economic activities.’ associated dominance of finance capital. Neoliberalism is also, and possibly THE HOUSEHOLD primarily, a fundamental restructuring AS A PRODUCTION SITE of the way people reproduce. Globally Such a wording suggests that the increasing protests by women today capitalist mode of production is not one calling for general strikes mean that economy but one split into two parts that left-wing politics ought to consider are connected in some way. To clarify whether the most important anti-capitalist this, Rosa Luxemburg’s development struggles today are maybe forming here. of the Marxist theory of accumulation In any case, these struggles appear to continues to provide a highly fertile articulate a current virulent contradiction basis for analyses today. In her main round the world; that of the economies of work on economics, The Accumulation accumulation and care. Women’s strikes of Capital (1913), Rosa Luxemburg are also always strikes about reproduction famously objected to Marx’s idea that the in the sense that they are struggles capitalist mode of production should be over reproductive resources, for the understood purely as the accumulation simple reason as the feminist economist of surplus value, by postulating:

38 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE ‘Accumulation is more than an internal By and large, however, this debate tacitly relationship between the branches of overlooks that a feminist discussion capitalist economy; it is primarily a of Luxemburg’s theories had already relationship between capital and a non- emerged during the 1970s. Domestic capitalist environment […].’ (Luxemburg labour researchers, in particular the 1913, 398) Bielefeld development sociologists Her hypothesis that even ‘capitalism Maria Mies, Claudia von Werlhof and in its full maturity’ continues to rely Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen argued on forms of accumulation in which that the domestic labour provided by appropriation is not grounded on contracts women without payment was subject to but ‘force, fraud, oppression, looting are such a form of primitive accumulation. openly displayed without any attempt Households produce the most important at concealment’ (ibid., 345) contradicts element of capitalist production – the Marx’s assumption that ‘primitive’ forms of commodity of labour power – and this accumulation, which Marx calls ‘primitive is basically done for free.¹ On top of the accumulation’, only played a role during unpaid work provided by women, they capitalism’s early, nascent stages. Indeed, highlighted another form of exploitation the First World War led Luxemburg to directly connected to salaried work that not believe that the colonies and the violent only takes place in the capitalist core but is exploitation that reigned there had to be constantly reproduced by capitalism. analysed with regard to their economic The reception at the time did propose function for the capitalist mode of a reading of Luxemburg’s extended production, and consequently needed to theory of accumulation that anticipated be seen as a form of ‘continued primitive today’s discussions of continuing forms accumulation’ (Mies 2009, 265). of primitive accumulation in economically Luxemburg’s hypotheses are today highly developed societies and interpreted widely discussed as ‘new Landnahme’, it also partially from a different angle: stipulating that advanced capitalism in with their theory of ‘continued primitive a way continuously internally produces accumulation’ the Bielefeld researchers such external colonies, ‘to take them back were not looking (only) at the expropriation into territory’ again at a later date. The of goods but the tapping into a different privatisation of public property is one form of production: that’s because such modern form of ‘accumulation by production also takes place in households. dispossession’ (Harvey 2003, 137), as is It is precisely regarding this point the looting of public budget funds during that Luxemburg’s analysis that the financial crises. The current discussion capitalist mode of production ‘depends about the commons is a reaction to this. in all respects on non-capitalist strata and

TOVE SOILAND 39 © Vladimiros Mitropoulos, Revolution, 2018, appropriates ‘means of production which marker, inc, monotype, 98 x 103 cm are not produced by capitalist methods’ social organizations existing side by side (ibid., 337) and that the non-capitalist milieu with it’ (Luxemburg 1913, 417345) proves uses this ‘reservoir of labour power’ (ibid., fruitful. By assessing ‘that capitalism needs 349) she determines that this articulation non-capitalist social organisations as the is a distinct form of Landnahme. Moreover, setting for its development, that it proceeds she provides important suggestions as to by assimilating the very conditions which how to potentially theoretically conceive alone can ensure its own existence’ (ibid., of this articulation, namely as a form 346) she makes clear that she conceives of subsumption in which subsistence of this relationship as an articulation of production is subsumed under the different modes of production. By insisting capitalist mode of production. Although that the capitalist mode of production both Luxemburg did not herself use the term

40 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE subsistence production, her choice of words on the unpaid work of third persons ‘non-capitalist forms of production’ shows for their own reproduction.2 A complex that she had in mind their resources for interlocking of paid for precarious care subsistence. In this sense, we could say work and unpaid care work results: in the that Luxemburg talks of a subsumption of care sector in their majority women work subsistence production by ‘non-capitalist as mostly migrant home helps, nurses milieus’ under the capitalist mode of or nannies for less than they need for production. their own reproduction. As they are often also the family breadwinner, they are PERMANENTLY UNPAID WORK forced to maintain themselves and their Based on this concept of an articulation children through free reproductive labour. of distinct modes of production, the Often third women, who are themselves Bielefeld sociologists reached the exposed to the same mechanism, provide conclusion which is still pioneering this labour – an endless cyclical chain today that the expansion of capitalism that passes the gaps in reproduction and the related spread of the wage form on ‘downwards’. This means that the would inevitably lead to an expansion conversion of previously unpaid labour of subsistence production. They said by women into salaried work leads under that the global spread of the wage form capitalist conditions paradoxically to an would by no means therefore lead to a increase in the demands to unpaid work. disappearance of subsistence production. Apparently, capitalism does not merely This applies in particular to the most produce its own ‘outside’ at least as far as important transformation of reproduction reproduction is concerned. The system which has taken place since Fordism is also very interested in maintaining went into crisis: the fact that some of the this outside to continue nurturing itself domestic labour provided for by women from its resources. This aspect is reflected free of charge became paid for work. Not far more precisely in the concept of as anticipated and different to what had articulation, in contrast with the image been expected by the women’s movement of Landnahme. To become a constant at the time, this change of form did not provider of invisible resources, the bring about a marked reduction in unpaid ‘outside’, while being dispossessed, must household labour. also be maintained. As it creates little value, the care sector under capitalism inevitably remains INVISIBLE DISPOSSESSION a low-wage sector, where people barely Using Bennholdt-Thomsen’s concept of earn a living income, and those working ‘marginal mass’ (1981, 43) this transfer of in the sector therefore greatly depend resources can be described in such a way

TOVE SOILAND 41 All precarious wage labour therefore in specific ways taps into reproductive labour resources and therefore a reservoir of additional labour outside of wage work, and flows back into it in the form of extra work (ibid., 34f). For Bennholdt-Thomsen, the significance of the ‘marginal mass’ therefore rests in the fact that from the perspective of capital it reproduces itself for free, but nonetheless remains available to capital when needed: ‘Segments of the population provide the necessary subsistence labour without leading to a cost for capital, greatly increasing capital’s opportunities to appropriate extra labour. […] The marginal mass is not outside or at the fringes, rather, it is an integral element of the capitalist system.’ (ibid., 44) Bennholdt-Thomsen’s concept of ‘marginal subsumption’ is hence not Michael Fielitz concerned with the transformation of a form of unpaid into paid labour, but that with the development of capitalist the maintaining of unpaid labour as a modes of production people reproduce necessary element of the post-Fordist themselves outside wage relations, regime of accumulation, or, more insofar as the precarious wage form precisely, the interdependent relationship becomes generalised. This means that between paid and unpaid care work that people reproduce despite being – or is constitutive for the post-Fordist system precisely insofar as – they are employed, and jointly subsidises ‘normal’ wage mostly outside paid labour and within labour. Madörin (2017, 39ff) for example a second mode of production and calculates that in Switzerland paid and therefore by using resources that are not unpaid care together accounts for around covered for by their wage. The spread of two thirds of a GDP extended to include precarious forms of labour in advanced unpaid labour, meaning that these two capitalist systems integrally lives off the thirds of economic activity are essentially resources of subsistence production. the economic foundation which bears

42 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE the – seen this way – true ‘remainder’ of REFERENCES the economy. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, 1981: Subsistenzproduktion und erweiterte Rosa Luxemburg’s thinking proves Reproduktion. fruitful for feminist approaches precisely Ein Beitrag zur Produktionsweisendiskussion, in: because she theoretically captured Backhaus, Hans-Georg u.a. (Ed.): aspects that Marxist theory neglected, Gesellschaft: Beiträge zur Marxschen and therefore makes visible otherwise Theorie 14, Frankfurt a.M., 30 – 51 Harvey, David, 200553: The New Imperialism, largely hidden forms of exploitation,. New York The focus on the spectacular forms of Luxemburg, Rosa, 1913: The Accumulation of dispossession, in the way it dominates Capital (trans. by Agnes Schwarzschild), London 2003 the current discussion on new Land- Madörin, Mascha, 2017: Überlegungen zur nahmen, therefore partially obscures Zukunft der Care-Arbeit, in: Diefenbacher, the view on this transfer of resources Hans/Held, Benjamin/Rodenhäuser, Dorothee (Ed.): Das Ende des Wachstums which is hard to pinpoint and therefore – Arbeit ohne Ende. Arbeiten in einer occurs silently. This however does not Postwachstumsgesellschaft, Marburg, 35 – 67 constitute a straightforward theft, but a —. 2019: Zählen, was zählt. Sorge- und form of articulation of different forms Versorgungswirtschaft als Teil der of production for which no stand-alone Gesamtwirtschaft, in: Knobloch, Ulrike (Ed.): Ökonomie des Versorgens. concepts exist within left-wing theoretical Feministisch-kritische Wirtschaftstheorien debate to date. im deutsch- Luxemburg’s thoughts in any case sprachigen Raum, Weinheim/Basel (to be published 2019) offer an understanding of continued Mies, Maria, 2009: Hausfrauisierung, primitive accumulation, which – if Globalisierung, Subsistenzproduktion, in: understood as the articulation of different Linden, Marcel von der/Roth, Karl Heinz (Ed.): Über Marx hinaus, Hamburg/Berlin, modes of production – facilitates taking 255 – 290 the situation of an expanding care sector in post-Fordism and the changing transformations of household labour in the post-Fordist regime of accumulation 1 The journal The Commoner (No. 15. winter 2012) refers to this older debate in its special into account. The concept of the edition Care Work and the Commons. This articulation is of such key importance includes important documents from that time. because it allows us to conceive of 2 The care sector remains a low-wage sector because as labour intensive work the reproduction in its paid and unpaid forms majority of care work resists rationalisation together as one mode of production which and therefore cannot benefit from the – under the dominant economic-political blessings of the capitalist mode of production – using technological innovations to increase framework – is subsumed under an productivity additional mode of production. (Madörin 2017).

TOVE SOILAND 43 ORDER REIGNS IN BERLIN ROSA LUXEMBURG ‘Order reigns in Warsaw,’ Minister Sebastiani informed the Paris Chamber of Deputies in 1831, when, after fearfully storming the suburb Praga, Paskiewitsch’s rabble troops had marched into the Polish capital and begun their hangman’s work on the rebels.1 ‘Order reigns in Berlin’ is the triumphant announcement of the bourgeois Press, of Ebert and Noske, and of the officers of the ‘victorious troops,’ who are being cheered by the petty-bourgeois mob in the streets, waving their handkerchiefs and shouting hurrahs. The glory and the honor of the German Army has been saved in the eyes of history. Those who were miserably routed in Flanders and the Argonne have restored their reputation by this shining victory – over the three hundred ‘Spartacists’ in the Vorwärts.2 The days of the first glorious penetration of German troops into Belgium, the days of General von Emmich, the conqueror of Liège, pale before the deeds of this Reinhardt and Company in the streets of Berlin.3 The massacred mediators, who wanted to negotiate the surrender of the Vorwärts and were beaten beyond recognition by rifle butts, so that their bodies could not even be identified; captives who were put up against the wall and murdered in a way that spattered their skulls and brains all over: in the face of such glorious acts, who is still thinking of the ignominious defeats suffered at the hand of the French, the English, or the Americans? ‘Spartacus’ is the name of the enemy; and Berlin, the place where our officers know how to win. Noske, the ‘worker,’4 is the name of the general who knows how to organize victories where Ludendorff failed. Who does not recall here the drunken ecstasy of that pack of ‘law- and-order’ hounds in Paris, the bacchanal of the bourgeoisie on the bodies of the Communards – the very same bourgeoisie who had only just capitulated pitifully to the Prussians and surrendered the nation’s capital to the foreign enemy, only to take to their heels themselves like the ultimate coward! But against the badly armed and starving Parisian proletarians, against their defenseless wives and children – how the manly courage of the little sons of the bourgeoisie, of the ‘golden youth,’ and of the officers flamed up again! How the courage of these sons of Mars who had broken down before the foreign enemy spent itself in bestial cruelties against the defenseless, against prisoners, and the fallen! ‘Order reigns in Warsaw!’ – ‘Order reigns in Paris!’ – ‘Order reigns in Berlin!’ And so run the reports of the guardians of ‘order’ every half- century, from one center of the world-historical struggle to another. And the rejoicing ‘victors’ do not notice that an ‘order’ which must be periodically maintained by bloody butchery is steadily approaching its historical destiny, its doom. What was this recent ‘Spartacus Week’ in Berlin? What has it brought? What does it teach us? Still in the midst of the struggle and the victory cries of the counterrevolution, the revolutionary proletarians have to give an account of what has happened; they must measure the events and their results on the great scale of history. The revolution has no time to lose, it storms onward – past still open graves, past ‘victories’ and ‘defeats’ toward its great goals. To follow lucidly its principles and its paths is the first task of the fighters for international socialism. Was an ultimate victory of the revolutionary proletariat to be expected in this conflict, or the overthrow of the Ebert-Scheidemann [government] and establishment of a socialist dictatorship? Definitely not, if all the decisive factors in this issue are taken into careful consideration. The sore spot in the revolutionary cause at this moment – the political immaturity of the masses of soldiers who, even now, are still letting themselves be misused by their officers for hostile, counterrevolutionary purposes – is alone already proof that a lasting victory of the revolution was not possible in this encounter. On the other hand, this immaturity of the military is itself but a symptom of the general immaturity of the German revolution. The open country, from which a large percentage of the common soldiers come, is still hardly touched by the revolution, the same as always. So far, Berlin is as good as isolated from the rest of the country. Of course, there are revolutionary centers in the provinces – in the Rhineland, on the northern seaboard, in Brunswick, Saxony, and Württemberg – that are heart and soul on the side of the Berlin proletariat. Still what is lacking first of all is the immediate coordination of the march forward, the direct community of action, which would make the thrust and the willingness to fight of the Berlin working class incomparably more effective. Furthermore – and this is but the deeper cause of that political immaturity of the revolution – the economic struggles, the actual volcanic fountain which is continually feeding the revolutionary class struggle, are only in their infancy. From all this it follows that at this moment a conclusive and lasting victory could not be expected. Was the struggle of the last week therefore a ‘mistake’? Yes, if it were in fact a matter of a deliberate ‘attack’ or a so-called ‘putsch’! But what was the starting point for the last week of fighting? The same as in all previous cases, the same as on December 6 and December 24: a brutal provocation by the government! Just as before, in the case of the blood bath involving defenseless demonstrators on the Chausseestrasse, or in the butchery of the sailors, likewise this time the cause of all subsequent events was the assault on the Berlin police headquarters. The revolution does not operate voluntaristically, in an open field, according to a cunning plan laid out by ‘strategists.’ Its opponents too have initiative; in fact, as a rule, they exercise it much more than the revolution itself. Faced with the shameless provocation of the Ebert-Scheidemanns, the revolutionary working class was forced to take up arms. Yes, it was a matter of honor for the revolution to repel the attack immediately and with all due energy, lest the counterrevolution be encouraged to advance further, and lest the revolutionary ranks of the proletariat and the moral credit of the German revolution in the International be shaken. Immediate resistance came forth spontaneously from the masses of Berlin with such an obvious energy that from the very beginning the moral victory was on the side of the ‘street.’ Now it is an internal law of life of the revolution never to stand still in inaction, in passivity, once a step has been taken. The best parry is a forceful blow. Now more than ever this elementary rule of all struggles governs each step of the revolution. It goes without saying, and it testifies to the sound instinct and fresh internal strength of the Berlin proletariat, that it was not appeased by the reinstatement of Eichhorn, that it spontaneously proceeded to occupy other outposts of the counterrevolution’s power: the bourgeois press, the semi-official news agencies, the Vorwärts. All these measures resulted from the people’s instinctive recognition that, for its part, the counterrevolution would not rest with the defeat it had suffered, but rather would be bent on a general test of strength. Here, too, we stand before one of the great historical laws of revolution against which are dashed to pieces all the sophistries and the pseudo-science of those little ‘revolutionaries’ of the USPD brand who, in every fight, look only for pretexts for retreating. As soon as the fundamental problem of the revolution has been clearly posed – and in this revolution it is to overthrow the Ebert-Scheidemann regime, the first obstacle to the triumph of socialism – then this problem will recur repeatedly as a pressing need of the moment, and each individual episode of the struggle will broach the problem in its entirety with the fatality of a natural law, however unprepared the revolution may be for its solution, however unripe the situation may still be. ‘Down with Ebert and Scheidemann!’ – this slogan is inevitably heard in every revolutionary crisis as the single formula summing up all partial conflicts, thereby automatically, by its own internal, objective logic, propelling each episode of the struggle to the extreme, whether one wants it or not. From this contradiction between the increasing gravity of the task and the lack of the preconditions for its solution it follows, in an initial phase of the revolutionary development, that the individual fights of the revolution formally end with a defeat. But revolution is the only form of ‘war’ – this, too, is its particular life principle – in which the final victory can be prepared only by a series of ‘defeats’! What does the whole history of modern revolutions and of socialism show us? The first flare-up of the class struggle in Europe – the revolt of the silk weavers of Lyons in 1831 – ended with a severe defeat. The Chartist movement in England – with a defeat. The rebellion of the Parisian proletariat in the June days of 1848 ended with a crushing defeat. The Paris Commune ended with a dreadful defeat. The whole path of socialism, as far as revolutionary struggles are concerned, is paved with sheer defeats. And yet, this same history leads step by step, irresistibly, to the ultimate victory! Where would we be today without those ‘defeats’ from which we have drawn historical experience, knowledge, power, idealism! Today, where we stand directly before the final battle of the proletarian class struggle, we are standing on precisely those defeats, not a one of which we could do without, and each of which is a part of our strength and clarity of purpose. Armed workers behind newspaper rolls at the barricade fight, Schützenstraße Berlin 11 January 1919, © bpk/Kunstbibliothek, SMB, Photothek Willy Römer/Willy Römer In this respect, revolutionary struggles are the direct opposite of parliamentary struggles. In the course of four decades we have had nothing but parliamentary ‘victories’ in Germany, we have advanced directly from victory to victory. And with the great test of history on August 4,1914, the result was: a devastating political and moral defeat, an unprecedented debacle, an unparalleled bankruptcy. Revolutions have brought us nothing but defeat till now, but these unavoidable defeats are only heaping guarantee upon guarantee of the coming final triumph. On one condition, of course! The question arises, under which circumstances each respective defeat was suffered: whether it resulted from the forward-storming energy of the masses being dashed against the barrier of the lack of maturity of the historical presuppositions, or, on the other hand, whether it resulted from the revolutionary action itself being paralyzed by incompleteness, vacillation, and inner frailties. Classic examples for both cases are, on the one hand, the French February Revolution, and the German March Revolution on the other. The courageous action of the Parisian proletariat in 1848 has become the living source of class energy for the entire international proletariat. The deplorable facts of the German March Revolution [1848] have clung to the whole development of modern Germany like a ball and chain. In the particular history of official German Social Democracy, they have produced after-effects well into the most recent incidents of the German revolution – and into the dramatic crisis we just experienced. How does the defeat in this so-called Spartacus Week appear in light of the above historical question? Was it a defeat due to raging revolutionary energy and a situation that was insufficiently ripe, or rather due to frailties and halfway undertakings? Both! The divided character of this crisis, the contradiction between the vigorous, resolute, aggressive showing of the people of Berlin and the indecision, timidity, and inadequacy of the Berlin leadership is the particular characteristic of this latest episode. The leadership failed. But the leadership can and must be created anew by the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the crucial factor; they are the rock on which the ultimate victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were up to the task. They fashioned this ‘defeat’ into a part of those historical defeats which constitute the pride and power of international socialism. And that is why this ‘defeat’ is the seed of the future triumph. ‘Order reigns in Berlin!’ You stupid lackeys! Your ‘order’ is built on sand. The revolution will ‘raise itself up again clashing,’ and to your horror it will proclaim to the sound of trumpets: I was, I am, I shall be.5

Luxemburg, Rosa, 1917: Order Reigns in Berlin, in: Hudis, Peter/Anderson, Kevin B. (Ed.): The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, New York 2004, 373–378

Image, p. 44: Guards of the Volksmarinedivision in front of the castle portal, Berlin, 24 December 1918, © bpk /Kunstbibliothek, SMB, Photothek Willy Römer / Willy Römer

1 A reference to the crushing of the Polish insurrection of 1830 – 31 by the Russian General Ivan Fyodorovich Paskiewitsch (1782–1856). His troops massacred thousands of freedom fighters upon entering Warsaw in 1831. In 1849 Paskiewitsch, also the Commander in Chief of the Russian Army, crushed the Ungarian Ravolution, thus bringing to an end the revolutions begun across Europe in 1848. 2 On January 13, 1919, the Ebert-Scheidemann government sent troops against supportersof the Spartacus League who had occupied the headquarters of Vorwärts. The troops‘s victory over the revolutionaries marked the beginning of the end of the Spartacus uprising. 3 German General von Emmich (d. 1915) was Commanding General of the 10th Army Corps, which carried out the bloody siege of Liège, Belgium, in August 1914. 4 Gustav Noske (1868 –1946), a former furniture worker, was right wing SDP member who was a specialist on military affairs before World War I. He became Defence Minister of the Ebert-Scheidemann government in 1918 and was responsible for the bloody suppression of the Spartacus uprising and also allowed the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. 5 ‘Raise itself up against clashing’ is a line from the poem Abschiedswort (a Word of Farewell) by Friedrich Freiligrath a close friend of Marx. Marx published it in the final issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung after the defeat of the 1848 revolution; the entire issue war printed in red ink. ‘I was, I am, I shall be’ is a line from Freiligrath’s poem Die Revolution, written in 1851. REVOLUTIONARY REALPOLITIK

MICHAEL BRIE MARIO CANDEIAS

REVOLUTIONARY REALPOLITIK I work and better lives permanently, yet all MICHAEL BRIE they can do is hope for progress within An agonising contradiction drives many the existing structures – if at all. Left-wing people on the Left; they know that a parties write socialism into their manifestos, fundamental transformation of our societies yet in government are acting primarily in is necessary, indeed, indispensable because administrating the status quo in a more of a lack of basic justice. The capitalist or less better way within the conditions of growth machine is taking us towards an fierce competition of cities and regions for ecological disaster barring billions of people capital and high skilled labour force. The from enjoying a life in dignity, the most revolutionary break with the structures of life-defining questions are not decided in property and power, with the whole mode of a democratic way, people are living their social development seems vitally important, lives as illegal immigrants and wars destroy and nevertheless only agonisingly little is entire societies. In real terms there is very possible in reality and often even reverses little they can do. In fact, even in the lives of into the opposite. This even applied to the Germany’s most radical Autonome there are countries where revolutionary rupture reformist aspects, they accept compromises occurred, in the Soviet-style real socialist (at work, when shopping or on holiday) that countries. are diametrically opposed to their declared objectives. Trade unionists know all too well THE TERM AS USED BY ROSA LUXEMBURG that only a fundamental transformation Rosa Luxemburg herself coined the of society can ever promise to secure good formulation ‘revolutionary Realpolitik’

52 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE (1903, 373) featured in an article for them, it is therefore certainly not a waste Vorwärts, the SPD’s official newspaper, of time to take stock of the intellectual on March 14 1903 although it was not tools at our hands with which we march attributed to her. It was on the occasion of into this era.’ (Bernstein 1897, 165) the 20th anniversary of the death of Karl From the outset, Luxemburg believed Marx. She never used this term again that it was wrong to oppose reform and and the term played no further role in left revolution. She wrote that, thanks to debate of the time. Marx, ‘The working class has managed By linking revolution, on the one for the first time to transform the idea of hand, with realpolitik on the other, Rosa socialism as the ultimate aim into daily Luxemburg intended to draw a conclusion politics’ divisional coins and to elevate the from the discussions within the German everyday political detail work to the big social democratic movement, which had idea’s executive tool. There was bourgeois been taking place since 1896 under the politics led by workers and there was heading of social reform or revolution -, revolutionary socialism before Marx. But known as the ‘revisionism debate’. This only since Marx and through Marx has occurred within the context of the real a socialist working class-politics existed contradictions within the social democratic that is at the same time and in the fullest movement and left-wing politics at the meaning of both words revolutionary time. Towards the end of the 19th century, realpolitik’. (Luxemburg 1903, 373) She capitalism and the German Empire rejected separating reform-oriented appeared to have stabilised. After the realpolitik in everyday life under the abrogation of the Anti-Socialist Laws, the German Empire and waiting for the SPD had returned to working on a legal ‘Kladderradatsch’ (August Bebel) and footing. The party subsequently enjoyed revolutionary breakdown. The Russian immense parliamentary success (around revolution of 1905, which firmly took hold a third of Reichstag MPs were SPD in in her home country of, Tsarist-occupied 1914), a majority, however, was not on the Poland as well, provided her with new horizon. A number of social reforms were motivation. In 1906 Luxemburg wrote implemented which Eduard Bernstein and from Warsaw, ‘The revolution is splendid. others hoped could lead to the introduction All else is bilge.’ (Luxemburg 1906a) of elements of socialism, planning, social Based on this experience, she seeks security and public ownership: ‘In the to organically fuse the direct struggles in advanced countries we stand at the eve if defence of the interests of workers and not of the dictatorship certainly of a very suppressed regions of the world and a substantial influence of the working class, revolutionary transformation of society. As respectively the parties that represent Frigga Haug writes: ‘Within this context,

MICHAEL BRIE | MARIO CANDEIAS 53 Rosa Luxemburg gives us a lesson in the insights. Only a form of politics based on art of creating linkages, dissenting and the actions of people, which is propelled above all – self-criticism.’ (Haug 2009, 21) by them, in which especially they are Right up to the founding of the KPD at the always experimenting with new forms turn of the year 1918/19 she emphasized, and content, learn and draw their own opposed to those who insisted on conclusions, establish their own forms boycotting national assembly elections: of organisation and demolish outdated ‘they understand: either machine guns ones can be revolutionary realpolitik. For or parliamentarism. Our aim is a slightly her, a left-wing party and its leadership refined radicalism. Not the coarse either or.’ were valuable in as much as they support (Luxemburg 1918a, 483) self-organisation and empowerment Luxemburg seeks to combine reform, and encourage people to move forward revolution and realpolitik in a different when the time is right. She vehemently way to both the reformists and Lenin. opposed the Bolshevik’s suppression of Unlike Bernstein and others, Lenin threw political freedoms because the elimination his weight completely behind revolution. of democracy, ‘Stops up the very living Yet all of them agreed, as did many other source from which alone can come social democrats at the time, that the correction of all the innate shortcomings right consciousness, which in Lenin’s of social institutions. That source is the case was a ‘revolutionary’ consciousness, active, untrammeled, energetic political needed to be instilled in the masses of life of the broadest masses of the people.’ workers. This was politics on behalf of (Luxemburg 1918b, 302) others. Workers were mainly a means to the end of their own liberation under the IMPORTANCE TODAY leadership of either a reform-oriented Over the course of the past 100 years, or revolutionary party. For Luxemburg, the Left has gained a lot of experience however, the 1905 revolution primarily with revolutionary realpolitik. We could highlighted one fact: ‘The living matter name the attempts for a unified or of world history, even in the presence of popular front during the 1920s and Social Democracy; and only if there is 1930s for a left historic block by the blood circulation between the organised Italian Communist Party, for left-wing nucleus and the popular masses, only if projects of transformation such as in one heartbeat vitalises the two, can Social Spain between 1936 and 1939, or Unidad Democracy prove that it is capable of great Popular in Chile from 1970 to 1973, or historical deeds.’ (1913, 252) In The Mass most recently in Venezuela, Bolivia and Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Ecuador. Revolutionary realpolitik however Unions (1906b) she summarised these also includes projects of immediate

54 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE self-organisation of workers in factories transformation of all of society’ (Candeias and companies (from Spain to Argentina), in this text). Within this context, Joachim cooperatives or participatory budgeting Hirsch (2005, 232) talks of radical first tried in Porto Alegre (Brazil). Finally, reformism that transforms the relations of this list should also include approaches power in society and ‘consciously opposes directed at new modes of production, and transcends capitalist social modes’. exchange or living. These efforts include Structurally, left-wing politics is the housing projects in Red Vienna or in characterised by the antinomy of a demand the Soviet Union following the First World for a change of system and the fight for War, yet also the communes of the 1968 reforms. Whether actors are capable of movement, third world shops and peer-to- developing a revolutionary realpolitik peer production. depends on their capacity to find mutually Revolutionary realpolitik, however, supportive forms of handling these is more than simply the sum of a set contradictions and adopt progressive of projects. We should only talk about solutions (cf Brie 2009). The contradiction revolutionary Realpolitik, if actors between the radical, the revolutionary consciously and purposefully work in claim to transform all of society into a such a way that such projects converge real life within the ‘true’, and work in the into a broader movement which takes here and now cannot be resolved, it can the perspective of the disadvantaged, only be worked on – individually, jointly threatened and excluded; a movement, with others, with initiatives, movements, which would seek to implement its in social organisations, through projects allied with a supportive middle specific projects and through solidarity. class, have an anti-hegemonic orientation, Revolutionary realpolitik is practical politics wants to establish the greatest possible specifically, with transformation-oriented degree of self-organisation for those objectives and means. affected and endeavours to expand open spaces and democratic participation, to REVOLUTIONARY REALPOLITIK II flexibly combine diverse violence-free (or MARIO CANDEIAS in certain cases low-level violence) forms, Left-wing movements, groups and which exploit contradictions within the parties are divided regarding the ruling bloc and so forth. Such a politics question as to whether capitalism can be would strive to strengthen tendencies in reformed or needs to be combatted in current society that transcend capitalism. principle. However, this is a false set of It seeks out points of rupture capable alternatives. There can be no leap into of rendering such transformations something completely different. Strategies of irreversibly ‘Towards a deeper transformation always begin with reform.

MICHAEL BRIE | MARIO CANDEIAS 55

Whether they pave a way into a different THE LIMITS OF REFORMISM society, as well as the relationship between Capitalism comes in different guises. In short and long term perspectives, always has unfavourable conditions, reforms at least to be newly defined. Reform and revolution, always served to improve the immediate as Rosa Luxemburg wrote, are not ‘different situation of the exploited, subjugated and methods’, but ‘different factors in the oppressed. In more favourable conditions, development’ that mutually ‘condition and they allowed the Left to gain ground, expand complement each other, and are at the and secure its scope for action. As with same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the every reform, hard-won social advances such north and south poles, the bourgeoisie and as limits to working time, salary increases, proletariat.’ (1899, 89) social security, ecological modernisation For many people on the Left, and progressive democratisation are fragile capitalism is a system based on and innately contradictory compromises. exploitation, war, pauperisation and They are the product of social struggles environmental destruction. It is a system which could subsequently be integrated that cannot be reformed, not at least in into the capitalist dynamic. A slowing any meaningful way. All too often reforms of accumulation or a shift in the power have been used to multiply strategies of relations threaten these achievements. exploitation, water them down or foist the Far-reaching measures fail if they reduce burden of violent relations of power on to the profit rate, cost capital too much or other global regions and peoples. The only threaten its power. Struggling for reforms alternative therefore would be revolutionary is absolutely necessary, yet this struggle transformation, even if the power relations is limited to a pre-defined space within a contradict such an option. framework which is compatible with the Others point out that in the past capitalist logic of exploitation. ‘That is why socialist revolutions have either failed, people who pronounce themselves in favour brought about more repressive state of the method of legislative reform in place socialist systems, or mutated into tyranny. and in contradistinction to the conquest of Some are finding it hard to even conceive political power and social revolution’ limit of an alternative. All too often, left-wing themselves to ‘the suppression of the abuses counter models for society have proven of capitalism instead of suppression of ineffectual, and the innovative dynamics capitalism itself.’ (Luxemburg 1899, 90). of capitalism to quash alternatives and There is no alternative to a struggle modernise leaves too strong an impression. to limit capitalism’s socially and Overcoming the capitalist mode of environmentally destructive dynamics – production and bourgeois rule seems a however, such struggles have limits: in futile task. line with the thinking of the constitutional

56 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE © Katerina Sarra, For Rosa, 2018, cohesion in a society split into classes. Its oil on canvas, 110 x 90 cm specific function is to ensure the overall theorist Nicos Poulantzas, the bourgeois conditions for reproduction of capital state should be understood as a accumulation (which provides its basis condensation of societal power relations of existence through taxation). These which means that it can be reformed. It functions exert limitations on reforms must however fulfil two functions: one within capitalism. As soon as one function general and one specific. The general is no longer given, the state loses its function consists in securing social legitimacy and viability.

MICHAEL BRIE | MARIO CANDEIAS 57 The situation is similar to the limitations her article on Karl Marx (ibid.). However, of regulating the market. Whilst the system-hopping is not possible. There is market is always politically created, it therefore a need for transformative steps cannot be regulated at will, in other that can be implemented straight away, words significantly limited in its negative which immediately improve conditions effects, without at the same time losing its for individual people. Such instant ability to function. Likewise, the function measures at the same time need to provide of capital is not based merely on the a perspective and indicate the next steps innovative and efficient (re-)combination towards a deeper transformation of all of of labour power, means of production and society. resources, but also on the production of Revolutionary realpolitik according a growing surplus value, i.e. exploitation, to Rosa Luxemburg solves the false and continuous accumulation, i.e. growth. contradiction between reform and If one of the two is limited, capital loses revolution, or makes it possible to work its basis of existence and therefore with contradictions. Revolutionary refers also its innovative moments. There is a to the sweeping, transformational form of contradiction between capitalist production a policy that gets to the root of a problem, and ecology and there are limitations to the and not so much the violent turning point principle of the welfare state in capitalism. of a revolutionary seizing of power. To Any left-wing politics has to analyse how to wish for or talk oneself into such a point is develop policies within these limitations, not possible. Concentrating on a rupture overcome these limitations and liberate would mean becoming politically incapable and re-organise the innovative moments of acting, condemning yourself to from the form of capital. revolutionary waiting. What appears radical is then no longer good for intervention. TRANSFORMATIVE PERSPECTIVES Luxemburg’s reference to realism A realistic politics of the day ‘that only reinforces this: acting in full awareness sets itself achievable goals that it pursues of the social power relations, but within to obtain by the most effective means the perspective of their transformation; in the shortest time’ (Luxemburg 1903, in connection with the realities and 373) therefore falls short of the objective. contradictions through which we all have What may appear unrealistic in daily to navigate, and the concerns and everyday politics is actually necessary from the interests of each individual; connecting point of view of the ‘historical tendency of to the individual interests and passions, development’ of a crisis-driven capitalism but re-formulating them – ethically which always calls into question again all politically, as Gramsci writes – so that social advances, as Luxemburg writes in the immediate individual interests of the

58 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE diverse groups (still isolated from each of conceiving of and bringing about other) and class factions can be overcome ruptures within the existing system. The and generalised into the interests of other protagonist of such a process can only groups and class factions. The aim is to be a participation-oriented Left with the develop a perspective of transformation in firm objective of transforming society that such a way that it goes ‘in all the parts of empowers individuals to take control of the its endeavours beyond the bounds of the rudder of their own history. existing order in which it operates’ – this is how Rosa Luxemburg describes the dialectics of revolutionary realpolitik (ibid.). Revolutionary realpolitik II was first This is about the bigger picture, published in: ABC der Alternativen 2.0., the shared control over the immediate Hamburg 2012, 352 − 353 living conditions and the shaping of futures. This is more than a desirable long-term objective. Rather, such a political compass prevents a return to corporatist, i.e. narrow group interests. Struggles or REFERENCES individual reforms have to be anchored Bernstein, Eduard, 1897: Probleme des within the perspective of a fundamental Sozialismus. Eigenes und Übersetztes von Eduard Bernstein. 1. Allgemeines über transformation of society, otherwise Utopismus und Eklektizismus, in: Die Neue activists are ultimately threatened by even Zeit, 15/6, 164−171 Brie, Michael, 2009 (Ed.): Radikale Realpolitik. greater subjugation, namely that their Plädoyer für eine andere Politik, Berlin individual interests become integrated Haug, Frigga, 2009: Revolutionäre Realpolitik into the dominant bloc in the form of – die Vier-in-einem-Perspektive, in: Brie, Michael (Ed.), Radikale Realpolitik, 11−26 compromises. The overall context of Hirsch, Joachim, 2005: Materialistische Staats- diverse emancipatory demands can theorie. Transformationsprozesse des always again be parcelled ‘from above’, to kapitalistischen Staatensystems, Hamburg Luxemburg, Rosa, 1899: Reform or Revolution, disarticulate social issues and isolate social Mineola NY 2006 groups. —. 1906a: Brief an Mathilde und Emanuel Wurm A number of anti-systemic demands vom 18. Juli 1906, in: GB 2, 258−259 —. 1906b: The Mass Strike, in: The Essential Rosa may protect against appropriation, Luxemburg, Scott, Helen (Ed.), Chicago 2008 yet this comes at the expense of an —. 1903: Karl Marx, in: GW, 1.2, 369−377 —. 1913: Taktische Fragen, in: GW 3, Berlin, isolated, marginal position which cannot 246−258 be connected. It requires a positive, —. 1918a: Rede für die Beteiligung der KPD an transformational and integrating project den Wahlen zur Nationalversammlung, in: GW 4, 481−487 that begins with reforms within capitalism —. 1918b: The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, Hudis and gives them a direction – and is capable Peter/Anderson Kevin B. (Ed.), New York 2004

MICHAEL BRIE | MARIO CANDEIAS 59 ROWING AGAINST THE CURRENT TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH ROSA LUXEMBURG

MIRIAM PIESCHKE

One of the many iconic images we have it’s for her life, her stance or her writing. of Rosa Luxemburg depicts her at the To what extent can she also be a reference SPD Party School, where she began to point for political education? Can her teach in 1907. Luxemburg stands on the writings serve as a basis for guiding left, apart from her there are only very principles of education? few other women in the picture. Unlike her friend Clara Zetkin, a trained teacher, LEARNING BY TEACHING Rosa Luxemburg had no pedagogical ‘While we teach, we learn.’ Originally background. Yet, as her texts quickly from the Roman philosopher Seneca, reveal, it was not only her knowledge this quote is often attributed to Rosa and analytical acumen that qualified her Luxemburg. Initially hesitant to accept for the job: it was her capacity to explain the job at the Party School, the minute contexts and complex issues. This makes she started teaching, she became reading Rosa Luxemburg’s texts a delight enthusiastic and praised the vibrant even today. She develops an idea, presents atmosphere, eagerness for debate and her arguments and dissects counter the enthusiasm of students. In her arguments. Her ability to get to the biography of Rosa Luxemburg, Annelies heart of complicated questions coupled Laschitza (1996, 292) writes that the with her wit meant she was an inspiring students praised her teaching qualities speaker, a highly influential journalist although they also said that she was and probably also a good teacher. To very demanding: ‘She always demanded many she remains a role model, whether intensive self-study. She thought it

60 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE right not to teach in the afternoon to textbook remained unfinished, because give students time to think about the Luxemburg continued to investigate morning lecture, go over their notes and her discovery. Teaching therefore read texts and books. These demands significantly contributed to her process made Rosa Luxemburg as popular as of understanding, leading to her theory she was feared.’ Questions were a key of accumulation, a milestone of her part in her method of teaching, she thinking. would ask students questions and from their answers immediately derive new LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER: questions. Instead of simply testing her THE MASSES AND LEADERS students’ knowledge, she wanted them Luxemburg is perhaps best known to think and in her lectures highlighted for her reflections on the relationship the salient points: ‘Rosa Luxemburg between the masses and their leaders never taught pure economic history, in the class struggle, movements and her lectures always included political socialist parties. Her participation in the events, ethnological and social theoretical Russian Revolution 1905 to 1907 induced aspects, a specific region’s art and her to set out her arguments in favour literature during a particular development of the mass strike in The Mass Strike, phase. This way she also made new which according to her is not a single discoveries for herself.’ (ibid., 290f) strike that can be called out by a party Luxemburg herself therefore traced or union leadership (Luxemburg 1906, her chief work The Accumulation of 118). Rather, it is a period of political and Capital directly back to her teaching. economic struggles which merge into In its foreword, she describes her each other, flare up and subside, are ‘unexpected difficulty’ in attempting interdependent, reinforce or weaken to write a ‘popularization of Marxian each other. She was horrified by the economic theory’ (Luxemburg 1913). way in which German union and party ‘On closer examination, I came to leaders believed they could not order a the insight that this was not merely a mass strike by decree, like whipping out question of presentation, but that there some kind of pocket-knife. She called this was a problem that was theoretically ‘abstract mental gymnastics’ (ibid.) and bound up with the content of the was delighted that the German proletariat second volume of Marx’s Capital, and masses were ‘applying themselves which simultaneously has a bearing to this new problem with such keen on the practice of contemporary interest’ due to their ‘sound revolutionary imperialist politics and its economic instinct and to the quick intelligence of roots.’ (Ibid.) And so the introductory the mass […], in spite of the obstinate

MIRIAM PIESCHKE 61 resistance of their trade-union leaders’ the watchwords of the onrushing crowd (ibid.). She did not presume here of the proletariat’ (ibid., 128). This was that the proletariat would understand due to the fact that both the leaders everything required automatically due to and the masses could only recognise its class position. Rather, she expected the revolution as it unfolded (see ibid., from the social democratic and union 129). Leadership therefore meant: ‘To leadership the capacity to react both to give the cue for, and the direction to, this instinct and the specific development the fight; to so regulate the tactics of the of events and take up the role as much political struggle in its every phase and of student as also of teacher, of leader at its every moment that the entire sum and follower. In the case of Russia, this of the available power of the proletariat meant clarifying to the working class which is already released and active, will the ‘international significance of the find expression in the battle array of the revolution’ and preparing them for the party; to see that the tactics of the social ‘the role and the tasks of the masses in democrats are decided according to their the coming struggles’ (ibid.). Luxemburg resoluteness and acuteness and that they therefore called for learning from specific never fall below the level demanded by situations, she was concerned as much the actual relations of forces, but rather with the object as with the mode of rise above it – that is the most important gaining knowledge. ‘Only in this form task of the directing body in a period of will the discussion on the mass strike mass strikes.’ (ibid., 149) Luxemburg lead to the widening of the intellectual describes the revolution as a process of horizon of the proletariat, to the learning in which the role of leadership sharpening of their way of thinking, and is also limited by the fact that only certain to the steeling of their energy.’ (ibid.) circumstances will allow events to take For Rosa Luxemburg, revolutionary their course that cannot be ordered by Russia made the case for a reciprocal leaders even if they wanted to. relationship between the leadership From her observations and experiences and the masses in specific struggles. In of the Russian Revolution, Luxemburg some instances, events had pushed the developed her specific understanding local branches of the social democratic of leadership that emphasises the two party and unions to take the leadership aspects of learning and teaching: ‘During and overcome the fragmentation of the the revolution it is extremely difficult for masses. In other cases, ‘the appeals of any directing organ of the proletarian the parties could scarcely keep pace with movement to foresee and to calculate the spontaneous risings of the masses; which occasions and factors can lead the leaders scarcely had time to formulate to explosions and which cannot. Here

62 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE also initiative and direction do not But in order to be able to overthrow it, consist in issuing commands according the proletariat requires a high degree of to one’s inclinations, but in the most political education, of class-consciousness adroit adaptability to the given situation, and organisation. All these conditions and the closest possible contact with cannot be fulfilled by pamphlets and the mood of the masses.’ (ibid., 148) leaflets, but only by the living political This is what she calls the element of school, by the fight and in the fight, in spontaneity: ‘The revolution, even when the continuous course of the revolution.’ the proletariat, with the social democrats (Luxemburg 1906, 130) Experience at their head, appear in the leading role, creates a mental sediment, the cultural is not a manoeuvre of the proletariat in growth of the proletariat and in this most the open field, but a fight in the midst ‘precious’ lies the ‘inviolable guarantee of the incessant crashing, displacing of their further irresistible progress in and crumbling of the social foundation. the economic as in the political struggle.’ In short, in the mass strikes in Russia (ibid., 134). the element of spontaneity plays such With learning from experience, a predominant part, not because the which she describes as essential, Russian proletariat are “uneducated,” Luxemburg does not only refer to the but because revolutions do not allow experiences made during struggles, but anyone to play the schoolmaster with also to those made in everyday life. This them’ (ibid.) Luxemburg’s analysis is was behind her strong criticism of the therefore not based on a single historical restrictions imposed by the Bolsheviks event; indeed she would later deepen on public life and discourse during the her analysis of the relationship between 1917 Russian Revolution: Luxemburg masses and leaders in her writings on emphasised ‘untrammeled, energetic the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the political life of the broadest masses of German Revolution 1918 (cf. „Order the people’ (1918, 302) as a necessary reigns in Berlin“ in this edition). corrective element to the limitations and shortcomings of bourgeois-democratic LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE institutions.1 Unlike bourgeois society, Closely tied to her concepts of the the dictatorship of the proletariat depends relationship between masses and on the political education and training of leadership her thinking contains a the entire ‘mass of the people’, as ‘the life further pedagogic idea that emphasises element, the very air without which it is the role of experience. Already in 1906 not able to exist.’ (ibid., 304). she demanded: ‘Absolutism in Russia In the eyes of Rosa Luxemburg, must be overthrown by the proletariat. this made the restrictions to the right of

MIRIAM PIESCHKE 63 assembly and freedom of the press so (ibid., 306). Luxemburg was convinced worthy of criticism. Public life in her view that a transformation of society is only was the source of political experience, possible through ‘a complete spiritual in particular in situations in which the transformation in the masses degraded political leadership can only advance by centuries of bourgeois rule. Social tentatively, and through experimenting. instincts in place of egotistical ones, As neither the leadership nor the masses mass initiative in place of inertia, are capable of knowing everything, they idealism which conquers all suffering, depend on learning from experience: etc., etc.’ (ibid.). ‘It is the very giant tasks which the While the Bolsheviks justified Bolsheviks have undertaken with coercive measures by referring to the courage and determination that demand political and tactical requirements of the most intensive political training the revolution, according to Luxemburg of the masses and the accumulation these requirements can only be met by of experience’, as only experience is granting the greatest freedoms: ‘Without ‘capable of correcting and opening general elections, without unrestricted new ways.’ (ibid., 305) Public life and freedom of press and assembly, without collective learning were synonymous a free struggle of opinion, life dies out for Luxemburg: ‘Only unobstructed, in every public institution, becomes a effervescing life falls into a thousand mere semblance of life, in which only new forms and improvisations, brings the bureaucracy remains as the active to light creative new force, itself corrects element. Public life gradually falls asleep, all mistaken attempts. The public life a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible of countries with limited freedom is so energy and boundless experience direct poverty-stricken, so miserable, so rigid, and rule. Among them, in reality only a so unfruitful, precisely because, through dozen outstanding heads do the leading the exclusion of democracy, it cuts off the and an elite of the working class is invited living sources of all spiritual riches and from time to time to meetings where they progress. (ibid.) Under bourgeois social are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, systems, the impoverishment of public and to approve proposed resolutions life bolsters those in power, therefore unanimously – at bottom, then, a clique what is crucial for a socialist society affair – a dictatorship, to be sure, not the is that the entire mass of the people dictatorship of the proletariat but only the participate in public life and public dictatorship of a handful of politicians, control, otherwise ‘the exchange of that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois experiences remains only with the closed sense, in the sense of the rule of the circle of the officials of the new regime.’ Jacobins.’ (ibid., 307)

64 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE LEARNING AS A FORM OF ORGANISING, conditions of being, insights regarding ORGANISING AS A FORM OF LEARNING how one is as individual bound into Learning and political organising and suffering from the dominant social are one and the same to Luxemburg, conditions constitute a first important interdependent and in need of each step in this regard. Such emancipatory other: through collective reasoning learning requires space, time and people become able to act collectively, patience and presents great challenges through collective struggle they gain to all teachers that have to prepare and new understanding and knowledge. She guide such scenarios. readily acknowledges the challenges In particular in the face of severe presented by capitalist society’s defeats, Luxemburg held on to her conditioning and disciplining of human convictions. ‘I was. I am. I will be!’, was action and thinking, which hampers her approach to learning from defeats. emancipatory learning and action. This optimism is the least teachers Moreover, this is why traditional concepts should take from Luxemburg. of teaching and learning are so seductive: some define the content, the rest follow. Apparently this seems to lead to rapid results. However, as the experiences REFERENCES of real socialist societies painfully Laschitza, Annelies, 1996: Im Lebensrauch, highlight, such results are no less built trotz alledem. Rosa Luxemburg. Eine Biografie, Berlin on sand than the bourgeois order itself. Luxemburg, Rosa, 1906: The Mass Strike, in: Once people have been systematically The Essential Rosa Luxemburg, Scott, Helen discouraged from contributing by (Ed.), Chicago 2008 —. 1913: Hudis, Peter/Le Blanc, Paul (Ed.), The thinking and critical analysis, an Accumulation of Capital. A Contribution to irreparable damage has been done. How the Economic Theory of Imperialism, in: The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, can we create a process of learning for Volume II. Economic Writings 2, New York organising that overcomes obedience, 2015 instead of using it for own ends in the —. 1918: The Russian Revolution, in: The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, Hudis, Peter/ Anderson, name of party discipline? To accomplish Kevin B. (Ed.), New York 2004, 281 – 312 this, left-wing political education must be oriented regarding content, 1 Trotsky for example had justified the methodology and framework conditions dissolution of the constituent assembly alleging in such a way that, it can go beyond the that it only represented the pre-revolutionary existing conditions within the existing majorities. Luxemburg opposed this assessment of the cumbersome nature of electorates with conditions (Brie and Candeias in this the corrective element of public debate by edition). Collective learning on individual referring to historic examples (Luxemburg 1913).

MIRIAM PIESCHKE 65 ‘NO COWARDICE BEFORE THE FRIEND!’ HOW DO WE CRITIQUE REVOLUTIONS?

LUTZ BRANGSCH

‘As a revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg was, Rosa was opposed to the Bolsheviks, and it of course, supportive of the Russian Revolution. is precisely these questions that the course Yet support without criticism, without a of the Russian Revolution has brought critique of the politics of Lenin and Trotsky, to the fore, and – I believe – strikingly was cowardice for Luxemburg – cowardice confirmed Rosa’s conceptions.’ (1921, 219), before the friend.’ (Schütrumpf 2006, 1001) Zetkin viewed the fundamental character The debates about the relationship of these differences very differently. between Lenin and Luxemburg played a fundamental role for decades particularly DIFFERENCES BETWEEN within the communist strain of the Left. LUXEMBURG AND LENIN The relationship between the two can very Lenin, in his spurious obituary to justifiably be described as tense, yet they Luxemburg, highlighted the essential were also united in their struggle against differences in their opinions from his the opportunism of right-wing social perspective. For him, they were Luxemburg’s democracy and their desire for socialist ‘mistakes’ and whether they could be revolution. While the views they shared legitimate differences, i.e. the possibility are uncontroversial, the significance of the that Luxemburg could be right, did not contradictions between their positions is even cross his mind. He attributed the deemed to be more diverse. Whereas in a differences to specific facts: ‘she was letter to Clara Zetkin Paul Levi emphasised mistaken in 1903 in her appraisal of that Rosa Luxemburg’s position was ‘On Menshevism; she was mistaken on the certain questions – this cannot be denied – theory of the accumulation of capital; she

66 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE was mistaken in July 1914, when, together circumstances, the correct one. In this with Plekhanov, Vandervelde, Kautsky context her wariness of organisational splits and others, she advocated unity between needs to be considered too. She believed the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; she was her place was where the masses were and mistaken in what she wrote in prison in they were in the large parties dominated by 1918 (she corrected most of these mistakes opportunists. Revolutionary ideas needed at the end of 1918 and the beginning to take hold among the masses through of 1919 after she was released). (Lenin confrontation with the opportunists. For 1922, 210) Each of these statements her, this had to happen within the party, would require a separate article because, not in a confrontation between different in hindsight, Lenin too was mistaken social democratic parties. She therefore about many points. Broadly speaking the remained in the party, even after the SPD’s differences can be grouped into three historic failure in 1914 and only broke with blocks. the party in 1918 when the scope for debate within the party ceased to exist. PARTY AND EMANCIPATION The first issue is the potential on the part MARX’S LEGACY of the masses to emancipate themselves, Secondly, the differences in position the role of the party and party apparatus related to their respective understanding vis-à-vis the masses and party members, of the Marxian legacy (c.f. Dellheim 2018). as well as the breadth of perspectives that In 1920, Lenin (334) was still describing can be allowed within a revolutionary party. Luxemburg as the representative of an Rosa Luxemburg never contradicted the ‘unfalsified Marxism’. United in their need for a disciplined party that takes on a rejection of Second International’s role as leader of the proletariat. However, orthodoxy, they nonetheless stood for the specific format such leadership different interpretations. Luxemburg, more should take was under discussion. With than Lenin, perceived the incomplete in reference to the Russian experience, Lenin Marx more clearly, as well as the approaches advocated a centralised party capable of still requiring development. Lenin, in turn, flourishing underground. By contrast, highlighted the harmoniousness of Marx’s Luxemburg developed her position against concepts and why to him Luxemburg’s the backdrop of the leeway a Western- critique in The Accumulation of Capital European bourgeois democracy afforded. (1913) seemed outrageous. She accepted Lenin’s course for moments of intensified class struggle, she was REVOLUTION however opposed to the idea that this party Thirdly, Lenin and Luxemburg represented model was universally, in all historical different stances regarding the relationship

LUTZ BRANGSCH 67 Luxemburg was conscious of the fact that the power of classes during revolutionary processes is not always consistent and can fluctuate. She however rejected a permanent dictatorship by the party or even by the party apparatus against the masses as this would undermine the idea of socialism.

CONCEIVING OF THE REVOLUTION IN A DIFFERENT WAY... With her critique of Lenin, Luxemburg asks us to shift our perspective, to distance ourselves from the fascination of the revolution as an event, of immediate © Elena Antenopoulou victory and to assign the events their place between strategy and tactics in revolutionary within the process of the self-liberation of action. Luxemburg’s critique of the the working class. Hers was a critique and Russian Revolution sharpened the focus self-critique of global social democratic on these differences. She never opposed policies of the time. In her view, three the revolution, power to the councils or perspectives were important; ‘1. The the dictatorship of the proletariat. She was past, to answer the question of why. 2. however opposed to quite specific decisions The Russian Revolution to understand and measures taken by the Bolsheviks its teachings. 3. The future to grasp the that she believed threatened to discredit new situation created by the war and proletarian politics. Superficially, this the opportunities it offers and tasks for was about how to deal with power. Lenin socialism’. (Luxemburg 1918a, 1092) unconditionally subordinated tactical Her focus was always on the failure decisions to a strategy of seizing power. of the German proletariat and Karl He saw the Bolsheviks or his fraction Kautsky’s role as a symbol of the Second within the Bolsheviks as the legitimate International. Her criticism of Lenin representatives of the proletariat and was and Trotsky was always also a criticism therefore convinced that the power of the of the state of international social Bolsheviks coincided with the dictatorship democracy. She believed the problem of the proletariat. One consequence of was not the strength of the opponent this view was that this dictatorship could but ‘the proletariat, its immaturity, or therefore turn against the proletariat itself. rather the immaturity of its leaders, the

68 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE socialist parties’ (Luxemburg 1918b, was not entirely wrong but this was not 373). Accordingly she summed up the the way to achieve lasting effects. Bolsheviks’ actions in the following terms: ‘Bolshevism has become a cue ... AND ‘DOING’ THE REVOLUTION for practical revolutionary socialism, for IN A DIFFERENT WAY all working class attempts to conquer Two points expose the problems related power. Having ripped open a social to the different approaches of Luxemburg abyss in the heart of bourgeois society, and Lenin in their critique of revolutionary internationally deepening and escalating action. The first concerns the relationship class antagonisms, herein lies the between the general and the specific. historic achievement of Bolshevism. ‘The danger begins only when they [the This achievement, within the larger Bolsheviks] make a virtue of necessity and historic context, undoes as unsubstantial want to freeze into a complete theoretical all specific errors and mistakes of system all the tactics forced upon them [the Bolshevism.’ (Ibid., 371) proletariat] by these fatal circumstances, It is this dialectic of failure (of the and want to recommend them to the international proletariat) and the merit international proletariat as a model of of ‘escalation’ (by the Bolsheviks) that socialist tactics.’ (Luxemburg 1918d, 309) would define Luxemburg’s analytical Caught up in the praxis of momentary work from January 1918 onwards. In circumstances, Lenin could only interpret September she wrote, ‘Any socialist party Luxemburg’s criticism as an attack. On the that comes to power in Russia today one hand, he simply did not understand must pursue the wrong tactics so long as her (as for that matter was the case with it, as part of the international proletarian the majority of readers). He followed other army, is left in the lurch by the main epistemological principles. Due to its body of this army. (Luxemburg 1918c, isolated nature, he placed the emergence of 391) She therefore raises the question Soviet power outside of the revolutionary as to how the main body of the army that process – and, although he occasionally is the international working class, could said the opposite – conceived of it as the be won over, and revealed her doubts determinant of the general, i.e. the power of that the path taken by Lenin and Trotsky the Bolsheviks became the criterion for the could achieve this objective. liberation of the working class. Lenin, in turn, did not honestly ask The events unfolded as Luxemburg himself this question. He hoped that the had feared. As early as March 1919, the escalating contradictions and the diligent Platform of the Communist International work of the party would drive the masses was adopted in which no trace could be into Bolshevism’s arms. His assumption found of Luxemburg’s differentiated

LUTZ BRANGSCH 69 considerations (c.f. Hedeler/Vatlin 2008, much a ‘counterrevolutionary bulwark’ as 202ff). During theKPD ’s found ing an instrument, to ‘deepen the intellectual congress she had – based on specific revolutionisation of the masses’ (ibid.). German conditions – presented a A second reason for Luxemburg’s different form of dictatorship of the and Lenin’s diverging assessments proletariat and a different focus for the of revolutionary action concerns the struggles. She had argued that the initial requirements in the time before, the period of this revolution ‘remained question of preparatory policies. This is exclusively political. We must be fully probably the most relevant point of these conscious of this. This explains the controversies. While Luxemburg traces uncertain character, the inadequacy, the the general aspects of the revolution half-heartedness, the aimlessness of to ultimately a single criterion, the this revolution.’ (Luxemburg 1918/19, proletariat’s claim to emancipation and 367f). She emphasised the role of the autonomous organisation, she also councils in their original function as formulated demands for the left-wing the self-organisation of the masses – at parties of her time before the revolution. a time when in Russia they had already Here too, she drew on her controversies become party organs. In her view, the with leading SPD (and union) figures workers’ and soldier’s councils had to be before 1914 on the one hand and Lenin strengthened, not as party entities but on the other. Revolutions always take as places of learning for the masses (cf. place at the wrong moment – how can Pieschke in this edition). Luxemburg such a wrong moment be transformed also set different priorities with regard into the right moment? to the format struggles should take: Lenin in contrast, after 1918, put ‘Socialism will not and cannot be created his bet completely on the triad terror by decrees; nor can it be established by against the capitalists and large farmers; any government, however socialistic. education and occasional terror against Socialism must be created by the masses, the working masses and finally occasional by every proletarian. Where the chains of terror and bribing of intellectuals and capitalism are forged, there they must be medium-scale farmers. Permanent civil broken. Only that is socialism, and only war was the movement form of this type thus can socialism be created. What is the of politics. Conversely, the relationship external form of struggle for socialism? sketched out by Luxemburg between It is the strike.’ (ibid., 368) Emphasising a political and an economic struggle the character of the revolution which presupposed what she always demanded is necessarily democratic, Luxemburg before and during the revolution: a argued that the National Assembly was as learning organisation in today’s terms.

70 LUXEMBURG 2019 | I SHALL BE DOES LUXEMBURG REVOKE ‘for there is nothing so destructive for the HER CRITIQUE? revolution as illusions, whereas nothing Luxemburg’s comrade Adolf Warski, who is of greater use than clear, naked truth.’ was often referred to later, misunderstood (Luxemburg 1918/19) the essence of Luxemburg’s critique when he claimed that the manuscript ‘The Russian Revolution’ was ‘a fragment REFERENCES Dellheim Judith, 2018: Ständig bei Marx, in: of a resolved intellectual struggle by the LuXemburg. Gesellschaftsanalyse und linke author’ (Warski 1922, 8). When analysing Praxis, Vol.3, Berlin, 64–71 the manuscript for this text against her Hedeler, Wladislaw/Vatlin, Alexander, 2008: Die Weltpartei aus Moskau: Der speeches at the KPD founding congress, Gründungskongress der Kommunistischen it becomes evident that her critique of Internationale 1919. Protokoll und neue the revolution served to sharpen her Dokumente, Berlin Lenin, W. I., 1920: Collected Works, Vol. 31, theoretical and practical concepts for Moskau 1974 revolution. This concerns union policy, —. 1922: Collected Works, Vol. 33, Moskau 1973 the role played by the councils and the Levi, Paul, 1921: Letter to Clara Zetkin, in: In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg. Selected Writings national assembly, the relationship of of Paul Levi, Leiden 2011, 217–219 political and economic struggle, the Luxemburg, Rosa, 1918a: Handschriftliche Fragmente zur Geschichte der relationship between the masses and Internationalen, der deutschen party as well as regarding the character Sozialdemokratie, zu Krieg, Revolution und of the party itself. In all of these points Nachkriegsperspektiven, in: GW 7/2, Berlin, 1088–1114 Luxemburg and her group stood —. 1918b: Fragment über Krieg, nationale Frage diametrically opposed to the views held und Revolution, in GW 4, Berlin, 366–373 by the majority within the nascent KPD, —. 1918c: Die russische Tragödie, in: GW 4, Berlin, 385–392 inspired as they thought they were by the —. 1918d: The Russian Revolution, in: The Rosa Bolsheviks. Luxemburg Reader, Hudis, Peter/ Anderson, Just before her death, she wrote: ‘The Kevin B. (Ed.), New York 2004, 281–312 —. 1918/19: Our Program and the Political masses are the crucial factor. They are Situation, in: The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, the rock on which the ultimate victory of Hudis, Peter/Anderson, Kevin B. (Ed.), New York 2004, 357–373 the revolution will be built.’ (Luxemburg —. 1919: Luxemburg, Rosa, 1917: Order Reigns 1919, 378) She absolutely upheld her in Berlin, in: Hudis, Peter/Anderson, critique of Lenin’s attempt to generalise Kevin B. (Ed.): The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, New York 2004, 373–378 the practice of replacing mass action Schütrumpf, Jörn, 2006: Rosa Luxemburg, die by party action until her death. She was Bolschewiki und „gewisse Fragen“, in: never willing to accept attempts to re- Utopie kreativ 193, 995–1002 Warski, Adolf, 1922: Rosa Luxemburgs Stellung interpret the actions of a minority as the zu den taktischen Problemen der Revolution, revolutionary action of a mass movement: Hamburg

LUTZ BRANGSCH 71 AUTHORS GAL HERTZ directs the ‘Humanities in Conflict Zones’ research project at the LUTZ BRANGSCH is an economist and Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv expert on democracy and the state at University. He received his PhD for his the Institute for Critical Social Analysis work on Karl Kraus and his research of Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. In addition, concentrates on modern German literature he has been engaged in the question of with a particular focus on the intersection history and political education for a vibrant of language, theatricality, violence and war. transformative Left for many years. MIRIAM PIESCHKE is a social scientist and MICHAEL BRIE studied philosophy and is civic educator. She currently works at an expert for the theory and history of the University of Magdeburg-Stendal socialist transformation research at the in a subject scientific research project Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung’s Institute for analysing right-wing populism. She is a Critical Social Analysis. He is a founding fellow at the Institute for Critical Social member of the LuXemburg Magazine. Analysis at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung and member of the editorial board of the MARIO CANDEIAS is the director of Rosa- LuXemburg Magazine. Luxemburg-Stiftung’s Institute for Critical Social Analysis and a further founding TOVE SOILAND is a historian and feminist member of the LuXemburg Magazine. philosopher. She teaches at universities in Switzerland, Austria and Germany focusing DRUCILLA CORNELL Drucilla Cornell is a philo on feminist theory and political economy, sopher and feminist theorist and emerita as well as on the relationship between Professor of Gender Studies, Literature and Marxism and psychoanalysis. Political Science at Rutgers University. INGAR SOLTY is an expert on peace and ALEX DEMIROVIĆ studied philosophy and security policy at Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung’s social sciences. In Germany he is known Institute for Critical Social Analysis. as one of the most vociferous left- wing intellectuals. He has taught at the UWE SONNENBERG is an academic project universities of Frankfurt Main and Berlin, staff member for Revolutions at Rosa- chaired the academic board of Rosa- Luxemburg-Stiftung’s history centre. Luxemburg-Stiftung, and is a fellow at the Institute for Critical Social Analysis JÖRN SCHÜTRUMPF is an historian and heads and founding member of the LuXemburg up the foundation’s research focus Rosa Magazine. Luxemburg.

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