2-28-06, 2:00 pm
Too often in our theoretical work Marxists overlook the contributions women have made in the arena of socialist thought. While Marx, Engels and Lenin made monumental contributions to the study of socialism, and we should diligently study their works, sometimes we neglect the contributions of revolutionary women leaders like Rosa Luxemburg.
Rosa Luxemburg’s rise as a leader in the German socialist movement was not an easy one. The German socialist leadership was mostly male and few female theoreticians were published in German papers. Overcoming sexism within the movement as an immigrant in her 20s was quite an accomplishment, the result of her ability to grasp the dialectic and dig deeper than most of her contemporaries.
The article that thrust her into the limelight of German socialist thought was “Reform or Revolution,” a refutation of “Problems of Socialism” by Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein’s article was published in Die Nue Zeit, a newspaper edited by German Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Karl Kautsky, and is viewed as a rejection of scientific socialism in favor of evolutionary social change.
Bernstein’s reformist current, reviled by Lenin, became a strong force within the SPD and if not for Luxemburg it might have gone unchallenged in the socialist press. “Reform or Revolution” called the reformist tendency into question, and Luxemburg helped lead the fight against opportunism and kept the SPD a revolutionary party.
An examination of the details of Bernstein’s argument and Luxemburg’s criticisms demonstrate the continuing relevance of Luxemburg’s conclusions.
Bernstein’s Argument
According to Bernstein, reform of capitalism will lead to socialism; capitalism is capable of creating an egalitarian state, he said, and therefore there is no reason for the working class to seek the conquest of political and economic power. The trade unions will create good working conditions, good pay, and true working-class power in the economic system; and capitalists will become mainly administrative in their economic role. In general, he suggested, the ever-evolving nature of capitalism would destroy its contradictions by means of credit, cartels and better means of communication.
The rise of the international credit system, he said, will enable capitalists to borrow in times of overproduction and economic downturns, allowing them the stability needed to stop the cyclical nature of the economy and ensure the resources necessary to keep the workers employed at a living wage.
New communication methods will allow the capitalists to run industries more efficiently, Bernstein insisted. Being able to know what supply and demand levels are, on a faster basis, would allow them to regulate production better. This would act as a means of stopping overproduction and evening out the economic cycles of capitalism. Luxemburg’s Refutation
By connecting capital, Luxemburg countered, the emerging international credit system increases the mutual sensitivity of capitalists to economic crises, keeping production artificially high and separating production from ownership by creating “social” capital in this international credit system. It also causes a small group of capitalists to accumulate immense productive powers and increases the social nature of production.
Cartels, for their part, increase the rate of profit in one field at the expense of the rates of profit in others, which creates conflict between industrial conglomerates. As members of the cartels move to restrict production, to stop crisis, they will idle productive capacity, putting workers out of their jobs. Finally, when world capitalist forces extend to their limits, regulations in those countries will give way to hyper-competition. This will create worsening conditions for workers, sharpening the class conflict.
While better communications leads to quicker reaction times, Luxemburg argued, they do not resolve the inherent contradictions and inadequacies of capitalism.
Luxemburg also disputed the idea that nonrevolutionary trade unions would be able to function as true organizations of class power. While a necessary part of the conscious development of the working class, unions, she said, that take a purely economic (i.e. not class-based) stance will never move the working-class towards power.
Bernstein asserted that trade unions will be the primary player in the development of working-class power in the socialist/Communist future. He asserts that they will lead the fight against the increasing rate of profit and turn this rate into the rate of wages. The main flaw in this argument is that it looks upon trade unions as an offensive force, but they are also a defensive one. Often trade unions do not lead working-class assaults; they protect the working class from capitalists’ attack. “They express the resistance offered by the working class to the oppression of the capitalist economy,” said Luxemburg.
Today’s Relevance
The world credit system has continued to grow, involving larger sections of the world’s population, and yet, the cyclical nature of capitalism has not been corrected. In the United States, where credit is readily available, we still have massive economic insecurity, much of which is actually caused by the levels of debt owed by the government, corporations and individuals. Not only do cartels continue, but also many have now been replaced by the height of capitalist productivity, the monopoly. Has the ever-rapid increase of centralization of capital into fewer and fewer hands led to a resolution to the problem of overproduction?
An increase in competition for profits is becoming more and more apparent in our society. Real earning power continues to fall, more and more jobs are sent to low-wage countries and competition between industrial conglomerates continues to sharpen. Take a look at the oil industry: while extracting the highest rates of profits ever, they are creating massive problems for the auto industry they have partnered with for so long. The increase in oil prices has lead consumers to move away from SUV’s, and their higher profit margins, and back to smaller, less profitable and more fuel-efficient cars, causing car companies to sustain profit losses.
With the advent of better and better communication technologies (e-mail, Web, cell phones), we can say that if this had been a true key to unlocking the contradictions inherent in capitalism, we would be living in a socialist wonderland, by now. In fact, better means of communication are the very mechanisms that are leading to the sharpening in conflict, both within the capitalist class and between the two classes. The ability to access information anywhere in the world has lead to a rapid expansion into previously unindustrialized countries, causing increased population centralization, and, as a result of this, increased proletarianization.
In our own country, the lack of a class conscious approach to building the movement within most trade unions along with increased right-wing corporate assaults has lead to a weakening of workers’ economic and political power. Business unionism, which became rampant during the McCarthy era, especially with the expulsion of the socialist and Communist elements within the CIO, has created a system that discourages class-struggle trade unionism.
Like Marx, Engels and Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg’s arguments stand up today. The timelessness of her contributions to socialist thought is the hallmark of a true dialectical materialist, and her arguments are just as relevant today as they were when first written.
Finally, Rosa thanks for fighting to get your thoughts out there. Thanks for breaking into the boys’ club. Generations of Marxists, male and female, have gained insight and direction from your writings.
--Glenn Burleigh is a reader from St. Louis, MO.
