You are the bluest light...

Observations on Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution? Part One.

That is all true, to be sure. It is also true that every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk. The new movement finds its forms and its own language.

I love this quote, because it is so ‘aufheben’. I quote it for this purpose, and this purpose alone. When it comes to combating idealism, we are all Luxemburgists.

It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful of "academicians" in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught.

Leninism pure and simple, building a socialist vanguard of workers equipped with the knowledge of scientific socialism. In fact, here Luxemburg describes the one of the faults of the Soviet Union: Marxism became the ideology of the ‘most advanced’ theoreticians while the masses were oblivious as to the Marxist fundamentals and Leninist’s praxis.

If Bernstein’s revisionism merely consisted in affirming that the march of capitalist development is slower than was thought before, he would merely be presenting an argument for adjourning the conquest of power by the proletariat, on which everybody agreed up to now. Its only consequence would be a slowing up of the pace of the struggle.

In many ways Rosa Luxemburg predicts the coming war of position. Even more so here,

The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin.

Capitalism inevitably will exhaust itself. The general pace of capitalism increases with the further and further anarchization of the means of production. Capitalists must more and more ferociously oppose other capitalists creating a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world. The big capitalists eat up as many small enterprises as they can in an effort to claim new territory. What is the consequence of this? Rosa’s prediction:

The progressive disappearance of the middle-size enterprise–in the absolute sense considered by Bernstein–means not, as he things, the revolutionary course of capitalist development, but precisely the contrary, the cessation, the slowing up of development.

Small-time capitalists are the innovators. The newest inventions come from the lower group of capitalists — Benz’s automobile, Apple Computer’s Apple II, etc. These examples are similar to similar in products in infrastructural business: they started as small innovations but they were either bought out or grew into corporations. Through monopolies and near-monopolies, computers and automobiles stagnate, growing only as big capital sees fit. Thus capitalism creates economic growth with technological stagnation.

Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order.

Indeed, like Lenin, Luxemburg believes that capitalism sows its own replacement. In the early-1900s, socialistic management of cartels, syndicates, banks was the replacement for capitalism. For us, socialistic management via the internet will be capitalism’s replacement.

And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution.

In short: winning the war of position, bringing class consciousness not out of the barrel of the gun but through workers’ education. The most-advanced proletarians win the battle of democracy through education of the masses in scientific socialistic theory and through organization of the working class into an armed body.

We see that credit, instead of being an instrument for the suppression or the attenuation of crises, is on the contrary a particularly mighty instrument for the formation of crises. It cannot be anything else. Credit eliminates the remaining rigidity of capitalist relationships. It introduces everywhere the greatest elasticity possible. It renders all capitalist forces extensible, relative and mutually sensitive to the highest degree. Doing this, it facilitates and aggravates crises, which are nothing

more or less than the periodic collisions of the contradictory forces of capitalist economy.
Red Rosa hit the nail on the head. In the 1920s, by buying and investing on credit, capitalists boldly and unscrupulously utilized the property of entrepreneurs to acquire profit. This led to mere ‘speculation’, and brought the ‘extremely complex and artificial mechanism’, the stock market, to a crash. This crash was one of the initiating factors of one of the greatest crises of American capitalism, The Great Depression.

Again, the ‘dot-com boom’ proved Rosa’s theory of credit. After the advent of the internet, there was a sudden growth of ‘internet capitalism’ and once again, a growth in stockholding and speculation. The result is well known: the dot-com bubble burst resulting in e-bankruptcy.

So that the scope of trade unions is limited essentially to a struggle for an increase of wages and the reduction of labour time, that is to say, to efforts at regulating capitalist exploitation as they are made necessary by the momentary situation of the old world market. But labour unions can in no way influence the process of production itself.

Put in modern terms the scope of the anti-globalization movement is limited essentially to a struggle for an increase of employment and the reduction of corporate power, a struggle that is part of class war but not the war in its totality.

While industry does not need tariff barriers for its development, the entrepreneurs need tariffs to protect their markets. This signifies that at present tariffs no longer serve as a means of protecting a developing capitalist section against a more advanced section. They are now the arm used by one national group of capitalists against another group.

O’ Sweet Jesus! The first time I read this I thought I was reading an expose on globalisation. If tariffs are the weapons of one group of national capitalists against another, then the capitalists have laid down their arms and now hold each other arm-in-arm. However, this is a consequence of something within the nation: small time capitalists for the most part disappeared in the First World. I remember Rosa saying that this disappearance means something, ‘the cessation, the slowing up of development.’


( This is for your own good! )

However, the matter appears entirely different when considered from the standpoint of the capitalist class. For the latter militarism has become indispensable. First, as a means of struggle for the defence of "national" interests in competition against other "national" groups. Second, as a method of placement for financial and industrial capital. Third, as an instrument of class domination over the labouring population inside the country.

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