Luxemburg and Lenin
on revolutionary
organization
Among the greatest representatives of the revolutionary Marxist movement in the twentieth century are Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The foremost leader of Russian socialism's left wing, Lenin forged a Bolshevik (majority) faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1903 which, by 1912, separated to form a distinctly revolutionary workers' party that—five years later—proved itself by leading the world's first socialist revolution. Luxemburg was in the same period a central leader in the left wing of both the Polish and German socialist movements. Associated throughout her revolutionary career with the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) and, in exile from her native Poland, a brilliant light in the massive German Social Democratic Party (SPD), she was the most prominent critic of the theoretical revisionism and practical reformism which were eating away at the integrity of the German workers' movement. Like Lenin, she was a perceptive analyst of imperialism and an uncompromising opponent of the First World War. Shortly before she and Karl Liebknecht were murdered during the abortive uprising of 1919, Luxemburg was a founder of the German Communist Party'
Yet much of the attention on Luxemburg in later years has been focused on her 1904 critique of Lenin's ideas on the question of revolutionary organization. Standard interpretations of Luxemburg's critique have her "demonstrate the bureaucratic tendencies inherent in Lenin's conception, speaking of the inevitable strangling of individual initiative in such an organization. ' This is the interpretation of the former German Communist
42 International Marxist Review Franz Borkenau in his anti-Communist classic World Communism (1938). 'Where Lenin, instead of the belief in the proletarian revolution, had put his hopes in a centralized group under his leadership' . Borkenau explained, 'Rosa Luxemburg almost alone continued to believe in the proletariat •.. The masses must not be ordered about by an "infallible" central committee. They must learn from their own experience, their own mistakes. Revolution must be the result of their increasing political understanding. She believed, in short, in the spontaneity of the proletarian masses.'?
This interpretation has found an echo across the political spectrum-among Cold War anti-Communist crusaders, among moderate reformist socialists, and even among many who consider themselves revolutionary opponents of capitalism. But it's a myth which obscures not only the realities of Lenin's politics but also of Luxemburg's. It even blurs the genuine insights which can be found in her critique of Lenin's ideas. Only if we clear away the deadwood of distortion and romanticization can we hope to understand these two revolutionaries, particularly their ideas on the vital question of how revolutionaries should organize themselves in order to be effective in advancing the socialist cause. Luxemburg and the Polish movement The standard generalizations about Luxemburg's opposition to organizational centralism are at once thrown into question if-unlike most commentators—we focus our attention on the the role she played in the Polish revolutionary movement, particulary from 1903 to 1913. In Poland, unlike Germany (but like Russia), revolutionaries were compelled to operate in underground conditions. The Polish organization in which she was involved was hardly 'Luxemburgist' in the libertarian way that the term is commonly understood. 'The Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania, which she led, was, if anything, far more highly centralized and far more merciless toward those in its ranks who deviated from the party's line, than was the Bolshevik party under Lenin,' wrote Max Shachtman in 1938. The knowledgeable ex-anarchist Max Nomad put it more strongly: 'And she was also hated by some prominent members of her own Polish Marxist Party whom she mercilessly expelled from the ranks of the organization when they dared to dissent from her views-even though it was known that the dissenters had behind them the majority of the underground membership.' More recently, the prominent Belgian Trotskyist Ernest Mandel commented: 'In fact, while criticizing Lenin, Rosa was busy building a centralized (one could say: over-centralized) illegal party in Poland, and conducting faction fights against minorities at least in the same (if not more) 'harsh' manner as Lenin. This is often forgotten in the analysis of the Lenin-Luxemburg controversy on organization, and merits closer attention. '3
One account of the events alluded to in these judgements has been of-
Luxemburg and Lenin on revolutionary organization 43 fered in Peter Nettl's biography Rosa Luxemburg. Nettl argued that 'Rosa Luxemburg was herself not directly involved,' in fact 'had nothing to do with' and 'disapproved of the harsh organizational measures for which, according to Nettl, her close comrade Leo Jogiches was primarily responsible.*
A more recent study, however, makes it difficult to accept Nettl's interpretation. Although Jogiches (whose party name was Tyszka) was certainly a central leader in the SDKPiL, Robert Blobaum has documented that 'while Tyszka's claims to political hegemony in the SDKPiL are both undeniable and well-documented, one must be able to distinguish between pretense and fact. The truth of the matter is that Tyszka lacked the political base among the party rank and file necessary to the realization of his ambitions.' The central organizational figure was Feliks Dzerzhensky, a sincere and dedicated revolutionist whose talents were ultimately to result in his becoming, after the Bolshevik Revolution, the first head of the Soviet republic's secret police, the Cheka. But in the years before that he played a role aptly described in this manner: "As the inspiration behind a constantly evolving organizational apparatus, and as the dominant figure in the executive institutions of the SDKPiL, Dzierzynski translated the ideas of Luxemburg-edited as they were by Tyszka-into more easily digestible forms of political action.' A member of the oppositional faction bitterly commented in 1904 that 'the triumverate of Tyszka, Luxemburg and Dzierzhensky does what it wants without coming to an agreement with the rest of the members. '5
Dzerzhensky was determined to forge, in his words, 'a new type of organization with no rights but to work, to carry out the instructions of the Foreign Committee (in which Luxemburg's perspectives predominated), to educate itself, to distribute literature, etc. This section shall have no voice at all or any right of representation in the party; its aim is simply to become Social-Democratic and to be at the beck and call of the Foreign Committee. ' This organizational perspective, justified as a necessary expedient due to Poland's repressive environment, was utilized to ensure the triumph of the political orientation of 'the Luxemburg group' in the SDKPiL. 'In assuring the victory of Luxemburg and Tyszka over their emigre opponents,' notes Blobaum, 'Dzierzynski had introduced fundamental organizational innovations that were to transform the appearance of the party. By placing himself at the head of party institutions-in the Foreign Committee, in the Main Directorate, and on the editorial board of Czerwony sztanderDzierzynski concentrated considerable power in his own hands which served to centralize the organization as a whole.' Blobaum indicates that all of this had 'Luxemburg's blessing' and that she 'realized her faction's debt to Dzierzynski and heaped praise upon his work in a congratulatory letter. '®
Blobaum argues persuasively that Dzerzhensky was not interested in power for its own sake and was, in fact, committed to a collective leadership with Luxemburg and Jogiches. Channelling his creative energy into
tireless organizational work, his goal was to translate the political
Weltanschaung of 'Luxemburgism'— identified by Blobaum as 'the emphasis on maximalist demands, exclusiveness in relation to non-proletarian segments of the population, inflexible opposition to the goal of Polish independence under any circumstances, the territorial as opposed to the national character of party work'-into action, bringing it to life through cohesive organization. Blobaum stresses that he was 'a Polish revolutionary of the "internationalist" wing, a true believer of the ideology of Marxism as interpreted by Rosa Luxemburg; significantly, it was her portrait that years later stared at him from a wall of his office at the Lubianka (Cheka
Nor can we simply assume that Luxemburg was so immersed in other matters that she was completely ignorant of Dzerzhensky's mode of operation. In 1905 she had an opportunity to get into Poland and Russia where the two revolutionary leaders worked closely and harmoniously. In the period after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, Dzerzhensky would not suffer any attempts at organized opposition to the authority of the ZG (Zarzad
Glowny-Main Directorate of the SDKPiL) and, moreover ... he was prepared to employ all means at his disposal to eliminate such opposition.'
This resulted in 1911-12, in a split in which Luxemburg played a significant role. One aspect of it was "the Radek case', which involved an effort to expel the dissident Karl Radek not only from the Polish socialist movement but also from the German movement. Luxemburg became deeply ined with the politics and organizational rights of the dissidents during this
The fact remains, however, that Luxemburg's primary field of operation was within the German Social Democracy. And her 1904 polemic 'Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy' is more than simply a critiman Marxist theoretical magazine Neue Zeit, it was introduced with the
The present work deals with Russian conditions, but the organizational questions with which it deals are also important for the German Social Democracy. This is true not only because of the great international significance which our Russian brother party has achieved, but also because similar questions of organization presently occupy our own party.9
If we fail to recognize the significance of Luxemburg's critique for the
German context, we will not be able to understand what she was saying.
The profound difference between German and Russian realities has been
44 International Marxist Review headquarters) in Moscow.' volved in this sad and dubious effort.®
It is worth noting that Lenin, although an 'outsider' affair.
The Immediate Context of Luxemburg's Critique que of Lenin's One Step Forward, following editorial comment:
cogently described by Max Shachtman:
', himself sympathiz-
, Two Steps Back. Appearing in the Ger-
Luxemburg and Lenin on revolutionary organization 45
The "professional revolutionists' whom Luxemburg encountered in Germany were not, as in Russia, the radical instruments for gathering together loose and scattered local organizations, uniting them into one national party imbued with a firm Marxist ideology and freed from the opportunistic conceptions of pure-and-simple trade unionism. Quite the contrary.
In Germany, the 'professionals' were careerists, the conservative trade union bureaucrats, the lords of the ossifying party machine, the reformist parliamentarians, the whole crew who finally succeeded in disemboweling the movement... The "centralism' of Lenin forged a party that proved able to lead the Russian masses to victorious revolution; the 'centralism' that Luxemburg saw growing in the German social-democracy became a conservative force and ended in a series of catastrophes for the proletariat. 10 It is also worth noting that while, in this period, Lenin tended to idealize the German Social-Democratic model (even as he unconsciously diverged from it) because from afar it still seemed a bulwark of Marxist orthodoxy, Luxemburg was already poignantly aware of its deficiencies (even as she was unable fully to transcend them).
Of course, Luxemburg's article has a relevance transcending the German context. The very way in which she frames the problem has had a universal resonance down to our own times:
On the one hand, we have the mass; on the other, its historic goal. located outside of existing society. On the one hand we have the day-to-day struggle: on the other. the social revolution. Such are the terms of the dialectical contradiction through which the socialist movement makes its way.
It follows that this movement can best advance by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers by which it is constantly being threatened. One is the loss of its mass character;
the other, the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger of sinking back into the condition of a sect; the other, the danger of becoming a movement of bourgeois social reform. '
Luxemburg goes on to criticize Lenin for an 'overanxious desire to establish the guardianship of an omniscient and omnipotent Central Committee' in order to protect the Russian workers' movement from opportunism. She argues that 'opportunism appears to be a product of an inevitable phase of the historic development of the labor movement,' and that it 'can be overcome only by the movement itself-certainly with the aid of Marxist theory, but only after the dangers in question have taken tangible form in practice. " Compressed into this point is a complex argument which is far richer than such interpreters as Franz Borkenau imply.
The fact remains that the entire argument is advanced as a polemic against Lenin's views. In 1904 Luxemburg did not fully grasp what those views were. In part this was because she, like most well-read Marxists outside of Russia was influenced by what Lenin's Menshevik opponents (who included most of the best-known Russian Marxists: Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Deutsch, Martov, Potresov, Trotsky, etc.) were asserting. In order to better evaluate Luxemburg's critique, we need to examine the circumstances under which the split in the Russian movement took place. The Russian Realities At the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903, which resulted in the
46 International Marxist Review Bolshevik/Menshevik split, Lenin did not intend to enunciate some 'Leninist' doctrine about 'a party of a new type.' The term Leninism at this time was nothing more than a factional epithet hurled at Lenin and his co-thinkers, who saw themselves, simply, as being the most consistent defenders of the traditional party perspective held in common by Marxists throughout Russia and the world. Even Pavel Axelrod, a veteran socialist on the Menshevik side of the split, believed that there were 'no clear, defined differences concerning either principles or tactics,' and that on the organizational questions there were no principled differences regarding "centralism, or democracy, autonomy, etc.' Rather there were differing opinions regarding the 'application or execution of organizational principles ... (which) we have all accepted. 13
With the passage of time, far-reaching political differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks did become evident, but Lenin perceived this only after he wrote his 1904 discussion of the split, One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward. The sources of the split were tangled and complex.
Political ideas are held by, and political organizations are composed of, human beings. We cannot afford to lose sight of the interplay between political principles and human dynamics as we attempt to grasp the vibrant reality of an organization's life and development. The 1903 congress of the RSDLP is a classic illustration.
• We all knew each other, ' wrote Lenin's companion Nadezhda Krupskaya, 'not only as Party workers, but in intimate personal life. It was all a tangle of personal sympathies and antipathies. The atmosphere grew tenser as the time for voting approached.' In spite of this dynamic, Lenin viewed the upcoming congress from the standpoint of a "professional revolutionary' determined to place political principle and organizational coherence above purely personal factors; he wanted this to be the case not only within the RSDLP as a whole, but also within the influential current of which he was a part, associated with the newspaper Iskra. Particularly among the leadership of the Iskra current—including Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Martov, Potresov and himself, i.e., the paper's editorial board—relations had a 'family character' marked by 'painful, long-drawn-out, hopeless quarrels ... which were often repeated, making it impossible for us work for months on end.' The idea that personal quarrels would dominate over political considerations and that policies affecting the entire organization would be settled by 'arrangements among ourselves' within 'the old family editorial board' was intolerable to him. He wanted to ensure that 'in the Party, on its formal basis, with subordination of everything to the Rules,' such a situation would be 'absolutely impossible, both judicially and morally. '14
To advance this development, Lenin made it clear that he would call for the election at the 1903 party congress of Iskra's editorial board, and also that he would propose the reduction of the board from six to threePlekhanov, Martov and himself. These three had done the bulk of the writing and editorial work, and each represented a distinctive element within the
Luxemburg and Lenin on revolutionary organization 47 RSDLP leadership; the fact that there would be three instead of six also ensured that decision-making deadlocks could be overcome by a majority vote. As he explained later to Potresov: 'I consider this trio the only businesslike arrangement, the only one capable of being an official institution, instead of a body based on indulgence and slackness, the only one to be a real center, each member of which, I repeat, would always state and defend his party view, not one grain more, and irrespective of all personal motives, all considerations concerning grievances, resignations, and so on. '15 We can see here that Lenin had no objection to political disagreements arising in the Party and among its leaders, that in fact he expected that all comrades would 'always state and defend' their particular party viewpoint. But he wanted to see commonly-accepted organizational rules which would ensure "business-like' functioning, filtering out "personal motives' as a major factor in party life.
Another aspect of this outlook can be seen in Lenin's attitude toward the Party congress, vividly described by Krupskaya: 'He always, as long as he lived, attached tremendous importance to party congresses. He held the party congress to the the highest authority, where all things personal had to be cast aside, where nothing was to be concealed, and everything was to be open and above board. He always took great pains in preparing for spee es i see end ryan at tie are a gre think the ost his subscribed in general to these organizational principles, however, many were shocked by the thoroughgoing application which Lenin proposed. Historian Neil Harding has noted:
What Lenin failed to take into account was the immmense emotional and psychological hurt that this entailed for Axelrod and Zasulich in particular. Earlier in the debate over
Article 1 (defining membership), Plekhanov had openly ridiculed Axelrod's objections to Lenin's formulations, pouring public scorn on the man who had, for so long, been his friend and who had been so utterly dependent upon him. Now the final blow was to deprive him of that one mark of prestige which might have given him sorely-needed esteem in the eyes of the movement and recognition of a life-time devoted to it. Much the same would have applied to Zasulich and Potresov... Martov rallied to their defense. as the!
had earlier supported him, and categorically refused to serve on the editorial board which was, nonetheless, ratified by the majority. '
Krupskaya later recalled:
sonalities... And the substance was this—that the comrades grouped around Lenin were far more seriously committed to principles, which they wanted to see applied at all cost and pervading all the practical work. The other group had more of the man-in-the-street mentality, were given to compromise and concessions in principle, and had more regard for persons. '8
After the congress, Lenin wrote to a concerned comrade:
The story goes that the 'praetorians' ousted people because of a slanderous accusation of opportunism, that they cast slurs on and removed people, etc. That is mere idle talk, the fruit of an imaginary grievance, rien de plus (nothing more). No one, absolutely no one had 'slurs' cast upon him or was removed, prevented from taking part in the work.
48 International Marxist Review
Some one or other was merely removed from the central body—is that a matter for offence?
Should the Party be torn apart for that? Should a theory of (Lenin's) hypercentralism be constructed on that account? Should there be talk of rule by rod of iron, etc., on that account? 19
Despite Lenin's pained objections, this is exactly what was said and repeated far and wide by his Menshevik adversaries, who organized a fierce campaign to disrupt RSDLP activities until the decisions of the congress were overturned, Plekhanov abandoned the Bolsheviks and Lenin himself was forced off the editorial board of Iskra.2° Lenin went on to organize a Bolshevik faction around the organizational perspectives to which he had won the 1903 congress, and he wrote One Step Forward, Two Steps Back in order to explain what had happened and to clarify the disputed organizational questions.
It was at this point that Rosa Luxemburg took the field against Lenin, in an essay more influenced by the accounts of prestigious Mensheviks than by the actual policies of Lenin. Luxemburg's Critique and Lenin's Reply Much of Luxemburg's polemic against Lenin consists of interpretations which simply cannot hold up under the weight of the facts. This becomes clear if we go through it point-by-point while referring to Lenin's generally ignored point-by-point reply to her.
Luxemburg writes that One Step Forward, Two Steps Back 'is a methodical exposition of the ideas of the ultracentralist tendency in the Russian movement. The viewpoint is that of pitiless centralism.' Lenin complains that Luxemburg's article 'does not acquaint the reader with my book, but with something else ... Comrade Luxemburg says, for example, that my book is a clear and detailed expression of the point of view of 'intransigent centralism'. Comrade Luxemburg thus supposes that I defend one system of organization against another. But actually that is not so. From the first to the last page of my book, I defend the elementary principles of any conceivable system of party organization. My book is not concerned with the difference between one system of organization and another, but with how any system is to be maintained, criticized, and rectified in a manner consistent with the party idea.'?1
Luxemburg writes: 'Lenin's thesis is that the party Central Committee should have the privilege of naming all the local committees of the party ... It should have the right to impose on all of them its own ready-made rules of conduct.' Lenin replies: 'Actually that is not so. What my views on this subject are can be documentarily proved by the draft Rules of Party Organization which I proposed. In that draft there is nothing about any right to organize the local committees. That right was introduced into the Party Rules by the commission elected by the (1903) Party Congress to frame them, and the Congress adopted the commission's text... In this commis-
Luxemburg and Lenin on revolutionary organization 49 sion which gave the Central Committee the right to organize the local committees, it was my opponents who had the upper hand.'22
Luxemburg writes: "the two principles on which Lenin's centralism rests are precisely these: (1) The blind subordination, in the smallest detail, of all party organs, to the party center, which alone thinks, guides, and decides for all. (2) The rigorous separation of the organized nucleus of revolutionaries from its social revolutionary surroundings. Such centralism is the mechanical transposition of the organizational principles of Blanquism into the mass movement of the socialist working class.' Blanquism, named after the 19th-century revolutionary Auguste Blanqui, was a non-Marxist conception of revolution, to be made by conspiracies of a small revolutionary elite instead of by the self-conscious working class. Lenin responds: 'She has confused the defense of a specific point relating to a specific clause of the Rules (in that defense I was by no means intransigent, for I did not object at the plenary session to the amendment made by the commission) with the defense of the thesis (truly 'ultra-centralist', is it not?) that Rules adopted by a Party congress must be adhered to until amended by a subsequent congress. This thesis (a 'purely Blanquist' one, as the reader may readily observe) I did indeed defend in my book quite 'intransigently'. Comrade Luxemburg says that in my view 'the Central Committee is the only active nucleus of the Party' • Actually that is not so. I have never advocated any such view '23 He went on to offer a succinct summary of what he believed the 1903 split had been about:
Our controversy has principaly been over whether the Central Committee and Central Organ should represent the trend of the majority of the Party Congress, or whether they should not. About this 'ultra-centralist' and 'purely Blanquist' demand the worthy comrade says not a word, she prefers to declaim against mechanical subordination of the part to the whole, against slavish submission, blind obedience, and other such bogeys. I am very grateful to Comrade Luxemburg for explaining the profound idea that slavish submission is very harmful to the Party, but I should like to know: does the comrade consider it normal for oppress party central institutions to be dominated by the minority of the Party
According to Luxemburg, Lenin 'is convinced that all the conditions necessary for the formation of a powerful and centralized party already exist in Russia' . Lenin replies: "The thesis I advanced and advance expresses something else: I insisted, namely, that all the conditions already exist for expecting Party Congress decisions to be observed, and that the time was passed when a Party institution could be supplanted by a private circle. '25
Lenin also responded ably to Luxemburg's charges that he wanted to impose 'the regulated docility' of factory discipline inside the Party and that he was a self-proclaimed Jacobin who confused this with Marxism. The factory and Jacobin analogies, he pointed out, were introduced into the debate by Mensheviks, and his direct responses to them were being distorted by Luxemburg.
50 International Marxist Review' Luxemburg as 'Vanguardist' Having cleared away various false arguments, we are almost ready to confront the substantive challenge to Lenin's outlook which Luxemburg raises. First, however, we should take note of the common ground shared by the two revolutionaries, which is far more considerable than is generally acknowledged. In fact, much of what Luxemburg has written seems like an elaboration of the Leninist conception of the party. Even in her 1904 polemic, she stresses the need for 'a proletarian vanguard, conscious of its class interests and capable of self-direction in political activity.' This "self-direction' she also calls "social-democratic centralism', which she defines as 'the 'self-centralism' of the advanced sectors of the proletariat. It is the rule of the majority within its own party.' Far from denigrating organization on behalf of "spontaneity', she insists on the need for a party which 'possesses the gift of political mobility, complemented by unflinching loyalty to principles and concern for unity. 27
Two years later, in her classic The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions-often interpreted (mistakenly) as a "spontaneist' document-she was to write: The social democrats are the most enlightened, most class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat. They cannot and dare not wait, in a fatalist fashion, with folded arms for the advent of the 'revolutionary situation', to wait for that which in every spontaneous people's movement, falls from the clouds. On the contrary, they must now, as always, hasten the development of things and endeavor to accelerate events ... If the widest proletarian layer should be won for a political mass action of the social democrats, and if, vice versa, the social democrats should seize and maintain the real leadership of a mass movement-should they become, in a political sense, the rulers of the whole movement, then we must, with the utmost clearness, Bonsial perian or sal ones, storm le German proletariat of their tactics and aims in the
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, in her sympathetic critique of Bolshevik policy, Luxemburg was to repeat these eminently 'vanguardist' assertions in 1918, though perhaps even more forcefully: 'Thus it is clear that in every revolution, only that party is capable of seizing the leadership and power which has the courage to issue the appropriate watchwords for driving the revolution ahead, and the courage to draw all the necessary conclusions from the situation.' Particularly scornful of the Mensheviks, Luxemburg noted that only the Bolsheviks were able to grasp 'the true dialectic of revolutions' and to stand the 'wisdom of parliamentary moles on its head: not through a majority to revolutionary tactics, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority-that is the way the road runs. Unly a party which knows how to lead, that is, to advance things, wins support in stormy times ... Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness and consistency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure. 1,29
Luternhurg and Lenin on revolutionary organization 51 Luxemburg's Challenge We are now in a position to examine the substantive disagreement between Lenin and Luxemburg.
Despite the underlying similarity in outlooks, there is an element in Luxemburg's 1904 critique of Lenin which is inconsistent with one of his fundamental premises.
The leading Menshevik Julius Martov, calling for a 'broad Social-Democratic working-class party', had argued: "The more widespread the title of Party member the better. We could only rejoice if every striker, every demonstrator, answering for his actions, could proclaim himself a Party member.' Lenin disagreed with this conception because 'the borderline of the Party remains absolutely vague... Its harm is that it introduces a disorganizing idea, the confusing of class and party.' In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back he elaborated: "The stronger our Party organizations, consisting of real Social Democrats, the less wavering there is within the Party, the more varied, richer, and more fruitful will be the Party's influence on the elements of the masses surrounding it and guided by it. The Party, at the vanguard of the working class, must not be confused, after all, with the entire class. '30
At one point in her polemic, Luxemburg says precisely the opposite: "The fact is that the social democracy is not joined to the organization of the proletariat. It is itself the proletariat.' This appears to be inconsistent, as well, with the thrust of her own "vanguardist' inclination which we've documented. But it is an assertion related to another key point to which she gives particular stress: "The social democratic movement cannot allow the erection of an air-tight partition between the class-conscious nucleus of the proletariat already in the party and its immediate popular environment, the non-party sections of the proletariat.' The attempt to safeguard revolutionary principles by stressing the distinction between the vanguard and the class as a whole, and efforts to establish an organizational structure reinforcing that distinction, can make the party not a living expression of the working class, but a sterile sect. 'Stop that natural pulsation of a living organism, and you weaken it, and you diminish its resistance and combative spirit—in this instance, not only against opportunism but also (and that is certainly of great importance) against the existing social order. The proposed means turn against the end they are supposed to serve. '31
The essence of Luxemburg's 1904 critique, as we can see, is the opposite of the point put forward by many latter-day anti-Leninists who appeal to her authority. She is not saying that the kind of party Lenin is building will establish a bureaucratic dictatorship once it makes a revolution. Rather, she is saying that it is in danger of degenerating into a sect which will be incapable of making a revolution! Lenin sees the party not as embracing the working class, but as interacting with it for the purpose of influencing it to go in a revolutionary direction. For Luxemburg, in the passage we're
looking at, the point is to blend into the working class as it exists, the better to contribute to its organic development as a revolutionary force.
A problem with the organizational perspective which Luxemburg appears to be proposing here is that she offers no clear alternatives to Lenin's orientation except for the organizational form of the German Social Democracy, with its growing bureaucratic-conservatism and opportunism which she was more keenly aware of than Lenin. But she concluded that such a development arises 'out of unavoidable social conditions' and 'appears to be a product and an inevitable phase of the historic development of the labor movement.' The problem would be corrected, she seemed to feel, by the crises of capitalist society and by the working-class radicalism and upsurges generated by those crises. 'Marxist theory offers us a reliable instrument enabling us to recognize and combat typical manifestations of opportunism,' she wrote. At the same time, 'the working class demands the right to make
The sectarian potential in Lenin's conception which Luxemburg identified soon became evident in 1905. The network of Bolshevik committees. 'professional revolutionaries' distinct from the Russian working class, proved to be ill-prepared for the tumultuous, unplanned revolutionary upsurge which pushed tsarism to the brink of the abyss. The stalwart Bolshevik 'committeemen' were blind to the revolutionary potential of the mass workers movement led by Father Gapon, were resistant to the workers' struggles for immediate demands and to the upsurge of trade unionism, were skeptical about the value of democratic non-party committees (soviets) of the workers, and were resistant to allowing too many radicalizing but
'untempered' workers into the Bolshevik organizations. The pressure of events-combined with Lenin's own unrelenting attacks on his comrades' sectarian inclinations—gradually forced the Bolsheviks to shift on all of these questions and, by the end of 1905, to become an effective revolutionary force. But it became clear that Luxemburg's warning was not entirely
When the Bolsheviks embraced democratic centralism in 1906, special emphasis was put on the democratic component which, as Lenin saw it, involving 'a decisive step towards the full application of the democratic principle in Party organization.' Favouring the dramatic influx of working- class militants (Bolshevik membership swelled from perhaps 4000 in 1905 to about 46,000 in 1907), Lenin explained: 'We are profoundly convinced that the workers' Social-Democratic organizations must be united, but in these united organizations there must be wide and free discussion of Party questions, free comradely criticism and assessments of events in Party life.
52 International Marxist Review its mistakes and learn in the dialectic of history. '32
The Test of History unwarranted. 33 would result in 'a less rigid, more "free"
', more "loose" organization'
Luxemburg and Lenin on revolutionary organization 53 In short, there must be 'the principles of democratic centralism, ... guarantees for the rights of all minorities and for all loyal opposition,... the autonomy of every Party organization, ... recognizing that all Party functionaries must be elected, accountable to the Party and subject to recall. '34
None of this contradicted the points which Lenin made in 1903-04 regarding the subordination of personal considerations to party rules and to majority decisions of the party congress; if anything, the policy of strengthening party democracy contributed to the realization of these points, while also contributing to the overcoming of the sectarian tendencies which had cropped up.
Even with this, however, the sectarian impulse surfaced again in 1907-11, under the leadership of such prominent Bolsheviks as Alexander Bogdanov, Leonid Krassin, Anatoly Lunacharsky and others concerned to defend Bolshevik 'purity" against a Lenin who was inclined to 'entangle' the party in trade union, reform and electoral activities. Krupskaya later recalled: 'A Bolshevik, they declared, should be hard and unyielding. Lenin considered this view fallacious. It would mean giving up all practical work, standing aside from the masses instead of organizing them on real-life issues. '35 As Gregory Zinoviev put it:
Comrade Lenin's main idea was that we had to remain with the working class and be a mass party and not to coop ourselves up exclusively in the underground and turn into a narrow circle. If the workers are in the trade unions then we must be there too; if we can send just one man into the Tsar's Duma then we shall: let him tell the workers the truth and we can publish his speeches as leaflets. If something can be done for the workers in the workers' clubs then we shall be there. We have to use every legal opportunity, so as not to divorce ourselves from the masses. 36
Rejecting such "semi-Menshevik' perspectives, the ultra-lefts led by Bogdanov maintained their commitment to a 'true Bolshevism' which was in many ways similar to what Luxemburg had criticized. An organizational split with Lenin was followed by their evolution into a sect which soon disintegrated.
The Leninist Bolsheviks, on the other hand, became the most cohesive revolutionary force in the Russian working class from 1912 to 1914. Despite fierce repression with the onset of the First World War, they made an impressive comeback with the overthrow of tsarism. By the middle of 1917 they were able to begin winning a working-class majority to the goal of socialist revolution, which was accomplished in October/November.
The trajectory of Rosa Luxemburg's own SDKPiL was less fortunate. The high degree of centralization helped it to remain intact and become an effective force during the 1905 upsurge. From 1904 to 1906 its membership grew from 1500 to 40,000. Yet it made no programmatic or organizational shifts. Robert Blobaum recounts how the SDKPiL failed to evolve in the manner that was to bring success to the Bolsheviks:
Always the realist, Lenin was to argue that a revolutionary party had to take into consideration the existing social conditions in the empire if it wished to broaden its political base. It should therefore appeal to the non-urban masses who made up a substantial majority of the population; it should reject the sectarian approach to non-party workers, leaving
54 International Marxist Review a door open to them primarily through trade union activity; and it should identify itself, however vaguely, with the national aspirations of the non-Russian sections of the population. On all of these issues, the SDKPiL was much less flexible, opting for the continuation of strict conspiratorial tactics, rigid organizational discipline, and 'proletarian internationalist' positions that had characterized its recent past. 38
Over the next several years it succumbed to sectarian isolation and debilitating splits. As it turned out, Luxemburg's polemical diagnosis of 1904 was even more apt in regard to her own organization than it was in regard to Lenin's.
No less instructive was Luxemburg's fate inside the German Social Democratic Party, where she followed an orientation more consistent with her 1904 polemic. Luxemburg and her revolutionary comrades found themselves trapped in the left-wing of a bureaucratized mass party which, when World War I erupted in 1914, supported the imperialist war eftort instead of organizing working-class resistance. In the aftermath of the war, as the working-class radicalization foreseen by Luxemburg gathered momentum, the Social-Democratic bureaucracy was able to divert much of the proletarian militancy into 'safe' channels; Luxemburg and the most determined revolutionaries were first blocked and finally ejected, left without an adequate revolutionary instrument of their own. In the midst of a rising proletarian ferment and counter-revolutionary violence, they were forced to begin rebuilding an organization.
That this experience, combined with the 1917 achievement of the Bolsheviks, had an impact on her thinking should be clear from the 1918 comments of hers already quoted. There is also the testimony of those who knew her. For example, Karl Kautsky—her erstwhile comrade turned bitter opponent-noted in 1921 (two years after her death) that in the course of the war Rosa drew steadily closer to the communist world of thought, so that it is quite correct when Radek says that 'with Rosa Luxemburg there died the greatest and most profound theoretical head of communism' Indeed, as early as 1916 one of her closest co-workers, Karl Liebknecht, complained that her organizational orientation had become 'too mechanically centralist', with 'too much "discipline", too little spontaneity'-which sounded, as Michael Löwy has commented, like 'a distant and paradoxical echo of the criticisms that Rosa herself had made in another context, addressed to Lenin. '41 Conclusions The purpose of this article is by no means to shrug off the insights in Luxemburg's essay 'Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy' The bureaucratic-sectarian tendency to which she directs our attention, while not an iron law, was very real among Lenin's Bolsheviks, and Lenin himself was forced to confront and combat it time after time. It also cropped-up in Luxemburg's own Polish Marxist organization. and it has been an ever
Luxemburg and Lenin on revolutionary organization 55 stronger tendency among many self-styled 'Leninist' organizations and grouplets that have proliferated like mushrooms over the past seven decades. 42 The truth which Luxemburg insists on has, theretore, a great
What is being suggested, however, is that it makes little historical sense to counterpose 'Luxemburgism' to 'Leninism' in regard to the question of revolutionary organization. More fruitful both for Marxist historians and activists would be a critical-minded integration of 'Luxemburgist' into
1. For a full political biography of Lenin, the following three volumes read in sequence are recommended: Leon Trotsky, The Young Lenin (Garden City: Doubleday & Co..
1972); N.K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin (New York International Publishers.
1970); Moshe Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle (New York: Vintage Books, 1970). The best political biography of Rosa Luxemburg remains that of her comrade Paul Frölich, Rosa
Luxemburg: Her Life and Work (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), but also see
Norman Geras, The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg (London: Verso, 1983).
2. Franz Borkenau, World Communism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962),
3. Max Shachtman, "Lenin and Luxemburg," New International , May 1938, p. 144; Max
Nomad, Aspects of Revolt (New York: Noonday Press, 1961), p. 264; Ernest Mandel,
4. Peter Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 344, 353.
5. Robert Elobaum, Feliks Dzierżyński and the SDKPil : A Study of the Origins of Polish
Communism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 4, 5, 103.
9. Rosa Luxemburg, Selected Political Writings, ed. Dick Howard (New York: Monthly
11. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, ed. Mary-Alice Waters (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970),
13. Neil Harding, Lenin's Political Thought, Vol. 1 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975),
14. Krupskaya, p. 94; V.I. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 34 (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
20. This comes through even in the pro-Menshevik account by Israel Getzler, Martov: A
Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat (Cambridge: Cambridge Unviversity
21. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, P. 116: Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 472.
22. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, p. 116: Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 472-473.
resonance even in our own time.
Leninist insight and experience.
pp. 45, 141.
letter to author, May 14, 1986.
8. Ibid., Pp. 150-151, 164, 203,205-208.
Review Press, 1971), p. 283.
10. Shachtman, p. 143.
pp. 128-129.
12. Ibid.
p. 195.
1960-1970), pp. 161, 165, 162.
15. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 166.
16. Krupskaya, p. 89
17. Harding, pp. 193-194.
18. Krupskaya, p. 96.
19. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 161.
Press, 1967)—see pp. 83, 88-89.
Notes
6. Nettl, p. 181; Elobaum, pp. 89, 104, 85, 254.
7. Elobaum, pp. 112-113, 146, 201, 226, 231.
56 International Marxist Review 23. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, p. 118; Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 473-474. 24. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 7, p. 474 25. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, p. 119; Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 474. 26. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, pp. 119, 117; Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 474, 475. 27. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, pp. 119, 122. 28. Ibid ., P. 200. 29. Ibid ., pp. 374, 375. 30. Brian Pearce, ed., 1903, Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party, Complete Text of the Minutes (London: New Park, 1978), pp. 312, 328; V.I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1967), pp. 312, 306. 31. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, pp. 119, 118, 129. 32. Ibid ., pp. 129, 130. 33. See Solomon Schwarz, The Russian Revolution of 1905 , The Workers' Movement and the Formation of Bolshevism and Menshevism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1967) and Marcel Liebman, 'Lenin in 1905: A Revolution That Shook a Doctrine, ' Monthly
Review, April 1970. 34. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10, pp. 34. 33, 314. 35. Krupskaya, p. 167. 36. Gregory Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party (London: New Park, 1973), pp. 153-154. 37. See Leopold H. Haimson, 'The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917,'
Slavic Review, December 1964 and March 1965, and Ronald Grigor Suny, 'Toward a Social History of the October Revolution, American Historical Review, February 1983. 38. Elobaum, pp. 145-146, 148, 217-219, 228-229. 39. See Carl Schorske, German Social Democracy, 1905-1917 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955) and Paul Frolich. Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Work. 40. Shachtman, p. 144. 41. Michael Lowy, 'Rosa Luxemburg's Conception of 'Socialism or Barbarism, ' Bulletin in
Defense of Marxism, January 1986, p. 15. For details see Helmut Trotnow, Karl
Liebknecht, A Political Biography (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1984), pp. 165-168. 42. On the U.S. scene, see: Paul Le Blanc, 'The Tragedy of American Communism,' Michigan
Quarterly Review, Summer 1982; James O'Brien, 'American Leninism in the 1970s,
Radical America, November 1977-February 1978; John Trinkl, 'Where have all the party builders gone?', Guardian August 21, September 4, September 11, 1985; Cliff Connor,
Crisis in the Socialist Workers Party (New York: F.I.T., 1984).
LAURENT BEAULIEU