www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, March 2003
Review: A look at Laschitza's LuxemburgIm Lebensrausch, trotz alledem. Rosa Luxemburg, Eine Biografie (In the Ecstasy of Life, Despite Everything. Rosa Luxemburg, A Biography) by Annelies Laschitza. Berlin: 1996, Aufbau-Verlag. 687 p. On Sept. 18, 1911, Franz Pfemfert wrote in DIE AKTION
(THE ACTION), an anti-militarist journal in Germany, about the Congress of the
German Social Democracy in Jena: "In every speech made there one could
perceive the corrupting influence of parliamentarianism. But the German Social
Democracy has not yet [recognized] the mistakes about the consequences of these
tactics! In Jena the so-called honest people--Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht--would
have had to resign if they don't like to be called rowdies and
'anarcho-syndicalists.' The future, however, will prove that they are right. The
future will prove that a socialist party has been given up as lost when it
becomes untruthful." One can read these prophetic words of Pfemfert in a
wonderfully written biography about Rosa Luxemburg by Annelies Laschitza, IM
LEBENSRAUSCH, TROTZ ALLEDEM. ROSA LUXEMBURG, EINE BIOGRAFIE (IN THE ESCTASY OF
LIFE, DESPITE EVERYTHING. ROSA LUXEMBURG, A BIOGRAPHY), published in Berlin in
1996. Laschitza quotes Pfemfert because she is describing one phase of
Luxemburg's struggle against reformism and revisionism in the German Social
Democracy and the Second International. In addition to anti-revisionism Laschitza writes about
the thoughts and actions of Luxemburg concerning the relation of the
Social-Democratic Party to the masses, the structure and functioning of a
revolutionary party, the development of Marxism as theory and praxis, the
National Question, revolution, and last but not least about Luxemburg as a woman
and human being. LUXEMBURG IN THE THICK OF STRUGGLE Laschitza situates Luxemburg in the development of Social-Democracy in Germany, Poland and Russia from 1890 until 1919. She covers Luxemburg's response to the 1905-06 revolutions in Poland and Russia, the collapse of the Second International in 1914 (when it voted to extend war credits to the German Kaiser), the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the German Revolution in 1918-19. The intent of this biography, Laschitza says, is "to show the unity of [Luxemburg's] personality, theoretical work, political and pedagogical activities" (p. 11). In the Poland-Russia context, Laschitza reveals interesting aspects about Luxemburg. Drawing on the research of the Polish historian Feliks Tych, she notes the discovery in 1991 by Tych of the so-called "Credo," a manuscript by Luxemburg with annotations by Leo Jogiches. This manuscript analyzes the situation in the Social-Democratic Party of Russia in 1912 and the role of the Polish-Lithuanian party which Luxemburg and Jogiches headed, in the effort to unite its factions. Laschitza's assessment is: "The 'Credo' belongs alongside the article 'Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy' (1904) and her manuscript on 'The Russian Revolution' (1918) as the most important works of Rosa Luxemburg about Lenin's politics and makes clear the principled differences between the two regarding questions about the unity of the party and the democracy in the party" (p. 404). KAUTSKY, LENIN AND LUXEMBURG In this biography we find an abundance of remarkable
things. I single out only two. One is the review Luxemburg made in 1905 of the
edition prepared by Kautsky of the first volume of Marx's THEORIES OF SURPUS
VALUE. Luxemburg had high esteem for Kautsky's qualities as editor in this case
(p. 186). This is a bit strange as later commentators concluded that Kautsky's
edition was imprecise. Second is her work on INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMICS (EINFUHRUNG IN DIE NATIONALOKONOMIE). It was begun in 1909 and not finished at the time of her death in 1919. It was published posthumously in 1925 by Paul Levi. Compared to Laschitza's earlier studies on Luxemburg,
this time Luxemburg is not mainly measured by Lenin and there is a resistance
toward any hero worship of him. Laschitza's biography is important because Luxemburg was
one of the most interesting personalities of the 20th century, and she was a
fighter for a better world, for socialism. On the one side, says Laschitza,
Luxemburg had prescient views, and on the other side she had some fundamental
errors (p. 9)--especially Luxemburg's writings on the National Question, an
issue on which she was most stubborn--as seen in her lifelong opposition to the
independence of Poland; and her theory of the accumulation of capital where she
departed from Marx (pp. 411-22). This biography would have had more strength if the
author had utilized some of the thoughts Raya Dunayevskaya developed in her
study of Luxemburg, ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN’S LIBERATION, AND MARX’S
PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION. The readers of this biography will benefit most from
it as they read the study of Dunayevskaya and vice versa. --Karel Ludenhoff |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
