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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2007 - January 2008Rosa Luxemburg and the Russian Revolution of 1917Editor's Note: The following essay is a response to the Persian edition of THE ROSA LUXEMBURG READER that was sent to us from a reader in Iran. * * * Tehran, Iran--It has been 90 years since the October Revolution in Russia. This time gap permits us to have a deeper insight about this event. An insightful observer is one who is able to see the passion and enthusiasm in a world which seems to have separated into two--between actual lived history and the "prehistory" of humanity. One such observer was Rosa Luxemburg. When the October Revolution of 1917 happened, Rosa was experiencing her four-year imprisonment in Germany. In solitary confinement, under the influence of a painful illness and the mental impact of long-term imprisonment, she lacked any relationship with the outside world which was thundering like a volcano. Among her contemporaries her pamphlet on the Russian Revolution stands as the most prophetic concerning this world-historical event. Many of her particular criticisms may be disputed or refuted, but the mistakes of this article are overshadowed by her moral and democratic motives. LUXEMBURG'S CRITIQUE OF LENIN However we should keep in mind that her work is a defense of the October Revolution in which the courage and innovativeness of the Bolsheviks is highly admired. The key point for her is the essence of seizing power and the steps that should be immediately taken so that the most widespread revolutionary democracy may be assured. In fact, the question that makes her our contemporary is: what happens after the revolution? What should be done so that a new class or bureaucracy may not take power into its hands? Rosa was not against the rule of the proletariat, but she believed that in taking power bourgeois democracy must be replaced by socialist democracy, rather than democracy being placed totally aside. The pamphlet on the Russian Revolution begins with an investigation of the German Social Democracy concerning the Russian revolution. Rosa finds the German proletariat's lack of support of the Russian Revolution to be an important measure of their immaturity. This is quite obvious in light of the fate of the German Revolution in the following years. She also discerns the prelude to all the failures of the Russian Revolution. On the one hand, there was world war and its brutal toll, plus the dominance of the great powers. On the other hand, there was the incompetence and failure to act of the international working class. Rosa believes that without an international proletarian revolution even the greatest idealism and energy cannot bring about socialism and democracy; without it, revolution will get stuck in labyrinth of contradictions and mistakes. THE ISSUE OF THE LAND In the following part of the pamphlet Rosa depicts the genesis of the October revolution and its ascending evolution: from a centralist initiation towards radicalization of goals. Like any profound analyst she directs her attention not only towards the events themselves and their apparent intensity, she also investigates their active driving forces. She demonstrates how the revolution did not limit itself to the realization of political democracy but put forward the most pressing issues in international politics--the issues of peace and land, which the peasant masses had put forward since 1905. Rosa deals with some important issues concerning the Bolsheviks during the revolution: the land issue, nationalities policy, the senate, the right to vote, and dictatorship. Rosa finds the Bolshevik tactic, embodied in the slogan of the expropriation and immediate distribution of land by the peasants, to be the shortest, simplest and clearest formula for crushing the great landowners uniting the peasants with the revolutionary government. But she thought that there is nothing in common between the appropriation of the land by individual peasants and a socialist economy. She believed that the appropriation of the land by the peasants would just change landlord ownership into peasant ownership by dividing the former into the latter. She moreover believed that these measures and their chaotic mode of execution meant what was being witnessed in Russia was the intensification rather than the nullification of differences within the peasantry. Military communism, the New Economic Policy (NEP), the obligatory socialization policy, and finally, the banishment and compulsory emigration of millions of peasants during the later Stalin period are obvious signs that the land problem left huge consequences for the future of the revolution. Rosa had properly distinguished the land problem and its destructive solution, but as for an alternative policy, we do not find anything specific--only short and general phrases such as calling for immediate socialization. Her suggestions regarding the immediate socialization of agricultural lands would no doubt have led to huge peasant commotions against new government and bloodshed, as transpired during the unsuccessful revolution in Hungary in 1919. However her prophecy was completely right when she said that this Bolshevik policy would lead to the creation of a layer of peasant proprietors who will confront every step toward socialization of the economy with hostility. Rosa did predict the struggle of the city and village resulting from this policy. Her standpoint is clear: the revolutionary society cannot achieve socialist goals in this manner. This is one of the greatest questions which has not so far been definitely answered: once a socialist revolution has happened in a society that is backward in terms of its production relations, the socialist government has to adopt non-socialist policy in fields such as land problems so that it can hold power--yet on the other hand, this means the reproduction of the bourgeois relations, something that undermines the political power of the revolutionary regime. INTERNATIONALISM AND NATIONALISM Both the Bolsheviks and Rosa Luxemburg found the definitive solution of the problem in the international revolution. But when this does not come about, what will we be faced with? We can easily see how necessity and selection are interwoven. The second problem that is dealt with in her essay is the problem of nationalities. The right of national autonomy before the October Revolution had led to a lot of discussions between Lenin and Rosa. In her previous works, Rosa had argued that such a slogan had no place in the revolutionary arsenal. Rosa thought it would not be possible for nationalism and socialism to come up with a compromise. Her point is that for the bourgeoisie and its ideology, national boundaries cannot be accepted, given the constant political and cultural divisions within the proletariat. She thought of a socialist and internationalist alternative as the only criterion for investigation. In fact, she did not believe in Marx's idea based on which the national revolution is a way towards socialism. She instead held that what must be taken into consideration are the consequences of every position on the class interests of proletariat; and as a result, every positive assessment about the national problem was dependent on the issue of whether the success can potentially lead to the necessary rule for autonomy and create a political milieu that improves the possibilities for the development of the class consciousness of the working class. She saw the decomposition of the Russian empire and its conversion into different nationalities, each dealing with this or that imperialism, as the result of the policy of the right of self-determination. SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY She wrote that once the Bolsheviks seized power they were against the right to vote, freedom of press and assembly, and in sum, all democratic rights. These were everything that could enable the people of Russia to decide their fate. Moreover Rosa believed that the pursuit of these Bolshevik policies would nurture the counterrevolution. She believed that the fundamental error of Lenin and Trotsky was that they, exactly like the Second International, counterposed dictatorship and democracy. But Marxists, she held, should separate the social core of democracy from bourgeois democracy. The distinctive point of the proletarian dictatorship "is in the mode it applies the democracy not in its abolition," she wrote. Since the goal of the transition period is to provide the proletariat with the possibility to apply its own power, its ability to do that lies in its challenging power within the proletarian dictatorship. She defended the Bolsheviks' measures in overcoming the resistance of the capitalists and their representatives. But this is only on the negative side. The positive aspect of proletarian power means specifically the substantial growth of democracy and freedom for the masses. This reminds us of her memorable statement: "Freedom for the supporters of the government, for the members of the party no matter how numerous it may be is not at all freedom." In fact, the main question that the October Revolution posed, but did not answer, is how democratic liberties could be guaranteed. Simply saying that the dictatorship of proletariat will protect the rights of people could not solve this question, since it may lead to the dictatorship of the leaders. And even when the final judge is the party itself, the universal life of society will be marginalized. What is the best way to confront this? Which institution could defend the individual rights of the people and challenge the would-be authority of the party, soviets, Red Guards and then, without any fear of being prosecuted afterwards, could proceed to criticize? Rosa did not live to see that what happened in the years after October 1917 was the realization of her worst predictions. This question is still relevant. Undoubtedly today, any socialist alternative that claims to annul the self-alienation of the human being must answer the question: what happens after the revolution? |
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