NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2010
Essay: A Japanese Marxist's view
Rosa Luxemburg, Raya Dunayevskaya and 21st century socialism
by Narihiko Ito
At the beginning of April 1980 I received a letter from Raya Dunayevskaya. She introduced herself as a researcher on Rosa Luxemburg and wanted detailed information on the International Rosa Luxemburg Association which I was preparing to organize.
Since April 1979 I had been at Mannheim University in West Germany as a guest professor. On Dec. 24, 1979, the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan. I saw a TV press conference with Mr. Gromyko, Soviet Foreign Minister, on the military operations in Afghanistan. I thought it could not solve the problem in Afghanistan and that it would also promote the political and ideological collapse of Soviet Socialism itself. I thought we had to create a principle of the new Socialism by studying Rosa Luxemburg's works and theory.
At once I talked with Prof. Gilbert Badia in Paris about the establishment of an International Rosa Luxemburg Association. I knew that Claudie Weill, Jacqueline Bois and Ilene Petit were studying Rosa Luxemburg in Paris. In February 1980 we all gathered at Prof. Badia's house and decided to establish the Rosa Luxemburg Association (RLA).
After the Paris meeting I visited Zurich to ask my old friend Theodor Pinkus, owner of the famous secondhand bookshop and activist, to act as General Secretary of the RLA. He willingly accepted. We decided the date of the RLA Founding Conference would be in September 1980 in Zurich.
After I came back to Japan in April 1980, I received the letter from Dunayevskaya. She already knew of the RLA and sent me her article on Luxemburg from News & Letters. Our correspondence began from that time.
When she sent me her new book Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (RLWLMPR) in 1982, I was deeply impressed. I wanted to talk with her directly and sent her an invitation to the Third International RLA Conference in Paris in May 1983. Unfortunately she could not come but sent a copy of her paper, "Feminist and Revolutionary," to be read to the Conference.
I was thunderstruck at the news of her death in 1987, as I lost an important thinker and theorist who deeply understood Luxemburg's and Marx's thought.
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In 1991 I received the second edition of RLWLMPR with a new foreword by Adrienne Rich which gave me more details of Dunayevskaya's life. I contributed an article to the Jan.-Feb. 1992 News & Letters titled "Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg are revolutionaries for our time" that indicated the following points:
First, that Dunayevskaya linked Luxemburg's life for the first time with the history of the women's liberation movement. There had been a misunderstanding that Luxemburg had no interest in the "Woman Question." Dunayevskaya connected Luxemburg's thought to today's women's movement.
I wrote: "Raya Dunayevskaya showed very clearly in her book the reason why Rosa Luxemburg refused to be pigeonholed into the 'Woman Question'. It was her protest against the 'male chauvinism' of the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party at that time. In this sense, it is very important that Dunayevskaya shed new light on Luxemburg's activities at the International Socialist Women's Conference at Stuttgart in 1907. It is also her unique view that the essential reason for the break with Jogiches was Luxemburg's self-development after her experiences of the Russian Revolution in 1906. Dunayevskaya hit the nail on the head when she pointed out that Luxemburg's 'greatest intellectual accomplishments occurred after the break.'"
Secondly, Dunayevskaya shed new light on the relation between Luxemburg and the "Black Dimension"--in other words, the brutal invasion of Imperialism into the non-capitalistic area (the Third World) about which Luxemburg clearly wrote in Accumulation of Capital.
The third point was Dunayevskaya's special attention on Marx's last works: the Ethnological Notebooks, drafts of letters to Vera Zasulitch, the French edition of Capital and the Critique of the Gotha Program. Dunayevskaya proved that Marx continued his theoretical activities as a revolutionary until his death.
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In 1992 when I read Dunayevskaya's essay written in February 1941, "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Is a Capitalist Society," I supported her view. But re-reading it I noticed that I had not understood clearly the following:
"Because we did not clearly understand the class nature of the present Soviet state, the Soviet Union's integral participation in the Second Imperialist World War came as a monstrous surprise. The Red Army march on Poland, the bloody conquest of part of Finland and the peaceful conquest of the Baltic states proved that the Stalinized Red Army had no more connection with the spirit, purpose and content of October [1917] than has the Stalinist state, whose armed might it is. What an abhorrent relapse from the conquests of October are the Stalinist conquests!"
In December 1979, facing the military invasion of the Soviet Army into Afghanistan, I realized the "End of Soviet Socialism" has come and started the International RLA. Dunayevskaya in 1941 recognized that the "Stalinized Red Army had no more connection with the spirit, purpose and content of October."
The expression "Global Capitalism" is often used. It means "Capitalism globally widens its invasion overall in the world." It does not mean "Capitalism became global without states." Luxemburg was consistently against the existence of the "State." She always said that "Socialism cannot co-exist with the State" and posited several kinds of "Autonomy" by the people against the "State."
When Dunayevskaya insisted that "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Is a Capitalist Society" it meant that capitalism, the state and military violence are one unit which is fundamentally different from socialism which will be composed without capitalism, the state and military violence.
By re-reading her works in this Raya Dunayevskaya Centenary Year, can we see what kind of society should be created in the 21st Century?
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