Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution
Part One
Chapter V:
The Consequences of Social Reformism
and General Nature of Reformism
In the first chapter we aimed to show that Bernstein’s
theory lifted the program of the socialist movement off its material
base and tried to place it on an idealist base. How does this theory
fare when translated into practice?
Upon the first comparison, the party practice resulting from
Bernstein’s theory does not seem to differ from the practice followed by
the Social Democracy up to now. Formerly, the activity of the
Social–Democratic Party consisted of trade union work, of agitation for
social reforms and the democratisation of existing political
institutions. The difference is not in the what, but in the how.
At present, the trade union struggle and parliamentary practice are
considered to be the means of guiding and educating the proletariat in
preparation for the task of taking over power. From the revisionist
standpoint, this conquest of power is at the same time impossible or
useless. And therefore, trade union and parliamentary activity are to be
carried on by the party only for their immediate results, that is, for
the purpose of bettering the present situation of the workers, for the
gradual reduction of capitalist exploitation, for the extension of
social control.
So that if we don not consider momentarily the immediate amelioration
of the workers’ condition – an objective common to our party program as
well as to revisionism – the difference between the two outlooks is, in
brief, the following. According to the present conception of the party,
trade–union and parliamentary activity are important for the socialist
movement because such activity prepares the proletariat, that is to say,
creates the subjective factor of the socialist transformation,
for the task of realising socialism. But according to Bernstein,
trade–unions and parliamentary activity gradually reduce capitalist
exploitation itself. They remove from capitalist society its capitalist
character. They realise objectively the desired social change.
Examining the matter closely, we see that the two conceptions are
diametrically opposed. Viewing the situation from the current standpoint
of our party, we say that as a result of its trade union and
parliamentary struggles, the proletariat becomes convinced, of the
impossibility of accomplishing a fundamental social change through such
activity and arrives at the understanding that the conquest of power is
unavoidable. Bernstein’s theory, however, begins by declaring that this
conquest is impossible. It concludes by affirming that socialism can
only be introduced as a result of the trade–union struggle and
parliamentary activity. For as seen by Bernstein, trade union and
parliamentary action has a socialist character because it exercises a
progressively socialising influence on capitalist economy.
We tried to show that this influence is purely imaginary. The
relations between capitalist property and the capitalist State develop
in entirely opposite directions, so that the daily practical activity of
the present Social Democracy loses, in the last analysis, all
connection with work for socialism. From the viewpoint of a movement for
socialism, the trade–union struggle and our parliamentary practice are
vastly important in so far as they make socialistic the awareness,
the consciousness, of the proletariat and help to organise it as a
class. But once they are considered as instruments of the direct
socialisation of capitalist economy, they lose out not only their usual
effectiveness but also cease being means of preparing the working class
for the conquest of power. Eduard Bernstein and Konrad Schmidt suffer
from a complete misunderstanding when they console themselves with the
belief that even though the program of the party is reduced to work for
social reforms and ordinary trade–union work, the final objective of the
labour movement is not thereby discarded, for each forward step reaches
beyond the given immediate aim and the socialist goal is implied as a
tendency in the supposed advance.
That is certainly true about the present procedure of the German
Social Democracy. It is true whenever a firm and conscious effort for
conquest of political power impregnates the trade–union struggle and the
work for social reforms. But if this effort is separated from the
movement itself and social reforms are made an end in themselves, then
such activity not only does not lead to the final goal of socialism but
moves in a precisely opposite direction.
Konrad Schmidt simply falls back on the idea that an apparently
mechanical movement, once started, cannot stop by itself, because “one’s
appetite grows with the eating,” and the working class will not
supposedly content itself with reforms till the final socialist
transformation is realised.
Now the last mentioned condition is quite real. Its effectiveness is
guaranteed by the very insufficiency of capitalist reforms. But the
conclusion drawn from it could only be true if it were possible to
construct an unbroken chain of augmented reforms leading from the
capitalism of today to socialism. This is, of course, sheer fantasy. In
accordance with the nature of things as they are the chain breaks
quickly, and the paths that the supposed forward movement can take from
the point on are many and varied.
What will be the immediate result should our party change its general
procedure to suit a viewpoint that wants to emphasise the practical
results of our struggle, that is social reforms? As soon as “immediate
results” become the principal aim of our activity, the clear–cut,
irreconcilable point of view, which has meaning only in so far as it
proposes to win power, will be found more and more inconvenient. The
direct consequence of this will be the adoption by the party of a
“policy of compensation,” a policy of political trading, and an attitude
of diffident, diplomatic conciliation. But this attitude cannot be
continued for a long time. Since the social reforms can only offer an
empty promise, the logical consequence of such a program must
necessarily be disillusionment.
It is not true that socialism will arise automatically from the
daily struggle of the working class. Socialism will be the consequence
of (1), the growing contradictions of capitalist economy and (2), of the
comprehension by the working class of the unavailability of the
suppression of these contradictions through a social transformation.
When, in the manner of revisionism, the first condition is denied and
the second rejected, the labour movement finds itself reduced to a
simple co–operative and reformist movement. We move here in a straight
line toward the total abandonment of the class viewpoint.
This consequence also becomes evident when we investigate the general
character of revisionism. It is obvious that revisionism does not wish
to concede that its standpoint is that of the capitalist apologist. It
does not join the bourgeois economists in denying the existence of the
contradictions of capitalism. But, on the other hand, what precisely
constitutes the fundamental point of revisionism and distinguishes it
from the attitude taken by the Social Democracy up to now, is that it
does not base its theory on the belief that the contradictions of
capitalism will be suppressed as a result of the logical inner
development of the present economic system.
We may say that the theory of revisionism occupies an intermediate
place between two extremes. Revisionism does not expect to see the
contradictions of capitalism mature. It does not propose to suppress
these contradictions through a revolutionary transformation. It wants to
lessen, to attenuate, the capitalist contradictions. So that the
antagonism existing between production and exchange is to be mollified
by the cessation of crises and the formation of capitalist combines. The
antagonism between Capital and Labour is to be adjusted by bettering
the situation of the workers and by the conservation of the middle
classes. And the contradiction between the class State and society is to
be liquidated through increased State control and the progress of
democracy.
It is true that the present procedure of the Social Democracy does
not consist in waiting for the antagonisms of capitalism to develop and
in passing on, only then, to the task of suppressing them. On the
contrary, the essence of revolutionary procedure is to be guided by the
direction of this development, once it is ascertained, and inferring
from this direction what consequences are necessary for the political
struggle. Thus the Social Democracy has combated tariff wars and
militarism without waiting for their reactionary character to become
fully evident. Bernstein’s procedure is not guided by a consideration of
the development of capitalism, by the prospect of the aggravation of
its contradictions. It is guided by the prospect of the attenuation of
these contradictions. He shows this when he speaks of the “adaptation”
of capitalist economy.
Now when can such a conception be correct? If it is true that
capitalism will continue to develop in the direction it takes at
present, then its contradictions must necessarily become sharper and
more aggravated instead of disappearing. The possibility of the
attenuation of the contradictions of capitalism presupposes that the
capitalist mode of production itself will stop its progress. In short,
the general condition of Bernstein’s theory is the cessation of
capitalist development.
This way, however, his theory condemns itself in a twofold manner.
In the first place, it manifests its utopian character in
its stand on the establishment of socialism. For it is clear that a
defective capitalist development cannot lead to a socialist
transformation.
In the second place, Bernstein’s theory reveals its reactionary
character when it refers to the rapid capitalist development that is
taking place at present. Given the development of real capitalism, how
can we explain, or rather state, Bernstein’s position?
We have demonstrated in the first chapter the baselessness of the
economic conditions on which Bernstein builds his analysis of existing
social relationships. We have seen that neither the credit system nor
cartels can be said to be “means of adaptation” of capitalist economy.
We have seen that not even the temporary cessation of crises nor the
survival of the middle class can be regarded as symptoms of capitalist
adaptation. But even though we should fail to take into account the
erroneous character of all these details of Bernstein’s theory we cannot
help but be stopped short by one feature common to all of them.
Bernstein’s theory does not seize these manifestations of contemporary
economic life as they appear in their organic relationship with the
whole of capitalist development, with the complete economic mechanism of
capitalism. His theory pulls these details out of their living economic
context. It treats them as disjecta membra (separate parts) of a lifeless machine.
Consider, for example, his conception of the adaptive effect of
credit. If we recognise credit as a higher natural stage of the process
of exchange and, therefore, of the contradictions inherent in capitalist
exchange, we cannot at the same time see it as a mechanical means of
adaptation existing outside of the process of exchange. It would be just
as impossible to consider money, merchandise, and capital as “means of
adaptation” of capitalism.
However, credit, like money, commodities and capital, is an organic
link of capitalist economy at a certain stage of its development. Like
them, it is an indispensable gear in the mechanism of capitalist
economy, and at the same time, an instrument of destruction, since it
aggravates the internal contradictions of capitalism.
The same thing is true about cartels and the new, perfected means of communication.
The same mechanical view is presented by Bernstein’s attempt to
describe the promise of the cessation of crises as a symptom of the
“adaptation” of capitalist economy. For him, crises are simply
derangements of the economic mechanism. With their cessation, he thinks,
the mechanism could function well. But the fact is that crises are not
“derangements” in the usual sense of the word. They are “derangements”
without which capitalist economy could not develop at all. For if crises
constitute the only method possible in capitalism – and therefore the
normal method – of solving periodically the conflict existing between
the unlimited extension of production and the narrow limits of the world
market, then crises are an organic manifestation inseparable from
capitalist economy.
In the “unhindered” advance of capitalist production lurks a threat
to capitalism that is much greater than crises. It is the threat of the
constant fall of the rate of profit, resulting not only from the
contradiction between production and exchange, but from the growth of
the productivity of labour itself. The fall in the rate of profit has
the extremely dangerous tendency of rendering impossible any enterprise
for small and middle–sized capitals. It thus limits the new formation
and therefore the extension of placements of capital.
And it is precisely crises that constitute the other consequence of the same process. As a result of their periodic depreciation
of capital, crises bring a fall in the prices of means of production, a
paralysis of a part of the active capital, and in time the increase of
profits. They thus create the possibilities of the renewed advance of
production. Crises therefore appear to be the instruments of rekindling
the fire of capitalist development. Their cessation – not temporary
cessation, but their total disappearance in the world market – would not
lead to the further development of capitalist economy. It would destroy
capitalism.
True to the mechanical view of his theory of adaptation, Bernstein
forgets the necessity of crises as well as the necessity of new
placements of small and middle–sized capitals. And that is why the
constant reappearance of small capital seems to him to be the sign of
the cessation of capitalist development though it is, in fact, a symptom
of normal capitalist development.
It is important to note that there is a viewpoint from which all the
above–mentioned phenomena are seen exactly as they have been presented
by the theory of “adaptation.” It is the viewpoint of the isolated
(single) capitalist who reflects in his mind the economic facts around
him just as they appear when refracted by the laws of competition. The
isolated capitalist sees each organic part of the whole of our economy
as an independent entity. He sees them as they act on him, the single
capitalist. He therefore considers these facts to be simple
“derangements” of simple “means of adaptation.” For the isolated
capitalist, it is true, crises are really simple derangements; the
cessation of crises accords him a longer existence. As far as he is
concerned, credit is only a means of “adapting” his insufficient
productive forces to the needs of the market. And it seems to him that
the cartel of which he becomes a member really suppresses industrial
anarchy.
Revisionism is nothing else than a theoretic generalisation made from
the angle of the isolated capitalist. Where does this viewpoint belong
theoretically if not in vulgar bourgeois economics?
All the errors of this school rest precisely on the conception that
mistakes the phenomena of competition, as seen from the angle of the
isolated capitalist, for the phenomena of the whole of capitalist
economy. Just as Bernstein considers credit to be a means of
“adaptation,” to the needs of exchange. Vulgar economy, too, tries to
find the antidote against the ills of capitalism in the phenomena of
capitalism. Like Bernstein, it believes that it is possible to regulate
capitalist economy. And in the manner of Bernstein, it arrives in time
at the desire to palliate the contradictions of capitalism, that is, at
the belief in the possibility of patching up the sores of capitalism. It
ends up by subscribing to a program of reaction. It ends up in an
utopia.
The theory of revisionism can therefore be defined in the following
way. It is a theory of standing still in the socialist movement built,
with the aid of vulgar economy, on a theory of capitalist standstill.
Next: Part II, Chap.6: Economic Development and Socialism
Last updated on: 21 July 2010
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