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Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution
Part Two
Chapter VII: Co–operatives, Unions, Democracy
Bernstein’s socialism offers to the workers the prospect
of sharing in the wealth of society. The poor are to become rich. How
will this socialism be brought about? His article in the Neue Zeit (Problems of Socialism) contain only vague allusions to this question. Adequate information, however, can be found in his book.
Bernstein’s socialism is to be realised with the aid of these two
instruments: labour unions – or as Bernstein himself characterises them,
economic democracy – and co–operatives. The first will suppress
industrial profit; the second will do away with commercial profit.
Co–operatives – especially co–operatives in the field of production
constitute a hybrid form in the midst of capitalism. They can be
described as small units of socialised production within capitalist
exchange.
But in capitalist economy exchanges dominate production. As a result
of competition, the complete domination of the process of production by
the interests of capital – that is, pitiless exploitation – becomes a
condition for the survival of each enterprise. The domination of capital
over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways.
Labour is intensified. The work day is lengthened or shortened,
according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the
requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown back
into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods that enable
an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The
workers forming a co–operative in the field of production are thus faced
with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the
utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role
of capitalist entrepreneur – a contradiction that accounts for the usual
failure of production co–operatives which either become pure capitalist
enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end
by dissolving.
Bernstein has himself taken note of these facts. But it is evident that he has not understood them. For, together with Mrs. Potter–Webb,
he explains the failure of production co–operatives in England by their
lack of “discipline.” But what is so superficially and flatly called
here “discipline” is nothing else than the natural absolutist regime of
capitalism, which it is plain, the workers cannot successfully use
against themselves.
Producers’ co–operatives can survive within capitalist economy only
if they manage to suppress, by means of some detour, the capitalist
controlled contradictions between the mode of production and the mode of
exchange. And they can accomplish this only by removing themselves
artificially from the influence of the laws of free competition. And
they can succeed in doing the last only when they assure themselves
beforehand of a constant circle of consumers, that is, when they assure
themselves of a constant market.
It is the consumers’ co–operative that can offer this service to its
brother in the field of production. Here – and not in Oppenheimer’s
distinction between co–operatives that produce and co–operatives that
sell – is the secret sought by Bernstein: the explanation for the
invariable failure of producers’ co–operatives functioning independently
and their survival when they are backed by consumers’ organisations.
If it is true that the possibilities of existence of producers’
co–operatives within capitalism are bound up with the possibilities of
existence of consumers’ co–operatives, then the scope of the former is
limited, in the most favourable of cases, to the small local market and
to the manufacture of articles serving immediate needs, especially food
products. Consumers’ and therefore producers’ co–operatives, are
excluded from the most important branches of capital production – the
textile, mining, metallurgical and petroleum industries, machine
construction, locomotive and ship–building. For this reason alone
(forgetting for the moment their hybrid character), co–operatives in the
field of production cannot be seriously considered as the instrument of
a general social transformation. The establishment of producers’
co–operatives on a wide scale would suppose, first of all, the
suppression of the world market, the breaking up of the present world
economy into small local spheres of production and exchange. The highly
developed, wide–spread capitalism of our time is expected to fall back
to the merchant economy of the Middle Ages.
Within the framework of present society, producers’ co–operatives are
limited to the role of simple annexes to consumers’ co–operatives. It
appears, therefore, that the latter must be the beginning of the
proposed social change. But this way the expected reform of society by
means of co–operatives ceases to be an offensive against capitalist
production. That is, it ceases to be an attack against the principal
bases of capitalist economy. It becomes, instead, a struggle against
commercial capital, especially small and middle–sized commercial
capital. It becomes an attack made on the twigs of the capitalist tree.
According to Bernstein, trade unions too, are a means of attack
against capitalism in the field of production. We have already shown
that trade unions cannot give the workers a determining influence over
production. Trade unions can determine neither the dimensions of
production nor the technical progress of production.
This much may be said about the purely economic side of the “struggle
of the rate of wages against the rate of profit,” as Bernstein labels
the activity of the trade union. It does not take place in the blue of
the sky. It takes place within the well–defined framework of the law of
wages. The law of wages is not shattered but applied by trade–union
activity.
According to Bernstein, it is the trade unions that lead – in the
general movement for the emancipation of the working class – the real
attack against the rate of industrial profit. According to Bernstein,
trade unions have the task of transforming the rate of industrial profit
into “rates of wages.” The fact is that trade unions are least able to
execute an economic offensive against profit. Trade unions are nothing
more than the organised defence of labour power against the
attacks of profit. They express the resistance offered by the working
class to the oppression of capitalist economy.
On the one hand, trade unions have the function of influencing the
situation in the labour–power market. But this influence is being
constantly overcome by the proletarianisation of the middle layers of
our society, a process which continually brings new merchandise on the
labour market. The second function of the trade unions is to ameliorate
the condition of the workers. That is, they attempt to increase the
share of the social wealth going to the working class. This share,
however, is being reduced with the fatality of a natural process by the
growth of the productivity of labour. One does not need to be a Marxist
to notice this. It suffices to read Rodbertus’ In Explanation of the Social Question.
In other words, the objective conditions of capitalist society
transform the two economic functions of the trade unions into a sort of
labour of Sisyphus,[2]
which is, nevertheless, indispensable. For as a result of the activity
of his trade unions, the worker succeeds in obtaining for himself the
rate of wages due to him in accordance with the situation of the
labour–power market. As a result of trade union activity, the capitalist
law of wages is applied and the effect of the depressing tendency of
economic development is paralysed, or to be more exact, attenuated.
However, the transformation of the trade union into an instrument for
the progressive reduction of profit in favour of wages presupposes the
following social conditions; first, the cessation of the
proletarianisation of the middle strata of our society; secondly, a
stoppage of the growth of productivity of labour. We have in both cases a return to pre–capitalist conditions,
Co–operatives and trade unions are totally incapable of transforming the capitalist mode of production.
This is really understood by Bernstein, though in a confused manner.
For he refers to co–operatives and trade unions as a means of reducing
the profit of the capitalists and thus enriching the workers. In this
way, he renounces the struggle against the capitalist mode of production
and attempts to direct the socialist movement to struggle against
“capitalist distribution.” Again and again, Bernstein refers to
socialism as an effort towards a “just, juster and still more just” mode
of distribution. (Vorwärts, March 26, 1899).
It cannot be denied that the direct cause leading the popular masses
into the socialist movement is precisely the “unjust” mode of
distribution characteristic of capitalism. When the Social–Democracy
struggles for the socialisation of the entire economy, it aspires
therewith also to a “just” distribution of the social wealth. But,
guided by Marx’s observation that the mode of distribution of a given
epoch is a natural consequence of the mode of production of that epoch,
the Social–Democracy does not struggle against distribution in the
framework of capitalist production. It struggles instead for the
suppression of the capitalist production itself. In a word, the
Social–Democracy wants to establish the mode of socialist distribution
by suppressing the capitalist mode of production. Bernstein’s method, on
the contrary, proposes to combat the capitalist mode of distribution in
the hopes of gradually establishing, in this way, the socialist mode of
production.
What, in that case, is the basis of Bernstein’s program for the
reform of society? Does it find support in definite tendencies of
capitalist production? No. In the first place, he denies such
tendencies. In the second place, the socialist transformation of
production is for him the effect and not the cause of distribution. He
cannot give his program a materialist base, because he has already
overthrown the aims and the means of the movement for socialism, and
therefore its economic conditions. As a result, he is obliged to
construct himself an idealist base.
“Why represent socialism as the consequence of economic compulsion?”
he complains. “Why degrade man’s understanding, his feeling for justice,
his will?” (Vorwärts, March 26, 1899). Bernstein’s
superlatively just distribution is to be attained thanks to man’s free
will; man’s will acting not because of economic necessity, since this
will is only an instrument, but because of man’s comprehension of
justice, because of man’s idea of justice.
We thus quite happily return to the principle of justice, to the old
war horse on which the reformers of the earth have rocked for ages, for
the lack of surer means of historic transportation. We return to the
lamentable Rosinate on which the Don Quixotes of history have galloped
towards the great reform of the earth, always to come home with their
eyes blackened.
The relation of the poor to the rich, taken as a base for socialism,
the principle of co–operation as the content of socialism, the “most
just distribution” as its aim, and the idea of justice as its only
historic legitimisation – with how much more force, more with and more
fire did Weitling defend that sort of socialism fifty years ago.
However, that genius of a tailor did not know scientific socialism. If
today, the conception tore into bits by Marx and Engels a half century
ago is patched up and presented to the proletariat as the last world of
social science, that too, is the art of a tailor but it has nothing of a
genius about it.
Trade unions and co–operatives are the economic support for the
theory of revisionism. Its principal political condition is the growth
of democracy. The present manifestations of political reaction are to
Bernstein only “displacement.” He considers them accidental, momentary,
and suggests that they are not to be considered in the elaboration of
the general directives of the labour movement.
To Bernstein, democracy is an inevitable stage in the development of
society. To him, as to the bourgeois theoreticians of liberalism,
democracy is the great fundamental law of historic development, the
realisation of which is served by all the forces of political life.
However, Bernstein’s thesis is completely false. Presented in this
absolute force, it appears as a petty–bourgeois vulgarisation of results
of a very short phase of bourgeois development, the last twenty–five or
thirty years. We reach entirely different conclusions when we examine
the historic development of democracy a little closer and consider, at
the same time, the general political history of capitalism.
Democracy has been found in the most dissimilar social formations: in
primitive communist groups, in the slave states of antiquity and in
medieval communes. And similarly, absolutism and constitutional monarchy
are to be found under the most varied economic orders. When capitalism
began, with the first production of commodities, it resorted to a
democratic constitution in the municipal–communes of the Middle Ages.
Later, when it developed to manufacturing, capitalism found its
corresponding political form in the absolute monarchy. Finally, as a
developed industrial economy, it brought into being in France the
democratic republic of 1793, the absolute monarchy of Napoleon I, the
nobles’ monarchy of the Restoration period (1850–1830), the bourgeois
constitutional monarchy of Louis–Philippe, then again the democratic
republic, and against the monarchy of Napoleon III, and finally, for the
third time, the Republic.
In Germany, the only truly democratic institution – universal
suffrage – is not a conquest won by bourgeois liberalism. Universal
suffrage in Germany was an instrument for the fusion of the small
States. It is only in this sense that it has any importance for the
development of the German bourgeoisie, which is otherwise quite
satisfied with semi–feudal constitutional monarchy. In Russia,
capitalism prospered for a long time under the regime of oriental
absolutism, without having the bourgeoisie manifest the least desire in
the world to introduce democracy. In Austria, universal suffrage was
above all a safety line thrown to a foundering and decomposing monarchy.
In Belgium, the conquest of universal suffrage by the labour movement
was undoubtedly due to the weakness of the local militarism, and
consequently to the special geographic and political situation of the
country. But we have here a “bit of democracy” that has been won not by
the bourgeoisie but against it.
The uninterrupted victory of democracy, which to our revisionism as
well as to bourgeois liberalism, appears as a great fundamental law of
human history and, especially, modern history is shown upon closer
examination to be a phantom. No absolute and general relation can be
constructed between capitalist development and democracy. The political
form of a given country is always the result of the composite of all the
existing political factors, domestic as well as foreign. It admits
within its limits all variations of the scale from absolute monarchy to
the democratic republic.
We must abandon, therefore, all hope of establishing democracy as a
general law of historical development even within the framework of
modern society. Turning to the present phase of bourgeois society, we
observe here, too, political factors which, instead of assuring the
realisation of Bernstein’s schema, led rather to the abandonment by
bourgeois society of the democratic conquests won up to now.
Democratic institutions – and this is of the greatest significance –
have completely exhausted their function as aids in the development of
bourgeois society. In so far as they were necessary to bring about the
fusion of small States and the creation of large modern States (Germany,
Italy), they are no longer indispensable at present. Economic
development has meanwhile effected an internal organic cicatrisation.
The same thing can be said concerning the transformation of the
entire political and administrative State machinery from feudal or
semi–feudal mechanism to capitalist mechanism. While this transformation
has been historically inseparable from the development of democracy, it
has been realised today to such an extent that the purely democratic
“ingredients” of society, such as universal suffrage and the republican
State form, may be suppressed without having the administration, the
State finances, or the military organisation find it necessary to return
to the forms they had before the March Revolution.[3]
If liberalism as such is now absolutely useless to bourgeois society
it has become, on the other hand, a direct impediment to capitalism from
other standpoints. Two factors dominate completely the political life
of contemporary States: world politics and the labour movement. Each is
only a different aspect of the present phase of capitalist development.
As a result of the development of the world economy and the
aggravation and generalisation of competition on the world market,
militarism and the policy of big navies have become, as instruments of
world politics, a decisive factor in the interior as well as in the
exterior life of the great States. If it is true that world politics and
militarism represent a rising tendency in the present phase of
capitalism, then bourgeois democracy must logically move in a descending
line.
In Germany the era of great armament, began in 1893, and the policy
of world politics inaugurated with the seizure of Kiao–Cheou were paid
for immediately with the following sacrificial victim: the decomposition
of liberalism, the deflation of the Centre Party, which passed from
opposition to government. The recent elections to the Reichstag of 1907
unrolling under the sign of the German colonial policy were, at the same
time, the historical burial of German liberalism.
If foreign politics push the bourgeoisie into the arms of reaction
this is no less true about domestic politics – thanks to the rise of the
working class. Bernstein shows that he recognises this when he makes
the social–democratic “legend,” which “wants to swallow everything” – in
other words, the socialist efforts of the working class – responsible
for the desertion of the liberal bourgeoisie. He advises the proletariat
to disavow its socialist aim so that the mortally frightened liberals
might come out of the mousehole of reaction. Making the suppression of
the socialist labour movement an essential condition for the
preservation of bourgeois democracy, he proves in a striking manner that
this democracy is in complete contradiction with the inner tendency of
development of the present society. He proves, at the same time, that
the socialist movement is itself a direct product of this tendency.
But he proves, at the same time, still another thing. By making the
denouncement of the socialist aim an essential condition of the
resurrection of bourgeois democracy, he shows how inexact is the claim
that bourgeois democracy is an indispensable condition of the socialist
movement and the victory of socialism. Bernstein’s reasoning exhausts
itself in a vicious circle. His conclusion swallows his premises.
The solution is quite simple. In view of that fact that bourgeois
liberalism has given up its ghost from fear of the growing labour
movement and its final aim, we conclude that the socialist labour
movement is today the only support for that which is not the
goal of the socialist movement – democracy. We must conclude that
democracy can have no support. We must conclude that the socialist
movement is not bound to bourgeois democracy but that, on the contrary,
the fate of democracy is bound up with the socialist movement. We must
conclude from this that democracy does not acquire greater chances of
survival, as the socialist movement becomes sufficiently strong to
struggle against the reactionary consequences of world politics and the
bourgeois desertion of democracy. He who would strengthen democracy
should want to strengthen and not weaken the socialist movement. He who
renounces the struggle for socialism renounces both the labour movement
and democracy.
[2] The
mythological king of Corinth who was condemned to roll a huge stone to
the top of a hill. It constantly rolled back down against making his
task incessant.
[3] The German revolution of 1848, which struck an effective blow against the feudal institutions in Germany.
Next: Chap.8: Conquest of Political Power
Last updated on: 21 July 2010
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