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Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution
Part Two
Chapter X: Opportunism and Theory in Practice
Bernstein’s book is of great importance to the German and
the international labour movement. It is the first attempt to give a
theoretic base to the opportunist currents common in the
Social–Democracy.
These currents may be said to have existed for a long time in our
movement, if we take into consideration such sporadic manifestations of
opportunism as the question of subsidisation of steamers. But it is only
since about 1890, with the suppression of the anti–Socialist laws, that
we have had a trend of opportunism of a clearly defined character. Vollmar’s
“State Socialism,” the vote on the Bavarian budget, the “agrarian
socialism” of south Germany, Heine’s policy of compensation, Schippel’s stand on tariffs and militarism, are the high points in the development of our opportunist practice.
What appears to characterise this practice above all? A certain
hostility to “theory.” This is quite natural, for our “theory,” that is,
the principles of scientific socialism, impose clearly marked
limitations to practical activity – insofar as it concerns the aims of
this activity, the means used in attaining these aims and the method
employed in this activity. It is quite natural for people who run after
immediate “practical” results to want to free themselves from such
limitations and to render their practice independent of our “theory.”
However, this outlook is refuted by every attempt to apply it in
reality. State socialism, agrarian socialism, the policy of
compensation, the question of the army, all constituted defeats to our
opportunism. It is clear that, if this current is to maintain itself, it
must try to destroy the principles of our theory and elaborate a theory
of its own. Bernstein’s book is precisely an effort in that direction.
That is why at Stuttgart all the opportunist elements in our party
immediately grouped themselves around Bernstein’s banner. If the
opportunist currents in the practical activity of our party are an
entirely natural phenomenon which can be explained in the light of the
special conditions of our activity and its development, Bernstein’s
theory is no less natural an attempt to group these currents into a
general theoretic expression, an attempt to elaborate its own theoretic
conditions and the break with scientific socialism. That is why the
published expression of Bernstein’s ideas should be recognised as a
theoretic test for opportunism and as its first scientific
legitimisation.
What was the result of this test? We have seen the result.
Opportunism is not a position to elaborate a positive theory capable of
withstanding criticism. All it can do is to attack various isolated
theses of Marxist theory and, just because Marxist doctrine constitutes
one solidly constructed edifice, hope by this means to shake the entire
system from the top to its foundation.
This shows that opportunist practice is essentially irreconcilable
with Marxism. But it also proves that opportunism is incompatible with
socialism (the socialist movement) in general, that its internal
tendency is to push the labour movement into bourgeois paths, that
opportunism tends to paralyse completely the proletarian class struggle.
The latter, considered historically, has evidently nothing to do with
Marxist doctrine. For, before Marx and independently from him, there
have been labour movements and various socialist doctrines, each of
which, in its way, was the theoretic expression corresponding to the
conditions of the time, of the struggle of the working class for
emancipation. The theory that consists in basing socialism on the moral
notion of justice, on a struggle against the mode of distribution,
instead of basing it on a struggle against the mode of production, the
conception of class antagonism as an antagonism between the poor and the
rich, the effort to graft the “co–operative principle” on capitalist
economy – all the nice notions found in Bernstein’s doctrine – already
existed before him. And these theories were, in their time, in
spite of their insufficiency, effective theories of the proletarian
class struggle. They were the children’s seven–league boots thanks to
which the proletariat learned to walk upon the scene of history.
But after the development of the class struggle and its reflex in its
social conditions had led to the abandonment of these theories and to
the elaboration of the principles of scientific socialism, there could
be no socialism – at least in Germany – outside of Marxist socialism and
there could be no socialist class struggle outside of the
Social–Democracy. Form then on, socialism and Marxism, the proletarian
struggle for emancipation and the Social–Democracy, were identical. That
is why the return to pre–Marxist socialist theories no longer signifies
today a return to the seven–league boots of the childhood of the
proletariat, but a return to the puny worn–out slippers of the
bourgeoisie.
Bernstein’s theory was the first, and at the same time, the last
attempt to give a theoretic base to opportunism. It is the last,
because in Bernstein’s system, opportunism has gone – negatively through
its renunciation of scientific socialism, positively through its
marshalling of every bit of theoretic confusion possible – as far as it
can. In Bernstein’s book, opportunism has crowned its theoretic
development (just as it completed its practical development in the
position taken by Schippel on the question of militarism), and has
reached its ultimate conclusion.
Marxist doctrine can not only refute opportunism theoretically. It
alone can explain opportunism as an historic phenomenon in the
development of the party. The forward march of the proletariat, on a
world historic scale, to its final victory is not, indeed, “so simple a
thing.” The peculiar character of this movement resides precisely in the
fact that here, for the first time in history, the popular masses
themselves, in opposition to the ruling classes, are to impose
their will but they must effect this outside of the present society,
beyond the existing society. This will the masses can only form
in a constant struggle against the existing order. The union of the
broad popular masses with an aim reaching beyond the existing social
order, the union of the daily struggle with the great world
transformation, that is the task of the Social–Democratic movement,
which must logically grope on its road of development between the
following two rocks: abandoning the mass character of the party or
abandoning its final aim falling into bourgeois reformism or into
sectarianism, anarchism or opportunism.
In its theoretic arsenal, Marxist doctrine furnished, more than half a
century ago, arms that are effective against both of these two
extremes. But because our movement is a mass movement and because the
dangers menacing it are not derived from the human brain but from social
conditions, Marxist doctrine could not assure us, in advance and once
for always, against the anarchist and opportunist tendencies. The latter
can be overcome only as we pass from the domain of theory to the domain
of practice but only with the help of the arms furnished us by Marx.
“Bourgeois revolutions,” wrote Marx a half century
ago, “like those of the eighteenth century, rush onward rapidly from
success to success, their stage effects outbid one another, men and
things seems to be set in flaming brilliants, ecstasy is the prevailing
spirit; but they are short–lived, they reach their climax speedily and
then society relapses into a long fit of nervous reaction before it
learns how to appropriate the fruits of its period of feverish
excitement. Proletarian revolutions, on the contrary, such as those of
the nineteenth century, criticise themselves constantly; constantly
interrupt themselves in their own course; come back to what seems to
have been accomplished, in order to start anew; scorn with cruel
thoroughness the half–measures, weakness and meanness of their first
attempts; seem to throw down their adversary only to enable him to draw
fresh strength from the earth and again to rise up against them in more
gigantic stature; constantly recoil in fear before the undefined monster
magnitude of their own objects – until finally that situation is
created which renders all retreats impossible and conditions themselves
cry out: ‘Hic Rhodus, hic salta!’ Here is the rose. And here we must
dance!” [Eighteenth Brumaire]
This has remained true even after the elaboration of the
doctrine of scientific socialism. The proletarian movement has not as
yet, all at once, become social–democratic, even in Germany. But it is
becoming more social–democratic, surmounting continuously the extreme
deviations of anarchism and opportunism, both of which are only
determining phases of the development of the Social–Democracy,
considered as a process.
For these reasons, we must say that the surprising thing here is not
the appearance of an opportunist current but rather its feebleness. As
long as it showed itself in isolated cases of the practical activity of
the party, one could suppose that it had a serious political base. But
now that it has shown its face in Bernstein’s book, one cannot help
exclaim with astonishment: ”What? Is that all you have to say?” Not the
shadow of an original thought! Not a single idea that was not refuted,
crushed, reduced into dust by Marxism several decades ago!
It was enough for opportunism to speak out to prove it had nothing to
say. In the history of our party that is the only importance of
Bernstein’s book.
Thus saying good–bye to the mode of thought of the revolutionary
proletariat, to dialectics and to the materialist conception of history,
Bernstein can thank them for the attenuating circumstances they provide
for his conversion. For only dialectics and the materialist conception
of history, magnanimous as they are, could make Bernstein appear as an
unconscious predestined instrument, by means of which the rising working
class expresses its momentary weakness but which, upon closer
inspection, it throws aside contemptuously and with pride.
Last updated on: 28.11.2008
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