Luxemburg on the Russian Revolution

We are writing to correct a false impression left by John Marot’s “Rosa Luxemburg and the democratic road to socialist revolution.” Marot rightly challenges long-standing myths about Luxemburg’s relationship to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, including the idea that Luxemburg and Lenin were implacable foes, and that Leninism led to Stalinism.

But Marot misleadingly cites us—we are the editors of Volume 5 of the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg—to illustrate his case:

For the past century, many on the Left have taken the Russian Revolution to be Luxemburg’s final and irrevocable verdict: Bolshevism was incompatible with Marx’s dictum that the emancipation of the working class can only be the work of the working class, not that of a “dictatorial” party. By dissolving, in January 1918, the Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of universal, equal, and direct suffrage, Lenin’s partisans “helped create precedents and preconditions for what became known as Stalinism,” as the volume’s editors state—nothing less. (xxxviii)

We were surprised and dismayed to be associated with a position that we do not hold. In the introduction from which this line is taken, we explore and reject those very myths. We argue that Luxemburg and Lenin were close comrades in the revolutionary Marxist wing of international socialism throughout their politically active lives, including during the period of the Bolshevik revolution:

Some commentators note the convergence between Luxemburg and Lenin regarding the support of democracy before the overturn of capitalism—but they conclude that Luxemburg differs from Lenin in her insistence on the need to create socialism through radically democratic means. Lenin, in contrast, is seen as representing an authoritarian, statist, top-down approach to establishing socialism in Russia’s new Soviet Republic. The editors of the present volume see the matter differently. Lenin never considered the possibility of socialism without democracy. (xxxvi)

Stalinism was not a product of Bolshevism, but rather the result of the failure of the Bolshevik revolution to spread globally. In her critique, Luxemburg’s attention is on the perilous circumstances conspiring against the revolution. As she puts it: “Lenin and his comrades have held power for no more than a brief period and have found themselves in the midst of the powerful vortex of internal and external struggles, besieged on all sides by countless enemies and opponents” (225). She also anticipates similarly confronting colossal impediments and contradictions in the German context: “once we too have taken power in the west, we will, even in the most favorable conditions, lose some teeth in our attempts to crack this tough nut before we have overcome the worst of the innumerable complicated difficulties of this enormous task!” (225).

As John Marot points out, some of Luxemburg’s positions were based on incomplete information (land reform) and in some cases she took a different position when faced with parallel situations during the German Revolution (National Assembly). In yet others she is warning against desperate survival measures in the face of counter-revolutionary strangulation that jeopardize socialist democracy. As Lenin put it in “Letter to American Workers”: “‘We are now, as it were, in a besieged fortress, waiting for the other detachments of the world socialist revolution to come to our relief’” (quoted p. xxxviii).

The passage we quote that is cited by Marot is not in fact referring to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by “Lenin’s partisans” (Marot). It is part of a summary of Arno Mayer’s The Furies, which explores the escalating violence of the defenders of the new Soviet Republic from late 1918 to 1921. We make a clear distinction between these “emergency measures” and Stalin’s “violent ‘revolution from above’” 12 years later (xxxviii).

One of our central arguments is that Luxemburg is not launching an attack on Lenin or Bolshevism. Rather, she is engaging in fierce debate with her fellow revolutionaries in the midst of the revolutionary storm:

It is clear from any serious reading of her polemic that Luxemburg is neither breaking with Lenin and Trotsky and other revolutionary leaders as betrayers of the socialist ideal nor scolding them from the sidelines. It is a critique from within. She sees them as outstanding comrades engaged in the very same struggle to which she has committed her life, comrades who have—particularly under the pressure of events—begun to make grave mistakes which she wants to help them correct. (xl)

In our own era of capitalist barbarism, we face crises that both connect back to the start of the last century and forward to new and devastating forms of violence and catastrophe. Our shared project is to build on the victories and defeats of the past to prepare ourselves for present and future struggle. As revolutionary leaders during a time of mass socialist movements, Lenin and Luxemburg are both part of the rich legacy for us to draw on.