Lenin, Luxemburg, and the revolutionary tradition 

On July 30, 2024, the editors of Tempest Magazine posted an 800-word letter from us under the heading “Rosa Luxemburg and the Russian Revolution, A Correction.” This title, like the tag of “article,” was misleading as we were not intending to offer a position on Luxemburg and the Russian Revolution. Rather, we were responding to a particular assertion about our views made by John Marot in his 4200-word review essay, “Rosa Luxemburg and the democratic road to socialist revolution” posted by the editors on June 10, 2024. Our correction has resulted in a further response, posted on August 28, 2024, entitled “Luxemburg’s lessons and the roots of Stalinism: A reply to Helen Scott and Paul Le Blanc.”

In our previous letter, we did not “veer off topic,” as Marot asserts, by focusing only on the opening of Marot’s article. That was our topic. It was not our purpose, and it is not our purpose here, to engage in a discussion of Marot’s particular analysis of Rosa Luxemburg’s thought and related historical and economic issues concerning the Russian and German Revolutions. We were and are concerned, more simply, with his distortion of what we say in our introductory essay to The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume V (London: Verso, 2024). Marot has now added new assertions about what we “apparently think” which are also at variance with what we actually think and what we actually wrote.

In his original article, Marot argues against “a common view” that “Luxemburg’s final and irrevocable verdict” holds that “Bolshevism was incompatible with Marx’s dictum that the emancipation of the working class can only be the work of the working class.” Marot associates us with this “thumbnail characterization of Bolshevism, and the attendant teleology… where Stalin’s dictatorship appears largely as Lenin’s ‘dictatorship’ multiplied tenfold.”

We wrote our response because this is a distortion of our position. We have both consistently rejected that “thumbnail characterization.” Rather, it is our contention (as we stated in our correction) 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.” We do not believe, nor do we write anywhere, that Bolshevism led to Stalinism, nor that Lenin represents the antithesis of the political legacy of Luxemburg or Marx.

In his new article, Marot makes two new false claims about what we think: “Le Blanc and Scott apparently think my argument is not worthy of consideration since they say nothing about it” and “My critics are dismayed because they think I am ‘attacking’ Lenin.”

Regarding the first assertion, despite the limited nature of our initial letter as well as this response, in our opinion, the issues that Marot has raised are certainly worth discussing. Some of them have been taken up and discussed at length (with specific reference to some of Marot’s analysis) in Paul Le Blanc, October Song: Bolshevik Triumph, Communist Tragedy, 1917-1924 (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017).

Finally, we were not dismayed because we thought Marot was attacking Lenin. We were dismayed that he was distorting what we say about Luxemburg, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”