The letters written before she takes up the task of responding to Bernstein reveals a woman who keeps before her the uprisings of enslaved workers attempting to free themselves from the stranglehold of the capitalists, the ruling class, while the SPD leaders were capitulating to the demands of the capitalists. (Sounds similar to the so-call "leadership" of unions and organizations and politicians today whose only interest is to appease the capitalists). In a letter to another friend, Clara Zetlin (after December 16, 1906), she is Rosa writing:
The masses, and still more the great mass of [party] comrades, in their hearts of hearts, have had their fill of parliamentarism. That's the feeling I get. They would welcome joyously any breath of fresh air in party tactics. But the older authorities still weigh down heavily on them, and even more so, the upper stratum of opportunist editors, elected officials, and trade union leaders. Our task now is simply to counteract these authorities, who have become all rusted over, with protest that will be as rough and brusque as possible. And in doing this--such is the nature of the situation--we will be opposed not so much by the opportunists as by the Executive and by Bebel. As long as it was a matter of a defensive struggle, against Bernstein and Co., Bebel and the Executive were glad to have our companionship and assistance--because they themselves, more than anyone, were shaking in their boots. But when it comes to an offensive against opportunism, then the old timers stand with Ede [Bernstein], Vollmar and David against us.
Realistically, Luxemburg was a major thorn in the side of the Patriarchs while she was alive and active! "Social Reform and Revolution" is as much an offensive tactic against the infiltration of opportunism in the SPD (beginning with its leaders who, Luxemburg argues, fail to hear the "great masses" of the party) as it is an attack on Bernstein's practice of revisionism.
In "Social Reform and Revolution," Luxemburg is emphatic! Reforms, she writes, are a good way to engage "in the proletarian class struggle" while "working in the direction of the final goal--the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labor." In other words, "the practical daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for the democratic institutions, offers Social Democracy the only means of engaging" with and in the proletarian struggle. "For Social Democracy there exists an indissoluble tie between social reforms and revolution. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution its goal."
However, she continues, Bernstein's theory advocates the priority of reform. His article on "Problems of Socialism," published in the Neue Zeit (1897-1998) and in his book, The Presuppositions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy,
Bernstein, Luxemburg writes, "tends to counsel the renunciation of the social transformation, the final goal of Social Democracy, and inversely, to make social reforms, which are the means of the class struggle, into its end."
Luxemburg recognized then as we witness now in the 21st Century, the formation of "careerists" of the "movement," who in their actions declare, as Bernstein did in writing, that "the final goal"is nothing to me."
The opportunist current in the Party, whose theory is formulated by Bernstein, is nothing but an unconscious attempt to assure the predominance of the petty-bourgeois elements that have entered our Party, to change the policy and aims of our Party in their direction.
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