Breaking into the boys’ club: Rosa Luxemburg’s Place in History

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Breaking into the boys’ club: Rosa Luxemburg’s Place in History

By Glenn Burleigh

The article that thrust her into the limelight of German socialist thought was “Reform or Revolution,” a refutation of “Problems of Socialism” by Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein’s article was published in Die Nue Zeit, a newspaper edited by German Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Karl Kautsky, and is viewed as a rejection of scientific socialism in favor of evolutionary social change.

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Bernstein’s Argument

According to Bernstein, reform of capitalism will lead to socialism; capitalism is capable of creating an egalitarian state, he said, and therefore there is no reason for the working class to seek the conquest of political and economic power. The trade unions will create good working conditions, good pay, and true working-class power in the economic system; and capitalists will become mainly administrative in their economic role. In general, he suggested, the ever-evolving nature of capitalism would destroy its contradictions by means of credit, cartels and better means of communication.

The rise of the international credit system, he said, will enable capitalists to borrow in times of overproduction and economic downturns, allowing them the stability needed to stop the cyclical nature of the economy and ensure the resources necessary to keep the workers employed at a living wage.

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Luxemburg’s Refutation

By connecting capital, Luxemburg countered, the emerging international credit system increases the mutual sensitivity of capitalists to economic crises, keeping production artificially high and separating production from ownership by creating “social” capital in this international credit system. It also causes a small group of capitalists to accumulate immense productive powers and increases the social nature of production.

Cartels, for their part, increase the rate of profit in one field at the expense of the rates of profit in others, which creates conflict between industrial conglomerates. As members of the cartels move to restrict production, to stop crisis, they will idle productive capacity, putting workers out of their jobs. Finally, when world capitalist forces extend to their limits, regulations in those countries will give way to hyper-competition. This will create worsening conditions for workers, sharpening the class conflict.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/2877/1/154/