Revolution Revisited: Re-reading Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution

In Reform or Revolution, Luxemburg (1900, reprinted 1970) argues that the act of reform within the capitalist system, regardless of its potential to benefit the workers, is ultimately a destructive act because reform serves to extend and perpetuate the capitalist system. Revolution is the only possible way to truly change the system, though in this work she does not indicate whether or not non-violent revolution is possible. This question is key for the field of conflict analysis and resolution because whether we agree with Luxemburg or not indicates how we conceptualize the field and how we approach conflict. Are we attempting to mitigate or manage the most violent conflict, to shift it to less violent forms, to stop the killing; or are we working to be catalysts for greater change and focused beyond ending physical violence? There seems to be merit to both approaches ñ clearly no one interested in resolving conflict would argue that allowing people to die is a good thing. However, it is quite clear that imperfect resolutions can result in more people dying in the long term, so resolution for resolutions sake is also not the answer. The Rwandan genocide, which resulted in part from the failure to resolve an earlier conflict through the Arusha Accords makes this clear. In re-reading Reform or Revolution it is helpful to apply Luxemburg’s ideas to something other than revolution in the sense of a proletarian uprising, and to instead look at how the questions affects conflict resolution.

While some street protests have been effective in recent years, such as the Ukrainian Orange Revolution which led to tangible changes in the government, there is little indication that the masses will rise up against government forces and seize control in most developed countries. Given the stagnation of the proletariat in these countries, we must ask whether revolution is still possible. Some of Marx’s putative followers, such as Bernstein, suggested that in lieu of violent rebellion, the system could be reformed and moved toward socialism through the introduction of more worker-friendly practices. Luxemburg roundly rejected this proposition. Any attempt at reform was simply an excuse to prop up a fundamentally corrupt system doomed to eventually fail.

Reform or Revolution is a direct response to the work of Bernstein and his calls for socialist reform under capitalism. In arguing against Bernstein’s ideas of reform, Luxemburg suggests his propositions were fundamentally system-driven. Something that is created within the capitalist system by default serves to bolster the system. While reforms might benefit the working class in the short-term, they ultimately serve to perpetuate a system ultimately opposed to the interests of the working class. It is first necessary to clarify what Luxemburg meant by the capitalist system or economy. She makes it clear that neither she nor Bernstein were speaking of the same system Marx was speaking of, with individuals bosses and capitalists oppressing individual workers. The growth of industry under capitalism creates an increasingly administrator-based system rather than one based on individual bosses. Luxemburg quotes Schmidt on this point, suggesting the move to an administrator-based version of capitalism diminishes the power of those in authority. Both Schmidt and Bernstein saw this as a good thing – the individual capitalists would lose their power and become administrators. Schmidt said, “the trade-union struggle for hours and wages and the political struggle for reforms will lead to a progressively more extensive control over the conditions of production” (in Luxemburg 1970, 28). Bernstein took this further, and suggested that this diminishing of power, along with a democratization of politics and the abilities of trade unions to demand reforms, could gradually shift the economic system toward socialism. Luxemburg countered that none of these institutions actually have the power to suppress the system, as it is self-serving no matter who is running it. The diffusion of power through reform meant more power resided in the system in the guise of administration than in the hands of the people who were supposed to benefit from the rise of administrative class.

For evidence for her idea that capitalism was expanding, not retreating, Luxemburg offered the example of credit. The credit system allows more people to consume in the market and causes capitalism to become “socialized in the framework of the capitalist society” (50). On the surface, this would seem to be a good thing, because it served to flatten the hierarchical tendencies of capital. More people were able to act as “capitalists” which diminished the power of the individual capitalist. In Bernstein’s view credit shifted more power into the hands of people who would otherwise be workers. In Luxemburg’s view it put the power into the hands of the administrators (and thus more securely in the system itself). In a Marxian sense, this could be seen as creating another layer of alienation, separating the worker as the producer even farther from the fruits of their labor. Though Luxemburg does not put it in these terms, credit was also another means of false liberation, because it allowed people to feel as though they were participating in the system as subjects rather than objects, but in reality they were only losing more control over their own autonomy to the system. Credit was a “means of adaptation” in the capitalist system, and while it did allow more people access to capital, it did not reform the system in the way that Bernstein argued that it could (Luxemburg 1970, 25). Rather than limiting the contradictions in the capitalist economy, as Bernstein believed, Luxemburg argued the expansion of the capitalist economy was also increasing the contradictions within it. Bernstein wanted to work toward a system free of crises, but Luxemburg believed that the crises are fundamental to the system and that to eliminate crises, the capitalist system itself had to be eliminated. It is not just credit that serves to expand and perpetuate the capitalist economy; the very reforms that workers and trade-unions agitate for can serve the same function. Luxemburg uses her wonderful “socialist lemonade” example to highlight this point (39). In her view, revisionist tendencies deny the contradictions inherent in the capitalist economy, and this combined with a rejection of the “comprehension by the working class of the unavoidably of the suppression of these contradictions through a social transformation,” which serves to prevent realization of the class viewpoint and socialism (42). To approach reform like Bernstein not only ignored the realities of crises and contradictions, but it also ignored the realities of the class structure:

It is not true that socialism will arise automatically from the struggle of the working class. Socialism will be the consequence of (1) the growing contradictions of the capitalist economy, and (2) the comprehension by the working class of the unavoidability of the suppression of these contradictions through a social transformation. When, in the manner of revisionism, the first condition is denied and the second rejected, the labor movement finds itself reduced to a simple cooperative and reformist movement. We move here in a straight line toward the total abandonment of a class viewpoint (42-3).

However, there are obstacles to organizing the workers and breaking down the system. While the decline of capitalism is inevitable, this decline also makes it harder for workers and trade-unions to organize, because “the market will be less favorable to the sellers of labor power because the demand for labor power will increase at a slower rate and labor supply more rapidly…” (Luxemburg 1970, 31). In Luxemburg’s view the labor unions were not going to be able to organize the people under these new conditions. The trade unions were serving primarily to allow the workers to participate in the capitalist system, rather than giving them a mechanism to escape the system. She says, “But the principal function of trade unions… consists in providing the workers with a means of realizing the capitalist law of wages, that is to say, the sale of their labor power at current market prices” (Luxemburg 1970, 28). Rather than a revolution led by the unions, she sought a revolution led by the working class itself. primarily serve the interest of the employer and the system.

She argues quite adeptly against political reform:

"That is why people who pronounce themselves in favor of the methods of legislative reform in place of and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society they take a stand for surface modification of the old society" (67).

This is the crisis the field of conflict resolution finds itself in – which goal are we working toward? Are the methods we are using appropriate for getting us there? Are we actually effecting change or are we just making surface modifications, as Luxemburg suggest?

In reading Luxemburg, it is easy to understand the pessimism in some of those who came after her. The capitalist economy is designed to be self-sustaining. If it can not be changed through reforms, as she firmly believes, then that only leaves revolution. However, as she also makes clear, revolution becomes more difficult as capitalism expands, because it is more difficult for the workers to organize themselves effectively. While Marxists believe decline and an ultimate crisis in capitalism are inevitable, which Luxemburg says to reject this is proposition is to reject the very core notions of socialism, it does beg the questions “What next?” The socialist ideal seems less and less likely as workers are increasingly alienated. A drastic change to the system does seem inevitable at some point, but it is not clear that a worker-driven socialist society is most likely immediate result of such a revolution.

As would-be conflict resolvers, where does this leave us? One potential model is to consider structural violence as another type of crisis. Luxemburg suggests that crises are fundamental to the current economic system and can not be eliminated unless the system undergoes revolution. Given the current climate of globalization and the rule of the corporation, it is unlikely that worker exploitation, environmental degradation, street riots, human trafficking, or any of the other evils of the capitalist world are going to ever be truly resolved. However, in working to change the system we can start calling them what they are – crises, or manifestations of the exploitation and violence inherent in capitalism. To borrow an idea from Paulo Friere, our goal should not be just to end violence, but help people understand that they are engaged in a system of violence and oppression. Perhaps there is an intermediary step that Luxemburg did not voice explicitly ñ we do not have to either embrace reformism or simply allow violence to continue while waiting for the inevitable revolution. We can hasten revolutionary change by helping those against who violence is being perpetrated, and perhaps those perpetrating it, as they are locked in the same struggle, that the problem is not the single instance of violence, be it structural or overt, but the system of capitalism.

Work Cited:

Luxemburg, R. (1970). Reform of Revolution. London: Pathfinder.