The Classics, Part 8a
Rosa Luxemburg
The
Mass Strike
“The Mass Strike” (a downloadable
compilation is linked below) is a 1906 Rosa Luxemburg classic, with a message that is similar to Lenin’s 1902
“What is to be Done?”
Rosa Luxemburg, in the third paragraph of her Chapter 1, demolishes the
anarchist, syndicalist, workerist, “economist” approach to the Mass Strike
thus:
“either the proletariat as a whole are not yet in
possession of the powerful organisation and financial resources required, in
which case they cannot carry through the general strike; or they are already
sufficiently well organised, in which case they do not need the general
strike.”
This does not mean that the Mass Strike, or general strike, is ruled out
always and forever as a tactic; but only that the Mass Strike tactic must arise
necessarily and organically from the circumstances, as Rosa Luxemburg goes on
to explain. But then it may come to pass that instead of over-eager anarcho-syndicalists
with no subjective or objective basis, the trade unions may be dominated by
over-cautious reformists. Rosa Luxemburg records that the German trade union
movement was approaching a two million membership, roughly the same as COSATU
in South Africa today, but it was reluctant to move.
Rosa Luxemburg describes the 1906 problematic of Germany thus:
“The German labour
movement… assumes the peculiar form of a double pyramid whose base and body
consist of one solid mass but whose apexes are wide apart… To desire the unity
of these through the union of the party executive and the general commission is
to desire to build a bridge at the very spot where the distance is greater and
the crossing more difficult. Not above, amongst the heads of the leading
directing organisations and in their federative alliance, but below, amongst
the organised proletarian masses, lies the guarantee of the real unity of the
labour movement.” [last page of “The Mass Strike” compilation,
linked below].
This argument supports the SACP tactic of developing Voting District
Branches, so that the “real unity” of
the South African National Democratic Revolutionary Alliance can be
structurally put into effect “below”
– at local level – between its constituent parts: ANC, SACP, COSATU and SANCO.
The relationship of the party and the class, or in Luxemburg’s
particular terms “the social democracy” and "the
trade-unions", opens up in Chapter 6 of The Mass Strike to a vision of
a revolutionary ensemble that must necessarily go far beyond
the structures of its previously-organised components, which are bound to be a
minority of the whole. Luxemburg writes:
“The plan of
undertaking mass strikes as a serious political class action with organised
workers only is absolutely hopeless. If the mass strike, or rather, mass
strikes, and the mass struggle are to be successful they must become a real
people’s movement, that is, the widest sections of the proletariat must be
drawn into the fight… Here the
organisation does not supply the troops of the struggle, but the struggle, in
an ever growing degree, supplies recruits for the organisation.
“… it is not
permissible to visualise the class movement of the proletariat as a movement of
the organised minority.
“…the sections
which are today unorganised and backward will, in the struggle, prove
themselves the most radical, the most impetuous element, and not one that will
have to be dragged along…
“If we now leave the pedantic scheme of demonstrative
mass strikes artificially brought about by order of parties and trade unions,
and turn to the living picture of a peoples’ movement arising with elementary
energy, from the culmination of class antagonisms and the political situation—a
movement which passes, politically as well as economically, into mass struggles
and mass strikes—it becomes obvious that the task of social democracy does not
consist in the technical preparation and direction of mass strikes, but, first
and foremost, in the political leadership of the whole movement.”
Luxemburg is saying that the political structure must lead. The trade
union movement cannot lead the revolution. Please read Chapter 6 of The Mass
Strike, linked below, and especially the concluding words.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: The Mass Strike, 1906, Rosa
Luxemburg.
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