ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN'S LIBERATION,

AND MARX'S PHILOSOPHY . OF REVOLUTION

Raya Dunayevskaya

NEW JERSEY: HUMANITIES PRESS SUSSEX: HARVESTER PRESS

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First published in 1982 in the United States of America by Humanities Pr-ess Inc., ·'Atl~tic High):li.nds, NJ 07716 and in·Eng!and by Harvester PreAS Ltd.

. .,.: - - . -.

~Copyright 1981 by Raya Dunayevskaya

Ub~ Or Congress Csuto:ins hi Publication Data_

Dunayevskaya, R&ya. Rosa_ Luxemburg. women's liberation, ami Marx's philosophy of revolution.

Bibllogn\phy: p. Includes index. I. Luxemburg. Rosa, 1871-1919. 2. Marx.- Karl,

18i~J.8.83.- 3; Women and socialitm. 4. Revolutions­and socialism. L Title. H..X273.L83D86 1982 33S 4'092'4 81-24063 ISBN 0-391-02569-4 -McJU- -ISBS 0·39Hl2793-X (paper)

Harves.tcr Press Ltd. -Engla!td ISBN 0 7108 0400 fi

AU rights reserved. No part ofthl5 pl!blic~~:tlon m•y be reprodUCi::;!, stored In a retrieval sysum or transmitted In t.ny other form or any mean!!, el~tronic:, photocopyins. recordins or otherwise~ without the permi::3ion in wriUnt from the publisher.

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J"m telling you thizt as sOon a~ I Can stick iny nOieout agaifl I_ will hunt and harry yoursociety_offrogs with trumpet blasts, whip crackir.gs; and bloOdhounds-/ike Pimthesi!ea 1 wantf!d to say. but by God, you pi!ople are no Achilles. Have you hiJd enough of a New Year's greeting now?- Then see to it that you, stay. 'human ••• Being h:lman meansjo;:fully throwing your whole life -.. on the scales Clfdestiny"when need be, but all the while rejoicing in c~·cry sunny :!a}' and C\'er)' bf!autif:.:l cloud. Ach.I k::ot•: cfr:o fiJrmula to wdte-youforbt!lng human. ••

. Rosa Luxemburg. 1916

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Everything depen-ds upOn the. historical background in which k fin:!, itself • . ~If the Russian Revolution becomes the siglla/fora proletarian re~·olution in the West. so that both complement each- . ath~r; the present Russian common oWnership-of/and may serye · . as the starting point for a communist development.

Karl Marx, 1881, IS82

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frorD; _Mikhail Lifshitz, The Rosdolsk:Y. The Making.of

i.o•latioru from LeOn TroL"ky.I905,

TABLE OF CONTENTS-

Introduction ix

Part One: Rosa Luxemburg as Theoretician, as Aclil•ist, as ln/emationa!ist Chapter I Two Turning Points in LuXemburg's Life: Before and

After the 1905 Revolution Chapter 11 The }:Jreak with Kautsky, 1910-11: From Mass Strike

Theory to Crisi_~- over Morocco-and Hushed-Up .. Woman Question" 17

_Chapter III Marx's and Luxemburs's Theories of Accumulation of Capital, its_ Crises- and its Inevitable Downfall 31-

Chapter IV From th~- "N:ttiorlai_Question .. and Imperialism to the _ Dialectics of Revoh.1tior.; the Relationship of Sponta­neity and Consciousness to Organization in the Dis-putes with Lenin, 1904. 1917 51

Chapter V \Var, Prison, and Revolutions, ~914-19 67

Part Two: The Women's Liberatioff Movemen/ as Revolu;iohar)' Force and Reason ..

Chapter VI An Oven•iew by Way of Introduction; the Black

Chapter Vll Chapter VIII

Dimension Luxemburg as Feminist; Break with Jogiches The TaSk that Renlains to be Done: The Unique and Unfinished Contributions ofToday•s Women•s LibCr~ ation Movement

79-89

99

Part Three: Karl Mal'x-From Critic of Hegel to Aulhor of Capital and Theon"st of"Revolu!ion in Permantmce"

Chapter IX Marx Discovers a New Continent or Thought end of Revolution 11 S

1. A Preliminary Note on the Dialectic: In Marx of the Early 1840s; in Luxemburg. 1902; in Lenin, 1914 11 S

2. Prometheus Bound, 1841-43 ' 122 3. Prometheus Unbound, 1844-18 124

.Chapter X A Decade of Historic "I."ransfcirmation: From -the Grundrisse to Capital 133

· 1. ..EconOmic:s,u 1857-58: Only ClaSs Struggles,_ or ·~Epochs of Social Revolution .. '? · 133

2:-' Capit_al: Significance of the 1875 French Edition of Volume 1 · - ~- -· · 139

Chaptef:XI The PhilosOpher of Pennanent Revolution Creates New GrOund fur or(;aniz.atiori · 153

1. Cn'tique of the Gotha Program l 53 2. _ M_S.rx's Theory of Permanent Revolution, 1843-83 158

Afterword: Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution 165 Ch3pter XII The L..'l'it.Writ!ngs of Marx Point a Trail to the-1980s 175

· 1. PoSt-M:mt.Marxists, Be Sinning with Frederick En&els 175 2. The Unknown EthnologiCal Notebooks, the Unread

Drafts of the Letter to Zasutich, as Well as the UridigCsted 1882 Preface to the Russian Edition of the Communist Manifesto 180

3. The New Moments of the Revolutionary Philosophic- : Historic Concepts DisCovered by Marx .in the Last Decade ofl·lis Life 188

4. A 1980s View , 192 Appendix: First English Translation of Rosa Luxemburg's Address

to the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic :Labor Party, London, 1907 · 199

SeleCted Bibliography Index

207 223

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Introduction

Moveme~n~l:~1~i~~~:~:;1~~~~~ author to who raised impinges on spontaueity

·feminist d1mension-of calls for the record Moreover,- ibere i~> n absorb Luxcmburg•s revolutio:na.i their demands of the

Today's Wom:n1 •• 1s~~:~:~~~,:. aspects, previo'Jsly_ r. fact that the task Luxemburg's works

grappling 'i~.·~i·~th;,M~~·:"':~·~·~~~~:=:~E revolution. To dci Women's

From the '133

Struggles, Or

'li'Rosa Luxemburg's Address ~.e RuSsian Soci<il-DernoCratic

133

139

180

188 192

,107' 199

207 223

Introduction

Three very different types of events in the 1970s have promPted this work. One. The transcription of the last writings .from Man's j>en, The EthnolOgical. No!ebooks.of Karl Marx, crt:ated 2. new vc>..ntage point from which to vieW Marx's oeul'res as· a totality._ This Cast so nevi an illumina"tion, on both his fint ( 1844) historic-philosophic concept of Man/Woman and his last ( 1881-82) analysis, as to undermine ·the long-held view· of post-Marx Marxists_ that

. Frederick Engels's The Origin of the Family. Pn"vateProperty, and the State was a .. joint" work ofMarx and Engels. What became &s translucent, when uut of the archives had come Marx's unpublished draft letters to Vera Zasulich, was Marx's concept of permanent revolution. ·This made clear, at one and the same time, how very deep must be the uproOting of class_ societY and hoW broad

· the view of the forces.ofrevolution. It Jed Marx to projecting nothing short of the possibility of a rcvolutioJl ocCurring in a backwaf11land like Russia aht:ad of -one in the technologically advanced West

Two. It cannot be altogether accidentr:il that those writings came to light in · _', the period oftlle emergence of an historic objective cveni.:.-the tiansfonnation of Women's Liberation as an Idea ,Vhos·e time had come into a worldwide·. Movement. However, it is not only the objectivity of this event that has led this: author to focus on Rosa Luxemburg. First and foremost, it was Luxemburg who raised so forcefully the question- of spontaneity of the masses that it impinges on an urgent question of our day: what is the relationship of spontaneity to both consciousness and .. the Party"? ThC total diSrCganJ of the fcminbot dimension of Rosa Luxemburg by Marxists and non-Marxists alike calls for the record t:o be straightened on that dimension in Luxem:,urg. Moreover, there i~ ·a need for today•s· Women's Liberation Movement to absorb,Luxemburg's revolutionary dimension, not for history's. sake but for their demands of the day. including that of autonomy.

Today's Women's Liberation Movement_has'introduced new and unique aspects. previously raised neither by non-Marxists nor Mdrxists. But the very fact that the tnsk remains unfinished points to the need_ to study further Luxemburg's works both u.s feminist and ns revolutionarY. And that nteans grappling with Marx's works, not just ns ''writings" but as a philosoph)' of revolution. To do nnything short of that impedes the development of the Women's Liberation Mo\-·~mc~l to its full potc~tial as Reason ns wcllt~s forte,

,,

Three. In this age when the myriad crises reached a global climax with the 1974-75 economic crisis, there is no doubt whatever that. far from being a question of the 1970s, it is a question of what Marx called .. the law Of motion of capitalist' society" to its collapse, the rise of the .Third World, and the imperztive need ro·r a· tutally n~nr o;ociety oD truly human foundations: Even

· mattCrs such as the publication of newly discovered unpublished works and IJew English translations of old works-including a new translation ofMarx's greatest th.coretical work? Cilpital, restoring to it Marx's ov,:n. "'Hegelian" language in ueconomics"-point to the intense? continuous interest in Mtlrxism. It fer transcends any single decade's preoccupation, or any single revolutionary force's aspirations, be it Labor or Woman, Youth or the Black Dimension.. It discloses a passion for revolution, as well as for a philosophy of · re·volution, that would assure its continuance also after the conquest of poWer.

It is because Marx discovered a whole new continent of thought and of revolution and because he so creatively held together in unison both concept and pnictice that grappling with Marx•s·Marxism has become a-matter of global urgency. Whether one locks at the economic crises or their o!)posite­nct onlY class struggles but the national liberation movements, even where they noy{ are forced to function under the whip of counter-revolution-the fact is that new forms ofrt:Volt keep emerging. They have erupted in Portugal, and in China in .. t..'le year of great troubles under heaven, .. when neveri.helcss there

--was rhe spOntaneous great mass outpouring even before Mao had said his last hurrah. They have erupted _in Iran, and in benighted South Afric&· •. where the Black Dimension is forever rising from the ashes. They hiwe eiupted from under Communist totalitarianism, as in Poland,· and from under Latin American oligarchy propped -up by United States imperialism, as in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The greatest contrai:Hction in all thi::se crosScurrents stems from 1he very depth of the economic-po1itica1-social crises, which produce a great desire for shortcuts to freedom. Instead of grappling with the working outClfa philosophy of liberation for our· age, theoreticians look only for ••root causes" of oppression. This is good, but hardly good enough. It narrows the whole relationship between cnusnlity and freedom; it impedes the dual rhythm of revolution that demands uot only the overthrow of the old, but the creation of the new.ln place of hewing out a road to totnl freedom, it gets hemmed in by one ronn or anothernfeconomic determinism. This is why it is necessary not to be diverted from a return to ihe t\ltality of Marx's Marxism, which never separated philosophy of revolution from actu'll revo1ution: each by itself is

one· sided. What Marx developed in his discovery of a new continent of thought is that

Mind is free and, when tightly related to the creativity of the masses in motion, shows itself to be self·detennined and ready for fusioi!. in freedom. lndeed, bcfo1·e he openly broke _from bourgeois Society, Mafx in 1841: thOugh still a

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··Prometheus Bound"' iri academia, posed the problematic 'of the day: the relationship of philosophy to reality. _ As against the familiarly-held vie~. that Marx developed frpm providing a PhilosOphic critique to a!' economic basis for his theory of revo~ution, .Marx developed Historical Materialism as a theory of p_ermanent revolution,· not_

. merely by standing Hcgel .. right side up"·and ''taki_ng over" t}_le Hegelit.n dialectic, but by going back to history's ·root of the Hegelian dialectic-the problem which .detennined Hegel's .. dialectic, i.e .. , th'e duaJ rhythm of the French Revolution. It is the negation oftiu! negation which Marx singled out as the creative force and Reason of dialectic methodology. It is that which·· FeuCrbach f~ilcd to grasp, S.nd Hegel tiimselfhad·covered with a "mystic veil.'' In saving the Hegelian dialectic from what Marx called Hegel's "dch~maniza-· · lion" of the Idea, as if its self-determination were mere thought rathc·r than human beings thinking and acting, Marx dug deep intO revolution, j:lermancnt revolution. Marx's unyielding concentration on revolution, on rcvolutionarv praxiS-revolutionary ruthless critique of aU that exists-reve~ls-thatdialectic~l .philosophy was the basis of the tota/iryofMarx's work, not only in philosophy but in practice, and in beth politics and economics. This being so. the' -transfonnation of reality remains the warp and woof.ofthe Marxian dialectic. This dialectical principle wiU show itself. I hope, to be the unifying force for an th_rec parts of the book, that is to say, not only of Part Three-''Karl Marx: From Critic of Hegel to Author of Capital and Theorist of'Revoluticn in Permaneoce"' -but also Parts One. and Two-'' Rosa Luxemburg llS Theore­tician, as Activist. as Intcmatiooa1ist;• and "The Womcn's· Libemtior. Movement as Revolutionary Force' and Reason." ·- ·_

Gatliering together the threads of the three parts or this work was made relatively easy by gathering. the threads of Marx's development because there we become witness, at one and the same time, to "hew" Marx transformed Hegel's revolution in philosophy into a philosophy of~volution, and to how sensitively Marx had his cars attunCd to the voices from below. so that what he had named his philosophy-"a new Humanism" -was continuously developing. -Just as the young Marx, in first turning to what he called "Economics," had discovered the proletariat as the Subject who would be the "gravedigger of capitalism" and the leader of proletarian revolution, sO. a~ the end of hi!'i life~· Marx made still ncwerdisco\rerie:: as he turned to new, empirical anthropolog.icpl studies likt; Morgnn'sAnci~nt Society as well as to the imperial incursions into the Orient and the carving up cf Africa. -

From the study of primitive communism Marx mode stiU newer discoverieS, including. at one nod the same time, a subitantiation of hi:; early Man/Wornan concept and of the way he had. in his summation of the Paris Commune, singled out :ts its greatest achievement" its own working existence ... As will be clear from Marx's letter; to Zasulich. in the_vcry period during which he was working on the Ethnological Notebooks. he viewed the peasants not only as a

"5ee0nd ecJ.itiOn.''.ofthe-Peasant warS to assure the_success of the proletarian . -vir.tory~ but atsO-as Possioly_ instrUmental in _still newe_r revolutions.· As Mnrx dUg into the history-of the remains of the Russian peasant i::ominune, he did riot

-- __ think i~-out'Ofthc :question that, if a union with Western technologically · .· .ldvaitced _ soCiety was posSible,. a rev·otution~ _could ·actually come flJ'St _in backW_~_Russi_a._This was in 1882! _. . ·_ ·-_-.No- wonder thBt Our_ age·too feels ~e- impact of the problematic MD.rx ·

grappled with in his day: the new revolutionary forces that dO not easily arisC and are nOt easily imagined. which were so prOfoundly posed in Marx'S new

. continent of th_oughf.and of revolution. Whether or not cur age risCs to the - historic task oftran,sforming reality. of one thing there is no doubt! Marx had

hewed Out a· road. not oOly for Luxemburg's gcnera~on, but for C?Urs.

May 5,!981 Detr9it. M~c:higan

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Raya Dunaycvskaya

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