Rosa Luxemburg
Speeches to Stuttgart Congress
Spoken: October 3 & 4, 1898
Source: Selected Political Writings Rosa Luxemburg, 1971, edited by Dick Howard, text from the German AusgewehlteReden und Schriften, II (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1951), 28-33.
Translated: (from the German) John Heckman
Transcription/Markup: Ted Crawford/Brian Basgen
Copyright: Monthly Review Press © 1971. Printed with the permission of Monthly Review. Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2004.
This is the text of two speeches made to the Stuttgart Congress of the German Social Democratic Party in 1898, in the discussion on tactics.
Speech of October 3, 1898
The speeches of Heine and others
have shown that an extremely important point has been obscured in our
Party, namely that of understanding the relation between our final goal and our
everyday uggles. It might he
said that our program has a pretty passage concerning the final goal, which,
while it certainly shouldn't be forgotten, has no immediate relation to our
practical struggles. Perhaps there are some comrades who think that
speculations about final goals are really academic questions. To them I would
say that for us, as a revolutionary proletarian party, there exists no more
practical question than that concerning ultimate goals.
Think about it: what really
constitutes the socialist character of our whole movement? The really
practical struggle falls into three categories: the trade-union struggle, the struggle for
social reforms, and the struggle to democratize the capitalist state. Are these
three forms of our struggle really socialism? Not at all. Take the trade-union
movement first! Look at England: not only is it not socialist there, but
it is in some respects an obstacle to socialism. Social reform is also
emphasized by Academic Socialists, National Socialists, and similar types. And
democratization is specifically bourgeois. The bourgeoisie had already inscribed democracy on its
banner before see did,
Then what is it in our day to-day
struggles that makes us a socialist party? It can only be the relation between these
three
practical struggles and our final goals. It is the final goal alone which
constitutes the spirit and the content of our socialist struggle, which turns
it into a class struggle. And by final goal we must not mean, as Heine
has said, this or that image of the future state, but the prerequisite for
any future society, namely the conquest of political power. [Shout: "Then
we do agree!] This
conception of our task is closely related to our conception of capitalist
society; it is the solid ground which underlies our view that capitalist
society is caught in insoluble contradictions which will ultimately
necessitate an explosion, a collapse, at which point we will play the role of the
banker-lawyer who liquidates a bankrupt company.
But if we take the position that
we w to bring to fruition
the interest of the proletariat, then it is impossible to make statements such
as those that Heine has recently made to the effect that we can also make
concessions on the question of militarism; it is impossible to make statements such as
those of
Konrad Schmidt to the central committee of the socialist majority in the
bourgeois parliament, impossible to say, as Bernstein has, that once we take
over command of the ship, even then we will not be in a position to do away
with capitalism. When I read that, I said to myself: what a stroke of luck that
the French socialist workers weren't that bright in 1871, for then
they would have said: "Children, let's go to bed, our hour has not yet
struck, production is not yet sufficiently concentrated for us to maintain control of the ship."
But then, instead of a moving drama, instead of a heroic struggle, we
would have seen a different scenario, for then the workers would not have
behaved like heroes, but like old women. I think that arguments about whether,
once we come to power, we s ill be able to make the production process serve
society, whether things are ripe for that, that is an academic
question. For us there can never be
any question that we must struggle to seize political poster. A socialist party
must always have a response appropriate to the situation; it can never shrink
back from its task. Therefore our views on what our final goals are must be
fully clarified. And we will fulfill them, in spite of storm, wind, and
weather. [Applause]
Speech of October
4, 1898
Vollmar has bitterly reproached me
with trying to preach to older veterans when I am still a young recruit to the
movement. That is not the case. It would be superfluous, since I am
convinced that the veterans stand firmly on the same ground as I. It is not at
all a question of preaching to anyone, but of expressing a particular tactic
clearly and unambiguously. I know that I still must earn my epaulets in the
German movement; but I want to do it on the left wing, where people struggle
against the enemy and not on the right wing, where people
seek out compromises with the enemy.[Objections]
But when Vollmar counters my
factual presentations with the argument, "You greenhorn, I could be your
grandfather," that proves to me that his logical arguments are on their
last legs. [Laughter] In fact, in the course of his presentation he made a
series of statements which, coming from a veteran, are confusing, to say the
least.
To Vollmar's sarcastic quotation
from Marx on labor laws, I oppose another quotation from Marx, that the
introduction of labor laws into England meant nothing less than the salvation
of bourgeois society. In addition, Vollmar claimed it was false not to treat
the trade-union movement as socialist and pointed to the [English] trade
unions. And doesn't Vollmar know anything about the difference
between old and new trade unionism?[A] Doesn't he know that the old
trade unionists stood hard and fast on the side of the bourgeoisie? Doesn't he
know that it was none other than Engels who expressed the hope that the
socialist movement might now advance in England because England had lost
its supremacy on the world market and that therefore the trade-union movement
must take a new path? Vollmar trotted out the specter of Blanquism. Doesn't
he know the difference between Blanquism and Social Democracy? Doesn't
he know that for the Blanquists it is a handful of emissaries who are to
take power in the name of the working class; for Social Democrats it is the
working class itself? That is a difference that no one who is a veteran
of the Social Democratic movement should forget.
Thirdly, he insinuated that I lust
for violent means. I have not given any pretext for such an accusation, either
in my statements or in my articles on Bernstein in the Leipziger Volkzeitung.[B] I take
exactly the opposite position. I say that the only violent means that will
bring us victory are the socialist enlightenment of the working class through
day-to-day struggle.
One could find no higher
compliment for my statements than to say that they are completely self-evident.
They are certainly self-evident to any Social Democrat; but they are not
self-evident for everyone here at the convention ["Oh!"] for example, not for
Comrade Heine with his politics of compensation. How does this relate to
the seizure of power? In what does a policy of compensation consist? We demand the
strengthening of people's rights, of democratic freedoms: the
capitalist state demands the strengthening of its own forces and its cannon.
Evyen given the most advantageous case, that such an agreement is honorably
concluded and kept by both sides: what we get is only a piece of paper. Borne
has already said: "I would not advise anyone to take a mortgage on a German
constitution. for all German constitutions are like so many pieces of
furniture. " Constitutional freedoms, if they are to have any permanent
worth, must be won through struggle, not through agreements. But what the
capitalist state would get by securing an agreement with us has a firm, brutal
reality.
The cannon and soldiers to which we would agree will shift the objective material
balance of power against us. It was none other than Lassalle who said:
"The true constitution of any country consists not in its written
constitution, but in the real balance of power." The inevitable result of
a politics of compensation is that we agree to relationships which appear
favorable on paper, but which in objective reality favor our opponents;
that we basically weaken our own position and strengthen that of our opponents.
I ask whether anyone can say that someone who suggests such a thing is
seriously trying to take political power? I think that the anger with which
Comrade Fendrich emphasized the obviousness of this tendency was
erroneously addressed to me; it is basically aimed at Heine. It was only an
expression of the sharp contradiction that Heine created between his position
and that of our Party's proletarian convictions when he dared
to speak of a politics of concessions toward the capitalist state.
Then take the statement of Konrad
Schmidt, that the anarchy of capitalist rule can be overcome through
trade-union struggles, or some such. If anything in our program gives credence to the necessity
for the seizing of political power, it is the conviction that no medicinal
herbs can grow in the dirt of capitalist society which can help cure
capitalist anarchy. Anarchy - the terrible sufferings of the working
class, the insecurity of people's existence, exploitation, the distance between
rich and poor - increases every day. Can anyone say that someone who wants to
solve these problems through capitalist means sees the necessity for the
seizure of political power by the working-class? Even here, Fendrich's
and Vollmar's anger is not directed at me, but at Konrad Schmidt.
And then the well-known statement
[by Bernstein] in the Neue Zeit: "The final goal, whatever it may be, is nothing to me: the
movement is everything! " Anyone who says that does not stand for the necessity of
seizing political power. You see that some comrades in the Party do not stand
for the final goals of our movement, and that it is necessary to express that fact
unambiguously. If ever it was necessary, now is the time. The blows of reaction
shower on us like hail. This debate must answer the Kaiser's
latest speech. Like the Roman Cato, we most say sharply and clearly, "In
addition, I am of the opinion that this state must be destroyed." The
conquest of political power remains the final goal and that final goal remains
the soul of the struggle. The working class cannot take the decadent
position of the philosophers: "The final goal is nothing to me, the
movement is everything." No, on the contrary, without relating the movement to the
final goal, the movement as an end in itself is nothing to me, the final goal
is everything. [Applause]
[A]
The "old" trade unions were professional unions which, by the
1890's, had been fully integrated into the system. The "new" unions,
the first of which was led by Tom Mann, John Burns and the Fabian W. A. Morris,
wanted to unite the workers of whole industries. Their efforts led to the
dockers' strike in August 1889, and the formation of the dockers'
union. The "new" unions grew rapidly, and fought a number of
successful struggles. They then formed the Independent Labour Party, which
eventually led to the formation of the Labour Party. As W. Abendroth puts it,
"the new trade unions were the first systematic, independent struggle by
the working class since the demise of Chartism."
[B]
The reference is to the first part of Social Reform or Revolution, which appeared in the Leipziger
Volkzeitung from September 21 to 28, 1898.