Luxemberg vs Lenin and a comment on Hayek (and Wieser)

The history of the Russian labor movement suggests the doubtful value of such centralism. An all-powerful center, invested, as Lenin would have it, with the unlimited right to control and intervene, would be an absurdity if its authority applied only to technical questions, such as the administration of funds, the distribution of tasks among propagandists and agitators, the transportation and circulation of printed matter. The political purpose of an organ having such great powers only if those powers apply to the elaboration of a uniform plan of action, if the central organ assumes the initiative of a vast revolutionary act.

But what has been the experience of the Russian socialist movement up to now? The most important and fruitful changes in its tactical policy during the last ten years have not been the inventions of several leaders and even less so of any central organizational organs. They have always been the spontaneous product of the movement in ferment. This was true during the first stage of the proletarian movement in Russia, which began with the spontaneous general strike of St. Petersburg in 1896, an event that marks the inception of an epoch of economic struggle by the Russian working people. It was no less true during the following period, introduced by the spontaneous street demonstrations of St. Petersburg students in March, 1901. The general strike of Rostov-on-Don, in 1903, marking the next great tactical turn in the Russian proletarian movement, was also a spontaneous act. ���All by itself,��� the strike expanded into political demonstrations, street agitation, great outdoor meetings, which the most optimistic revolutionist would not have dreamed of several years before.

Our cause made great gains in these events. However, the initiative and conscious leadership of the Social Democratic organizations played an insignificant role in this development. It is true that these organizations were not specifically prepared for such happenings. However, the unimportant part played by the revolutionists cannot be explained by this fact. Neither can it be attributed to the absence of an all-powerful central party apparatus similar to what is asked for by Lenin. The existence of such a guiding center would have probably increased the disorder of the local committees by emphasizing the difference between the eager attack of the mass and the prudent position of the Social Democracy. The same phenomenon ��� the insignificant part played by the initiative of central party organs in the elaboration of actual tactical policy ��� can be observed today in Germany and other countries. In general, the tactical policy of the Social Democracy is not something that may be ���invented.��� It is the product of a series of great creative acts of the often spontaneous class struggle seeking its way forward.--Rosa Luxemburg (1904) "Revolutionary Socialist Organization," part 1.

It is well known that despite their mutual admiration, and their common rejection of reformist/gradualist social democracy ('Bersteinism,') Lenin and Luxemburg also had some important disagreements. The quoted passage is from Luxemburg's response to Lenin's (1904) One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, and shows familiarity with Lenin's (1902) What is to be Done? In these works Lenin had advocated for an all powerful central party apparatus, as Luxemburg suggests. This apparatus was supposed to be secret (to avoid capture by the police) and constituted by an elite group of professional revolutionaries. (Lenin is also very critical of an exclusive, trade unionist focus on economic issues.) Lenin's argument appeals to the benefits of the division of labor among professional revolutionaries to the development of a professional cadre with different kind of specializations (agitators, propagandists, theoreticians, etc.) It is worth noting that the demand for secrecy is an effect of the Russian context (it being an autocratic police-state with few liberties of association), but the focus on professionalism seems less context sensitive for Lenin (nothing that follows hinges this, I hope). 

Luxemburg's intervention on the side of the spontaneous activity is notable not just because she risks being seen to side here, in part, with those gradualists she ordinarily condemns, but also because it appears she rejects the advantages of the division of labor to the revolution. In particular, Lenin's vanguardism solves a kind of knowledge problem for the proletariat which, while being exploited, lacks access to the intellectual tools to plan and organize a revolution. (It's short on human capital one may say.) Because I am not a Marxist, I hope the next part of this sentence is not treated as thinly-disguised-polemic, but it strikes me that Lenin is right to think that his view is well grounded in Marxist-Leninist writings (despite their criticisms of the division of labor under capitalism).* 

As an aside -- this may be more fairly construed as more polemical, but it is meant to be factual observation --, vanguardism does introduce an important tension into Marxism from a purely theoretical point of view. For, one of the key claims on behalf of Marxism, very clearly annunciated in the Communist Manifesto, is that it promises rule by the majority against the minority. And one need not be an Elite theorist to recognize how rare that it is. (The aristocratic element in liberal democracy -- elections to representative bodies -- secures (to be sure, legitimate) minority rule over a majority.) Vanguardism is a clear break with the idea of majority rule, which is why it is promised to be provisional. Of course, the non-trivial risk is that once in power the vanguard becomes a (new) species of elite rule.

So, Luxemburg's attack on the Leninist counterfactual ("The existence of such a guiding center would have probably increased the disorder of the local committees") is not merely an invention over a tactical debate, but also addresses a principled issue for Marxism. And here I want to call attention to two epistemic features of her position that are meant to respond to Lenin's solution to the knowledge problem for a revolutionary proletariat. First, she argues that central coordination does not increase unity and effectiveness, but is likely to cause disorder. And she attributes this to difference of positional or situated perspective which results inevitably in different stances (prudence vs enthusiasm), which itself undermines common agency. Of course, this is not a very convincing response to Lenin because the very enthusiasm of the masses is not sufficient to make a revolution (and often is directed at only local improvement without wider political regard). This is why Luxemburg's second point, the rejection of top-down policy, is significant.

Second, I read her as suggesting that many local struggles are each occasions of learning, trials that may in their very spontaneity and so novelty lead to new discoveries: where conflict induced necessity  generates "great creative acts." Each local trial of strength between the proletariat and the authorities and/or capital provides a feedback mechanism from which to learn in which (the revolutionary consciousness of) the working class is trained. And, in particular, over time this will create a critical mass of "the existence of a large contingent of workers educated in the class struggle" (presumably capable of revolutionary politics). So, from her perspective the temptation of vanguardism is understandable, but with patience (and class struggle) avoidable. 

By contrast, Lenin is quite clear that he thinks this is bunk--that a central clearinghouse is needed to integrate lessons learned and to provide the necessary expertise, to coordinate, and to educate. So, I am not suggesting Luxemburg wins this argument. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight we can see that he was right that vanguardism could achieve real power. But at the same time, Luxemburg was prescient in discerning that such vanguardism would inevitably lead to rule of a minority over a majority (as she notes "the self-discipline of the Social Democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee.")

Now, what I want to note, in conclusion, is that Luxemburg's position on the spontaneous, bottom up education by the proletariat through local struggle is structurally analogous to (recall)the view that Michael Polanyi and then, more famously, Hayek develop in the 1930s on the way learning occurs in markets and the generation of spontaneous order. To be sure, knowledge about the spontaneous order generating features of markets pre-date Luxemburg, so I am not suggesting she influenced their development of the concept, which was already familiar. (And Polanyi is surely influenced by the way 'spontaneous' is used in chemistry and physics of the nineteenth century.) But anyone familiar with debates among Marxists at the start of the twentieth century, will be quickly struck by how important and intense the debate over revolutionary spontaneity is. This debate died circa 1920.

Hayek (1899 ��� 1992) and Michael Polanyi  (1891 ��� 1976) came to maturity in the aftermath of this debate. While Polanyi never seems to have flirted with social democracy (and was not especially educated in economics), Hayek was clearly (and un-controversially) influenced by Wieser and charmed by Wieser's 'Fabian socialist' tendencies as a student. The Fabians were the standard-bearers of social democratic gradualism (which is at times compatible, of course, with left liberalism). So, it's worth exploring to what degree Wieser and the young Hayek were themselves enmeshed in, or at least aware of, the debates over the epistemic merits of spontaneous proletarian action. 

 

 

*I am always a bit amused that Marxism requires bourgeois or upper class traitors for the revolution to succeed.