Dérive

Paul Frölich’s biography of Rosa Luxemburg is an engrossing and informative read. Far shorter than the perhaps better-known two-part work by J.P. Nettl, the work is no less important for understanding Luxemburg’s life, times, and massive theoretical contributions. I’ve never fully appreciated the importance of Luxemburg’s work until now: it’s one thing to know the laudatory quotes (Frantz Mehring called her “the best brain after Marx,” and Lenin likened her to an eagle sorrowing over all her detractors) and another experience the full power of her thought. Frölich follows Luxemburg’s life from her early years in Poland to a seasoned revolutionary at the end of World War One. Along the way, he describes many important events taking place in European socialism such as the revisionist dispute surrounding Edward Bernstein and the parliamentary entryist debate surrounding Alexandre Millerand. Massive events of world importance loom overhead, including the first and second Russian Revolution...

Over a decade ago, Mike Macnair published an article 1 in the Weekly Worker describing a “slow-motion ‘split’” in the Communist Party of Great Britain - Provisional Central Committee (CPGB-PCC). Three comrades (presumably on the younger side) had left the CPGB without voicing a united or coherent oppositional perspective. One particular comrade had spoken about the difficulty he had experienced forming a coherent oppositional perspective when faced with more experienced members of the majority. The rather confused statement that the comrades would continue to defend the CPGB’s draft program in their new political homes led Macnair to state that, on its face, the departure appeared non-political. The rest of Macnair’s article details the reasons why the split was eminently political. Though a small event, the split demonstrated “core” problems facing the British far left. Macnair’s article led to a reflection on my time in the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) in the United S...

Konstantin Yuon New Planet (1921) Jack Conrad is a leading member of the CPGB-PCC and a frequent writer for the Weekly Worker . His 2022 three-part series describing Leon Trotsky's 'The Lessons of October' is of considerable interest given how central the work is in understanding the Russian Revolution from a Bolshevik's perspective. Jack contends that Trotsky's interpretation of events should be questioned and overcome. What follows is my reflection on the series.  Part 1: The history of 1917 is often used to justify sectarian existence: "if the Bolsheviks could do it, so can the chosen confessional sect or the broad left." this interpretation relies on a misrepresentation of the Bolshevik Party. 'The Lessons of October' is conventionally used to understand the Bolsheviks' program. Much of the left, even mainstream Communism (minus Trotsky's name) adhered to his account of events.  Trotsky claims that while the Bolsheviks did not seek to j...

  Alexei Tkechev and Sergei Tkechev Between Battle (1958-60) Mike Macnair is a member of the CPGB-PCC and a frequent contributor to the Weekly Worker . In the three-part series written in 2011, he discusses the necessary electoral tactics for socialists maneuvering through bourgeois political bodies. The primary question he asks, is: What should be the principled boundaries and acceptable tactics of communists in relation to calls for electoral support to coalitions, alliances, other parties or individual candidates? The following is a summary of his series.  Part 1: The policies of the contemporary Trotskyist, Communist, and Maoist groups. Also, the policy of the RSDLP during the Duma elections. The CPGB desires left unity; that is, a United Communist Party formed from the merger of the existing Marxist tendencies. Here in the United States, the Marxist Unity Group in the DSA works to do the same. To this end, CPGB and MUG may find themselves working with less principled par...

  Kathe Kollwitz The Parents (1921-22) Rosa Luxemburg wrote The Junius Pamphlet while in prison in 1915. She had been arrested for speaking out against the war. The voting of war credits by the SPD and near unanimous support for the war by the other parties of the Second Internation (with the exception of Russia and the United States) was a devasting blow to the cause of the socialist revolution.  The pamphlet served as the guiding statement for the International Group, which later became the  Spartacus League  and, from 1919, the  Communist Party of Germany  (KPD). The following is a summary of important points from each chapter of the pamphlet.  Bourgeois society reveals its true colors in war: " Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the wi...

  Rosa Luxemburg wrote 'Reform or Revolution?' as an article for the LVC party newspaper. The first part was printed in 1898 in response to another article by Edward Bernstein, and the second was printed in 1899 in response to Bernstein's book 'Evolutionary Socialism' (English title) published that same year.  A description of the revisionist dispute is given in Paul Frölich's  wonderful biography of Luxemburg: The Bernstein controversy revolved around the fundamental character of the socialist working-class movement. Disputes on this point had existed since the very beginning of the movement and were finally the reason for its disintegration into two camps. Bernstein's book ended with the advice to Social Democracy to summon up the courage 'to emancipate itself from an outworn phraseology and to display its true colours as a democratic-socialist reform party'. That raised the question: reform or revolution? Or more correctly, the question of the r...