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...

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...

  Protests began in Chile during the middle of October following the announcement of a 30 peso fare increase for the national metro service. In response, students staged fare evasion campaigns using the slogan ¡Evade! and occupied dozens of metro stations. The protests have since grown in size, embracing long-standing resentment over income inequality and the privatization of resources such as education and utilities, as well as demands for the resignation of President Enrique Piñera. City walls are covered in various slogans, including Rosa Luxemburg’s famous dictum declaring “socialism or barbarism”, and demonstrators wave the flag of the indigenous Mapuche people. Various reports from the ground paint a compelling picture of class struggle in one of the most unequal countries in Latin America, where 1% of the population controls some 26% of the total wealth. By design, the neoliberal policies pushed forward under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinoche and continued...

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes. - V.I. Lenin, Tolstoy and the Modern Labour Movement ( 1910 ) Recently the International Socialist Organization’s remaining ~600 members voted to dissolve. For those who are not familiar with the US Left, the ISO was a Trotskyist sect that organized on a rhetorical base of “socialism from below.” During the 80s and 90s, during a period of retreat of The Left, the ISO could have been considered its only potential hegemon. By the time I had joined, the org’s central mission remained “training Marxist cadre” for the future socialist movement coupled with a righteous abstention from the current historical moment. At the start of the eventual dissolution process, I was shocked at the possibility that our project may fail, and with it, similarly retire an equally anachronistic revolution...

  (the boss needs you, you don't need him) “The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.” - Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967.  "On Wednesday the undertakers went on strike. Now is not the time to die."  - Eyewitness to mass strike on May 14, 1968. "The crisis was infinitely more serious and profound...it was not my position that was in question, it was general de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic, and, to a considerable extent, Republican rule itself." - Prime minister Georges Popidou, May 25, 1968. "May ’68 was the biggest mass upheaval in the history of France and the concurrent wildcat general strike was the most important strike in the history of the European workers movement since World War Two. Nowhere else was the rejection of the new model of consumerist life more profound, or...