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Massenstreik, Partei und Gewerkschaften
In der zweiten Hälfte des Jahres 2019 kündigte sich nicht nur eine drohende Neuauflage der Weltwirtschaftskrise an, sondern die Massen betraten in allen Teilen der Welt wieder die Bühne der Geschichte. Mit ihnen gingen politische und Massenstreiks als Form des Kampfes der Arbeiter*innenklasse einher. Während in Deutschland die Gewerkschaftsführung politische Streiks weiterhin für undurchführbar erklärt, riefen Teile der Klimabewegung schon mehrmals dazu auf – bislang leider vergebens. Selbst angesichts zunehmender Wellen von Stellenabbau und Produktionsverlagerung setzt die Spitze der DGB- Gewerkschaften weiterhin auf gute Zusammenarbeit im Rahmen der »Sozialpartnerschaft« mit jenen, die einen unerbittlichen Klassenkampf von oben betreiben.
Rosa Luxemburgs Schrift ist ein Plädoyer gegen das Stillhalten der Gewerkschaften und für den Einsatz des Massenstreiks zur Durchsetzung politischer Forderungen. Gleichzeitig ist es eine schonungslose Kritik an der Stillhaltetaktik der Gewerkschaftsführungen, die vor über einhundert Jahren ihren Ursprung nahm. Alexandra Arnsburg bettet in ihrem Vorwort die Auseinandersetzung innerhalb der SPD um die Rolle, die die Partei spielen sollte, in ihre Gesamtentwicklung ein und bezieht Stellung zu Luxemburgs Hoffnung in die spontante Aktivität der Massen als Korrektiv. Dabei schlägt sie den Bogen zur späteren Haltung Luxemburgs und den Kämpfen der Nachkriegszeit in Deutschland.
Rosa Luxemburgs Schrift ist ein Plädoyer gegen das Stillhalten der Gewerkschaften und für den Einsatz des Massenstreiks zur Durchsetzung politischer Forderungen. Gleichzeitig ist es eine schonungslose Kritik an der Stillhaltetaktik der Gewerkschaftsführungen, die vor über einhundert Jahren ihren Ursprung nahm. Alexandra Arnsburg bettet in ihrem Vorwort die Auseinandersetzung innerhalb der SPD um die Rolle, die die Partei spielen sollte, in ihre Gesamtentwicklung ein und bezieht Stellung zu Luxemburgs Hoffnung in die spontante Aktivität der Massen als Korrektiv. Dabei schlägt sie den Bogen zur späteren Haltung Luxemburgs und den Kämpfen der Nachkriegszeit in Deutschland.
125 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1906
About the author
Rosa Luxemburg
505 books925 followersRosa Luxemburg (Rosalia Luxemburg, Polish: Róża Luksemburg) was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen. She was successively a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Social Democratic Party of Germany(SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Germany.
In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she co-founded, with Karl Liebknecht, the anti-war Spartakusbund (Spartacist League). On 1 January 1919 the Spartacist League became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In November 1918, during the German Revolution she founded the Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement.
She regarded the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 in Berlin as a blunder, but supported it after Liebknecht ordered it without her knowledge. When the revolt was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps (WWI veterans defending the Weimar Republic), Luxemburg, Liebknecht and some of their supporters were captured and murdered. Luxemburg was drowned in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. After their deaths, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht became martyrs for Marxists. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht continues to play an important role among the German far-left.
In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she co-founded, with Karl Liebknecht, the anti-war Spartakusbund (Spartacist League). On 1 January 1919 the Spartacist League became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In November 1918, during the German Revolution she founded the Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement.
She regarded the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 in Berlin as a blunder, but supported it after Liebknecht ordered it without her knowledge. When the revolt was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps (WWI veterans defending the Weimar Republic), Luxemburg, Liebknecht and some of their supporters were captured and murdered. Luxemburg was drowned in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. After their deaths, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht became martyrs for Marxists. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht continues to play an important role among the German far-left.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
October 10, 2022
I've read this before but now I'm a trade unionist trying to win a yes vote for strikes in my union's statutory ballot where we have to get past the British government's anti-trade union laws. This is brilliant analysis of how workers in mass strikes develop political and economic demands and their ideas in response to their own experience of organising and action.
RL wrote it from the 1905 revolution in Russia and the struggles for political and economic improvements from the last twenty years of the 19th century across the Russian empire.
It also has analysis of trade union bureaucracy that is absolutely relevant today.
Every strike contains the kernal of a bigger struggle so if you have ever been on a picket line, on strike or to show solidarity you may recognise how discussions and arguments develop as the strike goes on. Those discussions often become bigger as strikers think through how they will win and how our lives/society should be run. And that's ultimately the point.
RL wrote it from the 1905 revolution in Russia and the struggles for political and economic improvements from the last twenty years of the 19th century across the Russian empire.
It also has analysis of trade union bureaucracy that is absolutely relevant today.
Every strike contains the kernal of a bigger struggle so if you have ever been on a picket line, on strike or to show solidarity you may recognise how discussions and arguments develop as the strike goes on. Those discussions often become bigger as strikers think through how they will win and how our lives/society should be run. And that's ultimately the point.
August 14, 2018
Rosa Luxemburg was a passionate socialist, dedicated to destroying capitalism and creating a society without worker exploitation. Before tackling any of her work, it's critical to remember the time when she wrote and the political and historical context. Luxemburg wrote The Mass Strike in 1906, a few months after the first failed Russian Revolution, which she saw as an escalation of the socialist movement that built on all previous efforts to end capitalism. In 1905 across Europe, capitalism really did look like it was about to breathe its last. Workers united, rose up against 12 hour working days and poverty-level wages to demand their rights, and died violent deaths. It's important to remember that if it had not been for revolutionary workers organized in unions, those in the West could still be stuck working in dangerous conditions for six days per week.
Luxemburg was a passionate leader and writer, but her passion doesn't detract from her impeccably constructed argument. In sum, Luxemburg argues that only through mass strikes of thousands of politically conscious workers can capitalism be vanquished. She eviscerates the argument of her detractors that the mass strike is ahistorical by establishing the historical revolutionary context that led to the proliferation of the mass strike. The mass strike cannot be orchestrated by unions or the party because every mass strike builds on the collected knowledge of workers from the last strike. The social democratic parties' role is to lead the political education of workers during the mass strike and organize workers.
Luxemburg lambasts the caution of trade unions, arguing that both unions and parties are not two different peaks of the labor movement, but must remain subservient to the will of the workers. Trade unionism is a part of social democracy, not separate, and the power of the unions is dependent on the ideology of social democracy. Luxemburg calls for the unity of trade union and party leadership because their conflict only hurts workers' movements. She advocates unity, constant progression of the struggle, and risk taking. The political and the economic aspects of the revolutions must unite because they build each other in a virtuous circle of historical progress. If workers play it safe or become satisfied with reform, capitalism will never fall.
While Luxemburg valorizes the deaths of workers, she often treats their sacrifice as a "necessary" step to ending capitalism, which is highly problematic. She does not seem to understand that most workers will not risk sacrificing their lives for the struggle, especially if through economic reform and trade unionism they continue to gain higher wages and to shorten the working day. As in Germany in 1906, as workers' rights improve, the argument for revolutionary upheaval becomes weaker, and Luxemburg, a firm believer that capitalism cannot be reformed, does make a compelling argument that capitalist exploitation will remain as long as capitalism remains. However, I think she overestimates workers' desire for revolution, and thereby does not understand that for most workers, they are not willing to sacrifice their lives and their families' livelihoods for the revolution. They just want decent wages and a shorter working day.
I am giving The Mass Strike five stars because of Luxemburg's thorough argument and wonderful turns of phrase. While she may be too idealistic, Luxemburg's works are still worth studying today for their critique of capitalism and their historical relevance.
Here are some of my notes from my reading:
Luxemburg was a passionate leader and writer, but her passion doesn't detract from her impeccably constructed argument. In sum, Luxemburg argues that only through mass strikes of thousands of politically conscious workers can capitalism be vanquished. She eviscerates the argument of her detractors that the mass strike is ahistorical by establishing the historical revolutionary context that led to the proliferation of the mass strike. The mass strike cannot be orchestrated by unions or the party because every mass strike builds on the collected knowledge of workers from the last strike. The social democratic parties' role is to lead the political education of workers during the mass strike and organize workers.
Luxemburg lambasts the caution of trade unions, arguing that both unions and parties are not two different peaks of the labor movement, but must remain subservient to the will of the workers. Trade unionism is a part of social democracy, not separate, and the power of the unions is dependent on the ideology of social democracy. Luxemburg calls for the unity of trade union and party leadership because their conflict only hurts workers' movements. She advocates unity, constant progression of the struggle, and risk taking. The political and the economic aspects of the revolutions must unite because they build each other in a virtuous circle of historical progress. If workers play it safe or become satisfied with reform, capitalism will never fall.
While Luxemburg valorizes the deaths of workers, she often treats their sacrifice as a "necessary" step to ending capitalism, which is highly problematic. She does not seem to understand that most workers will not risk sacrificing their lives for the struggle, especially if through economic reform and trade unionism they continue to gain higher wages and to shorten the working day. As in Germany in 1906, as workers' rights improve, the argument for revolutionary upheaval becomes weaker, and Luxemburg, a firm believer that capitalism cannot be reformed, does make a compelling argument that capitalist exploitation will remain as long as capitalism remains. However, I think she overestimates workers' desire for revolution, and thereby does not understand that for most workers, they are not willing to sacrifice their lives and their families' livelihoods for the revolution. They just want decent wages and a shorter working day.
I am giving The Mass Strike five stars because of Luxemburg's thorough argument and wonderful turns of phrase. While she may be too idealistic, Luxemburg's works are still worth studying today for their critique of capitalism and their historical relevance.
Here are some of my notes from my reading:
March 12, 2026
For Luxemburg, the increase in strikes that came after the Russian Revolution of 1905 was a sure sign of the revolutionary spirit of the working class. She pushed for mass strikes to be an important tool used by the SPD (the Social Democratic Party in Germany) in undermining capitalism, for it to be a party whose aim is to overthrow the entire political and economic system.
But her theory became threatening to all bureaucratic machines, first to the SPD and the trade union leaders, and later to the Communist International. (Luxemburg was not a fan of Lenin’s propagation of a highly centralized party structure). It isn’t that the SPD didn’t support and indeed advocate mass strikes, it was that it had to be specifically under certain conditions. Contrarily, Luxemberg, in true participatory spirit, felt that in order for a mass strike to be an effective revolutionary weapon against capitalism it was imperative that the desire and drive for mass action came from the masses — who had been guided and influenced by the party. Needless to say, bureaucratic machines cannot tolerate being led by the desires and drives of the masses. She was later assassinated by the SPD.
At this point it should be evident that this is one of those few important works that clearly lay out the boundaries between real revolutionaries that are concerned with creating participatory democracies and those hypocritical, authoritative bureaucrats concerned only with parliamentary pursuits of power that contradict their rhetoric.
But her theory became threatening to all bureaucratic machines, first to the SPD and the trade union leaders, and later to the Communist International. (Luxemburg was not a fan of Lenin’s propagation of a highly centralized party structure). It isn’t that the SPD didn’t support and indeed advocate mass strikes, it was that it had to be specifically under certain conditions. Contrarily, Luxemberg, in true participatory spirit, felt that in order for a mass strike to be an effective revolutionary weapon against capitalism it was imperative that the desire and drive for mass action came from the masses — who had been guided and influenced by the party. Needless to say, bureaucratic machines cannot tolerate being led by the desires and drives of the masses. She was later assassinated by the SPD.
At this point it should be evident that this is one of those few important works that clearly lay out the boundaries between real revolutionaries that are concerned with creating participatory democracies and those hypocritical, authoritative bureaucrats concerned only with parliamentary pursuits of power that contradict their rhetoric.
March 6, 2023
Barras.
April 19, 2018
This work is curious if compared to the theoretical texts of other leading revolutionary theorists at the time. It contains far more concrete evidence than most of Lenin's texts (as opposed to the facebook-comment-like style of Lenin's polemics which seem to move in 10 directions at once), it doesn't make almost any predictions (except for the problematic development of specialists and bureaucrats in the party and unions), doesn't create any grand vision of the future, and it doesn't generally permit for the formation of any definite concept. It definitely uses immanent critique to show how the development of mass strikes arises historically, and yet it does not attempt to predict where it is going. It is dialectical without a conclusion, or without an absolute or resolution to the question. Her use of the "waves" metaphor, or the "undulating" character of the masses, interestingly shows how water corresponds to her humble admission that there is much that is impossible to control about history, mass movements, and mass events. In this sense, it is anarchistic almost like Lao Tzu. While one may think of the 1917 planned insurrection and go "aha! she's wrong!" this work seems rather to question the way we try to encapsulate a complex dynamic social movement to control it. It is truly a tragedy that her life was cut short, as in 1919 it was clear that her analysis of the ongoing revolution was far ahead of everyone else, especially Liebknecht.
December 20, 2024
Read this little pamphlet early in 2024, when my union was on strike. We were on the picket line for more than 8 weeks I think, during winter, sometimes during snow storms. It felt gruelling and I needed some motivation, and I found some in this interesting little reflection on the 1905 Russian Revolution and the lessons it was trying to derive from that revolt's mass strike for the German socialist movement. It was written when Rosa Luxemburg was in Finland with a circle of Bolsheviks including Lenin. There were some interesting comments (at times very critical) of union leadership and surprisingly about how many in the union leadership did not feel they were politically organized enough yet to enact a mass strike, but Luxemburg thought that this was a persistent pessimism that had to be overcome, and was in many cases erroneous. She wrote:
"Today the number of trade unionists already runs into the second million, but the views of the leaders are still exactly the same, and may very well be the same to the end. The tacit assumption is that the entire working class of Germany, down to the last man and the last woman, must be included in the organization before it “is strong enough” to risk a mass action, which then, according to the old formula, would probably be represented as “superfluous.” This theory is nevertheless absolutely utopian, for the simple reason that it suffers from an internal contradiction that goes in a vicious circle. Before the workers can engage in any direct class struggle they must all be organized. The circumstances, the conditions, of capitalist development and of the bourgeois state make it impossible that, in the normal course of things, without stormy class struggles, certain sections and these the greatest, the most important, the lowest and the most oppressed by capital, and by the state—can be organized at all. We see even in Britain, which has had a whole century of indefatigable tradeunion effort without any “disturbances”—except at the beginning in the period of the Chartist movement—without any “romantic revolutionary” errors or temptations, it has not been possible to do more than organize a minority of the better-paid sections of the proletariat."
"Today the number of trade unionists already runs into the second million, but the views of the leaders are still exactly the same, and may very well be the same to the end. The tacit assumption is that the entire working class of Germany, down to the last man and the last woman, must be included in the organization before it “is strong enough” to risk a mass action, which then, according to the old formula, would probably be represented as “superfluous.” This theory is nevertheless absolutely utopian, for the simple reason that it suffers from an internal contradiction that goes in a vicious circle. Before the workers can engage in any direct class struggle they must all be organized. The circumstances, the conditions, of capitalist development and of the bourgeois state make it impossible that, in the normal course of things, without stormy class struggles, certain sections and these the greatest, the most important, the lowest and the most oppressed by capital, and by the state—can be organized at all. We see even in Britain, which has had a whole century of indefatigable tradeunion effort without any “disturbances”—except at the beginning in the period of the Chartist movement—without any “romantic revolutionary” errors or temptations, it has not been possible to do more than organize a minority of the better-paid sections of the proletariat."
Read
January 28, 2025Read this because I was curious about Rosa Luxemburg's writings and due to what feels like an increasing amount of strikes around Canada and the US. From postal workers to Amazon, it feels like I was hearing about strikes and their effects quite regularly in 2024. When this happens, there is also talk about a mass/general strike to really mess with production and industry in general. What that would look like in practice in North America remains to be seen, as what exactly it would tell us about our economic and political culture of the time. Russian workers in the 20th century were certainly willing to engage in big strikes over various disputes, such as the length of the work day, treatment of workers and pay. I wonder how much support they got from workers outside their industries, because sadly we saw a lack of support from many during the Canada Post strike. Workers are not being supported right now, that much is clear to see.
Did Not Finish
December 20, 2025Azt hiszem, ez leginkább szakíróknak és rajongóknak. Hosszas kifejtése annak, ahogy a forradalom legnagyobb akadálya mintha maga a forradalmi szerveződés megosztottsága volna (bár én ezt egy pillanatra sem tudnám komolyan venni). Szóval laikus olvasóként nekem az egész egy messze túlgondolt köldökszöszölésnek hatott, bár nyilván történelmi jelentőségű satöbbi, de akkor is.
February 16, 2023
After the Russian Revolution of 1905, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) began discussing about mass strikes. This had long been considered an anarchist fantasy. But workers across the Tsarist Empire had shown that mass strikes were not only possible — they got results. Even the SPD's right wing conceded that a mass strike could be called for defensive purposes, such as if the ruling class tried to dissolve parliament.
In this pamphlet, Luxemburg argued that a general strike was not something that could be proclaimed by a party leadership. Instead, the mass strike was a stage of the class struggle. This pamphlet was much more empirical than I had remembered, with lots of detail about how the strike movements in the Russian Empire grew before and during 1905. It's only in the final chapter that Luxemburg attempted some theoretical generalizations, and in particular considered the conservative role of the growing bureaucracy in the German workers' movement.
While her critique of reformism is biting, Luxemburg — as always — placed too much faith in workers' spontaneous protests. To fight bureaucracy and reformism, she never saw the need for an organized revolutionary faction. Ironically, at the very end of Luxemburg's life, some of the most important general strikes in world history were very much "proclaimed." The date for the insurrection of November 9, 1918, was set by a vote during a series of committee meetings. The general strike of January 5, 1919 — the biggest in Berlin's history — was called by Luxemburg's newly-formed party along with several other parties. The problem was that Luxemburg, trusting that the masses would solve all political problems themselves, had failed to build up a party that could have led these strikes to lasting victories.
In this pamphlet, Luxemburg argued that a general strike was not something that could be proclaimed by a party leadership. Instead, the mass strike was a stage of the class struggle. This pamphlet was much more empirical than I had remembered, with lots of detail about how the strike movements in the Russian Empire grew before and during 1905. It's only in the final chapter that Luxemburg attempted some theoretical generalizations, and in particular considered the conservative role of the growing bureaucracy in the German workers' movement.
While her critique of reformism is biting, Luxemburg — as always — placed too much faith in workers' spontaneous protests. To fight bureaucracy and reformism, she never saw the need for an organized revolutionary faction. Ironically, at the very end of Luxemburg's life, some of the most important general strikes in world history were very much "proclaimed." The date for the insurrection of November 9, 1918, was set by a vote during a series of committee meetings. The general strike of January 5, 1919 — the biggest in Berlin's history — was called by Luxemburg's newly-formed party along with several other parties. The problem was that Luxemburg, trusting that the masses would solve all political problems themselves, had failed to build up a party that could have led these strikes to lasting victories.
November 19, 2023
Pocos pueden describir y comprender a las masas proletarias como lo hace Rosa Luxemburgo. Sus dinámicas, su potencia de fuego, su capacidad de lucha, su explosividad. Pocos socialdemócratas alemanas vieron la potencialidad de la clase obrera como lo hizo Rosa.
Un libro fundamental para cualquiera que pretenda llegar a ser un revolucionario, sin las amplias masas obreras, sin contar con ellas y menospreciándolas, es imposible hacer la revolución. Lectura obligada para cualquier dirigente obrero.
Un libro fundamental para cualquiera que pretenda llegar a ser un revolucionario, sin las amplias masas obreras, sin contar con ellas y menospreciándolas, es imposible hacer la revolución. Lectura obligada para cualquier dirigente obrero.
April 15, 2021
Ler Rosa foi uma surpresa extremamente agradável! A leitura é fluida e sua escrita muito didática. Apesar de ser um tema que requer diversos entendimentos subjacentes (nesse sentido o título é autoexplicativo: greve de massas, partidos e sindicatos), a autora nos conduz por seu caminho sem maiores entraves, e com grande precisão histórica. Me parece representar o materialismo histórico em sua melhor forma. Não pretendia ler Rosa Luxemburgo tão cedo, mas certamente olharei com carinho para suas outras publicações enquanto uma grande marxista.
June 26, 2017
Part argument over the role of trade unions and strikes in a revolution, part documentation of the great upsurge of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Lots of quotes comparing the pre-war situation in Germany to Russia that bear a lot of information for Australia today.
July 24, 2022
a great historical overview on the wins that mass strike brings to socialist movements
June 16, 2021
No tinc cap cosa intel·ligent a dir però m’ha agradat!
January 22, 2017
One of my favourite books. Well-written and accessible.
August 12, 2026
The mass strike was of great significance for understanding what was at the time a new dynamic of revolutionary struggle. Coming to grips with the emerging revolutionary possibilities and dynamics of the 20th century could not avoid discussing the mass strike as a new form of unified mass action, both economic and political, which raised the stakes of the struggle against the exploiters. Luxemburg's text is a very useful detailed study of this phenomenon. However, there are significant limitations to the text which are expressions of the real and substantial differences she had with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, differences which were to the detriment of the German and broader West European radical left of Social Democracy.
The mass strike is not something preordained for a particular date and time by a one true revolutionary force, an absolutely conscious construction. This conception of politics and history smacks of a police agent conception of the class struggle, that everything is a plot of radical actors. The mass strike is rather a spontaneous development out of the course of the class struggle, simultaneously connected with the day to day economic struggle while also being sudden escalations above them. It interweaves economic and political struggle, with economic and political motivations for action coming into unity, with economic demands bearing a political character, and the political struggle against tsarism being inseparable from the economic demands of the workers. It does not destroy workers' organisations but on the contrary it greatly accelerates their development. In the course of struggle there is an interweaving of more politically centralised demonstrative strikes and more spontaneous sectional fighting strikes, two sides in which workers develop political consciousness and their power at the point of production. The demonstrative strike however loses appeal as workers demand more severe action; what may be perceived as a degeneration into fighting strikes need not really be a degeneration of political consciousness. But importantly this depends on a revolutionary situation, and the mass strike heralds it. Mensheviks would retroactively blame defeat on the workers 'degenerating' into aggressive economic strikes instead of pursuing the lofty political movement alongside the liberals. On the contrary, the move to aggressive economic struggle combined with a tendency to open uprising was an intensification of the revolution.
However, there was more to 1905 than the mass strike. The significance of the mass strike for Lenin was that it was headed by the soviets and set the conditions for the armed uprising. The mass strike was a new and mighty weapon in raising the proletariat and the masses to revolution. It was the proletariat acting to set the terms for revolutionary leadership of the people. It was proletarian but went beyond the working class narrowly conceived; it was bound up with the debate on the trade unions being waged in the International and in Russia, whether the trade unions should focus on non-party work or should be organisations to raise consciousness and organisation for the revolution, but while the trade unions as organs of workers should be brought as close to the party as possible, the soviets were broader. Soviets cannot be formed at just any time (compared to trade unions and parties which should always be in formation), but if they genuinely commanded masses they would never be premature. The soviets' non-party nature was a strength tied to their being open to the whole revolutionary people and were arenas for forging proletarian leadership in a worker-peasant alliance for the seizure of power. The logic of revolutionary struggle is not to be squeezed narrowly into the capital-labour relation. While the Mensheviks saw the soviets as exclusively worker model parliaments, Lenin saw the soviets as an embryo revolutionary power, and could enlist the whole people in the democratic dictatorship if they organised to do so. The task laid down was for the vanguard, cohered by revolutionary Social Democracy, to take up the responsibilities of leadership and organise the insurrection out of the armed uprising precipitated by the mass strike. The Mensheviks argued an armed uprising should arise from the masses themselves and not be a party affair, which was treacherous abdication of responsibility.
Lenin would side with Luxemburg in emphasising the mass strike being a part of revolutionary struggle rather than being a means of carting out the workers to win reforms. After 1917 Lenin would praise Luxemburg's stress on revolutionary potential against Kautsky. But in 1905 and afterwards Lenin understood the mass strike as a moment in the strategic struggle for state power. The mass strike and soviet were spontaneous innovations which reframed the contours and opportunities of revolutionary struggle, but at the same time had to be redefined for revolutionary ends in a struggle over their political meaning and boundaries. It was by this logic that Lenin would recognise the significance of the mass strike and soviet without fetishising them. In July 1906 he argued against reforming soviets because it was a premature act if the workers did not have behind them the peasants. He would argue instead for intervention in the Duma because that is where the peasants were at at that time. In 1908 he would argue that the key task in relation to rising economic struggle of the proletariat is to convert it from a trade union struggle into a broad revolutionary upsurge against the armed forces of tsarism, while at the same time intervening in the Duma to force a alliance of the people against tsarism and the bourgeoisie. Hegemony was inseparable from the struggle for state power and dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.
Luxemburg, on the other hand, argued that revolutionary consciousness was a question of proletarian self-consciousness to be achieved through the experience of the struggle itself. This was blind to the danger of rival hegemonic projects for the revolution. Her infatuation with the spontaneous movement was tied to her opposition to the trade union leaderships which saw them as bureaucratic stiflers of the movement. But even on this point, she conceded trade union neutrality in countries other than Germany on the grounds that their swelling would organically feed into the growth of Social Democracy in those countries. Marxism for Luxemburg prefigured the logic of the spontaneous workers' movement, the movement was not an object of struggle and contradiction which had to be approached strategically as a battle over rival hegemonic projects. The 'people' are assimilated to the proletariat, and the more backwards in consciousness have to catch up to that of the advanced, and indeed they leap ahead, but only in a unilinear development of consciousness which didn't posed unity of the masses as a strategic problem. Establishing a Hegelian identity between trade unions and party was an expression of this approach. There is a sense that spontaneity must be respected and not stifled by conservative leadership, but only for the spontaneous unfolding toward socialist consciousness with Social Democracy as an enlightened teacher. This spontaneism could be accompanied by high sectarianism in party affairs, as was the case in Luxemburg's activity in Poland, on the grounds that the party bears the one true consciousness which spontaneity catches up to. Her prediction was that the spontaneous development of the movement would simply sweep away the opportunist leaders and be the condition for the left taking control of the party. In this way, despite the normal story of Luxemburg's supposed veneration of spontaneity in contrast to the dictatorial Lenin, it was actually Luxemburg who simultaneously thought there was nothing for Marxism to theoretically learn from spontaneous practice and also that its lack of development was to blame for the problems for the radical left. It was only when the movement was sufficiently developed that the left would be able to wage the factional struggle to oust the right wing of the party.
On these questions Luxemburg's text had some affinity with economism, it was an expression of what some have called 'revolutionary economism' which was an emergent trend out of reaction to 1905. An injunction to split into class lines all demands of the people and to destroy any sense of a coherent popular political goal, it raised the task of striving for self-activity to express a consciousness of specifically 'class' prerogatives. Analytical focus was that the workers alone were driving the revolution, and there was a scepticism towards anything that seemed, in the eyes of those enchanted with the spontaneous movement, to subordinate it to the schemes of politicians. While waged against the right wing of the SPD, it also aligned with Luxemburg's attack on Lenin and the Bolsheviks a couple years prior, in her siding with the Mensheviks after the Russian split. Luxemburg's conception of the task of the party as being one of education through successive stages of consciousness, Marxism being in harmony with the spontaneous unfolding of working class self-activity, led her to diagnose the problems of the German Party as being a matter of bureaucratic stifling of the logic of self-activity. This fitted well with the Menshevik focus on working class self-activity in abstraction from the strategic logic of the struggle for hegemony and political power. She identifed Lenin's dogged factional struggle over organisational questions with bureaucratic over-centralisation and intellectual domination over the workers. All the way up to 1913 she was attacking Lenin for being purportedly obsessed with factional power to the detriment of the workers' movement, all the while being herself extremely sectarian in the Polish party.
In that way, The Mass Strike had a mixed impact in its context. It did not give the SPD left a sufficient political orientation for waging a hard factional struggle against the centrist tendency of the party. If Luxemburg had taken from 1905 what Lenin had taken, the responsibilities of leadership, of revolutionary alliance with the peasantry and the constitution of the revolutionary people in historical materialist and strategic terms, the significance of the soviets as more than simply strike organs and the struggle to win leadership of them for dictatorship, the tasks of insurrection and dictatorship and state power as tasks specifically for the party emerging out of the mass struggle, this might have provided better political coordinates. It was these questions that would come to define the revolutionary tasks during the revolutions of the First World War, not simply the logic of the mass strike as elaborated here.
The mass strike is not something preordained for a particular date and time by a one true revolutionary force, an absolutely conscious construction. This conception of politics and history smacks of a police agent conception of the class struggle, that everything is a plot of radical actors. The mass strike is rather a spontaneous development out of the course of the class struggle, simultaneously connected with the day to day economic struggle while also being sudden escalations above them. It interweaves economic and political struggle, with economic and political motivations for action coming into unity, with economic demands bearing a political character, and the political struggle against tsarism being inseparable from the economic demands of the workers. It does not destroy workers' organisations but on the contrary it greatly accelerates their development. In the course of struggle there is an interweaving of more politically centralised demonstrative strikes and more spontaneous sectional fighting strikes, two sides in which workers develop political consciousness and their power at the point of production. The demonstrative strike however loses appeal as workers demand more severe action; what may be perceived as a degeneration into fighting strikes need not really be a degeneration of political consciousness. But importantly this depends on a revolutionary situation, and the mass strike heralds it. Mensheviks would retroactively blame defeat on the workers 'degenerating' into aggressive economic strikes instead of pursuing the lofty political movement alongside the liberals. On the contrary, the move to aggressive economic struggle combined with a tendency to open uprising was an intensification of the revolution.
However, there was more to 1905 than the mass strike. The significance of the mass strike for Lenin was that it was headed by the soviets and set the conditions for the armed uprising. The mass strike was a new and mighty weapon in raising the proletariat and the masses to revolution. It was the proletariat acting to set the terms for revolutionary leadership of the people. It was proletarian but went beyond the working class narrowly conceived; it was bound up with the debate on the trade unions being waged in the International and in Russia, whether the trade unions should focus on non-party work or should be organisations to raise consciousness and organisation for the revolution, but while the trade unions as organs of workers should be brought as close to the party as possible, the soviets were broader. Soviets cannot be formed at just any time (compared to trade unions and parties which should always be in formation), but if they genuinely commanded masses they would never be premature. The soviets' non-party nature was a strength tied to their being open to the whole revolutionary people and were arenas for forging proletarian leadership in a worker-peasant alliance for the seizure of power. The logic of revolutionary struggle is not to be squeezed narrowly into the capital-labour relation. While the Mensheviks saw the soviets as exclusively worker model parliaments, Lenin saw the soviets as an embryo revolutionary power, and could enlist the whole people in the democratic dictatorship if they organised to do so. The task laid down was for the vanguard, cohered by revolutionary Social Democracy, to take up the responsibilities of leadership and organise the insurrection out of the armed uprising precipitated by the mass strike. The Mensheviks argued an armed uprising should arise from the masses themselves and not be a party affair, which was treacherous abdication of responsibility.
Lenin would side with Luxemburg in emphasising the mass strike being a part of revolutionary struggle rather than being a means of carting out the workers to win reforms. After 1917 Lenin would praise Luxemburg's stress on revolutionary potential against Kautsky. But in 1905 and afterwards Lenin understood the mass strike as a moment in the strategic struggle for state power. The mass strike and soviet were spontaneous innovations which reframed the contours and opportunities of revolutionary struggle, but at the same time had to be redefined for revolutionary ends in a struggle over their political meaning and boundaries. It was by this logic that Lenin would recognise the significance of the mass strike and soviet without fetishising them. In July 1906 he argued against reforming soviets because it was a premature act if the workers did not have behind them the peasants. He would argue instead for intervention in the Duma because that is where the peasants were at at that time. In 1908 he would argue that the key task in relation to rising economic struggle of the proletariat is to convert it from a trade union struggle into a broad revolutionary upsurge against the armed forces of tsarism, while at the same time intervening in the Duma to force a alliance of the people against tsarism and the bourgeoisie. Hegemony was inseparable from the struggle for state power and dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.
Luxemburg, on the other hand, argued that revolutionary consciousness was a question of proletarian self-consciousness to be achieved through the experience of the struggle itself. This was blind to the danger of rival hegemonic projects for the revolution. Her infatuation with the spontaneous movement was tied to her opposition to the trade union leaderships which saw them as bureaucratic stiflers of the movement. But even on this point, she conceded trade union neutrality in countries other than Germany on the grounds that their swelling would organically feed into the growth of Social Democracy in those countries. Marxism for Luxemburg prefigured the logic of the spontaneous workers' movement, the movement was not an object of struggle and contradiction which had to be approached strategically as a battle over rival hegemonic projects. The 'people' are assimilated to the proletariat, and the more backwards in consciousness have to catch up to that of the advanced, and indeed they leap ahead, but only in a unilinear development of consciousness which didn't posed unity of the masses as a strategic problem. Establishing a Hegelian identity between trade unions and party was an expression of this approach. There is a sense that spontaneity must be respected and not stifled by conservative leadership, but only for the spontaneous unfolding toward socialist consciousness with Social Democracy as an enlightened teacher. This spontaneism could be accompanied by high sectarianism in party affairs, as was the case in Luxemburg's activity in Poland, on the grounds that the party bears the one true consciousness which spontaneity catches up to. Her prediction was that the spontaneous development of the movement would simply sweep away the opportunist leaders and be the condition for the left taking control of the party. In this way, despite the normal story of Luxemburg's supposed veneration of spontaneity in contrast to the dictatorial Lenin, it was actually Luxemburg who simultaneously thought there was nothing for Marxism to theoretically learn from spontaneous practice and also that its lack of development was to blame for the problems for the radical left. It was only when the movement was sufficiently developed that the left would be able to wage the factional struggle to oust the right wing of the party.
On these questions Luxemburg's text had some affinity with economism, it was an expression of what some have called 'revolutionary economism' which was an emergent trend out of reaction to 1905. An injunction to split into class lines all demands of the people and to destroy any sense of a coherent popular political goal, it raised the task of striving for self-activity to express a consciousness of specifically 'class' prerogatives. Analytical focus was that the workers alone were driving the revolution, and there was a scepticism towards anything that seemed, in the eyes of those enchanted with the spontaneous movement, to subordinate it to the schemes of politicians. While waged against the right wing of the SPD, it also aligned with Luxemburg's attack on Lenin and the Bolsheviks a couple years prior, in her siding with the Mensheviks after the Russian split. Luxemburg's conception of the task of the party as being one of education through successive stages of consciousness, Marxism being in harmony with the spontaneous unfolding of working class self-activity, led her to diagnose the problems of the German Party as being a matter of bureaucratic stifling of the logic of self-activity. This fitted well with the Menshevik focus on working class self-activity in abstraction from the strategic logic of the struggle for hegemony and political power. She identifed Lenin's dogged factional struggle over organisational questions with bureaucratic over-centralisation and intellectual domination over the workers. All the way up to 1913 she was attacking Lenin for being purportedly obsessed with factional power to the detriment of the workers' movement, all the while being herself extremely sectarian in the Polish party.
In that way, The Mass Strike had a mixed impact in its context. It did not give the SPD left a sufficient political orientation for waging a hard factional struggle against the centrist tendency of the party. If Luxemburg had taken from 1905 what Lenin had taken, the responsibilities of leadership, of revolutionary alliance with the peasantry and the constitution of the revolutionary people in historical materialist and strategic terms, the significance of the soviets as more than simply strike organs and the struggle to win leadership of them for dictatorship, the tasks of insurrection and dictatorship and state power as tasks specifically for the party emerging out of the mass struggle, this might have provided better political coordinates. It was these questions that would come to define the revolutionary tasks during the revolutions of the First World War, not simply the logic of the mass strike as elaborated here.
June 16, 2020
A detailed description of the mass revolutionary period in Russia in the last years of the 1800s through the first years of the 1900s - ending with a critique of the bureaucratization of trade unions (and of the party). Luxemburg gives due respect to the momentum of the masses and advises the party to educate workers without attempting to control spontaneous mass uprisings, which are often triggered by relatively small grievances in the context of greater political crisis.
But what, ultimately, is to be done at the end of this period? Luxemburg claims that the proletariat will enact a bourgeois revolution. After the workers have successfully agitated for economic reforms and increased wages, they will create in Russia a bourgeois parliamentary democracy, which they none the less do not believe in. This confusing line of thought follows a belief in the necessity of a very rigid interpretation of Marxist historical progress.
“If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western European countries, and during the last years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction – she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all. But that is not enough for my critic. He feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man. But I beg his pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.)”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...
But what, ultimately, is to be done at the end of this period? Luxemburg claims that the proletariat will enact a bourgeois revolution. After the workers have successfully agitated for economic reforms and increased wages, they will create in Russia a bourgeois parliamentary democracy, which they none the less do not believe in. This confusing line of thought follows a belief in the necessity of a very rigid interpretation of Marxist historical progress.
“If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western European countries, and during the last years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction – she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all. But that is not enough for my critic. He feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man. But I beg his pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.)”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...
July 11, 2018
The Mass Strike represents an analysis of the tactic of the mass strike as a weapon against the state and capital, a look at the Revolution of 1905 in Russia and the ways Luxembourg sees the unfolding dynamic of revolution and the role of Socialist parties and trade unions in this process.
Luxembourg uses the example of the Revolution of 1905, with a detailed and beautiful chronological description of the events there to lambast the German social-democrats for their excessive cautions despite large numbers of members and organization and illusionary goals of the Bakuninist anarchist of one big mass strike that will bring about revolution. However, her main point lies in that the evolution of the strike and its successes and failures are part of a longer mechanism that will lead up to revolution. One mass strike does not suffice but rather it must be part of a longer series of upsurges against capital at which point the leaders of socialist movements should insert themselves to guide it down a successful path and prior to this to create the conditions for such outbursts by education and organization. Luxembourg emphasizes that the revolution must come from a genuine outburst of the will of the workers and it is the duty of the leaders to head the call and take action. She denounces any manipulations by party or trade union leaders that invoke the fact that the time is not right for a strike or that wish to play strategic political games with the fate of the workers.
There are certain serious doubts that one might cast, in hindsight at the vanguardism espoused in Luxembourg and the pitfalls of this approach and also of her dismissal of anarchism but her writing remains relevant and a represents a solid analysis of strike tactics and the need for organizational flexibility and the responsibility of leaders to know when to step in and to listen to the call of the people.
Luxembourg uses the example of the Revolution of 1905, with a detailed and beautiful chronological description of the events there to lambast the German social-democrats for their excessive cautions despite large numbers of members and organization and illusionary goals of the Bakuninist anarchist of one big mass strike that will bring about revolution. However, her main point lies in that the evolution of the strike and its successes and failures are part of a longer mechanism that will lead up to revolution. One mass strike does not suffice but rather it must be part of a longer series of upsurges against capital at which point the leaders of socialist movements should insert themselves to guide it down a successful path and prior to this to create the conditions for such outbursts by education and organization. Luxembourg emphasizes that the revolution must come from a genuine outburst of the will of the workers and it is the duty of the leaders to head the call and take action. She denounces any manipulations by party or trade union leaders that invoke the fact that the time is not right for a strike or that wish to play strategic political games with the fate of the workers.
There are certain serious doubts that one might cast, in hindsight at the vanguardism espoused in Luxembourg and the pitfalls of this approach and also of her dismissal of anarchism but her writing remains relevant and a represents a solid analysis of strike tactics and the need for organizational flexibility and the responsibility of leaders to know when to step in and to listen to the call of the people.
December 10, 2024
Reading a text like this might appear like a waste of time. Most of its argument would be uncontroversial to anyone familiar with, say, the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. But I think it helps bring to the conscious mind assumed knowledge in a way which clarifies that knowledge.
Luxemburg polemicises against the trade union officials in Germany at the time who argue that greater union membership must precede a mass strike in Germany, as a mass strike would require much planning, including the collection of enough funds to hold the working class over until the strike's conclusion. But Luxemburg argues that spontaneous mass struggle precedes an increase in union membership. In the 1905 Revolution in Russia, she shows, the romantic idealism of workers allowed them to throw themselves into the struggle without much of a plan.
Luxemburg also examines arguments against applying the Russian situation to the German one. It caught my interest that she counters the argument that German democracy meant less chance of a mass strike like the one against Russian absolutism. She says that when German democracy has run its course, and the ruling class wishes to impose absolutism on Germany, the masses will be ready to resist. This seemed abstract to me at the time until two days later, when the failed military coup in South Korea led to an indefinite general strike against the leader of that regime.
My only hesitation from giving this book five stars is that Luxemburg lacks to polemic edge or revelatory insight of comparable pamphlets by Lenin, such as What is To Be Done or Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Luxemburg polemicises against the trade union officials in Germany at the time who argue that greater union membership must precede a mass strike in Germany, as a mass strike would require much planning, including the collection of enough funds to hold the working class over until the strike's conclusion. But Luxemburg argues that spontaneous mass struggle precedes an increase in union membership. In the 1905 Revolution in Russia, she shows, the romantic idealism of workers allowed them to throw themselves into the struggle without much of a plan.
Luxemburg also examines arguments against applying the Russian situation to the German one. It caught my interest that she counters the argument that German democracy meant less chance of a mass strike like the one against Russian absolutism. She says that when German democracy has run its course, and the ruling class wishes to impose absolutism on Germany, the masses will be ready to resist. This seemed abstract to me at the time until two days later, when the failed military coup in South Korea led to an indefinite general strike against the leader of that regime.
My only hesitation from giving this book five stars is that Luxemburg lacks to polemic edge or revelatory insight of comparable pamphlets by Lenin, such as What is To Be Done or Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
November 21, 2024
Muchas veces se ha rebajado el pensamiento de Luxemburgo frente al de Lenin, error muy grave, a mi parecer, a pesar de las claras diferencias que tenían entre ellos dos.
En este texto se demuestra una claridad y sagacidad en el analísis al momento de comorender el desarrollo del movimiento sindicalista y huelguista de la Rusia zarista, a partir del final del siglo xix hasta el Domingo Sangriento del 1905.
Este texto tiene merito en retratar el proceso revolucionario tal como él es, a partir de la experiencia Rusa, sobre todo frente a los reformistas alemanes, como Bernstein y otros.
A su vez, plantea las limitaciones del movimiento sindical una vez que este pretende reducirse a una unica actividad inmediata, la de las luchas económicas, sin tener en mira un fin ulterior a estos. Lo mismo aplica para el parlamentarismo, y a la reduccion de la lucha política en los limites del aparato estatal burgues.
Con respecto al movimiento obrero, su concepción orgánica de este —que no se reduce, como he leido por ahí, a una simple fé ciega en el espíritu revolucionario de las masas— es excelente para establecer los límites de un partido obrero que pretende organizar, casi que 'crear' la revolución por su cuenta; como si lo unico que fuera necesario fuera la organización perfecta del partido y sus militantes para hacer la revolución, independientemente del espíritu real de las masas obreras del momento.
De mis teoricas comunistas favoritas, y una gran lectura sobre el movimiento sindical y revolucionario.
En este texto se demuestra una claridad y sagacidad en el analísis al momento de comorender el desarrollo del movimiento sindicalista y huelguista de la Rusia zarista, a partir del final del siglo xix hasta el Domingo Sangriento del 1905.
Este texto tiene merito en retratar el proceso revolucionario tal como él es, a partir de la experiencia Rusa, sobre todo frente a los reformistas alemanes, como Bernstein y otros.
A su vez, plantea las limitaciones del movimiento sindical una vez que este pretende reducirse a una unica actividad inmediata, la de las luchas económicas, sin tener en mira un fin ulterior a estos. Lo mismo aplica para el parlamentarismo, y a la reduccion de la lucha política en los limites del aparato estatal burgues.
Con respecto al movimiento obrero, su concepción orgánica de este —que no se reduce, como he leido por ahí, a una simple fé ciega en el espíritu revolucionario de las masas— es excelente para establecer los límites de un partido obrero que pretende organizar, casi que 'crear' la revolución por su cuenta; como si lo unico que fuera necesario fuera la organización perfecta del partido y sus militantes para hacer la revolución, independientemente del espíritu real de las masas obreras del momento.
De mis teoricas comunistas favoritas, y una gran lectura sobre el movimiento sindical y revolucionario.
February 26, 2026
Insightful and of course influential but not my favorite of Rosa’s works. Due to the content it just naturally doesn’t have as much value outside of the time it was written compared to other primary texts.
Good:
-Super detailed breakdown of the 1905 revolution in Russia and analysis of the material conditions that led to it.
-similarly good analysis of the SPD and Germany politics of the time
-super insightful stuff about the relationship between trade unionism and revolutionary politics
-interesting insights on spontaneity and what that means for organization (although making some bold statements with only Russia as the example)
Bad
-like mentioned makes a lot of sweeping takes based off of the Russian experience
-sometimes is just kinda like a report from the frontline
-the reasoning seems a little less based in Marxist theory
Ugly: Bernstein’s ugly mug popped up again
For me to remember:
-talks about how earlier bourgeoisie revolutions in France and US aren’t possible in Russia because the conditions have matured and the economic oppression naturally facilitates a more radical revolution which I think could also be expanded to most of the third world revolutions and their inclusion of anti imperial nationalism because the nature of their conditions had changed.
Good:
-Super detailed breakdown of the 1905 revolution in Russia and analysis of the material conditions that led to it.
-similarly good analysis of the SPD and Germany politics of the time
-super insightful stuff about the relationship between trade unionism and revolutionary politics
-interesting insights on spontaneity and what that means for organization (although making some bold statements with only Russia as the example)
Bad
-like mentioned makes a lot of sweeping takes based off of the Russian experience
-sometimes is just kinda like a report from the frontline
-the reasoning seems a little less based in Marxist theory
Ugly: Bernstein’s ugly mug popped up again
For me to remember:
-talks about how earlier bourgeoisie revolutions in France and US aren’t possible in Russia because the conditions have matured and the economic oppression naturally facilitates a more radical revolution which I think could also be expanded to most of the third world revolutions and their inclusion of anti imperial nationalism because the nature of their conditions had changed.
August 9, 2023
For a book written over 100 years ago, The Mass Strike is still extremely accessible and relevant to issues today, at a time in Britain when almost the whole of the public service industry — health workers, teachers, transport workers, sectors of the civil service — are on strike or have been on strike.
Unlike some books by classic revolutionary writers like Marx, Engels and Lenin, this book does not confuse the modern reader with tediously long shadow boxing sessions with factional opponents long since dead, but addresses the issues typically with reference to direct evidence of more or less recent strikes and uprisings and so on.
Crucially, she presents the case that successful mass strikes (the iconic much wished and called for General Strike) can’t be organised from the top by organisations like the TUC but must be powered by uprising among rank and file workers.
She also points out the dangers of trade unionism disconnected from the wider labour movement, and vice versa, and the danger of the bureaucratisation of trade unions. In all cases, the danger involves detachment from the working class, and the interests of the working class.
Unlike some books by classic revolutionary writers like Marx, Engels and Lenin, this book does not confuse the modern reader with tediously long shadow boxing sessions with factional opponents long since dead, but addresses the issues typically with reference to direct evidence of more or less recent strikes and uprisings and so on.
Crucially, she presents the case that successful mass strikes (the iconic much wished and called for General Strike) can’t be organised from the top by organisations like the TUC but must be powered by uprising among rank and file workers.
She also points out the dangers of trade unionism disconnected from the wider labour movement, and vice versa, and the danger of the bureaucratisation of trade unions. In all cases, the danger involves detachment from the working class, and the interests of the working class.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2022
A brilliant work. Luxemburg's trust in the masses, and her ability to find the pulse of the revolutionary expressions of contradictions, are inspirational. There is certainly relevance here today, at least in the broader theoretical work. The union struggle has changed a lot throughout the world, and the communist movement has also entirely shifted, but as Luxemburg says "it is once again Marxism whose general method and points of view have thereby, in new form, carried off the prize. The Moor's beloved can die only by the hand of the Moor."
Perhaps my favorite quote: "The most precious, because lasting, thing in this rapid ebb and flow of the wave is its mental sediment: the intellectual, cultural growth of the proletariat, which proceeds by fits and starts, and which offers an inviolable guarantee of their further irresistible progress in the economic as in the political struggle."
Perhaps my favorite quote: "The most precious, because lasting, thing in this rapid ebb and flow of the wave is its mental sediment: the intellectual, cultural growth of the proletariat, which proceeds by fits and starts, and which offers an inviolable guarantee of their further irresistible progress in the economic as in the political struggle."
January 13, 2019
A very comprehensive and well-structured essay (which was a relief after reading her messy and incomprehensive 'In Memory of the Proletariat Party') detailing the mass strike, and expanding on Marx' and Engels' conception of it. Written after the massively succesful Russian mass strike of 1905, Rosa elaborates on its place in the class struggle, its importance and effectives, and deals with the contradiction between the anarchists' support for mass strike and the social democratic opposition to it (both of which are products of Blanquist anarchism). In the latter chapters, Rosa deals with the contradictions between the revolutionary character of the German Social Democratic Party (which had not descended into revisionism yet) and the reformist character of the trade-union movement.
August 10, 2023
Es la teórica marxista que mejor he visto escribir hasta el momento. Clara, precisa, enlazando como una maestra las ideas previamente expuestas con las nuevas, repitiendo conceptos con nuevos matices. Un diez.
El enfoque que da a la lucha de los sindicatos, las huelgas, la lucha parlamentaria y la concepción de estos como un medio y no como un fin, es hasta contemporánea aun habiendo pasado más de un siglo. Incluso señala síntomas y orígenes de la burocratización de los sindicatos, perfectamente visibles en UGT y CCOO. Hasta tiene hostias para el enfoque anarquista.
El enfoque que da a la lucha de los sindicatos, las huelgas, la lucha parlamentaria y la concepción de estos como un medio y no como un fin, es hasta contemporánea aun habiendo pasado más de un siglo. Incluso señala síntomas y orígenes de la burocratización de los sindicatos, perfectamente visibles en UGT y CCOO. Hasta tiene hostias para el enfoque anarquista.
January 20, 2026
From the fourth chapter onwards it just get's worse and worse. She underestimates the power of the subject and it shows by her claims having been proven wrong by history itself. Only one example of the many that can be found is that she says that once the stone of revolution has begone rolling it can't be stopped, not by anyone, not by any social democrats. Well we all know how the November revolution ended and what happened not too many years after it. It's honestly sad to see.
September 14, 2019
Another "must" from Rosa Luxemburg, who is now being fairly recognized by the new feminist movement on the left wing. Although referring to past times with totally different social and political situation, many topics can still be aplicable today, specially those regarding to the "faith on the union" and the attitude on never having a good momentum for the action.
August 25, 2024
While speaking especially on the material conditions respective to the Russian and German proletariat at the time, this work is of timeless importance to radical working class education, understanding the shortcomings of wage struggles and the necessity of revolution and the commitment to long-term revolutionary goals.
December 3, 2017
"No existen dos luchas distintas de la clase obrera, una económica y otra política; existe sólo una única lucha de clase que tiende simultáneamente a limitar la explotación capitalista dentro de la sociedad burguesa y a suprimir la explotación capitalista y al mismo tiempo la sociedad burguesa."
June 17, 2019
I've spent a good part of this year thinking of mass strikes and the Nairobi General Strike of 1950 has been of particular interest. Rosa's analysis of the 1905 Russian Revolution is articulate and well argued. Highly recommended
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