RES: RES: RES: Why the Left Always Loses: What is to Be Done?

Peter van Heusden pvh at industrial.egenetics.com
Wed Jan 17 00:52:38 PST 2001


On Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 11:36:31PM -0200, Alexandre Fenelon wrote:
>
> -Thank you for those good informations. I will try to get some material on
> -those groups in the Internet.
> -On your question, I think I can´t be considered an orthodox communist,
> since
> -I think democracy is absolutely essential if you want to build socialism.

This is a position which is not unique to Luxemburg, although in the 'orthodox communist' movement Luxemburg is probably best known for highlighting the question of democracy (e.g. in The Mass Strike and The Russian Revolution (aka. Marxism or Leninism?)). For instance, Otto Ruhle, one of the delegates from the KAPD (Community Workers Party of Germany) wrote a highly critical account of his trip to Russia in 1920: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8195/moscow.htm

The current to which Ruhle belonged - council communism - certainly saw democracy as central to communism. For texts by Ruhle and other 'ultra lefts' see the John Gray WWW site: http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/

The debate on what exactly 'democracy' means has been a big part of the history of 'left communism' - from the early position of the 'council communists' who saw democratic workers councils as the basis of communism onwards. Later theorists, however, deepened the analysis into a critique of the notion of representation - though there are early hints of this in e.g. Otto Ruhle's 'The Revolution is not a Party Affair' (and even in the work of Jan Waclaw Machajski) - more on that only if someone's interested.


> Is
> -there a word to name followers of Rosa Luxemburg? (whose works I´m just
> starting
> -to read, but I consider her the second best Marxist writer, second only to
> Marx,
> -and who had a strong pro democracy stance- see his work on Russian
> Revolution)

Yep, sounds like you're a Luxemburgist :) But Marx on the Russian Revolution? Huh? What works do you mean?

Peter



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