[lbo-talk] Rosa on Old Women (Was: Graeber responds to Hedges)

lbo83235 lbo83235 at gmail.com
Thu Feb 9 18:01:23 PST 2012


On Feb 10, 2012, at 2:08 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:


> Does anyone have a response yet to my question as to a non-sexist and
> non-ageist synonym for "old women" in Luxemburg's 1898 speeches? We really
> need such a term.

Here's the reference in context:

"But if we take the position that we are to bring to fruition the interest of the proletariat, then it is impossible to make statements such as those that Heine has recently made to the effect that we can also make concessions on the question of militarism; it is impossible to make statements such as those of Konrad Schmidt to the central committee of the socialist majority in the bourgeois parliament, impossible to say, as Bernstein has, that once we take over command of the ship, even then we will not be in a position to do away with capitalism. When I read that, I said to myself: what a stroke of luck that the French socialist workers weren’t that bright in 1871, for then they would have said: “Children, let’s go to bed, our hour has not yet struck, production is not yet sufficiently concentrated for us to maintain control of the ship.” But then, instead of a moving drama, instead of a heroic struggle, we would have seen a different scenario, for then the workers would not have behaved like heroes, but like old women. I think that arguments about whether, once we come to power, we will be able to make the production process serve society, whether things are ripe for that, that is an academic question. For us there can never be any question that we must struggle to seize political poster. A socialist party must always have a response appropriate to the situation; it can never shrink back from its task. Therefore our views on what our final goals are must be fully clarified. And we will fulfill them, in spite of storm, wind, and weather."

Looking at the context, I think the issue is less one of finding a synonym for "old women" than of finding a contrastive to "heroes." I hear mainly two pairs of opposites at work in the juxtaposition: "courage vs. cowardice" and "decisiveness vs. indecisiveness" (or maybe "confusedness"). I'm not sure "cowards" has the right kind of traction for making a point like this, but I don't have a better suggestion at the moment; hopefully others will jump in. I'm less convinced this specific point by Rosa is vital than I am that it could be good to reflect on what kinds of categories could be effective in framing the implicit moral-political demand for courage and decisiveness.

A slightly tangential thought: One of the things about the Middle East uprisings that I found striking was how comfortable people were using terms like "heroes" and "martyrs." I have trouble imagining those terms being used unselfconsciously and non-ironically in the U.S. context, but that may be a failure of imagination on my part.

Here's the link to the full speech:

<http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1898/10/04.htm>



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