by PAUL LE BLANC
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (left) and Rosa Luxemburg
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg first met in 1901 but actually got to know each other amid the revolutionary workers’ insurgencies sweeping through Russia and Eastern Europe in 1905-1906. As Luxemburg biographer J. P. Nettl tells us:
A personal sympathy between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg – based, like all Lenin’s friendships, on mutual respect – was born at this time [in 1906] and was to survive for six years until party differences drowned it once more in the froth of polemics. Even then a spark of personal sympathy always survived the renewed hostilities …[1]
Political theorist Hannah Arendt, drawing Nettl’s study, concludes that “there were few people she respected [as intellectual equals], and [Leo] Jogiches [Luxemburg’s close comrade in the Polish movement] headed a list on which only the names of Lenin and [Marxs’s outstanding biographer] Franz Mehring could be inscribed with certainty.” In 1911, she wrote: “Yesterday Lenin came, and up to today he has been here four times already. I enjoy talking with him, he’s clever and well educated, and has such an ugly mug, the kind I like to look at.” Luxemburg commented that her cat Mimi “impressed Lenin tremendously, he said that only in Siberia had he seen such a magnificent creature, that she was … a majestic cat. She also flirted with him, rolled on her back and behaved enticingly toward him, but when he tried to approach her she whacked him with a paw and snarled like a tiger.”[2] This symbolises the political differences that flared up between them, on which we will focus here.
Complex historical developments give some credence to Luxemburg’s warnings about the divisive, diversionary and destructive impact that nationalism can have for the working class. Lenin, on the other hand, is attentive to differences between the nationalism of oppressor nations (involving imperialism and racism, which must be opposed) and the nationalism of the oppressed (involving struggles against imperialism and racism, which should be supported).[3] It could be argued that there is truth in each of these divergent perspectives.
Imperialism
In both Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital and Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism the capitalist system is portrayed as inherently imperialistic and violent. Yet Luxemburg, in contrast to Lenin, does not see imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, or as something that arose in the late 19th century due to the consolidation of multinational corporations under the influence of finance capital. For her it has existed as an integral part of capitalism from its very beginning.
Lenin largely popularises the work of others – J. A. Hobson, Rudolf Hilferding and Nikolai Bukharin. Luxemburg offers an original and controversial analysis that is critical of what has been called the “realisation theory” (having to do with how exchange-values are transformed into actual prices) in the second volume of Marx’s Capital. While Lenin tends to see multifaceted dimensions, fluidity and flexibility in capitalist expansion, Luxemburg believes that there are limits – a necessity for capitalism to expand into non-capitalist territories, which will eventually be used up, leading to crisis and collapse.[4]
“She has got into a shocking muddle”, Lenin complained. “She has distorted Marx.” Yet even economists inclined to agree with Lenin have insisted that Luxemburg was raising important questions, and some economists have insisted that some of the answers she provided are well worth considering. One of her severest critics, Russian Marxist Nikolai Bukharin, hailed Luxemburg’s analysis as “a daring theoretical attempt” and “the deed of a brilliant theoretical intellect”. Ernest Mandel, agreeing with other critics on what he considers secondary issues, nonetheless argues that “the final balance-sheet on Luxemburg’s critique … must be a nuanced one. We cannot say baldly that she is right or that she is wrong.”[5]
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