Reform or Revolution - 2

While Luxemburg was able to refute Bemstein's
theory of the evolution of capitalism into
socialism, she still was faced with the "anomalous"
reformist tendencies of the German working
class. She saw the expansion of social democracy's
participation in electoral politics as a
two edged sword: "But capitalism furnishes besides
the obstacles also the only possibilities of
realizing the socialist program. The same can be
said about democracy" (Waters 1970, p. 74). But
the realization of democracy's potential lay in
working class organization outside the trade union
and parliamentary terrains. Basing her analysis
on the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905
Luxemburg idealized the mass strike as the universal
weapon of revolutionary class struggle.
The intermingling of political and economic
strikes would take the place of street fighting.
While recognizing the peculiar conditions in
Russia, Luxemburg argued against those in the
Social Democratic Party who regarded the mass
strike as a weapon specific to the working class
in absolutist and economically backward regimes

(Schorske 1955, Chapter 2). She never managed
to reconcile herself or her theory to the reformist
tendencies within the working class.
Whereas Bernstein's radical departure from the
Marxist core originated a new research program,"
Luxemburg's defense of the hard core led to the
development of a new and progressive belt of
theory -progressive in that it anticipated new
phenomena, some of which actually occurred.
The contributions of both should be contrasted
with Kautsky's defense of Marxism which reduced
its empirical content by denying anomalies.
Kautsky ([I8911 1971; 1909) preferred to look
for confiations of Marxism than to tackle its
anomalies. He held onto orthodoxy by appealing
to P5, arguing that there was still room for the
expansion of the forces of production within
capitalism and that its working class was correspondingly
immature. Therefore, revolution was
premature. He dealt with the divergence between
theory and reality by projecting their convergence
into an unspecified future. He neither reconstructed
the core nor created new theory. As the
situation in Germany polarized during and after
WWI, Kautsky disappeared into the widening
gulf separating social democratic revisionism and
the politically weaker revolutionary Marxism.