Marxism and the Union Bureaucracy:Karl Kautsky on Samuel Gompers and the German Free Trade Unions

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/156920608X315266
Historical Materialism 16 (2008) 115–136 www.brill.nl/hima Archive

Marxism and the Union Bureaucracy: Karl Kautsky on Samuel Gompers and the German Free Trade Unions

Daniel Gaido
National Research Council (CONICE), Argentina danielgaid@gmail.com

 Abstract
This work is a companion piece to ‘The American Worker’, Karl Kautsky’s reply to Werner Sombart’s Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? 
 (1906), first published in English in the November 2003 edition of this journal. In August 1909 Kautsky wrote an article on Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, on the occasion of the latter’s first European tour. Te article was not only a criticism of Gompers’s anti-socialist ‘pure-and-simple’unionism but also part of an ongoing battle between the revolutionary wing of German Social Democracy and the German trade-union officials. In this critical English edition we provide the historical background to the document as well as an overview of the issues raised by Gompers’visit to Germany, such as the bureaucratization and increasing conservatism of the union leadership in both Germany and the United States, the role of the General Commission of Free Trade Unions in the abandonment of Marxism by the German Social-Democratic Party and the socialists’ attitude toward institutions promoting class collaboration like the National Civic Federation.

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LuXemburg. Gesellschaftsanalyse und linke Praxis,
2019,
ISSN 1869-0424
Publisher:
Board of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung
Managing Editor:
Barbara Friedbarbara.fried@rosalux.orgTel: +49 (0)30 443 10-404
Editorial Board:
Harry Adler, Lutz Brangsch, MichaelBrie, Mario Candeias, Judith Dellheim, Alex DemiroviĆ,Barbara Fried, Corinna Genschel, Christiane Markard,Ferdinand Muggenthaler, Miriam Pieschke, KatharinaPühl, Rainer Rilling, Thomas Sablowski, Hannah Schu-rian, Jörn Schütrumpf, Ingar Solty,
Uwe Sonnenberg,Moritz Warnke and Florian Wilde

CONTENTS

STOP OR WE WILL SHOOT!
WHY THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF 1918/19 HAD TO END

IN POLITICAL REVOLUTION AND ULTIMATELY LOST IT AS WELL
by Ingar Solty, Uwe Sonnenberg, Jörn Schütrumpf
........................................2

 A NEW CIVILIZATION
by Alex Demirović
......................................10

ROSA LUXEMBURG AS A SOCIALIST FEMINIST
by Drucilla Cornell
...................................18 

‘NO SENTIMENTALITY PLEASE’
AN ISRAELI PERSPECTIVE ON ROSA LUXEMBURG
by Gal Hertz
.................................26
LETTER TO SOPHIE LIEBKNECHT
by Rosa Luxemburg
...............................................32

INNER COLONIES
THE CARE SECTOR AS A PLACE OF
‘NEW LANDNAHME’
by Tove Soiland
....................................................38
ORDER REIGNS IN BERLIN
by Rosa Luxemburg
......................................................44
REVOLUTIONARY REALPOLITIK
by Michael Brie | Mario Candeias
.......................................   .............52

ROWING AGAINST THE CURRENT TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH ROSA LUXEMBURG
by Miriam Pieschke
..........................................................60

‘NO COWARDICE BEFORE THE FRIEND!’
HOW DO WE CRITIQUE REVOLUTIONS?
by Lutz Brangsch........................66 

AUTHORS ...................................72

Rediscovering the Hamburg Workers' and Soldiers' Councils

Council Democracy: Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics, 2018

James Muldoon

Gaard Kets

This chapter aims to shed new light on our understanding of the development of council theory through an analysis of the early political experiences of council delegates in Hamburg at a formative stage of revolutionary activity and thought in Germany. We examine the minutes of 76 meetings of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council of Hamburg from 6 November 1918 to 24 March 1919 in order to offer a rich portrait of a key moment in the development of council theory. What we observe from the debates is that there is no single official position of council communism, but rather a set of shared underlying concerns and a number of different ways in which these ideas were put to work in different political contexts. The collapse of the legitimacy and authority of the old order and the organisation of councils into a force capable of taking de facto power opened the possibility of radical transformation. Yet attempts to theorise and create a new society were impeded both by ideological hesitation and the practical realities of attempting to govern in a divided and conflict-ridden society. The actions and theories of council delegates reflected a number of pragmatic compromises and competing interpretations over the proper structure and role for the councils.

Publication Date: 2018

Publication Name: Council Democracy: Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics

Council Democracy: Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics

Council Democracy: Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics, 2018

James Muldoon

The return to public assemblies and direct democratic methods in the wave of the global "squares movements" since 2011 has rejuvenated interest in forms of council organisation and action. The European council movements, which developed in the immediate post-WWI era, were the first and most impressive of a number of attempts to develop workers' councils throughout the twentieth century. However, in spite of the recent challenges to liberal democracy, the question of council democracy has so far been neglected within democratic theory. This book seeks to interrogate contemporary democratic institutions from the perspective of the resources that can be drawn from a revival and re-evaluation of the forgotten ideal of council democracy. This collection brings together democratic theorists, socialists and labour historians on the question of the relevance of council democracy for contemporary democratic practices. Historical reflection on the councils opens our political imagination to an expanded scope of the possibilities for political transformation by drawing from debates and events at an important historical juncture before the dominance of current forms of liberal democracy. It offers a critical perspective on the limits of current democratic regimes for enabling widespread political participation and holding elites accountable. This timely read provides students and scholars with innovative analyses of the councils on the hundredth anniversary of their development. It offers new analytic frameworks for conceptualising the relationship between politics and the economy and contributes to emerging debates within political theory on workplace, economic and council democracy.

Location: London

Organization: Routledge

Publication Date: Aug 1, 2018

Publication Name: Council Democracy: Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics

The Birth of Council Communism (chapter)

The German Revolution and Political Theory, 2019

James Muldoon

This chapter demonstrates the pivotal importance of the German Revolution on the development of council communist thought. It claims that differences between the Bolsehviks and “left” or “council” communists occurred initially over the questions of revolutionary strategies for Europe and only later over a critique of the centralisation and bureaucratisation of the Russian Revolution. This chapter also traces a shift in theorists’ understanding of the workers’ councils during and after the German Revolution. It argues that while participants in the revolution such as the Revolutionary Shop Stewards were more inclined to view the councils as the initial structures of a post-capitalist society, this shifted in the later council communist ideology towards a more open principle of workers’ self-emancipation. The outlines of council communism did not emerge immediately during the experience of workers' councils in the Germany Revolution. Rather, they emerged gradually through theoretical debates within the Communist International.

Publication Date: 2019

Publication Name: The German Revolution and Political Theory

A Marxian Theory of Democracy
Socialism and Democracy, 2000
Mehmet Tabak
https://www.academia.edu/3061865/A_Marxian_Theory_of_Democracy

Marx's Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship Revisited

Author(s): Mehmet TabakSource:
Science & Society,
Vol. 64, No. 3 (Fall, 2000), pp. 333-356

Published by: Guilford Press

https://www.academia.edu/36909948/Marxs_Theory_of_Proletarian_Dictatorship_Revisited

ROAD-MAP TO SOCIALISM_edited docx.docx

2018

Binay Sarkar

Democracy is the road to socialism
Win the battle of democracy
Do away with private property
Abolish the wages system altogether

Show more ▾

A COMRADE FROM THE WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT 

Democracy nowadays is communism - Engels

Binay Sarkar

Some workers even after getting involved in the World Socialist Movement hold on to the erroneous view that we should support movements for political democracy, owing to the phony belief that the struggle for democracy takes precedence over the struggle for Socialism. 

Actually, democracy in itself is not a system of society, but just the language of a social relation and a principle of organization and action. It is human nature to live socially, and democracy is the spontaneous social expression of human nature.

“The struggle for democracy is bound up with the struggle for Socialism, and not the struggle for Socialism bound up with the struggle for democracy.” (Socialist Standard, June1939).

THE LABOUR DEBATE AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE THEORY AND REALITY OF CAPITALIST WORK

https://www.academia.edu/3190057/The_Labour_Debate._An_investigation_into_the_theory_and_reality_of_capitalist_work

What is to be Done? Leninism,anti-Leninist Marxism and the Question of Revolution today

 

 

Chapter 1

What is to be Done? Leninism,anti-Leninist Marxism and theQuestion of Revolution today

 

Werner Bonefeld and Sergio Tischler

I

Of one thing we can be certain. The ideologies of the twentiethcentury will disappear completely. This has been a lousy century.It has been filled with dogmas, dogmas that one after anotherhave cost us time, suffering, and much injustice (Garcia Marquez,1990).

Amid the resurgence of anti-capitalist movements across theglobe, the centenary of Lenin’s

What is to be Done?

in 2002has largely gone unnoticed. Leninism has fallen on hard times – and rightly so. It leaves a bitter taste of a revolution whoseheroic struggle turned into a nightmare. The indifference toLeninism is understandable. What, however, is disturbing isthe contemporary disinterest in the revolutionary project. Whatdoes anti-capitalism in its contemporary form of anti-globalization mean if it is not a practical critique of capitalismand what does it wish to achieve if its anti-capitalism fails toespouse the revolutionary project of human emancipation?Anti-capitalist indifference to revolution is a contradictionin terms. Rather then freeing the theory and practice ofrevolution from Leninism, its conception of revolutionaryorganization in the form of the party, and its idea of the statewhose power is to be seized, as an instrument of revolution,remain uncontested. Revolution seems to mean Leninism, nowappearing in moderated form as Trotskyism. OrthodoxMarxism invests great energy in its attempt to incorporate the

 

2

What is to be Done?

 

class struggle into preconceived conceptions of organization,seeking to render them manageable under the direction of the party. The management of class struggle belongs traditionallyto the bourgeoisie who ‘concentrated in the form of the state’(see Marx, 1973, p.108), depend on its containment andmanagement in the form of abstract equality. The denial ofhumanity that is entailed in the subordination of the inequalityin property to relations of abstract equality in the form ofexchange relations, is mirrored in the Leninist conception ofthe workers state, where everybody is treated equally as aneconomic resource.Hiding behind dogma, contemporary endorsements of therevolutionary party as the organizational form of revolution,focus the ‘distortion’ of socialism on Stalin, cleansingLeninism and maintaining its myth.

1

 Was the tragedy of theRussian revolution really just contingent on the question ofleadership, a tragedy caused by a bad leader who took overfrom a good leader, and should Trotsky had succeeded Lenin,would his leadership have been ‘good’, rescuing the revolutionfrom the dungeons of despair – the Gulag? Whateverdifference Trotsky might have made, is revolution really just aquestion of personalities and their leadership qualities?Orthodox accounts do not raise the most basic question of thecritical Enlightenment –

cui bono

 (who benefits) – and,instead, show great trust in the belief that revolution has to bemade on behalf of the dependent masses, so that all goesaccording to plan, including the planning of the economicresource labour through the workers state. Marx’s insight thatcommunism is a classless society and that ‘to be a productivelabourer is...not a piece of luck, but a misfortune’ (Marx, 1983, p.477), is endorsed in perverted form: the party’s directorshipover the proletariat is a fortune for the misfortunate. Thosewho take the project of human emancipation seriously, willfind little comfort in the idea that the party knows best.Contemporary anti-capitalism does well to keep well clear ofthe Leninist conception of revolution. However, itsindifference to revolution belies its anti-capitalist stance. This,then, means that the

ratio emancipationis

 has to berediscovere

Outlining a vision of Communism in 21st century as an alternative to Capitalism
(by PKD (Parivartan ki Disha), Nagpur,India)
 ‘Humanity …..chooses its present from the perspective of the future, and thus forms its present on the basis of a projected future.’