For Luxemburg, the increase in strikes that came after the Russian Revolution of 1905 was a sure sign of the revolutionary spirit of the working class. She pushed for mass strikes to be an important tool used by the SPD (the Social Democratic Party in Germany) in undermining capitalism, for it to be a party whose aim is to overthrow the entire political and economic system.

But her theory became threatening to all bureaucratic machines, first to the SPD and the trade union leaders, and later to the Communist International. (Luxemburg was not a fan of Lenin’s propagation of a highly centralized party structure). It isn’t that the SPD didn’t support and indeed advocate mass strike, it was that it had to be specifically under certain conditions. Contrarily, Luxemberg, in true participatory spirit, felt that in order for a mass strike to be an effective revolutionary weapon against capitalism it was imperative that the desire and drive for mass action came from the masses — who had been guided and influenced by the party. Needless to say, bureaucratic machines cannot tolerate being led by the desires and drives of the masses. She was later assassinated by the SPD.

At this point it should be evident that this is one of those few important works that clearly lay out the boundaries between real revolutionaries that are concerned with creating participatory democracies and those hypocritical, authoritative bureaucrats concerned only with parliamentary pursuits of power that contradict their rhetoric.

Please read. ( )