SOURCE: A preface to Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Work, translated by Johanna Hoornweg, Monthly Review Press, 1972, pp. xiii-xx.

[In the following essay, Frolich explains how and why he collected material for his survey of Luxemburg's life and work.]

The first edition of [Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Work] was published in Paris at the end of August 1939, a few days before the outbreak of the Second World War. The book is a child of the German Emigration and bears the marks of its origins. The author left Germany at the beginning of 1934 after his release from a concentration camp. At the time he thought that the material which he had been gathering for many years to prepare for the Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) of Ross Luxemburg was in safe hands. Somehow, however, it got lost or fell into hands which would not let go of it. Among these papers were manuscripts and letters of Rosa Luxemburg; almost all of her works published in German, Polish and French; Volume v of the Gesammelte Werke, already typeset and ready to be printed, which contained her writings on imperialist politics; political and private letters to Rosa; a number of notes and many other items. Outside Germany only a part of the losses could be made good, and it became necessary to do without many papers which would have been useful in describing background details and personalities.

Despite these unfavourable circumstances, however, the book had to be written. Rosa Luxemburg's name has become a symbol in the international working-class movement. Yet little is known of her work today, and even those who are generally well-versed in socialist literature are acquainted with mere fragments of her writings. The publishing of her literary remains ran into frequent obstacles and—because of the factional fighting within the Communist International—into determined (even if never openly admitted) opposition. It could therefore not be completed. Thus whole areas of her work, a knowledge of which would have been of great significance in assessing her views, were forgotten. In the disputes of the various parties and tendencies in the working-class movement many teachings of the master were misconstrued, and many maliciously distorted. It seemed that if any socialist literature could be salvaged and brought out of hiding in a post-Nazi period, it would prove to be only rubble. There was a danger that only a faded memory or a deceptive legend of Rosa Luxemburg's historical achievements would be left.

The biographical works published about her either served a limited purpose, such as the one by Luise Kautsky, or they disregarded essential sectors of Rosa's life-work, such as the one by Henriette Roland-Holst. Both authors were very close to Rosa, and depicted her personality with much warmth and understanding. However, because both of them after all advocated views decidedly different from Rosa's, they could not succeed in presenting her ideas correctly and in doing justice to her political work.

One person would have been eminently qualified to revive Rosa Luxemburg's life and work: Clara Zetkin. The two of them had worked together for decades. Each was a strong person in the light of her own development and worth. They came from different backgrounds and each was influenced by other experiences. Nevertheless, in the intellectual disputes and political battles they had arrived at the same views and decisions. Of the leading socialists who survived Rosa, no one knew Luxemburg, the person and the fighter, better than Clara Zetkin; no one was more familiar with the battlefield, the historical circumstances, and with the identity of friend and foe in the skirmishes. Moreover, she knew the specific motives behind many of the decisions, motives which would have remained hidden to a researcher forced to make a judgment based on documents alone. What a biography of Rosa by Clara Zetkin would have provided can be surmised from the essays and pamphlets she wrote to commemorate her friend. Until her death on 20 June 1933, however, Clara Zetkin devoted herself completely to the tasks of the daily struggle, and declared again and again that she was thereby fulfilling the obligation she felt for her fallen comrade-in-arms.

The victory of fascism in Germany and the resulting effort to analyse the causes of the severe defeat of the proletariat led not only German socialists to make a more thorough study of the teachings of Rosa Luxemburg. Indeed, one could speak of a Luxemburg-Renaissance in the international working-class movement. The more the interest in her work grew, the deeper the gaps in the available material were felt to be. However, it was evident that it would not suffice merely to republish the lost writings insofar as they were at all accessible. The attempt now had to be made to provide an overall presentation of her ideas and actions using her own views as a starting-point. To define and work out as clearly as possible the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg was the chief task which the author set for himself. He therefore had carefully to consider his presentation and to let Rosa herself speak whenever the opportunity arose, even if the narrative flow might suffer from the break. He was thereby hoping to serve those readers whom he kept constantly in mind while working on the book—active socialists interested in theoretical and tactical problems.

That the book could be written at all was due above all to the efforts of the distinguished publisher and tireless defender of the deprived and the downtrodden, Victor Gollancz. It was his publishing company which, in the spring of 1940, brought out the English edition of the book in Edward Fitzgerald's excellent translation. It had an astonishing success in wartime England.

The book puts the reader back into a time that is past. In the three decades since Rosa Luxemburg's death the world has undergone cruel changes. Those January days of 1919 when the German Revolution was dealt a decisive blow marked, in fact, the end of an epoch of the working-class movement, a period which had begun with the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Laws and had been characterised by an almost uninterrupted socialist advance. Even in times of serious internal upheaval, such as the years of the First World War, this advance had continued, for, as the new experiences and problems were worked out intellectually, new heights of knowledge and insight were reached, and new moral strengths acquired in the more bitter struggles. Since then the conditions under which socialists have had to work have become increasingly more complicated and more difficult. It is true that working-class organisations everywhere grew impressively in size and that significant successes were obtained in individual struggles. However, the working-class movement remained divided by a deep rift; it became crippled by violent internal struggles, and its fighting morale weakened. The general development went from failure to defeat, finally ending in the terrible catastrophe for the whole proletariat brought on by German fascism. In this period of decline the old comrades-in-arms of Rosa Luxemburg felt more and more keenly how sorely the movement lacked her advice, her leadership, and her example. Today anyone trying to assess the difficulties facing the working class in all countries and particularly in Germany, and to grasp the dangers currently confronting all of mankind, becomes aware of the need of our times for a person with Rosa Luxemburg's clarity and boldness.

An attempt should be made to investigate how, under the cataclysmically changed conditions of today, Rosa Luxemburg's ideas, and particularly her tactical teachings, might be used in a fruitful way. However, this is not possible in a preface, even in bare outline form. The first prerequisite for such an undertaking would be a thorough analysis of all the characteristic social and political phenomena of our times. But it should be emphasised that Rosa Luxemburg never looked upon the results of her theoretical work as ultimate truths or as tactical models to be pressed to fit changed conditions. In a speech delivered to trade-union members in Hagen (October 1910) she herself said:

The modem proletarian class does not conduct its struggle according to a schema laid down in a book or in a theory. The modem workers' struggle is a fragment of history, a fragment of social development. And it is in the midst of history, in the midst of struggle, that we learn how we must fight … The first commandment of a political fighter is to go with the development of the times and to account always for any changes in the world as well as for any changes in our fighting strategy.

For her there was no dogma or authority which commanded blind obedience. Even the mere thought that her own ideas should not be subject to criticism would have taken her aback and roused her indignation. Ever alert and critical thinking was for her the lifeblood of the socialist movement, the first prerequisite for common action. Without constant and conscientious examination of the teachings which were handed down, without thorough analysis of the facts, without recognition of the new tendencies of development, it would be impossible for the movement to keep abreast of history and to master the tasks of the present. And, it should be added—because many years of experience have shown its importance—Rosa was well aware of the unavoidability of compromises in both organisational life and practical politics if unanimity in action towards a common aim was to be achieved. Where knowledge and recognition of the facts were concerned, however, she knew no compromise, and especially no submission to alien will. To stand up for her convictions to the bitter end was a moral principle, something she deemed a matter of course for any socialist; behind this was her unbroken urge to get to the bottom of things.

In her work there are enough scientific observations and tactical principles which stand up to every test, as well as conclusions which were not only valid in the particular circumstances of her time but could also stimulate and guide us in the solution of present-day problems. There remain, of course, those views of Rosa which are still the object of intellectual controversy. However, to make a critical evaluation of every word of the master would be to acquire her legacy, to take possession of it.

After the experience of the last decades objections were raised to certain of Rosa Luxemburg's ideas even by Marxists. It is necessary to make a more exact sketch of Rosa's standpoint in these questions and to test its justification. Marxist teaching culminates in the assertion that, in capitalism, production assumes a progressively social character, although private property remains linked to the means of production. Capitalist society must, according to this theory, inevitably perish because of this and other contradictions, i.e. because of the effects of its own laws of development. Rosa Luxemburg was deeply convinced of this historical necessity, and expressed this view in many of her works. Her chief work, The Accumulation of aapital, was concerned with proving that the decay of the capitalist social order was inevitable. Her conviction has been confirmed by history, for all the things we have been experiencing in the last several decades—this whirlpool of crises, wars, revolutions, and counter-revolutions, with all their frightful effects—are the convulsions of a disintegrating society. Here contradictions are operating which have always been at work in capitalist society, but they have now gelled into an explosive mixture of such force and of such proportions that it seems as if the whole world were being ravaged by a continuous series of earthquakes.

Marxists, including Rosa Luxemburg, have assumed that this process of decay would lead directly to socialism, for the development of the contradictions of capitalism would be accompanied, of course, by the growth of the chief contradiction, the one between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. As Marx put it, 'As the mass of misery, oppression, servitude, degeneration, and exploitation grows, so, too, does the indignation of the ever swelling working class, trained, united and organised by the mechanism of the capitalist production-process itself'. The fact of the matter was that in the epoch when the capitalist economic mode was developing and bringing the techniques of production to an ever higher level, the working-class movement also grew in size and strength. The generation to which Rosa Luxemburg belonged observed that this process was happening consistently, almost as if it were following certain laws. For this reason Rosa Luxemburg did not doubt that in the coming catastrophes the working class would have the will and the drive to fulfil its historic task.

During the First World War, however, when she experienced the collapse of the International and the crossing of the socialist parties into the imperialist camp, when the working masses were making one sacrifice after the other for the capitalist order, and the German proletarians in uniform were letting themselves be misused even against the Russian Revolution, Rosa repeated the warning more and more loudly: the catastrophes into which capitalist society will be plunged do not by themselves offer the certainty that capitalism will be superseded by socialism. If the working class itself does not find the strength for its own liberation, then the whole of society, including the working class, could be consumed in internecine struggles. Mankind now stands before the alternatives: either socialism or descent into barbarism! And she maintained this either-or view when the Central Powers collapsed and the revolution in Central Europe was making more powerful progress every day. In the Spartakus programme she wrote: 'Either the continuation of capitalism, new wars and a very early decline into chaos and anarchy, or the abolition of capitalist exploitation.'

The self-assertion of the Russian Revolution and the long-drawn-out revolutionary tremblings in Europe and in the colonial countries provided new nourishment for the optimism of the most active cadres of the socialist movement. Even if the path of development had to go through violent struggles with occasional reverses, it seemed to be leading inexorably to a socialist transformation of society. Although Rosa Luxemburg's warning of the dangers of sinking into barbarism was often repeated in both speeches and writings, its whole earnestness was not grasped. People had no idea what sinking into barbarism could mean at all—not until the victory of Hitler and his barbarians showed with brutally clear force that Rosa Luxemburg's warning cry had been no mere rhetorical phrase. The destruction of the working-class movement, the atomisation of the different social strata, the book-burnings, the strangulation of intellectual life, the horrors of the concentration camps, the extermination of whole sectors of the population, the total control of society by the state apparatus, and total war with its inevitable total defeat and terrible consequences—all this was the reality of barbarism.

The socialist working-class movement which had developed so powerfully alongside the capitalist mode of production was drawn into the catastrophe because it was incapable of halting its onset. The overturning of the socialist hopes of the broad masses was perhaps the most dangerous feature of the descent into barbarism. The course of events in Russia, whose revolution would at one time have lent new strength to these hopes, now had an especially shattering effect on the international socialist movement. The stunting of democratic organs in Russia, the control of the people by an almighty bureaucracy, the murder of Lenin's comrades-in-arms, and finally the pact with Hitler, left any remaining faith in the socialist politics of the Russian state only to those who were prepared to sacrifice all their critical faculties. Thus new problems arose for those who clung unswervingly to the aims of socialism. Discussions dealt no longer with the means and ways of achieving socialism, but with the question of whether or not the development towards socialism was at all secure. What is historical necessity? This now became the burning political question.

According to the Marxist analysis of capitalism, the ever greater socialisation of the production process, the growth of cartels and trusts, the development in the direction of state capitalism is historically necessary. This, however, means the formation of the prerequisites for a socialist organisation of the economy. Historical necessity is the dissolution of the capitalist social order in violent economic and political crises in which the class struggle is intensified and the working class obtains the possibility of gaining political power and bringing about socialism. The relative strength of the proletariat in the class struggles is to a great extent historically conditioned. In recent decades certain phenomena have had a disastrous effect on this strength, for example, the strong differentiation within the working class, its political split into different parties, the wearing down of the petit-bourgeoisie by the Great Depression and its swing to fascism, the ruthless use of state power in the class struggle, and finally the general effects of the whole complex of world-political conflicts with its confusing abundance of contradictory phenomena.

The intervention of a class and of its different strata and organisations in the historical process is not only the fruit of knowledge and will. It is heavily conditioned by social and political factors affecting the class from outside. However, classes and parties are themselves factors in the multifarious assortment of forces. Their commissions and omissions react continuously on the conditions under which they themselves have to fight. The knowledge and will of individuals, of the organisations and thereby of the class itself are of weighty significance in this process; they are decisive for the final victory when other conditions have also ripened, and they are decisive for the course taken by history at its turning points. This is part and parcel of the Marxist concept of history, which becomes bowdlerised if viewed as fatalism. Rosa Luxemburg often explained the relation between objective facts and tendencies of development on the one hand and the conscious action of men on the other, as, for example, in the compact sentences of her Juniusbroschdüre:

(The) victory of the socialist proletariat … is tied to the iron laws of history, to the thousand rungs of the previous tortured and all too slow development. But it can never be brought about unless the igniting spark of the conscious will of the great mass of the people springs up out of all the elements of the material prerequisites collected from this development.

This conscious will arises from a long process of experience, of training and struggle, a development of knowledge and morale. Here the teachings and the example of Rosa Luxemburg should and could be made fruitful. It is not given to everyone to recognise, with her scientific insight and visionary power, the great historic tendencies at work amid the chance phenomena of the day. However, everyone can, as she did, fearlessly and without shirking the consequences, look reality in the eye and strive to recognise the essential features in the events of the day, and thereby find the road that needs to be taken. One would always have to examine one's own views again and again in order to gain the confidence and the strength to stand up for one's own convictions. For Rosa Luxemburg loyalty to oneself was the natural prerequisite for loyalty to the cause of the oppressed. Her whole life bears witness to this.

But what did socialism mean to her? This question is being asked in a period when political concepts have become ambiguous and many have been used deliberately to deceive people. Again and again Rosa Luxemburg emphasised that the strategic aim of the working-class struggle, the aim which was supposed to determine all tactical measures, was the conquest of political power. This is the aim of struggle in class society. But it is only the method of transferring all the means of production into the hands of the general public and of organising production in a socialist way. But even this latter step is only the means to an end. The goal of socialism is man, i.e. a society without class differences in which men working in community, without tutelage, forge their own fate. It is—in Marx's words—'an association where the free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of all.' It is not socialism if the means of production are socialised and set into motion according to a plan, but a class or a social stratum autocratically controls the means of production, regiments and oppresses the working masses, and deprives them of their rights. No socialism can be realised in a country where the state power breaks in and gets rid of the old ruling classes and property relations but at the same time subjects the whole nation to a ruthless dictatorship which prevents the working class from being conscious of its particular role and tasks and acting accordingly. As Rosa Luxemburg expressed it in the Spartakus programme: 'The essence of socialist society is in the fact that the great working mass ceases to be a ruled mass, and that it itself lives and directs the whole of political and economic life in free and conscious self-determination.' Socialism is democracy completed, the free unfolding of the individual personality through working together with all for the well-being of all. Wherever state power still has to be applied to suppress the working masses, the socialist struggle has not yet achieved its aim.

The historical process has become more confusing and more cruel than the experiences of earlier times would have led one to expect. Never have the conditions of living and struggle of the German working class been so severe as they are at present, and there is no magic way of avoiding all the convulsions resulting from the greatest social crisis of mankind. However, the socialist movement can shorten the period of decline and of internecine warfare and can direct the course of history to new heights. Rosa Luxemburg's legacy will help the movement to gain the strength, self-confidence, and courage for this task.