The fourth chapter of Luxemburg’s ‘Social Reform or Revolution?’ as it was first published in English. A reminder: Luxemburg is 27 years old, and just arrived in Berlin, when she wrote this now classic work repudiating one of Marxism’s highest authorities.

‘Reform or Revolution: Capitalism and the State’ (1899) by Rosa Luxemburg from International Review. Vol. 1 No. 4. May, 1936.

THE SECOND condition of the gradual realization of socialism is, according to Bernstein, the evolution of the State in society. It has become a commonplace to say that the present State is a class State. However, we believe that this, too, like everything referring to capitalist society, should not be understood in a rigorous, absolute manner but dialectically.

The State became capitalist with the political victory of the bourgeoisie. Capitalist development modifies essentially the nature of the State, widening its sphere of action, constantly imposing on it new functions (especially those affecting economic life), making more and more necessary its intervention and control in society. In this sense, capitalist development prepares little by little the future fusion of the State and society. It prepares, so to say, the return of the function of the State to society. Following this line of thought, one can speak of an evolution of the capitalist State into society, and it is undoubtedly this that Marx had in mind when he referred to labor legislation as the first conscious intervention of “society” in the vital social process, a phrase on which Bernstein leans heavily.

But on the other hand, the same capitalist development realizes another transformation in the nature of the State. The present State is, first of all, an organization of the ruling class. If it assumes functions of a general interest that favor social development it is specifically because, and in the measure that, these interests and social development coincide, in a general fashion, with the interests of the dominant class. Labor legislation is enacted as much in the immediate interest of the capitalist class as in the interest of society in general. But this harmony endures only up to a certain point of capitalist development. When capitalist development has reached a certain level, the interests of the bourgeoisie, as a class, and those of economic progress begin to clash even in the capitalist sense. We believe that this phase has already begun. It shows itself in two extremely important phenomena of contemporary social life: on one hand, the policy of tariff barriers, and on the other, militarism. The two phenomena have played an indispensable, and in that sense a progressive and revolutionary role in the history of capitalism. Without tariff protection the development of large industry would have been impossible in various countries. But at present the situation is different.

At present, protection does not serve as much to develop young industry as to maintain artificially certain aged forms of production.

From the angle of capitalist development, that is, from the point of view of world economy, it matters little whether Germany exports more merchandise into England or England exports more merchandise into Germany. From the viewpoint of this development it may be said that the slave has done his work and it is time for him to go his way. Given the condition of reciprocal dependence in which the various branches of industry find themselves, a protectionist tariff on any commodity necessarily results in raising the cost of production of other commodities inside the country. It therefore impedes industrial development. But that is not so from the viewpoint of the interests of the capitalist class. While industry does not need tariff barriers for its development, the entrepreneurs need tariffs to protect their markets. Which signifies that at present tariffs no longer serve as a means of protecting a developing capitalist section against a more advanced section. They are now the arm used by one national group of capitalists against another group. Furthermore, tariffs are no longer necessary as an instrument of protection for industry in its movement to create and conquer the home market. They are now indispensable means for the cartelization of industry, that is, means used in the struggle of the capitalist. producers against consuming society in the aggregate. What finally brings out in an emphatic manner the specific character of contemporary customs policy is the fact that today not industry but agriculture plays the predominant role in the making of tariffs. Which means that the policy of customs protection has become a tool for converting and expressing the feudal interests in the capitalist form.

THE SAME CHANGE HAS TAKEN PLACE with militarism. If we consider history as it was—not as it could have been or as it should have been—we must agree that war has constituted an indispensable factor of capitalist development. The United States of America, Germany, Italy, the Balkan States, Poland, all owe the conditions or the rise of their capitalist development to wars, whether resulting in victory or defeat. As long as there were countries marked by internal political division or economic isolation which had to be destroyed, militarism played a revolutionary role, considered from the view point of capitalism. But at present the situation is different. If world politics have become the stage of menacing conflicts, it is not so much a question of the opening of new countries to capitalism. It is a question of already existing European antagonisms, which having been transported into other lands have exploded there. The armed opponents we see today in Europe and on other continents do not range themselves as capitalist countries on one side and backward countries on the other. They are rather States pushed to conflict especially as a result of their similarly advanced capitalist development. In view of this, when an explosion takes place, it is certain to be fatal to this development, in the sense that it must provoke an extremely profound disturbance and transformation of economic life in all countries. But the matter appears entirely different when considered from the angle of the capitalist class. For the latter militarism has become indispensable. First, as a means of struggle for the defence of “national” interests in competition against other “national” groups. Secondy, as a branch of placement for financial and industrial capital. Thirdly, as an instrument of class domination over the laboring population inside the country. In themselves, these interests have nothing in common with the development of the capitalist mode of production. What demonstrates best the specific character of present day militarism is the fact that it develops generally in all countries as an effect, so to speak, of its own internal, mechanical motive power, a phenomenon that was completely unknown several decades ago. We see this in the very inevitability of the complete indecisiveness of the objective and motive of the conflict and its accompanying circumstances. From a motor of capitalist development militarism has changed into a capitalist malady.

In this clash between capitalist development and the interests of the dominant class, the State takes a position alongside of the latter. Its policy, like that of the bourgeoisie, comes into conflict with social development. It thus loses more and more its character as a representative of the whole of society and is transformed, at the same rate, into a pure class state. Or to speak more exactly, these two qualities distinguish themselves more from each other and find themselves in a contradictory relation in the very nature of the State. This contradiction becomes progressively sharper. For on one hand we have the growth of the functions of a general interest on the part of the State, its intervention in social life, its “control” over society. But on the other hand, its class character obliges it to move the pivot of its activity and its means of coercion more and more into domains which are useful only to the class character of the bourgeoisie and have for society as a whole only a negative importance, as in the case of militarism and tariff and colonial polices. Moreover, the “social control” exercised by this State is at the same time penetrated and dominated by its class character. See for example the manner with which labor legislation is applied in all countries.

THE EXTENSION OF DEMOCRACY, which Bernstein sees as a means of realizing socialism by degrees, does not contradict but, on the contrary, corresponds perfectly to the transformation realized in the nature of the State.

Conrad Schmidt declares that the conquest of a social-democratic majority in Parliament is another direct road to this gradual “socialization” of society. Now the democratic forms of political life are without question a phenomenon expressing very clearly the evolution of the State in society. They constitute, to that extent, a move toward a socialist transformation. But the conflict within the capitalist State, described above, manifests itself even more emphatically in modern parliamentarism. Certainly, in accordance with its form, parliamentarism serves to express, within the organization of the State, the interests of the whole of society. But what parliamentarism expresses here is capitalist society, that is to say, a society in which capitalist interests predominate. Consequently, in this society, the representative institutions, democratic in form, are in content only the instruments of the interests of the ruling class. This manifests itself in a tangible fashion in the fact that as soon as democracy shows the tendency to negate its class character and to become transformed into an instrument of the real interests of the population, the democratic forms are sacrificed by the bourgeoisie and by its State representatives. That is why the idea of the conquest of a parliamentary reformist majority is a calculation which, entirely in the spirit of bourgeois liberalism, preoccupies itself only with one side—the formal side of democracy—but does not take into account the other side, its real content. All in all, parliamentarism is not a directly socialist element impregnating gradually the whole of capitalist society. It is, on the contrary, a specific means of the bourgeois class State, helping to ripen and develop the existing antagonisms of capitalism.

In the light of the history of the objective development of the State, the declaration by Bernstein and Konrad Schmidt that increased “social control” results in the direct introduction of socialism is transformed into a formula that finds itself from day to day in greater contradiction with reality.

The theory of the gradual introduction of socialism proposes a progressive reform of capitalist property and the capitalist State in the direction of socialism. But in consequence to the objective laws of existing society, one and the other develop in a precisely opposite direction. The process of production is increasingly socialized, and State intervention, the control of the State over the process of production, is extended. But at the same time, private property becomes more and more the form of open capitalist exploitation of the labor of others, and State control is at the same time penetrated with the exclusive interests of the ruling class. The State, that is to say the political organization, and the property relations, that is to say the juridical organization of capitalism, become more capitalist and not more socialist, opposing to the theory of the progressive introduction of socialism two insurmountable difficulties.

Fourier’s scheme of changing, by means of a system of phalansteries, all the water of the seas on the globe into fine lemonade was surely a phantastic idea. But Bernstein, who proposes to change the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness, by progressively pouring into it bottles of social-reformist lemonade, presents an idea that is merely more insipid but no less phantastic.

The production relations of capitalist society approach more and more the production relations of socialist society. But on the other hand, its political and juridical relations establish between capitalist society and socialist society a steadily rising wall. This wall is not only overthrown but is on the contrary strengthened, consolidated, by the development of social reforms and the course of democracy. What can overthrow this wall is only the hammer blow of revolution, that is to say the conquest of political power by the proletariat.

International Review was a short-lived, independent Marxist journal edited by Herman Gerson, pen name Integer, which hosted writers of the anti-Stalinist left, best known for its translation and publication of Rosa Luxemburg’s ‘Reform or Revolution’.

PDF of full issue: https://archive.org/download/international-review-1936_1936-05_1_4/international-review-1936_1936-05_1_4.pdf