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Reform or Revolution Rosa Luxemburg 9780873483032 Books

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Reform or Revolution Rosa Luxemburg 9780873483032 Books

Rosa Luxemburg accurately predicted many aspects of our current global capitalist neoliberal crisis wherein privatization of the commons is becoming more the norm globally, capitalists mercilessly exploit labor in the developing world, and technology that could be used to benefit humanity if collectively owned is causing mass unemployment under private control. Amidst wage stagnation, the ever increasing reserve army of labor, and growing wealth disparity, many are willing, without any understanding of the material conditions necessary for a mode of production to accurately describe itself as socialist, to jump onto the bandwagon of revisionist demagogues who make false promises of how capitalism can be regulated to accommodate for its internal contradictions. However, in capitalist societies, the state is a class state, and any regulations achieved by organized labor will eventually be done away with by the bourgeois state and in many ways, regulation accentuates capitalist crises. Rather than welfare state capitalism that offers a social safety net and a more comfortable wage-slavery, this book makes a strong argument for worker democratic control over the means of production and the abolition of the capitalist class system.


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Reform or Revolution Rosa Luxemburg 9780873483032 Books Reviews

Barbara Greenway, a high school teacher in Maryland, January 18, 2004,
luxemburg
Written at the turn of the last century (1900), this is Rosa Luxemburg's concise but brilliant response to the question --- what is the future for the workers of the world? The debate then, in Germany, is still the same question today. Can the current system be 'reformed'? Can we have humane capitalism? As Luxemburg says in this short pamphlet, 'The historic necessity of the socialist revolution manifests itself above all in the growing anarchy of capitalism...' Although it may seem that we are further away from this debate then ever before, reading this polemic may make you think differently. Luxemburg takes up economic development, unions, and the dangers of the opportunists of the 'left'. She always keeps her remarks grounded in the scientific socialism of Karl Marx and successfully, in my opinion, argues the case for workers ultimately taking power. A strong and convincing argument for those who want to study the writings of past revolutionary leaders to prepare for fights to come. While may say that this book is unavailable from time to time, it is always available from the Pathfinder Z store listed under"new and used" at the top of this page.
In 1897 Eduard Bernstein, then a influential leader of the German Socialist party, the SPD (a large, well funded organization which led many unions and whose leadership was respected internationally), began publishing a series of articles in the Socialist press which were later published as a book "Evolutionary Socialism". In this work Bernstein challenged a number of the basic underpinnings of Marxism. Principally, that a revolution was necessary to transfer political power from the capitalist class to the workers and farmers. Bernstein argued instead that by using the power of the unions, by getting reformers elected to public office, by passing social welfare legislation, etc. a gradual transformation, evolution, of capitalism to socialism could occur. None of the other leaders of the SPD challenged Bernsiein's views.
Instead a young woman in her twenties, just out of college, and an immigrant to boot, took on the job. In a series of articles she took on and demolished Bernstein's arguments. She went further and argued that a rot had infected the organization and needed to be cleared out. This was Rosa Luxemburg and this is her first important book. Well worth the time to read.
It is right now (2004) the accepted wisdom of the mainstream of that which
calls itself The Left in the U.S. (and not only there) that the present
evils of this System-the "free market" capitalist system-are the result of
"mistaken" policies, that U.S. imperial war and parallel attacks on our
rights were invented by George W. Bush (or at best, the Republicans), and
that the best we can do-we, meaning working people and youth seeking to
resist-is hope by various ways to tame the Yanqui Empire and make capitalism
behave in a "responsible" way. More than one hundred years ago, a
Polish-born, Jewish, and-for that time, gasp! -female revolutionist Rosa
Luxemburg stood up (on a chair once, the story is told; she was short as
well) in front of the largest and best organized labor movement in Europe,
the German Social Democratic Party, and declared that while working people
can never stop fighting for our rights and our interests such as in street
demonstrations and above all the strike picket line, we will carry the
weight of this system's evils around our neck unless we have the final goal
always in mind of taking power out of the hands of the capitalists and
putting it in our own. Elsewhere she summed it up as the choice between "
Socialism or Barbarism." In today's terms it could be summed as either we
do what the Cuban people did in 1959 and after in this country-in our era-or
humanity is doomed to a march by imperialism toward fascism and Word War
III. Read this book and you will do much more than learn about a long-ago
debate in the labor movement you will be inspired by Rosa Luxemburg's
absolute confidence in the ability of working people in the most advanced
capitalist industrial power of her time to storm the heavens and make
revolution!
It's a good read if your studying Marxist thought and also important to note that is it Luxemburg's critique on and earlier work by Eduard Bernstein called "Evolutionary Socialism". I would recommend reading that first to get a better understanding of Luxemburg's arguments.
Good book overall, you should read it if you want to get a better understanding of marxism
Rosa Luxemburg accurately predicted many aspects of our current global capitalist neoliberal crisis wherein privatization of the commons is becoming more the norm globally, capitalists mercilessly exploit labor in the developing world, and technology that could be used to benefit humanity if collectively owned is causing mass unemployment under private control. Amidst wage stagnation, the ever increasing reserve army of labor, and growing wealth disparity, many are willing, without any understanding of the material conditions necessary for a mode of production to accurately describe itself as socialist, to jump onto the bandwagon of revisionist demagogues who make false promises of how capitalism can be regulated to accommodate for its internal contradictions. However, in capitalist societies, the state is a class state, and any regulations achieved by organized labor will eventually be done away with by the bourgeois state and in many ways, regulation accentuates capitalist crises. Rather than welfare state capitalism that offers a social safety net and a more comfortable wage-slavery, this book makes a strong argument for worker democratic control over the means of production and the abolition of the capitalist class system.