He Ping: On Rosa Luxemburg's Conception of Socialist Culture
In the history of the development of Marxist philosophy, research into the historical materialist perspective has undergone a process of transition, shifting from the construction of theories regarding the transformation of social formations in the macro-sphere to the construction of cultural critique theories in the micro-sphere. Marxist theories of the critique of modernity, reflections on the dialectic of enlightenment, studies on consumer society, as well as Marxist cultural philosophy, eco-philosophy, and political philosophy, were all developed during this transitional process. How, then, did this process of transition in historical materialist research occur? What is the relationship between cultural critique theory in the micro-sphere and the theory of social formation transformation in the macro-sphere? Can the theoretical innovations of both be organically combined to allow historical materialist research to move beyond the current dilemmas faced by micro-cultural critique? These are undoubtedly major theoretical issues facing current research in historical materialism. To answer these questions, it is insufficient to merely study the various specific cultural critique theories that have emerged since the 20th century; one must return to the origin where the horizon of historical materialist research shifted. We must explore the internal mechanisms of this transition, discover the junction point between macro-level theories of social transformation and micro-level cultural critique, and construct a theoretical framework capable of integrating macro- and micro-sphere research into a unified whole, thereby achieving innovation in historical materialist theoretical research. In view of this, this article chooses Rosa Luxemburg’s socialist cultural outlook as a typical case study to reflect on these issues.
I. The Critique of Millerandism and the Proposition of the Socialist Cultural Outlook
The reason this article selects Luxemburg’s socialist cultural outlook as a typical case is that it represents an important node in the transition of historical materialist research from a macro-perspective to a micro-perspective, and the catalyst for this node was the emergence of Millerandism [1]. Therefore, to understand the content and significance of Luxemburg’s socialist cultural outlook, it is necessary to understand the nature and characteristics of Millerandism, to study how Luxemburg viewed Millerandism, and to see how she proposed the socialist cultural outlook in the process of critiquing it.
Millerandism began with, and was named after, the "Millerand Entry" incident. The so-called Millerand Entry refers to the act of the French Socialist Alexandre Millerand in June 1899, who, without organizational consent and in a personal capacity, joined the cabinet led by the bourgeois Republican Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, serving as the Minister of Commerce and Industry. This event triggered heated debate within the French socialist parties. The Guesdists [2] of the Workers' Party and the Blanquists [3] of the Revolutionary Socialist Party severely condemned Millerand, arguing that his actions violated the principles of the French Socialist Party and were a betrayal of the labor movement. Meanwhile, the revisionist faction led by Jean Jaurès defended Millerand’s actions, viewing his entry into the cabinet as an extraordinary measure taken during a time of crisis and as a type of socialist tactic. This raised a fundamental question regarding the proletarian struggle of the Second International: What is a socialist tactic? Where are its boundaries? It was precisely this question that triggered the great debate between the Marxist and revisionist factions within the Second International. In this debate, revisionists represented by Eduard Bernstein, Georg von Vollmar, and Jaurès argued that Millerand’s entry was a great socialist experiment, an action conducive to the working class seizing political power, and could bring favorable results to socialism. They claimed it proved that socialist principles could only harm the struggle for political power, and that only the effective implementation of socialist tactics could eliminate the numerous obstacles brought about by principle, allowing those who emphasized principle to realize that their thinking had failed to keep pace with realistic tactics. This was, in fact, a use of exaggerating socialist tactics and blurring the boundaries between tactics and principles to argue for the legitimacy of Millerand’s entry, thereby achieving the goal of negating socialist principles. Under these circumstances, clarifying the truth of Millerand’s entry and explaining the forms and limits of legal reform became the key for Social Democrats to resolve the issue of socialist principles versus tactics. It was in the process of solving these two problems that Luxemburg exposed the bourgeois essence of the Millerand incident and proposed the viewpoint of creating a socialist culture.
In July 1899, shortly after the Millerand incident occurred, Luxemburg published the article "A Question of Tactics," exposing the truth that Millerand’s entry served the bourgeoisie from two aspects. On the one hand, by analyzing the nature of the government apparatus of the bourgeois state, Luxemburg argued that Millerand’s entry could not possibly become part of the proletarian cause. She pointed out that in a bourgeois state, the executive government apparatus differs from the parliamentary apparatus: parliament is a legislative body that allows the opposition to exist and express its views; the government is an executive body whose "task is the implementation of laws, is action; it absolutely does not allow a principled opposition within itself, and it must keep all its organs in constant action. Therefore, even if the government is composed of representatives of different parties, as has been the case for several years in the mixed cabinets in France, it always stands on a common principled basis that enables it to act." Consequently, Socialists enter parliament out of tactical necessity, participating in parliamentary activities as an opposition to fight for workers' rights and struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state. In this context, parliamentary struggle becomes "a rational and appropriate way for Socialists to serve the proletarian cause." However, Socialists participating in government executive bodies face two choices: either stand in opposition to the government until expelled, or actively participate in government activities as a collaborator, becoming a member of the government and fulfilling its departmental functions. Between these two choices, whichever is taken can only serve the bourgeoisie and not the proletariat. This demonstrated that Socialists joining government executive bodies had exceeded the "routine modes of socialist activity" and was therefore no longer a question of tactics, but a question of principle—namely, whether to uphold socialist principles or abandon them. Measured by this principle, Millerand’s entry was by no means the execution of a socialist tactic, but rather "an experiment that could only harm the class struggle." On the other hand, by analyzing the various policies adopted after Millerand’s entry, Luxemburg exposed the anti-socialist substance of his reform measures. Luxemburg meticulously analyzed three important reform measures implemented following the entry (the law on the working day, the bill on trade unions, and the draft on compulsory arbitration of strikes), exposing the double-dealing method of linking concessions to workers with concessions to employers. This involved, on one hand, formulating measures beneficial to workers on paper to make employers yield some material concessions, while on the other hand, formulating various bills to restrict the trade union movement and prevent worker strikes, thereby achieving the goal of protecting capital. Luxemburg pointed out that this double-dealing proved that Millerand’s social reforms were merely a faithful copy of the general guiding principles of government political activity transposed into the realm of social policy. This was by no means social reform beneficial to workers, nor was it a socialist tactic; on the contrary, it came at the cost of damaging the interests of the working class and was a trampling of socialist principles and tactics. Through the analysis and critique of these two aspects, Luxemburg exposed the truth of the Millerand incident: his entry was not about a socialist legal reform, but a bourgeois legal reform.
The exposure of the truth behind the Millerand incident brought the question of the forms and limits of legal reform to the fore once again. As early as her systematic critique of Bernstein’s revisionist theory, Luxemburg had already proposed and begun researching the forms and limits of legal reform. At that time, however, the core question was: through what mode of activity should the proletariat achieve the transition from a capitalist social formation to a socialist social formation—through legal reform or through social revolution? Bernstein affirmed the former and negated the latter. To resolve this, Luxemburg placed legal reform within the macro-perspective of the process of human history, using the dialectical relationship between social reform and social revolution as a theoretical framework to argue for the forms and limits of legal reform. Under this framework, legal reform was defined as a mode of activity opposed to social revolution: social revolution occurs at the stage of the replacement of social formations and the transformation of social institutions, serving as the force promoting qualitative change in society; legal reform, meanwhile, only operates within the scope of a certain social formation or social institution, representing a process of quantitative accumulation of social change. However, the Millerand incident and the fierce debate it triggered within the Second International between the Marxist and revisionist factions sharpened the opposition between capitalist culture and socialist culture hidden within legal reform. Under these circumstances, studying the cultural nature of legal reform and exposing the opposition between socialist and capitalist culture within it became a problem that the Marxist faction of the Second International had to face and resolve. To solve this, Luxemburg delved into the micro-level of historical materialist research, using the dialectical relationship between the whole and the parts of socialist culture as a theoretical framework to rethink the forms and limits of legal reform.
The dialectical relationship between the whole and the parts of socialist culture constituted Luxemburg's theoretical framework for examining legal reform and served as her socialist cultural outlook. Luxemburg proposed this cultural outlook based on her understanding of legal reform during the period when Social Democrats participated in parliament—that is, legal reform is a kind of struggle carried out by the Social Democratic Party "on the soil of the bourgeois social order." However, this struggle is not the ultimate goal or the entirety of the proletarian struggle, but merely a stage and a part of the overall struggle of the proletariat "to completely eradicate exploitation and the entire bourgeois society." At this stage, what Social Democrats must do is integrate legal reform into the overall struggle of the proletariat, carrying out the struggle against the bourgeoisie under the guidance of a socialist cultural outlook, striving for the political and economic power of the working class, and preparing the proletariat to seize power. Thus, the overall struggle of the proletariat becomes the limit of legal reform during the period of parliamentary struggle. The precise meaning of this limit is: only those legal reforms that take the overall struggle of the proletariat as their goal and serve as a stage and a part of that overall struggle possess the character of socialist culture; conversely, those legal reforms that abandon the goal of the overall proletarian struggle, remain confined within the bourgeois system, and serve bourgeois rule possess only the character of capitalist culture. This limit is the principle Luxemburg used to measure whether a legal reform possessed a socialist or a capitalist cultural character.
Based on this principle, Luxemburg examined the relationship between socialist culture and legal reform. She argued that socialist culture is a totality [4] encompassing socialist economics, politics, and ideology; therefore, the construction of socialist culture necessarily includes the struggle against capitalist economics, politics, and ideology. During the parliamentary period, this struggle was divided into two forms: parliamentary struggle and trade union struggle. Because these two forms of struggle occur in different fields, they dictate that the Social Democratic Party must adopt two different modes of struggle. The field in which parliamentary struggle occurs is the parliamentary apparatus of the bourgeois government; in this field, the Social Democratic Party faces the institutional culture of capitalism, and its task is to participate in parliamentary activities as an opposition to win political and economic power for the working class. Luxemburg called this mode of struggle "political reform work." The field in which trade union struggle occurs is the trade union organization; in this field, the Social Democratic Party faces bourgeois ideological culture, and its task is to educate the working masses with socialist culture, guiding the trade union struggle from a focus on the immediate economic interests of the working class toward a focus on its long-term political interests. Luxemburg called this mode of struggle "economic reform work." Luxemburg emphasized that these two forms of struggle are "not two actions developing in parallel," nor do they constitute the entirety of the proletarian struggle; rather, they are merely the current work, a period, and a developmental stage of the overall proletarian struggle. The task of the Social Democratic Party is to enable the class struggle of the proletariat to transcend the boundaries of both parliamentary and trade union struggle, thereby realizing its ultimate goal—the complete liberation of the working class. It was in this sense that Luxemburg stated: "The relationship of the parliamentary struggle to Social Democratic policy is that of a part to the whole, just as is the relationship of trade union work to Social Democratic policy. Social Democracy [itself] is precisely the synthesis of the parliamentary and trade union struggles, that is, the synthesis of both into a class struggle aimed at the abolition of the bourgeois social order." In this way, Luxemburg raised the question of cultural hegemony for the Social Democratic Party within legal reform.
Luxemburg believed that for the Social Democratic Party to master cultural hegemony within legal reform, it must understand the scientific socialist perspectives of Marx and Engels from the height of a worldview (Weltanschauung), treating them as the culture of the proletariat and as a new rationality and a new faith. On April 30, 1902, Luxemburg published the article "The New Faith" in the Leipziger Volkszeitung [5], elucidating the significance of the scientific socialism founded by Marx and Engels from the height of human cultural transformation. She wrote: "On May 1st, the proletariat of the whole world steps out from behind the narrow national defensive walls (behind which every nation has conducted a world-historical struggle in its own place and in its own way for an entire year) onto the broad road of international brotherhood. But at the same time, this day must lead the proletariat to the high foundation of an all-encompassing worldview. From here, the proletariat as a class must not only view its past and future paths through the eyes of historical necessity but also cast an excited and fanatical gaze into the distance. At the end of that distance, the requirements of intellectual research and the poetic imagination of the human spirit across all ages have already been widely circulated, and have become contradictory disciplines from the origins of humanity to the present day. On this day, the proletariat must be made clearly aware that it shoulders not only a political mission and a social mission, but also an intellectual mission; the working class, in the words of its great precursor, is the heir to German philosophy; it is the carrier of a new faith that spans the globe; socialism does not merely strive for a new world order, but puts forward this demand on the basis of a new worldview; long before the social transformations occurring at present, various scientific ideas had already undergone an intellectual transformation, and this intellectual transformation signifies a change in worldview that is much more thorough and powerful than the change from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernican solar system; the proletariat of today must remember this fact all the more on this great world festival; for daily political and economic struggles often make the proletariat forget this great spiritual heritage accumulated for the working class by its spiritual father—a heritage that this class needs to regain generation after generation in order to possess it." This passage indicates that, for Luxemburg, the ideological and spiritual construction of socialist culture is superior to its political and social construction. Only under the guidance of the ideology and spirit of socialist culture can the struggle of the proletariat transcend the framework of parliamentarism and trade unionism, embark on the path of scientific socialism, and enable the proletariat to seize state power and obtain its own political and social power. It was precisely based on this understanding that Luxemburg took the persistence and development of Marx's historical materialism as the primary task of socialist cultural construction.
From criticizing Millerandism [6] to proposing the dialectical relationship between the whole and the parts of socialist culture, and from researching the forms and limits of legal reform to proposing the task of persisting in and developing Marx’s historical materialism, Luxemburg organically combined the critique of the capitalist system with the critique of bourgeois ideology, sketching a picture of socialist cultural creation. In this picture, the study of the forms and limits of legal reform constitutes a realistic political critique of Millerandism, while persisting in and developing Marx’s historical materialism constitutes an ideological critique of Millerandism. Luxemburg's socialist cultural outlook was constructed precisely in the process of conducting this political and ideological critique of Millerandism.
II. The Rational Construction of Socialist Culture
Regarding the study of historical materialism, Luxemburg followed a different academic trajectory than other Marxist theorists of her time. Theorists such as Antonio Labriola, Paul Lafargue, and Georgi Plekhanov all took the transformation of social formations as their theme to elucidate Marx’s basic principle that the economic base determines the superstructure. Luxemburg, however, took the struggle between socialist culture and capitalist culture within legal reform as her theme to elucidate the rational spirit and cultural character of historical materialism. The former constituted the macro-perspective of historical materialism research during this period, while the latter constituted the micro-perspective. Therefore, to understand the problems and academic trajectory of historical materialism in terms of micro-perspective research, it is necessary to examine how Luxemburg elucidated the rational spirit and cultural character of historical materialism.
In Luxemburg’s view, Marx's doctrine is scientific socialism. However, Marx's thoughts on scientific socialism did not arise from the empirical facts of observing the phenomenon of exploitation; rather, they were formed and developed in the process of founding the historical materialist [7] conception of history. That is to say, the process by which Marx founded historical materialism was also the process by which his scientific socialist perspectives took shape, and likewise the process of the rational construction of socialist culture. Proceeding from this viewpoint, Luxemburg conducted a systematic and in-depth study of Marx’s early writings, using Volume 1 of The Collected Works of Marx and Engels (March 1841–March 1844), edited by Franz Mehring as part of the Literary Remains of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Ferdinand Lassalle, as her source text. Luxemburg believed that the period from the late 1830s, when Marx began studying the philosophy of right, to the publication of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher in the 1840s, constituted the first stage of Marx’s intellectual development—the stage in which Marx transformed from a Hegelian into a socialist and in which his scientific socialist thought took shape.
During this stage, two independent main threads coexisted in Marx’s intellectual development: one thread was the process of internal crisis Marx experienced in attempting to resolve the contradiction between thinking and being, and between the material world and the process of thought; the other thread involved the political and economic issues Marx encountered through extensive contact with the real world. These two threads held dual significance for Marx’s intellectual development: first, in the process of engaging with the reality of Germany, Marx recognized the facts of exploitation and became conscious of the injustice of these facts; second, Marx recognized the defects of the idealist worldview and turned to a re-investigation of the unity of thinking and being, and of the material world and the thought process. On the basis of forming new concepts, he then "proposed consistent explanations and unified solutions to all partial problems in practical and spiritual life." Both threads vividly embody the characteristics of Marx’s intellectual creation: in the process of continuously exploring and answering the fundamental questions of philosophy, he moved toward the empirical world, subsequently using historical materialism as a totalizing concept to analyze the capitalist economy and demonstrate the objective necessity of historical development. On this basis, he founded critical political economy and scientific socialism.
Marx’s doctrine is a theoretical system composed of historical materialism, political economy, and scientific socialism. Within this, historical materialism is the "generalizing and productive viewpoint" used to "build the rock-solid foundation for the edifice of scientific socialism." Therefore, to grasp Marx’s doctrine and understand his political economy and scientific socialism, one must understand Marx’s historical materialism; and to understand his historical materialism, one must study the three important landmarks of the internal crisis Marx experienced before founding historical materialism. The first landmark is the letter Marx wrote to his father on November 10, 1837. In this long letter, Marx poured out to his father the difficulties he encountered in attempting to critique jurisprudence [8] philosophically—namely, that idealist philosophy "cannot combine material jurisprudence with formal jurisprudence." This was the first time Marx touched upon the problem of the unity of thinking and being. In the process of contemplating this problem, Marx did not, like other Young Hegelians, "cling solely to the realm of theological speculation—that is, to the abstract forms of ideology." Instead, through the study of jurisprudence and the philosophy of history, he "came into contact with the most recent and direct ideological form of material social life: law." This constituted the initial form of Marx’s founding of historical materialism—exploring the unity of thinking and being through the form of law.
The second landmark is Marx’s doctoral dissertation. In this thesis, Marx sought to resolve the problem of the unity of consciousness and being within natural philosophy. This was a study in pure philosophical form. It was precisely during this study that Marx constructed the worldview and methodology of historical materialism. The third landmark is Marx’s "Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right," published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. In this article, Marx raised the question of proletarian liberation, discovered the class basis of materialism, and elucidated the revolutionary and practical nature of historical materialism. This was an exploration of the unity of thinking and being through a social form. At this point, although Marx had not yet completed a monistic demonstration of the unity of consciousness and being, he had already established the class standpoint of the proletariat. Proceeding from this standpoint, he raised questions that only scientific socialism could answer—namely, "how to liberate man as an oppressed and mistreated member of society." Regarding this question, Marx "deduced a schema for the proletarian class struggle and proletarian victory from countless brilliant, dialectical conclusions that roared and surged in rapid succession."
Thus, by examining the internal crisis Marx experienced while exploring the unity of thinking and being in his early years, Luxemburg revealed the internal developmental process of Marx’s transition from Hegelianism to socialism. She also revealed how Marx’s scientific socialist thought emerged from the philosophical critiques of the late 1830s to the early 1840s. This proved that scientific socialist thought did not, as the "critical socialists" claimed, arise simply from Marx recognizing the facts of exploitation and becoming conscious of their injustice. On the contrary, it arose from Marx’s philosophical critique. It was philosophical critique that drove Marx into the empirical world to see the facts of exploitation and recognize their injustice; it was also within philosophical critique that Marx founded the materialist conception of history and obtained the "deductive method of socialism." Consequently, he gained a new understanding of the facts of exploitation and the phenomena of injustice he observed while working for the Rheinische Zeitung in the 1840s, and subsequently "blazed a unique trail through the labyrinth of daily facts in existing society, finding the scientific laws of the development and demise of this society. This is scientific socialism." From this, it is evident that Marx’s founding of scientific socialist doctrine is inseparable from the materialist conception of history; more precisely, Marx formed his scientific socialist views in the process of founding historical materialism. Chronologically, the founding of historical materialism came first, followed by the formation of scientific socialist concepts; logically, historical materialism is the philosophical foundation of scientific socialism and its internal constituent part. Precisely because it possesses historical materialism as its philosophical foundation, scientific socialism acquired the significance of a worldview and became a scientific theory.
Luxemburg believed that the reason scientific socialism could become the worldview of the proletariat lies in the fact that the basic principles of historical materialism contain the cultural spirit of scientific socialism. Luxemburg’s understanding of the basic principles of historical materialism concerned the relationship between Marx’s theory and the practice of the proletarian class struggle. In Luxemburg’s view, the relationship between the two is not an external relationship in the sense of applying theory to practice, but rather an internal constitution of the materialist conception of history. This internal constitution is contained within Marx’s philosophy, political economy, and scientific socialism. Among these, philosophy is historical dialectics, which is the most valuable part of Marx’s theory. It is not a complete theoretical system but rather "a research method, a set of inspired guiding thoughts that make it possible to look out upon a brand-new world, open up infinite vistas for independent activity, and inspire our thoughts to fly boldly into unresearched fields." Here, Luxemburg understood Marx’s historical dialectics as a weapon for the liberation of thought—a method of thinking that guides Marxist theorists to face reality bravely and create new Marxist theories according to the changes of the times. This method of thinking is both totalizing and critical.
Totality allows historical dialectics to obtain its practical content in the field of political economy—namely, the objective basis and ultimate goal of the proletarian class struggle. In this field, Luxemburg criticized those dogmatic theorists who regarded Volume 1 of Capital as the entirety of Marx’s scientific theory of value. She pointed out that such an understanding is incomplete both in terms of material and theory because the fundamental problem of Marx’s theory of surplus value is not truly unfolded in Volume 1; it is only unfolded and fully demonstrated in Volume 3, when discussing the question of the rate of profit. Therefore, if the problem of the rate of profit discussed in Volume 3 is not incorporated into Marx's theory of surplus value, it is impossible to explain this theory completely and scientifically. This was a major defect in Marxist economic theory at the time, and bourgeois thinkers seized upon this theoretical flaw to "ridicule the entire socialist movement founded by Marx." This required Marxists to attach importance to and study Volume 3 of Capital, taking Marx’s theory of the rate of profit as the fundamental problem of his political economy. Proceeding from this viewpoint, Luxemburg elucidated the theory of the rate of profit in Volume 3 and its significance for the working-class struggle. She pointed out that Marx’s theory of the rate of profit deals with the distribution of surplus value among various groups of exploiters and the changes in production caused by competition during distribution. While this problem seemingly has no direct bearing on the proletarian class struggle, it reveals the socialization trend of the capitalist production process and points out the objective basis for the socialist revolution, allowing people to see that the fundamental issue of the proletarian struggle is the liberation of all humanity. Thus, the significance of Marx’s theory of the rate of profit for the proletarian struggle lies in its revelation of the long-term needs of the proletarian struggle and the establishment of its ultimate goal. In this way, Luxemburg utilized the totality of historical dialectics to bridge the internal connection between Marx’s philosophy and political economy, treating the proletarian class struggle as an organic component of Marxist theory. This provided a theoretical basis for organically combining the immediate and long-term needs of the struggle in practice, breaking through the framework of parliamentarism, and launching the struggle to seize political power.
Criticality enables historical dialectics to construct a proletarian culture within the field of scientific socialism. Luxemburg emphasized that as a propertyless class living under the capitalist system, the proletariat "cannot automatically create its own mental culture in the process of its upward struggle." Only by accepting the guidance of Marxist theory and going to "Marx's intellectual arsenal to explore, refine, and utilize the new, unfinished works of his doctrine" can the proletariat create its own mental culture through its movement. Luxemburg proposed this viewpoint based on a critique of reformist theories of the workers' movement. In her view, reformist theories were only concerned with the immediate needs of the working class, striving to limit the proletarian class struggle to the framework of parliamentary struggle, "imagining that the ascending working class could automatically exert endless creativity in the theoretical field through the content of their class struggle" and "automatically create its own mental culture in the process of its upward struggle." To her, such theory completely deviated from Marx's theory of the workers' movement. Scientific socialism is concerned not with the immediate needs of the proletariat, but with its long-term needs; its foundation lies in the laws of social development and the historical inevitability of the demise of capitalism. According to this theory, the proletarian class struggle must transcend the framework of the capitalist system, because within this framework, it is impossible for the proletariat to create any culture other than bourgeois culture.
Accordingly, Luxemburg put forward her own proletarian view of culture, emphasizing that Marx's doctrine is itself the mental culture of the proletariat. However, this mental culture does not arise spontaneously within the framework of bourgeois culture; rather, it emerges at the point of rupture between proletarian culture and bourgeois culture. It is a negation of bourgeois culture, a brand-new mental culture, and the guiding ideology that leads the proletarian class struggle beyond the framework of the capitalist system to fulfill the proletariat's political and social missions. Yet, the workers' movement of that time had drifted away from the guidance of this thought. This was not because Marx's doctrine had become obsolete, nor because scientific socialism could no longer guide the proletarian class struggle, but because the struggle of the day had not reached the theoretical heights of Marxist doctrine. Luxemburg pointed out: "This incomparable instrument of mental culture lies idle because it is incompatible with bourgeois class culture, yet it far exceeds the working class's demand for weapons of struggle. Only with the liberation of the working class from its current conditions of existence can Marx's methods of research, along with other means of production, be socialized, fully utilized for the well-being of all humanity, and have their full energy unleashed." Here, by elucidating the criticality of historical dialectics, Luxemburg bridged the internal connection between Marx's philosophy and scientific socialism, tightly integrating the ideals of the proletarian struggle with reality, and proposing the historical mission of building socialist culture.
Luxemburg's elucidation of the internal spirit of Marx's philosophy, political economy, and scientific socialism possessed a dual criticality. First, Luxemburg conducted a theoretical critique against the stagnation of Marxist theory, pointing out that the "obsolescence theory" of Marx's doctrine advocated by revisionism and dogmatic theories were fundamentally wrong. They hindered the development of Marxist theory, causing the workers' movement to "continue using old, long-invalidated guiding thoughts, resulting in extremely slow progress in the theoretical application of Marx's insights." For the Social Democratic Party to change this stagnation, it had to base itself on the new developments of the workers' movement and create new Marxist theory. This was a requirement for the development of Marxist theory. Second, Luxemburg conducted a practical critique against the crisis of the workers' movement, pointing out that the root of the crisis lay in the proletarian class struggle remaining for too long at the level of satisfying the immediate needs of the working class. It failed to organically combine immediate needs with long-term needs or to establish the proletariat's class mission, which prevented the class struggle from reaching the historical heights required by Marx. To extricate the workers' movement from parliamentarism and lead it out of crisis, the Social Democratic Party had to use Marx's doctrine to guide the movement and raise the level of the proletarian struggle, because "only as our movement gradually enters forward-developing stages and poses new practical problems do we return to Marx's intellectual arsenal to explore, refine, and utilize the new, unfinished works of his doctrine." This was a requirement for the political struggle of the proletariat. It was within this dual critique that Luxemburg constructed the internal rationality of socialist culture.
III. The Ideological Construction of Socialist Culture
Luxemburg believed that for the Social Democratic Party to achieve cultural hegemony [9] within the parliamentary struggle, it must construct a socialist cultural ideology. This was undoubtedly a daunting task for the Party: first, it needed to establish Marx's philosophical worldview ideologically; second, it needed to critique bourgeois cultural consciousness spiritually and establish a proletarian cultural consciousness; third, it needed to practically establish the Social Democratic Party's cultural hegemony within the trade union movement. In Luxemburg's view, to construct socialist cultural ideology in these three aspects, the Party needed to analyze the various intellectual factions during the period of parliamentary struggle and clarify the cultural spirit of Marx's materialist conception of history.
In establishing Marx's philosophical worldview, Luxemburg focused on elucidating Marx's concept of the working class. She believed that the historical mission of the proletariat included political, social, and intellectual missions. For the proletariat to recognize its own historical mission, it first had to have a concept of the "working class," a concept first proposed by Marx. Before Marx, the working class lived in capitalist states as mere wage laborers; the only factors that united them were their common conditions of existence. From the moment Marx proposed the concept of the working class, the proletariat no longer existed merely as wage laborers, but appeared on the historical stage as a class burdened with the historical mission of liberating all humanity. The factors uniting this class became the political struggle to seize power and realize socialist transformation, as well as the awakened proletarian class consciousness.
Luxemburg's explanation of Marx’s concept of the working class served two purposes. Theoretically, it was to critique the attacks on Marx's doctrine by bourgeois thinkers of the time, demonstrate the scientific nature of Marxism, and prove that the emergence of Marx's doctrine and its application in the workers' movement signaled the end of bourgeois philosophy, history, and economics. Practically, it was to critique the opportunist and reformist trends spreading within the workers' movement, to shatter the illusion of "replacing class struggle with a democratic alliance of classes and reformed social peace," and to clarify that the foundation of the Social Democratic Party's tactics and ideology could only be historical materialism. In Luxemburg's view, this theoretical critique and practical struggle were two interacting aspects of the development of Marxist theory at that stage. At the time, the workers' movement was theoretically influenced by works discarded onto the market by bourgeois professors—works that "lacked independent intellectual innovation, far-sighted vision, and vigorous reasoning"—and was practically constrained by immediate interests and daily needs. In such circumstances, "only Marx's method" could answer the "series of new, unresolved scientific problems" posed by social progress, and the upsurge of the workers' movement also demanded the development of Marx's doctrine.
Based on this, Luxemburg treated the development of Marxist theory and the construction of proletarian class consciousness as two inseparable parts of the development of Marxist theory. In her article "Karl Marx," Luxemburg clearly stated: "Marx's doctrine (as was the case with the classical theories of political economy in the past) is first and foremost an intellectual reflection of a specific stage of economic and political development—namely, the period of transition from the capitalist historical stage to the socialist historical stage. However, it is more than just a reflection. We must realize that the historical transition recognized by Marx will never be completed unless this recognition of Marx becomes social recognition, the recognition of a specific social class—the modern proletariat. The historical transformation expounded by Marx's theory presupposes the following conditions: that Marx's theory becomes the ideology of the working class, and as this form of consciousness, becomes an element of history itself. Thus, Marx's doctrine is continuously verified with the appearance of every new proletarian who takes up the class struggle. It can be seen that Marx's doctrine is simultaneously a part of the historical process and thus is itself a process; the social revolution will be the final chapter of the Communist Manifesto."
Here, Luxemburg viewed Marx's doctrine and its development from the height of social transformation, arguing that Marx's doctrine is the mental culture of the proletariat, and that building this culture is the cultural mission of the Social Democratic Party. In her article "Dashed Hopes," Luxemburg explicitly proposed this cultural mission. She pointed out that the fierce quarrels over "useless trifles" within the Social Democratic Party, as well as the infiltration of reformist policies from the Jaurès faction in France and the Turati faction in Italy—under the guises of "free criticism," "free expression of opinion," and "free publication" advocated by revisionism—allowed the "toxins produced by bourgeois corruption to circulate unimpeded into the bloodstream of the proletarian party organism." This required the Social Democratic Party to clearly recognize the essential difference between the proletarian culture created by Marx and bourgeois culture. They had to realize that the Party's close connection with mental culture "is not based on those members of the bourgeoisie who have come over to our side, but on the rising proletarian masses. This connection does not come from the similarities between our movement and bourgeois society, but from its opposition to that society. Its source is the ultimate goal of socialism, which means returning the entirety of human culture to the whole of humanity." Thus, constructing an ideology of proletarian culture was not only a vital part of Luxemburg's development of Marxist theory but also the intellectual platform from which she critiqued the various non-Marxist doctrines of her time.
In terms of critiquing bourgeois cultural consciousness spiritually and establishing a proletarian cultural consciousness, Luxemburg elaborated upon Marx's critique of religion and discussed the relationship between the proletariat and religion. She argued that in capitalist society, so-called Christian civilization is a form of bourgeois "political fetishism" [10]. Bourgeois thinkers use this political fetishism to clear the way for the capitalist state to implement its "world policy," "catastrophically and chaotically creating peace, international conflict, and war," while spreading bourgeois class consciousness among the proletarian masses to dissolve the political struggle goals of the socialist party. Conversely, those members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) who were immersed in daily political and economic struggles failed to see the harshness of the cultural struggle in the spiritual realm. Instead, under the pretext that "religion is a private matter," they allowed Christianity to spread among the proletarian masses, even using a Christian worldview to incite the workers, believing this to be a masterstroke for achieving a psychological reconciliation between socialism and Christianity. All of this caused ideological confusion within the labor movement.
Addressing this situation, Luxemburg pointed out that the ideological issue within the labor movement is a question of understanding the existing world order and the future world order; it directly affects the political struggle of the proletariat and is therefore a problem the Social Democratic Party must face and resolve. However, problems in the spiritual realm can only be solved through struggle within the spiritual realm, and the political fetishism of Christianity can only be resolved through a critique of religion. To this end, Luxemburg wrote articles such as Political Fetishism, The New Faith, and The Proletariat and Religion. Using Marx’s critique of religion as her theoretical foundation, she historically examined the antagonistic relationship between religion and the proletariat.
In The New Faith, Luxemburg fully expounded Marx’s critique of religion, viewing it as a negation of positive religion or philosophy, including Feuerbach’s critique of religion. In her view, positive religion or philosophy—whether idealistic or materialistic—committed a fundamental error when discussing religious issues: they "either wanted to conceive the world based on the individual, or wanted to deduce man from the world, 'substance,' the 'absolute,' 'will,' or a personified God." In contrast, Marx and Engels centered on society, using their socialist theory to solve the riddle of society: "Society is not formed by the simple addition of individuals; it also has a vibrant, pulsing independent life, with extremely fine and precious blood constantly flowing to various systems, the forms of which have been described by masters of research and thought throughout the ages. The systems of philosophy and religion that previously constituted the center of the worldview have been cast into space by the modern Copernicans, revolving like planets around the newly discovered center—the sun that donates light, warmth, and life to human society, which constantly renews itself and remains forever young, its radiation and occasional separation of power and matter forming the planetary system of the history of philosophy and religion."
The "modern Copernicans" Luxemburg refers to here are Marx and Engels, and the "newly discovered center" is the scientific socialist theory they founded. In Luxemburg’s view, the scientific socialist theory founded by Marx and Engels inverted the religious world from the perspective of a worldview. When they used this new worldview to examine the world and human history, thereby understanding the historical mission of the proletariat, they established proletarian class consciousness. This idea was first proposed by Marx in his Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and On the Jewish Question, and was later expounded to the working class of the whole world in the Communist Manifesto. After half a century of dissemination within the labor movement, it became "a spiritual force in the world."
Luxemburg utilized this Marxist critique of religion to analyze the relationship between the proletariat and religion and to discuss the liberation of the proletariat. She pointed out that the relationship between the proletariat and religion is the relationship between the culture of scientific socialism and religious culture. Scientific socialist culture allows the proletariat to "recognize, control, and dominate the capitalist production process," to "become familiar with its own world-historical mission," and to build proletarian class consciousness. Religious culture, conversely, uses illusions and commodity fetishism to bind and imprison the thoughts of the proletariat, rendering them unable to understand their historical mission. It is evident that scientific socialist culture and religious culture are fundamentally opposed. This opposition dictates that there must be "profound and irreconcilable contradictions" between the proletariat and religion. Therefore, for the proletariat to achieve liberation, it must rid itself of religious illusions.
In her article The Proletariat and Religion, Luxemburg regarded the shedding of religious illusions as a mark of the proletariat's maturity, arguing that "the more the modern working class becomes familiar with its world-historical mission, and the more maturely it completes these missions, the more it can rid itself of religion." On the contrary, "if the working class still wants to include this sentence—declaring religion to be a private matter—in its program, then it means, first, that the state should not concern itself with religious illusions, and second, that individuals cannot be prevented from maintaining these illusions." The result of these two points is "nothing more than turning the proletarian struggle for liberation into a playground for arbitrarily playing religious games." Based on this analysis, Luxemburg proposed the task of the Social Democratic Party in the cultural sphere: to use the culture of scientific socialism to critique bourgeois religious culture, clarify that the international socialist worldview and the Christian worldview are fundamentally opposed, and make it clear that "the Christian worldview, as the faith of the masses, is our mortal enemy."
Regarding the practical establishment of the Social Democratic Party's cultural hegemony [11] within the trade union movement, Luxemburg elaborated on the dialectical relationship between the Social Democratic Party and the trade union movement. She believed there is a distinction between the two: the former concerns itself with the long-term interests of the proletariat, while the latter concerns itself with its immediate interests. However, this does not mean they are in absolute opposition; on the contrary, the two will become increasingly closely integrated within the actual socialist movement.
This is true first because the Social Democratic Party represents both the interests of the entire proletarian class and the entirety of the current labor movement. As the representative of class interests, the Party must conduct political struggle to improve the condition of the proletariat in all countries; as the representative of the entire movement, the Party must strive to align its pursued goals with the norms of the socialist movement. Therefore, the Social Democratic Party must care for and actively guide the trade union movement. Second, in striving for the immediate interests of the working class, the trade union movement inevitably follows two paths: one is "to make the results obtained by each country increasingly universal in nature through legal standards, while internationally integrating the power of trade unions"; the other is that its entire policy (including its attitude toward strikes, minimum wage issues, etc.) "is increasingly based on general social connections and takes into account the issues of social development." These two paths indicate that "the trade unions, out of their own interests, will naturally embark on the path that the Social Democratic Party has consciously embarked upon."
Due to these two reasons, the SPD established close ties with the trade unions, and German trade unions conducted all their work according to socialist principles from the very beginning. Luxemburg used this view to critique Eduard Bernstein’s [12] views on the trade union movement. A key piece of evidence Bernstein used for his revisionist perspective was his belief that the British trade union movement was advanced and that the German trade union movement should follow the British model. To refute this, Luxemburg historically examined the British trade union movement, pointing out that since the early 1850s, it had completely abandoned socialist goals and followed the path of trade-unionism [13], thereby losing its socialist character. In contrast, "in Germany and across the continent, trade unions were formed from the beginning on the basis of class struggle, that is, the socialist struggle; one could almost say they are the product of the Social Democratic Party." This demonstrates that the German trade union movement was more advanced than the British. Bernstein’s recommendation of the British example "is equivalent to suggesting that German trade unions abandon the foundation of socialist class struggle and stand on a bourgeois foundation." Accordingly, Luxemburg proposed the opposite of Bernstein: "To aid the cause of socialism, it is not the German trade unions that should follow the British, but rather the British trade unions that should follow the German." "The reason British 'spectacles' do not fit Germany is not because the situation in Britain is more advanced than in Germany, but because, from the perspective of class struggle, it lags behind Germany."
Luxemburg also used this viewpoint to critique reformist economics, specifically the vulgar economics represented by Werner Sombart. This school denied Marx’s theory of capitalist crisis, claiming that the emergence of cartels and the establishment of trade unions could prevent economic crises. Luxemburg argued that this view of reformist economics was nothing new, but a repetition of Bernstein’s revisionist views. Its true purpose was to oppose the Social Democratic Party’s leadership over the trade union movement and to prevent the unions from taking the socialist path. Sombart, its representative, believed the trade union movement possessed supreme economic power, but only on the premise that it "freed itself from the 'guardianship' of the Social Democratic Party." This showed he recognized the distinction between the trade union movement and the political party, as well as the nature of the economic struggle of the trade unions. Thus, he demanded they escape the Party's "guardianship" to remain purely economic in nature and serve the movements of capital. This was quintessential "Prussian royal politics." Luxemburg’s critique of Bernstein’s revisionism and reformist economics highlighted the ideological conflict within the trade union movement: the revisionist faction denied the Social Democratic Party’s leadership to make the movement serve the rule of capital, while the Party emphasized its leadership to guide the movement toward socialism, freeing it from the rule of capital and making it a form of struggle for working-class liberation.
How one views the relationship between the Social Democratic Party and the trade union movement was both a practical issue and an extremely important theoretical issue for the proletarian struggle of the Second International. As a practical issue, it concerned the formulation of the principles and tactics of the Social Democratic struggle. As a theoretical issue, it concerned the construction of historical materialism. Luxemburg bridged the relationship between Marxist theory of the political party, historical materialism, and the practice of the labor movement, thereby proving that the ideological construction of socialist culture is a unique part of historical materialist theory. The uniqueness of this theory lies in its strong practical character. However, this character does not stem from the practical application of the general principles of historical materialism, but rather from a construction of practical reason, which includes the construction of a philosophical worldview and a spiritual culture adapted to the needs of proletarian revolutionary practice. From this perspective, Luxemburg’s multi-layered ideological construction of socialist culture is an important intellectual resource for us today as we reflect on socialist ideology and create an ideological theory of socialist culture.
IV. A Few Insights
Luxemburg’s socialist view of culture was proposed during the ideological polemics critiquing Millerandism [14]. During these debates, Luxemburg recognized the deep crisis of the labor movement during the period of parliamentary struggle. Her proposal for the construction of socialist culture was an attempt to justify the political, social, and ideological missions of the working class from the high ground of Marxist theory. She hoped to use socialist culture to guide the labor movement, helping it escape its crisis and embark on the socialist path. From this perspective, the proposal of Luxemburg’s socialist view of culture was a diagnosis of the crisis of the Second International’s socialist movement and a crystallization of her reflections on the problem of socialist modernity. These reflections provide important insights for our innovation of historical materialist theory today.
The first insight is that socialist modernity should become an important subject in the study of contemporary historical materialism. Modernity studies are a significant topic within Western Marxist philosophical research; the social critical theory of the Frankfurt School and Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the critique of everyday life both center on the critique of modernity. While the emergence of these theories has greatly enriched the study of historical materialism, they have consistently suffered from serious theoretical defects. They failed to distinguish between capitalist modernity and socialist modernity within the concept of modernity itself, and consequently failed to carry out research on socialist modernity. This serious theoretical flaw is not obvious in the Frankfurt School’s social critical theory or Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life—where the primary aim is the critique of capitalist modernity—but its full disadvantages were exposed in Eastern European Neo-Marxism, which aimed to critique the phenomenon of socialist alienation. When Eastern European Neo-Marxist philosophers, especially those of the Budapest School [15], drew upon the intellectual resources of the Frankfurt School and Lefebvre, they failed to distinguish between capitalist and socialist modernity. They were unable to root a Marxist critical theory of modernity in the practice of Eastern European socialism or construct a critical theory of socialist modernity adapted to that practice. Instead, they mechanically copied the modernity critique theories of the Frankfurt School and Lefebvre. Consequently, they failed to propose effective solutions for diagnosing the phenomenon of socialist alienation in Eastern Europe, which resulted in the collapse of the Eastern European socialist system and the decline of socialist ideology and culture. This is a profound lesson for the study of Marxist modernity theory in the 20th century. This lesson indicates that the study of socialist modernity is an indispensable subject in contemporary Marxist research on modernity. For Marxism to emerge from its own theoretical and practical crises, it must study socialist modernity and construct the inner rationality and ideology of socialist culture at the point of rupture between socialist and capitalist cultures. This idea was proposed by Luxemburg quite early on, and Georg Lukács inherited and developed it in his early literary criticism as well as in History and Class Consciousness. Regrettably, both were ignored by later Marxist philosophers, leading to a void in socialist modernity research within the study of historical materialism. Therefore, to make historical materialism a new culture and a new concept that guides the development of contemporary human thought, we should fully draw upon the intellectual resources of Luxemburg and Lukács and conduct research on socialist modernity in connection with the new changes in contemporary world history.
The second insight is that the study of historical materialism must consider the issue of the junction between macro-perspectives and micro-perspectives. Luxemburg situated socialist culture within the grand historical framework of proletarian liberation to explore it. This not only suggested an academic path for the micro-perspective study of historical materialism but also demonstrated the logical structure between the macro-revolutionary theory and the micro-cultural critical theory of historical materialism. This research approach inspires us to construct a new way of thinking for historical materialism at the junction of micro-cultural critical theory and macro-social revolutionary theory, thereby achieving innovation in the theoretical study of historical materialism.
The third insight is that developing China’s theory of socialist modernity in integration with the reality of China’s socialist modernization is the academic path for reflecting on the road of Chinese-path modernization. The Communist Party of China has created a new road for Chinese-path modernization. How, then, should we study Chinese-path modernization from a scholarly perspective? Should we describe the characteristics of Chinese modernization at a sociological level? Or should we reveal the socialist cultural spirit of Chinese-path modernization at a philosophical level? If we choose the latter academic path, how should we carry out this research? On this question, the insight provided by Luxemburg’s view of socialist culture is that the socialist cultural spirit is not an abstract concept; it is of the era and of the nation, and thus possesses very realistic content. Luxemburg proposed her view of socialist culture based on her reflections on the struggle between socialist culture and capitalist culture during the period when Western European socialist parties joined parliaments; she created a theory of socialist modernity within the context of parliamentary struggle. This theory was undoubtedly revolutionary, critical, and advanced for the labor movement of the Second International [16]. However, we cannot simply transplant it to China. Instead, we must develop China’s theory of socialist modernity in connection with the reality of China’s socialist modernization.
(Author: He Ping, School of Philosophy, Wuhan University; Hubei Provincial Collaborative Innovation Center for Marxist Theory and Chinese Practice)
(This article is a staged result of the Major Bidding Project of the National Social Science Fund of China, "The Compilation, Translation, and Research of Rosa Luxemburg's Works.")
Network Editor: Tong Xin Source: Foreign Theoretical Trends, Issue 3, 2023