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news and letters archives column--May 1998
www.newsandletters.org
News and Letters, May 1998
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya--Marxist-Humanist Archives
Rosa Luxemburg: revolutionary, feminist
Editor's Note:
Along with the 150th anniversary of Karl Marx's COMMUNIST
MANIFESTO, this year marks also the 100th anniversary of the young Rosa
Luxemburg's entrance in May 1898 into the German arena where her challenge
to one of the established leaders of the Second International, Eduard
Bernstein, became the classic revolutionary answer to the theory and
practice of revisionism. As part of our celebration of May Day as a
revolutionary day of struggle, we print below a letter written by Raya
Dunayevskaya on Aug. 9, 1978 to women's liberationists she considered her
colleagues, as she undertook the study of what became ROSA LUXEMBURG,
WOMEN'S LIBERATION AND MARX'S PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION. It can be found in
THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA (microfilm no. 6432-6466) together with other letters
from 1978-81 on the process of writing that book. It is also included in
WOMEN'S LIBERATION AND THE DIALECTICS OF REVOLUTION, pp. 227-230.
by Raya Dunayevskaya/Founder of Marxist-Humanism
August 9, 1978
"The revolution is magnificent, and everything else is bilge." - Rosa Luxemburg
Dear Sisters:
Because the dialectic never fails to reveal facets one has never thought of
at the start of writing, I hesitate to write to you something on Rosa
Luxemburg when the work on it AS A BOOK has not yet begun. But because the
urgency of the very idea of a philosophy of revolution-Marx's-compels
confrontation, no matter how dissatisfied I may be with my articulation of
this topic when I have not worked out what is in my head, I will be brave
enunciating it.
Take the quotation at the top. No doubt some of today's women theorists who
refuse to grapple with Rosa's theories on the ground that she didn't write
on Women's Liberation are using that magnificent quotation as "proof" of
her playing down women's uniqueness, as if revolution and women were
opposites! The truth is that no greater proof could be given of how TOTAL
was her concept of revolution as the way, the only way, of uprooting
exploitative, racist, sexist society.
Just recently I found a letter that Rosa had written to Hans Diefenbach
from prison on, of all things, a review of a performance of Shakespeare's
AS YOU LIKE IT. She was so enamored with the review by a Dr. Morganstern
that she quoted it at length: "'This is by no means the only case where
Shakespeare draws this type of assured young woman: in his work, one
encounters several of this sort. We do not know whether he ever met a woman
like Rosalyn, Beatrice, or Portia, or whether he had models to work from,
or whether he created pictures from his longing. But this we definitely
know. From these characters, there speaks his own belief of woman. His
conviction is that woman can be so magnificent because of her special
nature. At least for a time in his life he extolled woman as few poets did.
In woman he saw a force of nature working which culture could never
harm...'" Then Rosa comments: "Isn't this a fine analysis? If you know what
an insipid, dried up, queer fish Dr. Morganstern is in private! But his
psychological penetration is what I would wish for the future creator of
the German essay."
Although this has nothing to do with theories of revolution and very little
to do with women's "role"-nor even the question of women's suffrage for
which Rosa did fight and did write about, although you wouldn't think so
from women's theorists' disregard of her-I wished to call attention to it.
This is NOT because it is one of the rare things in which she did speak of
women, since the women it speaks about are not those working class women
and socialist women with whom she worked. Rather, it is about women as
characters in literature by one genius of a dramatist who certainly was no
"proletarian revolutionary," and the reviewer she quotes whom she considers
"insipid." Why, then, did she pay attention to it, and why did I single it
out? It has to do with the multidimensionality of Rosa Luxemburg, both as
revolutionary and as human being, that she is concerned, in writing from
prison to a young socialist, that he be concerned that "the future creator
of the German essay" have "deep psychological penetration" of women as
"magnificent"!
In a word, when she writes of revolution which is "magnificent, and
everything else is bilge," it doesn't mean the downplaying of women.
Rather, it is the totality she aspires for "future." The point, especially
for us today, is not any counter-position of revolution and woman. Quite
the contrary. The real point-and that's why I have changed the title of the
projected book on Rosa Luxemburg and the relationship to Marx's theories,
from Marx's theory of revolution to Marx's PHILOSOPHY of revolution-is that
so long as we only talk of theory, we are talking only of the immediate
task of revolution, that is to say, the overthrow of capitalism. But when
we talk of a philosophy of revolution, we do not mean only the overthrow of
capitalism, but the creation of a new society. ONLY WHEN WE HAVE THAT IN
MIND CAN THE REVOLUTION BE TRULY TOTAL.
At the same time, what is most comprehensive in the projected work is that
the very "taking up" of Marx's philosophy of revolution means that we have
the opportunity of considering a very specific revolution, [the Russian
Revolution of] 1905, in which all three great revolutionaries-Luxemburg,
Lenin, Trotsky-were active. Each singled out what he/she considered the
greatest achievement of that revolution and then built on that as
preparation for the future revolution. It is this BUILDING ON that we wish
to break down for our age.
There is no doubt that Rosa was so enamored of the proletariat as
revolutionary that she seems to subsume the woman in her concept of
revolutionary. But there is equally no doubt whatsoever that she both
worked closely with Clara Zetkin in all aspects of the women's movement,
from suffrage to anti-imperialism. And indeed, the majority in such crucial
industrial centers like Hamburg were adherents of her theories and
activities in the anti-war movement. There is further no doubt that the
letters she wrote to women, again especially from prison, were of such
profound nature that they reveal her whole philosophy. Take the letter I
have often quoted, to Mathilde Wurm:
"I swear to you, let me once get out of prison and I shall hunt and
disperse your company of singing toads with trumpets, whips and
bloodhounds-I want to say like Penthesilea, but then, by God, you [all?-RD]
are no Achilles. Had enough of my New Year's greeting? Then see to it that
you remain a human being... to be human means throwing one's life "on the
scales of destiny" if needs be..."
That's the point, the whole point.
Marx's 1844 Essays were unknown to Rosa Luxemburg. But there is no doubt of
the fact, the profound fact, that Marx's whole new continent of thought
that began with revolution-so TOTAL and deep a revolution as to begin with
the Man/Woman relationship as the most basic one of all that needed total
reorganization-was also Rosa's concept. When Marx stressed that that
relationship needed uprooting in all class societies (indeed, I am ready to
say in ALL PREVIOUS SOCIETIES), it is proof of how total was Marx's concept
of tearing society up at its roots. So totally new was his philosophy of
revolution on that relationship that even under primitive communism, which
he much admired when discovered by Henry Lewis Morgan in the communal life
among the Iroquois-ANCIENT SOCIETY-Marx sensed women's enslavement. He was
certainly impressed with the communal life and with how much greater was
woman's role there than under capitalism. Nevertheless, much more was
needed in the creation of a new Man/Woman than "modernization." Marx is the
one whose extensive notes Engels used the year after Marx died for his THE
ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE. But, where Engels
only glorified primitive communism, as if all it needed were a sort of
"updating," Marx, the genius who discovered a whole new continent of
thought in developing his philosophy of revolution, sensed in the family
structure nothing short of elements of "slavery," of "serfdom."
(This is not the place to develop the difference between Marx and Engels
and why one-Marx-is the genius who discovered a whole new continent of
thought while the other-Engels-no matter how talented and how close a
collaborator of Marx, was not that founder. But here, since it is also
grounded on the Man/Woman relationship, the women can reach something
totally new if they work it out multidimensionally and dialectically.)
Rosa's whole life as a revolutionary, as a theoretician, as a
multidimensional woman, was so preoccupied with the spontaneity of
revolution that, not only as against "the educated" but also revolutionary
theoreticians who thought they need "to teach" revolution to the masses,
she focused instead on the great truth that, as she put it, "revolution
cannot be schoolmastered." Neither on the revolution's nor on spontaneity's
"magnificence" was it a question of "throwing out" the need for theory.
There may have been a playing down of "philosophy" as if that were
"abstract," but never any playing down of theory of revolution.
What concerns us now is to see what impulses we can "catch" in the newest
development of the Women's Liberation Movement of today, women who would
feel emboldened to become collaborators with us in the writing, in the
activities, to, at one and the same time, develop what is most immediate
(be it ERA or a strike, or any single case) and, at the same time, dig so
deeply both in their experiences and in our theories as to find common
ground for universal as well as individual self-development...
There surely is some time in everyone's life when one wants to reach for
something of the future. I do not doubt that in the present historic stage
women want to reach for that total uprooting of this sexist, racist,
exploitative society. Let's begin there.
Yours,
Raya
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