Mass and leaders

Rosa Luxemburg

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And once again the attitude of the entire bourgeois press towards what is happening in our party shows us how infallibly the class instinct triumphs over all the surface differences of the bourgeois parties. Once again they are in agreement, the National Liberals and the Catholic Centre. Monsignor Oertel, who glorifies the knout in his Deutsche Tageszeitung and the Voss Gazette; all of them vent their tearful exultation over the misfortunes of the Social-Democracy. Some rejoice to see the Socialists «tearing each other apart»; Had it not always been predicted that the Social-Democracy, against which all the remedies of the bourgeois pharmacy had proved powerless, would end by «devouring itself»? The others are satisfied with the misadventures of some «academics, members of the Socialist Party; definitive proof (according to them) of «the abyss that separates the cultivated man from the blind mass» and of the impossibility of crossing this abyss without «breaking one’s neck». Still others do not hold back with joy, because at last the socialists will no longer be able to look superbly at the bourgeois world since corruption has taken hold among them «just as it has with us». And with one voice they take up the refrain: it is the end of the halo, of the fascinating radiance that surrounded the Socialist Party. Gone for ever.

The comedy of this jubilation is well played. So much so that a party newspaper let itself be taken in and, with a great pathetic sigh, began to implore the party to pull itself together, if only to no longer offer the adversary such subjects of satisfaction.

And yet it is enough not to be altogether deaf to distinguish in this strident and ostensibly joyful concert the notes of a stinging disappointment, of a restrained rage. Precisely the sympathy which the bourgeois press never ceases to lavish on the two or three «cultivated men,» ill-treated by a barbarous horde, and these outraged invectives against the «blind masses,» who dared to «rebel against the academics,» show us clearly what is the wound which the party has not been afraid to unbridle.

No doubt the bourgeois circles of today may regard as a ridiculous and barbarous exaggeration the great rumour raised among the Socialists about «trifles which in any bourgeois party would have been liquidated with a shrug of the shoulders and an auspicious glance. For these circles it is no doubt grotesque to see a party composed of three million adult men agitating about a few «insincerities,» the total of which, in comparison with the sum of lies that a conservative spouts in a single election speech, represents about what the light of a cellar rat represents compared with the noonday sun.

The conflict with revisionism has now led to questions of persons, to humiliating questions of persons! We cannot deny this; we are forced to admit it with profound contrition. The fact is that we are not in the same convenient situation as the National Liberals or the Centre, the Prussian nobles or the democrats, for whom political corruption and the art of deceiving the masses are the very foundations of their political existence, thanks to which petty individual infamy disappears in the action as a whole like a drop in the ocean.

Moreover, a very sure class instinct is revealed in the great anger of the bourgeoisie. This uprising of the proletarian masses against isolated cases of corruption among the «academics» irritates the bourgeoisie exceedingly because they perceive in it the most pernicious aspect of the modern workers’ movement, namely, the radical change which the Social-Democracy has brought about for half a century in the relations between the «masses» and the «leaders».

Goethe’s remark about the «odious majority, which is composed of a few vigorous leaders, a good number of adaptable rascals, weak people who allow themselves to be assimilated, and the «masses» who trot in the rear without the slightest knowledge of what they want, the word by which the bourgeois pen-writers would like to characterize the socialist masses, is only the classic pattern of «majorities» in the bourgeois parties. In all the past class struggles, which were waged in the interests of minorities, and in which, to use Marx’s words, «all the development was carried out in opposition to the great mass of the people,» one of the essential conditions of action was the unconsciousness of the masses as to the real aims, the material content, and the limits of this movement. This discrepancy was, moreover, the specific historical basis of the «leading role» of the «educated» bourgeoisie, to which the following of the masses corresponded.

But, as Marx wrote in 1845, «with the depth of historical action will increase the volume of the mass engaged in this action.» The class struggle of the proletariat is «the deepest of all the historical actions that have taken place up to now»; it embraces the totality of the lower strata of the people, and since the existence of a society divided into classes, it is the first action that corresponds to the self-interest of the masses.

That is why the proper intelligence of the masses as to their tasks and means is an indispensable historical condition for socialist action, just as the unconsciousness of the masses was formerly the condition for the actions of the ruling classes.

In this way the opposition between the «leaders» and the majority which «follows them» is abolished, and the relationship between the masses and the leaders is reversed. The sole function of the so-called «leaders» of the Social-Democracy is to enlighten the masses about their historical mission. The authority and influence of the «leaders» in socialist democracy increase only in proportion to the educational work they carry out in this direction; i.e., their prestige and influence increase only to the extent that the leaders destroy what has hitherto been the basis of all leadership function, the blindness of the masses, to the extent that they strip themselves of their status as leaders, to the extent that they make the masses lead and that they themselves are the executive organs of its conscious action. The «dictatorship» of a Bebel, i.e., his immense prestige and influence, rests solely on the immense effort he has made to make the masses politically mature. And Bebel is reaping the fruits of this long effort today,y and the masses are following him enthusiastically since he expresses, as he does today, the will and thought of this mass. Doubtless, the transformation of the masses into a sure, conscious, lucid «leader,» the fusion dreamed of by Lassalle of science with the working class, is and can only be a dialectical process, since the workers’ movement is uninterruptedly absorbing new proletarian elements as well as defectors from other social strata. However, this is and will remain the dominant tendency of the socialist movement: the abolition of the «leaders» and the «led» mass in the bourgeois sense, the abolition of this historical foundation of all class rule.

It would, however, be an insult to the spirits of the old bourgeois champions of liberty to try to assimilate them to the «leaders» of the bourgeois parties of today.

The development of Social-Democracy has also had profound repercussions on the relations between the masses and the leaders outside the proletarian class struggle, in bourgeois circles themselves. The class movement of the ascendant bourgeoisie was based not only on the unconsciousness of the masses of the people as to the real aims of the action taken, but also, to a large extent, on the confusion of the leaders themselves. Now that the real interests of the mass of the people have been laid bare, the bourgeoisie can retain the votes of the people only by deliberately concealing its own class aspirations and the interests of the people which oppose them. The tribunes of the bourgeois revolutions of the past were leaders of the people by virtue of a historical self-illusion. The Karl Bachem («leader» of the Catholics), the Ernst Bassermanns (leader of the National Liberals), the Eugène Richter (leader of the democrats), whose paid pen-writers never cease to thunder against the «dictatorship» of Bebel, are representatives of the people by virtue of a political swindle.

Now, if we note that, among all these parties founded on the methodical mystification of the masses, the liberals surpass the others in the vehemence of their diatribes about the «blind mass» of the Socialist Party and the rebellion of the «calloused hand» against the «Holy Spirit of higher learning,» this offers us a striking proof of the change that has taken place during the last half century both in the historical background and in the state of mind of these gentlemen.

In the past, the Hegelian Bruno Bauer, having broken with the radical movement of 1840, maintained against the «liberal spokesmen of the popular masses» that the «real enemy of the spirit» lay «in the masses and not elsewhere.» The «spokesmen of liberalism» of that epoch saw the «real enemy of the spirit» not in the masses who took their liberal phraseology seriously, but «elsewhere,» and precisely in the reactionary Prussian state. Today, long allied with the Prussian reaction against the mass of the people, the «spokesmen of liberalism» see in this mass the «real enemy of the spirit.» Yes, in that mass which has turned away from them with contempt and which is waging the struggle on its own account against both Prussian reaction and bourgeois liberalism.

They are too green, the grapes! Since the bourgeoisie has been abandoned by its voters of the working classes, who have been passing under the banner of socialism in greater numbers every day, it has only hoped to push the socialist working class, through the intermediary of revisionism, into the ruts of bourgeois politics, to break the backbone of the class struggle and thus to take a feeble revenge for the defeats suffered on the stage of history.

As long as this hope lasted, the socialist mass appeared to the bourgeoisie capable of acquiring «culture» and «education» and gradually transforming itself into a «civilised» force. And now this mass has proved so savage and brutal that it makes an omelette out of all the eggs so carefully laid by the bourgeois cuckoo in the socialist nest. No doubt! This unfortunate «blind flock» has allowed itself to be led by its leaders and dictators to commit this deed unworthy of civilised beings.

A touch of comedy does not fail to brighten up this picture, but we readily admit that the pain felt by the pipers has, this time, particularly serious reasons. If the previous congresses condemned only a few isolated manifestations of practical and theoretical revisionism, in Dresden and after Dresden, the party not only repeated and reinforced the previous condemnations, but it put another aspect of revisionism on the spot – it examined its political morality and the personal connections with certain bourgeois circles which flowed from this morality.

It may be that the article on «Party Morality» (published by Georg Bernhard in Herr Harden’s Zukunft) is the result of fortuitous circumstances and does not in any way characterise the actual conduct of all the revisionist comrades. But anyone who has reflected on the events of the last few days cannot help finding in this article the adequate expression of the morality of revisionism, as it corresponds to its ideas with irresistible logic. The masses are regarded as children to be educated to whom it is not permissible to say everything, to whom they even have the right to conceal the truth in their own interests, while the «leaders,» consummate statesmen, knead this soft clay to erect the temple of the future according to their own great projects. All this constitutes the ethics of the bourgeois parties as well as of reformist socialism, however different the intentions of the one and the other may be.

The practical application of this way of looking at the relations between the masses and their «leaders» is provided by Jaurèssism in France and by the inclinations of the Turati faction in Italy. The autonomous and heterogeneous «federations» of the Jaurèssian party, Turati’s motion at the Imola congress, proposing to abolish the central committee of the party, all this means nothing other than the dissolution of the highly organized mass of the party, so that, from an autonomous leader, this mass may be transformed into a docile instrument of the parliamentarians and degrade itself to the state of that «blind mass» which «trots behind the leader,» «without knowing in the least what it wants,» or which, if it knows, as at the Bordeaux congress, has not the strength to make its will triumph. The Jaurèsian deputies even tend to emancipate themselves from the control and influence of the party organisations, to which they are indebted for their seats in parliament, and to appeal to the amorphous and unorganised electoral masses. These are the conditions for the organisation of the relations between the masses and the leaders as advocated in the article of the Zukunft, as a psychological necessity and as a norm of every popular movement.

The obliteration of all lines of demarcation at the grassroots, between the elite of the proletarians conscious of the goal and the unorganised mass of the people, corresponds, at the top, to the removal of the partitions between the «leaders» of the party and the bourgeois milieu—the rapprochement between the socialist parliamentarians and the bourgeois men of letters on the terrain of the «humanities.»

Under the auspices of what are called «culture» or «humanities,» these Social-Democratic deputies met on fine winter evenings with bourgeois journalists to distract themselves a little from the «professional troubles» and the «vulgarity of the political game.» Just as around Pericles gathered all the eminent things of Athens in politics, the arts, philosophy, and letters, to rise in perfect freedom of mind to the supreme heights of refined thought and feeling, so in a Berlin brasserie the statesmen of the Social-Democracy mingled with elegant women and witty short story writers to form a circle around the modern Pericles, Maximilian Harden: for a few exquisite hours they forgot the barbarous melee of the class struggle and the strong smell of the plebs, exchanging subtle remarks on the facts of the day and the works of art. The heads were not girded with crowns of roses, and the wines of Samos and Mytilene were replaced by the vulgar beer of Munich, but the true spirit of ancient friendship and of the finest culture floated like a light halo around this select circle. And it was with a tolerance, such as only superior minds know how to taste and practice, that they confided in each other very independent opinions and sometimes also detective information about importunate comrades. «Everything happened as is the custom among cultured people,» said Comrade Heine[1].

And here comes the coarse fist of the proletarian, who utterly lacks understanding of refined culture and the Periclean era, to brutally break all these «tender bonds of sublime humanity.» Painfully bruised and horrified, the antennae which bourgeois society had advanced to the very heart of our party are forced to withdraw in all haste. Herr Jastrow, the eminent economist, makes a disease of it, the Voss Gazette chirps, the liberals in the service of Rudolf Mosse pour out streams of insults; so many ways of confessing the loss of cherished hopes. The revisionist fog has dissipated, and before the eyes of the bourgeoisie, filled with spite and hatred, rises, as impregnable and as solid as formerly, the abrupt rock of the proletarian bastions. The yawning chasm has reopened between them and the bourgeois world, and instead of the peaceful penetration that the truckers of a perfidious policy were hoping for, it is a very random and dangerous assault that must be considered.

Now the connection is clear between the «moral events» of recent days and the methods of reformism. The joyful to-and-fro over the gulf between the camp of the proletariat and that of its enemies, the amiable intercourse established by «free criticism,» the «free outpourings» and the «free collaboration» of the revisionists with the bourgeois press, prepared the ground from which we have seen, among other curious efflorescences, the plot against Mehring. An intellectual endosmosis had been established between the Social-Democracy and the bourgeois world, and the poisonous juices of bourgeois decomposition could freely penetrate the circulation of the body of the proletarian party.

Hinc illae lacrimae. This is the source of the contortions of the bourgeois press, which predicts that henceforth the Social-Democracy will see the influx of «academics» and «enlightened» sympathies dry up. A liberal paper hopes that Comrade Göhre[2](formerly a Protestant pastor) will understand, now that he is forced to resign his mandate as a deputy, «the mistake he has committed» in adhering to the Social Democracy.

The generous mentality of the liberals obviously conceives that one can «make a mistake» in adhering to socialism, just as one makes a mistake on the stock exchange by speculating on coffee instead of speculating on cotton. These people do not even suspect that, by this expert judgment, they are confessing their own habit of putting politics on the same level as prostitution.

Now, if the academics who have come to us with this mentality were now to decide to leave our ranks, we could see them join the liberal sirens in all serenity. Let those who are alike come together. We would only fear that by wanting to take advantage of the balances of the «competing house» in this way, the poor liberal party would not succeed in doing brilliant business; it would be surprising if «academics» gifted with the practical spirit that our liberal supposes them to have gone and put themselves in the pawns of a party in full bankruptcy.

As for our intellectual mission, which the Junkers tremble at seeing us unable to fulfil after the «calloused hand» has «risen against the academics,» we can reassure these culture-loving nobles: soon, and without their finding any pleasure in it, the action of socialism to save civilisation from the Prussian feudal clutches will unfold with increased vigour precisely because of the liquidation of revisionism.

For the intimate connection of the socialist movement with the intellectual development is achieved not by defectors from the bourgeoisie, but by the elevation of the proletarian masses. This connection is based, not on any affinity of our movement with bourgeois society, but on its opposition to that society. Its raison d’être is the final goal of socialism, the restoration of all the values of civilisation to the whole of mankind. And the more the proletarian character of the Social-Democracy increases, the more likely it will be that German civilisation will be saved from the grip of its feudal zealots, and that Germany itself will escape the Chinese-type ankylosis in which the conservatives would like to maintain it.

All the more urgent is the purification of the party: the phenomena of decomposition which have manifested themselves in it over the last few years must be suppressed. For «with the depth» of this «historical action» – and in a certain sense it is indeed a historical action – we will see the growth of the «volume of the masses» which will follow us with confidence because our camp is the only one in which the real interests of the working class are fought under an unblemished banner.

Notes

[1]Wolfgang Heine, future Minister of Justice in 1919.

[2]Paul Göhre became Prussian Minister of Worship in 1919.