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Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory

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Rethinking Spontaneity Beyond Classical Marxism: Re-reading Luxemburg through Benjamin, Gramsci and Thompson
Alex Levant

To cite this article: Alex Levant (2012): Rethinking Spontaneity Beyond Classical Marxism: Rereading Luxemburg through Benjamin, Gramsci and Thompson, Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 40:3, 367-387 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2012.697761

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Critique Vol. 40, No. 3, August 2012, pp. 367 387

Rethinking Spontaneity Beyond Classical Marxism: Re-reading Luxemburg through Benjamin, Gramsci and Thompson
Alex Levant
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This paper reconsiders the established reading of Luxemburgs conception of spontaneity, where she is said to have overestimated the role of spontaneity and underestimated the role of the party because of an economic-determinist view of history. It reconsiders this view by re-reading Luxemburgs concept of spontaneity through the work of Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci and E.P. Thompson. Using conceptions of subjectivity not yet available at the time of these debates, as well as the recent scholarship of Lars Lih on Lenins What Is To Be Done?, this article illuminates both conscious and unconscious processes behind what often appears to be spontaneous resistance, and offers a new reading of Luxemburgs critique of Lenins views on organization in 1902 1905. It argues that Luxemburgs perceived economism is produced by her critics own economistic reading of spontaneity. In contrast, it suggests that her depictions of spontaneous activity speak to historical processes that can be illuminated by conceptions of subjectivity developed after her assassination, and which require a substantial reconceptualization of the nature of subjectivity beyond the limits of classical Marxism. Keywords: Spontaneity; Luxemburg; Benjamin; Gramsci; Lenin; Consciousness The Problem of Spontaneity The concept of spontaneity has been central to the question of political organization since the beginning of the international workers movement. Many of the old debates between Anarchists and Marxists, and within Marxism itself, had to do with the question of how to understand and engage with spontaneous resistance. Those debates have a renewed significance in light of the recent shift away from traditional

ISSN 0301-7605 (print)/ISSN 1748-8605 (online) # 2012 Critique http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2012.697761

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party- and state-focused approaches toward more decentralized methods of resistance to capitalism.1 Prompted by the bankruptcy of social democracy and a general suspicion of centralized control, this shift has been accompanied by a celebration of spontaneous resistance. In response, some commentators have reasserted the continued centrality of the state, as well as the limits of spontaneous activity.2 However, what does spontaneity mean? When we celebrate spontaneity and espouse suspicion toward centralized co-ordination, what are we celebrating? Conversely, when we point out the insufficiency of spontaneity, what exactly are we referring to? Despite the vast differences between these approaches, spontaneity tends to be understood in quite similar ways*as something that happens . . . well, spontaneously, that is without planning. Spontaneous resistance seems to mystically appear from time to time as a force to be celebrated, encouraged, channelled, directed, harnessed, feared, quelled, etc. It appears that both advocates and critics of privileging spontaneous activity over co-ordinated resistance tend to use the same mystified conception of spontaneity. In classical Marxism, spontaneity tends to be understood as a limited form of resistance that requires external leadership to be effective. For example, consider Leon Trotskys steam analogy. In the History of the Russian Revolution, he wrote, Without a leading organization the energy of the masses dissipates like steam in the absence of a cylinder and piston.3 Similarly, V.I. Lenin viewed such resistance as the unconscious (the spontaneous) to the aid of which socialists must come.4 In this tradition, spontaneity is generally associated with instinctive and unconscious resistance, which on its own would not amount to much beyond tradeunion consciousness5 or commodity consciousness.6 Consequently, socialist ideas must be brought in from the outside in order to empower the working class to emancipate itself. This merger thesis*the view that social democracy is the merger of the doctrine of socialism and the workers movement*has informed

See for example, Jeremy Brecher et al., Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), or the symposium in Historical Materialism, 13:4 (2005) on John Holloways Change the World Without Taking Power. 2 L. Panitch, Reflections on Strategy for Labour, Socialist Register, 37 (2001), p. 375. Nation states are not victims of globalization, they are the authors of globalization. States are not displaced by globalized capital, they represent globalized capital, above all financial capital. This means that any adequate strategy to challenge globalization must begin at home, precisely because of the key role of states in making globalization happen. Boris Kagarlitsky, The Twilight of Globalization: Property, State and Capitalism (London: Pluto, 2000), p. 16. He writes, all international institutions represent continuations of national states, rest upon them and are powerless to act without them. 3 Leon Trotsky, Istoria Russkoi Revolutsii. Pervii Tom: Fevralskaia Revolutsia [History of the Russian Revolution, Volume One: The February Revolution] (Moscow: Terra, 1997 [1930]), p. 29. 4 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 5 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961 [1902]), p. 388. 5 Ibid., p. 388; Marcel Liebman, Leninism Under Lenin (London: Merlin Press, 1975), p. 48. 6 cs, History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971 [1923]), p. 168. Georg Luka

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classical Marxist theory since at least the Erfurt Program (1891) of the Second International.7 However, certain tensions within classical Marxism point toward a different reading of spontaneity. Particularly instructive is the exchange between V.I. Lenin, who stressed the limits of spontaneous resistance and argued for the necessity of a vanguard party, and Rosa Luxemburg, who was concerned that such a party would stifle workers initiative and placed more emphasis on their spontaneous activity.8 A widely held view among Marxist theorists is that Luxemburg had overestimated the role of spontaneity and underestimated the role of the party because of an economicdeterminist view of history. In contrast, Lenins conception of the party has been praised as the organizational method of overcoming the economism9 that plagued the Second International.10 This article reconsiders this view by re-reading Luxemburgs concept of spontaneity through the work of Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci and E.P. Thompson. It argues that Luxemburgs perceived economism is produced by her critics own economistic understanding of spontaneity. In contrast, it suggests that her depictions of spontaneous activity speak to historical processes that are illuminated by conceptions of subjectivity that were developed after her assassination, and which require a substantial reconceptualization of the nature of subjectivity beyond the limits of classical Marxism. By reconsidering the prevalent reading of Rosa Luxemburgs approach to spontaneity, I attempt to rethink the classical understanding of spontaneous resistance. Broadly speaking, I want to argue that spontaneous resistance is a much more complex phenomenon than it appears in classical Marxism. Rather than an automatic (unconsidered) reaction to economic conditions, it ebbs and flows in relation to how changing social conditions are understood within a popular consensus. Rather than counter-posed to organization, it is likewise organized, albeit episodically and insufficiently. In addition to being more complex, spontaneous resistance appears to play a much more central role in the revolutionary process. I return to Marxs concept of self-emancipation, noting that people become empowered and radicalized by personally participating in struggle, and that, through this process, they tend to develop the capacities, consciousness and unity necessary to emancipate themselves.
Lars T. Lih, Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? In Context (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Lih argues that the merger thesis can be traced back to Engels. According to both Kautsky and Lenin, the first person to set forth the logic of the merger narrative was Engels in Condition of the Working Class in England, published in 1845. The Erfurt Program was Kautskys commentary on the SPD congress in 1891, which was held in the German town of Erfurt. 8 R. Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, Political Party, and the Trade Unions, in Mary-Alice Waters (ed.) Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (London: Pathfinder, 1970 [1906]), pp. 212 300. 9 Lenin, op. cit., p. 387. Economism is the notion that politics always obediently follows economics. 10 For primary sources see Lenins What is to be Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, as well as Luxemburgs Organizational Questions of Social Democracy. For proponents of this view, see John Molyneux, cs, History and Class Consciousness, op. cit., and Waters, Marxism and the Party (Exeter: Wheaton, 1978), Luka op. cit. For a critique of this view, see Lih op. cit.
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This rethinking of the concept of spontaneity requires a reconsideration of the merger thesis and hence points beyond classical Marxism. Luxemburgs Fatalism and her Errors Luxemburg was one of the most interesting advocates of recognizing the importance of spontaneous resistance. She appears to straddle both poles of the divide between spontaneity and centralized control. Although she was acutely aware of the need for a centralized party apparatus*after all, she helped found the Polish Social Democratic Party (RSDLPiL), she worked for years inside the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and was a principal founder of the German Communist Party (KPD)*she nevertheless consistently argued for the vital importance of spontaneous activity in the workers movement. This apparent ambivalence has puzzled a number of Luxemburg scholars over the years. On the one hand, she appears to have argued that the contradictions of capitalism led to its demise, and that the unfolding of this process moves workers into action. This view would make the role of an organization created for that purpose rather irrelevant. On the other hand, she clearly believed in the need for such an organization to intervene in this process. Some commentators have resolved this apparent paradox by locating a disjuncture between her political economy and her activist writing. Others have argued that these two perspectives speak to distinct moments in her political development.11 In general, however, she has been received, albeit critically, within the camp of the revolutionary socialist movement.12 I say critically received because almost all scholarship on Luxemburg, no matter how praiseworthy, includes a section on her errors. These errors are said to arise from a fatalistic conception of history.13 She has typically been criticized for underestimating the role of the party and overestimating spontaneous activity in the struggle against capitalism. For example, cs, put it as follows: the Hungarian philosopher and parliamentarian, Georg Luka this false assessment of the true driving forces leads to the decisive point of her misinterpretation: to the underplaying of the role of the party in the revolution and of its conscious political action, as opposed to the necessity of being driven along by the elemental forces of economic development.14 Her fatalism has to do with the notion that workers spontaneity arises in response to these elemental forces of economic development. Consequently, she has often been accused of economism.
Norman Geras, The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg (London: Verso, 1983). cs, History and Class Consciousness, op. cit., Molyneux, op. cit. and Waters, op. cit. See Luka 13 The term fatalism refers to the view that all events are predetermined or inevitable. Luxemburgs supposed fatalism is said to arise from overemphasizing the iron laws of historical development and underemphasizing the possibility of human intervention in the form of a vanguard party. 14 cs, History and Class Consciousness, op. cit., p. 275. Luka
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cs believed that Lenins conception of a vanguard party was In contrast, Luka cs thought an advance over what he perceived to be Luxemburgs fatalism.15 Luka that capitalism demystified itself, and fostered the formation of working classconsciousness; however, he understood that bourgeois society also produced new forms of mystification, which he sought to grasp with his concept of reification. The role of Lenins party, he believed, was to help overcome these barriers and facilitate the formation of class consciousness.16 Understanding consciousness not as a product of ideas alone, but of activity as well, he viewed Lenins approach of an activist party, which made demands on the activity of its members, as an advance over the parties of the Second International and over Luxemburg.17 Lenins party, according to cs, was a way to intervene in history, to make history, while Luxemburgs faith in Luka workers spontaneous activity led her to fatalistically anticipate the unfolding of the laws of history. This widely held view, however, obscures some of the most significant lessons that we can learn from Luxemburg about the nature of spontaneous resistance. However, before we turn to developing our concept of spontaneity, it is worthwhile to reflect for a moment on why she has been received with such condescension. Like a little sister who has not quite grown up, she has been lauded more for her self-less commitment to the struggle than for her brilliant observations and reflections on the problem of subjectivity and organization. Almost a century after she mused to the Party Fathers that the epitaph for Clara Zetkin and herself would read, Here lie the last two men of German Social Democracy,18 our essential reading of Luxemburg has not fundamentally changed. The Principle of Self-emancipation Luxemburgs emphasis on workers spontaneous resistance does not appear to arise from an economistic conception of history, but from a staunch adherence to the
Much has been written about the novelty of Lenins vanguard party. Lenin argued for an organization consisting of the most class-conscious layer of the working class whose task was to facilitate the process of workers self-emancipation. The originality of this organizational approach has often been attributed to Lenin. However, as Lih argues in his recent re-translation of, and substantial commentary on What is to be Done?, this notion of a party of a new type was already present in Kautskys Erfurt Program (1892). While Lenin did not consciously break with the Second International until 1914, there is a prevalent view that the Leninist party, which at first was only an adaptation of The Erfurt Program to the Russian context, contained the germ, unbeknownst to Lenin himself, of a new type of party. In light of Lihs work, it appears that the novelty of Lenins approach has been overstated and its debt to Kautsky understated. In fact, the continuities between Lenin and the Marxism of the Second International on the relationship between spontaneity and organization require further attention. 16 cs, Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought (London: NLB, 1970 [1925]), p. 25; Luka cs, Georg Luka History and Class Consciousness, op. cit., p. 314. 17 Ibid. However, it is important to note that Luxemburg shared Lenins view on the important pedagogical value of the struggle: All these conditions cannot be fulfilled by pamphlets and leaflets, but only by the living political school, by the fight and in the fight, in the continuous course of the revolution (Luxemburg, Organizational Questions of Social Democracy, in Waters, op. cit., p. 172). 18 Paul Frolich, Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Work (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1994), p. 192.
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principle of self-emancipation and a historical understanding of spontaneity. She understood spontaneity as the initiative of working people in response to their objective conditions.19 The reason she valued spontaneous resistance is because she saw working peoples own initiative as the only means to achieve such a fundamental social transformation. Her focus on workers themselves as opposed to their representatives, advocates and leaders, as the necessary agents of fundamentally transforming bourgeois society recalls Marxs own approach. The Provisional Rules of the First International, written by Marx in 1864, likewise argue that: the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.20 In fact, according to more recent Marxist thinkers, the principle of self-emancipation set him apart from utopian socialists, and other radicals, who contrived various blueprints for a post-capitalist society and conceived of the process of transformation as essentially a top-down affair. For example, in his 1995 pamphlet Socialism from Below, Canadian political theorist, David McNally, writes, Marx was the first major socialist thinker to make the principle of self-emancipation*the principle that socialism could only be brought into being by the self-mobilisation and self-organization of the working class*a fundamental aspect of the socialist project.21 This view was also shared by Engels. He wrote in his 1895 preface to The Class Struggles in France:
The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of the masses lacking consciousness is past. When it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul.22

The principle of self-emancipation was understood by Marx and Engels as the only realistic route to a socialist society. Rather than a blueprint originating in the mind of a socialist visionary, the specific form of socialist society was to be produced through the long struggle involving the bulk of the population. They believed that, through this process of struggle, not just society, but also people themselves would be transformed in fundamental ways. The process of struggle for a classless society was to be the forge that transformed working people*who had been trained by their own life-experience to conform to existing social norms*into masters of their own fate. Consequently, the dream of socialism could never be realized by utopian visionaries or benevolent masters, but only by means of a process that involved the broadest possible layers of working people themselves. Self-emancipation was, for Marx and
Molyneux, op. cit., p. 100. Marx, Provisional Rules of the First International, in The First International and After (London: Penguin, 1974 [1866]), p. 82; Michael Lowy, The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2005 [1970]); Hal Draper, Karl Marxs Theory of Revolution, Vol. II: The Politics of Social Classes (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978). 21 David McNally, Socialism from Below (Chicago, IL: International Socialist Organization, 1984); Draper, op. cit. 22 Lowy, op. cit., p. 19.
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Engels, absolutely central to their understanding of socialism.23 In light of the principle of self-emancipation, it is clear why Luxemburg placed so much value on workers spontaneous activity. If one believes that the working class must emancipate itself, and that no organization can do this on its behalf, then one approaches the initiative of working people as absolutely indispensable to the process of revolution. Against Reformism and Ultracentralism Recognizing the principle of self-emancipation, Luxemburg approached the question of organization with an eye to its impact on spontaneous resistance. For instance, she appears to have criticized two very different approaches*a reformist trend in German Social Democracy and Lenins concept of the vanguard party*for very similar reasons. In each case, her concern focused on the role of the initiative of working people. The Second International has often been criticized for its reformism.24 This reformism manifests itself in various ways, including its understanding of spontaneous resistance. In The Mass Strike, Luxemburg criticized how her German comrades understood the relationship between the workers movement and their leading organizations. Mocking their notion of a mass strike produced by an orderly issue of commands, she writes,
The mass strike, as it appears for the most part in the discussion in Germany, is a very clear and simply thought out, sharply sketched isolated phenomenon . . . What is meant by it is a single grand rising of the industrial proletariat springing from some political motive of the highest importance, and undertaken on the basis of an opportune and mutual understanding on the part of the controlling authorities of the new party and of the trade unions, and carried through in the spirit of party discipline and in perfect order.25

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From this perspective, working peoples own initiative, or spontaneous resistance, scarcely plays a role, except to follow the dictates of the controlling authorities. Instead of empowering people, this method of organizing tends to reinforce their subordination. Similarly, Luxemburg critiqued Lenins ultracentralist adaptation of socialdemocratic organizational principles to the Russian context in the form of the vanguard party because she believed that it threatened to stifle spontaneous resistance.26 One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, written by Lenin, an outstanding
Draper, op. cit. cs, History and Class Consciousness, op. cit.; Engels, A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Luka Program of 1891, in Marx and Engels Collected Works Volume 27 (Moscow: Progress, 1990) p. 217. 25 Luxemburg, Organizational Questions, in Waters, op. cit., pp. 158 182. 26 Ibid., p. 169. However, Lih argues that Luxemburgs critique is unfair. In her 1904 attack on Lenin, she asserted (with almost no textual documentation, let it be said) that Lenin was so intent on total central control that he overlooked the creative role of the worker movement itself (Lih, op. cit., pp. 206 207). He contends, however, that Luxemburgs articles provide no evidence that she had even read WITBD . . . It purports to be
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member of the Iskra group, is a methodological exposition of the ideas of the ultracentralist tendency in the Russian movement . . .. Laid down as principles are the necessity of selecting, and constituting as a separate corps, all the active revolutionists, as distinguished from the unorganized, though revolutionary, mass surrounding this elite.27 She goes on to remind Lenin of the unique nature of the socialist revolution and what this means for the question of organization.
The social democratic movement is the first in the history of class societies which reckons, in all its phases and through its entire course, on the organisation and the direct, independent action of the masses. Because of this, the social democracy creates an organisational type that is entirely different from those common to earlier revolutionary movements . . . for Lenin, the difference between the social democracy and Blanquism28 is reduced to the observation that in place of a handful of conspirators we have a class-conscious proletariat. He forgets that this difference implies a complete revision of our ideas on organisation and, therefore, an entirely different conception of centralism and the relations existing between the party and the struggle itself.29

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From Luxemburgs perspective, Lenins new type of party did not appear all that new, but was in fact far too similar to the organizational methods of bourgeois revolutions. The danger of this organizational approach was that it stifled the spontaneous resistance that needed to be nurtured, cultivated and developed. Rather than empowering working people to further develop their spontaneous resistance, this ultracentralism threatened to reproduce the similar type of subordination that they experienced in bourgeois society. In fact, Lenin glorified the discipline that workers became accustomed to under alienated conditions of factory production. He argued that such discipline demonstrated that workers were more class conscious than intellectuals who rebelled against his ultracentralism. In response, Luxemburg railed against this notion of discipline.
We misuse words and we practice self-deception when we apply the same term* discipline*to such dissimilar notions as: (1) the absence of thought and will in a body with a thousand automatically moving hands and legs, and (2) the spontaneous coordination of the conscious, political acts of a body of men [sic] . . . The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed selfdiscipline of the social democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility.30
a review of Lenins One Step Forward . . . I believe that Luxemburg was handed One Step by the Mensheviks who were organizing the literary campaign against Lenin who pointed out to her the notorious passages about factory discipline and Jacobins. Luxemburg had better things to do than actually read Lenins long, obsessive polemic but, instead, relied on the anti-Iskra critique earlier deployed by her friend and mentor Boris Krichevskii (ibid., p. 526). 27 Luxemburg, Organizational Questions, in Waters, op. cit., p. 163. 28 Blanquism refers to the view that the revolutionary process involves a small group of conspirators who tat, who then use the state to introduce a new social order. seize the state in a coup de 29 Luxemburg, Organizational Questions, in Waters, op. cit., p. 165. 30 Ibid., p. 168.

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Luxemburg cautioned that his ultracentralist approach failed to cultivate workers self-emancipation, and threatened to reproduce the very processes of alienation inside the movement. This critique of Lenin, however, may be unfair. As we saw above, Luxemburg may not have even read Lenins What is to be Done? or One Step Forward. In fact, Lenin shared much of Luxemburgs understanding of the working class as its own liberator. He placed considerable value on workers self-organization, and was among the first socialists to grasp the significance of workers councils (or soviets), when they first appeared in 1905 St Petersburg.31 His ideas changed substantially over the years and at times very closely approached those of Luxemburg.32 However, following Kautsky, Lenin understood spontaneous resistance as working peoples own instinctive, unconscious response to exploitation.33 Spontaneity, for Lenin, could never amount to more than trade-unionism (although he reconsidered this point in light of the mass strikes of 1905).34 Consciousness, on the other hand, was social-democracy. As Molyneux writes, For Lenin the development of the class struggle itself, even its economic form, is a process of moving from spontaneity to consciousness.35 Here we see an identification of consciousness with socialdemocracy and spontaneity with the unconscious, passed on from Kautsky via Lenin, from the Second to the Third International. In light of this understanding of spontaneity and consciousness, Lenin argued for an organization consisting of the most class-conscious layer of the working class whose task was to facilitate the process of workers self-emancipation.36 In contrast, Luxemburg was sceptical of what kind of conscious direction socialists could provide to the workers movement, and accused Lenin of playing schoolmaster with the revolution.37 Except for the general principles of the struggle, there do not exist for the social democracy detailed sets of tactics which a Central Committee can teach the party membership in the same way as troops are instructed in their training camps.38 Instead of socialists, she saw the struggle itself as the most important teacher. For instance, in her polemic against Lenin on organization, she wrote: The proletarian army is recruited and becomes aware of its objectives in the course of the struggle itself .39 This view already points beyond the merger thesis, as it challenges the classical understanding of spontaneity and socialist intervention. Spontaneous resistance already appears to play a much more central role than it does in Erfurtian Marxism.40
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

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Marcel Liebman, Leninism Under Lenin (London: Merlin Press, 1975). Ibid. Lenin, op. cit., p. 388. Liebman, op. cit., p. 48. Molyneux, op. cit., p. 44. Lenin, op. cit.; Lih, op. cit. Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, in Waters, op. cit., p. 259. Luxemburg, Organizational Questions, in Waters, op. cit., p. 166. Ibid. Lih, op. cit.

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Rather than an elemental force to be channelled or educated, it appears as a selfdeveloping phenomenon, that is, working people engaged in active struggle tend to develop the capacities, consciousness and unity that are necessary for their emancipation. This development, of course, is impeded by countervailing phenomena, which alienate, fragment, disorient*in general, disempower*working people. Rather than infusing socialist ideas into spontaneous resistance, the role of socialist intervention appears to call for an engagement with this dynamic*a very different political project. Most commentators, however, identified Luxemburg with the fatalism of the Second International, and Lenin with a new organizational method.41 However, is that really the case? How do we reconcile this apparent fatalism with her work in the css reading of SPD and the KPD? It may be the case, as I argue below, that Luka Luxemburg as economistic is limited by his own economistic understanding of spontaneity, as he inherited it from Lenin, and Lenin from Kautsky. Let us turn now to the work of E.P. Thompson, Antonio Gramsci and Walter Benjamin as we attempt to rethink the concept of spontaneity beyond economism. Rethinking Spontaneity A: E.P. Thompson and the Moral Economy Spontaneous resistance appears much less instinctive and unconscious, and much more considered when examined in light of the work of the historian, E.P. Thompson. For example, in his Customs in Common (1991), Thompson sought to grasp the motivations behind apparently spontaneous uprisings. He reflects on how historians have understood the phenomenon of the riot by examining food riots in 18th century England. He argues that historians typically understand riots using what he calls a spasmodic view of popular history.
According to this view the common people can scarcely be taken as historical agents before the French Revolution. Before this period they intrude occasionally and spasmodically upon the historical canvas, in periods of sudden social disturbance. These intrusions are compulsive, rather than self-conscious or selfactivating: they are simple responses to economic stimuli.42

This is precisely the view of history that posits spontaneity as an unconsidered reaction to economic conditions. In contrast, Thompson argues that riots are more complex affairs than spontaneous responses to economic conditions. His examination of food riots in 18th century England suggests that the poor were responding not only to their worsening economic conditions, but also to a perceived breach of their customary rights.
It is possible to detect in almost every eighteenth-century crowd action some legitimising notion. By the notion of legitimation I mean that the men and women
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cs, op. cit., Molyneux, op. cit. and Waters, op. cit. For example, see Luka E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common (New York: The New Press, 1991), p. 185.

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It appears that the riots were a reaction not only to their economic conditions, but also to the new laws and practices within a popular consensus. Thompson continues:
It is of course true that riots were triggered off by soaring prices, by malpractices among dealers, or by hunger. But these grievances operated within a popular consensus as to what were legitimate and what were illegitimate practices . . . Outrages to these moral assumptions, quite as much as actual deprivation, was the usual occasion for direct action.44

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What appears as an unconsidered reaction to economic hardship from the spasmodic view of history, from the perspective of the rioters appears as outrage in response to the illegitimate erosion of customary rights. Thompsons approach helps demystify an important aspect of spontaneity. Spontaneous collective action, which often appears as an automatic response to economic conditions, is informed by a popular consensus, which is central to understanding some of the motivation, conscious consideration and initiative behind spontaneous activity. Rethinking Spontaneity B: Gramsci and the Subaltern Antonio Gramsci, leader of the Communist Party of Italy from 1924 to 1926, similarly argued that spontaneous resistance was guided by traditional conceptions of the world. However, in addition to noting some of the conscious motivations behind apparently unconscious uprisings, he also identified another aspect of how spontaneity is much more considered and significant than it often appears in classical Marxism. In a well-known passage from his prison writings, he wrote, pure spontaneity does not exist in history: it would come to the same thing as pure mechanicity. In the most spontaneous movement it is simply the case that the elements of conscious leadership cannot be checked, have left no reliable document. It may be said that spontaneity is therefore characteristic of the history of the subaltern classes.45 Recall that Gramsci understood the subaltern as subordinate social groups, such as slaves, peasants, religious groups, women, different races, and the proletariat,46 who, by virtue of their marginalized position, have left few traces of their conscious activity. From this perspective, events that appear to have arisen
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Ibid., p. 188. Ibid. 45 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 196. 46 M. Green, Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramscis Concept of the Subaltern, Rethinking Marxism, 14:3 (2002), p. 2.

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spontaneously may simply have been organized by subordinate social groups, rather than the sanctioned official opposition, hence giving the impression of an absence of conscious planning. Marcus Greens careful study of Gramscis concept of the subaltern highlights Gramscis Notebook 3, 90, where he identifies his methodological criteria for the study of the subaltern. It lists six phases in the development of subaltern groups, beginning with their objective formation, through their organizational development to their development of political formations that assert autonomy beyond the old framework.47 The lack of evidence of their activities reflects a weakness of political organization typical of elementary forms of spontaneous resistance. However, as these formations develop through the process of struggle, their activity appears less spontaneous. Gramsci pays close attention to the development of subaltern groups from spontaneous resistance to forming political organizations capable of assembling a hegemonic bloc and challenging the ruling class for political power. In contrast to Erfurtian Marxism,48 which argues that spontaneous resistance cannot develop beyond reformist or economic demands, and advocates that classconsciousness and appropriate organization must be brought to the workers movement from the outside, in Gramscis prison writings, spontaneous resistance appears as an embryonic form of organization that can develop into something much more effective. By recognizing that the process of organization is already at work among subaltern groups, and need not be imposed from the outside (but should be engaged and cultivated), Gramsci likewise points beyond the classical Marxist treatment of spontaneity.49 This view was echoed several decades later by another Italian Marxist, Romano Alquati, who sought to read a similar proposition into Lenins What is to be Done?, which he understood not as a dismissal of spontaneous actions, but as the recognition that the latter already possessed an innate political significance. Used in this manner, the term spontaneity drew attention to the already existing forms of invisible organisation produced by workers in the absence of formal class organisation under their control.50
Ibid., p. 9. Lih, op. cit., pp. 5 6. I have coined the term Erfurtian to describe the bundle of beliefs, institutional models and political strategies that constituted orthodox Marx-based Social Democracy. Erfurt was the German town where the SPD held a congress in 1891 at which they celebrated their victory over Bismarcks repressive anti-socialist law and also adopted a new programme. An Erfurtian is someone who accepts the SPD as a model party, accepts the Erfurt Programme as an authoritative statement of the Social-Democratic mission, and accepts Karl Kautskys tremendously influential commentary the Erfurt Programme as an authoritative definition of Social Democracy. 49 P. Ives, A Grammatical Introduction to Gramscis Political Theory, Rethinking Marxism, 10:1 (1998), p. 42. Peter Ivess detailed study of Gramscis conceptions of spontaneous grammar and normative grammar, similarly challenges the spontaneous appearance of spontaneity, and stresses the significance of activity and history in spontaneous grammar in a nuanced way. 50 Steve Wright, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 49 50.
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Although Gramsci demystified the concept of spontaneity, he did not abandon the term altogether. He understood spontaneity as activity that is not the result of any systematic educational activity on the part of an already conscious leading group, but [has] been formed through everyday experience illuminated by common sense, that is, by the traditional popular conception of the world.51 Similar to Thompson, he understood subaltern activity as not simply an automatic reflex reaction to objective conditions, but as activity that is guided by the subaltern classes conceptions of the world. The work of both Gramsci and Thompson challenges the classical understanding of spontaneity. Rather than an automatic response to economic conditions, spontaneous resistance appears as a considered response in light of shared social norms, which is organized in an elementary form. When the classical identification of spontaneous resistance with the economy is severed, we begin to see spontaneous activity in a new light. This demystification of spontaneity has enormous consequences for the project of self-emancipation. It advances our understanding of spontaneity from mystical and economic-reductionist conceptions, and helps us to grasp it as the self-activity of subaltern classes, which is thoughtful, conscious and always present. Suddenly, the traditional dismissal of Luxemburgs focus on spontaneity as economistic appears less convincing. It is worth noting, however, that Gramsci did not romanticize this activity simply because it originates among the subaltern.52 While he recognized that subaltern classes are capable of self-activity, he acknowledged that this activity is not automatically revolutionary or even necessarily progressive. This understanding returns us to the question of the relationship between spontaneity and organization, albeit reformulated as conscious subaltern self-activity and the conscious activity of a leading group that is committed to advancing the overall struggle. Gramsci argued for a thoughtful engagement with spontaneous movements that seeks to educate, direct and give them a conscious leadership.53 However, the problem is more complex than a battle of ideas. As McNally writes, the political problem is not simply to dislodge the hegemony of ruling class ideas but, in fact, to destabilize our unconscious identifications with the commodity form itself .54 While Thompsons and Gramscis analyses are quite strong when it comes to revealing conscious processes that hide behind apparently automatic reactions to economic conditions, they provide only a partial account of spontaneity. Gramsci argues convincingly that spontaneous activity often appears as unconscious because of the subordinate position of the groups that organize it; however, he sidesteps the unconscious side of spontaneity, which is left mystified.
Gramsci, op. cit., pp. 198 199. In fact, he cautioned that such activity is often accompanied by reactionary movements of the ruling classes that seek to lead it in directions that maintain existing social relations. 53 Gramsci, op. cit. 54 David McNally, Bodies of Meaning (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 232.
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Rethinking Spontaneity C: Benjamin and the Collective Unconscious The work of Walter Benjamin helps demystify the unconscious side of spontaneity. In light of Thompsons and Gramscis work, we can grasp spontaneity*as the initiative of working people in response to their social conditions*not economistically, but as conscious self-activity. However, while spontaneity for Luxemburg involved selfactivity, it was not entirely guided by conscious planning. Although she recognized the conscious effort involved in apparently spontaneous uprisings, her description of such events clearly speaks to another phenomenon at work. For example, consider her account of the wave of general strikes that swept across Russia in 1905:
The sudden general rising of the proletariat in January under the powerful impetus of the St. Petersburg events was outwardly a political act of the revolutionary declaration of war on absolutism. But this first general direct action reacted inwardly all the more powerfully as it for the first time awoke class feeling and classconsciousness in millions upon millions as if by an electric shock. And this awakening of class feeling expressed itself forthwith in the circumstances that the proletarian mass, counted by millions, quite suddenly and sharply came to realise how intolerable was that social and economic existence which they had patiently endured for decades in the chains of capitalism. Thereupon, there began a spontaneous general shaking of and tugging at these chains. All the innumerable sufferings of the modern proletariat reminded them of the old bleeding wounds. Here was the eight-hour day fought for, there piece-work was resisted, here were brutal foremen driven off in a sack on a handcar, at another place infamous systems of fines were fought against, everywhere better wages were striven for and here and there the abolition of homework. Backward, degraded occupations in large towns, small provincial towns, which had hitherto dreamed in an idyllic sleep, the village with its legacy from feudalism*all these, suddenly awakened by the January lightning, bethought themselves of their rights and now sought feverishly to make up for their previous neglect.55

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This incredibly rich description of the 1905 general strikes demonstrates how spontaneity in those events was inspired and guided not only by conscious planning. Her imagery of the awakening of class-consciousness as if by electric shock, by the lightning of the general strikes, reminding them of old bleeding wounds*speaks to other processes. The central role that she placed on this sudden awakening earned her a considerable amount of criticism. As we saw above, her ideas on spontaneity have largely been dismissed as fatalistic. Although Luxemburg herself made plenty of remarks that warrant such criticism, her observations of sudden awakening need not necessarily be understood as fatalistic. In fact, this criticism of her approach is itself based on a mechanistic conception of the nature of the unconscious. In other words, there may be a different way to understand the unconscious side of spontaneity without slipping into fatalism.
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Luxemburg, Organizational Questions, in Waters, op cit., pp. 171 172.

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Years after Luxemburgs assassination, Walter Benjamin developed a conception of the unconscious that is useful for re-reading Luxemburgs ideas on spontaneity. Drawing on Freuds conceptions of consciousness and the unconscious, as well as Prousts ideas on memory, Benjamin developed his conception of the collective unconscious. In his 1939 essay, On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, he investigated Freuds concept of consciousness, referencing the latters 1921 work, Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
In Freuds view, consciousness [has an] important function: protection against stimuli. For a living organism, protection against stimuli is an almost more important function than the reception of stimuli; the protective shield is equipped with its own store of energy and must above all strive to preserve the special forms of conversion of energy operating in it against the effects which tend toward an equalization of potential and hence toward destruction. The threat from these energies is one of shocks. The more readily consciousness registers these shocks, the less likely are they to have a traumatic effect. Psychoanalytic theory strives to understand the nature of these traumatic shocks on the basis of their breaking through the protective shield against stimuli. According to this theory, fright has significance in the absence of any preparedness for anxiety.56

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From this perspective, consciousness not only receives stimuli, but also protects against potentially harmful stimuli by producing a narrative which represses the memory of these sensory shocks and the fears they inspired, writes McNally. Consciousness, in other words, spins a tale of security and stability in a dangerous and frightening world.57 The narratives with which consciousness grasps the world organizes it in a manner that protects us from traumatic shocks. The more successfully such shocks are parried by these narratives, the less they are experienced consciously; instead, they leave their mark on the unconscious as memory traces. Benjamin conceived of these memory traces by drawing on Prousts concept of memoire involontaire from A la Recherche du temps perdu. In the reflection which introduces the term, wrote Benjamin, Proust tells us how poorly, for many years, he remembered the town of Combray in which, after all, he spent part of his childhood. One afternoon the taste of a kind of pastry called madeleine (which he later mentions often) transported him back to the past, whereas before then he had been limited to the promptings of a memory which obeyed the call of attentiveness [memoire volontaire].58 These experiences of a sudden flash of memory are, according to Benjamin, unconscious memory traces that have been triggered by something in the present. When consciousness acts as a shield that represses memories of sensory shocks, the unconscious acts as a storehouse of traces of these repressed memories. However, Benjamins purpose was neither to confirm nor deny the accuracy of Freuds concept of consciousness; instead, he was interested in investigating the
W. Benjamin, On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, in Hannah Arendt (ed.) Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969 [1939]), p. 161. 57 McNally, Bodies of Meaning, op. cit., p. 214. 58 Benjamin, Baudelaire, op. cit., p. 158.
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fruitfulness of this hypothesis in situations far removed from those which Freud had in mind.59 He de-reified Freuds concept by contextualizing it in bourgeois society. He noted that bourgeois society involves an acceleration of shock effects*the assembly line, photography, street lighting, film, the movement of crowds hurtling through great cities, bombardment by advertisements, the unfathomable mobilization of science and technology in war60*resulting in consciousness becoming increasingly protective. The greater the share of the shock factor in particular impressions, he wrote, the more constantly consciousness has to be alert as a screen against stimuli; the more efficiently it does so, the less do these impressions enter experience.61 Also, note that shock is not only experienced at work, but also permeates experiences beyond the workplace. The shock experience which the passer-by has in the crowd, he wrote, corresponds to what the worker experiences at his machine.62 Life under capitalism involves the experience of increasing shock effects, which develop the shielding aspect of consciousness. Susan Buck-Morss puts it as follows, the aesthetic system undergoes a dialectical reversal. The human sensorium changes from a mode of being in touch with reality into a means of blocking out reality. Aesthetics* sensory perception*becomes anaesthetics, a numbing of the senses cognitive capacity that destroys the human organisms power to respond politically even when self-preservation is at stake.63 Benjamin further departs from Freud by approaching consciousness and the unconscious as social phenomena. The narratives that receive stimuli and repress memories of shocks are shared; they are part of the social world that individuals inhabit. Collective consciousness thus appears as a receptacle for stimuli, as well as a shield against potentially damaging stimuli that represses memories of their experience. The collective unconscious is thus a storehouse of traces of these repressed memories. These insights illuminate a whole dimension of experience that helps us to demystify the unconscious side of spontaneity. Although Luxemburg did not have this concept of the collective unconscious, it nevertheless helps us to understand her observations of spontaneous radicalization, which have been understood as reflex reactions to objective conditions. In light of Benjamins work, spontaneity is deeply rooted in historical experience. In fact, Benjamin praised Luxemburgs Spartacist League*a left grouping within the SPD, which eventually split to form the KPD*for its orientation on the horrors of the past rather than forgetting the past and focussing on the promise of the future, as was common in the social democracy of his day. In his brilliant Theses on the Philosophy of History Benjamin wrote,
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Ibid., p. 160. McNally, Bodies of Meaning, op. cit., p. 214. Benjamin, Baudelaire, op. cit., p. 163. Ibid., p. 176. Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), p. 104.

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Not man or men but the struggling, oppressed class itself is the depository of historical knowledge. In Marx it appears as the last enslaved class, as the avenger that completes the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden. This conviction, which had a brief resurgence in the Spartacist group, has always been objectionable to Social Democrats . . . Social Democracy thought fit to assign to the working class the role of the redeemer of future generations, in this way cutting the sinews of its greatest strength. This training made the working class forget both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated grandchildren.64

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This orientation on the past brings to light the role of history in consciousnessformation. Notice that, similar to Luxemburg, Benjamin focused on motivational factors that are not strictly conscious. While Luxemburg did not have the language with which to grasp this phenomenon, she noted that workers experienced a sudden awakening in the process of struggle and described it in terms that were echoed by Benjamin decades later. In light of Benjamins understanding of history as collective trauma, we can begin to understand the logic behind this awakening. Understanding Spontaneity Historically Using the work of Thompson, Gramsci and Benjamin, we can demystify some of the apparent mechanicity of spontaneity. Rather than an automatic reaction to economic stimuli, spontaneity can be understood as the self-organization of subordinate groups, usually in response to practices that are judged by the standards of a popular consensus. It involves conscious planning, reflection and judgement, and it often has a radicalizing effect. Furthermore, Benjamins work helps us to examine the unconscious side of spontaneity in a new way. Thompson and Gramsci illuminated some of the conscious processes behind what appear as unconscious responses to objective conditions; using Benjamin we can proceed further and approach unconscious reactions as having a logic that is historical rather than economic. Spontaneity begins to appear less like an automatic response to objective economic conditions, and more like conscious self-activity on the one hand, and a return of repressed collective trauma in a moment of collective struggle, on the other. Benjamins conception of the collective unconscious helps to account for Luxemburgs observations of a sudden awakening in moments of mass collective struggle. According to Benjamin, the past is always with us just below the surface, threatening to erupt into the present. Marx insisted that people make history, but not under conditions of their choosing. These conditions, for Marx, were not simply economic, but were shaped by the tradition of all the dead generations [that] weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.65 Benjamin understood this nightmare
W. Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History, in Hannah Arendt (ed.) Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969 [1940]), p. 260. 65 Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963 [1852]), p. 15.
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to be shaped by repressed memories of collective trauma. This nightmare*which contains an economic moment, but which cannot be reduced to economics*can be understood as an aspect of the terrain on which struggle takes place. This tradition of all the dead generations, which for Marx weighs on us like a nightmare, was for Benjamin also a powerful source of revolutionary energy. This energy is essentially produced by past collective trauma that confronts us in our stories, monuments, even our outmoded styles, fashions, customs, etc. Advertising routinely taps into this energy by suggesting that commodities will meet our needs and wants. The false hope offered by commodities has the effect of deferring disappointment and hence maintaining the status quo. However, mass collective action can also mobilize this energy by offering a different kind of hope. Luxemburgs observations of the mass strikes of 1905 read very much like a return of repressed collective trauma that had the effect of radicalizing the participants. The sudden eruption of the past into the present can be understood using Benjamins conception of the collective unconscious. Rather than fatalistic, from this perspective, Luxemburg appears to have had an acute historical sense of consciousness-formation. Far from being plagued by fatalism, Luxemburg was particularly successful at grasping the power and limits of conscious direction and the significance of spontaneity.
Of course, even during the revolution, mass strikes do not exactly fall from heaven. They must be brought about in some way or another by the workers. The resolution and determination of the workers also play a part and indeed the initiative and the wider direction naturally fall to the share of the organised and most enlightened kernel of the proletariat. But . . . there are quite definite limits set to initiative and conscious direction. During the revolution it is extremely difficult for any directing organ of the proletarian movement to foresee and to calculate which occasions and factors can lead to explosions and which cannot. Here also initiative and direction do not consist in issuing commands according to ones inclinations, but in the most adroit adaptability to the given situation, and the closest possible contact with the mood of the masses. The element of spontaneity, as we have seen, plays a great part in all Russian mass strikes without exception, be it as a driving force or as a restraining influence. This does not occur in Russia, however, because social democracy is still young or weak, but because in every individual act of the struggle so very many important economic, political and social, general and local, material and psychical, factors react upon one another in such a way that no single act can be arranged and resolved as if it were a mathematical problem. The revolution, even when the proletariat, with the social democrats at their head, appear in the leading role, is not a manoeuvre of the proletariat in the open field, but a fight in the midst of the incessant crashing, displacing and crumbling of the social foundation. In short, in the mass strikes in Russia the element of spontaneity plays such a predominant part, not because the Russian proletariat are uneducated, but because revolutions do not allow anyone to play the schoolmaster with them.66
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Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, in Waters, op. cit., pp. 258 259.

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In light of this passage, it is clear that Luxemburg did not have a fatalistic view of the revolutionary process. She certainly championed the necessity of revolutionary intervention by those in the vanguard of the struggle, but she always grasped this activity in the context of the overall historical process, which led her to recognize and underscore the limits of such activity. Luxemburg Beyond Classical Marxism: From Class-Consciousness to Empowered Subjectivity While I am tempted to say that Lenin overestimated the role of the party and underestimated the role of spontaneity, the aim of this article is not to side with Luxemburg against Lenin in the debate on organization; rather, it is to urge us to cs and revisit our understanding of the basic terms of that debate. In contrast to Luka others, I do not believe that Luxemburg was a spontaneist. On the contrary, her approach to spontaneous resistance has been occluded by an economistic understanding of spontaneity, which plagued much of the Second and Third Internationals. Luxemburg has been poorly read, and the prevailing reading tells us much about the readers. cs (and in agreement with Lih), I believe that the novelty Again in contrast to Luka and significance of Lenins organizational method, as articulated in What is to be Done?, has been exaggerated, and his debt to Kautsky and to the Second International requires further consideration. In other words, casting this debate as one between economistic spontaneity and conscious intervention is not true to the work of either Lenin or Luxemburg, and limits our ability to learn from them. Specifically, we are limited by a weak understanding of spontaneous resistance, cs and other which was inherited by Lenin from Kautsky, and passed on to Luka advocates of the early Third International (and critics of the Second International). In this regard, there is substantial continuity between the Second and the Third International. Spontaneity has been mechanistically identified with the unconscious reactions of working people, while consciousness has been identified with socialdemocratic theory as articulated by the party. In Kautsky this class-consciousness appears as socialist consciousness, which must be introduced into the class struggle from without;67 in Lenin it appears as Social-Democratic consciousness that cs it appears would have to be brought to them [workers] from without;68 in Luka 69 as imputed. In all three thinkers, class-consciousness appears as pre-conceived. cs saw class-consciousness as the appropriate and rational reactions imLuka puted [zugerechnet] to a particular typical position in the process of production.70 He understood these appropriate and rational reactions as proletarian ideology,
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Lenin, op. cit., pp. 383 384. Ibid., p. 375. cs, History and Class Consciousness, op. cit., p. 51. Luka Ibid.

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which he saw as Marxism itself. In other words, proletarian consciousness was a thoughtful, sober and rational response to existing conditions. One can imagine some of the consequences of this understanding of classconsciousness for the question of organization. If class-consciousness already exists in some form, then it could be apprehended and disseminated. This, according to cs, was precisely the main role of the Communist Party. The Communist Party Luka was to foster class-consciousness by clearly formulating the point of view demanded by the class as a whole in a way that workers could understand.71 What is particularly disconcerting here is the tendency to equate class-consciousness with a (correct) perspective, rather than an empowered subjectivity formed through experience. From this perspective Marxism appears as the ideology (in the positive sense) of the embattled proletariat,72 and the Communist Party as the place where this ideology is safeguarded and developed. cs and Lenin both repeatedly insist that the party does not fight on Although Luka the workers behalf or in their place, but only to accelerate the development of their consciousness to make them fit to struggle on their own behalf, in practice and even in its own rhetoric, the Communist movement, even in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, did substitute itself for the initiative of the working class. For example, consider Thesis 1 on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution from the Second Congress of the Third International (1920): The Communist Party differs from the whole working class because it has an overall view of the whole historical road of the working class in its totality . . . The Communist Party is the organisational and political lever with whose help the advanced part of the working class can steer the whole mass of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat on the correct road.73 Rather than a correct world view that can be disseminated to working people, and in agreement with theorists like E.P. Thompson, I approach class-consciousness as a product of shared experiences that are mediated by narratives that render the world meaningful. In order to reflect the experiential and embodied nature of consciousness-formation, I prefer the term empowered subjectivity to classconsciousness. To be clear, I am not suggesting that Luxemburg had the approach to subjectivity that I am trying to articulate. What I am arguing is that her understanding of spontaneity (and hence consciousness) cannot be reduced to economism. She approached spontaneous resistance as the initiative of working people, which is important not only as the steam of the revolution, but also as its teacher. Recall the conclusion to her polemic against Lenin: the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the
Ibid., p. 326. J. Larrain, Ideology, in Tom Bottomore et al., A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 222. 73 Alan Adler (ed.), Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third International (London: Ink Links, 1980), p. 68.
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cleverest Central Committee.74 She reminds us of the significant pedagogical value of active participation in struggle. Instead of the birds-eye view of the Communist Party, struggle itself is the process by which the correct road is recognized. If we consider spontaneous resistance beyond economistic explanations, we can learn a lot from Luxemburg. If she had had access to theories of subjectivity developed decades after her assassination, perhaps she would have articulated her views differently. However, such speculation is beside the point. The point being made here is that, rather than pointing back to the fatalism of the Second International, Luxemburg in fact points beyond the limits of the Third International and classical Marxism.

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Luxemburg, Organizational Questions, in Waters, op. cit., p. 182.