Ideas for today from a debate between Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky in 1910 over “the mass strike”, the role of the revolutionary party, and how workers’ struggle today relates to revolution in the future.
This brief extract from Beatrice and Sidney Webb's 'The History of Trade Unionism' (1894) describes how trade unions became controlled by professionals. We would not share the Webbs' approval of this development, but their description is illuminating!
Extract from Rosa Luxemburg: 'The Mass Strike, The Political Party and the Trade Unions', Section VIII. Need for United Action of Trade Unions and Social Democracy
Here, Rosa Luxemburg is writing about the need for trade unions and the socialist (called at that time, 'social democratic') party, to act together, and against the idea of trade unions being politically neutral. This particular extract is also useful for considering the nature of the trade union bureaucracy.
"The larger the mass the trade unions embrace, the better they are able to fulfil their mission. A proletarian party, on the contrary, merits its name only if it is ideologically homogeneous, bound by unity of action and organisation..."
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