Democratic Socialism

Rosa Luxemburg criticized traditional politics as the business of professional politicians who acted in the interests of one party of society only and tried to achieve and secure social, economic and cultural privileges for their followers. These politicians thought of themselves and acted as representatives of the underprivileged rather than as being part of them. In Luxemburg’s view, socialism was not a service to be rendered by others but should emerge out of the common, voluntary and conscious movement of all underprivileged. Accordingly, professional politicians and parties should only function as parts of this movement, charged with organization and political education.

Rosa Luxemburg did not intend to rule over individual members of exploitative and oppressive classes with physical force: “For its purposes, the proletarian revolution doesn’t need terror. It hates and despises the murder of people. It does not require these means of struggle, because it doesn’t fight individuals but institutions […]. It is not a desperate attempt of a minority to model the world after its ideal by force, but the action of the great mass of millions of people.”

In Rosa Luxemburg’s interpretation, the struggle for hegemony was a permanent fight for the approval and support of qualified majorities. Freedom and democracy were not luxury items donated to the people, but the condition for socialist politics: “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of a party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter. Not because of the fanaticism of ‘justice’, but rather because all that is instructive, wholesome, and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effects cease to work when ‘freedom’ becomes a privilege.”