로자 룩셈부르크의 공황인식 변화

Abstract

Rosa Luxemburg, who lived through the Second International,　was evaluated radically as a revolutionary romantic entrusting the mob to be responsible for socialist revolution or as a mechanical materialist believed that capitalism would self-destruct. However, it is true that she led political struggles centered on　the Spartacus League against the Bolsheviks. Then, the question arises as to how we should perceive Luxemburg’s theories and practices which ensured the inevitability of socialism and never-ending political struggles. This research analyses the changes in Luxemburg’s understanding in crisis in order to comprehend its connection with the theory of breakdown. Firstly, in the process of discussing revisionism, Luxemburg’s logic to capitalistic production’s anarchic characteristic as the cause of crisis and that this crisis eventually results in the breakdown of capitalism answered revisionists and attempted to restructure The Capital. Secondly, in The Accumulation of Capital which was written to demonstrate the implications of imperialism in the history of capitalism, the focus was placed on objective limitations and The Capital’s logic of expansive reproduction therefore structuring the underconsumption theory rather than directly analysing the cause or the meaning of crisis. Thirdly, Introduction to Political Economy which was written while lecturing at the political institution established by the Social Democratic Party of Germany, no longer contended that crisis contributed to the destruction of capitalism and identified crisis as representing capitalist production’s circulating character, hence comprehended the conditions of capitalism’s existence as an opportunity to expand to global market. In this sense, Luxemburg’s understanding of crisis shifted to revisionism as a means to capitalistic destruction, remarked on the limitations of capitalistic production rather than crisis in The Accumulation of Capital and in Introduction to Political Economy, unlike arguments on revisionism which connects crisis and destruction together, the understanding changed into capitalistic production as the condition for capitalism’s existence. Rightfully, Luxemburg’s emphasis on capitalism also changed, as she concentrated on proving the destruction of capitalism within revisionism however, in The Accumulation of Capital, an attempt was made to establish the inevitability of imperialism and in Introduction to Political Economy, a contradiction that is possessed by capitalistic production rather than capitalistic destruction is evident internationally.