Luxemburg’s Concept Of Freedom

Sevgi Doğan

This article connects the concepts of the self-emancipation and self-consciousness of the oppressed in Rosa Luxemburg to those of Frantz Fanon and G.W.F. Hegel, also drawing a contrast to Lenin’s concept of the vanguard party. First published in Turkish in Felsefelogos No. 52 (2014/1) – Editors.

“The unconscious comes before the conscious. The logic of the historic process comes before the subjective logic of the human beings who participate in the historic process.”[1]

To be thinker does not mean merely getting stuck within the boundaries of the realm of thought, but also being a real militant (activist). We see this in thinkers like Rosa Luxemburg, who devoted her life to practice and class movements, as well as Frantz Fanon, who was a political rebel, writer and researcher who investigated the colonization process sociologically, philosophically and psychiatrically and participated in the Algerian war of independence.

There are some common aspects to both thinkers. One is their challenging take on the problems of their time. Luxemburg was an activist who was sensitive to the problems of her era. She examined the demands for Poland’s independence and its economic conditions; also she engaged in both political discussions (i.e., she disagreed with Lenin about Polish national independence)[2] and scientific research (i.e., her doctoral dissertation on the Polish economy, entitled The Industrial Development of Poland).[3] Her dissertation was her first contribution to economic theory. As soon as it was published, it was extensively studied in Germany, Poland, and Russia. In this work, she analyzed the growth of Poland’s industry during the nineteenth century and in so doing tried to prove the dependency of Russian Poland upon the Russian market. Therefore, for her, political demands in favor of its independence were not realistic. Although some Polish workers paid attention to her opposition to calls for Poland’s independence, it was unpopular among most Polish nationalists and socialists.[4]

Fanon also focused on colonization and the alienation resulting from colonialism; he was involved in the struggle for national liberation and examined the psychological problems derived from it. Both addressed the practical acts of the nation they came from and stood up for the proletariat and the people for the sake of freedom and decolonization.

There is a common aspect in both Luxemburg’s approach to class-consciousness and Fanon’s view of the consciousness of decolonized peoples. I believe that Luxemburg’s theory of “class consciousness” corresponds in some ways with the process of “self-consciousness” in Hegel’s “master-slave dialectic.” Luxemburg almost never wrote about Hegel, but her distinct attitude toward class-consciousness, as compared with that of Lenin, reminds us of Hegel.

Accordingly, in this paper we aim to make a philosophical investigation of Luxemburg through the work of Fanon and Hegel. Apart from the discussion over whether Luxemburg was a philosopher, political economist, or social scientist, exploring her thought philosophically enriches our perspectives. Predicated on this view, we will try to probe into Luxemburg’s conception of freedom. We will find some similarities between Hegel’s idea of freedom and Luxemburg’s conception of freedom. Particularly, it is possible to explore a philosophical relationship between Luxemburg’s conception of “spontaneity” and “class consciousness” and Hegel’s dialectic of “self-consciousness.”

In Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Fanon emphasizes that the slave who has a black skin is different from the slave described in Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. However, I would argue that it was not only in Black Skin, White Masks but also in The Wretched of the Earth (1961) that Fanon’s evaluation of “the awareness of the colonial public” and “the awareness of the black-skinned man” was developed in a Hegelian sense.

We shall first explain Luxemburg’s conception of freedom and her ideas about the appearance of class-consciousness in terms of her differences with Lenin. We will then concentrate on her relation to Hegel, and finally examine Fanon’s approach and reveal their similarities. Our main thesis is that when we proceed from the contradiction in Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, we find that class realizes its freedom and consciousness through its own activity (self-activity) and labor. Unlike Lenin, for Luxemburg and Fanon, there is no external factor that is responsible for raising mass consciousness.


Luxemburg considers polemic as one of the means of enlightenment, just as the young Marx thinks of critique as a weapon. Thus, she made many enemies. In the context of polemic and critique, Luxemburg never avoids putting her ideas into words because she considers them to be illuminative, constructive and progressive for the future socialist movement. We should take into account her discussions, contradiction, and opposition with Lenin in this respect, but not as two Marxists who stand in two hostile camps. When we deal with Luxemburg’s ideas by praxis, in fact this contradiction could be a little more understandable. What Luxemburg had in his mind was a design in which “the individuals,” “masses,” or “people” achieve their consciousness through and within their own practice, or action. By contrast, in Lenin, the idea of the vanguard or leadership and centralization were dominant.

Like Marx, Luxemburg accepted that every country must be evaluated within its own historical conditions. Therefore, in Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy, she argued that it would be mistake to draw a parallelism between the current conditions of Germany and that of Russia. Luxemburg argues that in Russia the bourgeoisie did not dominate the state, whereas in Germany there was a developed bourgeoisie and thus the state was under its sway; for this reason it was possible to emphasize democracy. Accordingly, class conflict came to a head in the parliamentary system.

In Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy, Luxemburg criticizes Lenin’s conception of centralization. She explained her understanding as follows: the Central Committee of Party would have the precedence to all the local committees. In addition, this central committee would push the ready rules of party system on all the local committees. In other words, the local organizations had to apply what the central committee said. Then the central committee was a combination of the highest party organs. It was the unique thinking organ in the party. All other groups were its administrative units. Lenin considered that as a principle of revolutionary Marxism.[5]

In this context, in the Russian Revolution (1918) Luxemburg criticizes the same conception of centralization in the following way:


In this paragraph, Luxemburg attacked the Russian Revolution, referring to the risk that the revolution would be taken away from the proletariat and transformed into a party or a group of executives’ dictatorship. In this regard, for Luxemburg a socialist society would be only a historical product and so only in this way will it be in accord with socialism. This system of socialist society will arise from its own historical conditions and “its own school of experience.” With its social experience, this system of the socialist society will be an historical product, which creates the devices for its real requirements and solves the problems in its living historical conditions. In this case, it will continue to be a historical product, and will not be imposed and applied by commands.[7]

In What is to be done? (1902) Lenin referred to the problem of “spontaneity” and “consciousness.” According to Lenin, the working class was deprived of an internal dynamic that set them in motion towards a socialist direction. Therefore, an enlightened external factor was needed. In fact, these enlightened subjects led that working class, which had to be transformed in a revolutionary direction.[8] Lenin considered the “spontaneity element” as consciousness, which was not completed and still in embryonic form. However although the uprisings in a certain sense meant the awakening of consciousness, Lenin held that this awareness represents a series of “outbursts of desperation and vengeance”. However, he considered the strikes in the 1890’s (i.e., the strike of the industrial workers in Petersburg in 1896) as forms of struggle in which class-consciousness was more disclosed. While the uprisings represented only the resistance of the oppressed, systematic strikes were the core of class struggle. In other words, for Lenin, these strikes, which were the core of class struggle, were not the class struggle fully achieved or completed.[9] These strikes demonstrated the hostility between the working class and the employer, which began to raise awareness among the former, but the working class was not yet aware of the fact that its own interests were in conflict with the current social order and that it must never would compromise with the system. Of course, Lenin did not deny the progressive side of these strikes, but they remained to him a “purely spontaneous movement.”[10] Accordingly, for Lenin, as we mentioned, there was no social democratic consciousness among the workers; for this reason class-consciousness could be constituted only by bringing it from outside, by the social democrats. Lenin held that the working class only exhibited the consciousness of trade unionism, that is, the belief that it could push through a set of labor laws by trade unions. And the working class could not transcend this trade unionism. Lenin considered the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia as the leading force of consciousness or as “the vehicle of science.”[11] In the same text and chapter, Lenin argues that if the working class were left to its spontaneous development, it risked being subordinated to bourgeois ideology because “the spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism… and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.”[12]

Luxemburg thinks differently from Lenin; she is against bringing in class-consciousness from outside. According to Luxemburg, “practice or action” is the determinant. What brings the unconscious to consciousness and what brings the unwilling to the will is “action.” However, it is the masses self-action. She even said that the lack of consciousness was just the first stage; after this experience, the consciousness appeared. This is one of the aspects that links Luxemburg closer to Hegel. In Hegel, the movement began with a process that is unconscious, reserved, in itself, abstract, an empty absolute, and moves towards consciousness. Luxemburg expresses this as follows: “The unconscious comes before the conscious. The logic of the historic process comes before the subjective logic of the human beings who participate in the historic process.”[13] These expressions remind us the process of consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

Now we shall touch further on the relationship between Luxemburg and Hegel.


It is worth noticing that Luxemburg particularly emphasizes two things: 1) “action;” 2) “free will,” “self-determination” to realize action. These two concepts in essence contain the conditions of the realization of freedom. The first determination, or “action,” is the “masses’” spontaneous action and decisions. Through this actions, the individuals are faced with themselves and the conditions that they liv in. After a showdown with these conditions, the masses come into their own. These two concepts constitute the framework of her philosophy of freedom. More clearly, the masses become free only through their own actions and free will. This is made possible only by their political consciousness—without, of course, ignoring the economic dimension of the social class conflict.

In Luxemburg, the emancipation of working class and its freedom lies behind its desire to prompt itself into action through its own will. The working class, which is a sort of slave in terms of the master-slave dialectic, faces an existential, moral and political freedom in passing through a process of consciousness in the presence of the master. It emancipates itself from the alienation that it was confronted with by its own desire (will). It should be noticed that for Hegel, will or desire means as follows:

But in point of fact self-consciousness is the reflection out of the being of the world of sense and perception, and is essentially the return from otherness. As self-consciousness, it is movement; but in so far as what it distinguishes from itself is only itself, the difference, as an otherness, is immediately superseded for it; the difference is not, and it [self-consciousness] is only the motionless tautology of: ‘I am I’; in so far as for it the difference does not have the form of being, it is not self-consciousness… self-consciousness is Desire in general.[14]

In the first stage, self-consciousness is in the form of consciousness and the external, sensual world is preserved for it; but in the second stage, self-consciousness is reflected on itself and combined with itself. It realizes itself by returning to itself: this is the stage of the emancipation from otherness. At first, the external or sensual world for it was an eternal existence, nothing more than appearance. Of course, self-consciousness could not remain as a being in itself and reserved; self-consciousness, as Hegel said, is desire through this desire it transcends the position of “in itself” by heading towards the outside from its immediacy and by externalizing and clarifying itself. In short, one might say that the process of consciousness is always a movement of otherness and the process of purifying itself of this otherness.

Self-consciousness (subject) (for itself) which turns back upon itself and its essence by passing through the process of consciousness in itself, properly finds itself only when it encounters the other and finds itself in this other. In Luxemburg’s terms, the working class attains self-consciousness only through its own actual activity, its political position, and when it recognizes its historical, social, economic, and class conditions in externalizing itself. When we desire to find the real self that belongs to us, we can attain self-consciousness because it means we are aware of our alienation and want to transform it.

The basic character of Hegel’s conception of freedom is that people can have knowledge of themselves. Human beings rid themselves of normality and accidentality by a process of knowing or thinking. Hegel argues that will is practical spirit: Will is not completed and universal prior to a process of self-determination or a returning to itself. “Will” may have the feature of will only through its self-activity.

As long as the slave is not equal with his master, or as long as the conflict between slave and master does not disappear, freedom will not mean the freedom of anyone. In the Phenomenology Hegel evaluates of spirit as a “substance” which constitutes a society in which the individuals mutually recognize each other. The encounter of two self-consciousnesses appears in the master-slave dialectic. The master-slave relationship is based on a one-sided recognition. The master is recognized by the slave as a self-determining or free individual. Therefore, the master has an authoritarian power over the slave. However, this recognition is not satisfactory, because neither the master nor the slave finds itself in the other; while one of them is independent, the other is dependent on sensual things. Self-consciousness, which seeks itself outside itself, aims to find an object that can be identical with it. Thus, the master-slave relationship must lead a common recognition. What is contradictory in Hegel’s master-slave relationship is that this mutual recognition or identity is not realized. The idea of socialism and communism aims to realize this identity: the identities based on equality, which accepts the differences among the individuals.

One might say that the Hegelian sense in which the masses pursue freedom through their own self-awareness is a common theme in both Luxemburg and Fanon. We will now examine Luxemburg through Fanon[15].



“O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”[16]

The people Fanon speaks to are not the workers that Luxemburg addresses, but the poor and propertyless of undeveloped countries that want land and bread. Fanon is not just interested in the freedom and emancipation of impoverished people; he is also interested in the emancipation of the human subject as a whole. He believes that the liberation of the individual is based on the “decolonization of existence (being).” According to him, if we do not focus on the pressures that the dominant culture applies to individuals as well as the human psyche, we cannot find the path toward emancipation, and the fight against racism will amount to nothing. Fanon desires that every individual will become the subject of her/his history and the agent of her/his politics.

Fanon’s understanding of the decolonization of a colonized people is significantly different from the view of the “masses” or “crowds” as being uneducated and ignorant. Hegel is one of those who considered masses as an empty and meaningless crowd. However, the Gezi Resistance in Turkey was a concrete example that demonstrated that the masses are not an empty and meaningless mob. Unlike Hegel, who his Philosophy of Right argues that the masses do not know what they want and are formless and confused, Luxemburg and Fanon have great faith in “the masses.” In fact, the Gezi Resistance confirmed their faith. In other words, one of the common characteristics of Luxemburg and Fanon is that unlike Hegel they have a positive outlook to the capacity of the “masses” and “crowds.” Luxemburg did not believe that workers become conscious solely through an intervention from outside. Luxemburg and Fanon, like Marx, believed that a formless mass could be forged and work into iron.

Masses or crowds were one of the important concepts of nineteenth century thought, both in philosophy and literature. According to Walter Benjamin, the masses find their place in the nineteenth century novel—first of all Les Misérables and Les travailleurs de la mer by Victor Hugo, which opened up an imaginative space to the masses.[17] In his “Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” Benjamin argues that people like Hegel, and even Engels, who come from small towns or villages, do not understand the masses; what is more, they do not even experience these masses. For instance, he calls attention to a letter which was written by Hegel to his wife when he went to Paris from his small town shortly before his death: “When I walk around people are just like in Berlin; the same clothes, the same faces, the same appearance. Only with one difference; here they are in a dense crowd.”[18] Benjamin states that for a Parisian this condition of the masses is normal because even if there is a distance between the Parisian and the masses, still the Parisian is still part of the masses; it is not external to them. Hegel observes Paris from outside; just as Engels is external to London’s masses (The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845). Benjamin claims that for Baudelaire the masses are fascinating and charming—thus not external at all. Accordingly, perhaps nobody humiliates the masses as much as Hegel. Or is it better to say nobody is afraid of the masses as much as Hegel?

However, Fanon, like Luxemburg, approaches decolonization in the historical and materialist context and emphasizes that it is a historical fact, product, and process.[19]

In discussing the decolonization movements, Fanon emphasizes their awareness and consciousness. A conscious movement pushes decolonization a step further. Fanon considers decolonization and the negation of the individual’s alienation as part and parcel of this process. In other words, decolonization transforms existence itself and subjects existence to change; that is, in the movement of decolonization individuals realize themselves by becoming involved in being a part of mass action; they become aware of themselves and as a result a new stream of consciousness is initiated. According to Fanon, decolonization transforms the masses into the actors who write their history.[20] Here we can observe an approach, which is peculiar to both Hegel and Luxemburg. At this point, Fanon suggests the same idea as Marx, who in his early writing (i.e., the Manuscripts of 1844) states that with the annihilation of alienation individuals can truly realize themselves and therefore the truly free individual first appears. Fanon argues, “Decolonization is the veritable creation of a new man.”[21] Of course, he does not deny the difficulties of the decolonization process. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in the “Preface” of The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon is a realist and never abstains from hiding from reality. He speaks of things as they are, with their negative and positive sides.

Fanon discusses leadership in much the same way as Luxemburg, and criticizes the concept and practice of organizational centralization. Fanon is in favor of the self-orientation and self-governing of the colonized subject. He etymologically examines the word “leadership.” In English it is derived from the verb “to lead” and means to guide or to conduct oneself in, through, or along (a certain course); but the same word in French is usually used as “to herd.” According to Fanon, people do not need to be guided because the people are not a herd.[22] He refers to people becoming their own leadership. As long as people begin to recognize and see their conditions and try to overcome them, they can understand that “the liberation has been the business of each person.”[23] Liberation is not the “special merit” of a leader. The changes must be the product of “the muscles and the brains of the citizens.”[24]

In Lenin and Luxemburg the subject of history that has potential to transform reality is the proletariat. Lenin, however, considers the party as a person that protects and defends the right of proletariat. No doubt, Fanon evaluates his own geographical conditions and indicates that people from the countryside can lead the revolution. In other words, although he emphasizes peasant revolution (like Mao Zedong), he does not accept that an intellectual group can by itself bring people enlightenment.

The path to becoming self-conscious is basic insight of Fanon. The outbursts of desperation and vengeance by spontaneous movements tend to exist only for a short time, but the planned and organized struggle is long-term. Fanon contends that the level of consciousness of the fighters must be raised in order to transform the people and to win the national war; because according to him if you ignore this level of consciousness you will be unsuccessful. It means that although Fanon attaches great importance to action he does not neglect the importance of theory. One might say that his philosophical approach can be determined by the concept of praxis. In unconscious struggle, “neither stubborn courage nor fine slogans are enough.”[25] Fanon considers the political education of the masses as “historic necessity.”[26] “All this taking stock of the situation, this enlightening of consciousness, and its advance in the knowledge of the history of societies are only possible within the framework of an organization, and inside the structure of a people.”[27]

“The movement from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top should be a fixed principle, not through concern for formalism but because simply to respect this principle is the guarantee of salvation. It is from the base that forces mount up which supply the summit with its dynamic, and make it possible dialectically for it to leap ahead.”[28] Fanon is aware of the fact that without leadership a struggle could slide into chaos. However, Fanon states that the structure of the summit always takes its existence and strength from the struggle of people. “Literally, it is the people who freely create a summit for themselves, and not the summit that tolerates the people.”[29]

To conclude, one can contend that there is close similarity between Luxemburg and Fanon. Both believe that the masses can be transformed and become conscious through their own self-movement. They draw attention to the problems of the centralization; and they adopt the insight based on the mutual relationship from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top. It might be said that the relation posited between Luxemburg and Hegel might be made between Hegel and Fanon in the Wretched of the Earth, although in Black Skin, White Masks Fanon has a different view from him on the master-slave relationship.

However, before concluding the article, it should be remarked that neither Luxemburg nor Fanon thought that it could be possible to achieve freedom, decolonization and struggle without organization. They believed that the struggle would develop from an organization the masses determined by an understanding of the true historical conditions. However, class-consciousness itself is possible only by the action of the subjects of revolt themselves.

[1] Luxemburg, Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy, 1904,

[2] Here it is not our aim to discuss Luxemburg’s views of the national question. However, we can briefly address the issue here. Luxemburg differed from Lenin about nationalism. Luxemburg argues that the slogan claiming “the right of nations to self-determination” means the disintegration of Russia. For this reason, she strictly criticizes this approach. Luxemburg states that the right of nations to determine their own future would be the legacy of the bourgeois revolution, not a socialist idea. Luxemburg believed that the nations that were economically dependent were not allowed to destroy themselves after independence. In any case, after great suffering, these nations would be swallowed by a larger state (Aznar, “The Coherence of Luxemburg’s Theories and Life,” 2004. p. 246). Primarily she was in favor of abolishing Tsarism and uniting with the Russian workers rather than supporting the national independence or freedom of Poland. Her aim was the establishment of Russian democratic republic and under this republic, with Poland’s cultural autonomy (Carsten, “Rosa Luxemburg: Freedom and Revolution,” 1985, p. 273). For further information about the issue and Luxemburg, see: Tony Cliff, Rosa Luxemburg, trans. Yurdakul Fincancı, Gökkuşağı Publishing, 1968. For the life of Luxemburg see the film by Margarethe von Trotta, Rosa Luxemburg, Germany, year: 1986

[3] This work was dedicated to the examination of Poland through a macroeconomic perspective. It earned her a Ph.D. and was published as for its originality and scope of research. This work brought to light her originality and ability; that is, she made an accurate analysis of economic history with striking descriptions. In other words, its combination of statistics and social images was entirely her own style. (Helen Scott, “Introduction,” The Essential Rosa Luxemburg: Reform or Revolution; The Mass Strike, ed. Helen Scott, Haymarket Books: Chicago, Illinois, 2008, p.5)

[4] Estrella Trincado Aznar, “The Coherence of Luxemburg’s Theories and Life,” Neoliberalism in Crisis, Accumulation, and Rosa Luxemburg’s Legacy, ed. P. Zarembka, S. Soederberg, Emerald: UK, 2004, p. 244-5.

[5] Rosa Luxemburg, Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy [Leninism or Marxism?],

[6] Rosa Luxemburg, Russian Revolution,

[7] Rosa Luxemburg, “Rus Devrimi Üzerine,” Rosa Luxemburg ya da: Özgürlüğün Bedeli, ed.: Jörn Schütrumpf, trans. Murat Çakır, Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin, 2008, p.79

[8] Robert Mayer, “Plekhanov, Lenin and Working-Class Consciousness,” Studies in East European Thought
Vol. 49, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 159-185

[9] Lenin, “The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the Social-Democrats,” What Is To Be Done? trans. Muzaffer Ardos, Sol Publishing, 1990, p.36


[10] Ibid., Lenin, What Is To Be Done? trans. Muzaffer Ardos, Sol Publishing, 1990, p.36

[11] Lenin, What Is To Be Done?


[13] Luxemburg, Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy, 1904,

[14] Hegel, “Phenomenology of Spirit,” The Hegel Reader, ed. Stephen Houlgate, Blackwell Publisher: UK, USA, 1998, §167, p.88

[15] For further information about Fanon see: Barış Ünlü, “Frantz Fanon: Ezilenlerin ve Mülksüzlerin Düşünürü,” Ankara Üniversitesi Afrika Çalışmaları Dergisi, cilt:1, sayı:1, Güz 2011 and David Caute, “A Philosophy in Transition,” Frantz Fanon, New York: Viking Press, 1970

[16] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann, London: Pluto Press, 1986 p. 181

[17] Walter Benjamin, “Baudelaire’den Bazı Motifler,” Son Bakışta Aşk: Walter Benjamin’den Seçme Yazılar, hazırlayan: Nurdan Gürbilek, Metis Publishing, 2008, p.126

[18] Ibid., Benjamin, “Baudelaire’den Bazı Motifler,” p.127 (the translation belongs to author)

[19] Frantz Fanon, Yeryüzünün Lanetleri (The Wretched of the Earth), trans. Şen Süer, Sosyalist Publishing, 1994, p.42

[20] Ibid., Fanon, Yeryüzünün Lanetleri, trans. Şen Süer, p.42-43

[21] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963, p.36

[22] Frantz Fanon, Yeryüzünün Lanetleri, trans. Şen Süer, Sosyalist Publishing, 1994 p.182


[24] Ibid., Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p.201

[25] Ibid., Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p.136

[26] Ibid., Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p.138

[27] Ibid., Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p.143

[28] Ibid., Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p.198




1 Comment

  1. Jason Schulman

    I’m guessing that Sevgi Doğan has never read either of Lars T. Lih’s books on Lenin, both of which debunk the notion that “What is to Be Done?” says what Doğan thinks it says. More’s the pity.