“Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.”

That’s the quote from Rosa Luxemburg’s 1918 pamphlet, The Russian Revolution, which gets repeated so regularly whenever discussing Luxemburg’s political differences with Lenin, Trotsky, and friends. But I believe it is often taken detrimentally out of context. In context, she emphasizes this aspect of freedom as a practical matter: this sort of freedom is practically necessary for the proletariat to scientifically develop the material and social relations of socialism.

Without context, it’s easily interpreted as simply a bourgeois statement about the inherent morality of freedom of speech and expression. Consequently, people might associate Luxemburg with the liberal critiques of the Bolsheviks. That was even my interpretation of the quote, up until I actually read the pamphlet.

Consistently, Luxemburg is a razor sharp, insightful, and practically-focused Marxist; and the bourgeois interpretation would be a disservice to her reputation. Even worse, it might give people another excuse to delay reading her. It wouldn’t surprise me if the quote’s bourgeois interpretation has become widespread, even among contemporary revolutionaries. Luxemburg is often referred to, but my understanding is that this rarely results in people seriously reading her.

Giving Context to the Famous Quote:

So let’s give context to that quote. Luxemburg even explicitly says that the now-famous sentence is not to be interpreted in a bourgeois manner about some “fanatical concept of ‘justice’”, which makes the out-of-context quotation even more unfortunate. Here is the full paragraph:

Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of “justice” but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when “freedom” becomes a special privilege.

— Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’
Chapter 6, The Problem of Dictatorship

Luxemburg’s praise of freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to organize, freedom to have meaningful votes when the proletariat is in power—it is clearly a practical and material concern more than anything. This is consistent with the rest of Luxemburg’s body of work, which makes it even more ironic that this out-of-context quote has become one of the representative pieces of her writing. However, perhaps that was inevitable given the nature of liberal co-optation.

Luxemburg writes of important “instructive, wholesome and purifying” aspects which come from guaranteeing freedom for those who think differently. This should not be confused with guaranteeing capitalists the freedom to exploit people—that is clearly not an issue of merely “thinking differently”.

What are the practical benefits of this freedom which Luxemburg extols? Proletarian democracy allows people to bring in their own unique ideas which arise from their particular experiences, to fill in the gaps for each other in deliberations, to plan, to improvise, to get feedback, and to further iterate our social institutions and norms. Nearly a century later, Helene Landemore’s Democratic Reason develops in more detail our understanding of the practical effectiveness of inclusive deliberative democracy.

Being a disabled Polish, Jewish woman—Luxemburg rose the ranks in the party through sharp analysis and action. For all her capacity to overcome those social disadvantages, even Luxemburg could not have become as influential and positive of a force as she did if she had been disregarded for thinking differently and disagreeing with the party. To be clear: the freedoms Luxemburg admires are not motivated by concerns about allowing the most talented to rise to the top, but instead about how to productively incorporate each other’s ideas and concerns, particularly those of people who might otherwise be socially disregarded.

The generative, instructive benefits of comrades bringing in their diverse ideas and concerns requires the expansive and inclusive freedom to deliberate, take improvisational collective actions, and learn from the mistakes we are bound to make. Luxemburg presciently notes that the Bolshevik party was not institutionalizing these norms. And now, in contemporary organizing environments which are heavily influenced by the history of the Bolsheviks, this important aspect of socialist society-building needs to be fought for, even within revolutionary groups.

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It’s true that Luxemburg had sharp differences with the Bolsheviks, particularly regarding the role of the free involvement of the proletariat in the positive creation of socialism. In practice, she (and I) believe that the historical proletarian development of socialism cannot be effectively replaced by the utopian edicts of a revolutionary party:

Thus we know more or less what we must eliminate at the outset in order to free the road for a socialist economy. But when it comes to the nature of the thousand concrete, practical measures, large and small, necessary to introduce socialist principles into economy, law and all social relationships, there is no key in any socialist party program or textbook. That is not a shortcoming but rather the very thing that makes scientific socialism superior to the utopian varieties.
…
The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot. New Territory. A thousand problems. Only experience is capable of correcting and opening new ways. Only unobstructed, effervescing life falls into a thousand new forms and improvisations, brings to light creative new force, itself corrects all mistaken attempts.

— Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’
Chapter 6, The Problem of Dictatorship

Indeed, on this question of the positive development of socialist relations, Luxemburg is also closer to Marx’s analysis than Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Marx and Engels specifically avoid talking about the details of what a socialist economy would look like, to avoid utopianism. Scientific socialism focuses on the historical production of socialism: the dialectical development of our economic structures as the proletariat organically runs into limits, and then consequently collaborates to creatively apply our labor power for the interests of the working class, to adapt or overcome those limits. We will make mistakes, but so long as we are guided by our goal of providing useful objects and aid to meet each other’s needs and wants, we will learn from our mistakes. Trying to constrain the creative, productive freedom of the proletariat—relying primarily on party technocracy and preventing the mass of the proletariat from making and learning from our mistakes—this hinders the positive development of socialism.

We must abolish the limitations that capitalism imposes on our ability to organize ourselves to care for each other. Systems should then be developed to aid the proletariat in its iteration to a communist society: a society which values freedom, self-expression, and the creation of use values to address people’s freely-developed needs and wants.

Luxemburg’s emphasis on the liberated, natural interactions of the proletariat is an emphasis on how we may practically lean into the benefits of socialism in the development of our productive forces. Without the capitalist social form—the carrots and sticks which currently discipline the working class into developing the productive forces—how would socialism proceed? Revolutionaries ought to lean into the advantages of the productive power of the proletariat, which the capitalist social form tries to suppress: the free, democratic collaboration and innovation among the proletariat to organize and care for each other.

Giving Context to The Russian Revolution Pamphlet:

But do not take me out of context here either! For all her pointed criticism, Luxemburg was not antagonistic to the Bolsheviks, and neither am I. To say so would be a second liberal co-optation of Luxemburg at play with regards to The Russian Revolution pamphlet!

In The Russian Revolution, Luxemburg dedicates her first chapter to recognizing how the Bolsheviks successfully took the initiative to sustain revolutionary pressure through the final push against the counter-revolutionary forces. She emphasizes how they found a majority by organizing alongside the proletariat and peasantry to overthrow Tsarist and bourgeois rule in Russia.

Only a party which knows how to lead, that is, to advance things, wins support in stormy times. The determination with which, at the decisive moment, Lenin and his comrades offered the only solution which could advance things (“all power in the hands of the proletariat and peasantry”), transformed them almost overnight from a persecuted, slandered, outlawed minority whose leader had to hid like Marat in cellars, into the absolute master of the situation.

Moreover, the Bolsheviks immediately set as the aim of this seizure of power a complete, far-reaching revolutionary program; not the safeguarding of bourgeois democracy, but a dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose of realizing socialism. Thereby they won for themselves the imperishable historic distinction of having for the first time proclaimed the final aim of socialism as the direct program of practical politics.

Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary far-sightedness and consistency in an historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and all the other comrades have given in good measure. All the revolutionary honor and capacity which western Social-Democracy lacked was represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution; it was also the salvation of the honor of international socialism.

— Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’
Chapter 1, Fundamental Significance of the Russian Revolution

Notice how she writes that the Bolsheviks offered “the only solution which could advance things”. She is emphasizing how the Bolsheviks are highly constrained in their historical revolutionary conditions, which restricts how they may carry out revolution successfully. We see similar considerations of historical influence with regards to Bolshevik policy after they siezed state control, in the final chapter of the pamphlet:

…it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people.

Doubtless the Bolsheviks would have proceeded in this very way were it not that they suffered under the frightful compulsion of the world war, the German occupation and all the abnormal difficulties connected therewith, things which were inevitably bound to distort any socialist policy, however imbued it might be with the best intentions and the finest principles.
…
…Everything that happens in Russia is comprehensible and represents an inevitable chain of causes and effects, the starting point and end term of which are: the failure of the German proletariat and the occupation of Russia by German imperialism. It would be demanding something superhuman from Lenin and his comrades if we should expect of them that under such circumstances they should conjure forth the finest democracy, the most exemplary dictatorship of the proletariat and a flourishing socialist economy. By their determined revolutionary stand, their exemplary strength in action, and their unbreakable loyalty to international socialism, they have contributed whatever could possibly be contributed under such devilishly hard conditions.

— Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’
Chapter 8, Democracy and Dictatorship

Again, Luxemburg highlights the historical effects of imperialism and World War I. The USSR existed under the continuous threats of outside capitalist forces, and required the outside aid of socialist revolutions elsewhere in the world (particularly revolutions in developed capitalist countries) if they wanted to be ultimately successful. Lenin, Luxemburg, and even Marx (in his analysis of Russia in the 1880s) agree on this point.

She thinks that, under different historical circumstances, it would have been possible for the Bolsheviks to instantiate more democratic institutions and norms. But, she says, it's “comprehensible” why they did not do so, given the warped priorities they inevitably and understandably developed after they “suffered under the frightful compulsion of the world war, the German occupation and all the abnormal difficulties connected therewith”.

However, Luxemburg writes, simply because those were “inevitable” historical effects on the Bolsheviks, she raises the alarm that we must emphasize that these are not necessarily the conditions for the rest of the international revolutionary proletariat:

The danger begins only when they make a virtue of necessity and want to freeze into a complete theoretical system all the tactics forced upon them by these fatal circumstances, and want to recommend them to the international proletariat as a model of socialist tactics. When they get in their own light in this way, and hide their genuine, unquestionable historical service under the bushel of false steps forced on them by necessity, they render a poor service to international socialism for the sake of which they have fought and suffered; for they want to place in its storehouse as new discoveries all the distortions prescribed in Russia by necessity and compulsion – in the last analysis only by-products of the bankruptcy of international socialism in the present world war.

— Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’
Chapter 8, Democracy and Dictatorship

Nevertheless, the Russian Revolution—for all the criticisms we may make of it, and all the lessons we can learn from those criticisms—Luxemburg declares is a historical achievement, particularly in the context of all their Tsarist, bourgeois, and imperial antagonists.

What is in order is to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, the kernel from the accidental excrescencies in the politics of the Bolsheviks. In the present period, when we face decisive final struggles in all the world, the most important problem of socialism was and is the burning question of our time. It is not a matter of this or that secondary question of tactics, but of the capacity for action of the proletariat, the strength to act, the will to power of socialism as such. In this, Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first, those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world; they are still the only ones up to now who can cry with Hutten: “I have dared!”

This is the essential and enduring in Bolshevik policy. In this sense theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the head of the international proletariat with the conquest of political power and the practical placing of the problem of the realization of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the settlement of the score between capital and labor in the entire world. In Russia, the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to “Bolshevism.”

— Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’
Chapter 8, Democracy and Dictatorship

So with all of this context, we may return a final time to the interpretation of her famous quote:

“Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.”

— Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution
Chapter 6, The Problem of Dictatorship

This sentence is not a liberal, idealist, moralist critique of the Bolsheviks. In fact, it’s not even a simple materialist critique of Bolshevik tactics. It’s a reminder for all of us revolutionaries of what it takes to successfully and scientifically develop socialism—a reminder that the freedom and unencumbered improvisation of the proletariat is necessary for the development of positive socialist material and social relations, beyond merely the necessary negative actions of the abolition of capitalist relations.

Today, the proletariat’s improvisational, experimental, and democratic development of the productive forces is hindered by the bourgeoisie. But tomorrow, it may be hindered by a left party which, so self-assured in their own theoretical correctness, establishes a sectarian bureaucratic dictatorship in the name of the proletariat which unwittingly pushes for strategic “interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.” A freer proletariat can generate new strategies to defeat and replace capitalist social relations with proletarian ones—creating practices which would never have been dreamed of by a committee of socialist technocrats. But the proletariat cannot do so if their tendency toward free self-organization is continuously scuttled by a left party that thinks they know better.