Revolutionary Realpolitik

#Rosa150

Even 150 years after her birthday on March 5, 1871, Rosa Luxemburg's political impulses are still highly relevant and live on in today's struggles. Many socialists, as well as socialist feminists, are now united in their claim to pursue what she coined as revolutionary realpolitik. Instead of continuing to play reform and revolution against each other, they are interested in "transforming the idea of socialism as the ultimate aim into daily politics' divisional coins and to elevate the everyday political detail work to the big idea's executive tool" (Luxemburg 1903, 373).

Revolutionary Realpolitik implies that every struggle should also create the conditions for struggles to reach further, for an ever deeper transformation. For Rosa Luxemburg this includes fighting in parliament for concrete improvements for broad sections of the population, but always in the service of a learning process for the popular classes. At the same time, it was necessary to clearly show that parliament itself is part of capitalist rule and that the necessary upheaval can therefore not be decided in it. For Luxemburg, parliamentarism was therefore only one means alongside others, such as media work or the general strike, which had to be linked in order to get the people to take the wheel themselves: “The popular masses continue to be the living matter of world history, even in a social democracy, and only when there is lively circulation of blood between the organizational nucleus and the popular masses, only when the same heartbeat animates both, can social democracy prove capable of great historical deeds” (Luxemburg 1913, 252).

Against this background, different practical approaches by feminists around the world take on special significance, often under the heading of a "feminization of politics" (or similar terms such as a "feministation" or "de-patriarchalization"). These are often driven by women and feminists, especially Black women and women of color, who not only want to take over institutions, but, at the same time, change the rules of the game and question the central position they hold in our understanding of politics. Thus, initiatives, from placing feminists in municipal governments to feminist participation in constituent assemblies to the feminist strike, embody this revolutionary realpolitik by inserting feminist values and ways of doing politics into different arenas and creating new tools with which the movement can grow and deepen.