Where Do We Go from Here? Rosa Luxemburg and the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

Abstract

Five years into a global economic crisis that shows no sign of abating, it’s become plainly obvious that the uneasy marriage between capitalism and liberal democracy has been effectively annulled. Citizenries throughout the world are outraged by increasing inequality, unemployment, and poverty, but the political elites of the established parties (from nominally center-left or Social Democratic parties as well as the conservatives) have shown little interest in or ability to respond effectively to their wishes. If anything, elites have used the crisis as an opportunity to attack the last vestiges of the welfare state and the labor movement, pushing a politics of austerity that further instantiates its insidious, self-reinforcing logic. From an elite perspective, what state of affairs could possibly be better? Particularly when the Left and the labor movement in almost every nation affected by the crisis have shown themselves completely unable to mount effective opposition to these policies.