Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.
Interpretation
Social democracy seeks reforms as a way to achieve a more revolutionary change in society.
Rosa Luxemburg's quote emphasizes that social democracy is inherently linked to both the pursuit of gradual reforms and the ultimate goal of a radical transformation in society. The reforms serve as tools to advance towards revolutionary changes, highlighting the interconnectedness of these two approaches in the broader struggle for social justice and equality.
In practice
This quote can be used in a political speech to inspire activists.
Our scribblings are usually not lyrics but whirrings, without colour or resonance, like the tone of an engine-wheel. I believe that the cause lies in the fact that when people write, they forget for the most part to dig deeply into themselves and to feel the whole import and truth of what they are writing.
The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles...Social democracy...is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh. Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.
Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only no matter how big its membership may be is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently.
Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.
The existing legal constitution is nothing but the product of a revolution. Revolution is the act of political creation in the history of classes, while constitutional legislation is the expression of the continual political vegetation of a society.
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.
But now, we are becoming suspicious of the very things we have long celebrated - free markets, trade, immigration, and technological change. And all this is happening when the tide is going our way. Just as the world is opening up, America is closing down.
Change is the law of life and of relations between nations. When two great peoples such as ours, energetic and optimistic, live side by side in all the diversity that freedom offers, change is rapid and brings in its wake problems, sometimes frictions.
Conversion is a turning onto the right road. The next thing to do is to walk on it.
If citizens do not believe they can change their leaders through the ballot box, they will find other ways, even at the risk of destabilizing their countries.
Here's where redesign begins in earnest, where we stop trying to be less bad and we start figuring out how to be good.
There is no such thing as a Fourth Industrial Revolution with 9 billion thriving co-citizens in the world if it is accomplished on linear economic principles. We need a transition to circular economic principles and practice.
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