Reform or Revolution Audiobook By Rosa Luxemburg cover art

Reform or Revolution

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Reform or Revolution

By: Rosa Luxemburg
Narrated by: Anne Makoto
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Reform or Revolution, also titled Social Reform or Revolution?, is an 1899 pamphlet by Polish-German Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg, in which she argues that trade unions, reformist political parties, and the expansion of social democracy could not create a socialist society as Eduard Bernstein, among others, argued. She contends from a historical materialist perspective that capitalism is economically unsustainable and will eventually collapse and that a revolution is necessary to transform capitalism into socialism. The pamphlet was influential in revolutionary socialist circles and an important precursor to left communist theory.

Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks History & Theory Political Science Politics & Government
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Rosa Luxembourg is someone who I've wanted to look into for some time. and her analysis in readings of a contemporary turning into shredding his ideas one by one was not something I expected, but greatly enjoyed.

a catty diss track packed with information.

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it's a great breakdown on how revisionist try to distort on what should be done today. a great analysis on what to lookout for when talking with liberals on progressive changes that are needed.

great look on today from the past

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Rosa attacks with grace many of the claims still perpetuated today about the social function of trade unions and the limitations of co-op activity.

Years old arguments put to bed.

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I'll explain this book in rap terms. Luxembourg is Nas, Bernstein is Jay-Z, and this whole book is Ether. I don't think that such a short book has had such a big impact in my political outlook.

Ethered

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Reform or revolution is essential reading. However, the reader makes several errors like reading "dialectical" and "dialetic" and "trasnitory" as "transistory" repeatedly.

Not a terrible reading

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The later chapters of the book really get into the meat of what's wrong with the reform approach, and lay it out so clearly and simply why it won't work. Highly recommended read.

The narrator though, they're good and loved the whiny voice they did for the comments of the liberals. However they do have some pronunciation issues: "dialetical" instead of "dialectical" was common throughout, with "transistory" instead of "transitory" and "secretarian" instead of "sectarian" being quite funny. :)

Good book, funny performance

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The story was full of questionable theory and the performance was not very good either. I feel as though, for me, it was a waste of my time.

Underwhelming in every way.

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It was really difficult to follow Luxemburg's dry diction. She has the unfortunate affectation of stringing together multiple clauses all depending on each other, making it overall quite difficult to understand unless you're really closely listening. Even as a native English speaker there were several times I had to rewind because I couldn't parse the overall thought she was trying to convey through a long convoluted sentence.

It also seems as though she makes several claims that were perhaps explained or shown true in other texts that she just casually brings them up as though they're true without rigorously proving them out - which left me with more questions than when I started.

Overall, I've been really excited to read this for a long time only to be disappointed. It feels like the points made here are coming from a very dogmatic point of view as well. Like she keeps espousing the virtues of dialectics and how Bernstein is such a bastard because he's departed from the original teachings of Marx.

All in all, if you're a baby left or overall not very well versed in socialist theory (like myself), this work is going to be really hard to understand.

Really opaque unless you're well versed in theory

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