Quiz: Reform or Revolution

All 46 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. Whose fantastic idea does Luxemburg compare with Bernstein’s reformism?

   Fourier’s plan to turn the sea into lemonade Proudhon’s exchange bank Owen’s plan for self-supporting villages of co-operation Saint-Simon’s council of scientists
2. 2. Which pillar of scientific socialism does Luxemburg say Bernstein removes?

   The class consciousness of the proletariat The socialisation of the whole process of production The labour theory of value The growing anarchy of the capitalist economy
3. 3. What does Luxemburg say a “policy of compensation” amounts to “in plain German”?

   A policy of insurance A policy of boycott A policy of armed revolution A policy of horse-trading
4. 4. To what does Luxemburg compare the amount of “socialism” in the best factory law?

   Municipal rules on street cleaning and lighting the gas lamps The rules of the English trade unions on apprenticeship and hours The programme of the Paris Commune and its decrees on night work Bismarck’s social insurance laws for sickness, accident and old age
5. 5. What does Luxemburg conclude about the relation between democracy and the socialist movement?

   The socialist labour movement is the only support of democracy Socialists must give up their final goal in order to save democracy Democracy is irrelevant to the working class Democracy will develop by itself as capitalism grows
6. 6. Which of these is not one of the three ways militarism serves the capitalist class?

   Opening natural-economy countries to capitalism An instrument of class rule at home over the working people The most important field of investment for financial capital A weapon in the competition of rival national interests
7. 7. What role does Luxemburg say small capitals play in capitalist development?

   A stable class untouched by concentration The main support of the socialist movement A dying class that concentration will soon wipe out entirely in every branch Pioneers of technical change, periodically mown down by big capital
8. 8. Whose socialism of justice does Luxemburg say Bernstein revives in a weaker form?

   Ferdinand Lassalle’s Robert Owen’s Wilhelm Weitling’s Charles Fourier’s
9. 9. Where, according to Luxemburg, does Bernstein shift the question of socialism?

   From industry to agriculture From the nation to the world market and its crises From capital and labour to rich and poor From politics to religion
10. 10. To what does Luxemburg compare the trade-union struggle in its economic functions?

    The search for the Holy Grail The labour of Sisyphus The labours of Hercules Penelope’s weaving
11. 11. Whose influence does Luxemburg say the opportunist current unconsciously tries to secure in the party?

    The intellectuals of the party press The trade-union leaders and their full-time officials The party’s deputies in the Reichstag and the Landtags Petty-bourgeois elements that have joined the party
12. 12. What, for Luxemburg, is ultimately at stake in the debate with Bernstein?

    The whole existence of the Social-Democratic movement The editorship of the Neue Zeit The party’s attitude to the agrarian question A choice between two tactics for the coming Reichstag elections
13. 13. What historical significance does Luxemburg give Bernstein’s book?

    The first scientific refutation of Marx’s theory of value The first and last attempt to give opportunism a theoretical foundation The founding document of the trade-union movement The programme adopted by the party at Stuttgart
14. 14. To which earlier communist does Luxemburg say Bernstein has brought the movement back?

    Louis Blanc Wilhelm Weitling Ferdinand Lassalle Moses Hess
15. 15. Where does Luxemburg locate the practical difference between revisionism and the party’s usual tactics?

    In whether to stand candidates for parliament at all Not in the What but in the How In whether to form trade unions at all In the use of violence against the state
16. 16. In which two phenomena does Luxemburg see the divergence between bourgeois class interests and economic progress?

    Trade unions and co-operatives Tariff policy and militarism Credit and cartels Colonial emigration and the franchise
17. 17. For whose teachings does Luxemburg say Bernstein abjures Marx’s economic system?

    Lassalle, Rodbertus and Dühring Brentano, Böhm-Jevons, Say and Julius Wolf Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and John Stuart Mill
18. 18. Which branches of production does Luxemburg say co-operatives are excluded from?

    Textiles, coal, metal, petroleum, machine-building and shipbuilding Retail trade, groceries and the local distribution of household goods Local handicrafts such as tailoring, shoemaking and carpentry Food, bakery products and other articles of daily consumption
19. 19. Which sentence of Bernstein’s does Luxemburg call the sharpest statement of his views?

    “The state is not abolished; it withers away of itself.” “Socialism is nothing but the organisation of plenty for all.” “Workers of all countries, unite! The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” “The final goal, whatever it may be, is nothing to me; the movement is everything.”
20. 20. With what story does Luxemburg illustrate Bernstein’s attempt to abolish wage slavery by law?

    A shopkeeper weighing cinnamon and pepper A knight tilting at windmills A boaster who claims to have jumped at Rhodes A Russian policeman who grabs a fellow by the collar and finds he has none
21. 21. What, in Luxemburg’s view, can secure a producers’ co-operative’s existence?

    Tariff protection against cheaper foreign competitors A fixed circle of consumers through a consumers’ co-operative Affiliation to a trade union that guarantees its labour Regular subsidies from the state or the municipal authorities
22. 22. Why, according to Luxemburg, can cartels never become a general form of production?

    They raise profit in one branch only at the expense of others Workers always break them by strikes They cannot be organised across national frontiers and tariff walls The law forbids them
23. 23. What, according to Luxemburg, do protective tariffs serve today?

    As a weapon of one national group of capitalists against another To protect the workers’ wages against cheap foreign labour To fund social insurance without raising direct taxes To bring up young industries until they can face foreign competition
24. 24. Which events does the 1908 edition cite as refuting Bernstein’s theory of adaptation?

    The crises of 1900 and 1907 The crash of 1873 The railway mania of 1847 The Baring crisis of 1890 in London
25. 25. What, says Luxemburg, is Marx’s abstract human labour in its developed form?

    Wages Machinery Money Rent
26. 26. What, for Luxemburg, does the spread of joint-stock companies mean?

    A return from large to small enterprise The progressive socialisation of production in capitalist form The end of the anarchy of production The growth of an ever more numerous class of small capitalists
27. 27. Which defeat does Luxemburg set against Bernstein’s theory of trade-union control over production?

    The defeat of the English engineers The defeat of the Chartists The Taff Vale judgment The fall of the Paris Commune in May 1871
28. 28. Whose way of seeing things is Bernstein’s adaptation theory said to generalise?

    The individual capitalist’s The peasant’s The state official’s The industrial worker’s
29. 29. Which French financier does Luxemburg cite as appearing, in Marx’s words, half prophet and half scoundrel?

    Ferdinand de Lesseps James de Rothschild Isaac Péreire Jacques Laffitte
30. 30. Which sector does Luxemburg say plays the decisive part in present-day tariff policy?

    Banking and finance Overseas shipping Heavy industry Agriculture
31. 31. How does Luxemburg describe the relation between social reform and social revolution for Social Democracy?

    Revolution must come first, reform afterwards Reform is the means, revolution the aim Reform and revolution are mutually exclusive Reform is the aim, revolution only a threat
32. 32. What does Luxemburg say Bernstein’s theory is a mirror image of?

    The conditions of the 1840s Marx’s Capital, faithfully reproduced in every detail The programme of the Fabian Society The external world, but sometimes stood on its head
33. 33. Between which two dangers must the Social-Democratic movement steer, according to Luxemburg?

    Anarchism and opportunism Centralism and federalism Nationalism and internationalism Liberalism and conservatism
34. 34. What is Luxemburg’s verdict on credit as a “means of adaptation”?

    It reproduces and sharpens capitalism’s cardinal contradictions It is neutral with respect to crises It is a socialist institution within capitalism It removes crises by smoothing exchange between branches of production
35. 35. How does Luxemburg describe the relation of legal reform to revolution?

    Revolution is only necessary where the road of legal reform is blocked Reform works only within the framework created by the last revolution Reform is simply slower revolution Reform and revolution are interchangeable methods
36. 36. Where, according to Luxemburg, does Bernstein’s abandonment of the theory of collapse finally lead him?

    To support a general strike To deny the class struggle and even the existence of classes To return to Lassalle’s state socialism and producers’ associations To adopt anarchism
37. 37. Who has dropped anchor in the “quiet harbour” of disillusionment with social reform?

    Professor Schmoller and the socialists of the chair The French Possibilists The Russian legal Marxists The English Fabians
38. 38. Without the theory of collapse, what kind of foundation does Luxemburg say socialism is left with?

    An idealist foundation, by “pure knowledge” A religious foundation, resting on Christian ethics A purely statistical foundation, by counting votes A national foundation, in the interest of the fatherland
39. 39. Why, according to Luxemburg, must the proletariat take power “too early” at first?

    Because the peasants will rise first and drag the workers into the struggle Because the change takes a long struggle, in which premature attempts ripen the class Because economic conditions are never ripe until the workers have taken power Because the bourgeoisie will always provoke a rising before the workers are fully prepared
40. 40. How does Luxemburg characterise the trade unions?

    As the organised defence of labour-power against the attacks of profit As obstacles to socialism As the means to abolish profit gradually As organs of economic democracy that will gradually take over the running of industry
41. 41. Which industry does Luxemburg give as an example of cartels increasing anarchy on the world market?

    The international sugar industry German coal mining American railways The British cotton industry of Lancashire
42. 42. What does Luxemburg call the most general premise of Bernstein’s theory?

    A coming general crisis of the world market The conquest of political power by the workers The sharpening of class antagonisms in every country A standstill in capitalist development
43. 43. How does Luxemburg interpret Engels’s 1895 preface to The Class Struggles in France?

    As a call for immediate insurrection As a rejection of universal suffrage As present-day tactics, not a renunciation of the conquest of power As Engels’s final acceptance of the revisionism Bernstein later preached
44. 44. Why, according to Luxemburg, do producers’ co-operatives fail inside capitalism?

    The state refuses them credit To compete, the workers must act as capitalist employers towards themselves Their members lack the technical skill and the capital that large firms possess Consumers boycott their goods
45. 45. What does the choice of the legal road of reform amount to, according to Luxemburg?

    The only democratic road to socialism A temporary tactic until conditions ripen A slower but surer road to the same goal, the socialist society A different goal: inessential changes in the old order
46. 46. What alone, according to Luxemburg, can bring down the wall between capitalist and socialist society?

    The steady extension of social control over the conditions of production The hammer-blow of revolution, the conquest of political power The growth of co-operatives and trade unions until they embrace all workers A Social-Democratic majority in parliament, won by universal suffrage