Case Study General Motors Brazil Service Parts Business Case Study: General Motors Brazil – Service Parts Business DO NOT NEED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS 5 & | Homework Answers

Case Study General Motors Brazil Service Parts Business Case Study: General Motors Brazil – Service Parts Business

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: Demoralized by the SPD’s support for the war and inspired by (though critical of)
the Russian Revolution in 1917, Luxemburg, one of the SPD’s leading theoreticians, argued that a
revolutionary alternative to the SPD was required to promote proletarian revolution.]
SOURCE: Rosa Luxemburg, “Our Program and the Political Situation.” Translated by Dick Howard.
Monthly Review Press: 1971. Source of original German text: Rosa Luxemburg, “Rede zum Programm,”
in Politische Reden III 1914-1945, edited by Peter Wende, 142-175. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher
Klassiker Verlag, 1994.
Comrades! Our task today is to discuss and adopt a program. In undertaking this task we are not
motivated solely by the formal consideration that yesterday we founded a new independent party and that
a new party must formulate an official program. Great historical movements have been the determining
causes of today’s deliberations. The time has come when the entire Social Democratic socialist program
of the proletariat has to be placed on a new foundation. Comrades! In so doing, we connect ourselves to
the threads which Marx and Engels spun precisely seventy years ago in the Communist Manifesto. As you
know, the Communist Manifesto dealt with socialism, with the realization of the ultimate goals of
socialism as the immediate task of the proletarian revolution. This was the conception advocated by Marx
and Engels in the Revolution of 1848; and it was what they conceived as the basis for international
proletarian action as well. In common with all the leading spirits in the proletarian movement, both Marx
and Engels then believed that the immediate task was the introduction of socialism. All that was
necessary, they thought, was to bring about a political revolution, to seize the political power of the state
in order to make socialism immediately enter the realm of flesh and blood. Subsequently, as you are
aware, Marx and Engels undertook a thoroughgoing revision of this standpoint. In their joint Preface to
the republication of the Communist Manifesto in 1872, they say:
No special stress is to be laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of section II. That
passage would, in many respects, be differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of modern
industry during the last twenty-five years and of the accompanying progress of the organization of the
party of the working class: in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February revolution, and
then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two
months, this program has in some aspects been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the
Commune, namely, that the “working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and
wield it for its own purposes.”
What is the actual wording of the passage which is said to be dated? It reads on page 23 of the Communist
Manifesto as follows:
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to gradually wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie: to
centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the
ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning this can only be effected by means of despotic interference into property
rights and into the conditions of bourgeois production; by measures, therefore, which appear
economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, go beyond
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themselves, necessitate further inroads into the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of
revolutionizing the whole mode of production.
The measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries, the following will be generally applicable:
1. Abolition of landed property and application of all land rents to public purposes.
2. Heavy progressive taxes.
3. Abolition of the right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital and an
exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Increase in the number of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into
cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally, in accordance with a social plan.
8. Equal obligation upon all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Unification of agricultural and manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between
town and country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present
form. Unification of education with industrial production, etc., etc.
As you see, with a few variations, these are the tasks that confront us today: the introduction, the
realization of socialism. Between the time when the above program was formulated and the present
moment, there have intervened seventy years of capitalist development, and the dialectical movement of
history has brought us back to the conception which Marx and Engels had abandoned in 1872 as
erroneous. At that time, there were good reasons for believing that their earlier views had been wrong.
The further development of capital has, however, led to the fact that what was incorrect in 1872 has
become truth today, so that our immediate task today is to fulfill what Marx and Engels thought they
would have to accomplish in 1848. But between that point in the development, that beginning, and our
own views and our immediate task, there lies the whole development not only of capitalism but also of
the socialist labor movement, above all in Germany as the leading land of the modern proletariat. This
development has taken a peculiar form.
When, after the disillusionments of the Revolution of 1848, Marx and Engels had given up the idea that
the proletariat could immediately realize socialism, there came into existence in all countries Social
Democratic socialist parties inspired with very different conceptions. The immediate task of these parties
was declared to be detail work, the petty daily struggle in the political and economic realms, in order, by
degrees, to form the armies of the proletariat which would be ready to realize socialism when capitalist
development had matured. The socialist program was thereby established upon an utterly different
foundation, and in Germany the change took a very typical form. Until the collapse of August 4, 1914,
German Social Democracy took its stand upon the Erfurt Program, by which the so-called immediate
minimal aims were placed in the forefront, while socialism was no more than a distant guiding star, the
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ultimate goal. Far more important, however, than what is written in a program is the way in which that
program is interpreted in action. From this point of view, great importance must be attached to one of the
historical documents of our labor movement, to the Preface written by Friedrich Engels to the 1895
republication of Marx’s Class Struggles in France. It is not on mere historical grounds that I now reopen
this question. The matter is one of extreme immediacy. It has become our historical duty today to replace
our program upon the foundation laid by Marx and Engels in 1848. In view of the changes brought about
by historical development, it is our duty to undertake a deliberate revision of the views that guided
German Social Democracy until the collapse of August 4. This revision must be officially undertaken
today.
Comrades! This first act, between November 9 and the present, has been filled with illusions on all sides.
The first illusion of the workers and soldiers who made the revolution was: the illusion of unity under the
banner of so-called socialism. What could be more characteristic of the internal weakness of the
Revolution of November 9 than the fact that at the head of the movement appeared persons who a few
hours before the revolution broke out had regarded it as their chief duty to agitate against it, to attempt to
make revolution impossible: the Eberts, Scheidemanns and Haases. The motto of the Revolution of
November 9 was the idea of the unity of the various socialist trends in the general exultation – an illusion
which was to be bloodily avenged. The events of the last few days have brought a bitter awakening from
our dreams. But the self-deception was universal, affecting the Ebert and Scheidemann groups and the
bourgeoisie no less than ourselves. Another illusion was that of the bourgeoisie at the end of this stage,
believing that by means of the Ebert-Haase combination, by means of the so-called socialist government,
they would really be able to bridle the proletarian masses and to strangle the socialist revolution. Yet
another illusion was that of the Ebert-Scheidemann government, that with the aid of the soldiers returned
from the front, they would be able to hold down the working masses in their socialist class struggle.
Such were the multifarious illusions which explain recent events. One and all, they have now been
dissipated into nothingness. It has been shown that the union between Haase and Ebert-Scheidemann
under the banner of “socialism” serves merely as a fig leaf for the veiling of a counter-revolutionary
policy. We ourselves have been cured of our self-deceptions, as happens in all revolutions. There is a
definite revolutionary method by which the people can be cured of illusion, but unfortunately, the cure
must be paid for with the blood of the people. In Germany, events have followed a course characteristic of
earlier revolutions. The blood of the victims on the Chausseestrasse on December 6, the blood of the
sailors on December 24, brought the truth home to the broad masses of the people. They came to realize
that what has been pasted together and called a socialist government is nothing but a government
representing the bourgeois counter-revolution, and that whoever continues to tolerate such a state of
affairs is working against the proletariat and against socialism.
Our motto is: In the beginning was the act. And the act must be that the workers’ and soldiers’ councils
realize their mission and learn to become the sole public power of the whole nation. Only in this way can
we mine the ground so that it will be ready for the revolution which will crown our work. This, comrades,
is the reason, this is the clear calculation and clear consciousness which led some of us, and me in
particular, to say yesterday, “Don’t think that the struggle will continue to be so easy.” Some comrades
have interpreted me as saying that they wanted to boycott the National Assembly and simply to fold their
arms. It is impossible in the time that remains, to discuss this matter fully, but let me say that I never
dreamed of anything of the kind. My meaning was that history is not going to make our revolution an
easy matter like the bourgeois revolutions in which it sufficed to overthrow that official power at the
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center and to replace a dozen or so persons in authority. We have to work from beneath, and this
corresponds to the mass character of our revolution which aims at the foundation and base of the social
constitution; it corresponds to the character of the present proletarian revolution that the conquest of
political power must come not from above but from below. The 9th of November was an attempt, a weak,
half-hearted, half-conscious, and chaotic attempt to overthrow the existing public power and to put an end
to class rule. What now must be done is that with full consciousness all the forces of the proletariat should
be concentrated in an attack on the very foundations of capitalist society. There, at the base, where the
individual employer confronts his wage slaves; at the base, where all the executive organs of political
class rule confront the object of this rule, the masses; there, step by step, we must seize the means of
power from the rulers and take them into our own hands. In the form that I depict it, the process may
seem rather more tedious than one had imagined it at first. It is healthy, I think, that we should be
perfectly clear as to all the difficulties and complications of this revolution. For I hope that, as in my own
case, so in yours also, the description of the difficulties of the accumulating tasks will paralyze neither
your zeal nor your energy. On the contrary, the greater the task, the more will we gather all of our forces.
And we must not forget that the revolution is able to do its work with extraordinary speed. I make no
attempt to prophesy how much time will he needed for this process. Who among us cares about the time;
who worries, so long only as our lives suffice to bring it to pass. It is only important that we know clearly
and precisely what is to be done; and I hope that my feeble powers have shown you to some extent the
broad outlines of that which is to be done.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Rosa Luxemburg, writing in Die Rote Fahne barely a week after the declaration of
the Republic, expressed the limitations of this new government and the necessity of a further revolution.]
The result of the first week of the revolution is as follows: in the state of the Hohenzollerns, not much has
basically changed; the workers’ and soldiers’ government is acting as the deputy of the imperialistic
government that has gone bankrupt. All its acts and omissions are governed by fear of the working
masses. Even before the revolution has acquired verve and momentum, its only vital force, namely its
socialist and proletarian character, will have been spirited away.
The government of the German revolution at its present stage is in the hands of Scheidemann and Ebert,
who solemnly swear that one can form a “purely socialist government” with them, thus qualify
themselves as the appropriate partners in the firm at this initial provisional stage.
But revolution do not stand still. Their vital law is to advance rapidly, to outgrow themselves. It is already
being driven forward by its inner contradictions from this initial stage. The situation can be
comprehended as a beginning, as a condition untenable over the long haul. If the counter-revolution is not
to gain the upper hand all along the line, the masses must be on their guard.
A beginning has been made. What happens next is not in the hands of the dwarfs who would hold up the
course of the revolution, who would put a spoke in the wheel of world history. It is the realization of the
ultimate goal of socialism which is on today’s agenda of world history. The German revolution has now
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hit upon the path illuminated by this star. Step by step, through storm and stress, through battle and
torment and misery and victory, it will reach its goal.
It must!
[EITOR’S NOTE: Bloch was not an official member of the KPD, but an independent Marxist journalist
and philosopher who regularly wrote for the leftist Weltbühne. Nonetheless, he was generally associated
with the communist movement. He was one of the first to recognize the real danger of Hitler-led mass
movement in Germany.]
At first we coldly ignored it. Shrugged our shoulders at the malicious pack that crawled forth. At the red
posters with the driveling sentences, but the knuckledusters behind them. That which roughly stepped to
our bedside early in the morning to demand our papers, stuck itself up as a party here. Jews are forbidden
to enter the hall…
The peasants, the urban peasants, still exist here [in Bavaria] as a rabble: primitive, open to suggestion,
dangerous, unpredictable. The same people who had blackened the streets at Eisner’s funeral in countless
processions hounded the leaders of yesterday to their death. From one day to the next the flag shops
exchanged the soviet star for the swastika… These were not only impoverished petite bourgeoisie, who
grab at now this and now that means of assistance, nor were these an organized proletariat, not even a
relatively organisable lumpenproletariat that could be kept up to scratch, but definitely mere riffraff, the
vindictive, crucifying creatures of all ages. They were dazzled by the sham, by students in regalia, by the
magic of processions, parades, and ringing spectacle…
Seventeen-year-olds are burning to respond to Hitler. Beery students of old, dreary, reveling in the
happiness of the crease in their trousers, are no longer recognizable, their hearts are pounding. The old
student fraternity member is arising again, Schill’s officers reborn, they find their brother in Schlageter,
heroic associations with all the signs of irrational conspiracy are gathering under a secret light. Hitler,
their leader, did not deserve the indulgence of his judges and this farcical trial, but even with the wit of
Berlin lawyers there is no getting at him, and even Ludendorff, this brutally limited masculine symbol,
does not live on the same level with him.
Hitler is undoubtedly a highly suggestive type, unfortunately a great deal more vehement than the genuine
revolutionaries who incited Germany in 1918. He gave the exhausted ideology of the fatherland an almost
mysterious fire and has made a new aggressive sect, the germ of a strongly religious army, into a troop
with a myth… The extent to which Hitler has young people on his side should not be underrated. We
should not underestimate our opponent but realize what is a psychological force for so many and inspires
them.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Ulbricht was closely associate with developing the theory and related polices of
social fascism. As seen in this article from 25 November 2910, he pushed the KPD to find common
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ground where possible with local elements of the NSDAP to launch joint attacks on the SPD and its
control of the Prussian state government and police.]
SOURCE: Walter Ulbricht, Zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, vol. I. Berlin: Dietz Verlag,
1953.
Who is the biggest enemy of the working class? Every worker will reply: Fascism. Social Democracy and
the Reichsbanner are of another opinion. The social-democratic police president, Grzesinski, declared in
district Kreuzberg [of Berlin] that the fascists were not the danger, but rather the communists. Regarding
the wicked murder by the Nazis in Charlottenburg, Grzesinski replied that he is not considering banning
the NSDAP. On the same day, the dissolution of the [communist-affiliated] Young Socialist Steward
Service took place.
Who are the fascist forces? Not just the Nazis. But also the Stahlhelm, the Young German Order, the
Agrarian League and other reactionary organizations. In decisive situations, the Reichswehr and police
are also under orders from fascism. Even the government is correctly labeled by the communists as semifascist. Where is the difference in the practical politics of [the Centre and the NSDAP]? It is just a
question of time until the Centre adds the Nazis to the government. Yes, the fascist danger in Germany
already that close. And this government, which aims for the direct preparation of fascist dictatorship, is
supported by the social-democratic leaders.
This support can cost the proletariat its head. The SPD leaders will betray their “own republic” if it is
conquered by fascism. How can they fight against fascism when they just flattened the way for it with
their coalition politics, when they directly support it with their compromising politics and prevent the
struggle of the workers against fascism?
The rift between the Social-Democratic leaders and their proletarian followers is becoming bigger daily.
It is now unbridgeable. The leaders of the SPD are already asking the question if they should split.
Tomor…
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