Rosa Luxemburg and the Revolutionary Antiwar Mass Strikes in Germany during World War I Since 1906 Rosa Luxemburg was the outstanding protagonist of the revolutionary mass strike idea in Germany. Sie bekämpften Krieg und Kapitalismus und kämpften für Vergesellschaftung und ein Rätesystem. Von Faupel, the officer who, at the time, tricked the delegates to the recently-formed workers and soldiers’ councils, 20 years later was Hitler’s ambassador to Franco’s Spain. (Image: Permission given by Alexander Fiebrandt, grandchild of the photographer Herbert Fiebrandt/Public domain) Indeed, many revolutions have been made in the teeth of opposition and even sabotage of the leaders of the workers’ own organisations. Yet still in her most erroneous work she wrote of the Russian revolution and the Bolsheviks: “Everything that a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness, and consistency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure… Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian revolution; it was also the salvation of the honour of international socialism”. August 1871 in Leipzig; † 15. The young German Communist Party was by a treacherous murder of their best leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg – deprived of their leadership. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. It was virtually “a state within a state”, with over one million members in 1914, 90 daily newspapers, 267 full-time journalists and 3,000 manual and clerical workers, managers, commercial directors and representatives. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht continues to play an important role among the German far-left. Freikorps troops captured Luxemburg and Liebknecht without an arrest warrant and summarily executed them. There were some criticisms both at the time and later that suggested that Luxemburg and her ‘Sparticist’ followers should have immediately split with the SPD leaders, certainly following their betrayal at the outset of the First World War. But also in the words of Lenin, “In spite of her mistakes she was – and remains for us – an eagle”. Given the isolation of Berlin from the rest of the country at that stage, a setback or a defeat was inevitable. The German revolution not only overthrew the Kaiser but posed the germ of a workers government through the institution of a network of workers and sailors’ councils on the lines of the Russian revolution. Nearly one hundred years ago, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (both born in 1871, the year of the Paris Commune) were arrested and executed by ultranationalist members of the Freikorps during the early morning hours of January 15, 1919. Spartakusbund was the anti-war Spartacus League established by Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht after German’s participation in the First World War was supported by Social Democratic Party in1915. “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party—however numerous they may be—is no freedom at all,” she wrote. The opportunity of following the example of the Bolsheviks was posed but lost because of the hesitation of the KPD leaders, who were supported in this wrong policy by, among others, Stalin. He proposed a rapid split of the communists from the French Socialist Party in 1920 but changed his mind after Alfred Rosmer, in Moscow during that year, suggested that the Marxists would need more time to bring over the majority to the stand of the Communist (Third) International. Other luminaries of the Nazi regime were similarly ‘blooded’ at this time for the future murderous activities in their own country and throughout Europe. Luxemburg was well aware of the imminent danger. This, unfortunately, includes the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which can be construed as connected to Stalinism. While the workers of Madrid initially demonstrated for arms and their socialist leaders refused to supply them, the workers of Barcelona – freed from the inhibitions towards ‘leaders’ – rose ‘spontaneously and smashed Franco’s forces within 48 hours. Rosa Luxemburg was not so unprepared, as she had been involved in a protracted struggle, not just with the right-wing SPD leaders but also with the ‘left’ and ‘centrist’ elements, like Kautsky. This was consolidated when he became the first SPD MP to vote against the war. The July Days in Russia developed four months after the February revolution whereas in Germany the uprising took place a mere two months after the revolutionary overturn of November 1918. Like France in 1968, the government “could not get a single poster printed” as the working class paralysed the government and the state. … The complete unanimity of international revolutionary Social Democracy on all major questions of programme and tactics is a most incontrovertible fact.”. It is a profoundly interesting analysis of the role of the masses as the driving force, of their ‘spontaneous’ character in the process of revolution. On 15 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the finest brains of the German working class and its most heroic figures, were brutally murdered by the bloodthirsty, defeated German military, backed to the hilt by the cowardly social-democratic leaders Noske and Scheidemann. 'Red Rosa' Luxemburg and the making of a revolutionary icon Revolutionary socialists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered 100 years ago in Berlin. But such an approach – justified at one historical period – can be a monumental error at another, when conditions change and particularly when abrupt revolutionary breaks are posed. The question which history has placed on the agenda is: bourgeois democracy or socialist democracy for the dictatorship of the proletariat is democracy in a socialist sense of the term. angetreten war, das Proletariat auf Grundlage eines Marxistischen Programms zu organisieren und eine sozialistische Gesellschaft gegen die Interessen der Großgrundbesitzer und Kapit… Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (* 13. This hard-won lesson has still not been embraced by some purists on the “ultra-left” who, for example, failed to draw any distinction whatsoever between the “two capitalists” running for president in 2016 and either stayed home or cast their votes for third, “revolutionary” parties. She became involved in underground activities while still in high school.Like many of her radical contemporaries from the Russian Empire who were … They were both born in the same year, 1871, and died on the same day, their names necessarily linked in history. Although the new KPD participated in the Weimar National Assembly that founded the post-war Weimar Republic, the KPD decided to boycott the scheduled elections. Court rejects Trump’s drilling proposal in major victory for polar bears ... McConnell’s virus lawsuit ban far worse than advertised. A strength because the increasing power of the working class was reflected in the SPD and the unions. 5 No. She wrote: “What proves best the falseness of Bernstein’s theory is that it is in the countries having the greatest development of the famous “means of adaptation” – credit, perfected communications and trusts – that the last crisis (1907-1908) was most violent.” Shades of today’s world economic crisis, particularly as it affects the most debt-soaked economies of the US and Britain? In Berlin, thousands of people have taken part in commemorations of the life and work of the German communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (German: [ˈliːpknɛçt] (); 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German socialist politician and theorist, originally of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and later a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany, which split from the SPD after World War I. That month the November Revolution broke out as a working-class response to the horrors of war inflicted upon the world by the Kaiser’s government. Such was the role of the Bolsheviks in the 1917 Russian revolution. For instance, on the issue of the Third International he wrote: “The immediate future will show whether conditions have already ripened for the formation of a new, Marxist International… If they have not, it will show that a more or less prolonged evolution is needed for this purging. Luxemburg was shot and her body was thrown in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin, only to be found and identified months later, and Liebknecht was shot in the Tiergarten park. If we are to successfully change society then we need to study previous socialist movements to understand the lessons for today. After this uprising was suppressed he was arrested by the Scheidemann government and on January 15, 1919 was assassinated together with Rosa Luxemburg by a gang of German officers, covertly abetted by the Scheidemannists «Karl Liebknecht called upon the workers and soldiers of Germany to turn their guns against their own government. They felt it was their duty to stay with the workers. Januar 1919 von der Garde - Kavallerie - Schützen - Division verschleppten sie ins Hauptquartier verhörten sie unter schweren Misshandlungen erschossen Karl Liebknecht im Tiergarten mit drei Schüssen aus nächster Nähe Leichenzug wurde von KPD & USDP als But an all-sided analysis of Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas, taking into account the historical situation in which her ideas matured and developed, demonstrates that the claims of both of these camps are false. Indeed, when Lenin was presented with an issue of the SPD paper, ‘Vorwärts’, supporting war credits, he first of all considered it a ‘forgery’ of the German military general staff. Carnations are placed in front of a memorial stone with names of socialists at a cemetery in Berlin, Jan. 13, 2019. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were killed Jan. 15, 1919, by right-wing militiamen. This split was neither prepared nor desired by these ‘oppositionists’. On New Year’s Day 1919 Luxemburg declared: “Today we can seriously set about destroying capitalism once and for all. This was partly conditioned by historical experience until then, in which ‘partial general strike action’ featured in the struggles of the working class in the decades prior to the First World War. Rosa Luxemburg war die bedeutendste unter den Sozialisten, die in der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung wirkten. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were true revolutionary heroes, and their ideas and legacy will be remembered down the ages. The growing opposition to the war, however, widened the circle of support and contacts for Luxemburg and the Sparticist group. They can enlighten us particularly the new generation who are moving towards socialist and Marxist ideas. We are pleased to republish this article by Peter Taaffe written on the 90th anniversary of their deaths. We also saw, without a ‘by-your-leave’ to their leaders, a spontaneous revolutionary explosion in France in 1968 when 10 million workers occupied factories for a month. The opposite was the case in 1923 in Germany. Indeed, despite this, Luxemburg’s courage and fortitude shines through when one reads the speeches and criticisms that she made of the party leadership over years. Luxemburg made mistakes on the issue of the independence of Poland. To some extent, this later affected the leaders of the Communist Party (KPD) after her death. So starben Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg In der Nacht vom 15. auf den 16. In January, 1919, the two titans of the German Socialism, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, were murdered by the German reactionaries who hoped thereby to decapitate the rising revolutionary movement. Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. Among them were Stalin and Stalinists in the past. So is timing, as the opportunity for a successful social overturn can last for a short time. Liebknecht came from a political background in that his father was a leading socialist in Germany … Trotsky sums up her dilemma: “The most that can be said is that in her historical-philosophical evaluation of the labour movement, the preparatory selection of the vanguard, in comparison with the mass actions that were to be expected, fell too short with Rosa; whereas Lenin – without consoling himself with the miracles of future actions – took the advanced workers and constantly and tirelessly welded them together into firm nuclei, illegally or legally, in the mass organisations or underground, by means of a sharply defined programme.” However, Luxemburg did begin after the revolution of November 1918 her “ardent labour” of assembling such a cadre. Remembering protest singer Phil Ochs on his 80th birthday, Communists sweep local government elections in India’s Kerala state, Trump and coronavirus dealt major defeats on same day, 250 million Indian workers and farmers strike, breaking world record. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were true revolutionary heroes, and their ideas and legacy will be remembered down the ages. Both were imprisoned for their anti-war agitation. This meant that the prospects for socialism, specifically the socialist revolution, were relegated to the mists of time in their consciousness. Luxemburg was a real internationalist; a participant in the revolutionary movement in three countries. Rosa Luxemburg wurde am 5. Those who try and picture her as a critic of the Bolsheviks and the Russian revolution are entirely false. But if the German revolution had triumphed then history would not, in all probability, have known these figures or the horrors of fascism. Lenin organised for future battles, including the revolution. The German revolution of 1918-1924 also witnessed general strikes and partial attempts in this direction. The Socialist Party gets no financial support from big business. There is no doubt that Luxemburg’s sure political experience would have been a powerful factor in avoiding some of the mistakes – particularly ultra-left ones – which were subsequently made in the development of the German revolution. … When and where have there been brought to light differences between me, on the one hand, and Bebel and Kautsky on the other? Disgrace of over 4 million children in poverty. Originally a Pole, she was a founder of the Social Democratic party of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), in the Russian movement as a participant in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and a naturalised German and prominent member of the SPD. Together, they led the pursuit of a socialist future for a Germany transitioning from an imperial state to a republic post-WWI. Our party and campaigns rely entirely on donations from ordinary people. She contrasted the flair and energy from below in Russia, witnessed at first hand, to the weight the increasingly bureaucratic machine of the party and unions in Germany, which could prove to be a colossal obstacle to the working class taking power, she argued, in the event of a revolutionary eruption. Luxembourg, who fled as a Teenager because of their socialist activities from the Russian-occupied Poland, had a doctorate in Zurich, before 1898 moved to Berlin, where she is … She made mistakes: “Show me someone who never makes a mistake and I will show you a fool.” Yet here is a body of work of which, read even today almost 100 years later, is fresh and relevant – particularly when contrasted to the stale ideas of the tops of the ‘modern’ labour movement. As the war was coming to an end, they were freed from prison. On the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, Luxembourg she was a ‘conciliator’ in her approach, as was Trotsky (shown in his participation in the ‘August bloc’). Socialist Appeal, 18 January 1941 Eugene Varlin Karl Liebknecht: Revolutionist The “Democrats” Murdered Him – And Opened the Road to Hitler . But Lenin, while praising Luxemburg’s pamphlet, also comments that it “conjures up in our mind the picture of a lone man [he did not know Rosa was the author] who has no comrades in an illegal organisation accustomed to thinking out revolutionary slogans to their conclusion and systematically educating the masses in their spirit”. Many have attacked Rosa Luxemburg for her ‘false methods’, particularly her alleged lack of understanding of the need for a ‘revolutionary party’ and organisation. Only malicious enemies of the heroic traditions of the Bolshevik party circulated this material after her death in an attempt to divide Luxemburg from Lenin, Trotsky, the Bolsheviks and the great work of the Russian revolution. A Marxist Utopian between East and West: Karl Schmückle A Place for Polemic: Audacity, Implosion, and the Politics of Transition A Precarious Game: The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Videogame Industry Karl Liebknecht was subsequently imprisoned after … His ideas, his reactions, his attitudes, were formed out of the integration of his personal and his collective.” This represented both a strength and a weakness. Yet even with this stunning display of the power of the working class, it did not lead to a socialist overturn, precisely because of the absence of a mass party and leadership capable of mobilising the masses and establishing an alternative democratic workers’ state. Main Menu. People’s World traces its lineage to the Daily Worker newspaper, founded by communists, socialists, union members, and other activists in Chicago in 1924. Verhaftung am 15. The answer was Rosa Luxemburg, but she wasn’t given a chance to do so. She criticised the “clinging mists of parliamentary cretinism”, what would be called “electoralism” at the present time. Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. Here lie some of the differences between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. There was also the tumultuous history of the Marxist and workers’ movement in Russia, conditioned by the experience of the struggle against Narodya Volya (People’s Will), the ideas of terrorism, the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, the split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, the first world war, etc. Militant established perhaps the most powerful position for Trotskyists, in Western Europe at least, probably since the development of the international Left Opposition. But this was combined with the smothering of this very power, an underestimation by the SPD leaders, indeed a growing hostility to the revolutionary possibilities which would inevitability break out at some future date. With the collapse of the German government in October 1918 Liebknecht was granted political amnesty by Max von Baden. However, the role of what Marxists describe as the ‘subjective factor’, a mass party, far-sighted leadership, etc, is crucial in transforming a revolutionary situation into a successful revolution. IT IS ONLY appropriate, of course, that Klaus Gietinger’s The Murder of A general strike, on a much bigger scale, took place in Russia, in October 1905, on which Rosa Luxemburg comments. His famous aphorism, “The movement is everything, the final goal nothing,” represented an attempt to reconcile the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with what was an expanding capitalism at that stage. [3] Rosa Luxemburg correctly emphasised that a revolution could not be made artificially, outside of a maturing of the objective circumstances that allowed this possibility. In this period, there were instances where governments took fright at the general strike at its very outset, without provoking the masses to open class conflict, and made concessions. In 1915, they broke from the SPD and co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League (Spartakusbund). Indeed, her whole life within the SPD was bent towards rescuing the revolutionary kernel within this organisation from reformism and centrism. On this important anniversary, it is vital to look at Luxemburg’s inspirational, revolutionary legacy. Bertolt Brecht’s poetic memorial Epitaph upon her death was included in Kurt Weill’s 1928 composition The Berlin Requiem: “Red Rosa now has vanished too…. Zwischen 1905 und 1910 verbreiterte sich die Kluf… This was, in the words of Ruth Fischer, a future leader of the Communist Party of Germany, a “way of life… The individual worker lived in his party, the party penetrated into the workers’ everyday habits. Luxemburg and Liebknecht had previously founded and led the Spartacist League – a Marxist revolutionary movement established toward the end of WWI which would lay the roots of the establishment of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) on January 1, 1919. If the Social Democratic-ordained murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg were not tragedy enough, the lessons learned were poorly applied. It was not until the mid-1930s, after fascism had come to power, that communists belatedly realized their mistake and formed the United Front strategy, which they have generally followed ever since. While the Spd did Beat down the Spartakus Revolution lead by Luxemburg and Liebknecht, they did Not deploy the Freikorps. The situation following the First World War – a period of revolution and counter-revolution – was entirely different to this, with the general strike posing more sharply the question of power. Prominent figures from the country's left paid tribute to the founders of the German Communist Party and other socialist heroes.

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