Unfortunately, the muddled centrist lefts, whose party grew enormously as the social-democratic leaders lost support, let slip the opportunity to create an all-Germany council movement. The murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht Workers Power - Monday, June 09, 2014 95 years ago, on the night of January 15 1919, two great socialist revolutionaries died. This, unfortunately, includes the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which can be construed as connected to Stalinism. Court rejects Trump’s drilling proposal in major victory for polar bears ... McConnell’s virus lawsuit ban far worse than advertised. Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg, die beiden Köpfe der KPD, hingegen entzogen sich der Festnahme zunächst. Main Menu. So is timing, as the opportunity for a successful social overturn can last for a short time. 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. | Markus Schreiber / AP This week marks the anniversary of the Jan. … Home; About; Services Menu Toggle. 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 … On this day (15th Jan) in 1919 the two main leaders of the revolutionary movement in Germany, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, were murdered. Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. | Markus Schreiber / AP. It was this aspect that Lenin subjected to criticism in his comments on Rosa Luxemburg’s’ Junius’ pamphlet, published in 1915. 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. Such was the approach of Militant, now the Socialist Party, when it worked successfully within the Labour Party, in the 1980s, in Britain. Liebknecht was killed in the Spartacus Revolt of January While the Spd did Beat down the Spartakus Revolution lead by Luxemburg and Liebknecht, they did Not deploy the Freikorps. We honour Karl and Rosa, like all of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in trying to get rid of this capitalist system which offers us nothing but war, poverty and destruction. Lenin recognised that there would be opportunist trends within mass parties of the working class but he compared the Mensheviks in Russia not with Kautskyism but with the right-wing revisionism of Bernstein. People’s World is a voice for progressive change and socialism in the United States. 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. Their Spartacus League published The Red Flag (Die Rote Fahne) newspaper, demanding amnesty for all political prisoners and the abolition of capital punishment. These examples show that the spontaneous movement of the working class is not sufficient in itself to guarantee victory in a brutal struggle against capitalism. Both were imprisoned for their anti-war agitation. Following the 1917 Russian revolution, Rosa Luxemburg did come close to Bolshevism subsequently and became part of its international trend, as did Trotsky. (Image: Permission given by Alexander Fiebrandt, grandchild of the photographer Herbert Fiebrandt/Public domain) Rosa Luxemburg war die bedeutendste unter den Sozialisten, die in der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung wirkten. Title: Memorial to Rosa Luxemburg and and Karl Liebknecht Author: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Location: Berlin, Germany Year complete: 1926, destroyed 1933 In 1926, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was commissioned by communist art historian and collector Eduard Fuchs to build a monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two Marxist revolutionaries murdered by right-wing … In her writings, Luxemburg leveled pointed critiques not only at moderate socialism but also at the new Leninist revolutionary model in Bolshevik Russia. Rosa Luxemburg confronted an entirely different situation, as a minority, and somewhat isolated in a ‘legal’ mass party with all the attributes described above. Change ). 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 A second revolutionary wave, called the Spartacist uprising, swept Berlin that month. The SPD particularly feared the impact of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. 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. Therefore, at a crucial time, a definite timeframe, a correct leadership, can help the working class to take power. This was reinforced by the growth in the weight of the SPD within German society. Her book written in prison in 1918 – in which she criticised the Bolshevik regime – was a product of isolation, which she was persuaded not to publish and did not pursue later when released from prison. Liebknecht achieved fame immediately after the war by leading, with Rosa Luxemburg, the Spartacists in the so-called German Revolution against the government of Friedrich Ebert. / She told the poor what life is about, / And so the rich have rubbed her out. Given the isolation of Berlin from the rest of the country at that stage, a setback or a defeat was inevitable. Basing herself on the mass strikes of the Russian revolution, she nevertheless adopted a certain passive and fatalistic approach on this issue. STOP the ‘Going to Work Tax’ on NHS workers! On January 15, 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and her co-leader Karl Liebknecht are killed in Berlin by soldiers who were suppressing the uprising, and their bodies were thrown into a canal. Moreover, she herself built up a very ‘rigid, independent organisation’, that is a party, with her co-worker Leo Jogiches in Poland. This ignited a social revolution which swept through Catalonia and Aragon to the gates of Madrid, with four fifths of Spain initially in the hands of the working class. Moreover, hindsight is wonderful when dealing with real historical problems. The murders unleash a wave of violent protests throughout the country which lasted until May 1919, and whose repression by the military resulted in several thousand deaths. 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. A general strike, on a much bigger scale, took place in Russia, in October 1905, on which Rosa Luxemburg comments. But Rosa Luxemburg, on this anniversary, deserves special attention because of the colossal contribution she made to the understanding of Marxist ideas, theory and their application to the real movement of the working class. She even lacerated August Bebel, the ‘centrist’ party leader who increasingly “could only hear with his right ear”. 3, 18 January 1941, p.3. Emotion Coaching; Free Resources; Blog; Contact 90th anniversary of murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. This proved not to be so, unfortunately, because the initiatives from below by the working class, and the opportunities they generated, were squandered. 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. 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 today’s era, a general strike, ‘generally’, is an ‘either-or’ issue where an alternative workers’ government is implicit in the situation. Die SPD war eine sozialistische Arbeiterpartei, die im 19. Become a People's World sustainer today. For most of the 1920s, during the Comintern period, communist ire was understandably directed at the ruling Social Democrats of the Weimar Republic, whom they named “social fascists,” yet communists ignored or downplayed the threat posed by the gathering Nazi fascist movement. 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. It provides news and analysis of, by, and for the labor and democratic movements to our readers across the country and around the world. Das heutige Polen wurde damals vom russischen Zaren beherrscht. The opposite was the case in 1923 in Germany. Sie bekämpften Krieg und Kapitalismus und kämpften für Vergesellschaftung und ein Rätesystem. Our party and campaigns rely entirely on donations from ordinary people. They have invariably been indistinguishable politically from the reformist or centrist leaders. 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. Von Anfang an war Proletariat der revolutionären Bewegung in Russland voraus. Die … Significant labor actions and uprisings took place in several German cities and states, where temporary “Soviet republics” were established, but the last of them, in Bavaria, was put down in early May 1919. The issue of the general strike is of exceptional importance for Marxists. Rosa did this, characterising the social democracy as a “rotten corpse”. It developed because of the indignation and revolt of the working class at the SPD’s executive throttling within the party of all objections and resistance to their policy on the war. Rosa Luxemburg was an important figure in all the congresses of the Second International and generally carried the votes of the Polish Social Democratic party in exile. From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 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. Rosa Luxemburg, as had Lenin and Trotsky, not only refuted Bernstein’s ideas but in an incisive analysis adds to our understanding of capitalism then, and to some extent today, the relationship between reform and revolution (which should not be counterposed to each other from a Marxist point of view) and many other issues. Lenin – extremely modest on a personal level – was quite aware of his own vital political role and took steps, by going into hiding in Finland, to avoid falling into the hands of the counter-revolution. 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. Moreover, Luxemburg was amongst the very few who recognised the ideological atrophy of German social democracy prior to the First World War. 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. This itself is an indication of the speed of events that developed in Germany at this stage. The issue of leadership and the need for a party is central to an estimation of Rosa Luxemburg’s life and work. On the railways, in the factories and offices, the workers assisted the uprising to overthrow capitalism and establish a democratic workers’ state. Nay, more; not merely are we today in a position to perform this task, nor merely is its performance a duty toward the proletariat, but our solution offers the only means of saving human society from destruction.”. Socialists and communists commemorate them yearly on the second Sunday of January at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin, where they are buried. Together with Karl Liebknecht, Luxem-burg published Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), campaigned for social revolution, and, at the turn of 1918/1919, became one of the founding members of the KPD. This putsch lasted for a grand total of 100 hours! 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. After having participated for some months in the First Russian Revolution of 1905/06 she published her important essay “Mass Strikes, Political Party and Trade Unions”. 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. 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. In fact, in his famous work, ‘Two Tactics of Russian Social Democracy” of 1905, Lenin wrote: “When and where did I ever call the revolutionism of Bebel and Kautsky ‘opportunism’? Bodies like the Anti-Bolshevik League organised its own intelligence service and set up, in its founder’s words, an “active anti-communist counter-espionage organisation”. The freikorps were in alliance with the goverment and deployed by Gustav Noske (SPD) during the spartacus uprising which led to the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. 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. In fact, the erstwhile followers of Luxemburg in the newly-formed Communist Party made ultra-left mistakes in not initially supporting and strengthening the mass actions against Kapp. 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. Similarly, in Portugal, in 1974, a revolution not only swept away the Caetano dictatorship but meant that, in its first period, an absolute majority of votes to those standing in elections under a socialist or communist banner. Like France in 1968, the government “could not get a single poster printed” as the working class paralysed the government and the state. Those who try and picture her as a critic of the Bolsheviks and the Russian revolution are entirely false. In Chile in 1973, on the other hand, where the working class listened to their leadership and remained in the factories as Pinochet announced his coup, the most militant workers were systematically rounded up and slaughtered. August 1871 in Leipzig; † 15. … The complete unanimity of international revolutionary Social Democracy on all major questions of programme and tactics is a most incontrovertible fact.”. The same idea is expressed in our call for a socialist, planned economy, organised on the basis of workers’ democracy. 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’). In the convulsive events of 1923 in particular, Rosa Luxemburg with her keen instinct for the mass movement and ability to change with circumstances, would probably not have made the mistake made by Heinrich Brandler and the leadership of the KPD, when they let slip what was one of the most favourable opportunities in history to make a working-class revolution and change the course of world history. This was the situation following the Belgian general strike in 1893, called by the Belgian Labour Party with 300,000 workers participating, including left-wing Catholic groups. On the contrary, the railway workers continued to work so that could transport the opponents of Kornilov and derail his forces. 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. Emotion Coaching; Free Resources; Blog; Contact A strength because the increasing power of the working class was reflected in the SPD and the unions. Although she was a naturalised German citizen, Luxemburg was considered an ‘outsider’, particularly when she came into conflict with the SPD leadership. 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. Karl Liebknecht was in 1914 the only Social Democrat to reject the war, or spending one mark for it. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were killed in the middle of the Spartacist uprising, a series of strikes and demonstrations that began on 4 January 1919, when the Independent Socialist Emil Eichhorn was dismissed as Police Chief of Berlin. People’s World traces its lineage to the Daily Worker newspaper, founded by communists, socialists, union members, and other activists in Chicago in 1924. This led in 1975 to the expropriation of the majority of industry. He earned his doctorate at the University of Würzburg in 1897 and moved to Berlin in 1899, where he opened a lawyer's office with his brother, Theodor Liebknecht. If you really wanna know how fucked up parts of the 1919 SPD were just read the Wiki articel of … ( Log Out /  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. She was also wrong on the difference between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks (even in July 1914 supporting the opportunists who stood for the ‘unity’ between them) and, as Lenin pointed out, also on the economic ‘theory of accumulation’. Luxemburg was well aware of the imminent danger. The German revolution of 1918-1924 also witnessed general strikes and partial attempts in this direction. Liebknecht achieved fame immediately after the war by leading, with Rosa Luxemburg, the Spartacists in the so-called German Revolution against the government of Friedrich Ebert. But if the German revolution had triumphed then history would not, in all probability, have known these figures or the horrors of fascism. This does not have to take the form necessarily, on all occasions, of a separate ‘party’. 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. Rosa Luxemburg increasingly came into collision with the SPD machine, whose stultifying conservative effect she contrasted to the social explosions in the first Russian revolution of 1905-07. Indeed Lenin, as soon as he was convinced of the betrayal of social democracy – including the ‘renegade Kautsky’ – called for an immediate split, accompanying this with a call for a new, Third International. Karl Liebknecht. Luxemburg and Liebknecht are in the pantheon of the Marxists greats. The discontent of the masses was reflected in the January 1919 uprising. Not only that the structure was never built, but also that it was never built in Berlin, confronts us with a double absence of which we are reminded on the centenary of the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht; the radical promises of a communism beyond what the USSR became and the as-of-yet-unsuccessful 1918/1919 German revolutionary movement. For instance, her pamphlet ‘Reform and Revolution’ is not just a simple exposition of the general ideas of Marxism counterposed to reformist, incremental changes to effect socialist change. Trotsky pointed out: “Lenin considered Kautsky as his teacher and stressed this everywhere he could. This week marks the centennial of the Jan. 15, 1919, murders of German communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. This was because there was no coherent and sufficiently influential mass party and leadership capable of drawing all the threads together and establishing a democratic workers’ state. 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. [3] 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. Communists will lead a march to the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery in the east of the city and … Doch beide blieben bei ihrer aufrührerischen Propaganda. Here it is: http://archive.org/details/RosaLuxemburg. And in anticipation of when the army of the German proletariat will close its ranks under the banner of Karl and Rosa, each of us will consider it his duty to draw to the attention of our Red Army, who Liebknecht and Luxemburg were, what they died for and why their memory must remain sacred for every Red soldier and for every worker and peasant. Lenin’s approach was vindicated in the Russian revolution, with the Mensheviks ending up on the other side of the barricades. Together with other Spartacists Liebknecht campaigned openly for revolution, forming the German Communist Party at the end of December 1918. Disgrace of over 4 million children in poverty. 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”. Margarethe von Trotha’s outstanding 1986 film ‘Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg’ is available online with English subtitles. The young German Communist Party was by a treacherous murder of their best leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg – deprived of their leadership. Während sich die russische Bewegung noch auf Terroranschläge beschränkte, organisierte Proletariat schon Tausende Arbeiter und führte sie in der ersten polnischen Massenbewegung gegen den russischen Absolutismus zum Streik. Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. Luxemburg was a real internationalist; a participant in the revolutionary movement in three countries. 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. She hailed the work of Lenin and Trotsky. But a firmly-organised nucleus is essential in preparing for the future. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were true revolutionary heroes, and their ideas and legacy will be remembered down the ages. To some extent, this later affected the leaders of the Communist Party (KPD) after her death. 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. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were killed Jan. 15, 1919, by right-wing militiamen. Rosa Luxemburg, as a top leader and theoretician of Marxism, could have played a crucial, not to say decisive, role in subsequent events up to 1923 and the victory of the revolution if she had not been cruelly cut down. Karl Liebknecht Karl Liebknecht was born in August 1871 and died in January 1919. This would have removed the two leaders whose ideas and political guidance led to the success of the October revolution. The answer was Rosa Luxemburg, but she wasn’t given a chance to do so. Verhaftung am 15. 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. Many have attacked Rosa Luxemburg for her ‘false methods’, particularly her alleged lack of understanding of the need for a ‘revolutionary party’ and organisation. The real weakness of Luxemburg and Jogiches was not that they refused to split but that in the entire preceding historical period they were not organised as a clearly-defined trend in social democracy preparing for the revolutionary outbursts upon which the whole of Rosa Luxemburg’s work for more than 10 years was based. Karl Liebknecht was born in August 1871 and died in January 1919. The Bolsheviks enjoyed mass support and under those conditions calling a general strike would have weakened them and not the capitalist enemy. Facts about Rosa Luxemburg 2: Spartakusbund. From December 29-31, 1918, they took part in a joint congress of the Spartacus League, independent socialists, and the International Communists of Germany (IKD), that led to the foundation on January 1, 1919, of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) under their leadership. Lenin systematically trained and organised the best workers in Russia in implacable opposition to capitalism and its shadows in the labour movement. Socialist Appeal, 18 January 1941 Eugene Varlin Karl Liebknecht: Revolutionist The “Democrats” Murdered Him – And Opened the Road to Hitler . Wenige Tage nach der blutigen Niederschlagung des Januaraufstands verhafteten am 15. In 1915, they broke from the SPD and co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League (Spartakusbund). But also in the words of Lenin, “In spite of her mistakes she was – and remains for us – an eagle”. Yet the two martyrdoms to Social Democratic reaction—even if the uprising was adventurist and bound to fail—guaranteed them both a hallowed place in the communist pantheon, certainly in the socialist German Democratic Republic (1949-1990), but especially among Marxists.