Luxemburg spent much of World War I in prison, meanwhile writing her 'Spartakusbriefe' and 'Die Russisce Revolution', where she welcomed the October Revolution as a precursor of world revolution. 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. She wrote that it was necessary “to act on progressives and possibly even liberals, than to act with them”. This split was neither prepared nor desired by these ‘oppositionists’. In 1915, they broke from the SPD and co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League (Spartakusbund). This, unfortunately, includes the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which can be construed as connected to Stalinism. Luxemburg was well aware of the imminent danger. Under the pressure of the strike, the Tsarist regime made constitutional ‘concessions’ in 1905. Januar 1919 in Berlin) war ein prominenter Marxist und Antimilitarist zu Zeiten des Deutschen Kaiserreiches. Take control of the means of news production. 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. Luxemburg hatte am 7. Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht 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. 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. Among them were Stalin and Stalinists in the past. Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were true revolutionary heroes, and their ideas and legacy will be remembered down the ages. 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. 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. Januar 1919 in Berlin) war ein prominenter Marxist und Antimilitarist zu Zeiten des Deutschen Kaiserreiches.Seit 1900 Mitglied der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands, war er von 1912 bis 1916 einer ihrer Abgeordneten im Reichstag, wo er den linksrevolutionären Flügel der SPD vertrat. Court rejects Trump’s drilling proposal in major victory for polar bears ... McConnell’s virus lawsuit ban far worse than advertised. Wilhelm Canaris, the naval officer who assisted the escape of one of Rosa’s murderers, 20 years later was to command the Abwehr, German military intelligence, under the Nazis. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were both murdered by soldiers after the Spartacist uprising was crushed in 1919. 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. 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. On this important anniversary, it is vital to look at Luxemburg’s inspirational, revolutionary legacy. She was critical of Lenin’s attempt to create in Russia a democratic party but one that was ‘centralised’. Rosa Luxemburg and Jogiches could not be faulted for seeking to organise within the social democracy for as long as possible and, for that matter, the USPD later. Rosa Luxemburg wurde am 5. Luxemburg was a real internationalist; a participant in the revolutionary movement in three countries. 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. The Kapp putsch in March 1920, when the director of agriculture of Prussia, who represented the Junkers and highly-placed imperial civil servants, took power with the support of the generals, was met with one of the most complete general strikes in history. 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’. A period of dual power was initiated and the capitalists were compelled to give important concessions to the masses such as the eight-hour day. 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. Today marks the passing of 100 years since the murders of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919). Verhaftung am 15. This does not have to take the form necessarily, on all occasions, of a separate ‘party’. Their murders, carried out by the soldier Otto Runge, were decisive in the defeat of the German revolution but were also indissolubly linked to the victory of Hitler and the Nazis 14 years later. 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. 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. This week marks the centennial of the Jan. 15, 1919, murders of German communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The answer was Rosa Luxemburg, but she wasn’t given a chance to do so. We do not have a fetish about the general strike. / May she rest in peace.”. But a firmly-organised nucleus is essential in preparing for the future. The leaders of the SPD, along with the trade union leaders, had become accustomed to compromise and negotiations within the framework of rising capitalism. As the war was coming to an end, they were freed from prison. But the social-democratic leaders like Gustav Noske and Philipp Scheidemann conspired with the capitalists and the reactionary scum in the Freikorps (predecessors of the fascists) to take their revenge. 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. 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. Liebknecht, the son of one of the SPD’s central founders, had a prominent position as a left and anti-militarist before 1914. ( Log Out /  2017 – The 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, No the capitalist EU – Yes to a Socialist Europe, Don’t give taxpayers’ money to UKIP and Tory EU campaigners, An Introduction to Dialectical Materialism, Eight billionaires own as much wealth as half the planet – the real face of capitalism, Discussing Biden Win With American Socialists, #EndSARSCov Solidarity Protest In Coventry, Solidarity with NUJ Strike at Bullivant Media. 3, 18 January 1941, p.3. On January 15, 1919, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Wilhelm Pieck; the leaders of the German Communist Party, were arrested and taken in for questioning at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin. Im Januar demonstrieren jedes Jahr in Berlin 20.000 Menschen zum Todestag von Rosa Luxemburg und Karl Liebknecht. … The complete unanimity of international revolutionary Social Democracy on all major questions of programme and tactics is a most incontrovertible fact.”. angetreten war, das Proletariat auf Grundlage eines Marxistischen Programms zu organisieren und eine sozialistische Gesellschaft gegen die Interessen der Großgrundbesitzer und Kapit… Therefore, at a crucial time, a definite timeframe, a correct leadership, can help the working class to take power. In this sense, she was more farsighted even than Lenin, who passionately absorbed in Russian affairs and who saw the SPD as the ‘model’ for all the parties of the Second International, and its leaders, such as Kautsky, as teachers. 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. The SWP’s German organisation (Linksruck, now Marx 21) pursues a similar policy within Die Linke (the Left party) today as the left boot of the party and consequently will not gain substantially. However, her revulsion at the ossified character of the SPD and its ‘centralism’ meant that she did, on occasion, ‘bend the stick too far’ the other way. There were at least 15,000 full-time officials under the sway of the SPD in the trade unions. Today marks the passing of 100 years since the murders of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919). This meant that the prospects for socialism, specifically the socialist revolution, were relegated to the mists of time in their consciousness. Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (1919) W E HAVE suffered two heavy losses at once which merge into one enormous bereavement. “It is probable that Gustav Noske had a hand in the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht,” she told the party faithful in November at an event to discuss the 1919 revolt. Karl Liebknecht was born in August 1871 and died in January 1919. Friedrich Ebert’s majority Social Democratic government crushed the revolt and the Spartacus League by sending in the Freikorps, a government-sponsored paramilitary group consisting mostly of now out-of-work World War I veterans. But nevertheless, right from the first days of war Rosa Luxemburg with some political friends like Clara Zetkin, Franz Mehring and Wilhelm Pieck, joined soon by the member of parliament Karl Liebknecht, tried to regain the party for the old principles of the SPD. Die SPD war eine sozialistische Arbeiterpartei, die im 19. Connected to Rosa Luxemburg’s emphasis on ‘spontaneity’ was the issue of the general strike. 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. Such stages are reached in all revolutions when the working class sees its gains snatched back by the capitalists and comes out onto the streets; the Russian workers in the July Days of 1917 and the May Days in Catalonia in 1937 during the Spanish revolution. 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. She became involved in underground activities while still in high school.Like many of her radical contemporaries from the Russian Empire who were … Luxemburg was shot and her body thrown in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. A Socialist and a vocal critic of the German Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) war policies, co-founder of the anti-war Spartacus League in 1916 and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1918, Rosa Luxemburg supported the German Revolution of 1918. Wenige Tage nach der blutigen Niederschlagung des Januaraufstands verhafteten am 15. Numerous monuments to Luxemburg and Liebknecht have been erected, also streets, schools and public institutions named for them. She hailed the work of Lenin and Trotsky. Together, they led the pursuit of a socialist future for a Germany transitioning from an imperial state to a republic post-WWI. Karl Liebknecht. 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 Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were true revolutionary heroes, and their ideas and legacy will be remembered down the ages. THOUSANDS from across the world will gather in Berlin this weekend to mark the 100th anniversary of the murder of revolutionaries Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. 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. In Lenin’s work of that period and for a number of years following, one does not find a trace of criticism in principle directed against the Bebel-Kautsky tendency.” Indeed, Lenin thought that Luxemburg’s increasing criticisms of Kautsky and the SPD leadership were somewhat exaggerated. She continued with possibly the most famous of her quotes: “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.”. This proved not to be so, unfortunately, because the initiatives from below by the working class, and the opportunities they generated, were squandered. Basing herself on the mass strikes of the Russian revolution, she nevertheless adopted a certain passive and fatalistic approach on this issue. Carnations are placed in front of a memorial stone with names of socialists at a cemetery in Berlin, Jan. 13, 2019. If the opportunity is lost, it may not recur for a long time, and the working class can suffer a defeat. If the Social Democratic-ordained murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg were not tragedy enough, the lessons learned were poorly applied. Given the isolation of Berlin from the rest of the country at that stage, a setback or a defeat was inevitable. This was seen in the revolutionary events of 1936 in Spain. Karl Liebknecht studied law and political economy in Leipzig. Even Lenin, while proposing a split from the Second International and the formation of the Third International, following the August 1914 debacle, was even prepared to amend his position if events did not work out as he envisaged. Liebknecht was killed in the Spartacus Revolt of January But this became all the greater for the working class with the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The organisational conclusion from this was of a tactical rather than a principled character. Moreover, she herself built up a very ‘rigid, independent organisation’, that is a party, with her co-worker Leo Jogiches in Poland. 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. A second revolutionary wave, called the Spartacist uprising, swept Berlin that month. Emotion Coaching; Free Resources; Blog; Contact 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. Home; About; Services Menu Toggle. Indeed, many revolutions have been made in the teeth of opposition and even sabotage of the leaders of the workers’ own organisations. 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. 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. She criticised the “clinging mists of parliamentary cretinism”, what would be called “electoralism” at the present time. Margarethe von Trotha’s outstanding 1986 film ‘Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg’ is available online with English subtitles. 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. Karl Liebknecht is correctly bracketed with Luxemburg as the heroic mass figure who stood out against the German war machine and symbolised to the troops in the blood-soaked trenches, not just Germans but French and others, as an indefatigable, working-class, internationalist opponent of the First World War. 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. 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. Here it is: http://archive.org/details/RosaLuxemburg. Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg, die beiden Köpfe der KPD, hingegen entzogen sich der Festnahme zunächst. Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (* 13. But if the German revolution had triumphed then history would not, in all probability, have known these figures or the horrors of fascism. ( Log Out /  Our party and campaigns rely entirely on donations from ordinary people. It was this aspect that Lenin subjected to criticism in his comments on Rosa Luxemburg’s’ Junius’ pamphlet, published in 1915. 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. Main Menu. 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. We are pleased to republish this article by Peter Taaffe written on the 90th anniversary of their deaths. Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. 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. 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. General Wilhelm Groener, who led the German army, admitted later on: “The officer corps could only cooperate with a government which undertook the struggle against Bolshevism … Ebert [the social-democrat leader] had made his mind up on this … We made an alliance against Bolshevism … There existed no other party which had enough influence upon the masses to enable the re-establishment of a governmental power with the help of the army.” Gradually, concessions to the workers were undermined and a vitriolic campaign against the ‘Bolshevik terror’, chaos, the Jews, and particularly, “bloody Rosa” was unleashed. Karl Liebknecht, German Social Democrat, who, with Rosa Luxemburg and other radicals, founded the Spartakusbund (Spartacus League), a Berlin underground group that became the Communist Party of Germany, dedicated to a socialist revolution. ( Log Out /  Such was the role of the Bolsheviks in the 1917 Russian revolution. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Many have attacked Rosa Luxemburg for her ‘false methods’, particularly her alleged lack of understanding of the need for a ‘revolutionary party’ and organisation. On January 15, 1919, the revolutionary leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered in cold blood by a gang of right-wing army officers. The Times (London) declared that “capitalism is dead in Portugal”. Rosa Luxemburg war die bedeutendste unter den Sozialisten, die in der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung wirkten. Doch beide blieben bei ihrer aufrührerischen Propaganda. At the same time, I could not even admit the idea that the Social Democracy would simply cower on its belly before a nationalist militarism.”. This was a summing up of the first Russian revolution from which Luxemburg drew both political and organisational conclusions. The German revolution of 1918-1924 also witnessed general strikes and partial attempts in this direction. 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. At the time of the October revolution, in 1917, there was again no talk of a general strike. The Freikorps were Troops of the Reichswehr that refused to give Up their Arms after the War and they were responsible for some Attempts of a Coup Like the Kapp-Lüttwitz coup, which tried to take the goverment over from the Spd. 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. His famous call – “The main enemy is at home” – caught the mood, particularly as the mountain of corpses rose during the war. With the initial exception of Liebknecht and later Otto Rühle, they were the only two out of 110 SPD deputies who voted against. A political ‘split’ was undoubtedly required, both from the right and ‘left’ SPD. If you really wanna know how fucked up parts of the 1919 SPD were just read the Wiki articel of … 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. Spartacist leaders and KPD pioneers, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. After their deaths, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht became martyrs for Marxists. So starben Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg In der Nacht vom 15. auf den 16. 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. That lasted right up to the German social democrats’ infamous vote in favour of war credits on 4 August 1914. His continuing opposition, and that of Rosa, who also insisted that working people should never massacre each other, meant imprisonment for both till they were freed by the revolution. Like the labour and trade union leaders to day – although he was originally a Marxist, indeed a friend of the co-founder of scientific socialism, Friedrich Engels – Bernstein under the pressure of the boom of the late 1890s and first part of the 20th century, attempted to ‘revise’ the ideas of Marxism, which would in effect have nullified them. 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. 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.

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