rosa luxemburg, karl liebknecht
At a moment when things are particularly difficult, when our Red Army soldiers, somewhere around Archangelsk or in some other distant front in the cold, poorly dressed and shoed, have to lie side-by-side and return fire from imperialist bands; or when our women workers have to return to hungry children with an eighth of a pound of bread or have to overcome these or other new adversities––at that difficult moment we will remember Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. What will be the tasks of worker-revolutionaries when the criminal hand of the bourgeoisie leads Europe to that imperialist war? And right at that moment one thoughtful shout from a soldier resounded: "Are there not, after all, people who are fighting against this hell, even individuals who come out on their own in the course of world history and proclaim "down with the war"[?] Publisher: Communist Party of Great Britain Many considered him a great prophet who would open a new era in the history of humanity. They knew this perfectly well. Karl Liebknecht enjoyed the same trust and popularity in recent years in France. Died during the war. On this occasion, the call was not about their shared politics – … Berlin workers do not lag behind Petrograd or Moscow workers, and now they are the focus of the proletarian struggle for the entire universe. The German proletariat was portrayed as a collection of bandits. ", And thus say workers of the entire world now. At the beginning of the war, in 1915, everything German was cursed in France. “Liebknecht shot whilst attempting to escape.” They write further, “Rosa Luxemburg lynched by an infuriated crowd.”. The murderers are at work, Their enemies are in their power. These gentlemen quickly dressed themselves up as proponents of Soviet power, seized the driving reins, and to get to power German workers will have to step over the corpse of so-called Social Democracy. Rosa Luxemburg, with characteristic clarity, sketched the situation in Germany in a few words in her final speech. In other words, they said then: the task will be to turn the imperialist war into a civil war––into a war of workers, peasants, and soldiers against the bourgeoisie, against the authors of the war! Every Petersburg worker who has been in the ranks of the revolution for several years knows that once, when no one had the nerve to criticize German Social Democracy, when it seemed exemplary in all respects, Rosa Luxemburg already loudly proclaimed that the party was rotting at its roots. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were hated by them for bravely, brightly, and ably defending all that was best in the Russian proletariat; they were dedicated to the Russian revolution and wanted to follow in its footsteps. He did not personally participate in the Zimmerwald conference because he had been conscripted; he was sent to the front in the calculation that a stray bullet would remove that dangerous enemy of the bourgeoisie. Rosa Luxemburg is in their power. K. Liebknecht first of all thought of us, of the Russian revolution, and headed directly to his goal, to the building of the Russian embassy, where our comrades were still at that time, bared his head before the building and said that he sends "brotherly greetings to the first government of the calloused hand.". Rosa Luxemburg sounded the revolutionary alarm, she demanded honesty and loyalty to the banner of the International. When the "independents," together with the official SDs, joined the "Council of People's Plenipotentiaries" (a provisional revolutionary government) in November 1918, the Spartacists broke with them and, in December 1918, formed the German Communist party. Comrades, we dissolved the constituent assembly exactly 12 months ago. These words of hers at that time seemed enormously brazen: German Social Democracy was at the height of its glory. With that there should be no doubt that the blood of Liebknecht and Luxemburg will quicken the ripening of world socialist revolution! Liebknecht sent us a letter at the Zimmerwald conference which ended with famous words in response to the slogan that Schiedemann and his fraternity had issued at the start of the war: "Civil peace, reconciliation between classes, between wolves and sheep, between the bourgeoisie and the working class, between the butcher-monarchs and the soldiers and peasants." If they were victorious tomorrow––it would not mean that the workers of Berlin would receive two pounds of bread apiece and that there would be foodstuffs in Berlin and that rivers of milk with banks of jelly would flow there. Grigorij Zinov’ev . And he succeeded in breaking the ice. Another larger group – the USPD or independent Socialists – also broke away adopting a halfway position between the revolutionary Spartacists and the ‘moderates’. Can you really doubt that the Parisian working men and women, who have such exalted revolutionary traditions––people who, in 1915 with reverence spoke the name of Karl Liebknecht––can you doubt at all that they, like us, are overflowing with determination to struggle to the end and that they also clench their fists and say, "We will avenge the sacred blood of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg! The best in humanity is following our path, seeing the inevitability and rightness of that path. Their killings came after the crushing of the January Uprising in Berlin, and enjoyed the tacit approval of leading members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had taken power only […] Karl Liebknecht als Nicolaitaner und Studiosus. Bebel himself, knowing Liebknecht since childhood and loving him as a son, attacked him harshly for such, in his view, an "adventurist" proposal. They knew that one of the most dangerous enemies of the bourgeoisie, we can say without exaggeration, was and remained Rosa Luxemburg. Karl Liebknecht y Rosa Luxemburg habían fundado en el año 1917, en plena guerra mundial, la singular "Liga Espartaquista", "Spartakusbund". The automobile drives away into the night with Liebknecht, but not in the direction of Moabit, but into the Tiergarten (a large well-wooded park in the centre of Berlin). ON Wednesday, January 15th, 1919 Karl Libeknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered. The hatred of these leaders of the German proletariat is now obvious! Liebknecht was in poor standing with the leaders of the Second International even before the start of the war, but with the start of the war he landed among the unquestionably suspicious. What do you mean, go to the soldiers to preach socialism! Not a month passed before the German proletariat declared, "Only over our dead bodies will you come to a constituent assembly." And right at that moment one thoughtful shout from a soldier resounded: "Are there not, after all, people who are fighting against this hell, even individuals who come out on their own in the course of world history and proclaim "down with the war"[?]. “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. Items in brackets are the translator's insertions for clarity or, in the case of note 6, correction of Friedrich Ebert's name (identified as "Fritz" in the original). [8] The Spartacists, i.e. Who now, after the death of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, will think of their own personal life? . „Die großen Revolutionäre wurden zu Lebzeiten von den unterdrückenden Klassen ständig verfolgt, die ihrer Lehre mit wildestem Ingrimm und wütendstem Hass begegneten, mit zügellosen Lügen und Verleumdungen gegen sie zu Felde zogen. These peasants, these workers and soldiers will honor forever the names of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Rosa Luxemburg und Karl Liebknecht: Revolutionär-kommunistische Vorbilder für das 21. [3] The Jena congress of Social Democrats in 1905. Read her speech to the congress of Spartacists,[8] given on 31 December, 1918. 16, Osnovopolozhniki i vozhdi kommunizma; biograficheskie ocherki, Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1924, 198–212), Her brilliant books and articles on the mass strike, her speeches in Jena. And the imperialist officers of the German Republic rub their hands, Captain Pflungk-Hartung, Lieutenants Stiege, Liepmann, von Rietgen, Schulze and Heinz Pflungk-Hartung rub their hands. This week marks the anniversary of the Jan. 15, 1919, murders of German communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Ober-Lieutenant Vogel puts his pistol to her head, and blows her brains out with a bullet. During the war became an ardent chauvinist and in 1918 played a leading role in the counterrevolutionary movement in the Baltics. You remember the recent dialogue between French and German generals. Then he is struck down, a shot and somewhere in the night the wood groans. They feared that Social Democracy would lose its legal standing that way, that the bourgeoisie would be offended, that the bourgeoisie and the rulling classes would decide that German Social Democracy had ceased to side with the state! She was a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany. At the beginning of the war, in 1915, everything German was cursed in France. Liebknecht sent us a letter at the Zimmerwald conference which ended with famous words in response to the slogan that Schiedemann and his fraternity had issued at the start of the war: "Civil peace, reconciliation between classes, between wolves and sheep, between the bourgeoisie and the working class, between the butcher-monarchs and the soldiers and peasants." After 1914 a patriot and defensist. Ahead are months and possibly years of difficult trials, deprivation, struggle.". You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this And he succeeded in breaking the ice. 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 The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution notes that idolization of Luxemburg and Liebnecht is an important tradition of German far-left extremism. [10] The speech was given on 18 January 1919, and 19 January of the same year elections for the National Assembly were to be held. No, they said that new conflicts await you. At present Scheidemann and his gang, Ebert[6] and his government, are living exclusively on the charity of rich uncle Wilson[7] and the French imperialists who hope to stave off the wave of Bolshevism. Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid For his famous booklet, "Against Militarism," he was imprisoned for months on end. Rosa Luxemburg, in the ranks of the old, formal, official German Social Democrats, tirelessly and with immense talent fought precisely for this fundamental idea: she first sounded the alarm in the ranks of German Social Democracy and at all congresses demanded acceptance of the mass political strike, at a time when even the best of the then leaders of German Social Democracy did not what to hear of it. For his famous booklet, "Against Militarism," he was imprisoned for months on end. Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-933240-20-4. When Karl Liebknecht emerged from prison, from that stone cell, when the raging workers' movement tore him from there, the first movement of his spirit was to recall the working class of the country in which that class raised the banner of the Commune and to which befell the great joy of victory. The German general answered, "your excellency, why do you not understand that your accusation is without foundation? Following one frightfully unsuccessful exchange of fire for the French in 1915, the French frontline soldiers gathered in a circle, started a fire, and the survivors––among whom were many French intellectual workers––began to discuss their fate and think about what awaited them further. More than once she rebuked the most stalwart leaders of German Social Democracy in the discussion of questions of foreign policy, saying that, when the issue is adopting resolutions, the socialists are very radical, but when it comes to genuine struggle against the war and against the government that called forth this war, then they all "hide in the bushes. (2006). Comrades, our hearts are heavy. Januar 1919 in Berlin Freikorpssoldaten der Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division die untergetauchten Führer des Spartakusbunds , Rosa Luxemburg und Karl Liebknecht . Read her speech to the congress of Spartacists, Scheidemann and Ebert are now calling their constituent assembly, A Dying Class: The Traditional Middle-Class in Britain 2020, A Philosophy of Revolutionary Practice: The first two theses on Feuerbach [1977]. And only a small group of Marxists, at the head of which stood Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, said in 1907, eleven years ago: imperialist war is approaching, the bourgeoisie of all countries is leading all of humanity toward this unavoidable catastrophe. Anti-Anti-Zionism and Bad Faith Critique: Refuting a Misrepresentation of Enzo Traverso, Capital Comes to America: Charles H. Kerr & Company and the Cross-Atlantic Journey of Marx’s Master Work, Debating The Other Adam Smith: A Response to Christian Thorne’s Review, Dialectical Confusion: On Jason Moore’s Posthumanist Marxism. The last phrase in Liebknecht's letter read as such: "Comrades, our business now is to say––no civil peace, but civil war, this is the watchword of our day.". man is told that the motor has broken down, and is asked if he can walk. Some tried to present Scheidemann's policies as though they were a consistent implementation of Marx's teaching. Precisely for that they were especially hated by the Berlin social democrats. Liebknecht was one of the first to swim against the current. They fully appreciated the meaning of the victory that they could gain. ↑ rbb-tv - Rosa Luxemburg im Grips-Theater 07.11.2008 ↑ Statue am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, 29. The French general rebuked the German general for the help that German soldiers supposedly gave to us, the Bolsheviks, in occupied places around Riga. He’ll not reach Moabit (the prison) alive.” “Nor Rosa.”. Espionage and Intrigue in Babylon Berlin: The General’s Daughter, Live Free and Die: Notes On American Exterminism, Lockdown Politics: A Response to Panagiotis Sotiris, Lucien Sève: death of a major Marxist philosopher[1], Marx on British politics … and cab drivers[1], On Production and Reproduction (and Back Again): Nancy Fraser’s Socialism and its Problems, Revisiting the 'Mode of Production': Enduring Controversies over Labour, Exploitation and Historiographies of Capitalism, Rigorous Suppression of Intellectual Creativity: Responding Again to Alf Hornborg, Rossana Rossanda and the unfinished project of a critical communism, The Development of British Capitalist Society: A Marxist Debate, The Siren Call of Posthumanism: A Rejoinder to Cox, The Workers’ Opposition in Ukraine, 1920s–1930s, The struggle for land and capitalist exploitation, A Democracy of Forms: Levine, Latour and the New Formalism, 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 Religion for the Unbelieving: Review of Mikhail Lifshitz, The Crisis of Ugliness, Commodities, Price Formation and the Technologies of Power behind Markets, Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune, Crossing a twister: On Malm’s The Progress of this Storm (2018), Globalizing the History of Capital: Ways Forward, Half-Buried Books: The Forgotten Anti-Imperialism of Popular-Front Modernism, Hegemony, People, Multitude: Contemporary Movements and Radical Theory, Lifeblood, Climate Change, and Confronting Fossil Capital’s ‘Other Moments’, Modernity and Capitalism: India and Europe Compared, Nietzsche in His Time: The Struggle Against Socratism and Socialism, Questions without Answers: The Dutch and German Communist Left, Resuscitating the Dialectic: Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital in the Supposed ‘Age of Man’, Socialism in One Genre: On Cai Xiang’s Revolution and Its Narratives (Geming/Xushu), Soviet Archaeology in Theory and Practice, State and Capital in the Era of Primitive Accumulation. Scheidemann's government enjoys the goodwill of the international thugs only insofar as it enters the struggle against the Russian revolution. [4] Scheidemann, Philipp––member of the German Social-Democratic party, prominent deputy in the Reichstag. ... //www.findagrave.com: accessed ), memorial page for Dr Rosalia “Rosa” Luxemburg (5 Mar 1871–15 Jan 1919), Find a Grave Memorial no. We need to return, comrades, to the atmosphere of sleek and decorous Social Democracy and the Second International of that time, when the demands of Liebknecht seemed to be madness. In 1920, during the attempted revolutionary coup in Germany carried out by Kapp, offered his final services. And they concentrate their strength, all of their bloodthirstyness, against the people who are broadening the boundaries of the revolution, who are internationalists, who teach the German workers to follow in the footsteps of the Russian communist working class. Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, Clara Zetkin. [7] Wilson, Woodrow (1857–1924)––"Democratic" president of the United States, formerly a professor. The Bolsheviks pinned their hopes on German radicals to spread the revolution into Europe and, once victorious, extend a fraternal hand to the struggling Soviet state. To Karl Liebknecht belongs, of course, no less credit. In 1871 elected to the National Assembly as a socialist, was a member of the Commune; fled, sentenced to death, in 1881 amnestied, in 1884 a member of the Parisian municipality, from 1893 a deputy. Rosa Luxemburg began her work as a young girl in Poland and then continued it in Germany; she worked also in Russia. During the war––leader of the right opportunist wing of the German Social Democrats, social patriot, voted for war credits, led the fight against K. Liebknecht and the "Spartacus" group; after the November revolution of 1918––head of the compromise government of republican Germany. The murderers arrange a drinking bout at the Eden Hotel. ", She did not betray herself during the war either. “Swine! To the bourgeoisie it seems that the proletariat is a corpse over which they will step to get to the constituent assembly. After all, the same government that calls itself the government of a socialist republic is in power. She said, "We stand at the outset of a new struggle. The first person to initiate a theoretical assessment of that suppressed revolution; the first Marxist figure who understood the meaning of our soviets already in 1905, even though they had only just been created; the first European Marxist to clearly appreciate the role awaiting mass revolutionary strikes in combination with armed uprising––this was Rosa Luxemburg. At the Stuttgart congress in 1907 two worlds stood opposed to one another. Karl Liebknecht was born in August 1871 and died in January 1919. In the course of the entire war, one can say, she did not spend a single month in freedom,––Wilhelm with his gang and Scheidemann. There is a document––and, probably, there are many of them––that bears witness to the love in France for Karl Liebknecht. Leader of a small group of Blanquists. In note 8 I have replaced "proletariat" with "bourgeoisie," as it seems obvious that this was intended. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were both murdered by soldiers after the Spartacist uprising was crushed in 1919. Now imagine the pain that news that Karl Liebknecht is no longer among the living calls forth in the hearts of both German and French soldiers. He is best known for his opposition to the war in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of January 1919. Founded in 1997 it asserts that, not withstanding the variety of its practical and theoretical articulations, Marxism constitutes the most fertile conceptual framework for analysing social phenomena, with an eye to their overhaul. The coming months may be even more difficult for us. The murders in Berlin heightened the sense of vulnerability among the Bolsheviks, and Zinoviev sought both to underscore the rabid determination of global opposition to socialist revolution and assure his listeners of socialism's inevitable triumph. In Berlin, one morning in April 1916, Sophie and Karl Liebknecht received a telephone call from Rosa Luxemburg. She did not betray herself during the war either. You remember the recent dialogue between French and German generals. It stops in a dark side avenue. 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. Bernstein and the revisionists, as they were called then, insisted that, in essence, the working class should not reject the so-called colonial policy or imperialism (as we would put it now) but carry it out, as they said, in cultural forms and for the benefit of culture. members of the "Spartacus" union (Spartacus was the name of the leader of a well-known uprising of Roman slaves), formed at the beginning of the war by K. Liebknecht, R. Luxemberg, L. Jogiches (Tyszka), and others. Rosa Luxemburg stands in the ranks of the few figures of the Third International who combine the qualities of ardent agitator, brilliant politician and, along with them, one of the greatest theoreticians and writers of Marxism. The elections did, in fact, take place, and the resulting National Assembly, in which bourgeois parties dominated, drafted and promulgated the current bourgeois-republican constitution of Germany. The workers of Germany will step over it, and together with them we will reach the complete victory of the Third International! Rosa Luxemburg accused Scheidemann and his gang of wanting to help strangle the Russian revolution.
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