Rosa Luxemburg was the youngest of five children of a lower middle-class Jewish family in Russian-ruled Poland. Today marks the passing of 100 years since the murders of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919). But a firmly-organised nucleus is essential in preparing for the future. The leaders of the French Communist Party and the ‘Socialist’ Federation, rather than seeking victory through a revolutionary programme of workers’ councils and a workers and farmers’ government, lent all their efforts to derailing this magnificent movement. Their ideas and writings continue to be studied with reverence. 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. Januar 1919 ermordeten Freikorps-Soldaten die Anführer des Spartakus-Aufstandes. 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. To some extent, this later affected the leaders of the Communist Party (KPD) after her death. 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. 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. Home; About; Services Menu Toggle. Moreover, Luxemburg posed very clearly the ideological tasks: “The choice today is not between democracy and dictatorship. Other luminaries of the Nazi regime were similarly ‘blooded’ at this time for the future murderous activities in their own country and throughout Europe. Rosa did this, characterising the social democracy as a “rotten corpse”. Main Menu. Though she and Liebknecht considered it premature, they felt duty-bound to support it and through their newspaper urged the rebels to occupy offices of the liberal (but counterrevolutionary) press. On the railways, in the factories and offices, the workers assisted the uprising to overthrow capitalism and establish a democratic workers’ state. The growing opposition to the war, however, widened the circle of support and contacts for Luxemburg and the Sparticist group. August 1871 in Leipzig; † 15. In that case, our Party will be the extreme opposition within the old International – until a base is formed in different countries for an international working men’s association that stands on the basis of revolutionary Marxism.” When the floodgates of revolution were thrown open in February 1917 in Russia, and the masses poured onto the political arena, even the Bolsheviks – despite their previous history – had about 1% support in the soviets, and 4% by April 1917. This would have removed the two leaders whose ideas and political guidance led to the success of the October revolution. 90th anniversary of murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. 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. Become a People's World sustainer today. 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 Von Anfang an war Proletariat der revolutionären Bewegung in Russland voraus. Karl Liebknecht Karl Liebknecht was born in August 1871 and died in January 1919. Nevertheless, they took with them 120,000 members and a number of newspapers. If the Social Democratic-ordained murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg were not tragedy enough, the lessons learned were poorly applied. From Socialist Appeal, Vol. This culminated in the catastrophe of the SPD deputies in the Reichstag (parliament) – with the original single exception of Karl Liebknecht – voting for war credits for German imperialism. She hailed the work of Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky also, in his famous book, ‘Results and Prospects’ (1906), in which the Theory of the Permanent Revolution was first outlined, did have a perception of what could take place: “The European Socialist Parties, particularly the largest of them, the German Social-Democratic Party, have developed their conservatism in proportion as the great masses have embraced socialism and the more these masses have become organized and disciplined… Social Democracy as an organization embodying the political experience of the proletariat may at a certain moment become a direct obstacle to open conflict between the workers and bourgeois reaction.” In his autobiography, ‘My Life’, Trotsky subsequently wrote: “I did not expect the official leaders of the International, in case of war, to prove themselves capable of serious revolutionary initiative. Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (* 13. Karl Liebknecht studied law and political economy in Leipzig. We do not have a fetish about the general strike. Karl Liebknecht was born in August 1871 and died in January 1919. 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. Those who try and picture her as a critic of the Bolsheviks and the Russian revolution are entirely false. 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. 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. This itself is an indication of the speed of events that developed in Germany at this stage. Facts about Rosa Luxemburg 2: Spartakusbund. She was also a member of the International Socialist Bureau. 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. 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. 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. Rosa Luxemburg und Karl Liebknecht waren KämpferIn der sozialistischen Revolution, Arbeiterdemokratie und des Internationalismus in der SPD. In the wake of the Spartacist uprising in Berlin against the government, in which she proved a reluctant participant, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested in 1919. 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 … Because of its connotations with Stalinism however, Marxists today, in trying to reach the best workers, do not use language which can give a false idea of what they intend for the future. The same idea is expressed in our call for a socialist, planned economy, organised on the basis of workers’ democracy. This meant that the prospects for socialism, specifically the socialist revolution, were relegated to the mists of time in their consciousness. 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 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. But this became all the greater for the working class with the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Emotion Coaching; Free Resources; Blog; Contact ( Log Out /  Trotsky pointed out: “Lenin considered Kautsky as his teacher and stressed this everywhere he could. Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches correctly opposed “premature splits”. 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. The same charge – only with more justification – could be levelled at those left and even Marxist currents that work or have worked in broad formations, sometimes in new parties. Under the pressure of the strike, the Tsarist regime made constitutional ‘concessions’ in 1905. | Markus Schreiber / AP. Karl Liebknecht was subsequently imprisoned after … For her theoretical contribution alone, Rosa Luxemburg deserves to stand alongside Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. 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. Only the day before, Noske and Liebknecht, Ebert and Rosa Luxemburg, were still members of the one and only “united” German Social-Democratic Party. Lenin systematically trained and organised the best workers in Russia in implacable opposition to capitalism and its shadows in the labour movement. She criticised the “clinging mists of parliamentary cretinism”, what would be called “electoralism” at the present time. 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. 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. 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. 5 No. Luxemburg was a real internationalist; a participant in the revolutionary movement in three countries. 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.