And you know what untouchable authority Bebel enjoyed in the ranks of German Social Democracy; at that congress, speaking with the greatest harshness against Rosa Luxemburg, he all but demanded her departure from the party. November 2008 ↑ Rosa Luxemburg: Fragment über Krieg, nationale Frage und Revolution, GW 4, S. 366 ↑ Die russische 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 In: Michael Fröhlich (Hrsg. In the first place, contrary to the opinion of such outstanding political leaders as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the German ‘Lefts’, as we know, considered parliamentarianism ‘politically obsolete’ even in January 1919. German Politician. 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]. So what would have happen if Karl and Rosa weren't killed and turned Germany into their version of communist haven, with a Jewish woman in charge? Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg always felt the most intimate and fraternal connection to our revolution. The hatred of these leaders of the German proletariat is now obvious! No, they said that new conflicts await you. All that is youthful, fresh, honest, and revolutionary, vigorous, and upstanding in the working class has gathered around the banner of the union of youth, of which Liebknecht was one of the founders. The Burgergerwehr (Civil Guard) of Wilmersdrof, a suburb of Berlin, raided the illegal dwelling of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and arrested and took them both to the Eden Hotel in Berlin, the Staff Headquarters of the Gardeschuetzen (Horse Guards) Division. Ober-Lieutenant Vogel puts his pistol to her head, and blows her brains out with a bullet. The murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht and the suppression of the Spartacist uprising cast a pall on those hopes. Armed soldiers bunch around him, and he is led deeper into the dark wood. „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. Liebknecht is delivered to a first aid station as an “unknown man, found dead,” by Lieutenant Liepmann. Translation involves difficult decisions about word choice and sentence structure, but I have tried to remain true to the author's meaning without doing violence to his words. The Spartacists called workers not only to the fight against the war but also to social revolution. Recent weeks have been especially difficult. At the Stuttgart congress in 1907 two worlds stood opposed to one another. 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 1889, aged 18 and because of … What will be the tasks of worker-revolutionaries when the criminal hand of the bourgeoisie leads Europe to that imperialist war? The half-senseless. 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. [7]  Wilson, Woodrow (1857–1924)––"Democratic" president of the United States, formerly a professor. Now we see the results of the criminal policies of the gentlemen Scheidemanns. “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. Please credit Rosa Luxemburg is in their power. ", She did not betray herself during the war either. Rosa Luxemburg[2] belongs among the few individuals in the contemporary generation of the workers' movement to whom a share of the greatest happiness came: to serve not only as a populariser of the ideas of Marx but also to work farther, to add her own word to the field of Marxist theory. Precisely for that they were especially hated by the Berlin social democrats. 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. 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. Runge hits a second time, and leaves her for dead. That is what Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht died for and that is why they are loved by Russia's workers and peasants, who in a whole slew of regions tried to name their villages "Karl Liebknecht village." Some tried to present Scheidemann's policies as though they were a consistent implementation of Marx's teaching. To Rosa Luxemburg belongs the immense credit, which she shares with our comrade and teacher, Lenin, for formulating in 1907 at the international socialist congress in Stuttgart the basic idea for which Liebknecht and Luxemburg perished and for which everything that is honest and heroic in the international working class is now fighting. After their release, Luxemburg taught in Berlin between 1907 and 1914. After all, the same government that calls itself the government of a socialist republic is in power. Rosa Luxemburg is in their power. Karl Liebknecht enjoyed the same trust and popularity in recent years in France. Comrades, just as we are feeling in this hall, so, you can be sure, the working men and women of the whole world felt yesterday and feel today. 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. Zinoviev saved particular scorn for the German Social Democrats as traitors to the working classes and socialism and as puppets of the German bourgeoisie. We will also not forget that in France, where the bourgeoisie raised an especially strong wave of chauvinism, where everything German in 1915 was cursed, where workers and soldiers were infected with unusual hatred toward mankind, the name of Liebknecht was pronounced with love! [9]  August Winnig––one of the leaders of the Hamburg trade-union movement, prior to the war was editor of the central organ of construction workers, Grundstein (Winnig was a mason by trade) and member of the local Hamburg parliament. Translated, edited and introduced by Clayton Black. On this occasion, the call was not about their shared politics – … 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." Did Marx Ever Meet Walras (on a Lake in Switzerland)? For what did the German communards fight; what were German workers seeking, what were their great leaders––Liebknecht and Luxemburg––seeking? In the presidential election of 1920 he was replaced by the "Republican" Harding. Not a month passed before the German proletariat declared, "Only over our dead bodies will you come to a constituent assembly." 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. Do you want to know why exactly Rosa Luxemburg was killed? For his famous booklet, "Against Militarism," he was imprisoned for months on end. The German general answered, "your excellency, why do you not understand that your accusation is without foundation? (Image: Permission given by Alexander Fiebrandt, grandchild of the photographer Herbert Fiebrandt/Public domain) On January 15, 1919, the soldiers tracked her down and arrested her. What will be the tasks of worker-revolutionaries when the criminal hand of the bourgeoisie leads Europe to that imperialist war? And he succeeded in breaking the ice. In the final elections before the war elected vice-president of the Reichstag by the Social Democrats. He also hits Rosa Luxemburg over the head. 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"[?] 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.". 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. The coming months may be even more difficult for us. Liebknecht belonged to those few bold spirits in the ranks of German Social Democracy who demanded ten years ago, as it was expressed then, "antimilitarist" propaganda, i.e. The murderers arrange a drinking bout at the Eden Hotel. ", And thus say workers of the entire world now. In Riga, thanks to Scheidemann's odiousness and the work of the German leader of trade unions, August Winnig,[9] German proletarians together with Allied forces and the Baltic barons are coming out against Russian Bolshevik forces. 4, No. Rosa Luxemburg added, "Sitting in our current Scheidemann government are not only betrayers of the proletarian revolution but also genuine criminals!". At the beginning of the war, in 1915, everything German was cursed in France. “Swine! A man strikes her again on the head with the butt end of a pistol. The best in humanity is following our path, seeing the inevitability and rightness of that path. Jaeger Runge hits Liebknecht, who sits in the automobile, twice on the head from behind with a rifle butt. All is well for murderers. Prior to the war stood on the right wing of the party, during the war an ardent chauvinist, after the war an irreconcilable foe of the communists. Economic conditions in Petrograd at that moment were already dire, as food supply had collapsed, factory work had come to a halt, and thousands had either been conscripted into the Red Army or fled to the countryside to find relief. In 1915, in the trenches, where special efforts were made to enflame chauvinism, in France, which was completely engulfed by the flame of chauvinism and hated everything German, four years ago the best people, the best soldiers, the best workers recalled the name of Karl Liebknecht with reverence. They knew this perfectly well. 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. 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. 9. Will our class, under the influence of whatever deprivations may be, whatever misfortunes may be, really waver for even a moment? This party was led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, a Russian educated, Jewish woman, who came to Germany via Ukraine. ", She hurled that right in their faces! In Berlin, one morning in April 1916, Sophie and Karl Liebknecht received a telephone call from Rosa Luxemburg. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, leaders of the radical Spartacus League, were eager to transform Germany into a republic of workers’ and soldiers’ councils (a Räterepublik) in imitation of the soviet republic being established by the Bolshevik leaders in … The Berlin communards knew where they were headed; they went toward it and fell by the hundreds, they gave up the best of their people. 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. Ready at that time to drown every German in a spoonful of water, he appeared with an article in which he said: there were only two Germans in Germany who, after the Franco-Prussian war, remained internationalists––Marx and Engels. She falls. 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. They are immune, no one dare touch them. (2006). Zinoviev's tribute was published in Volume 16 of his collected works, (Sochineniia, vol. The workers of Germany will step over it, and together with them we will reach the complete victory of the Third International! In our selection of material we do not favour any one tendency, tradition or variant. Gri­go­rij Zinov’ev . 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"[?]. Karl Liebknecht y Rosa Luxemburg contaron para sus proyectos con el proletariado afín que no había acudido a las trincheras de la Gran Guerra, bien por no ser alemanes o bien por razones de edad o físicas. Her brilliant books and articles on the mass strike, her speeches in Jena[3] at the German Social-Democratic congress, taking place at the moment of our revolution, her identification of the role that awaited the Soviets of Workers' Deputies to play––all of these points, made over a decade ago, were of colossal historical significance. Karl Radek; Rosa Luxemburg; Karl Liebknecht; Leo Jogiches; Autorenseite << zurück weiter >> Rosa Luxemburg. To which another French soldier pronounced: "Yes, Karl Liebknecht." “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. Against Agamben: is a democratic biopolitics possible? 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! Scheidemann's government enjoys the goodwill of the international thugs only insofar as it enters the struggle against the Russian revolution. 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! man is told that the motor has broken down, and is asked if he can walk. State–Labour Relations and Spaces of Dissent: Whither Labour Activism? These words of hers at that time seemed enormously brazen: German Social Democracy was at the height of its glory. [5]  Vaillant, Edouard––one of the leaders of the French Socialist party. He also stood in the ranks of revolutionaries for nearly a quarter century. revolutionary propaganda among the soldiers. Karl Liebknecht was born in August 1871 and died in January 1919. A pacifist who during the war gave many widely broadcast speeches against the war and proposed the project for creating the League of Nations as a means for promoting peace in the future. You remember the recent dialogue between French and German generals. Comrades, our hearts are heavy. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were both murdered by soldiers after the Spartacist uprising was crushed in 1919. 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." Stefan Kipfer, Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide. Liebknecht was one of the first to swim against the current. 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. Having led the wartime Council of People's Deputies throughout the entire revolution, she assumed the position as Chairperson of the People's Council after the first elections in 1921 . Would the Holocaust be avoided? 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. 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 . 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. John Reed's name has been inextricably linked to the events of the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution.His book “Ten Days that Shook the World” is a first hand experience of the Revolution that changed the course of human history. work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Then he is struck down, a shot and somewhere in the night the wood groans. “Liebknecht shot whilst attempting to escape.” They write further, “Rosa Luxemburg lynched by an infuriated crowd.”. Yesterday was difficult for us, comrades; and today is difficult; these days are difficult for us. At the Stuttgart congress in 1907 two worlds stood opposed to one another. The last phrase in Liebknecht's letter read as such: "Comrades, our business now is to say––no civil peace, but. Germany is closer to Russia, consequently Bolshevism is more dangerous for us than for you." They knew that one of the most dangerous enemies of the bourgeoisie, we can say without exaggeration, was and remained Rosa Luxemburg. He devoted his whole existence to his work as a socialist, and his followers idolised him.\" He had inherited money from his grandfather and was willing to use this for the good of the soci… Rosa Luxemburg has been dragged, senseless, into another car, Ober-Lieutenant Vogel sits at the side of the blood-soaked woman. German Social Democrats decided that only an adventurer could propose that! Such was the official slogan of German Social Democracy. Karl Liebknecht Biography 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. Liebknecht, the Jew, Liebknecht, the Spartacist, Liebknecht, the agitator and rebel, the man without a country, the man who wants to level everything, the man who wants to nationalise women, the man who wants to abolish money. We know only one example from French history when a German socialist was so loved by French workers: I speak of Friedrich Engels. The German proletariat was portrayed as a collection of bandits. What do you mean, go to the soldiers to preach socialism! 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. Stavros Tombazos and the Discordance of Times, The Challenges of Understanding Digital Labour: Questions of Exploitation and Resistance, The General Theory of Permanent Revolution, The Humanisation of Nature and the Naturalisation of Marxism, Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy, Two Revolutions, One International Legal Order, Marxism & Latin America: Jeffery R. Webber, Borderland Marxism and Russia’s Revolutionary Periphery: Eric Blanc, Marxism, Space and a Few Urban Questions: A Rough Guide to the English Language Literature. 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. Rosa Luzemburg, the Polish Jewess, Rosa Luxemburg, the Spartacist, the agitator, the rebel, Rosa Luxemburg, Red Rosa, bloody Rosa. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg always felt the most intimate and fraternal connection to our revolution. [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.