There is a document––and, probably, there are many of them––that bears witness to the love in France for Karl Liebknecht. Recent weeks have been especially difficult. 9. 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. 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. 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! It is important to remember that it was meant to be delivered as a speech, so the paragraphs tend to be short (often only a single sentence) and the punctuation inconsistent. Scheidemann and Ebert are now calling their constituent assembly[10]. The coming months may be even more difficult for us. 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. She said, "We stand at the outset of a new struggle. German Politician. Stefan Kipfer, Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide. Ober-Lieutenant Vogel puts his pistol to her head, and blows her brains out with a bullet. Karl Liebknecht (Leipzig, 13 augustus 1871 – Berlijn, 15 januari 1919) was een van de leidinggevende figuren van de Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), tot hij met deze partij brak en zich bij de veel radicalere Spartacusbond aansloot.. Van 1890 tot 1893 studeerde hij rechten en politieke economie aan de universiteiten van Leipzig en Berlijn. 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. Publisher: Communist Party of Great Britain Rosa Luxemburg e Karl Liebknecht. Jaeger Runge hits Liebknecht, who sits in the automobile, twice on the head from behind with a rifle butt. Zinoviev's tribute was published in Volume 16 of his collected works, (Sochineniia, vol. The murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht and the suppression of the Spartacist uprising cast a pall on those hopes. Only a small group headed by Clara Zetkin was united with Rosa Luxemburg and sat next to her when the reproaches poured over her. That is, until their leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the latter a Jew, were murdered by opposite forces. Read her speech to the congress of Spartacists,[8] given on 31 December, 1918. Translated, edited and introduced by Clayton Black. 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.". Manfred Scharrer: Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919). The best in humanity is following our path, seeing the inevitability and rightness of that path. 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! ... //www.findagrave.com: accessed ), memorial page for Dr Rosalia “Rosa” Luxemburg (5 Mar 1871–15 Jan 1919), Find a Grave Memorial no. work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. The entire hope of the world bourgeoisie is concentrated on using any sort of barrier to separate the workers of one country from the workers of another country, and, most important, to separate them from the workers of Russia, who defeated their bourgeoisie. Historical Materialism is a Marxist journal, appearing 4 times a year, based in London. No, they said that new conflicts await you. Sided with the revisionist wing of the party. All is well for murderers. 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. You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this Rosa Luxemburg accused Scheidemann and his gang of wanting to help strangle the Russian revolution. They knew that one of the most dangerous enemies of the bourgeoisie, we can say without exaggeration, was and remained Rosa Luxemburg. They fully appreciated the meaning of the victory that they could gain. They did not want to listen to Rosa Luxemburg, but she was able to make them listen to her; she accepted the fight, raised the gauntlet thrown by Bebel, the best representative of the Second International, she made that congress, half of which consisted then of hucksters and traitors of socialism, pronounce the word "International.". in het Duits, 1976. At the beginning of the war, in 1915, everything German was cursed in France. The French general rebuked the German general for the help that German soldiers supposedly gave to us, the Bolsheviks, in occupied places around Riga. She was a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany. I remember conversations with Rosa Luxemburg in 1906 in the village of Kuokkala in the little apartment of Comrade Lenin, then in semi-emigration after the first revolution had been broken. Here is what happened: German Social Democracy, having for many years played a reactionary role in history, was able to seize the soviets through its apparatus of bureaucratic officials, usurp their rights, impose its own policies, and gather everything in its own paws. After their release, Luxemburg taught in Berlin between 1907 and 1914. And he succeeded in breaking the ice. 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. 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." 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. Karl Liebknecht y Rosa Luxemburg habían fundado en el año 1917, en plena guerra mundial, la singular "Liga Espartaquista", "Spartakusbund". 4, No. Confronted with the violence and disruption of their lives, the German people squarely aliened behind the government, and the revolution was crushed. Liebknecht was one of the first to swim against the current. The Berlin communards knew, just like the Petrograd workers in October last year, what they would have to endure after the seizure of power. In fact the corpse is the old, rotten Social Democrats who have turned into bourgeois executioners. Some tried to present Scheidemann's policies as though they were a consistent implementation of Marx's teaching. [2]  Born in 1870, killed 15 January, 1919. 21 and 46) 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. 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. One of his friends said: \"He was a very clever and able debater. Bebel himself, knowing Liebknecht since childhood and loving him as a son, attacked him harshly for such, in his view, an "adventurist" proposal. Do you want to know why exactly Rosa Luxemburg was killed? 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. Luxemburg was born in March 1871 in Zamosch, Poland. 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. In 1917–1918 enjoyed immense popularity not only in liberal bourgeois circles but also among American and West European workers. 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. Scheidemann's government enjoys the goodwill of the international thugs only insofar as it enters the struggle against the Russian revolution. Bebel himself, knowing Liebknecht since childhood and loving him as a son, attacked him harshly for such, in his view, an "adventurist" proposal. 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." Imagine what powerful propaganda the very death of such a man as Karl Liebknecht serves for the idea of communism. Jahrhundert! 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. 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. Rosa Luxemburg began her work as a young girl in Poland and then continued it in Germany; she worked also in Russia. [3]  The Jena congress of Social Democrats in 1905. 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. When the working class sacrifices its blood so selflessly, gives up the best that it has without hesitating for a second, will rank-and-file participants really waver? 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. 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. Armed soldiers bunch around him, and he is led deeper into the dark wood. 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. Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid Rosa Luxemburg, with characteristic clarity, sketched the situation in Germany in a few words in her final speech. And he succeeded in breaking the ice. They smile. Today marks the passing of 100 years since the murders of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919). A man strikes her again on the head with the butt end of a pistol. Died in 1924 "out of work.". The answer was Rosa Luxemburg, but she wasn’t given a chance to do so. Precisely for that they were especially hated by the Berlin social democrats. We know that the ‘Lefts’ were mistaken.” (Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, pp. In 1890 Rosa Luxemburg met Leo Jogiches, who had already served a term of imprisonment for revolutionary activity. A Response to Cummings and Shoikhedbrod: Towards Decolonizing the Jewish Question? Captains Hoffmann, Pabst and Petry and Lieutenant Vogel and Jaeger zu Pferd Runge stand at the door. There is a document––and, probably, there are many of them––that bears witness to the love in France for Karl Liebknecht. Do you want to know why exactly Rosa Luxemburg was killed? And when the entire official, so-called Socialist Party of France gave in to that chauvinist current, the aged Vaillant[5], the old communard, in his elder years having extended his hand to the devil of defencism, nevertheless lost his patience when newspapers began to defame Engels. 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. 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. Matthias John: Höhere Bildung in Leipzig. 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. In the end, however, Wilson signed the Versailles agreement, and the League of Nations became a simple servant of the Entente. 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." Would Hitler still find a way to come to power? 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. They rub their hands. 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. All is well for the murderers. man is told that the motor has broken down, and is asked if he can walk. 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. Many considered him a great prophet who would open a new era in the history of humanity. For what did the German communards fight; what were German workers seeking, what were their great leaders––Liebknecht and Luxemburg––seeking? Wilson's prestige suffered a fatal blow, he became a laughing stock for the entire world. 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. We know what an enormous role youth played in our revolution; it played the same in both the German and international [revolutions]. 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. Who stands for the constituent assembly in Germany? ", She hurled that right in their faces! Did Marx Ever Meet Walras (on a Lake in Switzerland)? 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. Rosa Luxemburg [ˈʁoːza ˈlʊksəmbʊɐk]1 Écouter, souvent retranscrit en français Rosa Luxembourg [ʁoza lyksɑbuʁ]2 Écouter, en polonais Róża Luksemburg [ˈruʐa ˈluksɛmburk]3, née le 5 mars 1871 à Zamość dans l'Empire russe (actuelle Pologne) et morte assassinée le 15 janvier 1919 à Berlin en Allemagne, est une militante socialiste et communiste, et une théoricienne marxiste. The United States refused to ratify the Versailles agreement and did not agree to join the League of Nations. 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. This is so odious that I openly and calmly declare that the German trade union leaders and German Social Democrats are the greatest of scoundrels. And Luxemburg and Lenin answered:  the task will be to use the entire economic and political crisis that will result from the war to lift the masses to struggle against the capitalist order! After its first mass demonstration against the First World War in Berlin in 1916, several leaders, including Luxemburg … 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. The German general answered, "your excellency, why do you not understand that your accusation is without foundation? 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 … ON Wednesday, January 15th, 1919 Karl Libeknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered. The uprising was crushed by the SPD government and the Freikorps(paramilitary units formed of World Wa… He, Liebknecht, is in their power. Who now, after the death of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, will think of their own personal life? Such was the official slogan of German Social Democracy. Berlin workers do not lag behind Petrograd or Moscow workers, and now they are the focus of the proletarian struggle for the entire universe. 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. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg always felt the most intimate and fraternal connection to our revolution.