Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg (March 5, 1870 or 1871 - January 15, 1919, in Polish language Ró?a Luksemburg) was a Polish-born German Marxist political theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary. She was a social democratic theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and later the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. She started the newspaper The Red Flag, and cofounded the Spartakusbund, a Marxist revolutionary group that became the Communist Party of Germany and took part in an unsuccessful revolution in Berlin in January, 1919. The uprising was carried out against Rosa's advice, and crushed by the remnants of the monarchist army and freelance right-wing militias collectively called the Freikorps, which were sent in by the government. Luxemburg and hundreds of others were captured, tortured, and killed.

Criticism of the October Revolution

In an article published just before the October Revolution, Luxemburg characterized the Russian February Revolution of 1917 as a revolution of the proletariat, and said that the liberal bourgeois were pushed to movement by the display of proletarian power. The task of the Russian proletariat was now to end the imperialist world war, in addition to struggling against the imperialist bourgeois. The imperialist world war made Russia ripe for a socialist revolution. Therefore "the German proletariat are also ... posed a question of honour, and a very fateful question." (ibid., p. 245)

Related Topics:
October Revolution - Russia - February Revolution - 1917 - Bourgeois - Imperialist - World war

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Her sharp criticism of the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks was lessened insofar as she explained the errors of the revolution and of the Bolsheviks with the "complete failure of the international proletariat" (On the Russian Revolution, GW 4, p. 334). Despite all the criticism, it remains to the Bolsheviks' credit that they dared to execute the revolution at all.

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"In this erupting of the social divide in the very lap of bourgeois society, in this international deepening and heightening of class antagonism lies the historical merit of Bolshevism, and with this feat — as always in large historic connections — the particular mistakes and errors of the Bolsheviks disappear without trace. (Fragment on War, National Questions, and Revolution, Collected Works 4, p. 366)

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After the October Revolution, it becomes the "historic responsibility" of the German workers to carry out a revolution for themselves, and thereby end the war (The Historic Responsibility, GW 4, p. 374). When a revolution also broke out in Germany in November, of 1918, Rosa Luxemburg immediately began agitating for a social revolution:

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"The abolition of the rule of capital, the realization of a socialist social order — this, and nothing less, is the historical theme of the present revolution. It is a formidable undertaking, and one that will not be accomplished in the blink of an eye just by the issuing of a few decrees from above. Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port." (The Beginning, Collected Works 4, p. 397)

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The social revolution demands that power is in the hands of the masses, in the hands of the workers' and soldiers' councils. This is the program of the revolution. It is, however, a long way from soldier — from the "Guards of the Reaction" (Gendarmen der Reaktion) — to revolutionary proletarian.

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