Luxemburg, Rosa (1871-1919)

Born on March 5th, 1871 in Zamoshc of Congress Poland,

Rosa Luxemburg was born into a Jewish family, the
youngest of five children. In 1889, at 18 years old,
Luxemburg's revolutionary agitation forced her to move to
Zürich, Switzerland, to escape imprisonment. While in
Zürich, Luxemburg continued her revolutionary activities
from abroad, while studying political economy and law;
receiving her doctorate in 1898. She met with many Russian
Social Democrats (at a time before the R.S.D.L.P. split);
among them the leading members of the party: Georgy
Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod. It was not long before
Luxemburg voiced sharp theoretical differences with the
Russian party, primarily over the issue of Polish self-
determination: Luxemburg believed that self-determination
weakened the international Socialist movement, and helped
only the bourgeoisie to strengthen their rule over newly
independent nations. Luxemburg split with both the
Russian and Polish Socialist Party over this issue, who
believed in the rights of Russian national minorities to self-
determination. In opposition, Luxemburg helped create the
Polish Social Democratic Party.

During this time Luxemburg met her life-long companion

Leo Jogiches, who was head of the Polish Socialist Party.
While Luxemburg was the speaker and theoretician of the
party, Jogiches complimented her as the organiser of the
party. The two developed an intense personal and political
relationship throughout the rest of their lives.

Luxemburg left Zürich for Berlin in 1898, and joined the

German Social Democractic Labour Party. Quickly after
joining the party, Luxemburg's most vibrant revolutionary
agitation and writings began to form. Expressing the central
issues of debate in the German Social Democracy at the time,
she wrote Reform or Revolution in 1900; against Eduard
Bernstein's revisionism of Marxist theory. Luxemburg
explained:

"His theory tends to counsel us to

renounce the social transformation, the
 final goal of Social-Democracy and,
inversely, to make of social reforms, the
means of the class struggle, its aim.
Bernstein himself has very clearly and
characteristically formulated this
viewpoint when he wrote: "The Final goal,
no matter what it is, is nothing; the
movement is everything."

While Luxemburg supported reformist activity (as the

means of class struggle), the aim of these reforms was a
complete revolution. She stressed that endless reforms
would continually support the ruling bourgeois, long past
the time a proletarian revolution could have begun to build
a Socialist society. Luxemburg, along with Karl Kautsky,
helped to prevent this revisionism of Marxist theory in the
German Socialist party. (Further Reading: 1904: Social
Democracy and Parliamentarism)

By the 1905 Revolution in Russia, Luxemburg refocused

her attention to the Socialist movement in the Russian
Empire, explaining the great movement the Russian
proletariat had begun:

"For on this day the Russian proletariat

burst on the political stage as a class for the
first time; for the first time the only power
which historically is qualified and able to
cast Tsarism into the dustbin and to raise
the banner of civilization in Russia and
everywhere has appeared on the scene of
action."

Revolution in Russia

Luxemburg stood by the Marxist theory of the Russian

proletariat leading a Socialist revolution; in opposition to
the Russian Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties,
but in support of the Bolshevik party. Luxemburg moved to
Warsaw to aid the Russian revolutionary uprising, and was
imprisoned for her activities.

In 1906, Luxemburg began to strongly advocate her

theory of The Mass Strike as the most important
revolutionary weapon of the proletariat. This continual
drive became a major point of contention in the German
Social Democratic party, primarily opposed by August Bebel
and Karl Kautsky. For such passionate and relentless
agitation, Luxemburg earned the nickname "Bloody Rosa."

Before the first World War, Luxemburg wrote The

Accumulation of Capital in 1913; a work explaining the
capitalist movement towards imperialism. With the
begining of World War I, Luxemburg stood ardently against
the German Social-Democratic Parties' social-chauvinistic
stand; supporting German aggression and annexations of
other nations. Allied with Karl Liebknecht, Luxemburg left
the Social Democractic party, and helped form the
Internationale Group, which soon became the Spartacus
League, in opposition of Socialist national chauvinism,
agitating instead that German soldiers turn their weapons
against their own government and overthrow it.

For this revolutionary agitation, Luxemburg and

Liebknecht were arrested and imprisoned. While in prison,
Luxemburg wrote the Junius Pamphlet, which became the
theoretical foundation of the Spartacus League. Also while
in prison, Luxemburg wrote on the Russian Revolution,
most famously in her book: The Russian Revolution, where
she warns of the dictatorial powers of the Bolshevik party.
Here Luxemburg explains her views on the theory of the
dictatorship of the proletariat:

"Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorship

consists in the manner of applying
democracy, not in its elimination, but in
energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-
entrenched rights and economic
relationships of bourgeois society, without
which a socialist transformation cannot be
accomplished. But this dictatorship must
be the work of the class and not of a little
leading minority in the name of the class --
that is, it must proceed step by step out of
the active participation of the masses; it
must be under their direct influence,
subjected to the control of complete public
activity; it must arise out of the growing
political training of the mass of the people.
 While Luxemburg attacked the Soviet government being
dominated by the strong hand of the Bolshevik party, she
recognised the Civil War that was raging through Russia and
the present need for such a government:

"It would be demanding something

superhuman from Lenin and his comrades
if we should expect of them that under such
circumstances they should conjure forth
the finest democracy, the most exemplary
dictatorship of the proletariat and a
flourishing socialist economy. By their
determined revolutionary stand, their
exemplary strength in action, and their
unbreakable loyalty to international
socialism, they have contributed whatever
could possibly be contributed under such
devilishly hard conditions. The danger
begins only when they make a virtue of
necessity and want to freeze into a
complete theoretical system all the tactics
forced upon them by these fatal
circumstances, and want to recommend
them to the international proletariat as a
model of socialist tactics."

Luxemburg later opposed the newly formed Soviet

government's efforts to come to Peace on all fronts, by
signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. (Further
reading: The Russian Tragedy)

In November, 1918, the German government reluctantly

released Luxemburg from prision, whereupon she
immediately began again revolutionary agitation. A month
later, Luxemburg and Liebknecht founded the German
Communist Party, while armed conflicts were raging in the
streets of Berlin in support of the Spartacus League.

On January 15, 1919, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht,

and Wilhelm Pieck; the leaders of the German Communist
Party, were arrested and taken in for questioning at the
Adlon Hotel in Berlin. While what happened is not known,
save for the last sentence, one account is that they were told
they were to be relocated; German soldiers escorted
Luxemburg and Liebknecht out of the building, knocking
them unconscious as they left. Pieck managed to escape,
while the unconscious bodies of Luxemburg and Liebknecht
were quietly driven away in a German military jeep. They
were shot, and thrown into a river.

With the finest leaders of the German Communist

movement murdered, the gates of rising German facism
opened unhindered.

Further Reading: Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive

Off-site link: ‘If You Do Not Follow the Order You Will Be
Shot’: New facts about the murder of Karl Liebknecht and
Rosa Luxemburg