Rosa Luxemburg (/ˈlʌksəmbɜːrɡ/LUK-səm-burg;[1]Polish:Róża Luksemburg[ˈruʐaˈluksɛmburk]ⓘ;German:[ˈʁoːzaˈlʊksm̩bʊʁk]ⓘ; bornRozalia Luksenburg; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary andMarxist theorist. She was a key figure of the socialist movements in Poland and Germany in the early 20th century.
At the outbreak ofWorld War I in 1914, the SPD supported the German war effort, after which Luxemburg andKarl Liebknecht founded the anti-warSpartacus League, which became affiliated with theIndependent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in 1917; the pair were arrested in 1916 for their activities and imprisoned until theNovember Revolution of 1918, after which they co-founded theCommunist Party of Germany. In January 1919, Luxemburg participated in theSpartacist uprising in Berlin, an attempted communist overthrow of the SPD-ruledWeimar Republic. The ill-prepared uprising (considered a blunder by Luxemburg herself)[2] was crushed by the government, which deployed anti-communistFreikorps paramilitaries that captured, tortured, andmurdered Luxemburg and Liebknecht.[3][4]
Luxemburg argued against thereformist road to socialism advocated byEduard Bernstein, defending the necessity of asocialist revolution. She also criticisedVladimir Lenin's concept of avanguard party, instead advocating spontaneous action by the workers, and in particular themass strike, which she viewed as the supreme form of revolutionary action. In her analyses of theRussian Revolution of 1917, she criticised the controlling character of Lenin and theBolsheviks. Luxemburg saw the collapse of capitalism as inevitable after it had spread to all areas of the world through the process ofimperialism.
Due to her pointed criticism of both theLeninist and thesocial democratic schools of Marxism, Luxemburg has always had a somewhat ambivalent reception among scholars and theorists of thepolitical left.[5] Nonetheless, she and Liebknecht were extensively idolised asmartyrs by theruling party ofEast Germany afterWorld War II.[6] Despite her strong ties and sentimentality towards Polish culture, opposition from thePolish Socialist Party and later criticism from Stalinists have made her a controversial historical figure in the political discourse of theThird Polish Republic.[7][8][9]
Róża Luksemburg, actual birth name Rozalia Luksenburg, was born on 5 March 1871 at 45 Ogrodowa Street (now 7a Kościuszko Street)[10] in Zamość.[11][12] The Luxemburg family werePolish Jews living in theRussian sector of Poland. She was the fifth and youngest child ofEdward Eliasz Luxemburg and Lina Löwenstein. Her father Edward, like his fatherAbraham, supported the Jewish Reform movement. Luxemburg later stated that her father imparted an interest inliberal ideas to her while her mother was religious and well-read with books kept at home.[13] As noted, the family moved to Warsaw in 1873.[14] Polish andGerman were spoken at home; Luxemburg also learnedRussian.[13] Although over time she became fluent in Russian andFrench, Polish remained Róża's first language with German also spoken fluently.[15][8][16] Rosa was considered intelligent early on, writing letters to her family and impressing her relatives with recitals of poetry, including the Polish classicPan Tadeusz.[10]
Rory Castle writes:
From her grandfather and father [Rosa] inherited the belief that she was a Pole first and a Jew second, with her emotional connection to the Polish language and culture and her passionate opposition to Tsarism being of central importance. Although her parents were religious, they did not consider themselves to be Jewish by nationality, rather 'Poles of the Mosaic persuasion'.[10]
Castle also points out that more recent research into the Luxemburg family and her early years shows that
Rosa Luxemburg gained a lot more from her family than has previously been understood by her biographers ... [not only] in terms of her education, financial support and assistance during her frequent incarcerations, but also in terms of her identity and politics. Her family was a closely knitted support network, even when its members were spread out across Europe. This solid foundation, which supported and encouraged her at every step, gave Luxemburg the intellectual and personal confidence to go out and attempt to change the world.[10]
From her private correspondence it is especially clear that she remained very close with her family throughout the years, despite being separated by borders and spread out across countries.[10]
In 1884, she enrolled at an all-girls'gymnasium (secondary school) in Warsaw, which she attended until 1887.[17] The Second Women's Gymnasium was a school that only rarely accepted Polish applicants and acceptance of Jewish children was even more exceptional. At this school, the children were only permitted to speak Russian.,[18] but Róża attended secret circles in which the works of Polish poets and writers were studied; officially this was forbidden due to the policy ofRussification against Poles being pursued in the Russian Empire at the time.[19] Nonetheless, from 1886, Luxemburg belonged to the illegal Polish left-wingProletariat Party which had been founded in 1882, anticipating the left-wing Russian parties by twenty years. She began political activities by organising ageneral strike, which ended with four of the Proletariat Party leaders being put to death and the party being disbanded, though the remaining members, including Luxemburg, kept meeting in secret. In 1887, she passed hermatura (secondary school examinations).
Inaugural dissertation for the award of a doctorate in political science from the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zurich. In the collection of theJewish Museum Switzerland.
Wanted by the tsarist police because of her activity in Proletariat, Rosa hid in the countryside, working as private tutor at adworek.[20] In order to escape detention, she fled toSwitzerland through the "green border" in 1889.[21] She attended theUniversity of Zurich (as did the socialistsAnatoly Lunacharsky andLeo Jogiches), where she studied philosophy, history, politics, economics, zoology[22][23] and mathematics.[24] She specialised inStaatswissenschaft (political science), economic andstock exchange crises, and theMiddle Ages. The University of Zurich awarded her aDoctor of Law degree and herdoctoral dissertation "The Industrial Development ofPoland" (Die Industrielle Entwicklung Polens) was officially presented in the spring of 1897 and was published by Duncker and Humblot in Leipzig in 1898. An oddity in Zurich, she was one of the first women in the world, and of course the first Polish woman, to be awarded a doctorate in political economy[21][8]
In 1893, with Leo Jogiches andJulian Marchlewski (alias Julius Karski), Luxemburg founded the newspaperSprawa Robotnicza (The Workers' Cause) which opposed thenationalist policies of thePolish Socialist Party. Luxemburg believed that an independent Poland could arise and exist only through socialist revolutions in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. She maintained that the struggle should be againstcapitalism, not just for Polish independence. Her position of denying a national right ofself-determination provoked a philosophic disagreement withVladimir Lenin. She and Leo Jogiches co-founded theSocial Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) party, after merging in Congress Poland's and Lithuania's social democratic organisations. Despite living in Germany for most of her adult life, Luxemburg was the principal theoretician of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP, later the SDKPiL) and led the party in a partnership with Jogiches, its principal organiser.[21] She remained sentimental towards Polish culture, her favourite poet wasAdam Mickiewicz, and she vehemently opposed theGermanisation of Poles in thePrussian Partition; in 1900 she published a brochure against this inPoznań.[15] Earlier, in 1893, she also wrote against the Russification of Poles by the Russian Empire's absolutist government.[16]
After the1905 revolution broke out, against the advice of her Polish and German comrades, Luxemburg left for Warsaw. If she were to be recognised, tsarist authorities would imprison her, but the October/November political strike, part of theupheaval in Russia with particularly active elements in Congress Poland, convinced Róża that she was needed in Warsaw instead of Berlin.[25] She arrived in Warsaw on 30 December, thanks to her German friend Anna Matschke's passport, and joined Jogiches, who had returned to Warsaw a month earlier, also on a false passport. They lived together in apension at the corner of Jasna and Świętokrzyska streets from where they wrote for the SDKPiL's illegally published paperCzerwony Sztandar (The Red Banner).[26] Luxemburg was one of the first writers to notice the 1905 revolution's potential for democratisation within the Russian Empire. In the years 1905-1906 alone, she wrote in Polish and German over 100 articles, brochures, appeals, texts, and speeches about the revolution.[25] Although only the closest friends and comrades of Jogiches and Luxemburg knew of their return to the country, theOkhrana, thanks to amole recruited by the tsarist authorities within the senior SDKPiL leadership, came to arrest them on 4 March 1906.[27]
They held her prisoner first at theratusz jail, then atPawiak prison and later at the Tenth Pavilion of theWarsaw Citadel. Luxemburg continued to write for the SDKPiL in secret while in custody, with her works smuggled out of the compound.[27] After two officers of the Okhrana were bribed by her relatives, a temporary release on bail was secured for her on 28 June 1906 for health reasons until the court trial.[8] In early August fromSaint Petersburg, she left forKuokkala, which was then part of theGrand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. From there, in the middle of September, she managed to secretly flee to Germany.[27]
AsIrene Gammel writes in a review of the English translation of the book inThe Globe and Mail: "The three decades covered by the 230 letters in this collection provide the context for her major contributions as a politicalactivist,socialist theorist and writer." Her reputation was challenged and, for some, tarnished byJoseph Stalin's cynicism inQuestions Concerning the History of Bolshevism. In his rewriting of Russian events, he placed the blame for the theory ofpermanent revolution on Luxemburg's shoulders, with faint praise for her attacks onKarl Kautsky which she commenced in 1910.[33]
According to Gammel,
In her controversial tome of 1913,The Accumulation of Capital, as well as through her work as a co-founder of the radicalSpartacus League, Luxemburg helped to shape Germany's young democracy by advancing an international, rather than a nationalist, outlook. This farsightedness partly explains her remarkable popularity as a socialist icon and its continued resonance in movies, novels and memorials dedicated to her life and oeuvre.
Gammel also notes that for Luxemburg "the revolution was a way of life" but that the letters also challenge the stereotype of "Red Rosa" as a ruthless fighter.[34] However,The Accumulation of Capital sparked angry accusations from theCommunist Party of Germany. In 1923,Ruth Fischer andArkadi Maslow denounced the work as "errors", a derivative work of economic miscalculation known as "spontaneity".[35]
Luxemburg continued to identify as Polish and disliked living in Germany, which she saw as a political necessity, making various negative comments aboutGerman culture during the German Empire in her private correspondence written in Polish. At the same time, she loved the works ofJohann Wolfgang von Goethe and showed an appreciation forGerman literature. However, she also preferred Switzerland to Berlin and greatly missed the Polish language andculture.[36][9]
When Luxemburg moved to Germany in May 1898, she had settled in Berlin. She was active there in the left wing of the SPD in which she sharply defined the border between the views of her faction and therevisionism theory of Eduard Bernstein. She attacked him in her brochureSocial Reform or Revolution?, released in September 1898. Luxemburg's rhetorical skill made her a leading spokesperson in denouncing the SPD'sreformist parliamentary course. She argued that the critical difference betweencapital andlabour could only be countered if theproletariat assumedpower and effectedrevolutionary changes inmethods of production. She wanted the revisionists ousted from the SPD. That did not occur, but Kautsky's leadership retained a Marxist influence on its programme.[37]
From 1900, Luxemburg published analyses of contemporary European socio-economic problems in newspapers. Foreseeing war, she vigorously attacked what she saw as Germanmilitarism andimperialism.[38] Luxemburg wanted a general strike to rouse the workers to solidarity and prevent the coming war. However, the SPD leaders refused and she broke with Kautsky in 1910. Between 1904 and 1906, she was imprisoned for her political activities on three occasions inBarnimstrasse women's prison.[39] In 1907, she went to theRussian Social Democrats' Fifth Party Day inLondon, where she met Lenin. At the socialistSecond International Congress inStuttgart, herresolution demanding that all European workers' parties should unite in attempting to stop the war was accepted.[38]
Luxemburg taught Marxism and economics at the SPD's Berlin training centre. Her former studentFriedrich Ebert became the SPD leader and later theWeimar Republic's first President. In 1912, Luxemburg was the SPD representative at the European Socialists' congresses.[40] With French socialistJean Jaurès, Luxemburg argued that European workers' parties should organise a general strike when war broke out. In 1913, she told a large meeting: "If they think we are going to lift the weapons of murder against our French and other brethren, then we shall shout: 'We will not do it!'" However, when nationalist crises in theBalkans erupted into violence and then the war in 1914, there was no general strike and the SPD majority supported the war as did theFrench Socialists. TheReichstag unanimously agreed to finance the war. The SPD voted in favour of that and agreed to a truce (Burgfrieden) with the Imperial government and promised that SPD-controlledlabour unions would refrain fromstrike action for the duration of the war. This led Luxemburg to contemplate suicide as the revisionism she had fought since 1899 had triumphed.[40]
In response, Luxemburg organised anti-war demonstrations inFrankfurt, calling forconscientious objection tomilitary conscription and the refusal of soldiers to follow orders. On that account, she was imprisoned for a year for "inciting to disobedience against the authorities' law and order."
In August 1914, Luxemburg, along withKarl Liebknecht,Clara Zetkin, andFranz Mehring, founded the groupDie Internationale ("The International"), which became the Spartacus League in January 1916. They wrote and distributed what had been made illegal anti-war pamphletspseudonymously signedSpartacus, after the slave-liberatingThraciangladiator who led a slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Luxemburg's pseudonym was Junius, afterLucius Junius Brutus, the founder of theRoman Republic. The Spartacus League vehemently rejected the SPD's support in the Reichstag for fundingthe war and urged Germany'slabor unions to declare an anti-war general strike. As a result, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were imprisoned in June 1916 for two and a half years. During imprisonment, Luxemburg was twice relocated, first to Posen (now Poznań), then to Breslau (nowWrocław).
Luxemburg continued to write and friends secretly smuggled out and illegally published her articles. Among them wasDie Russische Revolution, criticising theBolsheviks and accusing them of seeking to impose atotalitariansingle party state upon the Soviet Union. In that context, she wrote her famous pronouncement onfreedom of expression, "Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters," ("Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der Andersdenkenden") in criticising Lenin and the Russian Revolution.[41] She added: "The public life of countries with limited freedom is so poverty-stricken, so miserable, so rigid, so unfruitful, precisely because, through the exclusion of democracy, it cuts off the living sources of all spiritual riches and progress."[42] Another article written in April 1915 when in prison and published and distributed illegally in June 1916 originally under the pseudonymJunius wasDie Krise der Sozialdemokratie (The Crisis of Social Democracy), also known as theJunius-Broschüre orThe Junius Pamphlet.[43]
According to Russian historianEdvard Radzinsky, "The Bolshevik envoy in Berlin began secretly purchasing arms for the German revolutionaries. A little while ago the Germans had been assisting revolution in Russia. Now Lenin was reciprocating. The Bolshevik embassy became the headquarters of the German revolution."[44]
In November 1918, the USPD and the SPD initially shared power in theCouncil of the People's Deputies, the revolutionary government set up following the 9 Novemberabdication of EmperorWilhelm II.[45] This took place during the early days of theGerman Revolution that began with theKiel mutiny, which sparked the establishment ofworkers' and soldiers' councils across most of Germany to put an end to World War I and to themonarchy. The SPD leaders tried to prevent the establishment of aRäterepublik (council republic) like thesoviets of the RussianRevolutions of 1905 and1917 by pushing for early elections to aconstituent assembly to determine Germany's future form of government. Only a small minority of the councils supported a soviet-style system.[46]
Luxemburg was freed from prison in Breslau on 8 November 1918, three days before thearmistice of 11 November 1918. One day later, Karl Liebknecht, who had also been freed from prison, proclaimed the Free Socialist Republic (Freie Sozialistische Republik) in Berlin.[47] He and Luxemburg reorganised the Spartacus League and foundedThe Red Flag (Die Rote Fahne) newspaper, demanding amnesty for allpolitical prisoners and the abolition ofcapital punishment in the essayAgainst Capital Punishment.[13] On 14 December 1918, they published the new programme of the Spartacus League.
Following the arrival of Soviet emissary andmilitary advisorKarl Radek, between 29 and 31 December 1918 a joint congress of the League, independent socialists and the International Communists of Germany (IKD) took place with Radek's involvement. During the conference, Luxemburg continued to denounce theRed Terror andcensorship in the Soviet Russia. She also accused both Lenin and the Bolsheviks of havingpolice state aspirations. She further expressed shame that her former colleague and friend,Felix Dzerzhinsky, had agreed to head theCheka, the then Soviet security agency, and asked Radek to convey her opinions about all these matters to thePolitburo in Moscow.[48]
This same conference, however, ultimately led to the foundation on 1 January 1919 of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. Luxemburg supported the new KPD's participation in theWeimar National Assembly that founded the Weimar Republic, but she was out-voted and the KPD boycotted the elections.[49]
Leading up to the January 1919 struggle for power with the SPD, the improvisedSpartacist Uprising began in Berlin. Luxemburg spoke at the founding conference of the German Communist Party on 31 December 1918:
The progress of large-scale capitalist development during seventy years has brought us so far that today we can seriously set about destroying capitalism once and for all. No, still more; today we are not only in a position to perform this task, its performance is not only a duty toward the proletariat, but its solution offers the only means of saving human society from destruction.[50]
Like Liebknecht, Luxemburg supported the violentputsch attempt.[51] In a complete reversal of her previous demands for "unrestrictedfreedom of the press",[52]The Red Flag called for the KPD to violently occupy the editorial offices of the anti-Spartacist press and later, all other positions of power.[51] On 8 January, Luxemburg'sRed Flag printed a public statement by her, in which she called forrevolutionary violence and no negotiations with the revolution's "mortal enemies", the SPD-ledRepublican Government of Friedrich Ebert andPhilipp Scheidemann.[53]
In response to the uprising, Luxemburg's former student, German Chancellor and SPD leader Ebert ordered theFreikorps to suppress the Soviet-backed attempt at revolution, which was successfully crushed by 11 January 1919.[54] Meanwhile, Luxemburg'sRed Flag falsely claimed that the rebellion was spreading across Germany.[55]
Luxemburg and Liebknecht were taken prisoner in Berlin on 15 January 1919 by theGuards Cavalry Rifle Division of theFreikorps (Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision).[56] The unit'sofficer commanding, CaptainWaldemar Pabst, with LieutenantHorst von Pflugk-Harttung, questioned them under torture and then, following an alleged telephone call to Defense MinisterGustav Noske, issued orders tosummarily execute both prisoners. Luxemburg was first knocked down with a rifle butt byPrivate Otto Runge, then shot once, in the back of the head, either by LieutenantKurt Vogel or by LieutenantHermann Souchon.[57] Her body was then dumped in Berlin'sLandwehr Canal.[58] In what the militantlyantisemitic Pabst later claimed was a gesture of grudging respect for his non-Jewish ancestry,[59] Liebknecht was executed byfiring squad in theTiergarten. His body, without any identification, was then dumped outside the railings of theBerlin Zoo. According to historianRobert Service:
The symbolism was intentional. The enemies of the Spartacists looked on them as being less than human. Dogs were being given a dog's death. The Spartacists leaders met their ends with courage and dignity. Of their leaders, only Thalheimer and Levi survived, and it was Levi who delivered the funeral oration for Luxemburg on 2 February. Radek went into hiding.[60]
Luxemburg's last known words written on the evening of her execution were about her belief in the masses and what she saw as the inevitability of a triumphant revolution:[61]
The contradiction between the powerful, decisive, aggressive offensive of the Berlin masses on the one hand and the indecisive, half-hearted vacillation of the Berlin leadership on the other is the mark of this latest episode. The leadership failed. But a new leadership can and must be created by the masses and from the masses. The masses are the crucial factor. They are the rock on which the ultimate victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were up to the challenge, and out of this "defeat" they have forged a link in the chain of historic defeats, which is the pride and strength of international socialism. That is why future victories will spring from this "defeat"."Order prevails in Berlin!" You foolish lackeys! Your "order" is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will "rise up again, clashing its weapons," and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!
The executions of Luxemburg and Liebknecht were the beginning of a new wave ofparamilitary warfare in Berlin and across Germany. Thousands of members of the KPD as well as other revolutionaries and civilians were killed, often ascollateral damage. Finally, the People's Navy Division (Volksmarinedivision) and workers' and soldiers' unions, which had moved to the politicalfar left, were disbanded.[62]
The last part of the German Revolution saw many instances of armed violence and strike action throughout Germany. Significant strikes occurred in Berlin, theBremen Soviet Republic,Saxony,Saxe-Gotha, Hamburg, theRhinelands and theRuhr region. Last to strike was theBavarian Soviet Republic which was suppressed on 2 May 1919.
More than four months after the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, on 1 June 1919, Luxemburg's corpse was found and identified after an autopsy at theCharité hospital in Berlin.[56]
For his part in Luxemburg's murder, Private Runge was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for attemptedmanslaughter and Lieutenant Vogel to two years and four months for failing to report a corpse. However, Vogel escaped after a brief period in custody, with the help ofWilhelm Canaris. Captain Pabst and Lieutenant Souchon were never prosecuted.[63] TheNazis later compensated Private Runge for having been jailed, but he died in Berlin inNKVD custody after the end ofWorld War II.[64] The Nazis also later merged theGarde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision into theSA. In an interview with German news magazineDer Spiegel in 1962 and again in his memoirs, Captain Pabst alleged that Defence Minister Noske and Weimar Republic Chancellor Ebert had both covertly approved of his actions, but his account has not been confirmed, nor has his case been examined by the Parliament or Courts of Germany. In 1993, Gietinger's research on his access to the previously restricted papers of Pabst, held at the Federal Military Archives, found him as central to the planning of the murder of Luxemburg and the shielding of those who had acted under his orders from subsequent criminal prosecution.[65]
Shortly after Luxemburg's death, her fame was alluded to byGrigory Zinoviev at thePetrograd Soviet on 18 January 1919, supporting her assessment of Bolshevism.[62]
Lenin posthumously praised Luxemburg as an "eagle" of the working class, and stated that her work would serve as an example to other socialist revolutionaries.[67]
Russian revolutionaryLeon Trotsky also publicly mourned Luxemburg's and Liebknecht's deaths.[68] In later years, Trotsky frequently defended Luxemburg, claiming that Joseph Stalin had vilified her.[13] In the article "Hands Off Rosa Luxemburg!", Trotsky criticised Stalin for this despite what Trotsky perceived as Luxemburg's theoretical errors, writing: "Yes, Stalin has sufficient cause to hate Rosa Luxemburg. But all the more imperious therefore becomes our duty to shield Rosa's memory from Stalin's calumny that has been caught by the hired functionaries of both hemispheres, and to pass on this truly beautiful, heroic, and tragic image to the young generations of the proletariat in all its grandeur and inspirational force."[69]
In the city of Berlin aLiebknecht-Luxemburg-Demonstration, shortened toLL-Demo, is organised annually in the month of January around the date of their death. This demonstration takes place on the second weekend of the month inBerlin-Friedrichshain, starting near theFrankfurter Tor and then to their graves in the central cemeteryFriedrichsfelde, also known as theGedenkstätte der Sozialisten (Socialist Memorial).[70] InEast Germany, the event was widely considered to be a mere show forSocialist Unity Party of Germany politicians and celebrities, which was broadcast live on state television.[71]
During thePeaceful Revolution, the annual parade inEast Berlin honoring the deaths of Liebknecht and Luxemburg was used by East Germandissidents as part of their campaign, "to raise their unwelcome demands at embarrassing moments for the regime." On 17 January 1988, as PremierErich Honecker was reviewing the parade, a group of dissidents broke through the ranks of theFree German Youth and unfurled banners bearing an infamous dictum fromDie Russische Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg's book-length denunciation of bothauthoritarian socialism andcensorship in the Soviet Union,"Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der Andersdenkenden" ("Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters").[41] Viewers of the parade were then subjected to the ironic sight of East GermanStasi agents beating and arresting anyone who brandished the slogan.[72]
In January 2019, the German left-wing parties commemorated the 100th anniversary of the summary execution of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.[73][74][75]
Luxemburg (fourth from left against bookcase) among attendees at theSPD party school in 1907
Luxemburg initially professed a commitment to democracy and the necessity of revolution. Luxemburg's idea of democracy whichStanley Aronowitz calls "generalized democracy in an unarticulated form" represents Luxemburg's greatest break with "mainstream communism" since it effectively diminishes the role of thecommunist party, but it, similar to the views ofKarl Marx, states that the working class must "emancipate" themselves without a higher authority.[76]
Early on, Luxemburg attacked thetotalitarian tendencies present in theRussian Revolution claiming that without democratic institutions and protections, "life dies out in every public institution" and further claimed that such a lack of freedoms would lead to a "dictatorship of a handful of politicians".[52]
Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of "justice" but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when "freedom" becomes a special privilege. [...] But socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land after the foundations of socialist economy are created; it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism.
In an article published just before the October Revolution, Luxemburg characterised the RussianFebruary Revolution of 1917 as a "revolution of the proletariat" and said that the "liberalbourgeoisie" were pushed to movement by the display of "proletarian power". The task of the Russian proletariat, she explained, was now to end the "imperialist" world war in addition to struggling against the "imperialist bourgeoisie". The world war made Russia ripe for asocialist revolution. Therefore, "the German proletariat are also [...] posed a question of honour, and a very fateful question".[77] However, in several works, including an essay written from jail and published posthumously by her last companionPaul Levi (publication of which precipitated his expulsion from theThird International), titledThe Russian Revolution, Luxemburg sharply criticised some Bolshevik policies such as their suppression of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 following the October Revolution and their policy of supporting the purported right of all national peoples to self-determination. According to Luxemburg, the Bolsheviks' strategic mistakes created tremendous dangers for the Revolution such as its bureaucratisation.[citation needed] She wrote that the shortcomings of the October Revolution reflected a period of "complete failure of the international proletariat".[78] Luxemburg further stated:[79]
The awkward position that the Bolsheviks are in today, however, is, together with most of their mistakes, a consequence of basic insolubility of the problem posed to them by the international, above all the German, proletariat. To carry out the dictatorship of the proletariat and a socialist revolution in a single country surrounded by reactionary imperialist rule and in the fury of the bloodiest world war in human history – that is squaring the circle. Any socialist party would have to fail in this task and perish – whether or not it made self-renunciation the guiding star of its policies.
Bolshevik theorists such as Lenin and Trotsky responded to this criticism by arguing that Luxemburg's notions wereclassical Marxist ones, but they could not be applied to Russia of 1917. They stated that the lessons of actual experience such as the confrontation with the bourgeois parties had forced them to revise the Marxian strategy. As part of this argument, it was pointed out that after Luxemburg herself got out of jail, she was also forced to confront the National Assembly in Germany, a step they compared with their own conflict with the Russian Constituent Assembly.[80]
Following her observation of the October Revolution, Luxemburg claimed that it was the "historic responsibility" of the German workers to carry out a revolution for themselves and thereby end the war.[81] When the German Revolution began, Luxemburg immediately started to agitate for a social revolution[82] which she claimed would mitigate the negative consequences of the Bolshevik revolution.[79]
According to Aronowitz, the vagueness of "Luxemburgian" democracy is one reason for its initial difficulty in gaining widespread support. Luxemburg herself clarified her position on democracy in her writings regarding the Russian Revolution and theSoviet Union.[citation needed]
The Accumulation of Capital was the only work Luxemburg officially published on economics during her lifetime. In the polemic, she argued that capitalism needs to constantly expand into non-capitalist areas in order to access new supply sources, markets for surplus value and reservoirs of labour.[83] According to Luxemburg, Marx had made an error inDas Kapital in that the proletariat could not afford to buy the commodities they produced and by his own criteria it was impossible for capitalists to make a profit in a closed-capitalist system since the demand for commodities would be too low and therefore much of the value of commodities could not be transformed into money. According to Luxemburg, capitalists sought to realise profits through offloading surplus commodities onto non-capitalist economies, hence the phenomenon of imperialism as capitalist states sought to dominate weaker economies. However, this was leading to the destruction of non-capitalist economies as they were increasingly absorbed into the capitalist system. With the destruction of non-capitalist economies, there would be no more markets to offload surplus commodities onto and capitalism would break down.[84]
The Accumulation of Capital was harshly criticised by both Marxist and non-Marxist economists on the grounds that her logic was circular in proclaiming the impossibility of realising profits in a close-capitalist system and that herunderconsumptionist theory was too crude.[84] Her conclusion that the limits of the capitalist system drive it to imperialism and war led Luxemburg to a lifetime of campaigning against militarism and colonialism.[83]
TheDialectic of Spontaneity and Organisation was the central feature of Luxemburg's political philosophy, whereinspontaneity is agrassroots approach to organising aclass struggle, and organisation is a top-down orvanguardist approach to organising a class struggle. She argued that spontaneity and organisation are not separable or separate activities, but different moments of one political process as one does not exist without the other. These beliefs arose from her view that class struggle evolves from an elementary, spontaneous state to a democratic organisation.[85] Luxemburg developed theDialectic of Spontaneity and Organisation under the influence of mass strikes in Europe, especially the Russian Revolution of 1905.[86] Unlike the social democratic orthodoxy of the Second International, she regarded the organisation of a socialist movement as a temporary means to worker enlightenment:
Social democracy is simply the embodiment of the modern proletariat's class struggle, a struggle which is driven by a consciousness of its own historic consequences. The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process. The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.[87]
She insisted on setting the class struggle in its historical context, writing "the modern proletarian class does not carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress."[88]
Róża Luksemburg Electric Lamp Manufacturing Plant, Warsaw, 1970sA statue of Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin
In spite of her own Polish nationality and strong ties to Polish culture, her opposition to the independence of theSecond Polish Republic and later criticism from Stalinists have made her a controversial historical figure in the modernThird Polish Republic's political discourse.[7][8][9]
During thePolish People's Republic, a manufacturing facility of electric lamps in theWola district of Warsaw (Polish capital and the place where Luxemburg was raised and grew up), was established and named as theZakłady Wytwórcze Lamp Elektrycznych im. Róży Luksemburg(pl). After the transformation and change of regime, the factory was privatised in 1991 and then split up into four different companies; the factory buildings were sold by 1993 and fell into disuse in 1994.[89]
A street inSzprotawa used to be named after Luxemburg (ulica Róży Luksemburg) until it was changed toulica Różana (Rose street) in September 2018.[90] Many other streets and locations in Poland either used to be or still are named after her, such as those in Warsaw,Gliwice,Będzin, Szprotawa,Lublin,Polkowice,Łódź, etc.[91][92][93][94][95]
Efforts to put up commemorative plaques in her memory have taken place in a number of Polish cities, such as Poznań and her birthplace Zamość. A 45-minute-long sightseeing tour around areas associated with the life of the Polish revolutionary was organised in Warsaw in 2019, where a statue of her by Alfred Jesion was also put on display at the Warsaw Citadel as part of the Gallery of Polish Sculpture of the 1950s.[92]
The commemorative plaque in Poznań, on the building where she lived in during May 1903, was vandalised with paint in 2013.[96] An official petition was started in 2021 to name a square in Wrocław after her, but the local government rejected the proposal.[97]
Luxemburg collected plant specimens from 1913 up to her death. She had a lifelong interest in botany and the natural world.[98] This was especially true when she was isolated during her imprisonments, during which time working on the herbarium was critical to her wellbeing, an escape from a harsh reality, and a connection to the outside world.[23] Holger Politt, one of the editors of the 2016 book,Rosa Luxemburg: Herbarium,[99] said, "Collecting and identifying plants helped her hold on to sanity. It was therapeutic to her; she couldn't have coped without it".[22]
Luxemburg's personal herbarium, which comprises 18 notebooks, is placed at the Archive of Modern Records in Warsaw, Poland.[98] It contains 377 different plant specimens that she collected or that were sent to her by friends and acquaintances, and are mostly of cultivated and common species.[98] Each sheet features one to three different plants, which are identified using German and Latin species names and family names, and often also have handwritten botanical descriptions, as well as the collection location and date.[98] Luxemburg collected the plants from a range of places, including theAlps, theSudety Mountains, and also in or near the prisons in Berlin,Wronki, and Wrocław (Breslau). The latter include plants from the prison vegetable garden or prison flowerbeds which she herself had planted.[98]
Red Rosa now has vanished too, And where she lies is hid from view. She told the poor what life's about, And so the rich have rubbed her out. May she rest in peace.
The famous Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, originally named Monument to the November Revolution (Revolutionsdenkmal) which was designed by pioneering modernist and laterBauhaus directorLudwig Mies van der Rohe and built in 1926 in Berlin-Lichtenberg[100] and destroyed in 1935. The memorial took the form of asuprematist composition of brick masses. Van der Rohe said: "As most of these people [Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and other fallen heroes of the Revolution] were shot in front of a brick wall, a brick wall would be what I would build as a monument". The commission came about through the offices ofEduard Fuchs, who showed a proposal featuringDoric columns and medallions of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, prompting Mies' laughter and the comment "That would be a good monument for a banker". The monument was destroyed by the Nazis after they took power.
In 1951, Liebknecht and Luxemburg were honoured with symbolic graves at theMemorial to the Socialists (German:Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten) in the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery.
In the former East Germany and East Berlin, various places were named for Luxemburg by the East German communist party. These include theRosa-Luxemburg-Platz and aU-Bahn station which were located in East Berlin during theCold War.
An engraving on the nearby pavement reads "Ich war, ich bin, ich werde sein" ("I was, I am, I will be"). TheVolksbühne (People's Theatre) is also on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
Following the 1989 Peaceful Revolution andGerman reunification, CDU delegates on the Berlin city council recommended renaming all streets and squares honoring Marx,August Bebel, Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin. In a rare moment of agreement, bothPDS and SPD delegates balked at this and the battle became so heated that an independent commission was appointed to advise on the question. The commission ultimately recommended the compromise, "that Communists who had died too soon to help bring Weimar down, or the GDR up, should not be purged". For this reason, both streets and squares in the former East Berlin continue to bear Rosa Luxemburg's name.[101]
Dresden has a street and streetcar stop named after Luxemburg. The names remained unchanged after German reunification.
At the edge of theTiergarten on theKatharina-Heinroth-Ufer which runs between the southern bank of the Landwehr Canal and the borderingZoologischer Garten (Zoological Garden), a memorial has been installed by a private initiative. On the memorial, the name Rosa Luxemburg appears in raised capital letters, marking the spot where her body was thrown into the canal byFreikorps troops.
Feminists, Trotskyists, and other leftists in Germany especially show interest in Luxemburg's ideas. Distinguished modern Marxist thinkers such asErnest Mandel, who has even been characterised as Luxemburgist, have seen Luxemburg's thought as a corrective to traditional revolutionary theory.[102] In 2002, ten thousand people marched in Berlin for Luxemburg and Liebknecht and another 90,000 people laidcarnations on their graves.[103]
Opponents and critics of the far-left have often had a very different interpretation of Luxemburg's murder. Russian historian Edvard Radzinsky has gone on the record as a very harsh critic of the Soviet Government for spending so much money abroad to fund the efforts of those like Liebknecht and Luxemburg to covertly destabilise and overthrow the Weimar Republic and other Western Governments. In the Soviet Union during the same time, mass starvation was taking place as a result of theRussian Civil War (including theRussian famine of 1921). According to Radzinsky, "StarvingMoscow was feeding the Communist Parties of the whole world. People were swollen with hunger, but never mind, theworld revolution was at hand."[104] Conversely, Stalin denounced Luxemburg posthumously in 1932 as a "Trotskyist".[105][106]
AsAlexander Kerensky and the former Tsarist officer corps had fatally failed to unite for long enough to stop Lenin from seizing power in 1917,anti-communist Russian refugees living in the Weimar Republic occasionally expressed envy for the success of the SPD and theFreikorps in temporarily setting aside their political differences, even for just long enough to defeat the Spartacus Uprising, which was seen as an attempted German equivalent to theBolshevik Revolution.[107] In a 1922 conversation withCount Harry Kessler, one such refugee lamented:[107]
Infamous, that fifteen thousand Russian officers should have let themselves be slaughtered by the Revolution without raising a hand in self-defense! Why didn't they act like the Germans, who killed Rosa Luxemburg in such a way that not even a smell of her has remained?
Due to Luxemburg's importance in the development of theories ofMarxist humanist thought, the role of democracy and mass action to achieve international socialism as a pioneering advocate of workers' rights, gender equality, and as a martyr to her cause, she has become a minor iconic figure,[108][109] celebrated with references in popular culture. The night of his death,Rainer Werner Fassbinder was working on a script about Luxemberg.[110]
Simon Louvish's 1994 alternate history novelThe Resurrections (fromFour Walls Eight Windows, a revision ofResurrections from the Dustbin of History: A Political Fantasy), had Luxemburg and Liebknecht avoid death, their revolution becoming reality in 1923 when a failed Reichstag coup byGregor and Otto Strasser (plotted by theBlack Reichswehr'sBruno Ernst Buchrucker) killedGustav Stresemann,Wilhelm Cuno,Hans von Seeckt and 17 deputies followed by the Marxists creating a Berlin commune whose squads executed the Strassers and any Nazis not already in exile, the Reichswehr then disarming theFreikorps and accepting a German Soviet Republic's legitimacy, with Liebknecht asMinister of the Interior.[120]
German artist Max Beckmann in his post WWI lithograph Das Martyrium depicts Luxemburg's murder as a sexual assault, her clothes torn, her underwear revealed, one soldier fondling her left breast; another smirking while aiming his rifle butt at her right breast, the hotel manager holding her legs apart. There is no historical justification for this depiction. Tellini in Woman's Art Journal 1997 argues both the sensationalising aspect of graphic sexual assault as well as the artist'smisogyny were probably responsible.[124]
The feminist magazineLux, which began in 2020, says that it is named for Rosa Luxemburg, describing her as "one of the most creative minds to remake the socialist tradition".[125]
Canadian authorKyo Maclear wrote in her 2017 bookBirds, Art, Life: A year of observation about the pleasure that Luxemburg took when she was in prison from hearing and seeing birds, based on Luxemburg's letters from prison.[126]
1919 photo of the graves of Luxemburg andKarl LiebknechtGrave of Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin
On 29 May 2009,Spiegel Online, the internet branch of the news magazineDer Spiegel, reported the recently considered possibility that someone else's remains had mistakenly been identified as Luxemburg's and buried as hers.[56]
Theforensic pathologist Michael Tsokos, head of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences at the Berlin Charité, discovered a preserved corpse lacking head, feet, or hands in the cellar of the Charité's medical history museum. He found the corpse's autopsy report suspicious and decided to perform aCT scan on the remains. The body showed signs of having been waterlogged at some point and the scans showed that it was the body of a woman of 40–50 years of age who suffered fromosteoarthritis and had legs of differing length, as Luxemburg had. A laboratory inKiel also tested the corpse usingradiocarbon dating techniques and confirmed that it dated from the same period as Luxemburg's murder.
The originalautopsy, performed on 13 June 1919 on the body that was eventually buried atFriedrichsfelde, showed certain inconsistencies that supported Tsokos' hypothesis. The autopsy explicitly noted an absence of hip damage and stated that there was no evidence that the legs were of different lengths. Additionally, the autopsy showed no traces on the upper skull of the two blows by rifle butt inflicted upon Luxemburg. Finally, while the 1919 examiners noted a hole in the corpse's head between the left eye and ear, they did not find an exit wound or the presence of a bullet within the skull.
Assistant pathologist Paul Fraenckel appeared to doubt at the time that the corpse he had examined was Luxemburg's and in a signed addendum distanced himself from his colleague's conclusions. This addendum and the inconsistencies between the autopsy report and the known facts persuaded Tsokos to examine the remains more closely. According to eyewitnesses, when Luxemburg's body was thrown into the canal, weights were wired to her ankles and wrists. These could have slowly severed her extremities in the months her corpse spent in the water which would explain the missing hands and feet issue.[56]
Tsokos realised thatDNA testing was the best way to confirm or deny the identity of the body as Luxemburg's. His team had initially hoped to find traces of theDNA on old postage stamps that Luxemburg had licked, but it transpired that Luxemburg had never done this, preferring to moisten stamps with a damp cloth. The examiners decided to look for a surviving blood relative and in July 2009 the German Sunday newspaperBild am Sonntag reported that a great-niece of Luxemburg had been located – a 79-year-old woman named Irene Borde. She donated strands of her hair for DNA comparison.[127]
In December 2009, Berlin authorities seized the corpse to perform an autopsy before burying it in Luxemburg's grave.[128] The Berlin Public Prosecutor's office announced in late December 2009 that while there were indications that the corpse was Luxemburg's, there was not enough evidence to provide conclusive proof. In particular, DNA extracted from the hair of Luxemburg's niece did not match that belonging to the cadaver. Tsokos had earlier said that the chances of a match were only 40%. The remains were to be buried at an undisclosed location while testing was to continue on tissue samples.[129]
The Accumulation of Capital, translated by Agnes Schwarzschild in 1951. Routledge Classics 2003 edition. Originally published asDie Akkumulation des Kapitals in 1913.
The Accumulation of Capital: an Anticritique, written in 1915.
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^Leszek Kołakowski ([1981], 2008),Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 2: The Golden Age, W. W. Norton & Company, Ch III: "Rosa Luxemburg and the Revolutionary Left".
^abTych, Feliks (2018). "Przedmowa" [Preface]. In Wielgosz, Przemysław (ed.).O rewolucji: 1905, 1917 [On revolution: 1905, 1917] (in Polish). Instytut Wydawniczy "Książka i Prasa". pp. 7–29.ISBN978-8365304599.
^J. P. Nettl,Rosa Luxemburg, Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 54–55.
^abTych, Feliks (2018). "Przedmowa". In Wielgosz, Przemysław (ed.).O rewolucji: 1905, 1917. Instytut Wydawniczy "Książka i Prasa". p. 18.ISBN978-8365304599.
^abLuksemburg, Róża (July 1893). "O wynaradawianiu (Z powodu dziesięciolecia rządów jen.-gub. Hurki)".Sprawa Robotnicza.
^Weber, Hermann;Herbst, Andreas."Luxemburg, Rosa".Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved16 January 2019.
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^Tych, Feliks (2018). "Przedmowa". In Wielgosz, Przemysław (ed.).O rewolucji: 1905, 1917. Instytut Wydawniczy "Książka i Prasa". pp. 13–14.ISBN978-8365304599.
^abcTych, Feliks (2018). "Przedmowa". In Wielgosz, Przemysław (ed.).O rewolucji: 1905, 1917. Instytut Wydawniczy "Książka i Prasa". p. 14.ISBN978-8365304599.
^abTych, Feliks (2018). "Przedmowa". In Wielgosz, Przemysław (ed.).O rewolucji: 1905, 1917. Instytut Wydawniczy "Książka i Prasa". p. 15.ISBN978-8365304599.
^Tych, Feliks (2018). "Przedmowa". In Wielgosz, Przemysław (ed.).O rewolucji: 1905, 1917. Instytut Wydawniczy "Książka i Prasa". p. 16.ISBN978-8365304599.
^abcTych, Feliks (2018). "Przedmowa". In Wielgosz, Przemysław (ed.).O rewolucji: 1905, 1917. Instytut Wydawniczy "Książka i Prasa". p. 17.ISBN978-8365304599.
^Weitz, Eric D. (1994). "'Rosa Luxemburg Belongs to Us!'". German Communism and the Luxemburg Legacy.Central European History (27: 1), pp. 27–64.
^abKate Evans,Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg, New York, Verso, 2015
^Weitz, Eric D. (1997).Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
^Altmann, Gerhard (11 April 2000)."Der Rat der Volksbeauftragten" [Council of the People's Deputies].Deutsches Historisches Museum (in German). Retrieved1 May 2024.
^Scriba, Arnulf (15 August 2015)."Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte" [Workers' and Soldiers' Councils].Deutsches Historisches Museum (in German). Retrieved28 February 2024.
^Robert Service (2012),Spies and Commissars: The Early Years of the Russian Revolution, Public Affairs Books. pp. 171–173.
^Luban, Ottokar (2017).The Role of the Spartacist Group after 9 November 1918 and the Formation of the KPD In Hoffrogge, Ralf; LaPorte, Norman (eds.).Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933. London: Lawrence & Wishart. pp. 45–65.
^Luxemburg, Rosa (2004). "Our Program and the Political Situation". In Hudis, Peter; Anderson, Kevin B. (eds.).The Rosa Luxemburg Reader. Monthly Review. p. 364.
^Maclear, Kyo (2017).Birds, Art, Life: A year of observation (First U.S. ed.). New York.ISBN978-1501154201.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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