The 15th of January marks the anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg,Marxist theorist, agitator, internationalist, philosopher, economist being shot and
murdered when her body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal in Berlin, by right wing troops opposed to the revolutionary movement that swept through Germany in the wake of the First World War.
Long has she continued to inspire..
Rosa Luxemburg was born on March 5, 1871, in the city of Zamosc, Poland,
then under control of czarist Russia. Her father, Eliasz Luxemburg, was
a prosperous timber trader, who had inherited his business from his
father, Abraham.
of Polish Jewish descent who
became a naturalized German citizen. Rosa’s mother was Lina Loewenstein, the daughter of a traditional rabbi
and sister of a Reform rabbi. Rosa, who grew up speaking German, Polish
and Yiddish, was the youngest of the couple’s five children. As a young
child, she suffered from a hip ailment, which left her permanently
afflicted with a limp.
During Poland’s 1863 uprising against Russian rule, Eliasz supplied the
independence movement with weapons, so that for several years after the
revolt’s failure, he had to remain in hiding from czarist authorities.
In 1873, the family moved with him to Warsaw, where Rosa attended the
gymnasium.
Even during high school, Rosa was drawn to politics, becoming active in
the Proletariat party, a forerunner to the Polish Socialist party. After
several of her comrades in the party were arrested and executed, she
decided to pursue her higher education in Switzerland.
Luxemburg began at the University of Zurich as a student of zoology but ended up focusing on economics, philosophy and law. Throughout her political career, Luxemburg consistently opposed Polish
nationalism, believing that socialist action had to take place on the
international level, and that a separate revolution in Poland would be
self-defeating.
Similarly, she was opposed to Jewish nationalism or separatism. Though
she was sensitive to the problem of anti-Semitism, she was sure it would
disappear with the overthrow of capitalism. since 1899,she became an important figure in the world socialist movement, and became involved in the international organisation of workers overcoming physical infirmity and the prejudice she faced as a Jew to become an active revolutionary whose philosophy enriched every corner of an incredibly productive and creative life.
After finishing her studies, Luxemburg moved to Germany, gaining citizenship via a marriage of convenience and became a member of the
Social Democrat Party of Germany (SPD), becoming a leader of the radical wing of the Party , however she broke with the SPD after it supported the
imperialist drive towards war, she believed in the build up to the First
World War that ' workers blood should not be shed in defence of the
capitalist system'.
Though Luxemburg was militant about the idea of proletarian revolution,
she was anti-militarist. She believed in democracy and was an outspoken
opponent of the Bolsheviks’ belief that a small cadre of bureaucrats
should made political decisions on behalf of the proletariat: Revolution
had to be political as well as economic, she felt.
Because of her socialist agitation during this
terrible war , she was imprisoned for it's duration, but after Germany's
defeat she was released, and with her friend Karl Liebnecht,
formed the anti war Spartacist league, and she assumed the leadership of the
radical independent socialists. Her will and her desire was to see an
end to all exploitation and oppression.
Her faith was a socialist idea that combined the powerful passion of
both mind and heart. She devoted herself to the cause of revolution,and
its preparation. She lived and breathed its fire, with selflessness and
devotion, in every waking moment she dedicated herself to its cause.
Standing bravely up for freedom with a strong powerful intellect. An
individualist, she formulated her own ideas, using her own words to
energise and radicalise the people and bring about a socialist
revolution. She argued that "
The mass strike is the first natural,
impulsive form of every great revolutionary struggle of the proletariat
and the more highly developed the antagonism is between capital and
labour, the more effective and decisive must mass strikes become. The
chief form of bourgeois revolutions, the fight at the barricades, the
open conflict with the armed poor of the state, is in the revolution
today only the culminating point, only a moment on the process of the
proletarian mass struggle."
She followed no leader, was no ones puppet and when she criticised
Lenin, it was in relation to dictatorial aspects. She said "
Terror has
not crushed us. How can you put your trust in terror."
She quoted Leon Trotsky saying "
As Marxists we have never been idol worshippers of formal democracy." She went on "
All that really means is: We have always distinquished the social
kernal of social inequality and lack of freedom hidden under the sweet
shell of formal equality and freedom - not in order to reject the latter
but to spur the working class into being satisfied with the shell, but
rather, by conquering political power, to create a socialist democracy to
replace bourgeois democracy - not to eliminate democracy
altogether....... 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 the construction of
socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the
Socialist party. It is the same thing as 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 political training of the mass of the people."
Possibly her believe in democracy is what failed her philosophically,
nevertheless the questions she posed still worth looking at today. She
also wrote "
the revolution is the sole form of war, and this is also
its most vital law - in which the final victory can be prepared only by a
sense of defeat.".
She had determination by the buckets and a steely willful commitment.She herself took part in revolutionary events , recognising the need
of a revolutionary party, which could unite and give a lead in a
revolutionary situation, seeing socialism as a movement of the
proletarian masses that should emphasise unity and equality rather than
highlight the oppression of any particular group, with an undogmatic
commitment to an unfinished notion of freedom that still appeals to
many people today.
In November 1918 after four years of war, German society crumbled both
at the front at home, and a revolutionary fervour swept the land, the
working class took to the streets in a series of strikes and the navy
mutinied., though critical with some demands of the revolutionary
movement, Rosa threw in her lot with her comrades, believing that she
could not simply wait on the sidelines. Subsequently on the night of January 15, 1919 she
and Liebnecht were abducted, tortured in the luxury Hotel Eden, and then driven seperately to the nearby Tiergarten Park and murdered, Liebknecht was delivered to the city morgue while Lixemburg was dumped into a canal. They were both 47.
Her body was only recovered five months later after the winter ice had thawed. She was buried next to Liebknecht in the Friedrichstelde Cemetery.
Famously on the evening of her murder almost certainly knowing that her fate was sealed she wrote.
'"
The leadership has failed. Even o, the leadership can and must be recreated from the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the decicive element, they are the rock on which the final victors of the revolution will be built. Order reigns in Berlin! Your 'order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will already raise itself with a rattle and announce with fanfare, to tour terror; I was, I am, I shall be!"
Today her ideas can be pressed into many meanings. There is a feminist
Rosa, an anarchist Rosa, then there is a red Rosa, but she remains an
icon in the truest sense of the word.She has become part of Germany's cultural memory, immortalised in art, poetry, an award winning biopic , a musical and a graphic novel. And in her own words too, a well as being a brilliant Marxist theorist. Luxemburg was a prolific writer of letters, and her emotive lyrical writing has seen her emerge as a literary figure in her own right.Here's to Red Rosa, lets hope her spirit is not forgotten. Peace, bread, roses,Her revolutionary socialist politics endure because the struggle against barbarism remain as relevant as ever.
Here is poem written by Bertolt Brecht in 1920 about Rosa.
About the drowned girl - Bertolt Brecht
As she drowned, she swam downwards and was borne,
From the smaller streams to the larger rivers,
In wonder the opal of the heavens shone,
As if wishing to placate the body that was hers.
Catching hold of her were the seaweed , the algae,
Slowly she became heavy as downwards she went,
Cool fish swam around her legs, freely,
Animals and plants weight to her body lent.
Dark light smoke in the evenings the heavens grew,
But early in the morning the stars dangled, there was light,
So that for her, there remained too,
Morning and evening, day and night.
Her cold body rotted in the waters there,
Slowly, step by step, god too forgot,
First her face, then her hands, and finally her hair
She became carrion of which the rivers have a lot.
Luxemburg and Liebknecht are commemorated every tear on the sexond Sunday of January when red flowers are scattered on their graves.
She was also much admired by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893 -1978), a muicologit, composer, poet and novelist, who gained little recognition for her poetry during her own lifetime, who once joked, ' I intend to be a posthumous poet!
Like Rosa Luxemburg, she was appalled by the militarim of the First World War. Here is her tribute to Rosa Luxemburg , first published in her 1925 collection
The Espalier.
I Bring Her a Flower
Sweet faith
Such looks of quiet hath
That those on whom she’s smiled
Lie down to sleep as easy as a child.
No night,
However dark, can fright
Them, no, nor day
To come, however bleak and fell, dismay.
But sound
Sleep they in prison-bound
As when at liberty
And if they wake, they wake in charity;
Like her,
Who rousing at the jar
Of weary foot in the rain
Pitied the wakeful sentry for his pain.
(1925)
Further Reading
Rosa Luxemburg: A reapraisal - Lelio Besco
Andre Deutsch, 1975.
Rosa Luxemburg: A life
- Elizvieta Ettinga , Beacon Press 1987.
The letters of Rosa Luxemburg, Verso
The essential Rosa Luxemburg :Reform or Revolution and the Mass Strike
Red Rosa;a Graphic biography of Rosa Luxemburg - Kate Evans. Verso
"
either capitalism will continue, with fresh wars and a rapid plunge
intp chaos and anarchy, or else capitalist exploitation will be
abolished." Rosa Luxemburg 14/12/18 Rote Fahne
"Revolutionary idealism .... can be maintained over any period
of time only through the intensely active life of the masses themselves
under conditions of unlimited freedom." Rosa Luxemburg
" Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be."Rosa Luxemburg
