On January 15, 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the finest brains of the German working class and its most heroic figures, were brutally murdered by the bloodthirsty, defeated German military, backed to the hilt by the cowardly social-democratic leaders. On this important anniversary, PETER TAAFFE looks at Luxemburg’s inspirational, revolutionary legacy.
But Rosa Luxemburg deserves special attention because of the colossal contribution she made to the understanding of Marxist ideas and their application to movements of the working class. Many have attacked Rosa Luxemburg for her ‘false methods’, particularly her alleged lack of understanding of the need for a revolutionary party and organization. Among them were Joseph Stalin and Stalinists in the past. Others claim her as their own because of her emphasis on the spontaneous role of the working class. That seems to correspond to an anti-party mood, particularly among the younger generation – a product of the revulsion at the bureaucratic heritage of Stalinism and its echoes in the ex-social democratic parties. But an all-sided analysis of Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas, taking into account the historical situation in which they developed, demonstrates that the claims of both these camps are false.
Luxemburg and Liebknecht are in the pantheon of Marxist greats. For her theoretical contribution alone, Rosa Luxemburg deserves to stand alongside Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Those who try and picture her as a critic of the Bolsheviks and the Russian revolution are entirely false. Initially she criticized the policies of the Bolsheviks in 1918, in isolation from her prison cell, but was persuaded not to publish her comments by her closest supporters at the time. Yet still in her most erroneous work she wrote of the Russian revolution and the Bolsheviks: "Everything that a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness, and consistency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure… Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian revolution; it was also the salvation of the honor of international socialism". Only malicious enemies of the heroic traditions of the Bolshevik party used this material after her death in an attempt to divide Luxemburg from Lenin, Trotsky, the Bolsheviks and Russian revolution.
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