Rosa Luxemburg: “The Revolution Will ‘Raise Itself up Again Clashing,’
and to Your Horror It Will Proclaim to the Sound
of Trumpets: I Was, I Am, I Shall Be”
Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing...
-Albert Einstein
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
-Voltaire
For
the worker committed to justice and revolutionary change, desks in private
spaces are hard to come by. Work is dome in cramped apartments or in
a prison cell. It is done on the run, sometimes underground. For Marxist
theorist and activist Rosa Luxemburg, it is done in spite of the bourgeoisie’s
interests in maintaining its relationship to the privileged power because
it is the work that articulates the demands of the poor and working
class that, to this day, represents a subversive activity.
Consequently, when the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) dismissed Rosa Luxemburg’s work, the SPD did so because, as Luxemburg documented in “Social Reform or Revolution” and in “Theory and Practice,” (The Rosa Luxemburg Reader
),
its leadership had already begun to “revise” Marxism in such a way as
to inform the working class that its demands and strategies for protest
were either inappropriate or illogical. It is not inappropriate or illogical
for the SPD to endorse an imperialist war, however.
The imperialist war and the SPD leadership’s support for it nearly broke Luxemburg. In Germany, conditions for workers and soldiers were grim. Working class families spent 52 percent of their income on food and 33 percent on necessities such as housing, heating, lights and clothing. Whatever was left went to school fees for the children, church, social and intellectual life, health, insurance, debt, and savings” (“Economic and Social Development,” Imperial Germany 1871-1918). [1] By May, 1916, Luxemburg received word that her friend and comrade, Karl Liebknecht, has been arrested:: “I tried with all the might of my fist to “free” him [when he was seized] and I pulled at him and at the policemen all the way to the police station, from which I was unceremoniously expelled” (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Sudende,] May 12, 1916, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg). [2] By August 1916, she was on the verge of suicide (The Reader).
That same month, she decides to organize a meeting in her apartment in opposition to the socialist “capitulation to imperialist war” and worsening conditions for citizens in Germany. Karl Liebknecht, who also opposed the war, (The Reader), joins the group. For this meeting on the evening on August 4th, Luxemburg had one goal: to think about how to disassociate socialism from “the betrayal” of the SPD.
By the end of this meeting, Luxemburg and Liebknecht and others had formed the Die Gruppe Internationale and the Die Internationale journal. It was this crucial event that “helped galvanize antiwar sentiment and led a year later to the formation of Spartacus Group.” Luxemburg breaks from “the political legacy” of the SPD and the editors of Vorwarts and New Zeit. She and Karl Liebknecht, are arrested and imprisoned, but the Die Gruppe Internationale, now the Spartacus League, moves underground and continues to find creative ways in which to wage an “illegal campaign” against the war, distributing pamphlets, many of which were written by an imprisoned Luxemburg.
What I am in favor of, in general, is that things should proceed slowly and thoroughly rather than hastily and superficially. It is an entire process of political schooling that must be gone through by the masses of our people, and that requires time. In such times of transition, patience is the duty of a political person and a leader, even if it is not a pleasant duty. Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Sudende,] March 9, 1916, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg
).
With the German Revolution now in full swing by November 1918, enlisted soldiers and masses of workers take to the streets, for the soldiers and workers knew, writes historian Gordon Craig, that “the war had been lost” (Germany 1866 - 1945
).
Radical workers’ groups emerge in the manufacturing centers of Berlin, Bremen, Braunschweig, Stuttgart,
and Hamburg (The Reader); these groups are inspired by the Spartacus
Group. While the war continues to drain the country’s resources, more
workers form workers’ councils.
In the streets, 300 workers in the Maybach motor construction plant in Friedrichshafen, Wurttemberg chant “‘The Kaiser is a scoundrel’” (Germany). At Kiel and in the capital of Bavaria, enlisted men form “sailors’ councils” at the navel base (Germany). As they react to the “crisis,” their uprising spreads throughout Germany. Prince Max dispatches Majority Socialist Gustav Noske to Kiel with orders to restore order!
And he does! Noske becomes the workers’ savior by proclaiming himself chairman of the sailors’ council at Kiel! Of course, Noske fulfills the workers most immediate demand: he releases their “imprisoned comrades” (Germany). Cheers to Noske! At the Imperial Palace, Noske is a hero too! Outmaneuvering “the most radical elements in the sailors’ movement,” (Germany) - how could he not be a hero to the New Order in Berlin!
But other workers persisted. “Within days there were the red flags of communism all over German cities. Revolutionary councils formed and radical slogans, displayed, all inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia," historian Michael Strurmer writes in The German Empire).
On November 5, 1918, workers at Germany’s largest navel base at Wilhelmshaven formed a sailors’ council and marched on the Rathaus in Hamburg. In Bavaria, Socialist journalist Kurt Eisner (previously the editor of Vorwarts - 1898-1905) overthrows the monarchy and occupies the seat of “power.”
Eisner sets up a cabinet of Independent and Majority Socialists, retaining the posts of Prime Minister and Foreign Minister for himself, promised that in due course a National Assembly would draft a constitution, and assigned the task of maintaining public order to councils that would be elected in the barracks, workshops, and villages. (Germany 1866-1945)
But “radical” Eisner is not the “law and order” Noske! [3]
By November 9, with continual outbreaks of workers in the streets, Prince Max resigns and acknowledges that the Emperor, too, and the Crown Prince intends to relinquish their right to the throne (Germany). The head of the Social Democratic Party, Friedrich Ebert, is to be named Reich Chancellor, “charged with the task of calling a Constituent Assembly to determine the form the new state should take.”
Ebert, according to Craig, initially opposes the formation of a republic but event are moving along too quickly. By that afternoon, Philipp Scheidemann, ranking member of the Majority Socialist executive, shouts: “Long live the great German Republic!” (Germany). Ebert and Scheidemann agree on one thing: Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and the Spartacus League are enemies of the new order just as they were enemies of the old order! As Gordon writes, the newly formed government recognized that of all the emerging workers’ organizations, the Spartacus League posed “a more serious threat for it possessed two outstanding leaders” in Luxemburg and Liebknecht (Germany). And Rosa Luxemburg knows why! In a letter to Clara Zetkin, [4] dated January 11, 1919, Luxemburg explains that “the ‘Spartacists’ are for the most part a fresh new generation, free of the stupefying traditions of the ‘grand old party, tried and true’” (Letters).
For the workers and, particularly Luxemburg, Ebert, appointed SPD head after Bebel died in 1913, as Luxemburg writes, was “the quintessential party man…as the enemy” (Germany). A former student of Luxemburg, he becomes one of the leaders of the SPD and a strong advocate against the rule of the workers - and of Rosa Luxemburg’s conviction to revolutionary change. [5]
How much I would prefer to travel to visit you! But that is out of the question, because I am chained to the editorial office, and every day I am there until midnight, at the printing presses to oversee the making up of the issue, and besides in these disturbed times the most urgent information and instructions that must be given still come in at 10 or 11 at night, and they must be responded to immediately. On top of that almost every day, from early in the morning, there are conferences and discussions, and public meetings in between, and as a change of pace every few days there come urgent warnings from ‘official sources’ that Karl and I are threatened by gangs of killers [Mordbuben], so that we are not supposed to sleep at home but must seek shelter somewhere else… (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin,] December 25, [1918], The Letters)
Luxemburg, released from prison in November 1918 once the German Revolution was underway, writes several keys works, mostly in Die Rote Fahne, (Red Flag), the Spartacus League publication. “What Does the Spartacus League Want?” (The Reader) is a document that articulates the workers’ demands rather than request from the Ebert-Scheidemann regime anything that it cannot and will not grant.
On November 9, workers and soldiers smashed the old German regime. The Prussian saber’s mania of world rule had bled to death on the battlefields of France. The gang of criminals who sparked a worldwide conflagration and drove Germany into an ocean of blood had come to the end of its rope. The people - betrayed for four years, having forgotten culture, honesty, and humanity in the service of the Moloch, available for every obscene deed - awoke from its four-year-long paralysis, only to face the abyss.
On November 9, the German proletariat rose up to throw off the shameful yoke. The Hohenzollerns were driven out; workers’ and soldiers’ councils were elected. But the Hohenzollerns were no more than the front men of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Junkers. The class rule of the bourgeoisie is the real criminal responsible for the World War, in Germany, as in France, in Russia as in England, in Europe as in America. The capitalists of all nations are the real instigators of the mass murder. International capital is the insatiable god Baal, into whose bloody maw millions upon millions of steaming human sacrifices are thrown. (“What Does the Spartacus League Want?”)
What do the people want?
The new Reich Chancellor receives a call from General Wilhelm Groener. The military was at the disposal of the new Chancellor. We are here and ready to do battle, to crack heads, arrest, torture, and to imprison, and to kill. We are ready to restore order! And Ebert detested violence! But not the violence of the State! That violence necessary to tame the workers into obedient slaves is at the disposal of the new Reich Chancellor! The imperialist regime, Craig writes, was determined, above all, that the scenes of violence and civil war that had accompanied the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia should not be repeated in Germany, and in order to prevent that he wanted to end the tumultuous transitional state into which Germany had fallen on 9 November by an act that would legitimize authority and restore the public law (Germany)
Ebert hesitates - but momentarily. [6]
In “peace,” when workers are obedient and slavish, willing to be exploited and to remain faithful to the capitalist rule, a capitalist crisis is averted. Law and order effectively controls potential “threats” with a little theorizing of its own in which the masses are “educated” to accept atrocities inflicted on others as business as usual. The normalization of murder and its cover up (Trayvon Martin, Rakia Boyd, and Kenneth Chamberlain) are isolated misunderstandings, if not provocations committed by the victims. Jackboots are ever present - for those who can see and who refuse to remain faithful to the narrative of authority and who are no longer fooled by the “change” only in the person sitting in the seat of “power.” Because then, when the masses see the corruption and atrocities at home and the waging wars of drones abroad, does the government declare a crisis afoot and demands the speedy and thorough disbursement of the jackboots in every nock and cranny of our social, political, and cultural environment.. And the people wonder then why they had not seen them before!
The government’s attempt to restore order (tyranny and fear) is a given. But what do we want?
It is the last week of Malcolm’s life, the last year of Dr. Martin L. King’s. It is Luxemburg’s last days on Earth. There is Malcolm’s unification and internationalism campaign and later King’s anti-war stance and promise to bring thousands of the nation’s workers and poor to Washington D.C. Rosa Luxemburg’s determination to organize and educate the masses. [7]
Tuesday! And now yesterday [that is, on December 25 during the day - this letter written around midnight at the end of Christmas] there was of course a ‘revolutionary disturbance’ again. There was an enormous demonstration [8] [and march] to the Imperial Palace, and then a section of the demonstrators spontaneously headed for the Vorwarts building and occupied it! An armored car and 18 machine guns were found inside! I was then called in a hurry to a session and didn’t get home here until 11:30 p.m. tonight. Today [on December 26] I have to go back into the city right away. And that’s how it’s been all these days. It remains that way, at least as I am writing this hasty greeting. (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin,] December 25 [1918], The Letters). [9]
In response to Ebert’s appointment to Reich Chancellor and Noske’s effect program to pacify the soldiers and workers, Luxemburg and Liebknecht formed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in January 1919. “The party is in complete disarray - Strobel, Haase, Bock (!), and Freiheitare openly demanding that a ‘line of demarcation be drawn against the left,’ which means against us…in the provinces the merger between the USPD and the Scheidemanns is in full swing” (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin,] December 25 [1918], The Letters).
At the founding conference of the German Communist Party, December 31, 1918, [10] Luxemburg delivers a speech in which she reminds the organizers that “revolution which will crown our work” does not happen overnight. Attention must be focused on fighting “step by step, hand-to-hand, in every province, in every city, in every village, in every municipality in order to take and transfer all the powers of the state bit by bit from the bourgeoisie to the workers’ and soldiers’ councils” (“Our program and the Political Situation,” The Reader). But Luxemburg adds, before we can proceed to impose the power of the workers, the members of our own Party and the proletarians in general must be educated. Even where workers’ and soldiers’ councils already exist, there is still a lack of consciousness of the purposes for which they exist. We must make the masses understand that the workers’ and soldiers’ council is in all senses the lever of the machinery of state, that it must take over all power and must unify the power in one stream - the socialist revolution.
She further warns:
The masses of workers who are already organized in workers’ and soldiers’ councils are still miles away from having adopted such an outlook, and only isolated proletarian minorities are clearly conscious of their tasks.
By mid-January, the Weimar Republic is formed:
The delegates who had been elected to the National Assembly in mid-January [1919] assembled a month later in Weimar, the home of Goethe and his patron Carl August and of the mighty poet who had sought to teach his countrymen that greatness should be defined not in terms of material power but of moral stature and devotion to liberty. (Germany)
Those in power play the familiar game of musical chairs. Ebert becomes Reichsprasident, Scheidemann, chancellor, and our “community activist” in Kiel, Gustav Noske, takes over the Ministry of Defense. What follows? - something very familiar to us in the 21st Century after the events of September 11, 2001. Article 48 of the Weimar constitution!
‘Should public order and safety be seriously disturbed or threatened, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public order and safety; in case of need, he may use armed force…and he may, for the time being, declare fundamental rights of the citizen to be wholly or partly in abeyance.’ (Germany)
The “Socialists” in power now declared the socialists / communists “evil doers,” agitators of the workers. Ebert and Noske called upon the Supreme Command to cleanse the Republic of the disease of liberty. Noske said he was up to the task. He turned to General Ludwig von Maercher, who in turn sent a memorandum to “former officers”: recruit volunteer forces!” Freedom-loving officers [11] and fellow citizens from “demobilized lieutenants and N.C.O.s who found it difficult to adjust to civilian life,” to university students, to adventurers, patriots and drifters (Germany) responded, swelling the ranks of the free corps (Freikorps).
To Luxemburg’s horror, not a few were pulled from the soldiers’ councils!
The sore spot in the revolutionary cause at this moment - the political immaturity of the masses of soldiers who, even now, are still letting themselves be misused by their officers for hostile, counterrevolutionary purposes (“Order Begins in Berlin,” The Reader).
This development, she continues, is “proof that a lasting victory of the revolution” is “not possible in this encounter.”
The Freikorps and the army under the command of the Ebert-Scheidemann government are crushing the Spartacus Uprising. Four days before she and Karl Liebknecht are captured, Luxemburg writes to Clara Zetkin about what she observes among the workers. Unfortunately, she declares, the workers are not sufficiently prepared for the brutality of the government’s armed thugs. But “the severe political crisis that we’ve experienced here in Berlin during all the past two weeks or even longer have blocked the way to the systematic organizational work of training our recruits” (January 11, 1919, The Letters). Nonetheless, she adds, “these events are a tremendous school for the masses.” [12]
White Terror! White Terror!
As Luxemburg acknowledges, the brutality of the Ebert-Scheidemann regime is a “shameless provocation,” and it may hand the revolution a defeat - but, she adds, without these “defeats” from “which we have drawn historical experience, knowledge, power, idealism,” where would we be today. There are lessons to be learned in defeat!
We gather as survivors and students and continue the Struggle - even while the middle class cheer on the counterrevolution’s reign of “white terror”!
But when the word “defeated” becomes a visible brand we sear onto our foreheads, and when we restore ourselves to sheephood, it is because our attention has been diverted, and we have begun to anticipate “Order reigns in Berlin,” “Order reigns in the U.S,” and we can no longer hear ourselves chanting”‘Down with Ebert and Scheidemann!” Down with capitalists thieves and liars! Because we are not chanting anything anymore.
‘Order reigns in Berlin,’ is the triumphant announcement of the bourgeois press, of Ebert and Noske, and of the officers of the “victorious troops,’ who are being cheered by the petty-bourgeois mob in the streets, waving their handkerchiefs and shouting hurrahs. The glory and the honor of the German Army has been saved in the eyes of history (“Order Reigns in Berlin,” The Reader).
Okay - order reigns! Peace is on the way!
“Revolutionary struggles are the direct opposite of parliamentary struggles,” Luxemburg warns. Although “revolutions have brought us nothing but defeat until now…these unavoidable defeats are only heaping guarantee upon guarantee of the coming final triumph. On one condition, she writes,
the question arises, under which circumstances each respective defeat was suffered: whether it resulted from the forward-storming energy of the masses being dashed against the barrier of the lack of maturity of historical presuppositions, or, on the other hand, whether it resulted from the revolutionary action itself being paralyzed by incompleteness, vacillation, and inner frailties.
What has brought about defeat in this “so-called Spartacus Week”? “Was it a defeat due to raging revolutionary energy and a situation that was insufficiently ripe, or rather due to frailties and halfway undertakings?” (“Order Reigns in Berlin,” The Reader)
It was both, Luxemburg answers: “The divided character of this crisis, the contradictions between the vigorous, resolute, aggressive showing of the people of Berlin and the indecision, timidity, and inadequacy of the Berlin leadership is the particular characteristic of the latest episode.”
But the masses, she argues, must create their leadership. The masses are the “rock on which the ultimate victory of the revolution will be built.” The people “fashioned” this defeat “into a part of those historical defeats which constitute the pride and power of international socialism. And this is why this ‘defeat’ is the seed of the future triumph.”
The cleansing pogrom continued until May, 1919, when, as Craig writes, the great Sauberrungsaktion reached its climax (Germany). Thousands were killed during this reign of terror, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, captured and executed on January 15, 1919 by Freikorp officers. In time, a short time, millions will be tortured and killed.
Just as there have been other reigns of terror, there have been other uprisings…
“Order reigns in Berlin!’ You stupid lackeys! Your “order” is built on sand. The revolution will ‘raise itself up again clashing,’ and to your horror it will proclaim to the sound of trumpets: I was, I am, I shall be.
“I embrace you a thousand times, your R.”
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.
Consequently, when the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) dismissed Rosa Luxemburg’s work, the SPD did so because, as Luxemburg documented in “Social Reform or Revolution” and in “Theory and Practice,” (The Rosa Luxemburg Reader
),
its leadership had already begun to “revise” Marxism in such a way as
to inform the working class that its demands and strategies for protest
were either inappropriate or illogical. It is not inappropriate or illogical
for the SPD to endorse an imperialist war, however.The imperialist war and the SPD leadership’s support for it nearly broke Luxemburg. In Germany, conditions for workers and soldiers were grim. Working class families spent 52 percent of their income on food and 33 percent on necessities such as housing, heating, lights and clothing. Whatever was left went to school fees for the children, church, social and intellectual life, health, insurance, debt, and savings” (“Economic and Social Development,” Imperial Germany 1871-1918). [1] By May, 1916, Luxemburg received word that her friend and comrade, Karl Liebknecht, has been arrested:: “I tried with all the might of my fist to “free” him [when he was seized] and I pulled at him and at the policemen all the way to the police station, from which I was unceremoniously expelled” (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Sudende,] May 12, 1916, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg). [2] By August 1916, she was on the verge of suicide (The Reader).
That same month, she decides to organize a meeting in her apartment in opposition to the socialist “capitulation to imperialist war” and worsening conditions for citizens in Germany. Karl Liebknecht, who also opposed the war, (The Reader), joins the group. For this meeting on the evening on August 4th, Luxemburg had one goal: to think about how to disassociate socialism from “the betrayal” of the SPD.
By the end of this meeting, Luxemburg and Liebknecht and others had formed the Die Gruppe Internationale and the Die Internationale journal. It was this crucial event that “helped galvanize antiwar sentiment and led a year later to the formation of Spartacus Group.” Luxemburg breaks from “the political legacy” of the SPD and the editors of Vorwarts and New Zeit. She and Karl Liebknecht, are arrested and imprisoned, but the Die Gruppe Internationale, now the Spartacus League, moves underground and continues to find creative ways in which to wage an “illegal campaign” against the war, distributing pamphlets, many of which were written by an imprisoned Luxemburg.
What I am in favor of, in general, is that things should proceed slowly and thoroughly rather than hastily and superficially. It is an entire process of political schooling that must be gone through by the masses of our people, and that requires time. In such times of transition, patience is the duty of a political person and a leader, even if it is not a pleasant duty. Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Sudende,] March 9, 1916, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg
).With the German Revolution now in full swing by November 1918, enlisted soldiers and masses of workers take to the streets, for the soldiers and workers knew, writes historian Gordon Craig, that “the war had been lost” (Germany 1866 - 1945
).
Radical workers’ groups emerge in the manufacturing centers of Berlin, Bremen, Braunschweig, Stuttgart,
and Hamburg (The Reader); these groups are inspired by the Spartacus
Group. While the war continues to drain the country’s resources, more
workers form workers’ councils.In the streets, 300 workers in the Maybach motor construction plant in Friedrichshafen, Wurttemberg chant “‘The Kaiser is a scoundrel’” (Germany). At Kiel and in the capital of Bavaria, enlisted men form “sailors’ councils” at the navel base (Germany). As they react to the “crisis,” their uprising spreads throughout Germany. Prince Max dispatches Majority Socialist Gustav Noske to Kiel with orders to restore order!
And he does! Noske becomes the workers’ savior by proclaiming himself chairman of the sailors’ council at Kiel! Of course, Noske fulfills the workers most immediate demand: he releases their “imprisoned comrades” (Germany). Cheers to Noske! At the Imperial Palace, Noske is a hero too! Outmaneuvering “the most radical elements in the sailors’ movement,” (Germany) - how could he not be a hero to the New Order in Berlin!
But other workers persisted. “Within days there were the red flags of communism all over German cities. Revolutionary councils formed and radical slogans, displayed, all inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia," historian Michael Strurmer writes in The German Empire).
On November 5, 1918, workers at Germany’s largest navel base at Wilhelmshaven formed a sailors’ council and marched on the Rathaus in Hamburg. In Bavaria, Socialist journalist Kurt Eisner (previously the editor of Vorwarts - 1898-1905) overthrows the monarchy and occupies the seat of “power.”
Eisner sets up a cabinet of Independent and Majority Socialists, retaining the posts of Prime Minister and Foreign Minister for himself, promised that in due course a National Assembly would draft a constitution, and assigned the task of maintaining public order to councils that would be elected in the barracks, workshops, and villages. (Germany 1866-1945)
But “radical” Eisner is not the “law and order” Noske! [3]
By November 9, with continual outbreaks of workers in the streets, Prince Max resigns and acknowledges that the Emperor, too, and the Crown Prince intends to relinquish their right to the throne (Germany). The head of the Social Democratic Party, Friedrich Ebert, is to be named Reich Chancellor, “charged with the task of calling a Constituent Assembly to determine the form the new state should take.”
Ebert, according to Craig, initially opposes the formation of a republic but event are moving along too quickly. By that afternoon, Philipp Scheidemann, ranking member of the Majority Socialist executive, shouts: “Long live the great German Republic!” (Germany). Ebert and Scheidemann agree on one thing: Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and the Spartacus League are enemies of the new order just as they were enemies of the old order! As Gordon writes, the newly formed government recognized that of all the emerging workers’ organizations, the Spartacus League posed “a more serious threat for it possessed two outstanding leaders” in Luxemburg and Liebknecht (Germany). And Rosa Luxemburg knows why! In a letter to Clara Zetkin, [4] dated January 11, 1919, Luxemburg explains that “the ‘Spartacists’ are for the most part a fresh new generation, free of the stupefying traditions of the ‘grand old party, tried and true’” (Letters).
For the workers and, particularly Luxemburg, Ebert, appointed SPD head after Bebel died in 1913, as Luxemburg writes, was “the quintessential party man…as the enemy” (Germany). A former student of Luxemburg, he becomes one of the leaders of the SPD and a strong advocate against the rule of the workers - and of Rosa Luxemburg’s conviction to revolutionary change. [5]
How much I would prefer to travel to visit you! But that is out of the question, because I am chained to the editorial office, and every day I am there until midnight, at the printing presses to oversee the making up of the issue, and besides in these disturbed times the most urgent information and instructions that must be given still come in at 10 or 11 at night, and they must be responded to immediately. On top of that almost every day, from early in the morning, there are conferences and discussions, and public meetings in between, and as a change of pace every few days there come urgent warnings from ‘official sources’ that Karl and I are threatened by gangs of killers [Mordbuben], so that we are not supposed to sleep at home but must seek shelter somewhere else… (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin,] December 25, [1918], The Letters)
Luxemburg, released from prison in November 1918 once the German Revolution was underway, writes several keys works, mostly in Die Rote Fahne, (Red Flag), the Spartacus League publication. “What Does the Spartacus League Want?” (The Reader) is a document that articulates the workers’ demands rather than request from the Ebert-Scheidemann regime anything that it cannot and will not grant.
On November 9, workers and soldiers smashed the old German regime. The Prussian saber’s mania of world rule had bled to death on the battlefields of France. The gang of criminals who sparked a worldwide conflagration and drove Germany into an ocean of blood had come to the end of its rope. The people - betrayed for four years, having forgotten culture, honesty, and humanity in the service of the Moloch, available for every obscene deed - awoke from its four-year-long paralysis, only to face the abyss.
On November 9, the German proletariat rose up to throw off the shameful yoke. The Hohenzollerns were driven out; workers’ and soldiers’ councils were elected. But the Hohenzollerns were no more than the front men of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Junkers. The class rule of the bourgeoisie is the real criminal responsible for the World War, in Germany, as in France, in Russia as in England, in Europe as in America. The capitalists of all nations are the real instigators of the mass murder. International capital is the insatiable god Baal, into whose bloody maw millions upon millions of steaming human sacrifices are thrown. (“What Does the Spartacus League Want?”)
What do the people want?
-
Disarmament of the entire police force and of
all officers and nonproletarian soldier; disarmament of all members
of the ruling classes…
-
Abolition of all principalities; establishment
of a united German
Socialist Republic…
-
Elimination of all parliaments and municipal
councils, and takeover of their functions by workers’ and soldiers’
councils and of the latter’s committees and organs…
-
Confiscation of all dynastic wealth and income
for the collectivity…
-
Election of enterprise councils in all enterprises,
which, in coordination with the workers’ councils, have the task
of ordering the internal affairs of the enterprises, regulating
working conditions, controlling production and finally taking over
direction of the enterprise…
The new Reich Chancellor receives a call from General Wilhelm Groener. The military was at the disposal of the new Chancellor. We are here and ready to do battle, to crack heads, arrest, torture, and to imprison, and to kill. We are ready to restore order! And Ebert detested violence! But not the violence of the State! That violence necessary to tame the workers into obedient slaves is at the disposal of the new Reich Chancellor! The imperialist regime, Craig writes, was determined, above all, that the scenes of violence and civil war that had accompanied the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia should not be repeated in Germany, and in order to prevent that he wanted to end the tumultuous transitional state into which Germany had fallen on 9 November by an act that would legitimize authority and restore the public law (Germany)
Ebert hesitates - but momentarily. [6]
In “peace,” when workers are obedient and slavish, willing to be exploited and to remain faithful to the capitalist rule, a capitalist crisis is averted. Law and order effectively controls potential “threats” with a little theorizing of its own in which the masses are “educated” to accept atrocities inflicted on others as business as usual. The normalization of murder and its cover up (Trayvon Martin, Rakia Boyd, and Kenneth Chamberlain) are isolated misunderstandings, if not provocations committed by the victims. Jackboots are ever present - for those who can see and who refuse to remain faithful to the narrative of authority and who are no longer fooled by the “change” only in the person sitting in the seat of “power.” Because then, when the masses see the corruption and atrocities at home and the waging wars of drones abroad, does the government declare a crisis afoot and demands the speedy and thorough disbursement of the jackboots in every nock and cranny of our social, political, and cultural environment.. And the people wonder then why they had not seen them before!
The government’s attempt to restore order (tyranny and fear) is a given. But what do we want?
It is the last week of Malcolm’s life, the last year of Dr. Martin L. King’s. It is Luxemburg’s last days on Earth. There is Malcolm’s unification and internationalism campaign and later King’s anti-war stance and promise to bring thousands of the nation’s workers and poor to Washington D.C. Rosa Luxemburg’s determination to organize and educate the masses. [7]
Tuesday! And now yesterday [that is, on December 25 during the day - this letter written around midnight at the end of Christmas] there was of course a ‘revolutionary disturbance’ again. There was an enormous demonstration [8] [and march] to the Imperial Palace, and then a section of the demonstrators spontaneously headed for the Vorwarts building and occupied it! An armored car and 18 machine guns were found inside! I was then called in a hurry to a session and didn’t get home here until 11:30 p.m. tonight. Today [on December 26] I have to go back into the city right away. And that’s how it’s been all these days. It remains that way, at least as I am writing this hasty greeting. (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin,] December 25 [1918], The Letters). [9]
In response to Ebert’s appointment to Reich Chancellor and Noske’s effect program to pacify the soldiers and workers, Luxemburg and Liebknecht formed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in January 1919. “The party is in complete disarray - Strobel, Haase, Bock (!), and Freiheitare openly demanding that a ‘line of demarcation be drawn against the left,’ which means against us…in the provinces the merger between the USPD and the Scheidemanns is in full swing” (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin,] December 25 [1918], The Letters).
At the founding conference of the German Communist Party, December 31, 1918, [10] Luxemburg delivers a speech in which she reminds the organizers that “revolution which will crown our work” does not happen overnight. Attention must be focused on fighting “step by step, hand-to-hand, in every province, in every city, in every village, in every municipality in order to take and transfer all the powers of the state bit by bit from the bourgeoisie to the workers’ and soldiers’ councils” (“Our program and the Political Situation,” The Reader). But Luxemburg adds, before we can proceed to impose the power of the workers, the members of our own Party and the proletarians in general must be educated. Even where workers’ and soldiers’ councils already exist, there is still a lack of consciousness of the purposes for which they exist. We must make the masses understand that the workers’ and soldiers’ council is in all senses the lever of the machinery of state, that it must take over all power and must unify the power in one stream - the socialist revolution.
She further warns:
The masses of workers who are already organized in workers’ and soldiers’ councils are still miles away from having adopted such an outlook, and only isolated proletarian minorities are clearly conscious of their tasks.
By mid-January, the Weimar Republic is formed:
The delegates who had been elected to the National Assembly in mid-January [1919] assembled a month later in Weimar, the home of Goethe and his patron Carl August and of the mighty poet who had sought to teach his countrymen that greatness should be defined not in terms of material power but of moral stature and devotion to liberty. (Germany)
Those in power play the familiar game of musical chairs. Ebert becomes Reichsprasident, Scheidemann, chancellor, and our “community activist” in Kiel, Gustav Noske, takes over the Ministry of Defense. What follows? - something very familiar to us in the 21st Century after the events of September 11, 2001. Article 48 of the Weimar constitution!
‘Should public order and safety be seriously disturbed or threatened, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public order and safety; in case of need, he may use armed force…and he may, for the time being, declare fundamental rights of the citizen to be wholly or partly in abeyance.’ (Germany)
The “Socialists” in power now declared the socialists / communists “evil doers,” agitators of the workers. Ebert and Noske called upon the Supreme Command to cleanse the Republic of the disease of liberty. Noske said he was up to the task. He turned to General Ludwig von Maercher, who in turn sent a memorandum to “former officers”: recruit volunteer forces!” Freedom-loving officers [11] and fellow citizens from “demobilized lieutenants and N.C.O.s who found it difficult to adjust to civilian life,” to university students, to adventurers, patriots and drifters (Germany) responded, swelling the ranks of the free corps (Freikorps).
To Luxemburg’s horror, not a few were pulled from the soldiers’ councils!
The sore spot in the revolutionary cause at this moment - the political immaturity of the masses of soldiers who, even now, are still letting themselves be misused by their officers for hostile, counterrevolutionary purposes (“Order Begins in Berlin,” The Reader).
This development, she continues, is “proof that a lasting victory of the revolution” is “not possible in this encounter.”
The Freikorps and the army under the command of the Ebert-Scheidemann government are crushing the Spartacus Uprising. Four days before she and Karl Liebknecht are captured, Luxemburg writes to Clara Zetkin about what she observes among the workers. Unfortunately, she declares, the workers are not sufficiently prepared for the brutality of the government’s armed thugs. But “the severe political crisis that we’ve experienced here in Berlin during all the past two weeks or even longer have blocked the way to the systematic organizational work of training our recruits” (January 11, 1919, The Letters). Nonetheless, she adds, “these events are a tremendous school for the masses.” [12]
White Terror! White Terror!
As Luxemburg acknowledges, the brutality of the Ebert-Scheidemann regime is a “shameless provocation,” and it may hand the revolution a defeat - but, she adds, without these “defeats” from “which we have drawn historical experience, knowledge, power, idealism,” where would we be today. There are lessons to be learned in defeat!
We gather as survivors and students and continue the Struggle - even while the middle class cheer on the counterrevolution’s reign of “white terror”!
But when the word “defeated” becomes a visible brand we sear onto our foreheads, and when we restore ourselves to sheephood, it is because our attention has been diverted, and we have begun to anticipate “Order reigns in Berlin,” “Order reigns in the U.S,” and we can no longer hear ourselves chanting”‘Down with Ebert and Scheidemann!” Down with capitalists thieves and liars! Because we are not chanting anything anymore.
‘Order reigns in Berlin,’ is the triumphant announcement of the bourgeois press, of Ebert and Noske, and of the officers of the “victorious troops,’ who are being cheered by the petty-bourgeois mob in the streets, waving their handkerchiefs and shouting hurrahs. The glory and the honor of the German Army has been saved in the eyes of history (“Order Reigns in Berlin,” The Reader).
Okay - order reigns! Peace is on the way!
“Revolutionary struggles are the direct opposite of parliamentary struggles,” Luxemburg warns. Although “revolutions have brought us nothing but defeat until now…these unavoidable defeats are only heaping guarantee upon guarantee of the coming final triumph. On one condition, she writes,
the question arises, under which circumstances each respective defeat was suffered: whether it resulted from the forward-storming energy of the masses being dashed against the barrier of the lack of maturity of historical presuppositions, or, on the other hand, whether it resulted from the revolutionary action itself being paralyzed by incompleteness, vacillation, and inner frailties.
What has brought about defeat in this “so-called Spartacus Week”? “Was it a defeat due to raging revolutionary energy and a situation that was insufficiently ripe, or rather due to frailties and halfway undertakings?” (“Order Reigns in Berlin,” The Reader)
It was both, Luxemburg answers: “The divided character of this crisis, the contradictions between the vigorous, resolute, aggressive showing of the people of Berlin and the indecision, timidity, and inadequacy of the Berlin leadership is the particular characteristic of the latest episode.”
But the masses, she argues, must create their leadership. The masses are the “rock on which the ultimate victory of the revolution will be built.” The people “fashioned” this defeat “into a part of those historical defeats which constitute the pride and power of international socialism. And this is why this ‘defeat’ is the seed of the future triumph.”
The cleansing pogrom continued until May, 1919, when, as Craig writes, the great Sauberrungsaktion reached its climax (Germany). Thousands were killed during this reign of terror, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, captured and executed on January 15, 1919 by Freikorp officers. In time, a short time, millions will be tortured and killed.
Just as there have been other reigns of terror, there have been other uprisings…
“Order reigns in Berlin!’ You stupid lackeys! Your “order” is built on sand. The revolution will ‘raise itself up again clashing,’ and to your horror it will proclaim to the sound of trumpets: I was, I am, I shall be.
“I embrace you a thousand times, your R.”
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.
[1]
Author, Brett Fairbourn.
[2]
The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, editors Georg Adler,
Peter Hudis, and Annelies Laschitza, 2011.
[3]
Eisner is eventually shot dead on February 21, 1919 as part
of the purge of communist/socialist thinkers and activists by the Ebert-
Scheidemann regime.
[4]
Luxemburg instructs Zetkin to prepare to write about women
in the newly formed Die Rote Fahne. “As soon as you are back to normal
we will talk about the work. We here are in the process, among other
things, of laying the basis for the work with women and for educational
work” Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin, December 1918], The Letters of Rosa
Luxemburg.
[5]
“It is worth noting in passing,” Craig writes, “that many
of the praetorians who combated the Spartacus Union in 1919-and this
number included Pfug-Hartung [murders Liebknecht]and Vogel [murders
Luxemburg], and Pabst, Faupel, and Reinhard-ended their careers as enthusiastic
servants of Adolf Hitler” (Germany 1866-1945).
[6]
Craig writes that it is “unlikely that he [Ebert] would
have followed a different policy than the one he chose.”
[7]
See The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, editors Peter Hudis
and Kevin Anderson, 2004. Between November 1918 (when she is released
from jail) and January 1919 (she is murdered), Luxemburg pens four articles,
including “What Does the Spartacus League Want” (December 14, 1918)
and “Order Reigns in Berlin”
(January 14, 1919).
[8]
Workers gathered in Tiergarten
Park.
[9]
At the rally, “speakers for the Spartacus League, including
Karl Liebknecht, for the Revolutionary Shop Stewards, and for the People’s
Naval Division denounced the counterrevolutionary machinations and called
for the formation of a Red Guard and workers’ militia, and for the disarming
of officers and NCOs active with the counterrevolution” (n.797, The
Rosa Luxemburg Reader).
[10]
German Communist Party (KPD), founding congress held December
30, 1918 - January 1, 1919.
[11]
Col. Wilhelm Reinhard, free corps commander, was asked by
a journalist if he had not be heard calling the “government a rabble
and the new flag a Jewish rag.” Of course, he responds, “cheerfully.”
“I make no bones of the fact that I am a monarchist. My God! When one
has served his King and his country faithfully for thirty years, he
can’t suddenly say, ‘Starting tomorrow, I’m a republican!’” (Germany
1866-1945).
[12]
On January 4, 1919, a member of the “left wing of the USPD,
Emil Eichhorn, was dismissed as head of the Berlin police. Workers and
soldiers respond with mass rally in Berlin, and proceed to “arm
themselves for an uprising for which they were largely unprepared. The
uprising is quickly crushed (n.802, The Letters).
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