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?
-
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�
These
are but a few of the demands listed in �What Does the
Spartacus League Want?� But also on November
9, 1918, the new Reich Chancellor and his generals have
already begun to respond. They do not need a list
of demands from workers - the privileged power already
knows what threatens its survival.
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.
