[Marxism] 90 Years since the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

[J Rothermel]

    Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (1919)

By Leon Trotsky
Tuesday, 15 January 2008

We have suffered two heavy losses at once which merge into one enormous 
bereavement. There have been struck down from our ranks two leaders 
whose names will be for ever entered in the great book of the 
proletarian revolution: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. They have 
perished. They have been killed. They are no longer with us!

Karl Liebknecht’s name, though already known, immediately gained 
world-wide significance from the first months of the ghastly European 
slaughter. It rang out like the name of revolutionary honour, like a 
pledge of the victory to come. In those first weeks when German 
militarism celebrated its first orgies and feted its first demonic 
triumphs; in those weeks when the German forces stormed through Belgium 
brushing aside the Belgian forts like cardboard houses; when the German 
420mm cannon seemed to threaten to enslave and bend all Europe to 
Wilhelm; in those days and weeks when official German social-democracy 
headed by its Scheidemann and its Ebert bent its patriotic knee before 
German militarism to which everything, at least it seemed, would 
submit—both the outside world (trampled Belgium and France with its 
northern part seized by the Germans) and the domestic world (not only 
the German junkerdom, not only the German bourgeoisie, not only the 
chauvinist middle-class but last and not least the officially recognized 
party of the German working class); in those black, terrible and foul 
days there broke out in Germany a rebellious voice of protest, of anger 
and imprecation; this was the voice of Karl Liebknecht. And it resounded 
throughout the whole world!

In France where the mood of the broad masses then found itself under the 
heel of the German onslaught; where the ruling party of French 
social-patriots declared to the proletariat the necessity to fight not 
for life but until death (and how else when the ‘whole people’ of 
Germany is craving to seize Paris!); even in France Liebknecht’s voice 
rang out warning and sobering, exploding the barricades of lies, slander 
and panic. It could be sensed that Liebknecht alone reflected the 
stifled masses.

In fact however even then he was not alone as there came forward hand in 
hand with him from the first day of the war the courageous, unswerving 
and heroic Rosa Luxemburg. The lawlessness of German bourgeois 
parliamentarism did not give her the possibility of launching her 
protest from the tribune of parliament as Liebknecht did and thus she 
was less heard. But her part in the awakening of the best elements of 
the German working class was in no way less than that of her comrade in 
struggle and in death, Karl Liebknecht. These two fighters so different 
in nature and yet so close, complemented each other, unbending marched 
towards a common goal, met death together and enter history side by side.

Karl Liebknecht represented the genuine and finished embodiment of an 
intransigent revolutionary. In the last days and months of his life 
there have been created around his name innumerable legends: senselessly 
vicious ones in the bourgeois Press, heroic ones on the lips of the 
working masses.

In his private life Karl Liebknecht was—alas!—already he merely was the 
epitomy of goodness, simplicity and brotherhood. I first met him more 
than 15 years ago. He was a charming man, attentive and sympathetic. It 
could be said that an almost feminine tenderness, in the best sense of 
this word, was typical of his character. And side by side with this 
feminine tenderness he was distinguished by the exceptional heart of a 
revolutionary will able to fight to the last drop of blood in the name 
of what he considered to be right and true. His spiritual independence 
appeared already in his youth when he ventured more than once to defend 
his opinion against the incontestable authority of Bebel. His work 
amongst the youth and his struggle against the Hohenzollern military 
machine was marked by great courage. Finally he discovered his full 
measure when he raised his voice against the serried warmongering 
bourgeoisie and the treacherous social-democracy in the German Reichstag 
where the whole atmosphere was saturated with miasmas of chauvinism. He 
discovered the full measure of his personality when as a soldier he 
raised the banner of open insurrection against the bourgeoisie and its 
militarism on Berlin’s Potsdam Square. Liebknecht was arrested. Prison 
and hard labour did not break his spirit. He waited in his cell and 
predicted with certainty. Freed by the revolution in November last year, 
Liebknecht at once stood at the head of the best and most determined 
elements of the German working class. Spartacus found himself in the 
ranks of the Spartacists and perished with their banner in his hands.

Rosa Luxemburg’s name is less well-known in other countries than it is 
to us in Russia. But one can say with all certainty that she was in no 
way a lesser figure than Karl Liebknecht. Short in height, frail, sick, 
with a streak of nobility in her face, beautiful eyes and a radiant mind 
she struck one with the bravery of her thought. She had mastered the 
Marxist method like the organs of her body. One could say that Marxism 
ran in her blood stream.

I have said that these two leaders, so different in nature, complemented 
each other. I would like to emphasize and explain this. If the 
intransigent revolutionary Liebknecht was characterized by a feminine 
tenderness in his personal ways then this frail woman was characterized 
by a masculine strength of thought. Ferdinand Lassalle once spoke of the 
physical strength of thought, of the commanding power of its tension 
when it seemingly overcomes material obstacles in its path. That is just 
the impression you received talking to Rosa, reading her articles or 
listening to her when she spoke from the tribune against her enemies. 
And she had many enemies! I remember how, at a congress at Jena I think, 
her high voice, taut like a wire, cut through the wild protestations of 
opportunists from Bavaria, Baden and elsewhere. How they hated her! And 
how she despised them! Small and fragilely built she mounted the 
platform of the congress as the personification of the proletarian 
revolution. By the force of her logic and the power of her sarcasm she 
silenced her most avowed opponents. Rosa knew how to hate the enemies of 
the proletariat and just because of this she knew how to arouse their 
hatred for her. She had been identified by them early on.

 From the first day, or rather from the first hour of the war, Rosa 
Luxemburg launched a campaign against chauvinism, against patriotic 
lechery, against the wavering of Kautsky and Haase and against the 
centrists’ formlessness; for the revolutionary independence of the 
proletariat, for internationalism and for the proletarian revolution.

Yes, they complemented one another!

By the force of the strength of her theoretical thought and her ability 
to generalize Rosa Luxemburg was a whole head above not only her 
opponents but also her comrades. She was a woman of genius. Her style, 
tense, precise, brilliant and merciless, will remain for ever a true 
mirror of her thought.

Liebknecht was not a theoretician. He was a man of direct action. 
Impulsive and passionate by nature, he possessed an exceptional 
political intuition, a fine awareness of the masses and of the situation 
and finally an unrivalled courage of revolutionary initiative.

An analysis of the internal and international situation in which Germany 
found herself after November 9, 1918, as well as a revolutionary 
prognosis could and had to be expected first of all from Rosa Luxemburg. 
A summons to immediate action and, at a given moment, to armed uprising 
would most probably come from Liebknecht. They, these two fighters, 
could not have complemented each other better.

Scarcely had Luxemburg and Liebknecht left prison when they took each 
other hand in hand, this inexhaustible revolutionary man and this 
intransigent revolutionary woman and set out together at the head of the 
best elements of the German working class to meet the new battles and 
trials of the proletarian revolution. And on the first steps along this 
road a treacherous blow has on one day, struck both of them down.

To be sure reaction could not have chosen more illustrious victims. What 
a sure blow! And small wonder! Reaction and revolution knew each other 
well as in this case reaction was personified in the guise of the former 
leaders of the former party of the working class, Scheidemann and Ebert 
whose names will be for ever inscribed in the black book of history as 
the shameful names of the chief organizers of this treacherous murder.

It is true that we have received the official German report which 
depicts the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg as a street 
“misunderstanding” occasioned possibly by a watchman’s insufficient 
vigilance in the face of a frenzied crowd. A judicial investigation has 
been arranged to this end. But you and I know too well how reaction lays 
on this sort of spontaneous outrage against revolutionary leaders; we 
well remember the July days that we lived through here within the walls 
of Petrograd, we remember too well how the Black Hundred bands, summoned 
by Kerensky and Tsereteli to the fight against the Bolsheviks, 
systematically terrorized the workers, massacred their leaders and set 
upon individual workers in the streets. The name of the worker Voinov, 
killed in the course of a “misunderstanding” will be remembered by the 
majority of you. If we had saved Lenin at that time then it was only 
because he did not fall into the hands of frenzied Black Hundred bands. 
At that time there were well-meaning people amongst the Mensheviks and 
the Social Revolutionaries who were disturbed by the fact that Lenin and 
Zinoviev, who were accused of being German spies, did not appear in 
court to refute the slander. They were blamed for this especially. But 
at what court? At that court along the road to which Lenin would be 
forced to “flee”, as Liebknecht was, and if Lenin was shot or stabbed, 
the official report by Kerensky and Tsereteli would state that the 
leader of the Bolsheviks was killed by the guard while attempting to 
escape. No, after the terrible experience in Berlin we have ten times 
more reason to be satisfied that Lenin did not present himself to the 
phoney trial and yet more to violence without trial.

But Rosa and Karl did not go into hiding. The enemy’s hand grasped them 
firmly. And this hand choked them. What a blow! What grief! And what 
treachery! The best leaders of the German Communist Party are no 
more—our great comrades are no longer amongst the living. And their 
murderers stand under the banner of the Social-Democratic party having 
the brazenness to claim their birthright from no other than Karl Marx! 
“What a perversion! What a mockery!&#rdquo; Just think, comrades, that 
“Marxist” German Social-Democracy, mother of the working class from the 
first days of the war, which supported the unbridled German militarism 
in the days of the rout of Belgium and the seizure of the northern 
provinces of France; that party which betrayed the October Revolution to 
German militarism during the Brest peace; that is the party whose 
leaders, Scheidemann and Ebert, now organize black bands to murder the 
heroes of the International, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg!

What a monstrous historical perversion! Glancing back through the ages 
you can find a certain parallel with the historical destiny of 
Christianity. The evangelical teaching of the slaves, fishermen, 
toilers, the oppressed and all those crushed to the ground by slave 
society, this poor people’s doctrine which had arisen historically was 
then seized upon by the monopolists of wealth, the kings, aristocrats, 
archbishops, usurers, patriarchs, bankers and the Pope of Rome, and it 
became a cover for their crimes. No, there is no doubt however, that 
between the teaching of primitive Christianity as it emerged from the 
consciousness of the plebeians and the official catholicism or 
orthodoxy, there still does not exist that gulf as there is between 
Marx’s teaching which is the nub of revolutionary thinking and 
revolutionary will and those contemptible left-overs of bourgeois ideas 
which the Scheidemanns and Eberts of all countries live by and peddle. 
Through the intermediary of the leaders of social-democracy the 
bourgeoisie has made an attempt to plunder the spiritual possessions of 
the proletariat and to cover up its banditry with the banner of Marxism. 
But it must be hoped, comrades, that this foul crime will be the last to 
be charged to the Scheidemanns and the Eberts. The proletariat of 
Germany has suffered a great deal at the hands of those who have been 
placed at its head; but this fact will not pass without trace. The blood 
of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg cries out. This blood will force 
the pavements of Berlin and the stones of that very Potsdam Square on 
which Liebknecht first raised the banner of insurrection against war and 
capital to speak up. And one day sooner or later barricades will be 
erected out of these stones on the streets of Berlin against the servile 
grovellers and running dogs of bourgeois society, against the 
Scheidemanns and the Eberts!

In Berlin the butchers have now crushed the Spartacists’ movement: the 
German communists. They have killed the two finest inspirers of this 
movement and today they are maybe celebrating a victory. But there is no 
real victory here because there has not been yet a straight, open and 
full fight; there has not yet been an uprising of the German proletariat 
in the name of the conquest of political power. There has been only a 
mighty reconnoitering, a deep intelligence mission into the camp of the 
enemy’s dispositions. The scouting precedes the conflict but it is still 
not the conflict. This thorough scouting has been necessary for the 
German proletariat as it was necessary for us in the July days.

The misfortune is that two of the best commanders have fallen in the 
scouting expedition. This is a cruel loss but it is not a defeat. The 
battle is still ahead.

The meaning of what is happening in Germany will be better understood if 
we look back at our own yesterday. You remember the course of events and 
their internal logic. At the end of February, the popular masses threw 
out the Tsarist throne. In the first weeks the feeling was as if the 
main task had been already accomplished. New men who came forward from 
the opposition parties and who had never held power here took advantage 
at first of the trust or half-trust of the popular masses. But this 
trust soon began to break to splinters. Petrograd found itself in the 
second stage of the resolution at its head as indeed it had to be. In 
July as in February it was the vanguard of the revolution which had gone 
out far in front. But this vanguard which had summoned the popular 
masses to open struggle against the bourgeoisie and the compromisers, 
paid a heavy price for the deep reconnaissance it carried out.

In the July Days the Petrograd vanguard broke from Kerensky’s 
government. This was not yet an insurrection as we carried through in 
October. This was a vanguard clash whose historical meaning the broad 
masses in the provinces still did not appreciate. In this collision the 
workers of Petrograd revealed before the popular masses not only of 
Russia but of all countries that behind Kerensky there was no 
independent army, and that those forces which stood behind him were the 
forces of the bourgeoisie, the white guard, the counter-revolution.

Then in July we suffered a defeat. Comrade Lenin had to go into hiding. 
Some of us landed in prison. Our papers were suppressed. The Petrograd 
Soviet was clamped down. The party and Soviet printshops were wrecked, 
everywhere the revelry of the Black Hundreds reigned. In other words 
there took place the same as what is taking place now in the streets of 
Berlin. Nevertheless none of the genuine revolutionaries had at that 
time any shadow of doubt that the July Days were merely the prelude to 
our triumph.

A similar situation has developed in recent days in Germany too. As 
Petrograd had with us, Berlin has gone out ahead of the rest of the 
masses; as with us, all the enemies of the German proletariat howled: 
“we cannot remain under the dictatorship of Berlin; Spartacist Berlin is 
isolated; we must call a constituent assembly and move it from red 
Berlin—depraved by the propaganda of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa 
Luxemburg—to a healthier provincial city in Germany.” Everything that 
our enemies did to us, all that malicious agitation and all that vile 
slander which we heard here, all this translated into German was 
fabricated and spread round Germany directed against the Berlin 
proletariat and its leaders, Liebknecht and Luxemburg. To be sure the 
Berlin proletariat’s intelligence mission developed more broadly and 
deeply than it did with us in July, and that the victims and the losses 
are more considerable there is true. But this can be explained by the 
fact that the Germans were making history which we had made once 
already; their bourgeoisie and military machine had absorbed our July 
and October experience. And most important, class relations over there 
are incomparably more defined than here; the possessing classes 
incomparably more solid, more clever, more active and that means more 
merciless too.

Comrades, here there passed four months between the February revolution 
and the July days; the Petrograd proletariat needed a quarter of a year 
in order to feel the irresistible necessity to come out on the street 
and attempt to shake the columns on which Kerensky’s and Tsereteli’s 
temple of state rested. After the defeat of the July days, four months 
again passed during which the heavy reserve forces from the provinces 
drew themselves up behind Petrograd and we were able, with the certainty 
of victory, to declare a direct offensive against the bastions of 
private property in October 1917.

In Germany, where the first revolution which toppled the monarchy was 
played out only at the beginning of November, our July Days are already 
taking place at the beginning of January. Does this not signify that the 
German proletariat is living in its revolution according to a shortened 
calendar? Where we needed four months it needs two. And let us hope that 
this schedule will be kept up. Perhaps from the German July Days to the 
German October not four months will pass as with us, but less—possibly 
two months will turn out sufficient or even less. But however event 
proceed, one thing alone is beyond doubt: those shots which were sent 
into Karl Liebknecht’s back have resounded with a mighty echo throughout 
Germany. And this echo has rung a funeral note in the ears of the 
Scheidemanns and the Eberts, both in Germany and elsewhere.

So here then we have sung a requiem to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa 
Luxemburg. The leaders have perished. We shall never again see them 
alive. But, comrades, how many of you have at any time seen them alive? 
A tiny minority. And yet during these last months and years Karl 
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg have lived constantly among us. At 
meetings and at congresses you have elected Karl Liebknecht honorary 
president. He himself has not been here—he did not manage to get to 
Russia—and all the same he was present in your midst, he sat at your 
table like an honoured guest, like your own kith and kin—for his name 
had become more than the mere title of a particular man, it had become 
for us the designation of all that is best, courageous and noble in the 
working class. When any one of us has to imagine a man selflessly 
devoted to the oppressed, tempered from head to foot, a man who never 
lowered his banner before the enemy, we at once name Karl Liebknecht. He 
has entered the consciousness and memory of the peoples as the heroism 
of action. In our enemies’ frenzied camp when militarism triumphant had 
trampled down and crushed everything, when everyone whose duty it was to 
protest fell silent, when it seemed there was nowhere a breathing-space, 
he, Karl Liebknecht, raised his fighter’s voice. He said “You, ruling 
tyrants, military butchers, plunderers, you, toadying lackies, 
compromisers, you trample on Belgium, you terrorize France, you want to 
crush the whole world, and you think that you cannot be called to 
justice, but I declare to you: we, the few, are not afraid of you, we 
are declaring war on you and having aroused the masses we shall carry 
through this war to the end!” Here is that valour of determination, here 
is that heroism of action which makes the figure of Liebknecht 
unforgettable to the world proletariat.

And at his side stands Rosa, a warrior of the world proletariat equal to 
him in spirit. Their tragic death at their combat positions couples 
their names with a special, eternally unbreakable link. Henceforth they 
will be always named together: Karl and Rosa, Liebknecht and Luxemburg!

Do you know what the legends about saints and their eternal lives are 
based upon? On the need of the people to preserve the memory of those 
who stood at their head and who guided them in one way or another; on 
the striving to immortalize the personality of the leaders with the halo 
of sanctity. We, comrades, have no need of legends, nor do we need to 
transform our heroes into saints. The reality in which we are living now 
is sufficient for us, because this reality is in itself legendary. It is 
awakening miraculous forces in the spirit of the masses and their 
leaders, it is creating magnificent figures who tower over all humanity.

Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are such eternal figures. We are 
aware of their presence amongst us with a striking, almost physical 
immediacy. At this tragic hour we are joined in spirit with the best 
workers of Germany and the whole world who have received this news with 
sorrow and mourning. Here we experience the sharpness and bitterness of 
the blow equally with our German brothers. We are internationalists in 
our sorrow and mourning just as much as we are in all our struggles.

For us Liebknecht was not just a German leader. For us Rosa Luxemburg 
was not just a Polish socialist who stood at the head of the German 
workers. No, they are both kindred of the world proletariat and we are 
all tied to them with an indissoluble spiritual link. Till their last 
breath they belonged not to a nation but to the International!

For the information of Russian working men and women it must be said 
that Liebknecht and Luxemburg stood especially close to the Russian 
revolutionary proletariat and in its most difficult times at that. 
Liebknecht’s flat was the headquarters of the Russian exiles in Berlin. 
When we had to raise the voice of protest in the German parliament or 
the German press against those services which the German rulers were 
affording Russian reaction we above all turned to Karl Liebknecht and he 
knocked at all the doors and on all the skulls, including the skulls of 
Scheidemann and Ebert to force them to protest against the crimes of the 
German government. And we constantly turned to Liebknecht when any of 
our comrades needed material support. Liebknecht was tireless as the Red 
Cross of the Russian revolution.

At the congress of German Social-Democrats at Jena which I have already 
referred to, where I was present as a visitor, I was invited by the 
presidium on Liebknecht’s intiative to speak on the resolution moved by 
the same Liebknecht condemning the violence and the brutality of the 
Tsarist government in Finland. With the greatest diligence Liebknecht 
prepared his own speech collecting facts and figures and questioning me 
in detail on the customs relations between Tsarist Russia and Finland. 
But before the matter reached the platform (I was to speak after 
Liebknecht) a telegram report on the assassination of Stolypin in Kiev 
had been received. This telegram produced a great impression at the 
congress. The first question which arose amongst the leadership was: 
would it be appropriate for a Russian revolutionary to address a German 
congress at the same time as some other Russian revolutionary had 
carried out the assassination of the Russian Prime Minister? This 
thought seized even Bebel: the old man who stood three heads above the 
other Central Committee members, did not like any “needless” 
complications. He at once sought me out and subjected me to questions: 
“What does the assassination signify? Which party could be responsible 
for it? Didn’t I think that in these conditions that by speaking I would 
attract the attention of the German police?” “Are you afraid that my 
speech will create certain difficulties?” I asked the old man 
cautiously. “Yes”, answered Bebel, “I admit I would prefer it if you did 
not speak.” “Of course,” I answered, “in that case there can be no 
question of my speaking.” And on that we parted.

A minute later, Liebknecht literally came running up to me. He was 
agitated beyond measure. “Is it true that they have proposed you do not 
speak?” he asked me. “/Yes/,” I replied, “I have just settled this 
matter with Bebel.” “And you agreed?” “How could I not agree,” I 
answered justifying myself, “seeing that I am not master here but a 
visitor.” “This is an outrageous act by our presidium, disgusting, an 
unheard-of scandal, miserable cowardice!” etc., etc. Liebknecht gave 
vent to his indignation in his speech where he mercilessly attacked the 
Tsarist government in defiance of backstage warnings by the presidium 
who had urged him not to create “needless” complications in the form of 
offending his Tsarist majesty.

 From the years of her youth Rosa Luxemburg stood at the head of those 
Polish Social-Democrats who now together with the so-called “Lewica” 
i.e. the revolutionary Section of the Polish Socialist Party have joined 
to form the Communist Party. Rosa Luxemburg could speak Russian 
beautifully, knew Russian literature profoundly, followed Russian 
political life day by day, was joined by close ties to the Russian 
revolutionaries and painstakingly elucidated the revolutionary steps of 
the Russian proletariat in the German press. In her second homeland, 
Germany, Rosa Luxemburg with her characteristic talent, mastered to 
perfection not only the German language but also a total understanding 
of German political life and occupied one of the most prominent places 
in the old Bebelite Social-Democratic party. There she constantly 
remained on the extreme left wing.

In 1905 Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in the most genuine sense of 
the word lived through the events of the Russian revolution. In 1905 
Rosa Luxemburg left Berlin for Warsaw, not as a Pole but as a 
revolutionary. Released from the citadel of Warsaw on bail she arrived 
illegally in Petrograd in 1906, where, under an assumed name, she 
visited several of her friends in prison. Returning to Berlin she 
redoubled the struggle against opportunism opposing it with the path and 
methods of the Russian revolution.

Together with Rosa we have lived through the greatest misfortune which 
has broken on the working class. I am speaking of the shameful 
bankruptcy of the Second International in August 1914. Together with her 
we raised the banner of the Third International. And now, comrades, in 
the work which we are carrying out day in and day out we remain true to 
the behests of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. If we build here in 
the still cold and hungry Petrograd the edifice of the socialist state, 
we are acting in the spirit of Liebknecht and Luxemburg; if our army 
advances on the front, it is defending with blood the behests of 
Liebknecht and Luxemburg. How bitter it is that it could not defend them 
too!

In Germany there is no Red Army as the power there is still in enemy 
hands. We now have an army and it is growing and becoming stronger. And 
in anticipation of when the army of the German proletariat will close 
its ranks under the banner of Karl and Rosa, each of us will consider it 
his duty to draw to the attention of our Red Army, who Liebknecht and 
Luxemburg were, what they died for and why their memory must remain 
sacred for every Red soldier and for every worker and peasant.

The blow inflicted on us is unbearably heavy. Yet we look ahead not only 
with hope but also with certainty. Despite the fact that in Germany 
today there flows a tide of reaction we do not for a minute lose our 
confidence that there, red October is nigh. The great fighters have not 
perished in vain. Their death will be avenged. Their shades will receive 
their due. In addressing their dear shades we can say: “Rosa Luxemburg 
and Karl Liebknecht, you are no longer in the circle of the living but 
you are present amongst us; we sense your mighty spirit; we will fight 
under your banner; our fighting ranks shall be covered by your moral 
grandeur! And each of us swears if the hour comes, and if the revolution 
demands, to perish without trembling under the same banner as under 
which you perished, friends and comrades-in-arms, Rosa Luxemburg and 
Karl Liebknecht!”


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