Rosa Luxemburg

Timeline of the 1905 Russian Revolution

Timeline of the 1905 revolution in Russia. Adapted with thanks from Robert Wilde . • January 3-8: 120,000 workers strike in St. Petersburg; government warns against any organised marches. • January 9: Bloody Sunday. 150,000 striking workers and their families march through St. Petersburg to deliver a protest to the Tsar, but are shot and ridden down on multiple occasions by the army. • January: Reaction to the massacre spreads across neighbouring regions, especially the industrial centres where workers strike. February • February: The strike movement spreads down to the Caucasus. • February...

Rosa Luxemburg on Britain

Before we cast a general glance back the discussion about Bernstein's book in the party press, we still wish to treat individually some questions of detail which were particularly stressed in that discussion. This time, let us turn to the English trade union movement. The catchphrase of the "economic power" of the "economic organisation" of the working class plays a great role among the supporters of Bernstein. "It is the task of the working class to create economic power for itself" writes Dr Weltmann in issue 93 of the Elberfelde Freie Presse. In the same way E David concludes his series of...

The Lies Against Socialism Answered

For most of the 20th century, the common image of "socialism" was the USSR and the other states modelled on it, China, Cuba, and so on. There were always socialists who were critical of Stalin's or Khrushchev's USSR, seeing it as an unacceptably bureaucratic version of socialism, and keen to create a more democratic version in their own countries. By the late 1960s or early 1970s, a big majority even in the official Communist Parties was highly critical of Brezhnev's USSR. But most of those who criticised the USSR clung to the idea that some other USSR-model state - China, Vietnam, Cuba.... -...

Socialism or barbarism

In this excerpt from her speech on the “Spartacus Programme” of 1918, the Polish-German Marxist leader Rosa Luxemburg argued for socialism and revolution as the only alternative to capitalism and barbarity of war. Luxemburg was murdered alongside her comrade Karl Liebknecht by right wing troops under the direction of a Social-Democratic government in January 1919. 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...

What is the Bolshevik-Trotskyist tradition?

What follows is a summary of the political and ideological traditions on which Workers’ Liberty and Solidarity base ourselves. Isaac Newton famously summed up the importance of studying, learning, and building on forerunners. “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”, he wrote, referring to René Descartes, his contemporary Robert Hooke, and presumably also to his direct predecessor Isaac Barrow. In science few people think they can neglect the “tradition” and rely on improvisation. In politics, alas, too many. The summary here, written in 1995, starts as...

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