Luxemburg and Liebknecht, Revolutionary Communist Leaders

On 2 January 1919 the Spartacist League broke all organizational relations with the independent socialists (USPD) and established the Communist Party at the Berlin Congress. While this process of building the organ called upon to direct the proletarian struggles that came to the fore politically in the torrent of events of the immediate post‑war followed an accelerated course under the direction of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the Russian proletariat, under the firm leadership of the Bolshevik party, was driving off all of the combined attacks of united capitalism, in a desperate struggle.

But what were the true conditions of the balance of forces at this time in Germany?

After the events of November 1918, and following the constitution of the provisional government through the coalition of the two socialist parties, Majority Social Democratic Party and Independents, the defeat of German imperialism had provoked a disorganization of the State and of its entire superstructure such as to bring about, with the corresponding radicalization of the masses, favourable conditions for the proletariat to move to the conquest of political power.

While the Russian proletariat, which had already passed to the organization of the Red Army and already represented, on the eve of the insurrectionary movements of November 1918 in Germany, a powerful support for proletarian victory, social democracy was working hard to safeguard the teetering edifice of the capitalist regime.

The theory of the Kautskys and Bauers consisted in characterizing the proletariat’s way out of the situation as something that would have served as a pretext for an immediate invasion of German territory by the victorious allied capitalist powers, which would have meant the definitive and certain defeat of the proletarian class.

The inconsistency of this argument is proved by all the events that followed.

While the Kautskys and the Bauers provided, at the decisive moments, the best weapons for the defence of the bourgeois regime, by disorienting the masses when all the conditions existed for the assault on power, the Scheidemanns and the Noskes then, in the days of January of 1919, were required to complete this treacherous work by standing up as the executioners of the working class.

From the first days of the insurrection, when soldiers and sailors in particular responded to the calls of the Spartacists, when, in the streets of Berlin, it seemed that the fate of the German revolution must be decided, social democracy – whether majoritarian or independent – multiplied its presence to crush the impetus of the masses, putting itself completely at the service of the “Fatherland in danger” by presenting the insurgents as “savages”, mobilizing all forces first to prevent the extension of the movement and then moving on to the massacre of the young Communist Party.

The savage decapitation of the communist movement that followed in the tragic days of mid‑January in Berlin marks an important stage in bringing the proletarian movement to a halt.

The defeat of the German proletariat was moreover reflected in the defeat of a series of revolutions started in various countries, and in the difficulties faced in the course of consolidating the Russian revolution.

If these were the negative consequences of the defeat, we must not forget the positive aspects that it also embodied.

This first baptism of fire of the young communist party in the armed struggle, and the open functioning of social-democracy as a watchdog for the capitalist regime, were the elements that determined the orientation of the social-democratic masses towards communism, towards the Russian revolution.

Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg represent, within the framework of these events, the indestructible figures of proletarian action with respect to the constitution of the class party: the communist party.

The most radical break with all social democratic tendencies was sanctioned by the events of January. These events could have been reflected advantageously in the subsequent future course of proletarian struggles.

The years 1921, and 1923 in particular found, in these events, the lessons that were likely to point the proletarian movement towards victory.

But the opposite direction was also taken in 1923.

Not towards the immediate and direct struggle for the conquest of political power, but towards the alliance with the left wing of social democracy, the bloc with Zeigner in Saxony.

What occurred in 1919 excluded this prospect; this error cannot be imputed to Liebknecht and Rosa. Indeed, their whole activity, and the last moments of their life in particular, exclude this perspective a priori. Centrism, which seeks to pin the blame for the 1923 defeat on Liebknecht and Rosa, presenting their own positions as “centrist”, because, in their opinion, Liebknecht and Rosa had delayed the split with the independents precisely when the situation required a firm leadership capable of leading the masses, who had reached boiling point, towards the final objectives.

In this way centrism wants to reduce its responsibilities for the 1923 defeat by accusing Liebknecht of having a false position on the role of the party, since already in the Second International he allegedly submitted to the concept of the spontaneity of the masses, thus reducing the leadership role of the proletarian vanguard, the position fought for by the Bolsheviks.

By reducing the question of the Spartacists’ activity in these terms, that is to say, to their inadequacy in understanding of the central question of “the independent and decisive leadership of proletarian struggles”, the movements of 1919 appear as a delayed event resulting from alleged semi‑Menshevik positions that were previously supported in opposition to the Bolshevik fraction of the Second International.

A simple look at the uneven development of the proletarian movement, at the tenacious struggle during the war, supported by the sparse group of Spartacists against the independents, and against the most proven traitors of the proletarian class, demonstrate the real confluence of the healthy forces of the revolutionary Spartacist movement towards the positions supported by the Bolsheviks, while at the same time destroying the purported error of the spontaneity of the masses.

The logical consequence of the development of these positions subsequently led the Spartacists towards the establishment of the class party: towards the constitution of the communist party – and this in advance of all the other groups.

The delay in this constitution is not attributable to the will of certain elements, it is an inevitable result of the whole process of decomposition of social democracy and the political maturation of the masses towards the notion of their class party. In this process of formation and destruction, the contribution of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg remains peerless: to reduce its own responsibility for the defeat of 1923, the scholasticism of official centrism relies on the commonplaces of inveterate opportunists. Whereas the Spartacists, in spite of the fact that all the conditions for the assault on power were not present, did not hesitate for a single moment to put themselves at the head of the movement, official centrism, in a favourable situation such as arose in 1923, didn’t face up to its responsibilities, crediting itself with the greatest defeat of the international proletariat.

Today, when the communist movement is torn apart by an unprecedented crisis, when the bourgeoisie – despite its complete bankruptcy – attacks everywhere, when fires are already flaring up and threatening to ignite powder kegs on all continents, engulfing all humanity in the cauldron of a new war, the problem of the communist direction of struggles takes on a capital importance, of life or death for the oppressed of all countries.

At the anniversary of the death of the three leaders of the international proletariat, at the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, the communist vanguard will find, in the regeneration of the communist movement, the indispensable condition for taking up proletarian struggles once again, for the proletarian revolution, for the final victory of communism.