Quotes About Rosa Luxemburg

Democracy is indispensable, not because it renders superfluous the conquest of political power by the proletariat, but, on the contrary, because it makes this seizure of power both necessary and possible.

These passages on effective demand are problematic in certain respects, and Rosa Luxemburg provides a compelling challenge to Marx on this point, arguing that imperialism directed against noncapitalist social formations provided a partial answer to the effective demand problem.4 There has been debate over these issues ever since.

Revolutionary tactics cannot be invented by leaders; they must develop spontaneously-history comes first, leaders' consciousness second.

I have long been moved by Rosa Luxemburg's assertion that 'freedom is always the freedom to think otherwise,' and thus I've been attracted to contrarians, to people whose instinct is to go against the grain of officially accredited views - especially those accredited within their own circle of progressive thinkers. This has its dangers, to be sure.

In Berlin, after she took part in a failed general strike and uprising, her petite figure with its large hat and parasol still considered a threat by right-wingers, Rosa Luxemburg was beaten and shot by army officers and her body dumped in a canal.

The alleged political equality of men under such a government, declared Rosa Luxemburg, the top Spartacist theoretician, "is nothing but lies and falsehoods so long as the economic power of capital still exists.

Socialism," said Rosa Luxemburg, "does not mean getting together in a parliament and deciding on laws. For us socialism means the smashing of the ruling classes with all the brutality that the proletariat is able to develop in its struggle.

Der "Bolschewismus" ist das Stichwort für den praktischen revolutionären Sozialismus, für alle Bestrebungen der Arbeiterklasse zur Machteroberung geworden.

The sorry existence to which this mental tendency was condemned in recent decades by the powerful development of social democracy in Germany may, to a certain extent, be explained by the exclusive domination and long duration of the parliamentary period. A

Clearly, not uncritical apologetics but penetrating and thoughtful criticism is alone capable of bringing out the treasures of experiences and teachings.

Nationalism, the revolutionary theorist Rosa Luxemburg warned, is always a tool used to betray the working class. It is, she wrote, "an instrument of counterrevolutionary class policy."76 It unleashes powerful forms of indoctrination.

Does Bhisma care about women and their fate? Do all women have to be fierce warriors and die like men, as Rosa Luxemburg did, to earn his respect? Does he care about the mountains, behind which every day the sun rises and sets, about life on the side of the road, about the color of twilight in certain clear afternoons, so beautiful it is almost unendurable?

But much more to my taste, at least, are quite different tendencies, for example, that range of opinion that extends roughly from Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutch Marxist Anton Pannekoek and Paul Mattick to the anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker and others.

Early in January 1919 he struck. Between January 10 and 17—"Bloody Week," as it was called in Berlin for a time—regular and free-corps troops under the direction of Noske and the command of General von Luettwitz* crushed the Spartacists. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were captured and murdered by officers of the Guard Cavalry Division.