Socialism or barbarism

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THE GREAT Polish-German Marxist Rosa Luxemburg was kidnapped and murdered, and her body dumped in a Berlin canai, in January 1919. Her comrades Karl Liebknecht and Leo Jogiches also were murdered by the German counter-revolution, in the aftermath of the Spartacist 'uprising' of January 1919, in which many German workers had perished at the hands of the Social Democratic governAfter being the model party of international working class socialism for four decades, the German Social Democratic Party ('Social Democracy' was the pre-war name of the Marxist parties) broke dramatically with its past at the beginning of World War 1. It supported the German government. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were leaders of the small minority who remained faithful to socialism, opposing both the war and the traitorous party leaders.

Luxemburg, who had long been a leader of the left wing of tr party, was one of the few people in the socialist world who had understood before it collapsed that German Social Democracy was rotten to the core. By contrast, Lenin at first refused to believe that the German 'socialists' had gone over to the government, insisting that the newspapers which reported it were forgeries!

The anti-war left wing created the 'Spartacus League', which agitated against the war. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht spent most of the war in jail, until the revolution released them in Germany's war ended in a revolution which overthrew the Kaise: (Emperor) and set up a German Republic. But it was led by the traitor-socialists, who bore responsibility, with the ruling class, for the mass slaughter of workers in the trenches. They controlled the workers' councils which spread across Germany, and they set the limits to the revolution's development. They created the bourgeois 'Weimar Republic' ', which soon spawned Hitler's Third Reich.

At the end of the war the revolutionaries were still isolated. The Spartacus League, which declared itself the German Communist Party at the end of 1918, had only a few thousand members. The forces which were to create the mass German Communist Party of the '20s and early '30s did not come until 1921, from the vacillating Independent Social Democrats who had split from the Party's hard Against the (internal) opposition of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, the party allowed itself to be drawn into premature armed clashes with the government in early January 1919. Luxemburg and LiebLenin, who disagreed with Luxemburg on many issues and who had himself been subjected to lacerating criticism by her over two decades (the comment on violence in section 3 is probably a veiled emburg's introduction to opportunists and parasites of criticism of the Bolsheviks' 'Red Terror'), said this of Rosa Luxemburg in 1922. "She was — and remains for us — an eagle. And not only will communists all over the world cherish her memory, but her Spartacus League, 'What combat against the proletarian biography and her complete works... will serve as useful manuals for training many generations of communists all over the world"

Luxemburg's is a distinct strand within the heritage of revolution- (1918) that capitalists would 8ood ary Marxism which has come down to us. It is an extremely valuable The conception of self-liberating working class socialism is, centrally, what divides Socialist Organiser from sections of the • Labour Left like the Labour Coordinating Committee and the CamFor us, the choice which Rosa Luxemburg expressed as the choic between 'Socialism or barbarism' has now become the choice ment and its German Army allies. November 1918. right wing during the war.

knecht lost their lives in the course of this. one.

paign for Labour Party Democracy.

between socialism or nuclear annihilation.

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.

The World War confronts society with the choice: either continuation of capitalism, new wars, and imminent decline into chaos and anarchy, or abolition of capitalist exploitation.

With the conclusion of world mar. the class rule of the bourgeoisie has forfeited its right to ExistEnCe. i is no longer capable e: laciog society out of the serbie soonomic collapse which De =peralis orgy has left in I TELE I = = his bloody con* raining abyss, ==: == 20 escape, Do Se t:: ia socialism. _. ===: of the morld FEE E bring order into at 2as a bring work and ==t 5: 2. can end the reciFrica izuetter of the peoples, I EstE peace, freedom, =we Future to this martyred == Down with the wage sTate- That is the slogan of the S= Estead of wage labour Ei Less rule there must be suette abour. The means of parades must cease to be the -coopit oi a single class; they EIT become the common proper of all. No more exploiters and exploited! Planned prodacion and distribution of the procur in the common interest. Arolition not only of the contemporary mode of production, mere exploitation and robbery, but equally of contemporary commerce, mere fraud.

In place of the employers and their wage slaves, free working comrades! Labour as nobody's torture, because everybody's duty! A human and honourable life for all who do their social duty. Hunger no longer the curse of labour, but the scourge of idleness!

Only in such a society are national hatred and servitude uprooted. Only when such a society has become a reality will the earth no more be stained by murder. Only then can it be said: This war was the last.

In this hour, socialism is the only salvation for humanity. The words of the Communist Manifesto flare ... above the crumbling bastions of capitalist society:

Socialism or barbarism!

The establishment of the socialist order of society is the mightiest task which has ever fallen to a class and to a revolution in the history of the world. This task requires a complete transformation of the state and a complete overthrow of the economic and social foundations of society.

This transformation and this overthrow cannot be decreed by any bureau, committee or parliament. It can be begun and carried out only by the masses of people themselves.

In all previous revolutions a small minority of the people led the revolutionary struggle, gave it aim and direction, and used the mass only as an instrument to carry its interests, the interests of the minority, through to victory. The socialist revolution is the first which is in the interests of the great majority and can be brought to victory only by the great majority of the working people themselves.

The mass of the proletariat must do more than stake out clearly the aims and direction of the revolution. It must also personally, by its own activity, bring socialism step by step into life.

The essence of socialist society consists in the fact that the great labouring mass ceases to be a dominatea mass, but rather, makes the entire political and economic life its own life and gives that life a conscious, free, and autonomous direction.

From the uppermost summit of the state down to the tiniest parish, the proletarian mass must therefore replace the inherited organs of bourgeois class rule - the assemblies, parliaments and city councils -with its own class organs - with workers' and soldiers' councils.

It must occupy all the posts, supervise all functions, measure all official needs by the standard of its own class interests and the tasks of socialism. Only through constant, VILa reciprocal contact between the masses of the people and their organs, the workers' and soldiers' councils, can the activity of the people fill the state with a socialist spirit.

The economic overturn, likewise, can be accomplished only if the process is carried out by proletarian mass action. The naked decrees of socialisation by the highest revolutionary authorities are by themselves empty phrases.

Only the working class, through its own activity, can make the word flesh. The Excerpt from Rosa Luxthe programme of the revolution.

Does Spartacus Want?' members of the collectivity which alone possesses owner- naional assembly, that they ship of all wealth. would calmly renounce They have to develop indus- ty, profit, the right to exploit. triousness without the capitalist end, with tenacious energ The whip, the highest productivity without slavedrivers, discipline preserve their privileges. without the yoke, order without authority. The highest idealism medieval feudal barons alike, in the interest of the collec- the English cavaliers and the tivity, the strictest self-discipline, the truest public spirit of the masses are the moral foun- Lyonnais silk manufacturers dations of socialist society, just they all shed streams of blood, as stupidity, egotism, and cor- they all marched over corpses, ruption are the moral founda- murder, and arson, instigated tions of capitalist society. civil war and treason, in order t All these socialist civic defend their privileges and their virtues, together with the know- power. ledge and skills necessary to direct socialist enterprises, can class, at last offspring of the be won by the mass of workers caste of exploiters, outdoes all only through their own activity, its predecessors in brutality, in their own experience. open cynicism and treachery. I The socialisation of society defends its holiest of holies, it: can be achieved only through profit and its privilege of exploi. tenacious, tireless struggle by with the methodshof cold eill with tooth the working mass along its entire front, on all points where which it demonstrated to the labour and capital, people and world in the entire history of bourgeois class rule, can see the whites of one another's eyes. colonial politics and in the recent World War The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the hell against the proletariat. working class itself. It will mobilise the peasants against the cities, the backward strata of the working During the bourgeois revolu- against the socialist vanguard; it tions, bloodshed, terror, and will use officers to instigate political murder were an indis- atrocities; it will try to paralyse pensable weapon in the hand of every socialist measure with a the rising classes. thousand methods passive The proletarian revolution resistance; .:. it will turn the requires no terror for its aims; it country into a smoking heap of hates and despises killing. It rubble rather than voluntarily does not need these weapons give up wage slavery. because it dues not combat individuals but institutions, because broken step by step, with an Rosa Luxemburg at a mass meeting in 1918 the active organisation of the exploitation and class rule rise mass of workers and soldiers. up to a man to wage mortal Against the omnipresence, the thousands means of power of bourgeois society, the concenIt is sheer insanity to believe trated, compact, and fully developed power of the working humouredly obey the socialist class. Only a solid front of the verdict of a parliament or of a entire German proletariat, the south German together with the north German, the urban and the rural, the workers with All ruling classes fought to the the soldiers, the living spirited identification of the German Revolution with the InternationRoman patricians and the al, the extension of the German Revolution into a world revolution of the proletariat can create American slavedealers, the the granite foundations on which Walachian boyars and the the edifice of the future can be constructed.

The fight for socialism is the mightiest civil war in world history, and the proletarian revolution must procure the necessary tools for this civil war; it must learn to use them - to The imperialist capitalist struggle and to win.

Such arming of the solid mass of labouring people with all political power for the tasks of the revolution - that is the dictatorship of the proletariat and therefore true democracy.

Not where the wage slave sits next to the capitalist, the rural proletarian next to the Junker in fraudulent equality to engage in parliamentary debate over questions of life or death, but It will mobilise heaven and where the million-headed proletarian mass seizes the entire power of the state in its calloused fist, like the god Thor his hammer, using it to smash the head of the ruling classes - that alone is democracy, that alone is not a betrayal of the people.

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ILABOUR MOVEMENT All this resistance must be CAMPAIGNIor PALESTIN