Workers' Liberty

Together with Karl Liebnecht and — a little later Leo Jogiches — Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by right wing reactionaries in January 1919, after the failure of the rising by the Spartacists, the young, small, newly-formed Communist Party of Germany. She had spent the years of the First World War mainly in jail.

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.

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) became a revolutionary activist while
still a schoolgirl in Warsaw. At that time Poland was divided into
three parts, ruled by Russia, Germany, and Austria. Warsaw was
Russian-ruled.

Draft leaflet for SWP Rosa Luxemburg meetings

REFORM AND REVOLUTION. "For Social Democracy", wrote Rosa Luxemburg, meaning, in the language of the day, "for working-class socialism", "there exists an indissoluble tie between social reforms and revolution. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its goal... The practical daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers Social Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class struggle and working in the direction of the final goal..."The revolutionary who believes that concerns for votes and elections and "democratic institutions", or defence of limited working-class betterment on issues like the welfare state or trade-union rights, is "reformist", is a poor and ineffective revolutionary. Workers' Liberty is working with the SWP and others to get joint working-class socialist slates to challenge New Labour in the June Euro-elections. We work with other socialists - and urge the SWP to join - in the Welfare State Network and the United Campaign for Trade Union Rights.