Germany

How the British Communists responded to Rosa Luxemburg's 1918 criticism of the Russian Revolution

[Note: This is perhaps the first socialist response in English to the publication, in 1922, of Rosa Luxemburg's critical comments on the Russian Revolution. Writing in 1918, she had chosen not to publish these political judgments. They were first published by Paul Levy, who had been expelled from the Communist International in 1921. Irrespective of its name, Labour Monthly was a Communist Party Publication, edited by Rajani Palme Dutt, who would be the Party's main theorist for the next half century. This article shows the degree of freedom to think and write that there was in the Communist...

Stumbling into history

Remembrance of historical events tends to take place in formal settings, whether it's the Establishment on display at the Cenotaph or a left-wing meeting to recall events in working class history. It is rarely a part of everyday life. The laying of “Stolpersteine” (stumbling stones) in over 800 German cities and towns seeks to fill that gap by placing memorial stones in the pavement naming the Jews who once lived at that location but were killed or forced to flee Germany by the Nazis. The idea is that passers-by should “stumble” on the stones and be reminded of Nazi racial persecution in a way...

Berlin reverses privatisation

On 3 November, 600,000 Berliners voted in a referendum to take back the local electricity production and supply into public ownership — 83% of those who voted. This is only 150,000 less than the combined vote of the Social Democrat and conservative Christian Democrat parties (who run the federal state of Berlin) in the last regional elections. The referendum was held after around 230,000 signatures had been collected by the “Berliner Energietisch” campaign, calling for democratic control over and public ownership of the energy supply (and of other basic necessities), 100% green energy, any...

Self-Determination of Nations and Self-Defense

Note: With Rosa Luxemburg and others, Karl Liebknecht, a Deputy in the German Reichstag, opposed the the First World War and laid the basis for a new revolutionary socialist movement. Liebknecht, along with Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches and many others was killed by counter-revolutionaries at the beginning of 1919 "But, since we have been unable to prevent the war, since it has come in spite of us, and our country is facing invasion, shall we leave our country defenceless? Shall we deliver it into the hands of the enemy? Does not Socialism demand the right of nations to determine their own...

Remaking Socialism: From Socialism's Collapse in 1914 to the Foundation of the Communist International in March 1919

THE ECLIPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL On 4 August, 1914, the Workers' International breathed its last, and that watchword of socialism "Death to militarism", which should have rung out clear and strong above the tumult of mobilisation and the clash of arms, was unheard by the peoples of the world. No doubt this cry of revolt from a workers' movement animated by a true solidarity of the exploited against their task masters would have been promptly stifled by the death-dealing implements of war, and by the weight of censorship and martial law, but ere its defeat it would have awakened the consciences...

September 1939: Behind the Stalinazi pact

I: 5 September 1939 The Hitler-Stalin pact is the most sensational news to come out of Moscow in many years. Up to yesterday, it was the general belief that Stalin was moving heaven and earth in an earnest attempt to establish a “peace front” of the “democracies” against the “fascist aggressors”, especially against Fascist Germany. The friends and supporters of the Stalin regime said this repeatedly, and in so many plain words. Suddenly, right in the midst of the Anglo-French-Russian military discussions in Moscow, came the news that Hitler and Stalin had made a very important trade agreement...

To Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

They slew you in their beastly rage. Because you dared the struggle Wage With tyrants and with traitors too— The traitors feared and so they slew. Deluded naves! Your lifeless tongues More potent now in martyr songs Will trumpet forth the truth until, The very earth will rock and thrill; And thrones and states will crash and fall— And labor triumphs over all. * * So comrades, sleep—your Work is done; Sleep on! The battle will be won.

80 years on: could the Nazis have been stopped?

Recording of Clive Bradley's introduction to the Workers' Liberty Forum on '80 years on: could the Nazis have been stopped?' in London on 27 March. Click here for a recording. In 1933 the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) came to power, destroying the most powerful workers’ movement in Europe and setting Germany and the world on the road to fifteen years of dictatorship, genocide and war. Could the Nazis have been stopped? Why did the German working class not resist? What can we learn from Leon Trotsky’s analysis of the German labour movement’s failure to beat the Nazis? In the...

Merkel drafts her "growth plan": the smallest possible shift from neoliberalism

The German business magazine Handelsblatt has published (4 June) the European "growth plan" with which Chancellor Merkel plans to win the Social Democrat and Green votes to get the two-thirds majority she needs to ratify the EU fiscal pact. The plan signals Merkel shifting as little as she reasonably could from a scorched-earth neo-liberal policy of cutting everything, letting the jobless and poor rot, and telling us it's all good because it will create conditions for private business to make profits and expand. The Black-Yellow [CDU-FDP] coalition is trying to conciliate the SPD and Greens...

Greece: will Merkel budge?

John Palmer, former European editor of the Guardian , spoke to Solidarity about what the current talk among EU leaders about “growth initiatives” is likely to yield. In the polls in Greece, New Democracy are about two or three points ahead of Syriza at this point of time, so it’s by no means certain that the outcome on 17 June will be the Syriza victory which looked likely shortly after 6 May. If Syriza emerges on top, what happens will largely depend on the nature of the agreement which is to be negotiated at the European summit on 23 May. The Syriza leader has been invited to France and...

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