Rosa Luxemburg was murdered fifty years ago. Yet her name does not live on simply as a martyr, because she was killed by counter-revolutionary forces. It is not only with hindsight that we see her clear analysis of events both past and present, and extending into the future. In her own lifetime she was acknowledged as a person who had proved herself both in theory and action. The fact that her ideas were seriously discussed and - whatever political differences there may have been between her and Lenin - she herself was [greatly] respected throughout the revolutionary movement of Europe, is indication enough of the importance of her work.
In the last few years, the world has seen the rise of the militant youth, in particular the radicalisation of the students. Yet as long ago as 1886, when only 16 years of age, Rosa Luxemburg was denied a gold medal that was rightly hers for being top of the class because of "an [oppositional] attitude towards the authorities." Like some places today, the high-schools in Warsaw, at that time, [saw] hotbeds of political activity in which Rosa played a leading role. Three years later, when still in her teens, she was fleeing to Switzerland to avoid arrest, such were her activities in revolutionary circles at that time.
Much has been made of the political differences between Lenin and Luxemburg, particularly on the question of the organisation of Russian Social Democracy. The differences between the two have, in some instances been exaggerated to such a degree that Luxemburg is seen as putting the need for spontaneity before all else, and that Lenin was advocating a [purely] centralist party and not the democratic centralist party that we [know] today. Yet Rosa Luxemburg was in agreement with Lenin that the revolutionary party must be the advanced [guard] of the class, that it must be centrally organised and that the majority will must [illegible] be carried out always in the strictest discipline. Where Lenin and Luxemburg parted company was on the question of the exact role of the Central Committee. Luxemburg regarded the existence of an all-powerful Central Committee as a danger to the development of the struggle itself. "The ultra-centralism demanded by Lenin develops, it seems to us, not from positive, creative ideas, but from a sterile bureaucratic attitude... Its chief aim is to control the activity of the party rather than to fructify it, to limit rather than develop it, to dragoon the movement rather than to educate it." She attached great importance to the creative role of the masses and believed that it could be developed in the party only if there were wide freedom of criticism.
We know now that Lenin was not an ultra centralist as Luxemburg thought he was. As a matter of historical fact Lenin showed himself to be a master of tactical elasticity - a thing some people might not have suspected from his writings.
Lenin, in answering Luxemburg's criticisms showed that he was not in favour of absolute centralism but of the elementary discipline that was necessary in any organisation [illegible] capitalist[s]. And in a Russia [illegible] the loose and rather anarchial organisation that [existed] at the time [illegible] giving the Party a firm and disciplined organisational form.
The pamphlet [in which] Luxemburg criticised Lenin, "Organisational Questions of Russian Social Democracy" [illegible] known in its English translation [illegible] "Leninism or Marxism?" making a distinction that I do not think Luxemburg intended. And her oft-quoted [illegible] is still very relevant [illegible] "Fruitful [illegible] the infallibility of the most excellent Central Committee".
Yet at the same time Rosa Luxemburg stood for a [centralised] world party. In the theses drafted in the period when the launching of a Third International was being sorted out - and the main drafter was Rosa Luxemburg - it was stated that the centre of gravity of the organisation of the proletariat as a class is the International; and the obligation to carry out the decisions of the International takes precedence over all else.
[When] it comes to the question of the Russian Revolution, there is also a misunderstanding on what Luxemburg wrote. In the first place Luxemburg was in prison for over three years during the First World War and in her isolated position found it difficult to ascertain exactly what was happening outside. Little information reached her in prison and what there was, was all too often the distorted version of the bourgeois press. Purely on a theoretical basis it is very difficult to understand the real significance of rapidly changing circumstances.
The mistakes Rosa Luxemburg made because of her isolation have been greatly misrepresented. It has been said that she condemned the whole Bolshevik policy, including the [1917] revolution: and that she rejected the idea of the proletarian dictatorship and thereby justified the policy of the Mensheviks. Yet, despite her over-estimation of the Mensheviks and what they could [achieve], she was not misled when they and the Social Revolutionaries entered the Provisional Government: "The coalition Government is a half-measure; it burdens socialism with full responsibility... it [is] a compromise which like all political compromises is doomed to [failure]. The dictatorship of the proletariat is inevitable [illegible].
Although not complacent about the Russian Revolution, at no time did Rosa Luxemburg campaign against the Bolsheviks - as has sometimes been suggested. Despite criticisms of the Bolshevik policy on the agrarian question, on the question of national self-determination, and on the question of democracy and terrorism, at the same time she stated: "Lenin and Trotsky and their comrades displayed the utmost courage, energy, revolutionary foresight and revolutionary logic any party could have possibly displayed. The honour of the revolution, betrayed by social democracy in the west, was saved by the Bolsheviks. The November insurrection not only saved the Russian revolution, [it] also saved the honour of international socialism." (Hardly an indictment against the Bolsheviks.)
In her writings, her speeches, her actions, there the true Luxemburg [is to] be found. [Her] sympathy and emotion for the oppressed expressed itself in [illegible]. [We] socialists sometimes forget, in the struggle that lies before us, what we are trying to achieve. The following words of Luxemburg serve as a reminder of what is the essence of socialism: "Determined [illegible] with sweeping [illegible] every tear that flows and [might] have been [illegible] great deed who knocks down a child out of unfeeling carelessness commits a crime."
But in the misery of the individual, Rosa Luxemburg never forgot the greater misery of the world. Throughout her life, in an attempt to rid the world of [that] misery, she gave her whole being to the cause of socialism. In the words of Clara Zetkin: "She was the sharp sword, the living flame of revolution."