The murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht [View all]

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The murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
Workers Power - Monday, June 09, 2014

95 years ago, on the night of January 15 1919, two great socialist revolutionaries died. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were brutally murdered by paramilitaries, acting on the orders of the German Social-Democratic government.

Workers Power commemorates the anniversary of Luxemburg and Liebknecht’s death by analyzing their contribution to the Marxist tradition.

At the time of their deaths, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were leaders of the Spartacus group, the Left wing of the German workers’ movement. They had broken from the Social-Democratic Party (SPD) after its betrayal of the 1918 revolution.

In January 1919, the Social-Democratic government of Friedrich Ebert was trying to rebuild a capitalist Germany in tandem with the ruling class. In contrast, Luxembourg and Liebknecht were fighting for a socialist revolution to rid Germany of the corrupt politicians, the warmongering generals, and profiteering capitalists who had led the country into the terrible carnage of the First World War.

Today, Karl and Rosa are remembered as heroes of the Revolution, an inspiration to workers, to youth, to women fighting injustice everywhere. Their writings and their actions are rich in lessons. Their murderers are remembered as those who were prepared to butcher the workers of Berlin to preserve bourgeois rule. Their betrayal of the Revolution led, ultimately, to decades of inequality, terror, and war under the Nazis ...

Much more here: http://www.workerspower.net/the-murder-of-rosa-luxemburg-and-karl-liebknecht