The communist leaders were murdered on the orders of authorities keen to crush the growth of the German revolutionary movement on January 15 1919
HOUSANDS from across the world will gather in Berlin this weekend to mark the 100th anniversary of the murder of revolutionaries Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
Communists will lead a march to the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery in the east of the city and red roses will be placed on their gravestones in their memory.
The pair, who were leaders of the German Communist Party, were murdered by the right-wing reactionary troops known as the Freikorps on January 15 1919 by authorities keen to crush the growth of a revolutionary movement.
Organisers called for a large mobilisation, with “the fanatical evil spirit of their murderers celebrating a malign resurrection in many places in Germany and Europe.”
They said the murder of the revolutionary leaders helped pave the way for “Hitler’s Brownshirts” and the emergence of fascism in Germany.
But in a statement organisers condemned capitalist forces for creating conditions where “65 million are on the run, between inflatable boats and barrier fences.” Issuing a call to join the protest, they said they rejected “Fortress Europe.”
Liebknecht was part of the left wing of the SPD, was against the World War, and got murdered for his politics. People in Germany today remember him only when Rosa Luxemburg (an actual theorist) comes up, his fame consists of him being that other lefty who got murdered, and that's about it. People recognize Luxemburg's mug, but not him. I haven't read him myself, but scholars of Marxism usually consider him a brainlet with the heart in the right place.
Kevin Smith
definitely not, and Liebknecht is a name you know if you know anything about german social democracy
absolute nonsense not everyone is an uncultured, uneducated burger and pseud his father was one of the founders of the SPD ffs
all well and fine but i was talking about his anti-imperialist stance with which he was ahead of his entire party, so bitch please marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/liebknechtk/1914/12/reichstag.htm if you apologize not knowing basic leftist history when you yourself should know better being a german leftist then so be it but my opinion of you is low to say the least
Luis Cruz
Actually, it isn't. In his Marxkritik Liebknecht called Marx incoherent and it looks like he didn't grasp the distinction Marx made between concrete labour and labour power. Go fuck yourself. I know who he was and what happened to him and why. I said that people today don't recognized his mug, unlike Rosa's. And I said that because it's true.
Robert Clark
you're apologizing not recognizing him, and you just admitted it and i'm saying the only reason not to do so is because you'd have to be illiterate on basic socialist history, simple as that you're losing your shit about everything else i haven't even brought up just to distract from you apologizing brainlets /you
Jonathan Watson
??? ???
Nathan Watson
Rosa's political theory sucked ass and her economic theory sucked even more.
Cameron Hill
So? Better than the clusterfuck that was the Weimar Republic. Germany would have been better off had there been a legit civil war and had the Communists won. We would have saved ourselfs from WWII.
t. man who did not resist financial capitalism when he was in a position to do so and instead resigned his position of power to write a book and start a new, useless political movement instead
Nathaniel Harris
Really shows user.
Grayson Cox
ok fine you lazy moocher
Varoufakis admits it himself: he had a powerful card to play:
“Draghi’s bond-buying had a fragile political and legal basis. The German Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice had only grudgingly approved it after repeated legal challenges by German right-wing euroskeptics. What Varoufakis proposed was to unhinge that delicate legal and political equilibrium. To do so Greece would default on the Greek bonds that the ECB had purchased in 2010 and 2011 during earlier rounds of bond market stabilization. That part of Greece’s sovereign debt had not been written down in 2012. The bonds were under Greek law. Their face value was roughly $33 billion. If Greece defaulted on all or part of those bonds, the ECB would be forced to re-evaluate its entire portfolio of eurozone sovereign bonds, and the door would be thrown open to a new legal challenge from the German right wing, putting quantitative easing into jeopardy.”
Further down in his review, Tooze concludes: “Given Greece’s subordinate position, it would be bombastic to call his scheme a ‘nuclear option’. But it was certainly a dirty bomb.” Two comments are pertinent here:
AND YET HE DIDN'T FUCKING DO THIS WHEN ALL WAS LOST
William Bailey
I’m pretty sure the leadership of Syriza didn’t align with his plans, and only after 5 months he quit as finance minister.
Lucas Brooks
He wanted to but Tsiapras and the rest of Syriza didn't, which is why he resigned dumbass.
Ian Diaz
The interesting little thing about this picture for me as a German is that they still have the same fucking sign for the S-Bahn (suburban trains) in every city as they had it in 1945 and even during Weimar. Berlin metro even looks the same as it did during the 20s, and during the 70s, East Germany sold a few trains to the DPRK, which are still in use today. So, if you are ever visiting the DPRK get ready for the surreal experience to see grafiti of East German punks, metalheads and goths within the metro trains of Pyongyang (you really can).
Carson Gutierrez
Defaulting on loans isn't anywhere near a nuclear option, it was done all the time before 2008. Varoufakis didn't "admit" to being able to default, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard.
The hard part was keeping the economy going after a default because the ECB wasn't gonna give them any more cash as punishment. He had a bunch of interesting ways around that, the ECB had billions of euros in Greek bank vaults, they were going to seize them and stamp them with "only for use in Greece" and fill the ATMs with them (and then tell the ECB "Sorry, national emergency, here's the money it cost to make the bills").
Aiden Murphy
not roses, you ignorant anglos! it's a dianthus caryophyllus.
Got any pics of metros with grafiti? You'd think they'd remove it.
Grayson Watson
KKE told you so, and it's exactly what happened. He joined them anyway. What did he expect? But yeah, now that he left and does dumb shit all over again, now he's the true revolutionary who'd never bend. Don't you think you should go over to leftpol? Would feel more homely for you, there you can hug nationalists and kiss their ass, just like your beloved SYRIZA you utter failures.
Elijah Parker
so unironically has the post-ww1 SPD ever not been trash? even from a socdem perspective they've gotta be like the worst ones.
Henry Howard
The call for a general strike during the Kapp Putsch (which only worked because the USPD, KPD and their aligned unions joined it) but that's about it.
Levi Long
Literally post one example of a KKE article from like before 2015 saying what occured in Greece would happen, do it bitch.
Gavin Thompson
It's a german thing. I don't mean this in some Antideutsche way or some Zig Forums way that German culture is "cucked" or "degenerate" or whatever but from a materialist viewpoint Germany is basically the kingpin of imperialism in Europe, it's our United States. German industry profits massively from cheap labor from southern and eastern europe. These material conditions shape German leftism, where they have agreed to collaborate with this arrangement. German greens are also the worst in the continent. Similarly, the PS and PSOE are also bad (the former for similar reasons as the SPD) but just a notch above the SPD. Even Labour under Blair wasn't as bad as the SPD, they really take the crown for worst socdems ever.
yes, under oskar lafontaine. ebert and noske ruined it in 1914. under lafontaine it had a short renaissance of it's former self, however he eventually left the spd and founded die linke when it became clear that schröder/hartz/clement/steinbrück were up for reviving the ebert/noske style spd in 1999. so during the 2000 and 2010s it's got to be indeed one of the most belligerent anti-worker parties in europe. infact spd member thilo sarrazin started the alt-right/neoreactionary shit here and remains an icon of the far-right, yet he's still an spd member. today, with regard to plummeting polls, the spd is drifting a bit to the left, they even acknowledged that hartz4 was a mistake and introduced a minimum wage. won't help much though, i suppose. i still have a weak spot for the spd due to her glorious history prior 1914, however i doubt that there is potential for a turn back to the roots under a real social democrat like corbyn. it's full of bourgeois-liberal career politicians and completely lost credibility during the last 20 years. she might end up around the 5% mark soon, like her french sister party ps.
Luxemburg is one of the most radical leftists ever. She knew revolution can only happen on a global level and communism only works in a basic democratic council republic. She knew reformists are needed as a revolutionary reserve but thex work like Sisyphus. Luxemburd knew that self-criticism is highly needed to adopt to new historical-material situations and develop theory and practice adequately. She knew that only a holistic approach which includes ecological and animal rights can bring communism.
40 hour work week pensions universal public healthcare universal suffrage unionized workers paid maternal leave
still enacted
Jaxson Moore
Son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the founders of the German Social Democratic Party and contemporary of Marx. When the war broke out, Rosa was sidelined by her party and Karl was the only (I think) member of parliament to vote against funding the war amidst the war fever. He represented the true endgame scenario of SocDem and its shortcomings when he went up in front of the whole government and said that "the main enemy is at home", condemning the war as imperialist and contrary to socialist principles. Absolute mad lad. The rest is history.
Listen to and sing this all the time. I only cry sometimes.
Carter Green
I didn't know Karl actually did/said that, pretty based tbh.