Rosa Luxemburg Quotes

"No coarser insult, no baser aspersion, can be thrown against the workers than the remark: "Theoretic controversies are only for academicians.

Social Democratic centralism cannot be based on the mechanical subordination and blind obedience of the party membership to the leading party center. [...] The Social Democratic movement cannot allow the erection of an air-tight partition between the class-conscious nucleus of the proletariat already in the party and its immediate popular environment, the nonparty sections of the proletariat.

In the present situation, such an experiment would be doubly dangerous to the Russian Social Democracy. It stands on the eve of decisive battles against tsarism. It is about to enter, or has already entered, on a period of intensified creative activity, during which it will broaden (as is usual in a revolutionary period) its sphere of influence and will advance spontaneously by leaps and bounds. To attempt to bind the initiative of the party at this moment, to surround it with a network of barbed wire, is to render it incapable of accomplishing the tremendous task of the hour.

The Utopianism of the standpoint which expects an era of peace and retrenchment of militarism in the present social order is plainly revealed in the fact that it is having recourse to project making. For it is typical of Utopian strivings that, in order to demonstrate their practicability, they hatch "practical" recipes with the greatest possible details. To this also belongs the project of the "United States of Europe" as a basis for the limitation of international militarism.

Shamed, dishonored, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the roles of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of ethics - as a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential breath, devastating culture and humanity - so it appears in all its hideous nakedness.

From the moment when the workers of our country and of Russia began to struggle bravely against the Czarist Government and the capitalist exploiters, we notice more and more often that the priests, in their sermons, come out against the workers who are struggling. It is with extraordinary vigour that the clergy fight against the socialists and try by all means to belittle them in the eyes of the workers. The believers who go to church on Sundays and festivals are compelled, more and more often, to listen to a violent political speech, a real indictment of Socialism, instead of hearing a sermon and obtaining religious consolation there. Instead of comforting the people, who are full of cares and wearied by their hard lives, who go to church with faith in Christianity, the priests fulminate against the workers who are on strike, and against the opponents of the government; further, they exhort them to bear poverty and oppression with humility and patience. They turn the church and the pulpit into a place of political propaganda.

Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.

Social Democracy, does not, however, expect to attain its aim either as a result of the victorious violence of a minority or through the numerical superiority of a majority. It sees socialism come as a result of economic necessity - and the comprehension of that necessity - leading to the suppression of capitalism by the working masses. And this necessity manifests itself above all in the anarchy of capitalism.

Today he who wants to pass as a Socialist, and at the same would declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx.

"I'm not satisfied with the way in which people in the party usually write
articles. They are all so conventional, so wooden, so cut-and-dry....
Our scribblings are usually not lyrics, but whirrings, without color or
resonance, like the tone of an engine wheel. I believe that the cause lies
in the fact that when people write, they forget for the most part to dig
deeply into themselves and to feel the whole import and truth of what
they are writing. I believe that ever time, every day, in every article you
must live through the thing again, you must feel your way tugh it,
and then fresh words-coming fom: the heart and going to the heartwould occur to express the old fmiliar thing. But you get so used to a
truth that you rattle off the deepest and greatest tings as if they were
the "Our Fater" I firmly intend, when I write, never to forget to be enthusiastic about what I write and to commune with myself."

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains

Fourier's scheme of changing, by means of phalansteries, the water of all the seas into tasty lemonade was surely a phantastic idea. But Bernstein, proposing to change the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness, by progressively pouring into it bottles of social reformist lemonade, presents an idea that is merely more insipid but no less phantastic.

I want to burden the conscience of the affluent with all the suffering and all the hidden, bitter tears.

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. The essence of political freedom depends not on the fanatics of 'justice', but rather on all the invigorating, beneficial, and detergent effects of dissenters. If 'freedom' becomes 'privilege', the workings of political freedom are broken.

Lagenliga reformer och revolution är alltså inte olika metoder för historiskt framåtskridande, vilka man kan välja efter behag vid historiens disk, som man gör med varm eller kall korv, utan de utgör olika moment i klassamhällets utveckling.