• Rosa Luxemburg, “What Are the Origins of May Day?”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1894/02/may-

day.htm

• Rosa Luxemburg, “The Development of the Mass Strike

Movement in Russia

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-

strike/ch03.htm

• Rosa Luxemburg, “Women’s Suffrage and Class Struggle”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1912/05/12.htm

• Watch John Sayles Matewan (1987)

Oct. 9— HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVES

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

• Desperate Measures for Desperate Times

• Reform Sparks Reform

Diego Velázquez, The Rokeby Venus, 1644.

“Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and

outline on canvas”

Rosa Luxemburg

(March 5, 1871 – January 15, 1919)

• Rosa Luxemburg was a German-

Polish revolutionary socialist of

Polish-Jewish descent who became

a naturalized German citizen

Rosa Luxemburg

(March 5, 1871 – January 15, 1919)

• March 5, 1871:

Born in Zamość,

Russian Poland.

• 1873: Moved with

her parents and

siblings to Warsaw.

Rosa Luxemburg

(March 5, 1871 – January 15, 1919)

• Early 1889: Left Poland to study at Zurich

University in Switzerland.

• 1893: Co-founded the Social Democracy of

the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP, later

SDKPiL) with Leo Jogiches, Julian

Marchlewski and Adolf Warszawski.

• July 1893: Attended the International

Socialist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland.

• July 1896: Attended the International

Socialist Congress in London, England.

• 1897: Awarded her doctorate from Zurich

University.

• May 1898: Moved from Zurich to Berlin,

Germany.

Rosa Luxemburg

(March 5, 1871 – January 15, 1919)

• September 1900: Attended the International Socialist Congress in

Paris, France.

• January 16, 1904: Sentenced to two months imprisonment for

‘insulting the Kaiser’.

• August 1904: Attended the International Socialist Congress in

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Rosa Luxemburg

• December 1905- March 1906: Participated in the ‘1905

Revolution’ in Warsaw. Imprisoned for revolutionary activities

from March- June 1906 in the Warsaw Citadel.

• December 12, 1906: Sentenced to two months imprisonment in

Weimar, Germany.

• May- June 1907: Attended Congress of the Russian Social

Democrats in London, England.

Rosa Luxemburg

(March 5, 1871 – January 15, 1919)

• August 1907: Attended International Socialist Womens’ Congress

and International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, Germany.

• August- September 1910: Attended International Socialist

Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark.

• November 1912: Attended Extraordinary International Socialist

Congress in Basel, Switzerland.

Rosa Luxemburg

(March 5, 1871 – January 15, 1919)

• September 25, 1913: Gave a speech at Fechenheim, near

Frankfurt, calling on German workers to refuse to take up arms

against their French brothers. As a result, Luxemburg was

sentenced to one year’s imprisonment on February 20, 1914.

• December 1913: Attended meeting of International Socialist

Bureau in London, England.

• July 1914: Attended emergency meeting of International Socialist

Bureau in Brussels, Belgium, which called for anti-war agitation.

Rosa Luxemburg

• August 5, 1914: Following the Reichstag vote of the previous day,

in which the Social Democrats voted in favor of war credits,

Luxemburg co-founded the anti-war ‘Internationale Group’ in

Berlin, which later evolved into the Spartacus League.

• February 18, 1915- February 18, 1916: Imprisoned in

Barnimstrasse Womens’ Prison, Berlin.

• February- March 1915: Wrote the anti-war Junius Pamphlet.

Rosa Luxemburg

• July 10, 1916: Arrested in Berlin and held under

‘protective custody’ for the next two years.

• March 8, 1917: ‘February Revolution’ in Russia.

• November 8, 1917: ‘October Revolution’ in Russia.

• November 9, 1918: Released from Breslau Prison on the

day that the Kaiser’s abdication is announced and a new

government is formed by Max von Baden, which seeks

an armistice.

Luxemburg returned to Berlin and began agitation

with a new newspaper, ‘Die Rote Fahne’ (‘The Red

Flag’).

Rosa Luxemburg

• December 24, 1918: Fighting breaks out in Berlin between

government forces and revolutionary sailors.

• December 31, 1918- January 1, 1919: Co-founded the German

Communist Party (KPD) with Karl Liebknecht, Leo Jogiches and

others in Berlin.

Karl Liebknecht

(August 13, 1871–January 15, 1919)

Lev “Leo” Jogiches 1867 – 1919)

Rosa Luxemburg

• January 5, 1919: Beginning of ‘the Spartacist Rising’ in Berlin,

when armed workers demonstrate against the removal of left-

wing police chief Emil Eichhorn.

• January 15, 1919: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht

arrested by government ‘Freikorps’ and taken to the Eden Hotel,

where they were interrogated.

• Liebknecht taken to Berlin’s Tiergarten and shot.

• Luxemburg rifle-butted and forced into a car, in which she

was shot in the head. Her body is thrown into the Landwehr

canal.

Rosa Luxemburg (German: Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg), 1986 West German film

directed by Margarethe von Trotta.

Rosa Luxemburg

• March 10, 1919: Luxemburg’s former lover and lifelong comrade

Leo Jogiches, now KPD leader, arrested and murdered by

government troops in Berlin.

• June 13, 1919: Following the discovery of her corpse on June 4, a

funeral was finally held for Luxemburg in Berlin and was

attended by thousands of mourners

Käthe Kollwitz, Memorial for Karl Liebknecht, 1921

Rosa Luxemburg

• “Freedom is always

and exclusively freedom

for the one who thinks

differently”

What Are the Origins of May Day?

(1894)

• At the International Workers’ Congress in 1889, attended

by four hundred delegates, it was decided that the eight-

hour day must be the first demand.

• The delegate of the American workers called attention to

the decision of his comrades to strike on May 1, 1890,

• May Day = Labor Day

“What Are the Origins of May

Day?”• “The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a

means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia.”

• The workers there decided in 1856 to organize a day of

complete stoppage together with meetings and entertainment

as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day.

“What Are the Origins of May Day?”

The day of this celebration was to be April 21. At first, the

Australian workers intended this only for the year 1856. But this

first celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian

masses of Australia, enlivening them and leading to new agitation,

that it was decided to repeat the celebration every year.

May Day march in New York City, May 1, 1909

Rosa Luxemburg, “The Development of

the Mass Strike Movement in Russia”

• Strikes, and mass strikes “the present official period, so to

speak, of the Russian Revolution is justly dated from the rising

of the proletariat on January 22, 1905, when the demonstration

of 200,000 workers ended in a frightful bloodbath before the

czar’s palace.”

• Luxemburg furthermore discussed the causes, outcomes, and

events that led to the 1905 Russian Revolution: the great general

strike of the textile workers in St. Petersburg in 1896 and 1897;

the mass strike in Batum in the Caucasus in March 1902; and

the general strike, in December 1904 in the Caucasus, in Baku.

• Luxemburg did not deem that the mass strike should

be restricted to merely a defensive measure, nor was it

a solitary incident.

• In fact, she believed the mass strike was “the sign” of

class struggle, which had grown over years.

• For Luxemburg, mass strike did not steer to

revolution; rather the revolutionary period shaped the

political and economic conditions for mass strikes to

transpire.

Rosa Luxemburg, “Women’s Suffrage

and Class Struggle” 1906

• Luxemburg points out that without the right to vote for

women the “political and syndical awakening of the

masses of women”, can only be transmitted by proxy,

and not directly but indirectly through a husband or a

male advocate.

• In her essay, Luxemburg established how essential the

political enfranchisement of proletarian women was

ultimately beneficial to the goals of socialism.

• Bourgeois women had rights (i.e. Privileges)

than that of proletariat women

• Fighting for women’s suffrage, we will also

hasten the coming of the hour when the present

society falls in ruins under the hammer strokes

of the revolutionary proletariat.”

Rosa Luxemburg, “Women’s Suffrage

and Class Struggle” 1906

• It was twelve years later in Russia that women

were granted the right to vote on July 20,

1917; Great Britain on February 6, 1918;

Germany on November 12, 1918; Poland on

November 28, 1918; and the United States on

June 4, 1919.

Rosa Luxemburg, “Women’s Suffrage

and Class Struggle” 1906

Diego Velázquez, The Rokeby Venus, 1644.

“Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and

outline on canvas”

“I have tried to destroy the picture of the

most beautiful woman in mythological history

as a protest against the Government

destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most

beautiful character in modern history. Justice

is an element of beauty as much as colour and

outline on canvas”

Around 10am on the morning of

March 10, 1914, the well-known

British militant suffragette Mary

Richardson took a meat cleaver out of

her coat and slashed the painting. She

was convicted on charges of malicious

damage, and sentenced to the

maximum penalty of six months

imprisonment.

Emmeline Pankhurst, the British campaigner for women’s

voting rights and leader of the radical Women’s Social and

Political Union (WSPU), who had been arrested in extremely

violent circumstances the day before. Richardson’s view was

that if people were outraged about her own attack on the

painting, which was a mere representation of physical

beauty, “they should be equally or more outraged over the

government’s treatment of Pankhurst, a real embodiment of

moral beauty.”

Pankhurst (wearing prison

clothes) described her first

incarceration as “like a

human being in the

process of being turned

into a wild beast.”

Emmeline Pankhurst (née

Goulden; July 15, 1858 –

June 14, 1928)

Pankhurst travelled constantly, giving speeches

throughout Britain and the United States. One of

her most famous speeches, “Freedom or death”,

was delivered in Connecticut in 1913.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

• Desperate Measures for Desperate Times

• Reform Sparks Reform

“What Are the Origins of May Day?”, “The Development of the Mass Strike Movement in

Russia”, and “Women’s Suffrage and Class Struggle”

Rosa Luxemburg’s essays examine

the essential mindset that in the

identifying of the advance of strikes

signified the revolutionary force of

the working class. Throughout her

writings she interrogates the concept

of a spontaneous “mass action”,

which she believed would in turn lead

to a revolutionary force for the

working class, and thus to overthrow

capitalism and the bourgeoisie order.

“What Are the Origins of May Day?”, “The Development of the

Mass Strike Movement in Russia”, and “Women’s Suffrage and Class

Struggle”

With Luxemburg’s disenchantments

with the SPD’s (Social Democratic

Party) lack of supporting causes,

and furthermore, the Trade Unions’

efforts to prevent strikes, she set

about to raise the consciousness of

the working class, the marginalized,

and the suppressed; to enact a

“spontaneous” mass action in order

to overthrow capitalism and

therefore to give the whole of society

a voice.

• Oct. 9— HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

• Rosa Luxemburg, “What Are the Origins of May Day?”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1894/02/may-

day.htm

• Rosa Luxemburg, “The Development of the Mass Strike

Movement in Russia”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-

strike/ch03.htm

• Rosa Luxemburg, “Women’s Suffrage and Class Struggle”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1912/05/12.htm

• Watch John Sayles Matewan (1987)

Oct. 9— HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVES