Important Points from Rosa Luxemburg's 'The Junius Pamphlet'

 

Kathe Kollwitz The Parents (1921-22)

Rosa Luxemburg wrote The Junius Pamphlet while in prison in 1915. She had been arrested for speaking out against the war. The voting of war credits by the SPD and near unanimous support for the war by the other parties of the Second Internation (with the exception of Russia and the United States) was a devasting blow to the cause of the socialist revolution. The pamphlet served as the guiding statement for the International Group, which later became the Spartacus League and, from 1919, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The following is a summary of important points from each chapter of the pamphlet. 

• Bourgeois society reveals its true colors in war: "Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form."
• German Social Democracy - the jewel of the social democratic movement - has reneged on its duty. It is nothing but a rotten corpse: "And what did we in Germany experience when the great historical test came? The most precipitous fall, the most violent collapse. Nowhere has the organization of the proletariat been yoked so completely to the service of imperialism. Nowhere is the state of siege borne so docilely. Nowhere is the press so hobbled, public opinion so stifled, the economic and political class struggle of the working class so totally surrendered as in Germany."
• The socialist movement engages in society and changes society. As a result, the socialist movement itself is changed. Changed people change the world, which then changes the people, etc: "Men do not make history according to their own free will. But they make history nonetheless. Proletarian action is dependent upon the degree of maturity in social development. However, social development is not independent of the proletariat but is equally its driving force and cause, its effect and consequence. [Proletarian] action participates in history. And while we can as little skip a stage of historical development as escape our shadow, we can certainly accelerate or retard history. 
• The war will be a tragedy only if the proletariat doesn't learn from this experience. Fall many times but learn the lessons for a final victory: "We are like the Jews that Moses led through the desert. But we are not lost, and we will be victorious if we have not unlearned how to learn. And if the present leaders of the proletariat, the Social Democrats, do not understand how to learn, then they will go under 'to make room for people capable of dealing with a new world."
• The faithful words of the Reichstag group by which they voted for slaughter: “We are now facing the irrevocable fact of war. We are threatened by the horrors of invasion. The decision, today, is not for or against war; for us there can be but one question: by what means is this war to be conducted? Much, aye everything, is at stake for our people and its future, if Russian despotism, stained with the blood of its own people, should be the victor. This danger must be averted, the civilisation and the independence of our people must be safeguarded. Therefore we will carry out what we have always promised: in the hour of danger we will not desert our fatherland. In this we feel that we stand in harmony with the International, which has always recognised the right of every people to its national independence, as we stand in agreement with the International in emphatically denouncing every war of conquest. Actuated by these motives, we vote in favour of the war credits demanded by the Government.”
• What do the bourgeoisie promise the proletariat after a victories war? In Germany, workers are promised economic growth following the war as followed 1870. But the growth was taking place prior to the war, and all the war brought was the entrenchment of a military monarchy and rule of the landlord class (Junkers). All this war promises is economic ruin for all those involved. The trade union movement rises and falls as an international class; a defeated Europe but victorious Germany would still be a loss for the workers' movement. Another war looms on the horizon regardless of who "wins" this present war.
• The vanguard of the world proletariat - the best and brightest- are being mowed down in the war: "The blood-letting of the June days [1848] paralyzed the French workers’ movement for a decade and a half. Then the blood-letting of the Commune massacres again retarded it for more than a decade. What is now occurring is an unprecedented mass slaughter that is reducing the adult working population of all the leading civilized countries to women, old people, and cripples."