A DUTY OF HONOR BY ROSA LUXEMBURG (NOVEMBER 18, 1918)

  

Rosa Luxemburg (also Rozalia Luxenburg; Polish: Róża Luksemburg; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist, anti-war activist, and revolutionary socialist of Polish-Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen. She was, successively, a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she and Karl Liebknecht co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League (Spartakusbund), which eventually became the KPD. During the November Revolution she co-founded the newspaper Die Rote Fahne ("The Red Flag"), the central organ of the Spartacist movement.

She considered the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 a blunder, but supported it as events unfolded. Friedrich Ebert's majority Social Democratic government crushed the revolt and the Spartakusbund by sending in the Freikorps (government-sponsored paramilitary groups consisting mostly of World War I veterans). Freikorps troops captured and executed Luxemburg and Liebknecht. Luxemburg's body was thrown in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin.

Due to her pointed criticism of both the Leninist and the more moderate social democratic schools of socialism, Luxemburg has had a somewhat ambivalent reception among scholars and theorists of the political left. Nonetheless, some have regarded Luxemburg and Liebknecht as martyrs of the socialist cause.

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://calabigallery.com/artists/rosa-luxemburg/]

 

           Rosa Luxemburg, the famous Marxist Theorist wrote an Anti-Death Penalty article on November 18, 1918.

Rosa Luxemburg

A Duty of Honor

(November 1918)

---

First Published: Die Rote Fahne, November 18th, 1918.
Source: Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Political Writings, edited and introduced by Robert Looker, pp.258-61.
Translated: (from the German) W.D. Graf.
Transcription/Markup: Ted Crawford/Brian Baggins with special thanks to Robert Looker for help with permissions.
Copyright: Random House, 1972, ISBN/ISSN: 0224005960. Printed with the permission of Random House. Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2004.

---

We did not want any ‘amnesty’, nor pardon, for the political prisoners who were the victims of the old order. We demanded our right to freedom, through struggle and revolution, for the hundreds of faithful and brave men and women who were languishing in prison because they had fought for popular freedom, for peace and for socialism against the bloody dictatorship of the imperialist criminal bands. They are now all free. Again we stand shoulder to shoulder ready for the struggle. It was not the Scheidemanns nor their bourgeois cronies with Prince Max at their head who liberated us; it was the proletarian revolution which burst open the gates of our cells.

However, one other group of wretched inmates who still languish in those gloomy dwellings has been forgotten completely. Until now no one has thought of the thousands of pale, emaciated figures who have been incarcerated for years behind the walls of the gaols and penitentiaries in expiation for petty offences.

And yet they are also unfortunate victims of the infamous social order against which the revolution was directed, the victims of an imperialist war which increased distress and misery into unbearable torture and which, with its bestial human slaughter, unleashed all evil instincts in weak and congenitally tainted natures.

Bourgeois class justice is again proved to be a net through whose meshes predatory pikes may easily wriggle, while little sticklebacks thrash about helplessly in it. The millionaire war profiteers largely escaped judgement or got off with ridiculously small fines, but the petty thieves were given drastic gaol sentences. Starving, shivering from the cold in their barely heated cells, emotionally depressed by the horrors of the four-year war, these step-children of society are waiting for pardon, for relief.

They are waiting in vain. The last Hohenzollern, like a good sovereign, forgot their suffering amid the international blood-bath and the erosion of the crown’s power. During the four years since the conquest of Liege there has been no amnesty worthy of the name, not even on that official holiday of the German slaves, the ‘Kaiser’s Birthday’.

Now the proletarian revolution must brighten their gloomy existence in the gaols by a small act of mercy; it must shorten the draconian sentences, eliminate the barbaric disciplinary system (detention in chains, corporal punishment!), and improve to the best of its ability the treatment, medical provisions, the food supply and conditions of work. This is a duty of honour!

The existing penal system, which is permeated through and through with the brutal class spirit and barbarism of capitalism, must be extirpated root and branch. A thoroughgoing reform of the system by which sentences are executed must be undertaken. A completely new system, corresponding to the spirit of socialism, can admittedly be established only upon the foundation of a new economic and social order. All crimes, as all punishments, are indeed always rooted ultimately in the economic conditions of society. Nevertheless, one decisive measure can be implemented at once. The death penalty, this greatest outrage of the utterly reactionary German Penal Code, must go immediately! Why is this being delayed by the workers’ and soldiers’ government? Ledebour, Barth, Däumia, does not Beccaria, who two hundred years ago denounced the infamy of the death penalty in all civilized languages, exist for you? You have no time, you say, you have constant cares, difficulties and tasks before you. Take your watches in hand and see how much time is needed to open your mouths and say: the death penalty is abolished! Or do you want a protracted debate, culminating in a vote among yourselves on this topic? Would you again, in this case, surround yourselves with layer upon layer of formalities, considerations of competence, questions of rubber stamps and rules, and similar rubbish?

Alas, how German this revolution is! How prosaic and pedantic it is, how lacking in verve, in lustre, in greatness! The forgotten death penalty is only one small feature. But how often precisely such small features betray the inner spirit of the whole.

Take at random any history of the great French Revolution; take the dry Mignet. Can anyone read this book without it setting his heart pounding and his mind ablaze? Once he has opened it at random and begun to read, can he put it down before he has heard with bated breath the last chords of the huge event fading away? It is like a Beethoven symphony intensified into gigantic proportions, a raging storm on the organ of the times, great and splendid both in its errors and its successes, in victory and in defeat, in its first naive rejoicing and its last restrained sigh. And here at home in Germany? At every step, in matters large and small, one senses that the worthy old comrades are still with us from the times when Social Democracy was slumbering blissfully, when the party card was everything, human beings and intellect nothing. But let us not forget that world history is not made without intellectual greatness, without moral fervour, without noble gestures ...

In leaving the hospitable rooms where we recently resided, Liebknecht and I – he taking leave of his shorn prison comrades and I of my poor dear prostitute and thief with whom I spent three and a half years under the same roof – we promised them faithfully, as their morose glances followed us, that we would not forget them!

We demand that the Executive Council of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils immediately alleviate the fate of the prisoners in all Germany’s penal institutions!

We demand that capital punishment be stricken from the German Penal Code!

Rivers of blood have flowed in torrents during the four years of imperialist genocide. Now every drop of the precious fluid must be preserved reverently and in crystal vessels. Ruthless revolutionary energy and tender humanity – this alone is the true essence of socialism. One world must now be destroyed, but each tear that might have been avoided is an indictment; and a man who hurrying on to important deeds inadvertently tramples underfoot even a poor worm, is guilty of a crime.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/11/18c.htm

  

The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening. - Rosa Luxemburg

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/494422]

Rosa Luxemburg

Against Capital Punishment

(November 1918)

---

First Published: Die Rote Fahne, No.3, 18 November 1918.
Source: International Socialist Review, Vol.30 No.1, January-February 1969, pp.5-6.
Translated: (from the French which was from the original in German) William L. McPherson in Germany After the Armistice: A Report Based on the Personal Testimony of Representative Germany, Concerning the Conditions Existing in 1919, edited by Maurice Berger.
Transcription/Markup: Einde O’Callaghan, Daniel Gaido, & Brian Baggins
Public Domain: Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005. This work is completely free.

This is an alternate translation of the same work by a different name A Duty of Honor, which is the correct German translation for Eine Ehrenpflicht.

---

We did not wish for amnesty, nor for pardon, in the case of the political prisoners, who had been the prey of the old order. We demanded the right to liberty, to agitation, to revolution for the hundreds of brave and loyal men who groaned in the jails and in the fortresses because, under the former dictatorship of Imperialist criminals, they had fought for the people, for peace, and for socialism.
They are all free now.

We find ourselves again in the ranks, ready for the battle.

It was not the clique of Scheidemann and his bourgeois allies, with Prince Max of Baden at their head, that liberated us. It was the Proletarian Revolution that made the doors of our cells spring open.
But another class of unfortunate dwellers in those gloomy mansions has been completely forgotten. No one, at present, thinks of the pale and morbid figures which sigh behind prison walls because of offenses against ordinary law.

Nevertheless these are also the unfortunate victims of the infamous social order against which the Revolution is directed – victims of the Imperialistic war which pushed distress and misery to the very limit of intolerable torture, victims of that frightful butchery of men which let loose all the vilest instincts.

The justice of the bourgeois classes had again been like a net, which allowed the voracious sharks to escape, while the little sardines were caught. The profiteers who have realized millions during the war have been acquitted or let off with ridiculous penalties. The little thieves, men and women, have been punished with sentences of Draconian severity.

Worn out by hunger and cold, in cells which are hardly heated, these derelicts of society await mercy and pity.

They have waited in vain, for in his preoccupation with making the nations cut one another’s throats and of distributing crowns, the last of the Hohenzollerns forgot these miserable people, and since the Conquest of Liege there has been no amnesty, not even on the official holiday of German slaves, the Kaiser’s birthday.

The Proletarian Revolution ought now, by a little ray of kindness, to illuminate the gloomy life of the prisons, shorten Draconian sentences, abolish barbarous punishments – the use of manacles and whippings – improve, as far as possible, the medical attention, the food allowance, and the conditions of labor. That is a duty of honor!

The existing disciplinary system, which is impregnated with brutal class spirit and with capitalist barbarism, should be radically altered.

But a complete reform, in harmony with the spirit of socialism, can be based only on a new economic and social order; for both crime and punishment have, in the last analysis, their roots deep in the organization of society. One radical measure, however, can be taken without any elaborate legal process. Capital punishment, the greatest shame of the ultra-reactionary German code, ought to be done away with at once. Why are there any hesitations on the part of this Government of workers and soldiers? The noble Beccaria, two hundred years ago, denounced the ignominy of the death penalty. Doesn’t its ignominy exist for you, Ledebour, Barth, Daeumig?

You have no time, you have a thousand cares, a thousand difficulties, a thousand tasks before you? That is true. But mark, watch in hand, how much time would be needed to say: "Capital punishment is abolished!" Would you argue that, on this question also, long discussions followed by votes are necessary? Would you thus lose yourselves in the complications of formalism, in considerations of jurisdiction, in questions of departmental red tape?

Ah! HOW German this German Revolution is! How argumentative and pedantic it is! How rigid, inflexible, lacking in grandeur!

The forgotten death penalty is only one little isolated detail. But how precisely the inner spirit, which governs the Revolution, betrays itself in these little details!

Let one take up any ordinary history of the great French Revolution. Let one take up the dry Mignet, for instance.

Can one read this book except with a beating heart and a burning brow? Can one, after having opened it, at no matter what page, put it aside before one has heard, with bated breath, the last chord of that formidable tragedy? It is like a symphony of Beethoven carried to the gigantic and the grotesque, a tempest thundering on the organ of time, great and superb in its errors as well as in its achievement, in victory as well as in defeat, in the first cry of naive joyfulness as well as in the final breath.

And now how is it with us in Germany?

Everywhere, in the small as in the great, one feels that these are still and always the old and sober citizens of the defunct Social-Democracy, those for whom the badge of membership is everything and the man and the spirit are nothing.

Let us not forget this, however. The history of the world is not made without grandeur of spirit, without lofty morale, without noble gestures.

Liebknecht and I, on leaving the hospitable halls which we recently inhabited – he, among his pale companions in the penitentiary, I with my dear, poor thieves and women of the streets, with whom I have passed, under the same roof, three years and a half of my life – we took this oath as they followed us with their sad eyes: "We shall not forget you!"

We demand of the executive committee of the Council of Workers and Soldiers an immediate amelioration of the lot of all the prisoners in the German jails!

We demand the excision of capital punishment from the German penal code!

During the four years of this slaughter of the peoples, blood has flowed in torrents. Today, each drop of that precious fluid ought to be preserved devotedly in crystal urns.

Revolutionary activity and profound humanitarianism – they alone are the true breath of socialism.

A world must be turned upside down. But each tear that flows, when it could have been spared, is an accusation, and he commits a crime who with brutal inadvertency crushes a poor earthworm.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/11/18c-alt.htm