A collection of quotes and thoughts by Rosa Luxemburg on freedom, struggle, democracy, leadership, determination, fight, victory, government, history and aim.
Rosa Luxemburg was a renowned German economist, Marxist ideologue, philosopher, revolutionary and activist. She is regarded as one of the noted advocates of socialism and anti-war activism. Although it is true that Luxemburg’s criticism of Lenin has not earned her a great degree of favour among left wingers from the political spectrum, it is often stated that she is one of the leading figures of the ‘socialist cause’. Throughout her life, she was known for not only her anti-war activism but also her advocacy for socialism as the ideal form of society. She had been the member of the ‘Communist Party’ of Germany, ‘The Independent Social Democratic Party’ and the ‘Social Democratic Party’ of Germany (SPD) during her life. However, she quit the SPD for the party’s support of Germany’s participation in the First World War and that was what gave her the inspiration to co-found the party that went on to become the ‘Communist Party of Germany'. Luxemburg is without doubt one of the most well-known Marxist thinkers. Following is a compilation of quotations and sayings by Rosa Luxemburg who is often regarded as the martyr of the socialist cause. Read through the quotes and sayings by Rosa Luxemburg and get inspired.
Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
Rosa Luxemburg
Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.
Rosa Luxemburg
Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations.
Rosa Luxemburg
Social democracy... is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh.
Rosa Luxemburg
The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles.
Rosa Luxemburg
Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat.
Rosa Luxemburg
The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.
Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port.
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.
Rosa Luxemburg
One day, when the world market is more or less fully developed and can no longer be suddenly enlarged, and if labour productivity continues to advance, then sooner or later the periodic clashes between productive forces and market barriers will begin, and because of their recurrence, these will naturally become increasingly rough and stormy.
Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.
Rosa Luxemburg
The very action of the proletariat is a determining factor in history. And although we can no more jump over the stages of historical development than a man can jump over his shadow, nevertheless, we can accelerate or retard that development.
Rosa Luxemburg
The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process.
Rosa Luxemburg
Credit reproduces all the fundamental antagonisms of the capitalist world. It accentuates them. It precipitates their development and thus pushes the capitalist world forward to its own destruction.
Rosa Luxemburg
Democracy is indispensable, not because it renders superfluous the conquest of political power by the proletariat, but, on the contrary, because it makes this seizure of power both necessary and possible.
Though foreign loans are indispensable for the emancipation of the rising capitalist states, they are yet the surest ties by which the old capitalist states maintain their influence, exercise financial control, and exert pressure on the customs, foreign and commercial policy of the young capitalist states.
Rosa Luxemburg
Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud.
The existing legal constitution is nothing but the product of a revolution. Revolution is the act of political creation in the history of classes, while constitutional legislation is the expression of the continual political vegetation of a society.
Rosa Luxemburg
Under the leaden sway of Alexander III's government, the silence of the graveyard prevailed. Russian society, equally discouraged by the collapse of all hopes for peaceful reforms and by the apparent ineffectiveness of the revolutionary movement, was in the grip of a mood of depression and resignation.
Rosa Luxemburg
The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.
Rosa Luxemburg
People finally understood that the role of the social-democratic party rests on its conscious leadership of the mass struggle against the existing society, a struggle that must reckon with the vital, necessary conditions of capitalist society.
Rosa Luxemburg
Our scribblings are usually not lyrics but whirrings, without colour 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.
Tomorrow the revolution will 'rise up again, clashing its weapons,' and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!
Work for legal reform takes place only within the framework of the social form created by the last revolution.
Rosa Luxemburg
What presents itself to us as bourgeois legality is nothing but the violence of the ruling class, a violence raised to an obligatory norm from the outset.
Rosa Luxemburg
In the Imperialist Era, the foreign loan played an outstanding part as a means for young capitalist countries to acquire independence.
Rosa Luxemburg
Women's freedom is the sign of social freedom. Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.
Rosa Luxemburg
Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter
Rosa Luxemburg
Life is singing also in the sand crunching under the slow and heavy steps of the guards, when we know how to listen to it.
My dear, it is very nice here, every day two or three persons are stabbed by soldiers in the city; there are daily arrests, but apart from these it is pretty gay..
Rosa Luxemburg
I know thy works, that thou are neither cold nor hot; I would that thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.
