BolshevismBourgeoisieCapitalismCommunismCommunist ManifestoRosa LuxemburgSocialismWorkers PartyWorking ClassWorld War

420 THE CLASS STRUGGLE ROSA LUXEMBURG 421 right bankruptcy, as the inner expression of a social patriotic labor party imbued with bourgeois ideals, a party that has sold the proud revolutionary birthright of the proletariat for even less than the mess of pottage demanded by Kautsky for the empty words of a Kaiser, recognize no parties, know only Germans, for the honor of a place in the ranks of nationalistic delusion.
its gigantis, insatiable appetites, its tremendous means of power, very different wonders from the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and Gothis cathedrals, as expressed in the Communist Manifesto. It gives new and deeped content to the difference between Germany and France created by the war of 1870 71; it extinguishes old differences familiar to world politics betwen the great powers of Europe and creates new fields of conflict between them; it is tearing the United States and Japan into its powerful current. Dripping with dirt and blood it traverses the earth, destroying ancient civilizations and converting entire despoiled nations into slaves of European capitalism. International imperialism is heaping up fagot upon fagot for the devastating world conflagration in Egypt, Syria, Morocco, South and Southeast Africa, in Asia Minor, Arabia, Persia, and China, on the islands and the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, and on the Balkan peninsula. But it was German imperialism, late born and madly aggressive, which, by way of the provoking ultimatum of Austria to Serbia in 1914, carried out the war stroke that lit the pyre of capitalistic civilization. It was driven on irresistably by the gold hunger of German finance. represented in particular by the German Bank, the most concentrated, best organized institution of capitalistic finance in the world which longed to exploit Turkey and Asia Minor, and the lust of profit of the armament industries; it received its ruinous fool liberty from the barely curbed despotism of Wilhelm II and the voluntary weakness of the bourgeois opposition.
Rosa Luxemburg succeeded so well in portraying within the narrow limits of her Junius pamphlet the imperialistic nature of the World War and its aims, because in her extensive scientific work on the Accumulation of Capital she had traced down in an exposition as thorough as it was brilliant, the last roots of imperialism, as well as its political branchings. But in divesting the World War of its ideological dress, exposing in its nakedness as a business venture the business venture, the deal for life and death of international Capital, she also mercilessly, piece by piece, tears the ideological wrappings of the Social Democratic policy of August 4th from its body. In the fresh morning atmosphere of scientific examination of the entire historical phenomenon and its associations, the hollow phrases of the fight for civilization, against Czarism, ar for the defense of the Fatherland, etc. crumble away. Convincingly Rosa Luxemburg proves that in the present imperialistic environment the conception of a modest, virtuous war of defense of the fatherland has forever flown. The Social Democratic war policy reveals itself in all its primitive ugliness as outThe Junius pamphlet is introduced by observations on the duty and importance of Socialist self criticism, observations that are among the most wonderful things that have ever emerged out of the depths of pure and strong socialistic feeling and thought.
Here the sincerest, most glowing conviction demands the highest and severest standards for our actions as Socialists, directing our glance with prophetic force to the great resplendent perspectives of the future which Socialism opens to us. The approaching heroic hour of the new world epoch must find a heroic race in the proletariat which during the up and down of victory and defeat of its revolutionary struggles shall train itself through unsparing self criticism, for the triumph of Socialism. The conclusion of the Junius pamphlet links on to the beginning, closing the ring. It views the World War as the pioneer of th World Revolution. Victory or defeat in the present gigantic struggle must be equally fateful for the conflicting imperialist groups, and incidentally for the proletariats of the different lands, leading inevitably to the collapse of the capitalistic order and capitalistic culture, to its world trial before the judgment seat of the Revolution. Rosa Luxemburg wrote this in March and April of 1915 long before the heroic Russian proletariat led by the determined Bolsheviki gave the storm signal for the social revolution, long before the slightest ruffling of the waters in Germany and in the Habsburg dual monarchy announced the approach of a revolutionary flood. What we have since experienced, what Rosa Luxemburg herself was still permitted to experience in part, is a splendid corroberation of the arp ness and correctness with which she had in her Junius pamphlet seen the historical lines of development.
Perhaps on this very account some reader may regrettingly or faultfindingly inquire why the author did not show in perspective the possibility of a revolution in Russia, why she neglected to indicate the possible methods and means of fighting in the revolutionary period that was just dawning. It is true that in 1915, already out of the roaring chaos of the world struggle more and more clearly and visibly the giant form of the Revolution was emerging. But there was no indication of when and