Rosa LuxemburgRussian RevolutionSocialismStrikeWorking Class

422 THE CLASS STRUGGLE ROSA LUXEMBURG 423 where it would begin its triumphal course.
The Russian Revolution was to be the subject of a second Junius pamphlet, some of whose outlines had already been hastily sketched by Rosa Luxemburg. The murderous hand of the German culture bearing military has deprived us of the projected work, which would also have discussed and evaluated the fighting means and methods of the Russian Revolution not in Kautsky fashion, certainly, according to a hard and fast scheme to which the actual development had to fit itself. No, Rosa Luxemburg view is that of a living, creative stream following out the historic development. The historical moment each time demands the appropriate form of the people movement and itself creates new means, improvises hitherto unknown fighting instruments, enriching the arsenal of the people, unheedful of party rules.
The essential thing for the Revolution, then, is not a conglomeration of ridiculous rules and prescriptions of a technical nature, but the political slogan, the clear consciousness of the political tasks and interests of the proletariat. In accordance with this view, Rosa Luxemburg at one time investigated an already tried fighting instrument of the working class the general strike, which she recognizes as first in historical importance and as the classical form of the movement of the proletariat in the periods of a revolutionary ferment. Her pamphlet on this subject a pioneer work in the proper estimation of this fighting instrument has been given a new significance by present events; today it should find millions of readers and sympathizers, rally millions of active fighters, ready for revolutionary deeds.
The Junius pamphlet is a particularly sparkling treasure of the heritage which Rosa Luxemburg has left the proletariat of Germany, of the world, for the theory and practice of its struggle for liberation, a treasure whose sparkle and glow are a painful reminder of how great and irreparable is the loss we have suffered. What is said of this treasure here, compares with it as a dry table of classification of plants compares with a garden full of blossoming, resplendent, fragrant flowers. It is as though Rosa Luxemburg, in anticipation of her sudden end, had gathered together in the Junius pamphlet all the forces of her genial nature for a great work the scientific, penetrating, independently searching and pondering mind of the theoretician, the fearless, burning passion of the convinced, daring revolutionary fighter, the inner richness and the splendid wealth of expression of the ever struggling artist. All the good spirits which nature had lavished upon her stood by her side as she wrote this work. Wrote merely wrote? No, experienced in the depths of her soul. In the precisely coined words that mark both her iconoclastic criticism of the Social Democratic betrayal and her inspiring vision of the expiation and the resurrection of the proletariat in the Revolution; in the sentences that seem to rush on to their goal; in the extensive chains of thought welded together with iron firmness; in the brilliant sarcasms; in the plastic figures of speech and the simple, noble pathos in all this one feels that it is suffused with the heartblood of Rosa Luxemburg, that in it speaks Rosa Luxemburg iron will, that behind it stands her whole being, every fibre of it. The Junius pamphlet is the outlet of a great personality that has devoted itself wholly and singly to a great, to the greatest cause. So, out of this work, the same Rosa Luxemburg greets us from beyond the grave who today more than ever is leading the world proletariat, going before it and leading it upon its way of Golgotha toward the promised land of Socialism.
But within the circle of light that surrounds her form, there stands a second great personality, which it is necessary to draw out from the obscurity in which it has purposely remained with that modesty which is a sign of real worth and the complete merging of all personal characteristics in a great ideal. This personality is Leo Jogisches. More than twenty years he was united with Rosa Luxemburg in an incomparable community of ideals and fighting purpose which had been steeled by the most powerful of all forces the glowing, all consuming passion of the two unusual souls for the Revolution. Not many have known Leo Jogisches, and very few indeed have estimated him according to his great significance. He appeared usually only as the organizer, who translated Rosa Luxemburg political ideas into practice, as an organizer to be sure of the first order, as a genial organizer. However, this does not exhaust his accomplishments. Of a far reaching, thorough general education, a rare master of scientific Socialism, a penetrating dialectic mind, Leo Jogisches was the incorruptible critical judge of Rosa Luxemburg and her work, her ever waking theoretic and practical conscience, at times too the one who saw further, the one who stimulated, just as Rosa on her part was the more penetrating and the one who created. He was one of those still very rare great masculine personalities who was capable of living side by side in true and joyous comradeship with a great feminine personality, without feeling in her growth and development a bond and a limitation upon his own ego; a gentle revolutionary in the noblest sense of the word, without any contradiction between belief and action. So, much of Leo best lies enshrined in the life work of Rosa Luxemburg. His increasing,