Quotessence
Home / Authors / Rosa Luxemburg Biography
Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg Biography

Philosopher

Related Quotes

“La tendance générale et le résultat final de ce processus sont l'hégémonie universelle de la production capitaliste. Ce terme atteint, le schéma de Marx entre en vigueur : l'accumulation, c'est-à-dire l'expansion ultérieure du capital, devient impossible.”

CapitalProductivismeCritique Des Critiques
Book:The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg Volume IV: Political Writings 2, On Revolution
Create image

“Geschändet, entehrt, im Blute watend, von Schmutz triefend – so steht die bürgerliche Gesellschaft da, so ist sie. Nicht wenn sie, geleckt und sittsam, Kultur, Philosophie und Ethik, Ordnung, Frieden und Rechtsstaat mimt – als reißende Bestie, als Hexensabbat der Anarchie, als Pesthauch für Kultur und Menschheit –, so zeigt sie sich in ihrer wahren, nackten Gestalt.”

MarxismBourgeois Society
Book:La crisis de la socialdemocracia
Create image

“It [the proletariat] should and must at once undertake socialist measures in the most energetic, unyielding and unhesitant fashion, in other words, exercise a dictatorship, but a dictatorship of the class, not of a party or of a clique – dictatorship of the class, that means in the broadest possible form on the basis of the most active, unlimited participation of the mass of the people, of unlimited democracy.”

SocialismCommunismProletariat
Book:The Russian Revolution
Create image

“The uninterrupted victory of democracy, which to our revisionism as well as to bourgeois liberalism, appears as a great fundamental law of human history and, especially, modern history has shown upon closer examination to be a phantom. No absolute and general relation can be constructed between capitalist development and democracy. The political form of a given country is always the result of the composite of all the existing political factors, domestic as well as foreign. It admits within its limits all variations of the scale from absolute monarchy to the democratic republic.”

HistoryCommunismLiberalismHistorical Materialism
Book:Reform or Revolution
Create image

“The modern proletariat was not led by the social-democracy into class struggle. On the contrary, the international social-democratic movement was called into being by the class struggle to bring a conscious aim and unity into the various local and scattered fragments of the class struggle.”

SocialismCommunismMaterialismMarxismClass StruggleSocial DemocracyHistorical Materialism
Book:The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy
Create image

“Have private property, capitalist exploitation and class rule ceased to exist? Or, have the propertied classes in a spell of patriotic fervour declared: in view of the needs of the war we hereby turn over the means of production, the earth, the factories and the mills thereon, into the possession of the people? Have they relinquished the right to make profits out of these possessions? Have they set aside all political privileges, will they sacrifice them upon the altar of the fatherland, now that it is in danger? It is, to say the least, a rather naive hypothesis, and sounds almost like a story from a kindergarten primer. And yet the declaration of our official leaders, that the class struggle has been suspended, permits no other interpretation.”

CommunismMarxismCritiqueClass StruggleHistorical MaterialismSocial Democratic Party
Book:The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy
Create image

“Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognizable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will.”

WarCapitalismImperialismMarxismDialecticsHistorical Materialism
Book:The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy
Create image

“Fourier's scheme of changing, by means of phalansteries, the water of all the seas into tasty lemonade was surely a phantastic idea. But Bernstein, proposing to change the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness, by progressively pouring into it bottles of social reformist lemonade, presents an idea that is merely more insipid but no less phantastic.”

Rosa LuxemburgReformismGerman Social DemocracyReform Or Revolution
Book:Reform or Revolution
Create image

“Sur ma tombe, comme dans ma vie, il n'y aura pas de phrase grandiloquente. Sur la dalle de mon tombeau, on ne devra lire que deux syllabes: «zwi-zwi». C'est le cri des mésanges charbonnières que j'imite si bien qu'elles accourent aussitôt. Et imaginez que dans ce zwi-zwi qui d'habitude brillait comme une aiguille d'acier et rendait un son très clair et très grêle, il y a depuis quelques jours un trille tout à fait menu, une minuscule note de poitrine. Et savez-vous, mademoiselle Jacob, ce que cela signifie ? C'est le premier léger mouvement du printemps à venir : malgré la neige, le froid et la solitude, nous croyons, les mésanges charbonnières et moi, à la venue du printemps ! Et si, par trop d'impatience, il ne devait pas m'être donné de vivre ce printemps, n'oubliez pas que sur la dalle de ma tombe on ne doit lire rien d'autre que «zwi-zwi». 7 février 1917, prison de Wronke À Mathilde Jacob”

PrisonGuerrePolitiqueRévolutionLettreRosa LuxemburgTombeMésangeOiseaux
Book:Commencer à vivre humainement
Create image

“The true dialectic of revolutions, however, stands this wisdom of parliamentary moles on its head: not through a majority to revolutionary tactics, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority — that is the way the road runs.”

RevolutionSocialismCommunismMarxismDialecticsSocial RevolutionOpportunismDialectical MaterialismParliamentary Cretinism
Book:The Russian Revolution,: And Leninism or Marxism?
Create image

“A la fin, tout sera bien récapitulé; et si ça ne l'est pas, je «m'en fiche aussi»; même sans ça, la vie m'est une telle source de joie tous les matins j'inspecte scrupuleusement les bourgeons de tous mes arbustes et vérifie où ils en sont; chaque jour je rends visite à une coccinelle rouge avec deux petits points noirs sur le dos que je maintiens en vie depuis une semaine sur une branche, dans un pansement de chaude ouate malgré la bise et la froidure; j'observe les nuages, toujours plus beaux et sans cesse différents, et au total je ne me considère pas plus importante que cette petite coccinelle et, imbue du sentiment de mon infime petitesse, je me sens ineffablement heureuse.”

PrisonRosa LuxemburgFleursLettresNuagesCoccinelle
Book:Commencer à vivre humainement
Create image

“Social Democracy, does not, however, expect to attain its aim either as a result of the victorious violence of a minority or through the numerical superiority of a majority. It sees socialism come as a result of economic necessity - and the comprehension of that necessity - leading to the suppression of capitalism by the working masses. And this necessity manifests itself above all in the anarchy of capitalism.”

SocialismLabourRosa LuxemburgGerman Social DemocracyReform Or Revolution
Book:Reform or Revolution
Create image

“En réalité, je traverse actuellement une passe assez dure. C'est exactement comme l'an dernier, à la Barnimstrasse : pendant sept mois je tiens bon, et le huitième mes nerfs flanchent tout à coup. Chaque jour à passer devient un petit sommet qu'il me faut gravir; la moindre bagatelle m'irrite douloureusement. En effet, dans cinq jours il y aura huit mois pleins de ma deuxième année de solitude. Ensuite, sûrement, comme l'an dernier, la vie reprendra ses droits, d'autant plus qu'on s'approche du printemps. Du reste, tout serait bien plus facile à supporter, si je n'oubliais pas la loi fondamentale que je me suis fixée comme règle de vie: être bon, voilà le principal! Etre bon tout simplement. Voilà qui englobe tout et qui vaut mieux que toute l'intelligence et la prétention d'avoir raison. 5 mars 1917, prison de Wronke À Hans Diefenbach”

PrisonGuerreRévolutionRosa LuxemburgSurvivreLettres
Book:Commencer à vivre humainement
Create image

“Europe, it is true, is a geographical and, within certain limits, an historical cultural conception. But the idea of Europe as an economic unit contradicts capitalist development in two ways. First of all there exist within Europe among the capitalist States – and will so long as these exist – the most violent struggles of competition and antagonisms, and secondly the European States can no longer get along economically without the non-European countries. ... At the present stage of development of the world market and of world economy, the conception of Europe as an isolated economic unit is a sterile concoction of the brain. ... And if the idea of a European union in the economic sense has long been outstripped, this is no less the case in the political sense. .... Only were one suddenly to lose sight of all these happenings and manoeuvres, and to transfer oneself back to the blissful times of the European concert of powers, could one say, for instance, that for forty years we have had uninterrupted peace. This conception, which considers only events on the European continent, does not notice that the very reason why we have had no war in Europe for decades is the fact that international antagonisms have grown infinitely beyond the narrow confines of the European continent, and that European problems and interests are now fought out on the world seas and in the by-corners of Europe.”

PoliticsPeaceCapitalismEconomicsUtopiaEuropean UnionRosa Luxemburg
Book:Rosa Luxemburg Speaks
Create image

“The self-discipline of the Social Democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee. The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed self-discipline of the Social Democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility.”

SelfStatesLastsSocialResultsClassDemocracyHabitDisciplineAuthorityRootsObedienceAcquireCapitalistRulersSocialistCommitteesSelf DisciplineWorking ClassBourgeoisReplacementsOld HabitsServilitySocial Democracy
Author:Rosa Luxemburg
Create image

“Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does "regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization.”

WorldLooksMeanDoeSaidWarMomentsShowsThis WorldCivilizationSocialismTriumphWar Of The WorldsTransitionWorld War IImperialismSeriousnessLoftyBourgeoisBarbarismAnnihilationCrossroadsRegressionEngels
Author:Rosa Luxemburg
Create image

“What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball… I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears.”

WorldWantFeelsHumansHeartPlayHomeBodyPainSpecialTearsMy HeartEmpathyBirdBallsVictimCloudsJewCornersWretchedGhettoRubberPlantations
Author:Rosa Luxemburg
Create image