Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Rosa Luxemburg

Quote by Rosa Luxemburg

“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.”

Quote by Rosa Luxemburg

Work

The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg (March 5, 1871 – January 15, 1919) was a Polish-German Marxist philosopher, economist, and revolutionary. She was a key figure in the German Social Democratic Party and a co-founder of the Communist Party of Germany. Known for her critique of capitalism, theory of imperialism, and advocacy for socialist democracy, she opposed World War I and was imprisoned for her anti-war activities. Luxemburg was murdered by right-wing paramilitaries during the German Revolution of 1919. Her works, including 'The Accumulation of Capital' and 'The Russian Revolution,' remain influential in Marxist theory. more

You May Also Like

“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.”

“This,” James said, when he had disappeared. “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars … as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting-on!”

“The suck you are charging away from needs to stay behind you, and fully grasping your driving forces will make sure you are charging forward, dedicated to your lighthouse.”