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Quote by Rosa Luxemburg

“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.”

Book:The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy

Work

The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy

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Author

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

“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.”

Communism Marxism Critique Class Struggle Historical Materialism Social Democratic Party

Book:The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy

Source: The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy

“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.”

War Capitalism Imperialism Marxism Dialectics Historical Materialism

Book:The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy

Source: The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy

“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!”

James Oliver If We Were Villains

Book:If We Were Villains

Source: If We Were Villains