Rosa Luxemburg
Order Prevails in Berlin
Written: January 14, 1919
Source: Gessemelte Werke
Publisher: Dietz Verlag
First Published: Rote Fahne, 14 January 1919
Translated: Marcus
Online Version: marxists.org 1999
Transcription: A. Lehrer/Brian Basgen
[The following editorial is the last known piece of writing by
Rosa Luxemburg. It was written just after the Spartacus uprising
was crushed by the German government and in the hours prior to
the arrest and murder of her and Karl Liebknecht by the
Friekorps.–A.L.]
"Order prevails in Warsaw!" declared Minister
Sebastiani to the Paris Chamber of Deputies in 1831, when after
having stormed the suburb of Praga, Paskevich’s marauding
troops invaded the Polish capital to begin their butchery of the
rebels.
"Order prevails in Berlin!" So proclaims the
bourgeois press triumphantly, so proclaim Ebert and Noske, and the
officers of the "victorious troops," who are being
cheered by the petty-bourgeois mob in Berlin waving handkerchiefs
and shouting "Hurrah!" The glory and honor of German
arms have been vindicated before world history. Those who were
routed in Flanders and the Argonne have restored their reputation
with a brilliant victory -- over three hundred
"Spartacists" in the Vorwarts building. The
days when glorious German troops first crossed into Belgium, and
the days of General von Emmich, the conqueror of Liege, pale
before the exploits of Reinhardt and Co. in the streets of
Berlin. The government’s rampaging troops massacred the
mediators who had tried to negotiate the surrender of the
Vorwarts building, using their rifle butts to beat them
beyond recognition. Prisoners who were lined up against the wall
and butchered so violently that skull and brain tissue splattered
everywhere. In the sight of glorious deeds such as those, who
would remember the ignominious defeat at the hands of the French,
British, and Americans? Now "Spartacus" is the enemy,
Berlin is the place where our officers can savor triumph, and
Noske, "the worker," is the general who can lead
victories where Ludendorff failed.
Who is not reminded of that drunken celebration by the
"law and order" mob in Paris, that Bacchanal of the
bourgeoisie celebrated over the corpses of the Communards? That
same bourgeoisie who had just shamefully capitulated to the
Prussians and abandoned the capital to the invading enemy, taking
to their heels like abject cowards. Oh, how the manly courage of
those darling sons of the bourgeoisie, of the "golden
youth," and of the officer corps flared back to life against
the poorly armed, starving Parisian proletariat and their
defenseless women and children. How these courageous sons of Mars,
who had buckled before the foreign enemy, raged with bestial
cruelty against defenseless people, prisoners, and the fallen.
"Order prevails in Warsaw!" "Order prevails in
Paris!" "Order prevails in Berlin!" Every
half-century that is what the bulletins from the guardians of
"order" proclaim from one center of the world-historic
struggle to the next. And the jubilant "victors" fail to
notice that any "order" that needs to be regularly
maintained through bloody slaughter heads inexorably toward its
historic destiny; its own demise.
What was this recent "Spartacus week" in Berlin? What
has it brought? What does it teach us? While we are still in the
midst of battle, while the counterrevolution is still howling
about their victory, revolutionary proletarians must take stock of
what happened and measure the events and their results against the
great yardstick of history. The revolution has no time to lose, it
continues to rush headlong over still-open graves, past
"victories" and "defeats," toward its great
goal. The first duty of fighters for international socialism is to
consciously follow the revolution’s principles and its
path.
Was the ultimate victory of the revolutionary proletariat to be
expected in this conflict? Could we have expected the overthrow
Ebert-Scheidemann and the establishment of a socialist
dictatorship? Certainly not, if we carefully consider all the
variables that weigh upon the question. The weak link in the
revolutionary cause is the political immaturity of the masses of
soldiers, who still allow their officers to misuse them, against
the people, for counterrevolutionary ends. This alone shows that
no lasting revolutionary victory was possible at this
juncture. On the other hand, the immaturity of the military is
itself a symptom of the general immaturity of the German
revolution.
The countryside, from which a large percentage of rank-and-file
soldiers come, has hardly been touched by the revolution. So far,
Berlin has remained virtually isolated from the rest of the
country. The revolutionary centers in the provinces -- the
Rhineland, the northern coast, Brunswick, Saxony, Wurttemburg --
have been heart and soul behind the Berlin workers, it is
true. But for the time being they still do not march forward in
lockstep with one another, there is still no unity of action,
which would make the forward thrust and fighting will of the
Berlin working class incomparably more effective. Furthermore,
there is -- and this is only the deeper cause of the political
immaturity of the revolution -- the economic struggle, the actual
volcanic font that feeds the revolution, is only in its initial
stage. And that is the underlying reason why the revolutionary
class struggle, is in its infancy.
From all this that flows the fact a decisive, lasting victory
could not be counted upon at this moment. Does that mean that the
past week’s struggle was an "error"? The answer is
yes if we were talking about a premeditated "raid" or
"putsch." But what triggered this week of combat? As in
all previous cases, such as December 6 and December 24, it was a
brutal provocation by the government. Like the bloodbath against
defenseless demonstrators in Chausseestrasse, like the butchery of
the sailors, this time the assault on the Berlin police
headquarters was the cause of all the events that followed. The
revolution does not develop evenly of its own volition, in a clear
field of battle, according to a cunning plan devised by clever
"strategists."
The revolution’s enemies can also take the
initiative, and indeed as a rule they exercise it more frequently
than does the revolution. Faced with the brazen provocation by
Ebert-Scheidemann, the revolutionary workers were forced
to take up arms. Indeed, the honor of the revolution
depended upon repelling the attack immediately, with full-force in
order to prevent the counterrevolution from being encouraged to
press forward, and lest the revolutionary ranks of the proletariat
and the moral credit of the German revolution in the International
be shaken.
The immediate and spontaneous outpouring of resistance from the
Berlin masses flowed with such energy and determination that in
the first round the moral victory was won by the
"streets."
Now, it is one of the fundamental, inner laws of revolution
that it never stands still, it never becomes passive or docile at
any stage, once the first step has been taken. The best defense is
a strong blow. This is the elementary rule of any fight but it is
especially true at each and every stage of the revolution. It is a
demonstration of the healthy instinct and fresh inner strength of
the Berlin proletariat that it was not appeased by the
reinstatement of Eichorn (which it had demanded), rather the
proletariat spontaneously occupied the command posts of the
counter-revolution: the bourgeois press, the semi-official press
agency, the Vorwarts office. All these measures were a
result of the masses’ instinctive realization that, for its
part, the counter-revolution would not accept defeat but would
carry on with a general demonstration of its strength.
Here again we stand before one of the great historical laws of
the revolution against which are smashed to pieces all the
sophistry and arrogance of the petty USPD variety
"revolutionaries" who look for any pretext to retreat
from struggle. As soon as the fundamental problem of the
revolution has been clearly posed -- and in this
revolution it is the overthrow of the Ebert-Scheidemann
government, the primary obstacle to the victory of socialism --
then this basic problem will rise again and again in its
entirety. With the inevitability of a natural law, every
individual chapter in the struggle will unveil this problem to its
full extent regardless of how unprepared the revolution is ready
to solve it or how unripe the situation may be. "Down with
Ebert-Scheidemann!" -- this slogan springs forth inevitably
in each revolutionary crisis as the only formula summing up all
partial struggles. Thus automatically, by its own internal,
objective logic, bringing each episode in the struggle to a boil,
whether one wants it to or not.
Because of the contradiction in the early stages of the
revolutionary process between the task being sharply posed and the
absence of any preconditions to resolve it, individual battles of
the revolution end in formal defeat. But revolution is
the only form of "war" -- and this is another peculiar
law of history -- in which the ultimate victory can be prepared
only by a series of "defeats."
What does the entire history of socialism and of all modern
revolutions show us? The first spark of class struggle in Europe,
the revolt of the silk weavers in Lyon in 1831, ended with a heavy
defeat; the Chartist movement in Britain ended in defeat; the
uprising of the Parisian proletariat in the June days of 1848
ended with a crushing defeat; and the Paris commune ended with a
terrible defeat. The whole road of socialism -- so far as
revolutionary struggles are concerned -- is paved with nothing but
thunderous defeats. Yet, at the same time, history marches
inexorably, step by step, toward final victory! Where would we be
today without those "defeats," from which we
draw historical experience, understanding, power and idealism?
Today, as we advance into the final battle of the proletarian
class war, we stand on the foundation of those very defeats; and
we can do without any of them, because each one
contributes to our strength and understanding.
The revolutionary struggle is the very antithesis of the
parliamentary struggle. In Germany, for four decades we had
nothing but parliamentary "victories." We practically
walked from victory to victory. And when faced with the great
historical test of August 4, 1914, the result was the devastating
political and moral defeat, an outrageous debacle and rot without
parallel. To date, revolutions have given us nothing but
defeats. Yet these unavoidable defeats pile up guarantee upon
guarantee of the future final victory.
There is but one condition. The question of why each
defeat occurred must be answered. Did it occur because the
forward-storming combative energy of the masses collided with the
barrier of unripe historical conditions, or was it that
indecision, vacillation, and internal frailty crippled the
revolutionary impulse itself?
Classic examples of both cases are the February revolution in
France on the one hand and the March revolution in Germany on the
other. The courage of the Parisian proletariat in the year 1848
has become a fountain of energy for the class struggle of the
entire international proletariat. The deplorable events of the
German March revolution of the same year have weighed down the
whole development of modern Germany like a ball and chain. In the
particular history of official German Social Democracy, they have
reverberated right up into the most recent developments in the
German revolution and on into the dramatic crisis we have just
experienced.
How does the defeat of "Spartacus week" appear in the
light of the above historical question? Was it a case of raging,
uncontrollable revolutionary energy colliding with an
insufficiently ripe situation, or was it a case of weak and
indecisive action?
Both! The crisis had a dual nature. The contradiction
between the powerful, decisive, aggressive offensive of the Berlin
masses on the one hand and the indecisive, half-hearted
vacillation of the Berlin leadership on the other is the mark of
this latest episode. The leadership failed. But a new leadership
can and must be created by the masses and from the masses. The
masses are the crucial factor. They are the rock on which the
ultimate victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were
up to the challenge, and out of this "defeat" they have
forged a link in the chain of historic defeats, which is the pride
and strength of international socialism. That is why future
victories will spring from this "defeat."
"Order prevails in Berlin!" You foolish lackeys! Your
"order" is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will
"rise up again, clashing its weapons," and to your
horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing:
I was, I am, I shall be!