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Clara Zetkin

In Defence of Rosa Luxemburg

(1919)
Source: The Communist International, Vol. 1, No.2, 1919.
Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org in August, 2002.

The article written by comrade Louisa Kautsky in commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg

(see the Freiheit of January 20, No.36) challenges to energetic opposition all those
who intimately knew the greatness of soul of our so foully assassinated comrade. It
goes against my inclination to dispute about the deceased as it were before her open
grave. Yet truth and friendship prompt me to refute some of the assertions made by
Louise Kautsky. I believe I owe it not only to the departed, but also to the living to
prevent the caricature of Rosa Luxemburg, as drawn and spread by her numerous
enemies, from being any further coarsened and distorted by ill-drawn lines from the
hand of a friend.

Louisa Kautsky is right when she says of Rosa Luxemburg as a fighter that “she did
not spare even her best friends, on the contrary”. Yet as a friend thoroughly
understanding the deceased comrade L. Kautsky ought to have laid stress on some
other points besides. The tenacious, thoughtful patience with which she fought for the
soul of her oldest friends before setting out top combat them! The sincerity of her grief
when she had to take arms against a former confederate, the bitterness of her
disappointment when his way of fighting and wielding arms made he recognize that he
did not come up to the high ideal she had formed of him. To be sure, Rosa Luxemburg
did not spare even her oldest friend if she was honestly convinced that he was
detrimental to and wronging the proletarian class-struggle. The cause in her eyes
always stood above the person. Once she considered it her duty to combat even her
dearest friend she did so with all the weapons at her disposal. With the heavy artillery;
of serious scholarly methods and mature theoretical training, with the weighty blows of
brilliant dialectics, the dainty foil of irony, wit and derision. Yet at no time did she
make use of unchivalrous methods. Here was a thoroughly noble character, incapable
of retaliating upon anyone, of weilding the weapons of baseness, even if such were used
against herself.
 Louisa Kautsky is therefore wrong when she characterizes Rosa Luxemburg thus: “I
am sorry to say that in such cases she acted like Lenin, much admired by her, who
having once been brought up before a party-tribunal for libelling a party-comrade
declared: ‘A political opponent, in particular if he be of our own socialist camp, ought
to be fought with poisoned weapons by seeking to arouse the worst possible suspicion
against him’.” By the way, I strongly doubt whether the above-mentioned utterance
ought really to be taken as characteristic of the great bolshevik leader. I know from the
history of the Russian revolution as also from my own experience what a relentless and
fear-inspiring opponent comrade Lenin was. Yet libel I did not find among his
weapons. Before granting conclusive force to that alleged statement of his I ought to
know all the details of the context and the circumstances in which it is said to have
been made.

According to my knowledge and feelings Louisa Kautsky ought to have guarded

against passing at the end of her commemorative essay, from the purely personal
ground to the political one and here insinuating a change – incomprehensible to her –
in the ideas and attitude of Rosa Luxemburg. I fully and with heartiest sympathy
appreciate what Louisa Kautsky is endeavoring to do for socialism within the limits of
her circle and her nature. By no means do I question her right to hold her own opinion
on the events and phenomenon that occur in the camp of international socialism. But
all this does not alter the fact that in the struggle for socialism she only partakes of the
experience of others but has no experience of her own. In consequence,
notwithstanding her striving after objectivity, she lacks the true independent attitude
towards those phenomena. She regards them from the point of view of her entourage,
of a wife trying to understand, closely taking part in the struggle of her husband, but
herself not standing in the midst of the fray. Rosa Luxemburg, on the other and, was in
the thickest of the fighting and kept a sharp lookout from the high watch-tower she had
erected for herself.

Thus it is easily understood, that while the one, scrutinizing and weighing, fought for
the historical appreciation of the Russian revolution, the other in lofty self-confidence
sat in preconceived judgement upon the “bolshevik heresies” which, “contrary to all
reasons have so dazzled and deluded the clear mind of Rosa Luxemburg that she
desired to repeat in Germany the experience that had miscarried in Russia.” No need
for me to further pursue this crushing verdict, for I am certain that the “experiments
that miscarried in Russia” will still have a creative role assigned to them in future
history wen what the socialist compromisers have written against them will no longer
be able to harm even a mouse. Rosa Luxemburg’s attitude towards the Russian
November revolution was consistent and clear. It has not to be judged by incidental
utterances about persons and events, utterances that are pardonable with high-spirited
persons of subtly differentiated and high-strung sensitiveness, influenced by
impressions and things. Rosa Luxemburg valued bolshevism as a whole by its
prominent historical importance, and she did not fail to criticize those detail
inclinations and her tact forbade her to act as Louisa Kautsky’s demand for consistency
in political action obviously seems to have required. That means, to unearth old feuds
and antiquated judgement just at the moment when the spies and hangmen of Ebert
and Noske were dogging the footsteps of Radek.

I do not desire to argue within the limits of these lines with Louise Kautsky on the
question as to which really are the “bolshevik methods that Rosa Luxemburg not only
confessed, but unfortunately, even began to practice herself”. All I wish to say is that
those “methods” do not correspond to the figure that, for the benefit of the
unprincipled and faint-hearted policy of the right wing of the Independent Socialist
Party is being drawn on the wall, – a counterfeit that comes very close to the
“bolshevik” and “Spartacus” bogey of the government socialists. However, let us
mention the “bolshevik methods” no more. With this catchword to explain the
miscarriage of the January revolt of Berlin is just as foolish as to attribute the failure of
the Paris Commune to its having anticipated the “bolshevik heresies” and “methods”.
Rosa Luxemburg did not take her methods of combat from the Russian conditions. She
rather deduced them by means of deep research of insight into international
development. For Germany she based them on the German conditions, yet not on the
conditions of the past period of slack evolution, but on those of the stormy chapter of
revolution that began after the rise and unfolding of imperialism.

My friend, Louisa Kautsky, will not be offended if I say what I think, i.e. that the
commemoration article was begun by the grateful friend of Rosa Luxemburg and
finished by the wife of Karl Kautsky. Rosa Luxemburg would have been the last person
to reproach her for it. Out of her consciousness of her own freedom there grew up a
leniency towards the inner constraint and dependence of others. It is not the patronage
of Louisa Kautsky that will have spoken the last word on Rosa Luxemburg “delusion”
and “bolshevik methods”. The final word will be uttered by history. We all who take
pride in having been Rosa Luxemburg’s friends and comrades in arms await this
verdict.

Clara Zetkin (Germany)

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Last updated on 28.2.2004