Centenary

A hundred years ago today, Rosa Luxemburg was brutally murdered in Berlin, beaten with gun butts before being shot in the head and having her body thrown into the Landwerh Canal. The killers were soldiers made callous by trench warfare. They belonged to the Freikorps who were subduing the Berlin Spartacist uprising by cannon-shot, machinegun fire and mass executions, under the orders of Noske, Sheidemann and Ebert. That night – she was arrested at about 9pm along with Karl Liebknecht who was murdered separately – the most brilliant socially-oriented mind of the times was obliterated, and a majority of her manuscripts were later destroyed. Fortunately for posterity “The Accumulation of Capital” and other published writings survived. And anyone wishing to better understand the fundamental link between profit capitalism and empire would be advised to read sections I & III of Rosa Luxemburg’s masterpiece (written in just four months of great exhilaration, according to a May 12 1917 letter to Diefenbach from the prison in Wronki where she had been incarcerated for opposing the war).

Accessible at Marxists Internet Archives:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/index.htm

Historical details from Paul Frölich’s “Rosa Luxemburg”, ed. Maspero, 1965