Zinoviev, unusually, with words of the greatest respect, even exaltation, on the 10th anniversary of Karl Leibknecht’s murder. Now less known, outside of Germany, than Rosa Luxemburg whom he is so closely identified because of their common fate, Liebknecht was easily among the most recognizable figures of International Socialism for a decade before his summary execution. Not only was the Third International in its formative period regularly referred to as the Bolshevik-Spartacus International, but Karl Liebknecht was also far better recognized by workers internationally, and revered, than Lenin in those years. Nearly every class-conscious worker in the U.S. would have known of Karl Liebknecht as an uncompromising Socialist a decade before 1919. This, the full text of an essay written by Zinoviev gives the obligatory ‘Leninist’ critique of Karl and Rosa’s mistakes and inadequacies, yet nevertheless rightly appreciates his enormous, historic, service given to the overthrow of imperialism and the emancipation the working class; the single, all-consuming cause that Liebknecht lived and died for.  

‘Karl Liebknecht and the War’ by Grigori Zinoviev from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 9 No 3. January, 19, 1929.

Ten years have passed since the murder of Karl Liebknecht. In this decade of the proletarian revolution the name of Karl Liebknecht has not been forgotten; on the contrary, it is better known and better honoured amongst the oppressed all over the world than ever before. In victory and defeat, in attack and in defence the working class of Germany and of the whole world will take the life and activity of Karl Liebknecht, one of the greatest leaders of our class, as a glorious example.

In this article we will remind our readers briefly of the most important stages in the life of Karl Liebknecht,

Karl Liebknecht was not always the Karl Liebknecht who is known to day to the toilers all over the world. In his political activity there is a long period when the difference between him and the other leaders of the German social democracy was not very great. In this period there was nothing to show the great historical role which Karl Liebknecht was to play during the war. It is sufficient to say that during the course of the years 1905 to 1915. during the struggle of the Russian tendencies, Karl Liebknecht was more often on the side of the Mensheviks than that of the Bolsheviks.

The development of the social democrat Liebknecht into the Liebknecht of the Spartakus Bund (League) and of the armed insurrection took place during the war. The international young Communist movement which educates the communist youth in the deepest respect for Karl Liebknecht and regards him, after Lenin, with justification as its best leader, must learn to know the real Liebknecht with all his weaknesses and all his strength. This is all the more necessary because the errors of Liebknecht were not his personal errors, but the errors of a whole wing, and by no means the worst wing, of the international working class movement. This fact detracts nothing from the real greatness of Liebknecht. With regard to Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin wrote that she had made a mistake in connection with the independence of Poland; that in 1903 she made a wrong estimate of the Mensheviks; that she was wrong in connection with the accumulation of capital; that she made a mistake in 1914 when he supported the proposal for a union of the Bolsheviks with the Mensheviks (at the so-called Brussels discussion which was organised by the Second International); that she made fundamental mistakes in a number of important questions of the Russian revolution in her writings in prison in 1918, but that despite these errors she remains an “eagle”. Lenin then quoted the popular Russian proverb to the effect that an eagle may sometimes swoop even lower than a hen, but that it is quite impossible that a hen might ever fly higher than an eagle.

Karl Liebknecht was and remains despite all his errors, an eagle. The truth, the whole truth concerning his life, his struggles, his mistakes and his great qualities shows up still more clearly the heroism of his attitude during the first great imperialist war.

The name of Karl Liebknecht, as it will go down in world history, is indissolubly bound up with the war. The greatness of Karl Liebknecht consisted in the fact that he understood better than anyone else, except Lenin, and was able to express better than anyone else, except Lenin, the great change which came over the proletarian revolution in Germany and in the other belligerent countries in connection with the first imperialist world war.

There is no need to stress especially the fact that the working class of Europe at the end of the first imperialist world war was different from the European working class which entered this war. Every month of the world war represented a tremendous lesson for the international proletariat. Every volley fired on the imperialist battle-field destroyed the reformist illusions of a peaceful development held by those sections of the working class in Europe which entered the war with the ideology inculcated by the twenty five years of peaceful development experienced by the Second International before the war.

Blood flowed in torrents. Every week tens and even hundreds of thousands of human beings lost their lives. With every day the miseries and privations of the population grew. Even in the first months of the war hesitation and doubt made themselves felt amongst the patriotic workers who were under the influence of the social democracy. Very soon the hesitations and doubt were resolved into a definite and growing hostility towards the war which the social democratic leaders termed “Great”, “Heroic” etc. And in this situation Karl Liebknecht was the man to whose lot it fell to express this change in the broad masses of the working class. Together with the masses Liebknecht developed towards revolutionary conclusions, and with the whole passion of his fiery nature he expressed the protest of the millions of workers against the fratricidal slaughter. Liebknecht was able as no other to express the fury, the suffering and the protest, and later also the growing revolutionary determination of the best sections of the European working class which had been flung into the slaughter by the bourgeoisie and the treachery of the social democracy.

In the excellent book of Barbusse “Under Fire” which gives an unequalled description of the imperialist war, the author shows us in one of the best passages in the book, how, in the middle of the war, the example of Karl Liebknecht was synonymous with the best efforts of the workers and soldiers in this terrible period.

Liebknecht’s great power was that, even when the war was still in full blast, he was able to express with unparalleled strength the passionate flaming hatred of the workers against war, and at the same time the first, fresh, and even naive hope for an immediate revolution against war.

Liebknecht’s past is in many respects different from that of Lenin. Unlike Lenin, Liebknecht was neither a prominent theoretician nor the generally recognized leader of a party or even of a fraction, Lenin’s past shows us a uniformity of opinion and a system of ideas from the end of the ‘nineties right down to the death of our great master. From the book “Who are the Friends of the People” down to the book “Better less, but Good”, there is an uninterrupted and logical line of development. The period of the historical preparation of Bolshevism and the period of the historical action of Bolshevism are both equally embodied by Lenin. For a quarter of a century Lenin worked at the same thing. First of all he laid the theoretical and political basis of Bolshevism, and then he applied it in three revolutions. He pursued his cause to the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat.

Karl Liebknecht’s past is not of the same character. In the nineties of the last century, Lenin was already a Bolshevik, Liebknecht became a Bolshevik only in the years 1914/18.

Even before the war Karl Liebknecht paid very much attention to the Russian revolution. The events of 1905 were of the deepest interest to him. But in this period Liebknecht did not succeed in realising with full clarity the real class-significance of the events in Russia. Liebknecht was not able to estimate correctly the two main streams of Russian revolutionary life, Bolshevism and Menshevism. Up to 1915 Liebknecht did not support the Bolsheviks.

Inside the German social democracy Liebknecht stood on the Left, Marxist wing of the party. However, he had no systematized and final attitude, no general platform in connection with the German questions. He declared himself in favour of anti-militarist propaganda when the “Fathers” of the German social democracy considered it “tactless” to refer to the matter at all. He insisted upon paying great attention to the organisation of the young workers at a time when the above-mentioned “Fathers” considered the matter to be a bad joke. It may be remarked in passing that one of the characteristic features of opportunism is the fact that it takes up a negative and unfavourable attitude towards the organisation of the youth. All these things represent great services performed by Karl Liebknecht. His insistence upon anti-militarist propaganda and upon the support of the youth organisations, so to speak, prepared him for his historic role during the imperialist war. These, however, were the only “buds” which a keen observer might have seen at the time, serving to hint at the future role which Liebknecht was to play in the working class movement.

Liebknecht stood upon the left-wing of the German social democracy, but he regarded this party as his party, and even in 1914 the unity of this party seemed to him to be inviolate. Up to the outbreak of the war and even in the first few weeks of the war Karl Liebkecht was not able to determine upon open opposition to the majority of the German social democracy, much less on a split. Even on the 4th August, 1914, when the notorious vote of the German social democracy was given for the war credits, Liebknecht, who had carried on a passionate struggle in the social democratic Reichstag fraction, of which he was a member, against voting in favour of the credits, contented himself in public with an ineffectual protest. Only on the 2nd December. 1914, when the vote was taken in the German Reichstag concerning the granting of a further war credit of 5 milliard Marks, did Karl Liebknecht openly read a statement and vote against the granting of credit as the only one out of 111 social democratic deputies in the Reichstag. Even then the political attitude of Karl Liebknecht to the war was so uncertain that the Bolsheviks felt compelled to deal with his attitude in an article entitled “Not Heroes” (“Against the Stream” Page 40) in the following fashion:

“The declaration of Karl Liebknecht has now also been published. The declaration is excellent in its first part which deals with the robber-imperialist character of the war, but in the second part the declaration exhausts itself in the proclamation of the slogan “Peace!”. The conclusion is in such contradiction to the argument that it rings like a disharmony. If what comrade Liebknecht says about the war is correct (and it undoubtedly is correct) then the only conclusion for socialists can be: the transformation and development of the imperialist war into a civil war”. In this stage of the war, however, Karl Liebknecht expressed only the elementary urge of the workers for peace and the first dawning of a realisation amongst the social democratic workers concerning the real character of the imperialist war. Only in the summer of 1915, at the time of the first Zimmerwald conference, did Liebknecht openly approve of the Leninist logan of the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war. At that time Karl Liebknecht had been conscripted military service and was not able to attend the conference.

He sent, however, a letter to the conference which closed with the words: “Not civil peace, but civil war is now on the agenda”.

This is the period in which the Spartacus Bund was formed, that league of revolutionary workers which was to play such a glorious role in the history of the German revolution. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg stood at the head of this group, the first as political leader and agitator and the second as theoretician. The first action of this group called forth the furious hatred of the bourgeoisie and of the social democracy, a hatred which did all honour to the members of the group and its leaders. The historic significance of the first actions of the Spartakists is irrefutable. However, the fact must not be concealed that in the first period of its exstence the Spartakus group did not possess a united Bolshevist programme. The members who represented this group in Zimmerwald and Kienthal even allied themselves to a certain extent with Martov against Lenin. Organisationally this group was connected with the larger group of oppositional German social democrats which later formed the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany.

The theoretical attitude of Karl Liebknecht was also not thought out to a logical conclusion at this time. Nevertheless, even then the figure of Liebknecht grew not daily, but hourly. Conscripted for military service. Liebknecht continued his anti-war propaganda in the army, and neither the state of martial law nor the moral poison of the leaders of the official social democracy were able to intimidate him. His “comrades” in the social democracy even went so far as to declare him insane. His every step was dogged by the deadly hatred of Prussian militarism, but Liebknecht’s determination only grew under the pressure of intimidation, his voice steeled, his revolutionary will developed and hardened. At the head of a little group of Berlin workers he demonstrated on the Potsdamer Platz in the centre of Berlin against war and openly unfurled the banner of the struggle against war. This numerically unimportant demonstration of Berlin workers under the leadership of Liebknecht will go down in the history of the world revolution as one of the most heroic episodes in the black chapters of the war years.

Karl Liebknech sung his famous slogans amongst the workers: “The enemy is in our own country!”. “Turn the bayonets against your own bourgeoisie!”. These words had the effect of a bombshell. One must have experienced the war years in order to appreciate what an effect these words of Liebknecht had. For these heroic words, German militarism, with the applause of the official German social democracy, sent Karl Liebknecht to prison with hard labour, and it was in prison that he developed into the standard bearer of the world revolution.

The longer the imperialist war lasted, the higher the mountains of dead bodies grew and the worse the situation of the workers became, the greater their discontent and the firmer the revolutionary determination of the proletariat in the belligerent countries. Above the bloody darkness of the imperialist war the name of Karl Liebknecht shone to the workers like a beacon. At that time the name of Liebknecht was known to far greater circles than that of Lenin, who was compelled at the time to work in illegality abroad.

The Russian revolution broke out. From prison Karl Liebknecht sent the Russian workers a message of solidarity and support. From this time on Karl Liebknecht began to be convinced of the complete correctness of the attitude of the Bolsheviks. His former “friends”, the Russian Mensheviks, including even the most radical, showed themselves to be just as banal traitors as the Scheidemanns and Eberts. The Bolsheviks alone bore the programme of Karl Liebknecht, his slogans and his name into the masses of the workers, peasants and soldiers aroused and set in movement by the revolution. In the July days of 1917 Lenin and his immediate friends and comrades experienced a similar fate to that of Karl Liebknecht. They too were arrested and flung into prison, slandered, declared to be agents of the foreign enemy, “enemies of The Fatherland” and their names were covered with dirt. Their party comrades of yesterday, the Lieberdans, the Tseretellis and the Tchernovs took part in this vile and slanderous campaign against the Bolsheviks.

The news of the events in Russia penetrated through the prison walls to Liebknecht. With tremendous enthusiasm Liebknecht gathered every single item of information he could obtain from the country where the revolution had broken the fiery ring of capitalist war. The November Victory of the Bolsheviks is welcomed with enthusiasm by Liebknecht from the same prison. The Bolsheviki had seized power. They were proud of the unreserved support of such fighters like Karl Liebknecht. For a few months the proletarian revolution in Russia marched from victory to victory, as Lenin said. And then the first eat international difficulties began to rear up in its path. German imperialism was still strong enough to force the revolution to sign the peace of Brest-Litovsk. During the differences opinion inside the ranks of the Bolsheviki concerning the admissibility of signing the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the name Liebknecht played no small role. In Germany the revolutionary tide was undoubtedly surging upwards. The victory of e German revolution was a matter of days, not longer of months. When Liebknecht is victorious he will of course release from all our difficulties and correct all our errors, declared Lenin to the “left-wing” communists, but that does not mean at we can permit ourselves to make especially many errors, that, in the present state of affairs, we can permit ourselves the luxury of refusing to sign the Brest-Litovsk treaty.

The Russian revolution signed the Brest-Litovsk treaty. This act caused an explosion of fury amongst all social-patriotic elements in Russia. Petty-bourgeois patriotism rose to white eat. Everywhere in the whole world the leaders of the Second International, in Germany also, did everything in their power slander the Bolsheviks, to make their motives suspect and to get them in the worst possible light in the eyes of the working class in Western Europe. Here again it was Karl Liebknecht who gave the signal from prison to the best sections of the German proletariat in particular and to the proletariat of Europe in general. If the first proletarian revolution is compelled to accept the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, then it is not the Bolsheviks who are responsible, above all it is the fault and at the same time the misfortune of the working class in Western Europe who have not yet been able to assist the Russian revolution in the necessary fashion.

In the meantime the forces of German imperialism diminished more and more and approached the point of complete exhaustion. The revolutionary crisis approached in Germany with increasing speed. The working masses stirred up by the war marched towards the revolution. The official German social democracy did all in its power to hold the masses under the yoke of imperialism, but it was already too late. The military defeats of Hindenburg and Ludendorff accelerated the collapse. The German working class became more revolutionary with every passing day, with every hour. Karl Liebknecht was their standard bearer, their leader. The name of Liebknecht was known to all revolutionary workers and all the oppressed all over the world.

The revolutionary movement of the German workers and soldiers released Liebknecht from prison. Immediately after his release from prison, Liebknecht marched at the head of a great demonstration of workers to the building of the Berlin Soviet Embassy in order first of all to send his greetings to the Russian proletarian revolution. He bared his head before the red flag of the Soviet Republic. His first speech in revolutionary Germany was made in honour of the Russian revolution and the Soviet Power.

From this moment on the whole work of Liebknecht was uninterrupted service to the cause of the proletarian revolution. The whole revolutionary section of the German working class was grouped around the Spartakus Bund. The name of Liebknecht was a torch which lighted the path of the swelling ranks of the revolutionary German proletariat. The influence of Spartakus grew daily, even hourly.

Nevertheless, the German bourgeoisie and the German social democracy were incomparably better organised and cleverer than the Russian bourgeoisie, the Russian social revolutionaries and the Mensheviki, Above all, they took into consideration the experiences of the Russian revolution. When Kerensky, Tseretelli, Tchernov and Lieberdan took power, they issued the slogan, “Continue the war to a victorious end”, but Scheidemann, Noske and Ebert were more cunning when they had power and they issued the slogan, “Peace at any price”. Peace with the imperialist Entente, war against the revolutionary workers! Peace with Clémenceau and Lloyd George, war against Karl Liebknecht and Lenin! These were the slogans of the “Social Democratic” Government which resulted from the November revolution. Ebert and Noske exploited the fighting spirit of the German revolutionary workers who were eager for action. Cold-bloodedly they provoked a premature insurrection in order then to drown it in the blood of the workers. This criminal plan of the “Fathers” of the German Social Democracy was successfully carried out. The January insurrection of the Spartakists was drowned in the blood of Germany’s best workers. The young German Communist Party was robbed of its leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were murdered. Only yesterday Noske and Liebknecht, Ebert and Rosa Luxemburg were members of one and the same “united” German Social Democratic Party. Today Noske and Ebert are the murderers of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

Karl Liebknecht served the cause of the German Revolution not only with his life and his struggle, but also with his heroic death. The circumstances of the death showed the German workers the degeneration of the German Social Democratic Party, that party which down to the present day has served as the greatest bulwark for the German bourgeoisie against the proletarian revolution.

In 1921, in his “Letter to the German Communists” analysing the March rising in Germany and the causes leading to the defeat of the revolutionary insurrection, Lenin declared, “At the time of the crisis the German workers had no party, in consequence of the delayed split and in consequence of the accursed tradition of “unity” with the treacherous and characterless lackeys of capitalism, Scheidemann, Legien, David and Co. and Kautsky, Hilferding and Co.”

In consequence of the delayed split! The Bolsheviks did not make this mistake. Long before the war they split away from the Mensheviks. The tremendous advantage which the Bolsheviks had consisted in the fact that they entered the war period and the revolutionary period following the war as an independent Bolshevist Party whose hands were not bound by “unity” with the Mensheviki. That was the basic guarantee for the victory of the Bolsheviks.

The German and the whole international bourgeoisie, the leaders of the German and of the whole international Social Democracy who had learned from the “Russian experience” and who were furious with rage in face of the approaching proletarian revolution, did everything in their power to entrap, the badly armed revolutionary workers and defeat them as quickly as possible. The workers, who had suffered so much during the war, were anxious for insurrection. “Hatred forced a premature insurrection”. (Lenin. See above.) The Social Democracy led the bourgeoisie over the bodies of the Spartakist workers and over the bodies of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg into a “liberated” Germany, which was called by the first “Social Democratic” Government a “Socialist” Republic in order to mislead the workers. For the present the bourgeoisie has retained power. The German proletariat has paid heavily for the delayed split from the Social Democratic Party and for the absence of a firm and consolidated Bolshevist Party.

The heroic insurrection of the Spartakists was crushed, but it sowed the seeds of victory and one day these seeds will bear fruit.

The path from the official Social Democracy to “Spartakism” represented, of course, tremendous progress. The “path from the Spartakus Bund to the Bolshevist Party represents a further step forward. But the path from Bolshevism to “Spartakism” would be a step backwards.

From Liebknecht forward to Lenin! If Karl Liebknecht were alive today he would be the first to say that this, and not the opposite, must be the path of the revolutionary workers. Liebknecht himself developed along this path, and only the treacherous bullets which killed him prevented him from leading the German proletariat along this path.

Karl Liebknecht is the greatest hero of the proletarian revolution. Lenin is its greatest and most capable leader, teacher organiser and theoretician. In the history of the world revolution the names of Karl Liebknecht and Vladimir I. Lenin will not be opposed to each other but will stand side by side. Whoever wishes to honour the memory of the great proletarian revolutionary Karl Liebknecht must tread the path of Leninism.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecor” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecor’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecor, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly. A major contributor to the Communist press in the U.S., Inprecor is an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1929/v09n03-jan-15-1929-inprecor.pdf