Rosa Luxemburg Riot and Revolution (1906)

“After Bebel had spoken at the Party Congress in favour of the General Strike, other speakers, who took part in the discussion, expressed disapproval of such means, as the General Strike could lead to a physical force revolution, at which the workers may be defeated. Then followed the accused, who derided and sneered at these objections, more especially as they were living in the year of the ‘glorious Russian revolution’. She said: ‘we should be fools if that would be no lesson to us’, and she emphasised the fact that in Germany we had also arrived at that point where Evolution must give way to Revolution. Respecting her comrade, Heine, she stated he was not in touch with the masses who, as history proves, had always shed their blood for the exploiting class; and she thought they may once shed their blood for their own class. These are the main points of the speech, which dealt less with the General Strike than with the Revolution. In fact the accused mentioned only now and then the General Strike, in order to be able to talk about the principal point, viz., the Revolution. In that way the incitement to the use of physical force was thrown out to the masses who were confused already, and the sanguinary seriousness of the speech was crowned by a quotation from the Communist Manifesto that the workers have nothing to lose but their chains. The accused desires that the object of the Socialist Party should not be attained by parliamentary means or by means of the General Strike, but by a physical force revolution; and the speech was made to incite the masses to break their chains. It was to happen in our country just as in Russia. All this amounts to an incitement to the use of physical force.…