Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht

“ To die among thousands, even to die alone, if you think you hear the plaudits of your nation or your class, is a thing many of us have learned to do, but to stand up against a vindictive irrational war spirit, such as ruled Germany, to stand up alone, to be contemned not only by your enemies but by those who called themselves your comrades and friends, to be met by polite derision and by actual threats of violence, to be called a madman, to be called a traitor, to be misunderstood and doubted ”

“ But it is painful for me to write these lines at a time when our radiant hope of previous days—the Socialist International—lies destroyed on the ground with a thousand expectations, when even many Socialists in the belligerent countries—for Germany is not an exception—have in this most rapacious of all wars of robbery willingly put on the yoke of the chariot of Imperialism, just when the evils of capitalism were becoming more apparent than ever. ”

“ The class struggle alone is the salvation of the proletariat and we hope that we will carry on very soon the class struggle in open international intercourse with the proletariat of all countries, even with those with whom we are at war. In this international class struggle rests not only hope for the democratization, for the political and economic emancipation, of the working class, but also the one hope for the mass of the people concerned even during the war. ”

“ In those days of disillusion, I remember well a conversation among a few of us concerning the plight of the Social Democracy. "The German government knew their Socialists well, and knew how best to reach them," declared one of our group. "There is one man in Germany, however, whom we shouldn't despair of, even now. If he is still alive, I cannot but believe that he will soon raise his voice against the course pursued by the German government and by his own party, and show the world that even in the land of utter darkness there still shines one light."
Liebknecht's record was open. ”

“ The philosophy of Karl Liebknecht as revealed in these pages leaves but a narrow ledge for heroes to stand on. To him the significant thing in history is, and has always been, the stirring of the masses of men at the bottom, their unconscious writhings, their awakenings, their conscious struggles and finally their gigantic, fearsome upthrust, which overturns all the little groups of clever men who have lived by holding these masses down. In these conflicts, kings, priests, leaders, heroes count for no more than flags or flying pennants. ”

“ As to the care to be taken of those disabled by war, I can only support the heart-felt words which came from all parts of this house on this question and echoed in our hearts, that we demand action on this matter without delay and do everything possible to keep these unfortunate people from all need and misery. But I do not wish to mistake what experience teaches us—that we have every right to take words uttered in days such as we are passing through with a great deal of criticism and suspicion. ”

“ The cries of distress from the prisons and penitentiaries and places of misery which cannot reach the public will sound one fine day more clearly in the ears of those who now stop their ears and will help to wake up humanity to the only holy struggle known by us Social-Democrats,—for peace against war, against the capitalistic order of society, for Socialism! ”

“ Her soldier husband must 'hold on' and 'steal' in the land of her neighbors. He must hold on and 'suffer' because the capitalists, the hurrah patriots and the armor-plate kings have willed it so. Every one must keep his or her tongue between the teeth, for the war profiteers must make money out of the want and misery of the wives and their husband soldiers at the front.
"By a lie the German workingman was forced into the war, and by like lies they expect to induce him to go on with war!" A mighty shout went up from a thousand throats—"Hurrah for Liebknecht." ”

“ Each Socialist Party has its enemy, the common enemy of the International, in its own country. There it has to fight it. The liberation of each nation must be its own work.
Only blindness can order the continuation of the slaughter until the "enemy" is crushed. The well-being of all nations is inseparably connected; the struggle of the organized working class can only be carried out internationally. ”

“ I am, however, particularly proud and happy to send my greetings to you, to the British Independent Labour Party, who, with our Russian and Servian comrades, have saved the honor of Socialism amidst the madness of national slaughter.
Confusion reigns among the rank and file of the Socialist Army and many blame Socialist principles for our present failure. It is not our principles which have failed, however, but the representatives of those principles. It is not a question of changing our principles, it is a question of applying them to life, of carrying them into action. ”

“ Socialist observed that in Prussia we Germans have three cardinal rights, which are: we can be soldiers, we can pay taxes and we can keep our tongues between our teeth. The Socialist who made this observation made it with a grim humor, but to-day the humor of it must be disconnected from it—it is all too grim. Especially in these days this observation is too true. To-day we are sharing these three great Prussian State privileges in full. Every German citizen is given the full privilege to carry a rifle in any manner. Even the Boy Scout has been incited to play the ridiculous rôle of a soldier. ”

“ Thus shall the working classes of all the belligerent countries become conscious of the necessity to fight for a peace consistent with the principles of Socialism, a peace without conquest and without humiliation, a peace based not on hatred but on fraternity, not on force but on freedom, a peace which, because of its justice, may be everlasting. ”

“ But more than ever before the primary school is used to-day in order to make firm the position of the ruling classes, to capture the souls of the young proletariat for the ruling class, for Militarism. When we think of all that, we recognize how urgently the proletariat must work for a fundamental reform of the entire school system.
Neglect of youth through the war cannot be denied, exists in spite of all camouflage. There is not enough rain in the heavens to wash away this sin from the bourgeois form of society. Improvement of this condition can be obtained only by sharp criticism. ”

“ Classics surely do not consist in driving home languages and some other knowledge of facts, but their essence is the spirit of humanism, the spirit of independence, of clear vision, of criticism, of everything which is felt to be harmful. This is the real freedom of the spirit. The ideal of the bayonet, of the bombshell, of poison gas and grenades which are hurled down on peaceful cities, the ideal of submarine warfare, that is something quite different. ”

“ If defending the peace idea, if the proclamation of the international proletariat class struggle against war, is treason, then it is an honor to be reproached as a traitor. ("Very true!" from the Soc.-Dem.) For us, who see our country in the Internationale of the proletariat, it is impossible thus to be deceived by the Department of Justice. But the administration of the Department of Justice should consider if it is not the highest insult to our present order of society to consider work for peace and against the murdering of the people as treason! ”

“ To all this the working-class of all countries can give but one answer: a harder struggle, the international class struggle against the capitalist Governments and the ruling classes of all countries for the abolition of all oppression and exploitation by the institution of a peace conceived in the Socialist spirit. In this class struggle the Socialist, whose Fatherland is the International, finds included the defense of everything that he, as a Socialist, is bound to defend. ”

“ What could Liebknecht alone have done with all his ringing eloquence and all his superb, I almost said, sublime heroism? Clearly we must rule Carlyle out of the controversy and agree with Liebknecht, the Socialist, that Liebknecht, the hero, had little to do with this vast subversion.
Yet, as Carlyle says, "One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon any great man, without gaining something by him." ”

“ But if it is true that the duty to tell the truth is the aim of all education, then something entirely different must be taught. In school must be taught, how this war arose, not only that the abominable murder of Sarajevo was an incident to inspire horror, but also the fact that the crime of Sarajevo was looked upon in many circles as a gift from Heaven, serving them as a war pretext. ”

“ We see all other classes in the war, and especially through the war, pursue unrestrained and without any compunction their class interests. We know that this war serves or will serve, if it will go according to the desire of the ruling class—the great capitalistic interests—the interest of the ruling classes in a particular way. Shall only the masses of the people wait until after the war? ”

“ Is it known to the Imperial Chancellor that during the present war in the United Turkish Empire the Armenian people were driven from their homes and slaughtered by the hundred thousands? What negotiations has the Imperial Chancellor undertaken with the United Turkish Government in order to bring about the necessary punishment, to alleviate the situation of the rest of the Armenian population in Turkey and to make the repetition of such horrors impossible? ”

“ But what spiritual embarrassment comes to our children, when they hear of the Lord, who is the Lord of all people, that is,—if I may use this word in this connection,—an international God, a God of the entire humanity, when this God of charity is claimed by each nation for itself and for the war! ”

“ Look at what is happening in Germany to-day and test, as best we may, these two confronting theories concerning the influence of great men upon history. As I write Germany is in the throes of revolution. The immensely powerful Hohenzollern monarchy has fallen, the brave, stubborn, modern-witted, money-bolstered aristocracy is shattered, and a proscribed poor man, Karl Liebknecht, is loudly acclaimed. ”

“ Certainly only to such proletarian children will those privileges be accorded, whose souls, which make them independent, are already broken, who are robbed of their class consciousness and who become accessories of capitalist society. And at the same time these laughable experiments are presented to the people with a self-sufficiency which makes it possible for them to recognize very well the insincerity of the ruling classes. ”

“ The high taxes which the German people have so far paid are insignificant compared to the great burdens which they must carry after the war, and for which their masters are daily preparing them with such touching delicacy of patriotic sentiment through the medium of the official press.
"The new Germany has the unquestionable right [Pg 132] to hold its tongue between its teeth. Recently our official press has been flooded by authoritative and pharisaic exhortations to soldiers' wives that they must, for God's sake, not complain so much about the scarcity of food. ”

“ This War, desired by none of the people concerned, has not broken out in behalf of the welfare of the German people or any other. It is an Imperialist War, a war over important territories of exploitation for capitalists and financiers. From the point of view of rivalry in armaments, it is a war provoked by the German and Austrian war parties together, in the obscurity of semi-feudalism and of secret diplomacy, to gain an advantage over their opponents. At the [Pg 32] same time the war is a Bonapartist effort to disrupt and split the growing movement of the working class. ”

“ Many a sharp word could be said on this point, many a lash with the whip could be given to the bourgeoisie society, but because the President does not wish it, I will have to be silent about that which should also be said. When [Pg 85] Assemblyman Schenk von Schweinsburg said recently that the war should not end very soon, lest after the war we shall again face such conditions as in 1870—then I say, that from the present war no moral regeneration can grow; from blood no innocence can grow; from might no right can grow. ”

“ In committee it was said also in the bourgeois section that unilateral military education leads to brutalizing the youth. But that does not frighten you, when your holy of holies, Militarism, is helped. You want liberty only for the ruling classes and oppression for the great masses. ("Very true!" from the Soc.-Dem.) You abhor the free mind because it will mean the twilight of the gods of the ruling classes. Classical education of to-day is only a parody on real classic education. ”

“ The source of war criminality will flourish more and more, the longer the war lasts; and will not the lowering of the entire standard of living through enormous pressure, lead to this—that the whip of need should be even after the war one of the long-remaining acquisitions of our great time? ”

“ Never did the class character of the present society of the Prussian state reveal itself so rude and unmasked as right now. Nor do we have any occasion to postpone our demands for democratization at a time when the dangerous reaction of the inner autocracy upon the external policy shows itself so awful and dangerous, at a time which is really clamoring for the democratization of exterior politics. ”

“ This militarization of the schools has been characterized even by some parts of the bourgeoisie as a questionable act. In the schools they have already started to educate the human beings up to being war machines. The schools are converted into training stables for the war. The physical upbuilding of the youth is encouraged now to attract new material for the Moloch, Militarism. Strengthening especially human health has thus as its aim the destruction of human life. I do not want to examine here how war psychology can reconcile itself to the foundations of our entire education. ”

“ Those who profit from the war want war with the United States. To-morrow, perhaps, they may order us to aim lethal weapons against new groups of brethren, against our fellow-workers in the United States, and fight America, too. Consider well this fact: As long as the German people does not arise and use force directed by its own will, the assassination of the people will continue. ”

“ I. The German Government is in its social and historical character an instrument for the crushing down and exploitation of the laboring classes; at home and abroad it serves the interests of junkerism, of capitalism, and of imperialism.
The German Government is a reckless champion of expansion in world politics, the most ardent promoter in the competition of armaments, and [Pg 138] accordingly one of the most powerful influences in developing the causes of the present war. ”