96 Quotes by Rosa Luxemburg

If the proletariat came to power, it could draw from Bernstein's theory the following 'practical' conclusion: to go to sleep.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains

Socialism does not mean getting together in a parliament and passing laws, socialism means for us overthrowing the ruling classes with all the brutality [loud laughter] that the proletariat is capable of deploying in its struggle.

It [the proletariat] should and must at once undertake socialist measures in the most energetic, unyielding and unhesitant fashion, in other words, exercise a dictatorship, but a dictatorship of the class, not of a party or of a clique – dictatorship of the class, that means in the broadest possible form on the basis of the most active, unlimited participation of the mass of the people, of unlimited democracy.

La tendance générale et le résultat final de ce processus sont l'hégémonie universelle de la production capitaliste. Ce terme atteint, le schéma de Marx entre en vigueur : l'accumulation, c'est-à-dire l'expansion ultérieure du capital, devient impossible.

Geschändet, entehrt, im Blute watend, von Schmutz triefend – so steht die bürgerliche Gesellschaft da, so ist sie. Nicht wenn sie, geleckt und sittsam, Kultur, Philosophie und Ethik, Ordnung, Frieden und Rechtsstaat mimt – als reißende Bestie, als Hexensabbat der Anarchie, als Pesthauch für Kultur und Menschheit –, so zeigt sie sich in ihrer wahren, nackten Gestalt.

I want to burden the conscience of the affluent with all the suffering and all the hidden, bitter tears.

Fourier's scheme of changing, by means of phalansteries, the water of all the seas into tasty lemonade was surely a phantastic idea. But Bernstein, proposing to change the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness, by progressively pouring into it bottles of social reformist lemonade, presents an idea that is merely more insipid but no less phantastic.

Women's freedom is the sign of social freedom.