It has now been 18 years since the republican henchmen, lacking any intellectual impetus from social democracy, treacherously murdered Rosa Luxemburg. With foam at the mouth, Vorwärts had called for the murder in poetic verses. Yet what this great fallen woman achieved in both theory and practice is more alive today among the working class than ever before.

Such a unified harmony of person and work cannot be made to fit into the scholastic schema of the Kremlin's theory of Leninism and Stalinism—least of all because Rosa Luxemburg, both as a fighter and as a towering theoretical figure, is enshrined in the heart of the international proletariat. Thus, she inflicted great damage upon the Moscow idol-cult of Stalin and the canonization of Lenin. The independent, critical achievements of this brilliant mind are a horror and abomination to the high priests of the Leninist dogma, with its absolute truths proclaimed as the ultimate instance. What, then, does the Marxist-Leninist International do? It directs its thunderbolts not against the butchers, but against the defiler.

But like everything else, this theoretical assassination also has its material basis. The difficulties of reconstruction in Russia continued to mount despite all the enthusiasm. A strong opposition was beginning to challenge economic policy more and more boldly. It was to be silenced and kept away from the congress of the Russian Communist Party. Outwardly, a united front was being displayed. The Communist Party of Russia is a military organization. The supreme commander Stalin opened the campaign with a vicious letter against the almost unknown Slutzki, because he had dared to question the infallibility of "Pope Lenin" regarding the split within the German Social Democracy before the First World War, and the role of the left wing around Luxemburg and Mehring. Of all people, Stalin now plays the role of the high guardian of Bolshevik tradition — he, who as late as 1917, during a March meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee, supported a proposal by the Menshevik Zeretelli to reunite with the Russian "defenders of the fatherland."

It would have been easy to quietly and permanently silence the troublesome historian Slutzki through administrative means. But as a diversionary tactic, the campaign against deviations from the Leninist articles of faith offered a convenient opportunity.
Like a swarm of hungry hornets, the eager young men — for whom politics is more business than conviction — pounced on the general line, eager to search it for distorted passages. In the inspection, a few dozen poor wretches were immediately dragged into the spotlight. Their dissenting opinion is labeled as sinful anti-Leninism, their independent thinking as centrism and rotten liberalism. A harsh battle is declared against Luxemburgism and Trotskyism — or what people imagine under those names — branding them as a semi-Menshevik and un-Marxist deviation. Rosa Luxemburg is treated like a dead dog, and her life’s work is presented as nothing more than a continuous string of errors and misjudgments.

But the Stalin letter was also the signal for the sections of the Comintern in their respective countries to launch an offensive against the so-called conciliators and semi-Menshevism, in which they tried to outdo one another in unworthy conduct.

The Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party presented 'Father' Stalin with a resolution as a Christmas gift, aimed at overcoming the ideological legacy of Luxemburgism in Poland. The great achievements of Luxemburg in and for the Polish workers’ movement were dismissed with a kick as 'dangerous opportunism'. For the Polish Communist Party—this disoriented young lady—Luxemburgism is the root of all its foolishness and errors. It is the rag on which, in Pharisaic self-righteousness, they wipe their fingers in order to be bathed in Stalin's grace.

The German Communist Party does not want to fall behind the Polish Central Committee. As the only mass party of the Marxist-Leninist International (apart from the Soviet CP), it believes it must prove its loyalty to the line all the more. The Central Committee anxiously and eagerly watches Moscow to see how it coughs, so as not to miss the alignment with the line. And once it gets the right signal, the party is whipped into action with its sleeves rolled up. These eager clients are also the most obedient poodles of the Third International. Lacking intelligent and independent thought, they exaggerate the dictated slogans into grotesqueries, and when the man with the moustache from Moscow comes later, a few inconvenient figures are sent into the desert as scapegoats — just like what happened with the slogan of the 'people’s revolution'.

It is understandable that for such political operators, Stalin's letter was a welcome feast to prove their studious subservience. Under the banner of 'Thälmannism', the Central Committee and the Party confessed themselves as repentant sinners in matters of theory. At the same time, an eager realignment of the party line began, directed against the rightist deviations, which — as remnants of Spartakism and Luxemburgism — were branded with a red-hot iron as a mark of shame.

Worst of all was done by Die Rote Fahne ('The Red Flag'), which, in a downright perverse manner, just days before the 13th anniversary of Rosa's death, unleashed one poisonous attack after another against her life's work. As a 'semi-Menshevik', she supposedly had no understanding of the laws of capitalism, and held a mechanistic conception of the collapse of the capitalist system. On questions of the attitude toward revolution, the role of the party, the mass strike, the theory of imperialism, the national and colonial question, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, she was said to have completely failed. This centrism and opportunism of hers allegedly distorted the politics of the Spartacus League. Its aftereffects, they claim, became the main obstacle to the development and victory of the revolutionary movement of the German proletariat. This is the judgment of this political legacy by the editorial board of Die Rote Fahne — which, despite its vile insults, still shamelessly bears the note on its masthead: 'Founded by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.'

When Die Fahne triumphantly proclaims: 'History has demonstrated with striking clarity the superiority of Leninism over all other currents,' it is precisely the course of history and the politics of the KPD that reveal the superior significance of Luxemburgism for the class struggle. More on that in a forthcoming article.