Rosa Luxemburg — A Pyrrhic Victory
With enchanting mythological analogies and ruthless Marxist critique, this article written by Rosa Luxemburg exposes the Ebert Cabinet as the leading actor in the German counterrevolution and describes the contemporary problems and potential outcomes in the course of the revolution.
Published as “Ein Pyrrhussieg” in Die Rote Fahne, no. 36, December 21, 1918. View the original German version here.
Rosa Luxemburg — A Pyrrhic Victory [1]
The first meeting of the Council Congress is over. If you judge the outcome by the discussions that the delegates engaged in and by the decrees that they issued, it was a total victory for the Ebert government and the counterrevolution. The revolutionary street remained excluded, the political power of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils was annulled, the national assembly will be elected, and the dictatorial power of the December 6 clique has been confirmed. Could the bourgeoisie wish for anything better, for anything more under the current circumstances? “The dictators have no interest in their dictatorship,” rejoices the Freiheit, the sad organ of political ambiguity.
Sadly, it is true that the congress, the political body elected by the workers’ and soldiers’ councils of Germany, did not embrace its historical mission to seize political power for the cause of the revolution; rather, it disembodied itself and handed its power, entrusted by the proletariat, to the enemy. This reveals not only the general inadequacy and immaturity of any revolutionary attempt but also the difficulties of this particular proletarian revolution, the specific character of these historical circumstances.
During all former revolutions, the fighters entered the arena with open visors: class against class, program against program, coat of arms against coat of arms. Every revolution had its share of lies, intrigues, and secret plots, but those were the notorious lies, intrigues, and secret plots of the counterrevolution, of the royalists, the aristocrats, the reactionary military officers. It was always the henchmen of the toppled or threatened regime who employed counterrevolutionary tactics in its name and for its rescue. It sufficed to disclose the hidden symbols and emblems of the counterrevolutionaries, inevitably those of the ruling classes, for the masses to zealously tear them apart.
Today, the defenders of the old order do not hide any symbols and emblems of the ruling classes. They enter the arena under the flag of the “social democratic” party. Were the names of Ebert, Haase, and co. those of Heydebrand, Gröber, or Fuhrmann [2] — which would reflect their actual politics — then not one among the congress’s delegates would follow them. If the cardinal question of the revolution would openly and honestly be presented as “Capitalism or socialism?” then there would not be the slightest hesitation or doubt among the workers.
But, history does not make it that easy for us. Bourgeois class rule is fighting its last historical struggle today under a foreign flag, the flag of revolution itself. A socialist party, the supposedly most authentic expression of the workers’ movement and the class struggle, has turned into the strongest tool of the bourgeois counterrevolution. The core messages, the overall tendencies, the policies, the propaganda, the tactics — everything is capitalist. The only socialist elements that remain are the symbols, the appearance, and the phrases. These are used to deceive the masses and to degrade a delegates’ council of the revolutionary proletariat to the mamluks of the counterrevolution. [3]
This is German social democracy, this is the result of how it has developed over the last twenty-five years. The spirit of August 4, 1914, can be felt everywhere at the congress. We meet the old, pre-revolutionary Germany of the Hohenzollern, of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and we are reminded of the sieges and atrocities of Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltics. All this despite the terrible defeat on the battlefields of France and the events of November 9. And still: the old Germany is no more. It is the wonderful secret of all socialist transformations — the result of historical necessities as much as of inner growth — that one day of revolution can change the face of society and make the old forever a thing of the past. The events of November 9, as weak, as insufficient, and as confused as they were, have created a gap between yesterday and today that cannot be bridged. One tiny snowflake can be enough to cause a gigantic avalanche burying mountains, valleys, and entire villages. In much the same way, the modest acts of November 9 were enough to cause an earthquake unraveling the class structures of Germany. This process of unsettling and toppling bourgeois class rule can find no other end than the triumph of the social revolution. After the bankruptcy of imperialism, there is no other possibility, no other salvation than socialism. Each day, the situation becomes more desperate. Each day, history shows more clearly and brutally that drastic measures are inevitable.
The masses of soldiers returning home are slowly transforming into masses of workers. They take off the livery of imperialism and don the coat of the proletariat. That way, the soldiers reconnect with their origins, the roots of their class consciousness, while the threads that have tied them temporarily to the ruling classes are cut. Simultaneously, the gigantic problems of unemployment, economic battles between capital and labor, and the bankruptcy of the state increase.
The inner collapse of the capitalist economy reveals that its head resembles Medusa’s: behind the economic contradictions are glowing embers from which new blazes of class struggle emerge every day. This also means that the revolutionary tension and the revolutionary consciousness of the masses will become stronger every day. In fact, the Council Congress has made an important contribution to this by demonstrating clearly how far removed it is from the actual situation in the country and from the mood of the masses. Its debates make it entirely clear that, in order to save their own lives, the workers and soldiers have no other choice but to fight the counterrevolutionary government to the bitter end.
Only indecision, halfheartedness, and haziness can put the revolution at risk. Everything that contributes to clarity, every disclosure of the truth only fuels its fire. In this sense, the Council Congress is doing a tremendous job. It removes all the deceptive veils from the counterrevolution’s face and shakes the conscience of the proletarian masses like only the explosion of a land mine can.
As soon as the delegates of the congress have uttered their final word, it will be time for the workers’ and soldiers’ councils across the country to speak. And they will not only speak but also act. The victory of the Ebert government will prove to be the same as every victory of the counterrevolution: a Pyrrhic victory.
Footnotes
[1] A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. A Pyrrhic victory takes a heavy toll that negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress. The phrase originates from a quote from Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose triumph against the Romans in the Battle of Asculum in 279 BC destroyed much of his forces, but the tactical victory forced the end of his campaign.
The translation comes from “From All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918–1919” by Gabriel Kuhn — Ed.
[2] Heinrich von Heydebrand und der Lasa (1851–1924), chairman of the Deutschkonservative Partei [German Conservative Party]; Adolf Gröber (1854–1919), prominent member of the Catholic Deutsche Zentrumspartei [German Center Party], and Paul Fuhrmann (1872– 1942), aristocrat and prominent member of the Nationalliberale Partei [National Liberal Party].
[3] The mamluks were a warrior caste recruited from slaves in Muslim societies, usually loyal to their superiors.
