Rosa Luxemburg — Friedensutopien (1911)

Source: This work was reprinted in a shorter form in Die Internationale , January 1926. A translation of the latter piece was made in The Labour Monthly , July 1926, pp.421-428, from which this version is taken. We earnestly would like to print the full copy, instead of this abstract version, which is the best we’ve been able to find hitherto. Translated: (from the German) ? Transcription/Markup: Ted Crawford/Brian Baggins. Copyleft: Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2004. WHAT is our task in the question of peace? It does not consist merely in vigorously demonstrating at all times the love of peace of the Social Democrats; but first and foremost our task is to make clear to the masses of people the nature of militarism and sharply and clearly to bring out the differences in principle between the standpoint of the Social Democrats and that of the bourgeois peace enthusiasts. Wherein does this difference lie? Certainly not merely in the fact that the bourgeois apostles of peace are relying on the influence of fine words, while we do not depend on words alone. Our very points of departure are diametrically opposed: the friends of peace in bourgeois circles believe that world peace and disarmament can be realised within the frame-work of the present social order, whereas we, who base ourselves on the materialistic conception of history and on scientific socialism, are convinced that militarism can only be abolished from the world with the destruction of the capitalist class state. From this follows the mutual opposition of our tactics in propagating the idea of peace.…