Rosa Luxemburg Quotes

The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles.

Regardless of the degree of class consciousness of their members, the trade unions are, by their very nature, driven on to the revolutionary goal.

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight...

The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.

Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . . There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

Organizing the working class in England or the U.S. or any other advanced capitalist country has been a daunting challenge.

There is no alternative to class struggle.

If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation.

The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class.

A social democratic party without deep roots in the working class movement would quickly fade into an unrepresentative intellectual sect.

When the proletariat is not organized enough to conduct a successful struggle against the political power of the ruling class, it must be trained for such a purpose by steady and hostile instigation.

The masses of the working-people of Scotland have read history, and are no revolutionary levelers.

We can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that.

Who, if not the revolutionary intelligentsia, could promote the political development of the working class?

Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

The wealth of society is created by the workers, peasants and working intellectuals. If they take their destiny into their own hands, follow a Marxist-Leninist line and take an active attitude in solving problems instead of evading them, there will be no difficulty in the world which they cannot overcome.

Labor has been severely undermined, but that's happened before. In the 1920s, the labor movement was virtually crushed, in large part by Wilson's Red Scare, but it dramatically revived in the 1930s. It spearheaded the social-democratic New-Deal style changes which were beneficial to the country - not sufficient, but beneficial. That could happen again.

We've got to keep an eye on the battle that we face - a war on workers. And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party. And there's only one way to beat and win that war - the one thing about working people is, we like a good fight.

The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done.

The controversies between the proletariat and the middle class had to be smoothed out and bridged over by each getting to know and understand the other.

History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.

Socialism as such from its very origins is a workers' system, and when there occur deviations, it is workers that react first.

The conclusion you can draw from these characteristics is that you have an uneven development of class activity and an uneven development of class consciousness in the working class.