The Mass Strike Quotes

“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...”
― Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike

“what is the actual role of Anarchism in the Russian revolution? It has become the sign of the common thief and plunderer; a large proportion of the innumerable thefts and acts of plunder of private persons are carried out under the name of 'Anarchist-Communism' - acts which rise up like a troubled wave against the revolution in every period of depression and in every period of temporary defensive. Anarchism has become in the Russian revolution, not the theory of the struggling proletariat, but the ideological sign-board of the counter-revolutionary lumpenproletariat, who, like a school of sharks, swarm in the wake of the battleship of the revolution. And therewith the historical career of Anarchism is well-nigh ended.”
― Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike

“After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand stalks of economic struggle with the capitalists keeps their fighting energy alive in every political interval; it forms, so to speak, the permanent fresh reservoir of the strength of the proletarian classes, from which the political fight every renews its strength, and at the same time leads the indefatigable economic sappers of the proletariat at all times, now here and now there, to isolated sharp conflicts, out of which public conflicts on a large scale unexpectedly explode.”
― Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike

“The sorry existence to which this mental tendency was condemned in recent decades by the powerful development of social democracy in Germany may, to a certain extent, be explained by the exclusive domination and long duration of the parliamentary period. A”
― Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions