 I'll be speaking mainly on Rosa Luxemburg and the German Revolution. This year, it marks, as Sam said, a 100-year anniversary of the German Revolution. And I think it's very important for us as revolutionaries to learn the lessons from the revolutions, both those who succeeded like the Russian and also those who failed like the German. And this January, it will be the 100-year anniversary also for the murder on Rosa Luxemburg and the Karl Liebknecht. Rosa Luxemburg has become somewhat of an icon on the left wing. I think many people share these memes, these pictures with her quotes on Facebook and on the internet. And a lot of people see her as an inspiration. But I would also say a lot of most people don't actually know what she stood for, don't actually know her ideas, don't actually know the activities that she made. And she is one of the most distorted figures on the left wing. Both the Stalinists distorted her views, tried to make her into this soft, anti-Leninist, anti-Bolshevik revolutionary. And a lot of the left reformists, they take the same things that the Stalinists take, but they just say it's something positive, that she is something like a soft, lifty, like an anti-capitalist, but not really a revolutionary. And I would say that is completely wrong. And I think this 100-year anniversary of her death, that it's time that we as revolutionaries, as Marxists, that we reclaim the revolutionary heritage of Rosa Luxemburg and say she is ours, she is not the left reformist icon. She was a true revolutionary. She was one of the founders of the German Communist Party. She was one of the key figures in the German revolution. Sadly, not for long, because just a few months into the revolution, she was brutally murdered in January 1919. Rosa Luxemburg was born in the Russian-occupied part of Poland in 1871. Very young, she was a Pole, she was a Jew, and she was a woman. So I think she felt depression, very present in her life. And in a very young age, she became a revolutionary, already in high school, and before she was 20, she had to flee Poland and had to go to Switzerland to study and to do revolutionary activity. And there she was one of the founders of the Polish revolutionary movement. But I would say her main field of activity was that in the German movement, in the end of the 18th century, in 1898, she moved to Berlin to be part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the SPD. This was the biggest party in the second international. It was the most important, it was the party that Lenin at that time saw as the model for a Marxist party. And she just threw herself into the discussions in the Social Democratic Party. And all from the beginning, and I think this is also what we have to stress as revolutionaries, from the beginning she was on the side of the revolutionaries. When she just moved to Germany, there was the debate started by Bernstein, Edward Bernstein, that said, we have to revise Marxism. Now Marxism will just gradually, now capitalism will just gradually better the lives of the workers. So we just have to focus on the movement for better conditions. We don't have to focus on the end goal of a socialist revolution. And Rosa Luxembourg was one of the harshest defenders of the need to keep the goal of a socialist revolution as the end goal of the struggle for reforms, as the end goal of the struggle for Marxists. That you can't just discard the struggle for a socialist revolution, then you lose all existence for the party. And I think if we look at the Social Democratic Parties today, that is very clear, that their essence of life has just become pillars of capitalist society. And she could see that in the Social Democratic Movement, both in Germany and internationally, there was a process taking place adapting to capitalist society. There was an upswing in capitalism. There was a lay in the top movement that became adapted to negotiations, to the economy going forward, to having negotiations with the employers. And they just focused on these small reforms. And she could see this process very clearly because she was in the thick of it. And she started to criticize this. And this process you could see, I think for Lenin, for example, who was away in Russia, he couldn't see it, until it became apparent in 1914 when the First World War broke out. In August, when the German SPD voted for the war credits, which in effect meant to support the German Bursarsee in the First World War. And I would say all the years in the two decades leading up to the German Revolution, she was one of the key figures in the struggle for the revolutionary ideas inside the Second International. And the last year leading up to the First World War, she was one of the key figures in the struggle against imperialism and the impending war that was clear for everybody was on the agenda on the horizon in Europe. In the Second World War, there was a discussion on the nature of the war, that this would be an imperialist war and that the task of the social democrats, which at that time called themselves Marxists, not as the social democrats today. But at this time it was the International for Lenin, for Trotsky, for Luxembourg, for Liebknecht, for all these revolutionary figures basically. And they discussed that the main task of the social democrats when the war came was to oppose it, to be against it. And there was a discussion at the International Congress in 1907 where Lenin and Luxembourg, they put forward an amendment to the revolution on war that was accepted by the International. That said, if the war comes, the task of the social democrats all over the world is to oppose the war with all means that we have. And not only that, but also to turn the war into a struggle to how do they formulate it. To strive with all their power to make use of the violent economic and political crisis brought about by the war to rouse the people and thereby to hasten the evolution of capitalist class rule. That is to turn the war into a fight against capitalism. This was accepted by the Second International. But it became clear that in the top of the Second International in words they paid lip service to the ideas of revolution of Marxism but basically they had adapted themselves to capitalist society. And this became obvious on 4th of August 1914. This was the day where the vote on the war credit was taken in the German Reichstag, the parliament. And all the members of the SPD parliamentary group voted for these war credits. And it was a shock all over the international. Year after year the international congresses and the parties had voted to go against the war and now suddenly they all voted for the war. Lenin thought that the German paper, the four words that described this vote, he thought it was a forgery of the German headquarters. He didn't believe that this actually happened. But this showed how far the process of degeneration had gone in the top of the Second International and the German Social Democratic Party. And Rosa Luxembourg, she had seen this all along and had criticized it and fought against it. And when the war came she gathered a small group of people on the evening of the vote in her apartment to discuss what to do and to send out a resolution saying not all German Social Democrats are in favor of this war. The problem was this was a very small group. It was actually only a handful at this time. Together with a guy called Franz Mering, she put out a paper called The International Group. And this was not a paper in the Leninist sense. This was not a national organizer. This was a paper meant to influence, especially the Social Democratic local party organizations. So it didn't have an organization around itself. It just had a network of people and this small core of people writing this magazine. But nevertheless they were the only ones who put forward in the beginning of the war these ideas of the war being an imperialist war and the need to turn it into a fight for socialist revolution. But at this time I think when you sit here you can be quite optimistic, we are quite many and we are more and more year by year. But at this time in the beginning of the First World War I think the situation have seemed quite bleak. The whole international had just betrayed everything they ever stood for. Those people defending revolutionary ideas not just to be against the war was a very, very small group on an international scale. But underneath the surface this process that Trotsky called the molecular process of revolution was taking place. In the beginning it seemed like the whole world supported the war but underneath the surface the discontent and the frustration started to build among the masses internationally and also in Germany. This small network of Luxembourg, Transmering, Klassetkin was joined by others in this fight and very soon they were also joined by Karl Liebknecht. Karl Liebknecht was a parliament member, a Reichstag member from the SPD and from that he had voted for the war credits on 4th of August. But very soon he realized this was a mistake because it gave the picture that it was a group that was unanimous. And it hadn't been a unanimous group. I think 14 out of the 110 SPD members of parliament had actually talked for voting against. But they had been so loyal to party discipline that they had accepted the majority and voted in favor. But Karl Liebknecht realized that this was not a time to follow party discipline, this was a time to stand out and to actually speak the opposition. And in December of 1914 the German government again asked for a vote on new war credits and Karl Liebknecht as the only one stood up in parliament and voted against. And he was just, the parliamentarians were shouting at him, calling him all kind of dark and a lot of very bad names. So it took a lot of courage. But it also made him into a symbol of the opposition against the war internationally. The name of Karl Liebknecht in the trenches in France, in Russia, in Germany became the name and the icon of actually somebody standing up to be against this slaughter of the workers all over Europe. This small revolutionary force of Liebknecht, Luxembourg and so on, they were also further weakened by the fact that either they were called up to the army, Liebknecht was called into the army, or they were put in prison. Also Luxembourg, she had been sentenced already before the war for offending the Kaiser, the German Kaiser. And when the war began, she was sweeped up and put into jail. I think actually she was only supposed to be there a few months and they kept her a year. Then they let her out, she was out for four or five months and then she was put into a protection custody. So she wasn't sentenced for anything, she hadn't done anything wrong, but for her own protection, the German regime put her in prison. I would say it was more for their own protection and then just to put her in prison. The problem with this kind of sentence is you don't have an expiring date and you can't appeal, you can just sit there and wait for the revolution actually ended up freeing her. But I think it wasn't that obvious that that would happen when she was put in prison. And she wasn't the only one, a lot of the other revolutionary leaders was put in prison. It didn't stop their revolutionary activities. When she was in prison, she wrote the very famous Junius Pamphlet because she used the pseudonym Junius and it was like the first, Lenin greeted it very enthusiastically as the first coherent criticism of the war from Germany. He also had some criticisms of the concrete content but he greeted it as, he's saying, written in a very lively style, the Junius Pamphlet has undoubtedly played and will play an important role in the struggle against the ex-social democratic party of Germany which has deserted to the side of the Buswasi and the Jungas and we hardly greet the author. This was the first time that the German revolutionary left put forward a coherent analysis of the war and what to do. What Lenin also said and his main criticism of this pamphlet was that it seemed that it was written by a very isolated group in Germany and he was correct. This was the main problem of the revolutionaries in Germany when the war came and later when the revolution came that they were a very small group and that they were very, very isolated. In January 1916, these people from the international group and other left-wingers they met and they formed the Spartacus League and decided to put out the Spartacus letters. They were a network still inside the SPD and they tried to build up but they were still, I would say, they were not an organization as we know it in a Leninist sense. It was not a cater organization, it was a network of like-minded people who looked to these Spartacus letters as a way of inspiration more than as a way of organizing around it. And that meant that when the opposition to the war among the German workers began to grow, there were strikes, there were demonstrations and the pressure inside the SPD began to grow. Suddenly not everybody supported, well they didn't in the beginning either, but the members of the Social Democratic Party they began to express opposition towards the war and a layer in the leadership, not just the revolutionaries but also the more center of the leadership began to feel this pressure and began to openly oppose the war also. More and more MPs voted against the war, more and more of the party leaders, the party pavers began to actually speak out. And in the end it ended in a split in the SPD. In January 1917 with the Social Democratic Party expelling, it ended up being almost half, and they formed the USPD, the Independent Democratic Socialist Party of Germany. The old SPD had 170,000 members and the USPD had 120,000 members. And this was a paradox. The Spartacists went with the USPD, the Independent Socialist, but they ended up with all the old leaders of the center of the reformists, all those they had fought against for all these years, Bernstein who put forward the revisionist ideas, Kautzky who Rosa Luxembourg had been in a fight with since 1910, all the old leaders of the SPD ended up in this new USPD. So it was a split that was completely unprincipled, and it wasn't even initiated by those who formed the USPD, it was initiated by the right-wing leadership of the SPD expelling them. So it was quite a big mess, you could say, with no clear line and no clear program. There was the Kautzky who was for pacifism and there was also Luxembourg for revolutionary socialism. So it was a very mix of people, you can say. And all the old disagreements still existed, and this was the situation of the German left when the revolution broke out. Like in the rest of the world, as we saw in Russia, the discontent with the war built, and this led to an outburst of frustration, both the slaughter in the trenches, but also the conditions of life for normal workers was just being harsher and harsher. The prices of food went up, people were hungry, they were cold, and there was strikes, demonstrations, and this in the end burst out into the German revolution in November 1918. The drop was that it was clear that the German army was on the brink of defeat. The German high command, they wanted one last, how can you say, honorary action to save the honour of the German fleet. So they wanted to send the German fleet out. The problem was that for the soldiers of the German fleet, they didn't want to save the honour of the German army on behalf of their own lives. So they said, enough is enough. This time we're not going out, in Kiel, in northern Germany, they mutinied and it spread, and very soon, workers and soldiers councils were set up in the northern towns of Germany, in the naval bases. The red flag was flying over these naval ships and the revolution spread throughout Germany. And on the 9th of November, in Berlin, was set up a workers and soldiers council and the revolution had reached the capital of Germany. And this opened up a period, a revolutionary period in Germany, and I know Rob will speak more about that. But very quickly, the German Kaiser, abdicated and the SPD, the right wing leaders of the SPD, stepped in to save the situation, to try by reforms from above to divert revolution from below. They hoped that they could step in and save the revolution from not going too far, to just keep it within the boundaries of a bourgeois revolution, of a democratic revolution, and not to go all the way to the workers taking power. They got the majority in the councils and they also got into government along with the USPD, the independent socialist. And in some ways, it was a situation that resembled the situation after February in Russia, a period where there was a double power, a bourgeois government, and these councils, both led by these reform, moderate socialists, you could call them. This revolution was finally what freed Oslo Luxemburg from prison, along with other political prisoners. And right from prison, she went into this revolutionary cauldron. She just stepped right into demonstration, speaking, writing, editing, the Spartacus letters. And what she said was that the SPD, the right wing leaders, they're trying to diffuse the revolution by calling a national assembly. What we should do is the only way forward is for the workers and soldiers' councils to take power. This is the only way to go. We have to follow the Russian example, basically. The Spartacists in this were still a very small minority. When the revolution broke out, they were 50 in Berlin. That is not a lot of people in a very, very large town. They were more people spread across Germany, but they were still this quite loose network. They grew very quickly when the revolution broke out. They attracted the most radicalized youth. They were very revolutionary, but also very inexperienced and very impatient. And they looked to the Russian example, which was a good thing, but they couldn't see the experience of the Bolsheviks, of the Russian revolutionaries. They could just see how they ended up ceasing power by an armed uprising. They couldn't see all the work that had gone before. And the preparatory work that the Bolsheviks had done, because what happens in a revolution, what happened in Russia and what happened in Germany is a revolution, it awakens all layers, not just the most radicalized. It awakens all these people who haven't been political, maybe ever in their life, and they have to learn through their own experience. They have to test the reformists in practice. They can't just jump, or most of them, don't just jump straight to revolutionary conclusions. So what Lenin said in Russia was that the revolutionaries had to patiently explain. And this was also the task of the revolutionaries in Germany. But it was not so easy to see if you've just been awakened to revolution and there's a revolution all around you and you're just impatient for something happening. And all the old leaders, let's just throw them to hell, basically. So, very, within a few months of the revolution, the Spartacus, they decided to break with the USPD and form the Communist Party. So that was actually formed during the revolution. On New Year's Day, between 1918-1919, they formed the German Communist Party. And here it was clear that the party was, I think, three-fourths of the participants were younger than 35, and only one was older than 50. So it shows that it was a very young group and they were very influenced by these ultra-left ideas. For example, they were against the majority against participating in trade unions because they were dominated by the SPD, which was a mistake, and which Luxembourg opposed and said, we have to work where the masses are to try and win them over. But Luxembourg, she was not so worried either. She said, well, it's a new party, and like all newborns, it squeals in the beginning. We will sort it out. But the problem was that they had very little time to sort it out. Within the first week, actually, of the foundation of the Communist Party, the major test came for the young party. The SPD, it was clear there was a polarization. The USPD had just left the government and the SPD, they decided to try and provoke the masses of Berlin and provoke the revolutionaries by sacking the police director of Berlin, who was a member of the USPD and who was seen by the workers of Berlin, like their guy, that he would defend them. So they said, we sack him and we see what happens. Try to provoke an immature uprising, basically. And it did provoke a mass movement in Berlin. The workers, soldiers of Berlin, went onto the street and actually stayed there for days. The problem was there was no leadership. There was set up a committee, but they didn't know what to do. They discussed to kick out the government, but they didn't have any plan to do it. So they just sat deliberating and the masses was on the street for several days and in the end they went home and the SPD, they organized the Freikops reactionary troops to go in and just crush the revolution, basically. And in this, I don't have much time, in this they also stepped up the witch hunt against the Spartacists. The Spartacists hadn't organized this. The communists hadn't organized it. They were part of it, of course. Luxembourg was against this. She said it was immature that the Berlin workers would be isolated and crushed. But the SPD whipped up this witch hunt and especially against the leaders Luxembourg and Liebknecht. They put a price on their heads. And Luxembourg and Liebknecht, they hit, but they refused to leave Berlin. They refused to leave the workers in Berlin. So they just hid in different apartments. And on the 15th of January, that is two weeks after the foundation of the Communist Party, they were taken by soldiers and taken to a hotel where they were killed on the way out. Liebknecht killed, trying to escape, which is not true. They just shot him. And Luxembourg was hit in the head with a rifle butt and then she was shot and then she was thrown into the land back canal in the tear garden and was not found until May. And I think we don't know what would have happened if they hadn't been killed. I think what we can say is that Luxembourg, had she lived, especially her, she would have had the authority to try and educate these young revolutionary forces of the young Communist Party of Germany and might have changed the situation. I will end by two things. First, I will say a quote by Rosa Luxembourg, which I think shows the essence of her, that she never lost one of her main features, I think, was her true belief in the working class and their power and energy to overthrow society. The last article she wrote before she was killed, and I think that's quite prophetic, but she wrote, it's called Order Prevails in Berlin. Order Prevails in Berlin, you foolish lackeys. Your order is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will rise up again, clashing its weapons and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpet-splacing, I was, I am, I shall be. And I think this shows the essence. She was a true revolutionary believing in the power of the working class. Her main problem was that she hadn't built an organization based on this idea. So when the war broke out, when revolution came, there was no organization to actually intervene in the movement. And I think this is the main lesson to take from her, beside her revolutionary heritage, is she may be excused, because at that time they hadn't had the experience, but we may not be excused because we have the experience and we have to learn from it, so it wasn't a waste of her life, what she did, so we have to learn from this and actually build this organization that can intervene when the masses begin to move. And I think the last thing I will say is that she, and this, we don't have time, she made many mistakes and had many weaknesses, but her main thing was that whatever she did and whatever she said, she did it for the right reasons. She did it for revolutionary reasons and no one is perfect. No one has no faults. And I will end by this quote by Lennon that I think sums up the essence of what she was, because after her death a lot of people took forward her weak sides. But what he said is, he called her an eagle. He quoted a Russian fable. Eagles may at times fly lower than the hens, but hens can never rise to the height of eagles. Rosa, in spite of her mistakes, was an eagle and I think this is what we take from her. She was a revolutionary eagle and her revolutionary heritage is our heritage and we have to learn from her life and from her ideas. Romer, it might seem pretty obvious that the task of revolutionaries is to study revolutions. We have to learn the lessons of the struggles of the working class in the past. We have to look at their failings as well as the victories in order to prepare ourselves for the inevitable movement of the working class at our time. The reason why we wanted to produce a book on Germany was not because simply it was the anniversary, because we realized that we were entering a revolutionary period ourselves. It is our task to build up the necessary forces in order to ensure that the revolutions we come across are successful. In 1918, 1919, capitalism became very close to its overthrow. In fact, it was Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States, who said, we are now in a race with Bolshevism and the world is on fire. That was said in March 1919. And Germany really was the center of this revolutionary wave throughout Europe. And Germany was a community of cities as a key. Lutrosky said in 1930 that Germany was the key to the international situation. They could say that was the case in 1918, because Germany wasn't a backward country. Germany was at the heart of Europe. Germany was the most advanced industrial state on the European continent, at a very powerful working class with revolutionary traditions. As the revolution had succeeded in Germany, it would have been the end of capitalism. The rule of Europe would have gone communist. And that was not only the feelings of... The capitalists were very worried about the situation, but also of Lenin, who, after all, said he was prepared to give up the Russian Revolution for a successful revolution in Germany. Because a German revolution would have changed the whole of, well, not just the fate of Germany, it would have transformed the whole world. A victorious German revolution would have changed history. There would not have been a Second World War. There would not have been a Holocaust. Those tragedies would have been absent if the working class had been victorious in Germany. And therefore, it's very important for us, I think, to understand these particular lessons of this great revolution of 100 years ago, in November 1918. Of course, there are parallels with the revolution in Russia, a year earlier, where the revolution was a spontaneous movement of the working class, which led to the overthrow of the aristocracy and prepared the ground for a proletarian revolution itself. There are those who tried to say, well, it wasn't really a revolution. Some bourgeois historians have written books, dismissing the idea as a revolution. Of course, for these bourgeois historians, they kind of break out in a rash when they hear the name revolution. Therefore, try and play down these characteristics. We shouldn't be surprised with that. But there's even those on the left who actually have the same idea. There was an author I came across, Gabriel Kuhn, who wrote an interesting book. In fact, it was a compilation of writings and documents of the revolution of 1918. And in the introduction to this work, he says, well, we can't be sure it was a real revolution. This guy was an anarchist, at least with anarchist sympathies. He said, well, the jury is still out of whether it's a revolution or not. I thought to myself, well, I knew juries had been out for a week or two, but for juries to be out for 100 years, and then come to no conclusion at all, as what this character of this massive movement was, is rather surprising. This is clearly a revolution. If you define a revolution as a movement of the masses, of those who never in the past or usually participate in politics or in society in general, when they rise up and try to take destiny into their own hands, as Trotsky explained, that is a revolution. Whether it succeeds or not is another matter. But the fact that the masses are on the move are attempting to take power into their hands. In fact, they do have power in their hands. In February in Russia, the revolution led to the creation of Soviets, and this tiny working class held power. And in 1918, in November, it wasn't the generals who put an end to the First World War. It was the sailors and the soldiers and the workers of Germany who rose up in revolution to put an end to the war. Of course, you will not cure anything about this in the programmes and the documentaries that will be shown in the next few weeks, honouring the centenary of the First World War, the end of the First World War. But it is a fact, it's the movement of the German workers which put an end to this barbarism. It started as Marie pointed out as a revolt against the decisions of the military in Germany to go on an adventure in the North Sea, a battle with the British forces. And from a mutiny on one ship, which was put down as a matter of fact, the mutiny began to spread to other ships until over 100,000 sailors were involved in this general mutiny in the North Sea at that time. In other words, it was from a spark. You have the movement, the generalised movement of revolution which ended up affecting the town, the city of Kiel and from there spread throughout Germany itself. And spontaneously, the workers and the sailors created these councils, these Soviets, because that's what they were, committees which took power into their hands, whether it be on the ships or whether it be in the towns or in the barracks, everywhere, the workers began to self-organise spontaneously. We take a leaf out of Rosa Luxemburg's book. Yes, it was a spontaneous movement of the workers to take power into their hands. And the whole regime in Germany was suspended in mid-air. These two revolutions begin at the top by splitting the ruling class because they can feel the movement below them in an attempt to prevent this movement by either repression or by giving reforms. Either one is a mistake because either one will lead to a further provocation of the masses. A crack at the top gives them confidence. And this is precisely what happened. The big movement took place because of the disintegration of the regime itself. And the monarchy of the Kaiser, the King, the Libri allowed parliamentary government to occur in October led by Prince von Baden, who established a government in order to try and hold the situation. And they brought in, yes, the social democrats were brought into that government and they were willing to compass this in order to hold back the situation. But of course, it only provoked the situation more. It prepared this enormous mutiny and revolution. In the words of Jan Walton, who wrote his autobiography Out of the Night, he was a participant of the revolution and he says he talks about a big burly sailor who was marching down the road with the rest of the contingent and saw an old lady who said, what's going on? What's happening? What's happening? And he said, revolution, madam, revolution. In other words, it was instinctive in these workers. They knew what they were about, what they were doing. And of course, the movement of the workers led to a crisis within the regime. And this Prince von Baden realised the game was up and demanded that the Kaiser abdicate. Of course, the Kaiser didn't want to abdicate. On the contrary, his advice was that his generals, General Greisner, who came to see him, you must take loyal troops with fire-throwers, with bombs, and you're going to put this revolution down. And his answer was, Sire, you have no army. It has disappeared. And yet he couldn't believe this. And he stubbornly refused, as did the Tsar, in February 1917, because they were out of touch with what was going on. They refused to abdicate. And yet without their abdication, there was no way they had any opportunity of holding this revolution back. And it was quite a funny episode where the Kaiser learnt of his abdication, not from his own mouth, but from the Chancellor himself, who he had appointed. And the next day he was on a train to Holland, where he stayed until the end of his life. But the whole monarchy disintegrated. His brother put on false whiskers and put a red flag on the car in order to escape to the border. He had Prince Ludwig III of Bavaria pleaded with the revolutionaries, please don't put a red flag on my castle. It's my private property. Of course, they ignored him and he voluntarily went into exile. Of course, behind this comic opera was obviously the disintegration of the state. And what Marie said, he had a situation of dual power. The working class had power in its hands in Germany through these councils that were set up everywhere. They had arms. When the soldiers came back from the war, they were armed. And therefore the demonstrations that took place in all the cities, and in Berlin in particular, mass demonstrations, were armed demonstrations. They had the power and the old government was suspended in midair. But of course, they had to rely upon... The only people who could salvage the situation was the social democratic leaders themselves. And these social democrats had risen to the top, if you like. And they were the reformists. They were the careerists. They were the democrats, if you like, who hated revolution and the idea of revolution. In fact, Ebert, who became the chancellor, said, I hate revolution like sin. In fact, he made a deal with von Baden that he would take the reins of the government, providing that he would act to put the revolution down. And this great democrat, social democrat, this leader of the social democracy, wanted to maintain the monarchy. He was pleading in von Baden to take on the regency. They were desperate to maintain the status quo. But von Baden said, he didn't want it. That was enough. There was a poison chalice. And he left a note, you take care of everything. So they formed a government, a socialist government. But at that very time, the workers themselves were beginning to realise they needed their own government. And in Berlin, the workers' council in Berlin took a decision that they would appoint a government of people's commissars, just like in Russia, made up of the socialist party leaders of the SPD, of the social democrats, and the independent social democrats. But the workers themselves had taken the initiative. It was their revolution. They had power in their hands. But they weren't conscious of this power. A bit like the Russian workers between February and October. They had power in their hands, in the form of the Soviets. They could have easily swept away the old regime. But they weren't conscious of this power. It required a leadership. It required their party to lead them. Like Trotsky-Gembert, the party to a piston box. The energy of the masses is like steam. It's enormously potentially powerful. But unless it's concentrated in a piston box through a revolutionary party, then it can dissipate. And that's the real need for the revolutionary party. It brings everything together. It allows these forces to carry through, if you like, the last step of the sweeping away of the old order and the consolidation of the working class itself. Of course, in Russia, they were lucky, they had the Bolshevik party of Lenin and Trotsky, which is built up of the previous 10, 15 years. And they were able, they were dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism, prepared to go all the way. And on that basis, they had a successful revolution in Russia. Within the space of nine months, they had a second revolution. In Germany, in October, sorry, in November 1918, it was the February revolution. That's what it was. And the way it was being set for a new October in Germany, provided they could build a leadership in time. Because the workers instinctively looked to the old parties that they had built, that they had created their traditional organisations. And in this context, it was the Social Democratic Party and also the Independent Party, they were their traditional organisations. And power, if you like, was handed to those leaders in order to carry through the revolution. So on the 9th of November, these workers' councils said they should form a call for the formation of the workers' government of Commissars. The only thing is that Prince von Barden had just asked the Social Democrats to form a government. So here's the contradiction. Yes, they form a government and they asked for the left to join the government, the independence, in order to give them a left cover. Because the whole object of Ebert, of Scheidemann, of Nosca, the main leaders of the Social Democrats, was to restore law and order. Or put an end to this revolution. And all they wanted was to have a kind of democratic republic where they could be a democratic, loyal opposition, basically. And they squandered the potential for the revolution. They squandered, they betrayed it. They deliberately called on the workers to leave the streets, to go back home, to go back to the factories, to have law and order restored. Only thing is, they had no means of restoring this law and order and the workers were on the streets, they were mobilized, they felt their power. And the only thing, the only people they could rely on that is the government was the old order. And above all, a reactionary elite called the Freikor, which was an armed reactionary mob, which got trained, again, fighting against the Bolsheviks. They were being courted, they were being trained. In order to march on Berlin, to put the workers in their place. But of course, there's a time and a place for everything. The revolution was red hot, if you like. The workers were on the move. Yes, they had a government, but the government itself had to give concessions and so did the ruling class. The only hope for the bourgeoisie in Germany was to give concessions. So the workers were demanding the right to organize, so they allowed trade unions, which were illegal before. The right to vote, the right to strike, all the democratic rights were now granted to the workers, even the eight hour day was granted to the workers grudgingly. The capitalist couldn't afford it, but they had to give it. And the workers felt the power that they were achieving something because they won these reforms. But the rule of the movement was detracted, if you like, was sent on a wrong path by these leaders, talking about, forget the councils. Let's have a national assembly. Let's have democratic elections, that's what we want. And of course, the Labour leaders, whether you like it or not, had authority. They were the leaders. And they were able to convince, I would say, a Congress of workers and soldiers, councils, that this was the best way forward. That is, to give up their power and look towards the election of a constituent assembly or a national assembly. And that ended the first phase, if you like, of the revolution. But of course, behind the revolution was the counter-revolution. The only way the ruling class could get back in the saddle was not just put an end to the revolution, but carry through a counter-revolution. And the only way they could do that was arms, an armed struggle. They had a coup, actually, an attempted coup on the 6th of December, and it failed because of the movement of the workers. They tried again on the 24th, the 25th of December, where they tried to provoke the workers. There was a regiment in Berlin, the Marine Regiment, and they tried to get it out of Berlin and they sent troops against it. But the troops mutinied and fraternised with those sailors. In other words, every time they attempted to undermine the revolution, the means they were employing would be undermined through fraternisation. But by January, as Marie says, they again tried to provoke the workers in order to try and crush them. And that's what happened in the so-called Spartacus Week of January 5th, January 12th, 1919, led to the murder of hundreds of workers and a witch hunt to undermine and destroy what they saw as the main danger, the Spartacists. Because they were the most dedicated of all. And they had leaders who had enormous authority on the 9th of November, at the beginning of the revolution, a mass demonstration took place outside the Reichstag of the Parliament. And the first speaker was Carl Liebnacht, who was well-known, explained he was an MP, a deputy. He defied the war, he'd gone to prison and he called on this mass of workers in front of him. What we want is not a bourgeois republic, what we want is a workers' republic, a Soviet republic, all those in favour of a Soviet republic. And there was masses who voted in favour of that to take power. And that was an indication of the burning, revolutionary mood in society. But they didn't have the party to pull it together, these were individuals. And you can't have the working class at fever pitch all the time. This exhaustion will take place. And that's precisely what happened. The revolution was sidetracked. The revolution was betrayed by the social democratic leaders who then tried to drown it in blood by the murder, not only of Carl Liebnacht, Rosa Luxemburg, but many others. And they set the Freikorps, this reactionary, semi-fascist gang on workers throughout Germany itself. But you know, a revolution's not one act. A revolution has many acts. In fact, revolution and counter-revolution can come close together. And the whole of the experience from 1918 to 1923 is the shift between revolution and counter-revolution. Every time there's a movement towards counter-revolution, it is like, as Mark said, the whip of counter-revolution pushes the revolution forward. And therefore, you have these events, huge events which transforms the situation. Counter-revolutionary events and revolutionary events which changes the working class, changes the organizations of the working class. Because in the end of 1920, the independence, this big party, votes to join the Communist International, which is formed in February 1919. And there you have something like 800,000 workers at that time to join a Communist movement. So the Communist Party becomes a mass party in 1920. And by that time, you had the Capuch. They have the old series of battles that take place in Germany culminating in the crisis of 1923, which was a revolutionary situation with the occupation of the Ruhr by the French army because the failure of the Germans to pay the reparations from the First World War. And that spark a spontaneous revolutionary movement. But this time, unlike the Spartacists, which had a handful of people in Berlin and throughout Germany, then you had a mass Communist Party. And they could have taken power in Germany in 1923. But unfortunately, given the advice from Zenoviyev and Stalin in particular, the leaders of the Communist International, they told him to go easy, told him not to provoke the situation, allowed the fascists to move first. It was their advice to the movement. And it resulted in though they had potential power, they resulted in a debacle because they hesitated, they prevaricated, instead of organising a decisive challenge for power itself. And as a result, they gave up and there was an end to the movement. Germany is full of tragedies. But even Trotsky explained that the potential revolution even existed right up to 1930, just before Hitler came to power. But it was the mistakes. The Communist Party became Stalinised and he had the split in the working class movement itself which led to the tragedy. The biggest Communist Party in the world, the biggest Labour movement in the world shattered. And that was because of a lack of leadership, a lack of programme which is a key ingredient, if you like, for the success of a revolution. And our task, yes, is to see this as part of our heritage. We have a responsibility to learn and understand what happened in Germany to prepare ourselves for the events that are coming in Britain, in Europe, America and the world in the coming period. That we have to prepare in advance. There's no good trying to create a revolutionary party when the revolution is here. You have to create it in advance. You have to create the cadres, you have to create the network, you have to create the embryo of the party and it's events that will create, if you like, will affect the minds of the masses, will transform the situation and prepare the ground for a building of a mass party itself. But it cannot be done spontaneously. It has to be prepared and has to be prepared in advance. That is why we treat this furious seriously. Marxism can be defined as the historical experience of the working class. We are the memory of the working class as opposed to the reformists who have no memory at all. We learn, we absorb, we prepare in order that the revolutions which are coming, no doubt about that, we understand what we want is a successful revolution and just as Germany was the key to the international situation, now there are many keys, many potentials and one successful revolution in one country of the world where will, in the words of Woodrow Wilson, set the world a light, set the world a fire. And on that basis, you can have a successful revolution on a world scale. It's much more favorable now than ever before. The working class, even in Germany, was a sizable section, but 40% of the population were peasants. Today, the peasantry has been eliminated. The working class is stronger now than ever before. But it cries out for a leadership, a Marxist leadership that's prepared to go all the way. And that's our task. That's what we will fight for. And that's why, yes, in the words of Rosa Luxembourg, socialism or barbarism, it is barbarism and the capitalism. We have to fight for that alternative now to win the youth, to win the workers, to fight to overthrow capitalism and really pay homage to those heroes who tried in vain in the past. We have a duty to carry the victory ourselves forward to a conclusion. Comrades, that's the way forward for our class.