Creating an International Spartacist Manifesto

In December of 1918, Rosa Luxemburg published the great text “Was Will Spartakus” in Die Rote Fahne. This importantly outlined the key goals of the Spartacus League and the German Revolution. I see it as an essential manifesto for all Luxemburgists and I’m sure many agree. So, I have modified the original to remove the references to the material situation of WWI Germany and promote globalism. It is the International Manifesto of Spartacists rather than one of Germans. Proletarians of all countries, unite!

25 Demands of the Spartacists

The fight for socialism is the mightiest civil war in world history, and the proletarian revolution must procure the necessary tools for this civil war; it must learn to use them – to struggle and to win.

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Such arming of the solid mass of laboring people with all political power for the tasks of the revolution—that is the dictatorship of the proletariat and therefore true democracy. Not where the wage slave sits next to the capitalist, the rural proletarian next to the Junker in fraudulent equality to engage in parliamentary debate over questions of life or death, but where the million-headed proletarian mass seizes the entire power of the state in its calloused fist – like the god Thor his hammer – using it to smash the head of the ruling classes: that alone is democracy, that alone is not a betrayal of the people.

• Disarmament of the entire police force and of all officers and nonproletarian soldiers; disarmament of all members of the ruling classes.
• Confiscation of all weapons and munitions stocks as well as armaments factories by workers’ and soldiers’ councils.
• Arming of the entire adult male proletarian population as a workers’ militia. Creation of a Red Guard of proletarians as an active part of the militia for the constant protection of the Revolution against counter-revolutionary attacks and subversions.
• Abolition of the command authority of officers and noncommissioned officers. Replacement of the military cadaverdiscipline by voluntary discipline of the soldiers. Election of all officers by their units, with right of immediate recall at any time. Abolition of the system of military justice.
• Expulsion of officers and capitulationists from all soldiers’ councils.
• Replacement of all political organs and authorities of the former regime by delegates of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils.
• Establishment of a revolutionary tribunal to try all conspirators of counter-revolution.
• Immediate confiscation of all foodstuffs to secure the feeding of the people.
• Abolition of all ties to monarchs and the British Commonwealth; establishment of a united Federal Socialist Republic.
• Elimination of all parliaments and municipal councils, and takeover of their functions by workers’ and soldiers’ councils, and of the latter’s committees and organs.
• Election of workers’ councils in all Germany by the entire adult working population of both sexes, in the city and the countryside, by enterprises, as well as of soldiers’ councils by the troops (officers and capitulationists excluded). The right of workers and soldiers to recall their representatives at any time.
• Election of delegates of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils in the entire country to the central council of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils, which is to elect the executive council as the highest organ of the legislative and executive power.
• Meetings of the central council provisionally at least every three months – with new elections of delegates each time – in order to maintain constant control over the activity of the executive council, and to create an active identification between the masses of workers’ and soldiers’ councils in the nation and the highest governmental organ. Right of immediate recall by the local workers’ and soldiers’ councils and replacement of their representatives in the central council, should these not act in the interests of their constituents. Right of the executive council to appoint and dismiss the people’s commissioners as well as the central national authorities and officials.
• Abolition of all differences of rank, all orders and titles. Complete legal and social equality of the sexes.
• Radical social legislation. Shortening of the labor day to control unemployment and in consideration of the physical exhaustion of the working class. Maximum working day of six hours.
• Immediate basic transformation of the food, housing, health and educational systems in the spirit and meaning of the proletarian revolution.
• Confiscation of all dynastic wealth and income for the collectivity.
• Repudiation of the state and other public debt together with all war loans, with the exception of sums of certain level to be determined by the central council of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils.
• Expropriation of the lands and fields of all large and medium agricultural enterprises; formation of socialist agricultural collectives under unified central direction in the entire nation. Small peasant holdings remain in the possession of their occupants until the latters’ voluntary association with the socialist collectives.
• Expropriation by the council Republic of all banks, mines, smelters, together with all large enterprises of industry and commerce.
• Confiscation of all wealth above a level to be determined by the central council.
• Takeover of the entire public transportation system by the councils’ Republic.
• Election of enterprise councils in all enterprises, which, in coordination with the workers’ councils, have the task of ordering the internal affairs of the enterprises, regulating working conditions, controlling production and finally taking over direction of the enterprise.
• Establishment of a central strike commission which, in constant collaboration with the enterprise councils, will furnish the strike movement now beginning throughout the nation with a unified leadership, socialist direction and the strongest support by the political power of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils.
• Immediate establishment of ties with the fraternal parties in other countries, in order to put the socialist revolution on an international footing and to shape and secure the peace by means of international brotherhood and the revolutionary uprising of the world proletariat.

Conclusion

That is what the Spartacists want!

And because that is what it wants, because it is the voice of warning, of urgency, because it is the socialist conscience of the Revolution, it is hated, persecuted, and defamed by all the open and secret enemies of the Revolution and the proletariat.

Crucify it! shout the capitalists, trembling for their cashboxes.

Crucify it! shout the petty bourgeois, the officers, the anti-Semites, the press lackeys of the bourgeoisie, trembling for their flesh-pots under the class rule of the bourgeoisie.

Crucify it! shout the Social Democrats, who, like Judas Iscariot, have sold the workers to the bourgeoisie and tremble for their pieces of silver.

Crucify it! repeat like an echo the deceived, betrayed, abused strata of the working class and the soldiers who do not know that, by raging against the Spartacists, they rage against their own flesh and blood.

In their hatred and defamation of the Spartacists, all the counter-revolutionaries, all enemies of the people, all the antisocialist, ambiguous, obscure, and unclear elements are united. That is proof that the heart of the Revolution beats within the Spartacists, that the future belongs to them.

The Spartacists do not wish to rise to power over the mass of workers or through them.

The Spartacists are only the most conscious, purposeful part of the proletariat, which points the entire broad mass of the working class toward its historical tasks at every step, which represents in each particular stage of the Revolution the ultimate socialist goal, and in all national questions the interests of the proletarian world revolution.

The Spartacists refuse to participate in governmental power with the lackeys of the bourgeoisie, with the ‘Social Democrats’ of today, because they see in such collaboration a betrayal of the fundamentals of socialism, a strengthening of the counter-revolution, and a weakening of the Revolution.

The Spartacists will never take over governmental power except in response to the clear, unambiguous will of the great majority of the proletarian mass of all of Germany, never except by the proletariat’s conscious affirmation of the views, aims, and methods of struggle of the Spartacists.

The proletarian revolution can reach full clarity and maturity only by stages, step by step, on the Golgotha-path of its own bitter experiences in struggle, through defeats and victories.

The victory of the Spartacists comes not at the beginning, but at the end of the Revolution: it is identical with the victory of the great million-strong masses of the socialist proletariat.

Proletarian, arise! To the struggle! There is a world to win and a world to defeat. In this final class struggle in world history for the highest aims of humanity, our slogan toward the enemy is: Thumbs on the eyeballs and knee in the chest!

Attributions

• Original Text: Rosa Luxemburg, “Was Will Spartakus?”, Die Rote Fahne, December 14, 1918.
• Source: Selected Political Writings, Rosa Luxemburg. Edited and introduced by Dick Howard. Monthly Review Press © 1971. PDF version of the original scan.
• Translated: (from the German) by Martin Nicolaus.
• Transcription/Markup: Brian Baggins.
• Copyright: Monthly Review Press © 1971. Published by the Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org, 2004) with permission from Monthly Review Press.
• Modifications made in the International Manifesto: blobii, 2025 (public domain)

posted 13-10-2025 all blogs homepage