Karl Liebknecht

In 1907, as chairman of the International Union of Socialist Youth, Karl Liebknecht published the pamphlet Militarism and Anti-Militarism (Militarismus und Antimilitarismus). It was the first systematic Marxist analysis of militarism in the age of imperialism. Liebknecht distinguished between militarism's external function (aggressive brinkmanship and war preparation against other nations) and its internal function: a mechanism for repressing the working class and every progressive movement. He captured the spirit of militarism by quoting the Prussian Minister of War, General Karl von Einem: 'A soldier loyal to the king who shoots badly is preferable to one who shoots well but whose political convictions are questionable.'

The pamphlet immediately drew the attention of the imperial state. General von Einem requested criminal proceedings for treason, and the trial opened at the Reich Court of Justice in Leipzig in October 1907. Conducting his own defence, Liebknecht argued that 'imperial orders are null and void if their purpose is a breach of the constitution.' The court sentenced him to eighteen months of fortress imprisonment (Festungshaft). But his courtroom fight made him a hero among Berlin's workers, and a crowd escorted him to prison.

While still in detention in 1908, Liebknecht was elected to the Prussian House of Representatives, one of the first eight Social Democrats to enter the state parliament under Prussia's three-class franchise. The prison term earned through anti-militarist struggle did not end his political career; it gave him a national platform. The argument he developed in Militarism and Anti-Militarism (that militarism under capitalism is structural, and anti-militarist work is inherently class struggle) provided the theoretical and political foundation for the lone vote against war credits he would cast seven years later.

On 4 August 1914, exactly one week into the First World War, the Reichstag voted on the first war credits. The SPD voted unanimously in favor. The party of working-class internationalism endorsed its government's war budget. And with that, the Second International effectively dissolved.

Karl Liebknecht voted yes in deference to party discipline. But four months later, on 2 December, when the second war credits came to the floor, he stood alone and voted no. One vote against, out of 397.

'This war is imperialist on both sides. The enemy of the German proletariat is not abroad: it is here, in the German ruling class.'

The SPD caucus expelled him. He was conscripted, sent to the Eastern Front, and later arrested for anti-war activity, spending years in prison until October 1918. The moment he was free he was at the center of Berlin's November Revolution.

His lone vote became a touchstone for anti-war movements across the twentieth century. 'The main enemy is at home.' Born of a specifically German moment, but surviving as a universal proposition for every imperialist war.

Released from prison in October 1918, Liebknecht returned to Berlin and reorganized the Spartacus League as an independent political force. On 9 November he proclaimed the 'Free Socialist Republic' from the Berlin Palace and, with Luxemburg, launched the daily Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag). But at the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils on 16–20 December 1918, the majority opted for early parliamentary elections and the councils' self-dissolution; Liebknecht and Luxemburg were excluded from the proceedings.

When the SPD-led Council of the People's Deputies began using the military against the revolutionary left (attacking the People's Navy Division in the Christmas battles of 24 December, prompting the three USPD deputies to resign), the Spartacists concluded that the revolution could not be completed within a parliamentary framework. On 30 December 1918, Liebknecht and Luxemburg convened delegates from across Germany in Berlin for the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

The congress, which ran through 1 January 1919, rejected parliamentarism and adopted the council republic as its platform. The KPD was Germany's first national communist party, and one of the few founded independently before the Comintern's establishment in March 1919. Luxemburg, the party's leading theorist, argued for revolution through mass strikes and popular mobilization; Liebknecht took a more militant line and did not rule out armed uprising. It was precisely this tension (between mass struggle and insurrection) that would play out dramatically in the Spartacist uprising just two weeks later. The KPD became a major force in German left politics throughout the Weimar Republic and, after the Nazi seizure of power, the backbone of underground communist resistance.