Question

What according to Rosa Luxemburg were the consequences of European Social Democrat’s failure to block their nations’ government going to war in 1914.

Answer 1

Answer:

Rosa Luxemburg wrote in The Junius Pamphlet (1915) that the Social Democrats across Europe failed to block their nation's governments because they were docile and showed weakness, there was a waning of their fighting spirit.

Explanation:

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), a prominent Marxist intellectual in Germany said that the Social Democrats failed to stop the governments of Europe from going to war, especially because the Marxist leaders had lost their fighting spirit (Luxemburg, Julius Pamphlet, 1915). The consequence is that the bourgeois state and the dominant classes were able to maintain their control of the state and institutions at the expense of the people of Europe who had to endure the war. Luxemburg said the European Left should see the war as a test of strength and that the Social Democrats need to learn how to be protagonists instead of a  "will-less football," (Chapter 1, The Julius Pamphlet). Luxemburg believed the party needed to take control of their own fate and history if their view of society was to prevail. It is known through other speeches and writing that Luxemburg believed the Social Democrats had become overly bureaucratized and the trade unions in Germany resisted the idea of revolution.