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Wilhelm Liebknecht

Festrede gehalten zum Stiftungsfest des Dresdener Bildungs-Vereins am 5. Februar 1872, Neue Auflage, Berlin 1891, SB Berlin http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB000027A700000000

„Der demokratische Staat ist die einzig mögliche Form der sozialistisch organisierten Gesellschaft.“

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Über die politische Stellung der Sozialdemokratie, insbesondere mit Bezug auf den Norddeutschen „Reichstag“ (1869). In: Kleine politische Schriften, Frankfurt/M. 1976, S. 14 ff. marxists.org http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/liebknechtw/1869/05/01.htm

„Programme sind aber nicht dazu da, mit dem Mund bekannt und mit der Tat verleugnet zu werden; sie sollen die Richtschnur unseres Handelns sein.“

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Über die politische Stellung der Sozialdemokratie, insbesondere mit Bezug auf den Norddeutschen „Reichstag“ (1869), in: Kleine politische Schriften, Frankfurt/M. 1976, S. 14 ff. marxists. org

„Weil wir die Untrennbarkeit der Demokratie und des Sozialismus begriffen haben, nennen wir uns Sozialdemokraten.“

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Über die politische Stellung der Sozialdemokratie, insbesondere mit Bezug auf den Norddeutschen „Reichstag“ (1869), in: Kleine politische Schriften, Frankfurt/M. 1976, S. 14 ff. marxists. org

„(Brief an Karl Marx vom 25. Januar 1865) Wenn du Lust hast, Jemanden vor den Kopf zu stoßen, suche dir für den Zeitvertreib nicht gerade Deine Freunde aus.“

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Abt. 3: Briefwechsel, Bd. 13: Engels/Marx: Briefwechsel Oktober 1864 bis Dezember 1865, 2002. google. books.com.

„Diesen Tempel dem Volk zu öffnen, das ist unser Bestreben; die Wissenschaft, die Ihr zum Monopol einiger Auserwählten gemacht, und für die Ihr kein Stück Brod habt, wenn sie nicht Euren Launen schmeichelt, Eurem Eigennutz fröhnt - die Wissenschaft wollen wir zum Gemeingut Aller machen.“

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Zu Trutz und Schutz, Festrede zum Stiftungsfest des Crimmitschauer Volksvereins, 22. Oktober 1871, Vierte vermehrte Auflage, Verlag der Genossenschaftsbuchdruckerei, Leipzig 1874, S. 33, books.google.de https://books.google.de/books?id=s9lkAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA33&dq=%22Die+Wissenschaft+wollen+wir+zum+Gemeingut+aller+machen.%22

„Was prinzipiell das Richtige, ist stets auch praktisch das Beste. Prinzipientreue ist die beste Politik.“

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Ueber die politische Stellung der deutschen Sozial-Demokratie, Vortrag in der Versammlung des Berliner demokratischen Arbeiter-Vereins, Berlin 31. Mai 1869. In: Beilage zum Demokratischen Wochenblatt Nr. 32, 1869, books.google.de https://books.google.de/books?id=w1W63At2UaQC&pg=PA366&dq=%22Prinzipientreue+ist+die+beste+Politik.%22, marxists.org http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/liebknechtw/1869/05/01.htm

„Weil wir die Untrennbarkeit der Demokratie und des Sozialismus begriffen haben, nennen wir uns Sozialdemokraten. In diesem Namen liegt unser Programm. Programme sind aber nicht dazu da, mit dem Mund bekannt und mit der Tat verleugnet zu werden; sie sollen die Richtschnur unseres Handelns sein.“

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Wilhelm Liebknecht: Zitate auf Englisch

“Socialism without democracy is pseudo-socialism, just as democracy without socialism is pseudo-democracy.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

Wilhelm Liebknecht, On The Political Position of Social-Democracy https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/1889/political-position.htm (1869 & 1889)

“I am for the unity of the party – for the national and international unity of the party. But it must be a unity of socialism and socialists. The unity with opponents – with people who have other aims and other interests, is no socialist unity. We must strive for unity at any price and with all sacrifices. But while we are uniting and organizing, we must rid ourselves of all foreign and antagonistic elements. What would one say of a general who in the enemy’s country sought to fill the ranks of his army with recruits from the ranks of the enemy? Would that not be the height of foolishness? Very well, to take into our army – which is an army for the class struggle and the class war – opponents, soldiers with aims and interests entirely opposite to our own, – that would be madness, that would be suicide.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“The bureaucratic, though capitalistic, spirit of our governments tends towards a state socialism which, in fact, is only state capitalism, but which is dazzling and misleading for those who are easily deceived by external similarities and catch words. The German, or more accurately the Prussian, state socialism whose ideal is a military, landlord and police state, hates democracy above everything else. … It is to them something inherently political. But all politics is diametrically opposed to what is socialist. So by this trick logic we arrive at the conclusion which has gained footing here and there, even in social democratic circles, that democracy as savoring of politics has nothing in common with socialism, but on the contrary is opposed to it. … But the truth is that democracy is not a thing that is specifically political, and we must never forget that we are not merely a socialist party, but a social democratic party because we have perceived that socialism and democracy are inseparable.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“It would be an unparalleled case of flying the track and going astray if the German Social Democracy, which has had such wonderful success and such a wonderful growth for the very reason that it has marched ahead unterrified on the basis of the class struggle, should suddenly face about and plunge into mistakes, the avoidance of which has been the power and pride of our party, and has put the German Social Democracy at the head of the international social democracy of all countries.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“All parties without exception recognize us as a political power, and exactly in proportion to our power. Even the craziest reactionary that denies us the right of existence courts our favor and by his acts gives the lie to his words. From the fact that our assistance is sought by other parties, some of our comrades draw the strange conclusion that we should reverse the party tactics, and in place of the old policy of the class struggle against all other parties, substitute the commercial polities of log rolling, wire pulling and compromise. Such persons forget the power which makes our alliance sought for, even by our bitterest enemies, would have had absolutely no existence were it not for the old class struggle tactics. If Marx, Engels and Lassalle had accepted from Bernstein and his modest or not modest fellow thinkers the tactics of compromise and dependence upon bourgeois parties, then there never would have been any Social Democracy; we would have been simply the tail of the Progressive party.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“All who are weary and heavy laden; all who suffer under injustice; all who suffer from the outrages of the existing bourgeois society; all who have in them the feeling of the worth of humanity, look to us, turn hopefully to us, as the only party that can bring rescue and deliverance. And if we, the opponents of this unjust world of violence, suddenly reach out the hand of brotherhood to it, conclude alliances with its representatives, invite our comrades to go hand in hand with the enemy whose misdeeds have driven the masses into our camp, what confusion must result in their minds! … It must be that for the hundreds and thousands, for the millions that have sought salvation under our banner, it was all a colossal mistake for them to come to us. If we are not different from the others, then we are not the right ones – the Savior is yet to come; and the Social Democracy was a false Messiah, no better than the other false ones! Just in this fact lies our strength, that we are not like the others, and that we are not only not like the others, and that we are not simply different from the others, but that we are their deadly enemy, who have sworn to storm and demolish the Bastile of Capitalism, whose defenders all those others are. Therefore we are only strong when we are alone. This is not to say that we are to individualise or to isolate ourselves. We have never lacked for company, and we never shall so long as the fight lasts. On the essentially true but literally false phrase about a “single reactionary mass,” the Social Democracy has never believed since it passed from the realm of theory to that of practice. We know that the individual members and divisions of the “single reactionary mass” are in conflict with each other, and we have always used these conflicts for our purposes. We have used opponents against opponents, but have never allowed them to use us.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“Undoubtedly there are bourgeois who from a feeling of justice and humanity place themselves upon the side of the laborers and socialists, but these are only the exceptions; the mass of the bourgeoisie has class consciousness, a consciousness of being the ruling and exploiting class. Indeed, the mass of the bourgeoisie, just because they are a ruling class, have a much sharper and stronger class consciousness than the proletariat.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“Distrust was counted as a democratic virtue, and over-confidence as a democratic vice.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“We come more and more frequently into momentary unions, or momentary relations with other parties. But these momentary relations must never become momentary alliances. We must never bind the party. We must always keep our hand free; exploit the conditions; let our opponents do the dirty work for us; and with the goal of the party firmly in mind, keep in the middle of the road, and go our own way, only going along with opposing parties when our way happens to be the same as theirs. That we are a party of the class struggle, who have nothing in common with any other party, and who have to fight and conquer all other parties, in order to attain our goal, is something which we must never for a moment lose sight of.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“The proletariat stands politically as well as socially in the most abrupt contradiction to the present class state. It must fight it on all fields and upon every question, both of domestic and of foreign policy.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“A practical surrender of our party principles appears to me far more dangerous than all of Bernstein’s theoretical will-o’-the-wisps put together. … Democratic elements do not thereby become Socialists, though many believe they are socialists. … This political socialism, which in fact is only philanthropic humanitarian radicalism, … it has diluted and blurred the principles and weakened the socialist party because it brought into it troops upon which no reliance could be placed in the decisive moment.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“We Social Democrats dare not be like the other parties, all of whom are equally guilty of the injustices of the present system and equally responsible for them. Every one who suffers under these injustices looks to us for deliverance. Every one of us has had these victims of society after failing to get justice from the courts, from the government, from the Emperor himself, and from all the other parties, come to us as the last and only ones that can help them. They do not know our scientific program; they do not know what capital and capitalism mean; but they have the belief, the feeling, that we are a party that can help when all other parties fail. This belief is for us an inexhaustible source of power. It was a similar faith of despair that spread more and more in the decaying Roman empire and slowly undermined the heathen world until it finally collapsed. We give up this inexhaustible source of power if we ally ourselves with other parties and drive suffering humanity from us by saying to it: “We are not essentially different from the others.””

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

Once the boundary line of the class struggle is wiped away and we have started upon the inclined plane of compromise, there is no stopping. Then we can only go down and down until there is nothing deeper.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“The supreme importance of tactics and the necessity of maintaining its class struggle character, is something the party has been well conscious of from the beginning. … We find that in all questions of tactics the thought was continually kept in the foreground that the party must be kept clean from all mixture with all other parties, every one of which, no matter how much they differed from each other or how furiously they fought among themselves, stood upon the ground of bourgeois society as a common basis. This separation of the Social Democracy from all other parties, this essential difference, which silly opponents take as a reason or pretext for declaring us political outlaws, is our pride and our strength.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“For our party and for our party tactics there is but one valid basis: the basis of the class struggle, out of which the Social Democratic party has sprung up, and out of which alone it can draw the necessary strength to bid defiance to every storm and to all its enemies.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of wealth and respect for poverty, such as we find in Christianity and other religions, is not socialism. The communism of early times, as it was before the existence of private property, and as it has at all times and among all peoples been the elusive dream of some enthusiasts, is not socialism. The forcible equalization advocated by the followers of Baboeuf, the so-called equalitarians, is not socialism. In all these appearances there is lacking the real foundation of capitalist society with its class antagonisms. Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms. Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind. Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable. Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“On the ground of the class struggle we are invincible; if we leave it we are lost, because we are no longer socialists. The strength and power of socialism rests in the fact that we are leading a class struggle; that the laboring class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, and that within capitalist society effectual reforms, which will put an end to class government and class exploitation, are impossible.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“We will not turn from the old tactics, nor from the old program. Ever advancing with science and economic development, we are what we were and we will remain what we are. Or – the Social Democracy will cease to exist.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“This is not an end, but only a means to an end.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“If the way to hell is paved with good intentions, the way to defeat is paved with illusions.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

We must strive for unity at any price and with all sacrifices. But while we are uniting and organizing, we must rid ourselves of all foreign and antagonistic elements. What would one say of a general who in the enemy’s country sought to fill the ranks of his army with recruits from the ranks of the enemy? Would that not be the height of foolishness? Very well, to take into our army – which is an army for the class struggle and the class war – opponents, soldiers with aims and interests entirely opposite to our own, – that would be madness, that would be suicide.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

We must always keep our hand free; exploit the conditions; let our opponents do the dirty work for us; and with the goal of the party firmly in mind, keep in the middle of the road, and go our own way, only going along with opposing parties when our way happens to be the same as theirs. That we are a party of the class struggle, who have nothing in common with any other party, and who have to fight and conquer all other parties, in order to attain our goal, is something which we must never for a moment lose sight of.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“It is a bourgeois feeling to overvalue the possession of representatives. In representation as in money there is power – power over others. Whoever places the purity and the greatness of our party above all else, for him representatives have value only in so far as they serve to give expression to the power and extent of Social Democracy. What do ten, what do a hundred representatives signify, when our escutcheon has lost its gloss through their acquisition? The value of a representative is small. But the value of the integrity of our party is immeasurable. In it rests our strength.”

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

As with the shorn hair, that signified his manhood’s honor, the strength of Samson disappeared, so the strength of our party would cease if we allowed the bourgeois Delilahs to flatter away our most precious jewel and the roots of our triumphal strength – the party purity, the party honor.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

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Wilhelm Liebknecht

Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind. Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable. Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)