Wilhelm Liebknecht
1826 — 1900
Biography
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.
From No Compromise — No Political Trading (1899)
Works:
1869: On the Political Position of Social-Democracy (speech)
Abridged alternate translation: The Elections to Parliament are only a Means of Agitation
1870: The Reichstag Farce (speech)
1870: The Battlefield, Not the Reichstag, is the Final Court of Judgment (fragment)
1872: Knowledge is Power – Power is Knowledge (excerpts)
The Bourgeoisie and its Civilization
1872: Speech Intended to be Delivered before the Jurors in the Leipzig Trial for High Treason
1872: A Soldier of the Revolution (speech)
1874: Liebknecht’s First Speech in the German Reichstag
1878: Liberty has Been Outlawed Together with Us (speech)
1881: The Spider and the Fly
1886: On the Deportation of Poles from Prussia
1889: On the Political Position of Social-Democracy (pamphlet) 📖
1889: Speeches delivered at the Founding Congress of the Second International
A Global Workingmen’s Parliament
1893: We Are a Revolutionary Party (fragment)
1893: The Eighteenth of March (speech)
1892-1894: Not a Man and Not a Penny for this System! (speech)
1895: A Bad Quarter of an Hour
1895: On May Day ✉
1895: Preface to Eleanor Marx’s The Working Class Movement in England
1895: Lèse Majéste (speech)
1896: Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs 📖
1896: A Message From Liebknecht ✉
1896: Our Recent Congress
1896: Statement on Armenia
1897: Crete and Social-Democracy
1897: The First of May in Germany
1898: May Day in Germany
1898: Social-Democracy in Germany: On the elections ✉
1898: International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress (with Paul Singer) ✉
1899: To my friends in England
1899: No Compromise – No Political Trading 📖
1900: Beware of Imperialism and Militarism ✉
1900: To the Editor of The Clarion ✉
1900: On Militarism
1900: Breakers Ahead
1901: How it could be done (posthumous publication)
Collection: Voices of Revolt: Speeches of Wilhelm Liebknecht 📖
Writings about Wilhelm Liebknecht:
1896: Wilhelm Liebknecht and the Social-Democratic Movement in Germany, by Edward Aveling
1900: William Liebknecht, obituary by Daniel De Leon (PDF)
1900: Wilhelm Liebknecht, the People’s Tribune, obituary by Eugene V. Debs (PDF)
1910: From August Bebel’s memoirs
1911: From H.M. Hyndman’s memoirs
1918: From Eduard Bernstein’s memoirs