The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles.

Meaning of the quote

The quote means that people who work hard for a living, like factory workers or farmers, only learn how to stand up for themselves and fight for their rights by actually going through difficult situations and battles. They don't just automatically know how to fight injustice - they have to experience it themselves and learn from those experiences.

About Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish-German revolutionary socialist who played a key role in the revolutionary socialist movements of Poland and Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was a prominent figure in the Spartacist uprising and co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League, which eventually became the Communist Party of Germany.

More about the author

More quotes from Rosa Luxemburg

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers’ struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people’s highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party – though they are quite numerous – is no freedom at all.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

Social democracy… is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)

Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat.

Rosa Luxemburg

German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871-1919)