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Sri Lankan IYSSE to commemorate 150th anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg’s birth

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka is holding an online lecture and meeting to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of German-Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.

The lecture will be based on the March 4 World Socialist Web Site perspective written by Peter Schwartz, secretary of the International Committee of the Fourth International. It will be held on Friday, April 9, at 7.00 p.m. and conducted in Sinhala and Tamil.

Rosa Luxembourg was the founder of the socialist movement in Poland and a leading member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), the largest and dominant party in the Second International. She fought uncompromisingly against Eduard Bernstein’s revisionist attacks on Marxism and the political centrism of Karl Kautsky, manifestations of the later degeneration of the SPD and the Second International’s adaptation to imperialism.

When the SPD voted to support German war credits following the outbreak of the 1914–18 imperialist war, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht formed the Spartacus League, a revolutionary tendency within the SPD to reassert the revolutionary principles of working-class internationalism within the party and the working class.

In late 1918, amid the eruption of the German Revolution, Luxemburg and Liebknecht founded the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) to lead the eruption of revolutionary struggles of the German proletariat. German imperialism, having learnt the lessons of Russian Revolution, handed power to the SPD leader Friedrich Ebert, who plotted an alliance with the military high command, to bloodily suppress the working class. On January 15, 1919, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were brutally murdered by Freikorps soldiers.

The IYSSE meeting will discuss Luxemburg’s revolutionary legacy, the contemporary attempts to falsify the Marxist and internationalist foundations of her work, and the lessons for the class struggle today.

The lecture will be given by SEP Central Committee member Prageeth Aravinda and the meeting chaired by IYSSE national convener Kapila Fernando.

Date: April 9

Time: 7.00 p.m.

Registration: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5585842739545125904

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