Junius Pamphlet

The Junius Pamphlet (German: Juniusbroschüre)[1] was a text written by Rosa Luxemburg in 1915 while she was in prison, against the brutality of the First World War.

Her critique of the collapse of the Second International in the face of world war proved influential among political activists looking for a way of reconstituting a revolutionary Marxist movement.

[5] Because it was published anonymously, some early editions mistakenly attributed authorship jointly to Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Franz Mehring.

[7] Discussing the descent into war led by imperialist governments and bourgeois politicians, she famously wrote in the Junius pamphlet 'bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism'.

However in the Junius Pamphlet she argued that “international socialism recognises the right of free independent nations, with equal rights… between the national interests and the class interests of the proletariat, in war and peace, there is actually complete harmony.”[9] The pamphlet served as the guiding statement for the International Group, which later became the Spartacus League and, from 1919, the Communist Party of Germany.