Power to the [cont'd page 94]

It's the centenary of the formation of the Spartacus League by Rosa Luxemburg and others.

She felt about the 1914 change in direction of Germany's Social Democrat party much as Corbynists feel about New Labour.

Everything that, during the preceding fifty years, we had preached to the people, that we had declared to be our sacred principles, that we had proclaimed countless times in speeches, in brochures, in newspapers, in leaflets - all at once all that proved to be empty clap-trap. Suddenly, as though by evil magic, the party of the proletarian international class struggle has become a national liberal party. Our organizational strength, of which we were so proud, has proved to be completely impotent , and where we were once respected and feared mortal enemies of bourgeois society, we have now become the irresolute and justly despised tools of our mortal enemy, the international bourgeoisie.

(From a Spartacus League pamphlet of April 1916, translated by William D Graf for a series edited by Ralph Miliband)