Politics & Power Quote by Rosa Luxemburg

Luxemburg’s line is a warning flare shot from inside the revolutionary project, not from its comfortable enemies. Written in the shadow of the Russian Revolution, it targets a seductive argument every movement makes when it tastes power: that restriction is temporary, that only the “right” people need latitude, that discipline is the price of historical necessity. Her phrasing punctures that logic with a simple test. If freedom is confined to the state’s own circle - “members of the government,” “members of the Party,” even “quite numerous” - it has already turned into a perk, not a principle.

The subtext is sharper: a party can expand its membership and still remain an aristocracy. Quantity doesn’t redeem exclusion; it just widens the VIP lounge. Luxemburg is calling out the way revolutionary legitimacy can be manufactured through participation that’s conditional, curated, and revocable. When dissent becomes synonymous with betrayal, “freedom” becomes a management tool - a reward for compliance.

The intent isn’t libertarian romance about individualism. It’s a hardheaded diagnosis of how authoritarianism is born: not in a single coup, but in the bureaucratic habit of deciding who counts as “the people.” Luxemburg, a socialist who believed in mass politics, insists that a revolution that can’t tolerate its critics will eventually stop needing its citizens at all. Freedom that doesn’t apply to opponents is just power wearing an ethical mask.