Extract from a speech made by Rosa Luxemburg on December 31st, 1918
The measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries, the following will be generally applicable:
1. Abolition of landed property and application of all land rents to public purposes.
2. Heavy progressive taxes.
3. Abolition of the right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Increase in the number of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally, in accordance with a social plan.
8. Equal obligation upon all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Unification of agricultural and manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Unification of education with industrial production, etc., etc.
As you see, with a few variations, these are the tasks that confront us today: the introduction, the realization of socialism. Between the time when the above program was formulated and the present moment, there have intervened seventy years of capitalist development, and the dialectical movement of history has brought us back to the conception which Marx and Engels had abandoned in 1872 as erroneous. At that time, there were good reasons for believing that their earlier views had been wrong. The further development of capital has, however, led to the fact that what was incorrect in 1872 has become truth today, so that our immediate task today is to fulfill what Marx and Engels thought they would have to accomplish in 1848.
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