The BILD is Germany’s biggest right-wing tabloid, well known for its frenzied attacks against immigrants and the left. The day after the Anti-G8 demonstration in Rostock its headline screamed: “Do you want dead, hooligans?” (no one “died” as it happens, afterwards it transpired there were only two “seriously” injured police officers). But on Monday (January 14, 2008), BILD reported that; “more than 10.000 demonstrators from (across) Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria” participated in the demonstration to commemorate the three L’s (Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Vladimir Lenin).

We could add to the BILD report that there were also lots of people from Denmark, Greece, the Basque Country and other countries. But we agree – for once – with BILD that the LLL demonstration this year was bigger than in the previous years. There were over 10,000 people at the demonstration, almost 100,000 at the cemetery.

In contrast, Der Spiegel, a sort-of-liberal weekly magazine, simply repeated the police report about the demonstration – 3,400 participants. The bourgeois press, whether right-wing or very right-wing, was amused by nostalgic Stalinists with Stalin portraits or symbols of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, the former East Germany), and it’s that a lot of LLL fans are older people who have taken part in this commemoration for the last fifty years or more. But if it was really only older people, then the demonstration would shrink continuously, just like the old PDS did – the slow growth in the number of participants proves that every year new, young people join up.

One just needed to look at the loud and militant Anticapitalist-Internationalist Block (organized by ALB and ARAB) where lots of people were demonstrating who were born after the collapse of the GDR.

Because the capitalist system offers us less and less perspectives, the communists Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Lenin are slowly arousing more and more interest among young people. The three L’s, for most of them, don’t stand so much for a political program as for a general rejection of capitalism. But the interest in their communist program is growing too:

The meeting room in the house project “Red Island” was almost full as the independent youth organization REVOLUTION had a meeting about “The LLL and the Revolution”. There were two talks about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the November Revolution in Germany in 1918. Through the comparison it was shown that a revolutionary-marxist workers’ organization was lacking when the German revolution began, which contributed decisively to the defeat of the workers’ insurrections in the German Empire.

After the meeting there was a solidarity party with more than 50 people, where the “Communist Classics” were especially popular. At 2am the party was ended, out of a deep sense of responsibility – in contrast, lots of Antifas at the demonstration the next day looked like they had partied way too long…

There were young people from across Germany, the Czech Republic and even further away at REVOLUTION’s “LLL Weekend”. While Left Party politicians mourn briefly at the cemetery and then return to their reformist politics, attempting to someone make capitalism more humane, we want to revive the revolutionary socialist tradition of the three L’s (that’s why it’s called “Old School”). We honor Rosa Luxemburg because she fought her whole life for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Did she really defend bourgeois democracy and oppose the “Bolshevik dictatorship”, as some left politicians claim today? She said herself: “All power in the hands of the working masses as a revolutionary weapon to shatter capitalism – only that is true equality, only that is true democracy!” And: “Whoever opposes the storm truck of the socialist revolution, will end up with smashed limbs on the ground.” So much to that.

by Wladek, Revo Berlin, January 17, 2008

• REVOLUTION’s flyer for the demonstration
• report from last year’s LLL demonstration
• pictures from Revo Germany