The Councils Strike Back!!!

This senior project examines the events of Germany from 1918 to 1919. In this examination, the Arendtian model of Revolution was used to evaluate not only the quality of the German Revolution, but also its success. The components of the model that were integral to this project were, the foundation of freedom, the relevance of the social question, and the establishment of the revolutionary spirit through the implementation of councils. After the exploration and the evaluation of the German Revolution, the project to over determine if Rosa Luxemburg’s theories of Revolution could have resulted in a different outcome for German revolution 1918-1919. This project explores questions related to freedom, politics, socialism, the social question, and council theory. The guiding question for this project is as follows: could a model of Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of revolution solve the problem of revolutions in the modern age. Through this work I have discovered that if we assume that Arendt is correct in identifying the components of a revolution, then the German Revolution of 1918-1919 failed because it did not establish a new body politic that resulted in political freedom. The German Revolution also was distracted with solving the social question, which must have hampered its ability to succeed. I have also concluded that Rosa Luxemburg’s guide to a successful Revolution could have established political freedom in Germany, as well as an answer the social question