The Versailles Treaty of 1919 was one of the most outrageous and predatory treaties in history. It was a blatant act of plunder perpetrated by a gang of robbers against a helpless, prostrate and bleeding Germany. The proceedings at Versailles are highly enlightening because they reveal the inner workings of imperialist diplomacy, the crude reality of power politics and the material interests that lurk behind the flowery phrases about Liberty, Humanitarianism, Pacifism and Democracy.

In 1918-19 the German workers could have taken power. Had they done so world history would have been very different, as it would have a huge impact on the workers of Europe, thereby breaking the isolation of Soviet Russia and thus stopping the Stalinist degeneration. A genuine international federation of socialist republics could have been built. Unfortunately the German Communists committed a series of errors, errors which we must learn from and prepare for the future.

Rosa Luxemburg wrote this programme in December 1918, a few days before the German Communist Party (the successor of the Spartacus League) was founded. The reader will realise at once that this is a call for a socialist Germany.

Rosa Luxemburg was an outstanding Marxist and revolutionary. Her assassination on this day 90 years ago severely damaged the German Communist movement. Here Patrick Larsen looks at her strong side and also her weaknesses in the light of the 1918 German Revolution and draws out lessons for today, in particular for the revolutionary movement in Venezuela.

We are also publishing Trotsky's appraisal of the two revolutionaries, written just after they were murdered in 1919, and "Hands Off Rosa Luxemburg", his defence of what Rosa Luxemburg really stood for, against Stalinist slanders, as well as an extract from Lenin's "Notes of a Publicist" in which he defends Rosa Luxemburg against the reformists.

After 4 years of intense warfare, the German workers and soldiers ended World War I in November 1918. The workers and soldiers had taken power into their hands but also handed it over to the very same people who so shamefully supported the war in 1914. These Social Democratic leaders organized the first defeat of the German revolution.