Spartacus League

Spartacists

 or Spartacus League

Revolutionary socialist group active in Germany (1914–18). It developed as an offshoot of the Social Democratic Party and was officially founded in 1916 by Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and others who violently opposed Germany's role in World War I and called for a socialist revolution. The group encouraged demonstrations in December 1918 that led to the abortive Spartacus Revolt in January 1919, after which the leaders were murdered by members of the Freikorps. The league was then transformed into the Communist Party of Germany.

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Spartacus League 

(in German, Spartakusbund), a revolutionary organization of German left-wing Social Democrats. The Spartacus League was formed on Nov. 11, 1918, through the reorganization of the propagandistic Gruppe Internationale, which had been formed in January 1916 by revolutionary Social Democrats and which had published the journal Internationale (founded in 1915). The league had its own central committee, which included K. Liebknecht, R. Luxemburg, F. Mehring, L. Jogiches, and W. Pieck. Until late 1918, the Spartacus League belonged to the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, to which the Gruppe Internationale also belonged.

During the November Revolution of 1918, the Spartacists consistently struggled to develop the revolution. They advanced the slogan “All power to the soviets!,” demanded that workers be armed, and exposed the traitorous policies of the reformist leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. The formation of the league, along with the publication of the newspaper Die Rote Fahne, was an important step toward the creation of an autonomous revolutionary party of the German proletariat. In late December 1918, at an all-German conference of league members and radicals, the Communist Party of Germany was created.