The name comes from the Spartakusbund (Spartacus League), a German revolutionary group led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg that came to the fore in the aftermath of the November Revolution in 1918. Liebknecht had penned a number of pamphlets using the pen name of Spartacus and his circle consisted of individuals disillusioned with the mainstream German socialist party, the SPD, which voted for the war and its deputies gave the government war credits. The pamphlets Liebknecht and company produced featured Spartacus in bold letters and the name Spartakusbund imparted the perception that this was a mass movement.

There were several rationales behind the use of the Spartacus name, which Luxemburg reportedly hated. On an more immediate level, the use of pseudonyms was quite common among left-wing groups producing materials that were illegal. The Spartacus pamphlets were both against the war and government, so their authors could be charged with treason. But Spartacus also summoned up images of the 1848 Revolutions. Liebknecht had a personal connection to the 1848ers and one of the smaller groups in that abortive revolution also took its name from the gladiator turned rebel against Rome. The historical Spartacus was laden with a good deal of symbolism in the nineteenth century; Barrias's statue Le Serment de Spartacus was one example of how Spartacus was a symbol for a revolting against injustice. Liebknecht was like many German of his educational background in that antiquity and classicism played an outside role in his Bildung. Marx, who often filled his work with classical allusions, wrote in a letter to Engels that Spartacus was "the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history. Great general (no Garibaldi), noble character, real representative of the ancient proletariat." Choosing Spartacus as a pen-name was one whose symbolism would have been obvious in the early twentieth century Germany long before Kubrick and Starz had their way with the Thracian gladiator.

The Spartakusbund's fate mirrored that of Spartacus with the revolt fizzling out and both Luxemburg and Liebknecht summarily executed. A far right Freikorps group carried out the executions, but it was done under the authority of an SPD minister in the provisional government Gustav Noske. This made both leaders martyrs to communism both in Germany and abroad. Lenin may have had significant problems with the Spartakusbund (and Luxemburg reciprocated), but he recognized the value of martyrs and their extra-judicial murder. The nascent Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD/Communist Party of Germany) also drew on the Spartakusbund as their political ancestors and the murder as the capstone to a German revolution snuffed out by a counterrevolutionary alliance between the SPD and the far right.