Rosa Luxumberg

[The Red Next Door]

I heard she was against the German Revolution and she was a reformist, from what i read she doesn't seem reformist, can you give me the download on her?

[Serge's Fist]

I heard she was against the German Revolution and she was a reformist, from what i read she doesn't seem reformist, can you give me the download on her?

She was a revolutionary and for the German revolution. I would trust what you read and not what people say to you.

My comrade Ben Lewis has been translating some of her works into English that were previously left in dusty German pamphlets and books. Why not have a read of this: Rosa Luxemburg in her own words (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker2/index.php?action=viewarticle&article_id=1001866)

Also her MIA section is excellent, I think reading the Junius Pamphlet would be a good idea too if you haven'y already read it.

[Zanthorus]

I think she was against the Spartacist uprising because she thought it was premature but went along with it anyway and got killed.

She was most certainly not a reformist though. She wrote a book, "Social Reform and Revolution" which was a critique of the revisionist Eduard Bernstein, she also supported the Russian revolution.

[The Red Next Door]

She was a revolutionary and for the German revolution. I would trust what you read and not what people say to you.

My comrade Ben Lewis has been translating some of her works into English that were previously left in dusty German pamphlets and books. Why not have a read of this: Rosa Luxemburg in her own words (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker2/index.php?action=viewarticle&article_id=1001866)

Also her MIA section is excellent, I think reading the Junius Pamphlet would be a good idea too if you haven'y already read it.

I read a book, that had a bunch of her writings, I was just asking, Rosa speaks was the only book i read about her.

[Serge's Fist]

I read a book, that had a bunch of her writings, I was just asking, Rosa speaks was the only book i read about her.

When I face a situation like this the best thing to do is to do as much primary source reading you have the time for. Rosa Luxemburg was an outstanding revolutionary whose contributions were of great importance to the movement.

[Nwoye]

she also supported the Russian revolution.
this is true, but she didn't do it uncritically. While in prison she wrote The Russian Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/index.htm), where she came out in support of the participation of the working class in the overthrow of the tsardom and the liberal coalition government that took its place in 1917. However she also criticized the leaders of the Bolshevik party for their role in the new government. She describes how it is necessary to distinguish bourgeois democracy from socialist democracy, and how the latter may come about:

socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land after the foundations of socialist economy are created; it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the socialist party. It is the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class – that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people.
It's also important to understand that her criticism of the Bolsheviks came from a materialist (meaning Marxist) position, in the sense that she understood the circumstances surrounding thethe revolution in russia; the failure of the worldwide proletariat to challenge capitalism on an international level:

Everything that happens in Russia is comprehensible and represents an inevitable chain of causes and effects, the starting point and end term of which are: the failure of the German proletariat and the occupation of Russia by German imperialism. It would be demanding something superhuman from Lenin and his comrades if we should expect of them that under such circumstances they should conjure forth the finest democracy, the most exemplary dictatorship of the proletariat and a flourishing socialist economy. By their determined revolutionary stand, their exemplary strength in action, and their unbreakable loyalty to international socialism, they have contributed whatever could possibly be contributed under such devilishly hard conditions. The danger begins only when they make a virtue of necessity and want to freeze into a complete theoretical system all the tactics forced upon them by these fatal circumstances, and want to recommend them to the international proletariat as a model of socialist tactics. When they get in there own light in this way, and hide their genuine, unquestionable historical service under the bushel of false steps forced on them by necessity, they render a poor service to international socialism for the sake of which they have fought and suffered; for they want to place in its storehouse as new discoveries all the distortions prescribed in Russia by necessity and compulsion – in the last analysis only by-products of the bankruptcy of international socialism in the present world war.Sorry for the length, but I feel like this section of The Russian Revolution provides a fair but brief illustration of Luxembourg's political philosophy in relation to that of the Bolsheviks.

btw a list of her works can be found here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/index.htm) at Marxists Internet Archive.

[Zanthorus]

She describes how it is necessary to distinguish bourgeois democracy from socialist democracy, and how the latter may come about.

Your thinking of Lenin's The State and Revolution. Luxemburg's piece is a classic of apologetics for parliamentary democracy against the rule of the soviet councils.

[Muzk]

This is a good summary of Rosa Luxemburg (as a person)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/profiles/rosa.htm

[S.Artesian]

I heard she was against the German Revolution and she was a reformist, from what i read she doesn't seem reformist, can you give me the download on her?


Definitely not a reformist. She was, in Lenin's words, "an eagle." A revolutionary of great character, strength, and brilliance.