Rosa Luxemburg

[TheGeekySocialist]

hey everyone, I am about to plough through reading several works by Luxemburg and wondered if anyone had reccomendations in addition to what im reading (will list below) and/or had any thoughts on Luxemburg and her writtings, cheers.

reading:
The National Question
Reform or Revolution
Organisational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy

[Apoi_Viitor]

The Accumulation of Capital

[Battlecat]

The Industrial Development of Poland

[Zanthorus]

'The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions'


The Accumulation of Capital

Probably only worth reading if you're already familiar with Marx's Capital.

[graymouser]

Rosa Luxemburg's most important work is The Mass Strike, because it's a monumental addition to Marxist theory. Essentially it was her work that connected the general strike to Marxism, at a time when most erstwhile Marxists (such as the "Marxist Center" she fought against in Germany) had dismissed it as an anarchist utopia. It connected theory with practice, in that its conclusions are mostly based off of political general strikes held in Russia during the 1905 revolution.

If you want to get into Luxemburg, I would suggest reading a biography - I particularly liked Paul Frölich's, which Haymarket just re-released here in the US.

You won't want to read Accumulation of Capital unless you've read all three volumes of Marx's Capital. It's heavily based on the reproduction schemas in the later volumes of Marx and is not a popular work (i.e. not meant for mass consumption). The other works you mentioned are polemical, and while Reform or Revolution is pretty good Organizational Questions is frequently taken out of context. It's not an anti-Party screed but an attack on a position that was falsely attributed to Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

[TheGeekySocialist]

'The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions'



Probably only worth reading if you're already familiar with Marx's Capital.

forgot to mention, but I actually already read Mass Strike earlier in the year, a friend reccomended it before March 26th (here in the UK) :) it was very good and I agree with what graymouser said about it, it's part of the reason im interested in reading more of her work.

I have read a bit of Capital and been to talks about it, but I have not yet read it in full, would people reccomend reading it in full first?

@ graymouser - thank you for the advice :) I will look up the autobiography you reccomended

[Volcanicity]

I have read a bit of Capital and been to talks about it, but I have not yet read it in full, would people reccomend reading it in full first?

I wouldn't recommend diving head first into "Capital",try reading Marx's "Value,price and profit "before tackling it as it'll give you a good introduction as it basically read's like a watered down and condensed version of "Capital"volume one.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/.

[caramelpence]

Rosa Luxemburg's most important work is The Mass Strike, because it's a monumental addition to Marxist theory. Essentially it was her work that connected the general strike to Marxism, at a time when most erstwhile Marxists (such as the "Marxist Center" she fought against in Germany) had dismissed it as an anarchist utopia. It connected theory with practice, in that its conclusions are mostly based off of political general strikes held in Russia during the 1905 revolution.

Just to avoid confusion, Luxemburg was actually concerned with distinguishing the mass strike from the general strike in that she characterized the latter as that which is planned and organized in advance and kept within a narrow set of boundaries, whereas she saw the mass strike as an essential characteristic of a revolutionary situation. She wanted to distinguish the two and refute the fetishization of the general strike by the SPD trade-union bureaucracy.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The Russian Revolution. Chapter 8 is particularly significant in understanding the fallacy of presenting politics as a choice between bourgeois democracy and socialist dictatorship.