Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)


German revolutionary leader, journalist, and socialist theorist, who was killed in Berlin in 1919 during the German revolution. Rosa Luxemburg saw herself as a citizen of the proletariat. She lived the international life of a Socialist 'pilgrim', believing that only socialism could bring true freedom and social justice. Luxemburg was the advocate of mass action, spontaneity, and workers democracy, but her criticism of the "revisionists" and their ideological leader Edward Bernstein is considered her most important legacy to European political thought.

"Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat." (from 'The Junius Pamphlet', 1916)
Rosa Luxemburg was born in Zamosc, in Russian Poland, into a Jewish middle-class family. At the age of five she became seriously ill. After recovering she walked with a limp for her whole life, and sciatic pain caused her much trouble. She was educated at the Warsaw Gimnazium and from the age of 16 she participated in revolutionary activities. Her favorite writer during these years was the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, whose patriotism and life in political exile influenced her deeply. In 1889 she moved to Switzerland to continued her studies. Partly she was forced to flee from Poland because of her activities. Luxemburg entered the University of Zürich, where she studied natural sciences and political economy. She started her career as a journalist and became one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. In 1898 Luxemburg completed her doctorate. The dissertation was entitled The Industrial Development of Poland.

In 1899 appeared Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution, her defense of Marxism. It opposed Edward Bernstein's reformist position and criticized Bernstein's revisionist theories in his Evolutionary Socialism (1898). Bernstein had published also in Neue Zeit a series of articles, in which he had attempted to disprove some of the basic doctrines of Marxism. He rejected Marx's theories of class struggle and concluded that revolution was unnecessary. Luxemburg believed that her work would make the "old guard" of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) to view her as a serious political thinker and leader. "Since the final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the social democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor transforming the entire labor movement from a vain effort to repair the capitalist order into a class struggle against this order, for the suppression of this order - the question: "Reform or revolution?" as it is posed by Bernstein, equals for the social democracy the question: "The be or not to be?" In the controversy with Bernstein and his followers, everybody in the party ought to understand clearly it is not a question of this or that method of struggle, or the use of this or that set of tactics, but the of the very existence of the social democratic movement." (from Reform or Revolution)

A German citizen by marriage Luxemburg become in 1898 a leader of the left wing of the SPD and participated in the second International and in the 1905 revolution in Russian Poland. In 1906 she was arrested in Warsaw but released finally on health grounds. She returned to Germany where she taught at SPD party school in Berlin until 1914 and developed ideas about general strike as a political weapon. In 1912 appeared her major theoretical work, The Accumulation of Capital, in which she tried to prove that capitalism was doomed and would inevitably collapse on economic grounds. After differences with moderate German socialists, she founded with Karl Liebknecht the radical Spartacus League in 1916. Two years later the organization became the German Communist Party.

During World War I Luxemburg spent long times in prison, writing her Spartakusbriefe and Die Russisce Revolution, where she welcomed the October Revolution as a precursor of world revolution. After the Spartacist uprising in Berlin against the government, in which she participated reluctantly. The uprising, which failed, was also a defining moment among others for Adolf Hitler. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested in 1919. While being transported to prison she and Liebknecht were murdered on the night of 15/16 on January 1919 by German Freikorps soldiers. Luxemburg's body was thrown into the Landwehr canal and found on May. She was buried on June 13 in Friedrichsfeld cemetery, where Liebknecht and the other killed revolutionaries were also buried.

Luxemburg's lover Leo Jogiches was murdered in 1919. Just before his death, he had decided with Clara Zetkin and Mathild Jacob to publish Luxemburg's collected works. The project proceeded slowly because Lenin's critical opinions of Luxemburg's thought were not easy to ignore. Lenin saw that she underestimated nationalist ideology, underrated the role of the Communist party, and emphasized to much the power of the mass action. Luxemburg was critical about Lenin's acceptance of the idea of national self-determination. Later Stalinist study was not very happy about her - her unorthodoxy was nearly as dangerous as Trotsky's. Luxemburg's collected works did not appear until 1970-75 in DDR.

"The list of people with whom Simone Weil was politically associated reads like an almanac of the French Left. Thévenon, Guérin, Battaille, Serret. Simone saw in Rosa Luxemburg (d. 1919) a kindred soul. 'Her life, her work, her letters affirm life and not death,' wrote Simone. 'Rosa aspired to action, not to sacrifice. In this sense, there is nothing Christian in her temperament.'" (from The Left Hand of God by Adolf Holl, 1997)
Thoroughful reevaluation of Luxemburg's work started in Germany in the 1970s. Her theories were considered as an alternative to Communism or Social Democracy. When Marxist study lost its attraction in the 1980s, Luxemburg arose still interest among feminist theorist. Luxemburg herself did not participate into women's rights movement, women's liberation was for her part of the liberation from the oppression of capitalism. Raya Dunayevskaya argues in her study Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (1981) that Luxemburg's years after the break-up with her lover Leo Jogiches were not "lost years," as J.P. Nettl presents in his large biography (1966). Dunayevskaya documents Luxemburg's myriad activities and theoretical work including Mass Strike. In the 1980s Margareta von Trotta's film Rosa Luxemburg (1986), starring Barbara Sukowa, gained commercial success. The film was partly based on Annelies Laschitza's studies. However, feminist critic objected Trotta's conventional (melo)dramatic narration.

For further reading: Rosa Luxemburg. Gedanke und Tat by Paul Frölich (1939); Rosa Luxemburg by J.P. Nettl (1966, 2 vols.); Rosa Luxemburg, Woman Liberations and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution by Raya Dunayewskaja (1981); Rosa Luxemburg. Ein Leben für die Freiheit by Fredrich Hetman (1987); Rosa Luxemburg. A Life by Elzbieta Ettinger (1988); Rosa Luxemburg. A Life for the Internationale by Richard Abraham (1989); Rosa Luxemburg - Die Rote Demokratie by Peter Bierl (1991); Une Femme rebelle by Max Gallo (1992); Philosophia: The Thought of Rosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil, and Hannah Arendt by Andrea Nye (1994); Eine Leiche im Landwehrkanal. Die Ermordung der Rosa Luxemburg by Klaus Gietinger (1995); Im Lebensrausche trotz alledem by Annelies Laschitza (1996); Rosa Luxemburg and the Noble Dream by Donald E. Shepardson (1996); Sozialismus oder Barbarei by Virve Manninen (1996); Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary for Our Times by Stephen Eric Bronner (1997); Rosa Luxemburg und Leo Jogiches by Maria Seideman (1998); Die Welt is so schön bei allem Graus by Annelies Laschitza (1998); Rosa und Karl by Manfred Scharrer (2002) - See also: Luxemburg and Mass Action ; Rosa Luxemburg and German Social Democracy by Ernest Mandel ; Rosa Luxemburg, Polish Marxist Revolutionary
Selected works:

DIE INDUSTRIELLE ENTWICKLUNG POLENS, 1898 (doctoral thesis)
SOZIALREFORM ODER REVOLUTION, 1899 - Social Reform or Revolution
DIE AKKUMULATION DES KAPITALS, 1913 - Accumulation of Capital
SPARTKUSBRIEFE, 1916
BRIEFE AUS DEM GEFÄNGNIS, 1919
DIE RUSSISCHE REVOLUTION, 1922 - The Russian Revolution, and Leninism or Marxism?
BRIEFE AND FREUNDE, 1950
AUSGEWÄHLTE REDEN UND SCHRIFTEN, 1951
ICH WAR, ICH BIN, ICH WERDE SEIN!, 1958
DAS MENSCHLICHE ENTSCHEIDET, 1958
POLITISCHE SCHRIFTEN I-III, 1966
SCHRIFTEN ZUR THEORIE DER SPONTANEITÄT, 1970
Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, 1970 (ed. by Mary-Alice Waters)
INTERNATIONALISMUS UND KLASSENKAMPF, 1971
BRIEFE AN MATHILDE JAKOB, 1972
GESAMMELTE WERKE, 1-5, 1970-75
VIVE LA LUTTE!, 1975
GESAMMELTE BRIEFE, 1-6, 1980-93
The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, 1993
Rosa Luxemburg: Writings and Reflections, 1999


http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/luxembur.htm



(Edited by Kodzoquo at 3:38 pm on Oct. 17, 2002)