The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg

by Norman Geras

No great socialist thinker has been so often misrepresented as the Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. In this scrupulous study, tightly argued, Geras systematically considers and refutes the major myths which have developed about her work. He shows how her views on socialist strategy in Russia were closer to those of Lenin than any other leader, and clarifies her famous theory of the mass strike. Her critique of the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution is distinguished from social-democratic or anarchist attacks, to which it has often been assimilated.

Widely praised on its first publication, The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg is an important contribution to our understanding of an earlier generation of Marxism in Poland and Russia.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Politics, Theory, Biography

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Norman Geras was Professor Emeritus of Government at the University of Manchester. In a long academic career, he has contributed substantially to the analysis of the works of Karl Marx, particularly in his book Marx and Human Nature and the article "The Controversy About Marx and Justice," which remains a standard work on the issue.

Reviews

[Liam89 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Few Marxist philosophers and thinkers have been analysed and discussed as much as Rosa Luxemburg, and this has often been in a hostile or dishonest way. Some falsely condemned her as a believer in spontaneity and of the almost teleological inevitability of socialism. Others have tried to subsume her writings into those of liberalism with her assertion of the importance of democracy and freedom of speech. The late Professor Geras does her legacy a great service by dispelling both of these myths, and using close textual analysis and comparison with other revolutionaries such as Trotsky and Lenin, shows that she was a dedicated Marxist revolutionary whose critiques of capitalism were combined with an unfailing belief that only through constant agitation and rigorous self-education could the masses seize political and economic power following the economic collapse that she believed was inevitable. However, she knew that within a genuinely democratic and socialist society, based on the Marxist principe of self-realisation and expression, a recourse to police-state tactics, of repression, of death-squads and censorship and authoritarianism, would lead to the decay and death of that society. Had she not been so brutally murdered in 1919 by the fascists she had spent her political life fighting, she would have lived to have seen that she was more right than she knew.

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly easy read despite the fact that most of it is advanced commentary on later interpretations of Luxemburg, meaning that I would have gotten more out of it had I read more of her work before this book. Written from a Trotsky-sympathetic perspective, this is also an interesting document of the discussions within British Marxism in the 1970s.

[伞 擎杨 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good work refuting Lukács!