The National Question: Selected Writings

by Rosa Luxemburg, Horace B. Davis (Editor, Introduction)

"No person was better equipped to debate the basic issues of Marxism with Lenin than the brilliant Polish–German intellectual Rosa Luxemburg. And yet a comparison of her ideas with Lenin's has been difficult for English-speaking readers because of the lack of adequate translations. This book remedies this problem."
—Library Journal

"Among those [articles] that were not until now available in English were those for which she was most famous, namely, her very influential, and controversial, articles on the national question which she published in Polish in 1908-09 and which expounded ideas that Lenin violently opposed at the time, yet which were to a large extent to be adopted by the Bolsheviks as their own in 1919. The editor . . . presents us here with a readable, accurate, and annotated translation of these articles and of a few others translated from the German. He also supplies us with a knowledgeable introduction in which he puts the issue of nationalism vs. socialism in a historical as well as contemporary context."
—Choice

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

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Rosa Luxemburg (Rosalia Luxemburg, Polish: Róża Luksemburg) was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen. She was successively a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Social Democratic Party of Germany(SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Germany.

In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she co-founded, with Karl Liebknecht, the anti-war Spartakusbund (Spartacist League). On 1 January 1919 the Spartacist League became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In November 1918, during the German Revolution she founded the Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement.

She regarded the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 in Berlin as a blunder, but supported it after Liebknecht ordered it without her knowledge. When the revolt was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps (WWI veterans defending the Weimar Republic), Luxemburg, Liebknecht and some of their supporters were captured and murdered. Luxemburg was drowned in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. After their deaths, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht became martyrs for Marxists. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht continues to play an important role among the German far-left.

Reviews

[sara]

muy interesante… flipo con el análisis histórico que tiene y la facilidad con la que lo transmite

[Ruya Hazeyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disagree with Ms. Luxemburg’s takes on self determination

[Roger Cottrell]

When I wrote my symapthetic 5 part TV documentary on Northern Ireland Loyalism this was my point of departure. Luxembourg KNEW that the Polish Left (and particularly the Jews) would be worse off in an independent Poland and was proved right. This may seem a controversial position in the light of what happened to Poland under first the Nazis and then Stalinism but Luxembourg was murdered in 1919 and didn't know this. She didn't see Stalinism's wilful collusion in the Nazi butchery of the Warsaw Commune of 1944, the facile apology for this in THE NEW STATESMAN and even Isaac Deutscher's writings, Gireck's attempts to buy off the Polish working class and what happened to it, the rise of Solidarity as a legitimate political union nor its sorry degeneration (post Jaruljelski's coup) into a bourgeois restorationist party. But she'd have recognised Walenca's mix of nationalism, Catholic fundamentalism and anti-semitism for what it was and understood exactly why the former Communist Party in Poland now gets more vites than at any time since 1944

[Aivaras Žukauskas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Controversial even from today's standpoint, but not without its points.

[Jack]

I'm not qualified to give my opinion on much said since I lack the knowledge on the subject so I shall not be rating this text, but nevertheless it was interesting and I enjoyed it.

[Leonardo]

Los ensayos relevantes de Rosa Luxemburgo está recolectados en Rosa Luxemburg, The National Question, ed. Horace Davis (New york: Monthly Review Press, 1976).

Imperio Pág.77

[Bandar · Rating 4 out of 5]

rich and deep. incredible detail and vision for humanity. RIP