روزا لوكسمبورغ تتحدث

by Rosa Luxemburg, روزا لوكسمبورغ, عزة حسون (Translator)

From her political awakening as a high school student in tsarist-occupied Poland until her murder in 1919 during the German revolution, Rosa Luxemburg acted and wrote as a proletarian revolutionist. Rosa Luxemburg Speaks takes us inside the political battles between revolution and class collaboration that still shape the modern workers movement.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published December 12, 1970

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

[Thibaud Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first pathfinder press book I read. I decided to read this book as she is a universal figure on the left. My favorite parts of this book are Socialism and Churches, Russian Revolution, and Against Capital Punishment. There is an organization called Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung I looked at. The article I read from this organization is called Seven Reasons not to leave Lenin to our enemies. When I read this article we can't speak of Leon Trotsky, Eugene Debs , Luxemburg, Mother Jones, James Connolly, Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Clara Zetkin, Alexandra Kollontai, Alexander Shlyapnikov and others without Lenin. Socialism and Churches talks about how Communism and Socialism goes back to the time of Jesus. The thing she wrote on capital punishment was wonderful she wanted to see the long prison sentences, death penalty, and other cruel things like putting manacles on prisoners abolished. Things I did not know about her is she had a hip disability that was misdiagnosed as tuberculosis. The quote I love from the Russian Revolution pamphlet she wrote is "Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for one who thinks differently, effectiveness vanishes when it becomes a special privilege". I think of this as we live under two party rule.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Eagles sometimes fly as low as hens, but hens can never fly like eagles, and for us, Rosa Luxemburg was an eagle".---Vladimir Illich Lenin
Red Rosa Luxemburg, a martyr to Marxism in 1919, enjoyed a resurgence of popularity and scrutiny in the late 196os when this vital collection of speeches and pamphlets was issued. New Left students pored over her writings on the spontaneity of revolutionary movements. Hannah Arendt wrote an appreciation of her life and work. Third-world militants appreciated her theory of imperialism, the opposite of Lenin's, highlighting how the imperialist countries needed profits from colonies and ex-colonies to survive; cut off the source, and the empire was doomed. ( Che' Guevara echoed this theme in his last writing, MESSAGE TO THE TRICONTINENTAL, "Create two, three, many Vietnams".) Is there a Rosa for the twenty-first century? in the era of globalization and renewal of proxy wars the answer is an urgent "yes". Start with this anthology, the cry from the heart of a life-long communist who still speaks to us from the grave.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a huge amount of ink spilled on the differences, and alleged differences between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin. But one can't compare Marxist thinkers (or any others) outside of context. Nor can one assume that anyone's political positions are static.

Trotsky also had big differences with Lenin, but these narrowed over time, and from voting with the minority (Mensheviks) in 1903 to February 1917, it becomes harder to distinguish them until they wound up in the same organization. Luxemburg's critique of the Russian Revolution was written when she was in prison, with very little reliable information. As for her earlier critique of Lenin on "organizational questions," I think history has shown that critiques of organization often prove to be a way of hiding political differences.

So much nonsense has been written attacking Lenin's What Is to Be Done? while forgetting that Lenin's view of a model party at the time was the German Social Democracy, and he says so in the text. The Russian party couldn't function in the same way, being forced underground by violent repression, but then the German Social Democrats had also gone through a period when they were unable to function legally. As the editor of this volume, Mary-Alice Waters points out, Luxemburg's major disagreement with Lenin was on the question of nationalities, not organization. And I don't think that anyone today is going to argue that she was right about that. We've already seen what happened when Stalin broke with Lenin on this very issue (see Lenin's Final Fight), and we're seeing a postscript to it in Putin's vicious war against Ukraine.

Luxemburg saw before Lenin the huge rot within the German Social Democratic Party and other socialist parties. In her piece "Socialist Crisis in France," which is excerpted here, she comes out strongly against "Millerandism," which was a precursor of the Stalinist "popular front" policies, which Trotsky continually opposed.

This book will give you a view of Luxemburg's well-known works from Reform or Revolution" to her speech at founding of the of the German Communist Party. You can read more of her late works in the book entitled The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents, 1918-1919; Preparing the Founding Congress.

This is a wonderful introduction to one of the great Marxist thinkers, one of the honored martyrs of the world revolution, who was a woman, and like so many revolutionaries, Jewish.

[Lio Lio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished , What is Economics Part For the Third Or Fourth time .. Simplifying Simplicity itself ! .. I donno How someone can read a pretty long article on economics without getting Bored tired and irritated , but Rosa Luxemburg can take you there .. =)

[Ben Jaques-Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writings of the important German socialist.