A new, authoritative introduction to Rosa Luxemburg's most important works.

This book sets out to examine Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas, not from the distorted myths about her political ideas, or solely about personal questions such as her love life, but from Luxemburg’s very own writings. It is an attempt to provide an insight into the treasure trove of ideas and revolutionary theory that Luxemburg’s works constitute. The book shows that the real Rosa Luxemburg is often very far from the myths and rumours that surround her: Rosa Luxemburg was, is and remains a revolutionary.

Rosa Luxemburg is unquestionably the most important historical European woman Marxist theorist. Significantly, for the purpose of creolizing the canon, she considered her continent and the globe from an Eastern Europe that was in constant flux and turmoil. From this relatively peripheral location, she was far less parochial than many of her more centrally located interlocutors and peers. Indeed, Luxemburg’s work touched on all the burning issues of her time and ours, from analysis of concrete revolutionary struggles, such as those in Poland and Russia, to showing through her analysis of primitive accumulation that anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles had to be intertwined, to considerations of state sovereignty, democracy, feminism, and racism. She thereby offered reflections that can usefully be taken up and reworked by writers facing continuous and new challenges to undo relations of exploitation through radical economic and social transformation Luxemburg touches on all aspects of what constitutes revolution in her work; the authors of this volume show us that, by creolizing Luxemburg, we can open up new paths of understanding the complexities of revolution.

Rosa Luxemburg war eine der bedeutendsten Intellektuellen des "langen" 19. Jahrhunderts und ihr Wirken in der Politik sowie innerhalb der europäischen Arbeiterbewegung äußerst facettenreich. Sozialismus verstand sie – vor allem zum Unmut der Bolschewiki – als Einheit von politischen und sozialen Freiheiten. Bis heute ist sie deshalb eine Identifikationsfigur, ihre Schriften besitzen eine ungebrochene Aktualität. Luxemburgs vielgestaltiges Leben reichte von der Entstehung des Deutschen Kaiserreiches bis kurz nach dessen Ende (1871–1919) und wird im Jubiläumsjahr 2021 mit einer zweibändigen Ausgabe gewürdigt. Band 1 vermittelt einen Überblick über Biografisches und liefert eine Bestandsaufnahme ihres politischen Wirkens.

Striking the right balance between personal insight and political analysis, this biography traces Rosa Luxemburg's development from a humble Polish girl with a keen interest in herding geese to the most important leader of the German Communist Party.

This book analyses the development of Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) as an outstanding Marxist thinker and socialist politician in the era of imperialism and revolution. Identifying the driving force behind Luxemburg’s development as the deep unity between her passionate, emphatic life and her political and theoretical work, the authors retrace the inner dynamics of its different stages while highlighting the deep rupture caused by the experience of the Russian Revolution. On the basis of new publications of her Polish works and other writings, Luxemburg's strategic approaches are located in an Eastern European context. The authors discuss Luxemburg’s unique analyses of the first experiments in socialist participation in government, of the first Russian revolution and of the forms of accumulation of capital to outline the foundations of her novel understanding of both democratic-socialist revolution and of a society that would point beyond social democracy as well as Bolshevism – a vision that will gain new significance in the twenty first century. This book looks upon the lasting heritage of Rosa Luxemburg as the groundbreaking thinker of the unity between democracy and socialism.

Collection with new contributions to the debate from New Politics concerning the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg. Publishing Stephen Eric Bronner's essay 'Red Dreams and the New Millennium' along with the numerous responses to the piece, a new introduction, and an interview with Bronner stimulates the discussion around Luxemburg's legacy.

Presents an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the major themes, thinkers, and movements in modern European intellectual history.

A classic book on the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg’s work with essays of political analysis by leading scholars he inspirational power of Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) remains as important today as it was in her lifetime. An uncompromising, original thinker and revolutionary activist, Luxemburg’s efforts to develop an emancipatory version of Marxism through her involvement with Polish, Russian and German Social Democratic parties and then the Spartacist League ensured her position as an influential force, yet resulted in her brutal murder during the January 1919 uprising in Berlin. J. P. Nettl’s biography was first published half a century ago and remains the most detailed and comprehensive study of Rosa Luxemburg to date. His extensive knowledge of the social and political context of the European socialist movements in which she was active, and his engagement with her voluminous writings in German, Polish, and Russian (many of which are only now being translated into English), brings to light the multidimensional nature of her life and work. This new edition will enable a new generation to explore Luxemburg’s political and activist work, as well as grasp the unique personality of this remarkable woman, theoretician and revolutionary.

Om Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)