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 German
revolutionary leader, journalist, and socialist theorist. 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 revisionist position of Edward Bernstein is considered her
most important legacy to European political thought.
"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)
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 and later 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
favourite 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 continue her studies. She was
forced to flee from Poland partly 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 defence
of Marxism. It opposed Edward Bernstein's reformist position and
criticized Bernstein's revisionist theories in his Evolutionary
Socialism (1898).
A German citizen by marriage Luxemburg become in 1898 a leader
of the left wing of the German Social Democratic Party (SDP) 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 SDP 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, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested in 1919. While
being transported to prison German Freikorps soldiers murdered her
and Liebknecht on the night of 15/16 of January 1919. Luxemburg's
body was thrown into the Landwehr canal and found in May. She was
buried on June 13 in Friedrichsfeld cemetery where Liebknecht and
the other murdered 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 bypass. Lenin saw that she underestimated nationalist ideology,
underrated the role of the Communist party, and emphasized too 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.
Thorough re-evaluation 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);
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 und Leo Jogiches by Maria Seideman (1998);
Die Welt is so schön bei allem Graus by Annelies Laschitza (1998)
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