Rosa Luxemburg And The Struggle For Democratic Renewal

An examination of the enduring legacy of Rosa Luxemburg and her importance for activists and intellectuals alike.

Originally published in 1940, this is an exhaustive biography of the famous socialist philosopher and revolutionary. The following book represents the first serious attempt to give a full length biography of the most remarkable woman the international socialist movement has ever produced, and at the same time an account of her ideas and an indication of her permanent contribution to socialist thought. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: Youth - The Fate of Poland - In Defence of Marxism - The Problem of Political Power - Full Dress Rehearsal - Rosa Luxemberg In Action - A New Weapon - Capitalism Inevitably Doomed? - The Struggle Against Imperialism - The Consuming Flame - The World War - The Russian Revolution - The German Revolution - The Lamp Lies Shattered

Rosa Luxemburg's theoretical masterpiece This collection is the first of three volumes of the Complete Works devoted to the central theme of Rosa Luxemburg’s life and work—revolution. Spanning the years 1897 to the end of 1905, they contain speeches, articles, and essays on the strikes, protests, and political debates that culminated in the 1905 Russian Revolution—one of the most important social upheavals of modern times. Luxemburg’s near-daily articles and reports during 1905 on the ongoing revolution (which comprises the bulk of this volume) shed new light on such issues as the relation of spontaneity and organization, the role of national minorities in social revolution, and the inseparability ofthe struggle for socialism from revolutionary democracy. We become witness to Luxemburg’s effort to respond to the impulses, challenges, and ideas arising from a living revolutionary process, which in turn becomes the source of much of her subsequent political theory—such as her writings on the mass strike, her strident internationalism, and her insistence that revolutionary struggle never take its eyes off of the need to transform the human personality. Virtually all of these writings appear in English for the first time (translated from both German and Polish) and many have only recently been identified as having been written by Luxemburg.

Part Four of a comprehensive collection of Rosa Luxemburg's writing This 600-page volume of Luxemburg’s Complete Works contains her writings On Revolution from 1906 to 1909—covering the 1905–06 Russian Revolution, an epoch-making event, and its aftermath. Over 80 per cent of writings on this volume have never before appeared in English. The volume contains numerous writings never before available in English, such as her pathbreaking essay “Lessons of the Three Dumas,” which presents a unique perspective on the transition to socialism, her “Notes on the English Revolution” of the 1640s, and numerous writings on of the role of the mass strike in fomenting revolutionary transformation. All of the material in the volume consists of new translations, from German, Polish, and Russian originals.

From her political awakening as a schoolgirl in tsarist-occupied Poland until her murder by thugs 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.

Provocative writings on the question of national self-determination and its relationship with socialism.

This biography, first published half a century ago, remains the most detailed and comprehensive study of Rosa Luxemburg. Nettl's 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 effort to develop an emancipatory version of Marxism liberated from the constraints of both reformism and authoritarianism, as well as grasp the unique personality of this remarkable women theoretician and 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.

Among the major Marxist thinkers of the Russian Revolution era, Rosa Luxemburg stands out as one who speaks to our own time. Her legacy grows in relevance as the global character of the capitalist market becomes more apparent and the critique of bureaucratic power is more widely accepted within the movement for human liberation. The Rosa Luxemburg Reader is the definitive one-volume collection of Luxemburg's writings in English translation. Unlike previous publications of her work from the early 1970s, this volume includes substantial extracts from her major economic writings—above all, The Accumulation of Capital (1913)—and from her political writings, including Reform or Revolution (1898), the Junius Pamphlet (1916), and The Russian Revolution (1918). The Reader also includes a number of important texts that have never before been published in English translation, including substantial extracts from her Introduction to Political Economy (1916), and a recently-discovered piece on slavery. With a substantial introduction assessing Luxemburg's work in the light of recent research, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader is an indispensable resource for scholarship and an inspiration for a new generation of activists.