The Complete Works Volume of Rosa Luxemburg: Volume V

Description

This volume is the first to contain all of Luxemburg’s eloquent writings on the 1917 Russian Revolution and 1918-19 German Revolution

This volume is the first to contain all of Luxemburg’s eloquent writings on the 1917 Russian and 1918-19 German Revolutions. It also contains articles, essays and manuscripts on the European socialist movement prior to World War I and her effort to rebuild the socialist movement on revolutionary foundations in its aftermath.

Much of this material appears in English for the first time. Her incisive contributions on revolutionary strategy, the German and Russian Revolutions, and the transition to socialism reveal a profound commitment to radical democracy, which becomes evident as she elaborates on her lived experience with razor-sharp conceptualizations of the mass strike.Her democratic commitment is also highlighted in her deepening conflict with the bureaucratic conservatism afflicting the German Social Democratic Party.

She is horrified yet at the same time grimly analytical while surveying the unfolding violence and brutality of the First World War.Deeply inspired by Russia’s 1917 upsurge, she is nonetheless compelled to analyze and criticize fatal limitations of the Russian Revolution.

Swept up in the revolutionary chaos sweeping through Germany in 1918-1919 which results in her own martyrdom, she gives voice to revolution’s final testament: “I was, I am, I shall be.”Acknowledgments
Editorial Foreword
Introduction: Rosa Luxemburg and the Marxist Tradition
– by Helen C. Scott and Paul Le Blanc
Abbreviations

1910
What Course Now?
Party Congress of the SPD of Germany, September 18–24, 1910, in Magdeburg
The Political Mass Strike and the Trade Unions
The Political Mass Strike and the Unions

1911
Stolypin’s Regime
The Reichstag Debates on the Mass Strike

1913
Lódz
Lódz’s Huge Struggle
On the Political Mass Strike: A Police Report
On Lódz’s Huge Struggle
On the Political Mass Strike [August 1913]
On the Political Mass Strike [August 12, 1913]
Lódz’s Huge Struggle
Jena Party Congress
On the Political Mass Strike [September 19–20, 1913]
Mass Strike and the Taxation Question

1914
Can the Mass Strike be Considered a Means of Defense for the Proletariat in a Changed Political Constellation?
On the Prussian Suffrage Struggle
Once Again the Prussian Suffrage Struggle
The Establishment of a Mass Strike Fund

1915
What’s with Liebknecht?

1916
Liebknecht

1917
The Russian Revolution
The Revolution in Russia
Russian Problems
The Old Mole
Two Easter Messages
Burning Issues of Our Time

1918–19
Historical Responsibility
Fragment Concerning War, the National Question and Revolution
Not Following the Script
Toward the Catastrophe
Handwritten Fragments on the History of the International, German Social Democracy, War, Revolution, and Post-War Perspectives
On the Russian Revolution
The Russian Tragedy
The Little Lafayettes
The Beginning
The Old Game
The National Assembly
A Daring Game
To the Proletarians of All Countries
The Acheron in Motion
Party Congress of the Independent Socialist Party
The “Immature” Mass
The Socialization of Society
Fourteen Dead—One Woman Murdered
On the Executive Council
What Does the Spartacus League Want?
To the Barricades
Extraordinary General Assembly of the German Independent Social Democratic Party of Greater Berlin—On December 15, 1918
National Assembly or Council Government?
Ebert’s Mamelukes
A Pyrrhic Victory
The Election of the National Assembly
The Reich Conference of the Spartacus League
Founding Congress of the Communist Party of Germany
The First Party Congress
What Are Our Leaders Doing?
Neglected Obligations
The Leaders’ Failure
Houses of Cards
Order Prevails in Berlin

Appendix: Once Again, On Organization and Disorganization
A Glossary of Personal Names
Index“A radical of luminous dimension.”
—Vivian Gornick

“Rosa goes on being our source of fresh water in thirsty times.”
—Eduardo Galeano

“Intrepid, incorruptible, passionate and gentle. Imagine as you read between the lines of what she wrote, the expression of her eyes. She loved workers and birds. She danced with a limp. Everything about her fascinates and rings true. One of the immortals.”
—John Berger

“One cannot read the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, even at this distance, without an acute yet mournful awareness of what Perry Anderson once termed ‘the history of possibility.'”
—Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic

“Luxemburg’s criticism of Marxism as dogma and her stress on consciousness exerted an influence on the women’s liberation movement which emerged in the late ’60s and early ’70s.”
—Sheila Rowbotham, GuardianRosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was a Polish-Jewish revolutionary and one of the greatest theoretical minds of the European socialist movement. An activist in Germany and Poland, she authored numerous classic works in economics and politics, and is widely considered a foremost proponent of radical democracy. She was assassinated in January 1919 and has become a heroine of socialist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements around the world.GB

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