The essay concerns the highly controversial pamphlet of Rosa Luxemburg The Russian Revolution, in which Luxemburg criticizes Lenin’s post-revolutionary policies, in particular his dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, an elected body. The essay reviews the history of the text’s publication and the intense debate, which continues to this day, over whether or not Luxemburg changed her mind on its central critique. At stake in the argument is not only Luxemburg’s evaluation of Lenin’s actions but also the correct weighting to be (...) given to the two components in the central Marxist–Leninist dialectic of revolution: spontaneity and consciousness. In elaborating this point the essay brings in examples from the writings of Lukács and Stalin, and also discusses the dialectic’s centrality in socialist realism. (shrink)

This article challenges widespread uncritical portrayals of Rosa Luxemburg. By examining the politics and practices of Luxemburg and her SDKPiL party in Poland, I show that their commitment to proletarian emancipation was undermined by sectarian and doctrinaire tendencies that contributed to the defeat of Poland’s workers’ revolutions in 1905 and 1918–19. A critical analysis of their approaches to the national question, the Polish Socialist Party, German Social Democracy, and the role of the revolutionary party, undermines the prevailing romanticisation of Luxemburg. (...) I argue that the Polish Socialist Party, Luxemburg’s main political rival, posed a viable Marxist alternative for Poland’s revolutionary movement. (shrink)

In this paper, I look into personal and political entanglements in Rosa Luxemburg's letters and essays revolving around questions and problems of the revolution. The analysis is informed by Hannah Arendt's theorisation of revolutions in modernity, as well as her reading of narratives within the political. What is intriguing about the Luxemburg/ Arendt encounter is the fact that although both theorists consciously refused to connect themselves with feminist ideas and movements of their times and geographies, their writings have inspired a (...) rich body of feminist theorisations of the political. What I argue is that Luxemburg's ideas and lived experiences of the revolution largely inspired Arendt's theorisation of the revolution as a political phenomenon in the pursuit of freedom, and are opening up new vistas in our understanding of gendered dynamics in historical and contemporary revolutionary events. (shrink)

Este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar a figura de Rosa Luxemburgo como exemplo de ascensão das mulheres ao espaço público tal qual descrito por Hannah Arendt, e refletir sobre os motivos que permitiram seu negligenciamento histórico. Tendo em vista que apesar de ter tido grandes contribuições teóricas e práticas e ter ascendido ao espaço público, ainda assim Rosa Luxemburgo fora negligenciada, estereotipada por meio da figura ora sanguinária, ora romantizada, e por esses motivos Arendt acredita que a política alemã não (...) obteve o reconhecimento devido que mereceria nem em vida e nem em morte. Para tanto, utilizaremos a distinção entre espaço público e espaço privado de Arendt, presente na obra _A condição humana,_ bem como seu ensaio intitulado “Rosa Luxemburgo: 1871-1919”, presente na obra _Homens em tempos sombrios_ _ _e a obra _Rosa Luxemburgo ou o Preço da Liberdade_ de Jörn Schütrumpf_. _Por fim, corroboramos com Hannah Arendt e trazemos também Jörn Schütrumpf para reafirmar que apesar de ter ocorrido uma pequena mudança em sua reputação, e algumas pessoas até saberem o nome de Rosa Luxemburgo, diante de sua grande contribuição teórica e prática seu reconhecimento acadêmico e político ainda é insuficiente, e acreditamos ainda ser possível um reconhecimento ainda que tardio da importância da figura de Rosa Luxemburgo para o pensamento teórico/filosófico político contemporâneo. (shrink)

The ongoing project to issue the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, which will make all of her writings available in English translation, provides a critical lens to re-evaluate aspects of Luxemburg’s theoretical contribution that has often been passed over in much of the secondary literature on her. Of foremost importance in this regard is the distinctive contribution that she made to the understanding of how to achieve a transition to socialism in a developing society that remains surrounded by the capitalist (...) world market and imperialist powers. This paper aims to show that her reflections during and after the 1905 Revolution, especially as reflected in a series of rarely studied articles and essays in the Polish revolutionary press, provides an important corrective to how the transition to socialism was understood by other Marxist currents. (shrink)

Much writing on scientific biography focuses on the legitimacy and utility of this genre. In contrast, this essay discusses a variety of genre conventions and imperatives which continue to exert a powerful influence on the selection of biographical subjects, and to control the plot and structure of the ensuing biographies. These imperatives include the following: the plot templates of the Bildungsroman (the realistic novel of individual self-development), the life trajectories of Weberian ideal types, and the functional elements and personae of (...) the folkloric tale of the "hero's quest." The essay discusses the nature and application of these genre conventions in some detail, with the conclusion that biography, however useful, exerts a powerfully distorting influence on the image of how most science gets done. (shrink)

During its first four congresses, held annually under Lenin, the Communist International went through two distinct phases: while the first two congresses focused on programmatic and organisational aspects of the break with Social-Democratic parties, the third congress, meeting after the putsch known as the ‘March Action’ of 1921 in Germany, adopted the slogan ‘To the masses!’, while the fourth codified this new line in the ‘Theses on the Unity of the Proletarian Front’. The arguments put forward by the first two (...) congresses were originally drafted by leaders of the Russian Communist Party, but the initiative for the adoption of the united-front policy came from the German Communist Party under the leadership of Paul Levi. This article explores the historical circumstances that turned the German Communists into the pioneers of the united-front tactic. In the documentary appendix we add English versions of two documents drafted by Levi: the ‘Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany’ on the Kapp Putsch, dated 16 March 1920, and thekpd’s ‘Open Letter’ of 8 January 1921, which gave rise to the united-front tactic. (shrink)