The images of the 8 March 2018 demonstrations in Spain evoked surprise and excitement all over Europe. Thousands of demonstrators—predominantly women and queers of all ages—turned the streets into torrents of purple, occupied universities, held assemblies, and brought public transport to a standstill while singing joyfully. Some five million people took part in a nationwide feminist strike from paid and unpaid work alike. The event was not just the biggest feminist mobilization, but also the biggest strike ever recorded in Europe.
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Rosa Luxemburg is one of the iconic faces of the socialist movement. She is also one of the few women, possibly the only women, whose key role in the movement is unquestioned. She continues to impress us to this day as a brilliant author and clear-sighted theoretician; she was an inspirational speaker, artistic chronicler and passionate comrade. Rosa Luxemburg represents a stance that brings together resolute dedication to political struggle and ‘tender humanity’.
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One of the many iconic images we have of Rosa Luxemburg depicts her at the SPD Party School, where she began to teach in 1907. Luxemburg stands on the left, apart from her there are only very few other women in the picture. Unlike her friend Clara Zetkin, a trained teacher, Rosa Luxemburg had no pedagogical background. Yet, as her texts quickly reveal, it was not only her knowledge and analytical acumen that qualified her for the job: it was her capacity to explain contexts and complex issues. This makes reading Rosa Luxemburg’s texts a delight even today.
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Revolutionary realpolitik I

by Michael Brie

An agonising contradiction drives many people on the Left; they know that a fundamental transformation of our societies is necessary, indeed, indispensable because of a lack of basic justice. The capitalist growth machine is taking us towards an ecological disaster barring billions of people from enjoying a life in dignity, the most life-defining questions are not decided in a democratic way, people are living their lives as illegal immigrants and wars destroy entire societies.
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Rosa Luxemburg continues to provoke irreconcilably controversial reactions even today. Many within the SPD leadership believed she was too radical and democratic. The same can be said of many of those who followed her in the KPD leadership. Ruth Fischer discredited Luxemburg’s understanding of freedom as the freedom of those who think differently as a syphilis bacillus. From the same reasoning, Ernst Thälmann fully agreed with Stalin that Luxemburgism established a bridge to bourgeois ideology and social fascism, and therefore needed to be rooted out (Bierl 1993, 9f).
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The critique of Marx put forward by parts of the environmentalist movement and subsequently the Green Party targeted a central aspect of Marxian theory.[1] Marx’s notion presented in the Foreword to the ‘Critique of Political Economy’, according to which the development of the productive forces is determined by social relations, was interpreted by environmentalists in the sense that Marx simply favoured endless economic growth, a permanent expansion of man’s technological domination of the natural world allowing for the infinite appropriation of natural resources. From this perspective, socialism seemed to imply that the abolishment of capitalist ownership relations would mark only the beginning of unrestricted technological development. The result would be ever-increasing consumption, continuous destruction of the environment, and a depletion of natural resources robbing future generations of the latter. Despite the good intentions on behalf of humankind, the destruction of nature would ultimately bring suffering upon humans as well.
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To what extent does contemporary Nigerian feminism reflect Nigerian women’s realities?

I grew up in 1980s Lagos, in a chaotic but exciting city in a country which I love, but which struggles with a deeply ingrained male supremacist culture. Already as a child, I took notice and issue, that men had all the so-called “head” positions in our society; they were heads of state, heads of companies, heads of the army and heads of families. In school when we learnt about Nigerian history, we did not learn about notable people such as Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Margaret Ekpo, Charlotte Obasa, Oyinkan Abayomi or Queen Amina of Zazzau, or the many notable Nigerian women who played vital roles in shaping our nation.
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In leftist debate, queer identity politics and class politics tend to be dealt with separately. In real life, however, things are more complicated, as queer subjects always belong to social classes too. The precarious are neither all heterosexual, nor can they always be assigned to just one of two binary genders. Even in debates about connective class politics, queer perspectives are generally ignored. One problem in determining new class politics lies in the restrictedness of conceptualisations of (working) class subjects. Politics of representation – with their scope from aesthetic to political representation (Schaffer 2008, 83) – play an important part in this: Representation means depiction (Darstellung), conception (Vorstellung), and standing in for someone or something (Vertretung). These meanings are inextricably intertwined, inconceivable individually.
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Southerners On New Ground (SONG) is a regional Queer Liberation organization made up of people of color, immigrants, undocumented people, people with disabilities, working class and rural and small town, LGBTQ people in the South. We believe that we are bound together by a shared desire for ourselves, each other, and our communities to survive and thrive. We believe that Community Organizing is the best way for us to build collective power and transform the South. Out of this belief we are committed to building freedom movements rooted in southern traditions like community organizing, political education, storytelling, music, breaking bread, resistance, humor, performance, critical thinking, and celebration.
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Alex, you are actively involved with the platform »Keine Mehr« (Not One Less), whose aim is to bring the femicide debate to Germany. Why are you using the term femicide instead of talking about individual murders of women?

Femicide, or feminicide, is the killing of women and girls because of their gender. Every femicide involves the killing of a woman, but not every killing of a woman is a femicide. So it is not simply about differentiating between female and male victims.

Instead, the term is intended to make certain murders of women visible as a form of hate crime and to draw attention to the social context. On the one hand, this means understanding femicide as an extreme expression of unequal gender relations and a male desire to dominate. Numerous studies and reports have shown that the risk for women to be exposed to violence rises particularly when traditional gender arrangements are shifting – especially during and after a separation or divorce.
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