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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