This is an accepted version of this page
154-551: Clara Zetkin ( / ˈ z ɛ t k ɪ n / ; German: [ˈtsɛtkiːn] ; née Eißner [ˈaɪsnɐ] ; 5 July 1857 – 20 June 1933) was a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights . Until 1917, she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany . She then joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and its far-left wing,
308-617: A constituent assembly to determine Germany's future form of government. Only a small minority of the councils supported a soviet-style system. Luxemburg was freed from prison in Breslau on 8 November 1918, three days before the armistice of 11 November 1918 . One day later, Karl Liebknecht, who had also been freed from prison, proclaimed the Free Socialist Republic ( Freie Sozialistische Republik ) in Berlin. He and Luxemburg reorganised
462-514: A socialist revolution in contemporary society is inevitable. While the inevitability of an eventual socialist revolution is a controversial debate among many different Marxist schools of thought , all Marxists believe socialism is a necessity. Marxists argue that a socialist society is far better for most of the populace than its capitalist counterpart. Prior to the Russian Revolution , Vladimir Lenin wrote: "The socialisation of production
616-427: A Marxist perspective. Other developments include: The latest field of research examines and develops Marxist pedagogy in the postdigital era. Rosa Luxemburg This is an accepted version of this page Rosa Luxemburg ( Polish : Róża Luksemburg , [ˈruʐa ˈluksɛmburk] ; German: [ˈʁoːza ˈlʊksm̩bʊʁk] ; born Rozalia Luksenburg ; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919)
770-519: A Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat; therefore, capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution . In a socialist society, private property —as the means of production—would be replaced by cooperative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use . Friedrich Engels explained that "the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which
924-475: A backlash against Marxist thought in post-communist states, such as Poland . However, it remains prominent in the sociological research sanctioned and supported by communist states, such as in China . Marxian economics is a school of economic thought tracing its foundations to the critique of classical political economy first expounded upon by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxian economics concerns itself with
1078-699: A blunder, but supported the attempted overthrow of the SPD-ruled Weimar Republic and rejected any attempt at a negotiated solution. Friedrich Ebert 's SPD Cabinet crushed the revolt and the Spartakusbund by sending in the Freikorps , government-sponsored paramilitary groups consisting mostly of battle-hardened World War I veterans of the Imperial German Army . Freikorps troops captured, tortured and executed Luxemburg and Liebknecht during
1232-526: A certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution ." These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at
1386-400: A co-founder of the radical Spartacus League , Luxemburg helped to shape Germany's young democracy by advancing an international, rather than a nationalist, outlook. This farsightedness partly explains her remarkable popularity as a socialist icon and its continued resonance in movies, novels and memorials dedicated to her life and oeuvre". Gammel also notes that for Luxemburg "the revolution was
1540-542: A concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe. According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary socialist Vladimir Lenin, "the principal content of Marxism" was "Marx's economic doctrine." Marx demonstrated how the capitalist bourgeoisie and their economists were promoting what he saw as the lie that "the interests of the capitalist and of the worker are ... one and the same." He believed that they did this by purporting
1694-495: A devoted Marxist, with whom she had two sons, Maxim and Konstantin (known as Kostja). Ossip Zetkin became severely ill in early 1889 and died in June of that year. After the loss of her lover, Zetkin moved to Stuttgart with her children. She was married to artist Georg Friedrich Zundel , who was eighteen years her junior, from 1899 to 1928. Her political career began after being introduced to Ossip Zetkin, whom she later married. Within
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#17328951951921848-631: A few months of attending and taking part in socialist meetings, Zetkin became entirely committed to the party, which offered a Marxist approach to the demand for women's liberation. Around the time of 1880, due to the political climate in Germany, Zetkin went into exile in Switzerland and later in France. Upon her return to Germany, nearly a decade later, she became the editor of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 's newspaper for women, Die Gleichheit (Equality),
2002-601: A general move towards socialism; otherwise, they could easily be eradicated by future legislation. She interviewed Vladimir Lenin on "The Women's Question" in 1920. During the period of the First World War , at the international women's peace conference in Switzerland, activists, revolutionaries, and supporters gathered to confront the concern for unity among workers across the battle lines. There, Zetkin spoke: Zetkin, along with Karl Liebknecht , Rosa Luxemburg , Luise Kähler and other influential SPD politicians, rejected
2156-805: A general strike to rouse the workers to solidarity and prevent the coming war. However, the SPD leaders refused and she broke with Kautsky in 1910. Between 1904 and 1906, she was imprisoned for her political activities on three occasions in Barnimstrasse women's prison . In 1907, she went to the Russian Social Democrats ' Fifth Party Day in London , where she met Lenin. At the socialist Second International Congress in Stuttgart , her resolution demanding that all European workers' parties should unite in attempting to stop
2310-599: A half years. During imprisonment, Luxemburg was twice relocated, first to Posen (now Poznań), then to Breslau (now Wrocław ). Luxemburg continued to write and friends secretly smuggled out and illegally published her articles. Among them was Die Russische Revolution , criticising the Bolsheviks and accusing them of seeking to impose a totalitarian single party state upon the Soviet Union. In that context, she wrote her famous pronouncement on freedom of expression "Freedom
2464-720: A joint congress of the League, independent socialists and the International Communists of Germany (IKD) took place with Radek's involvement. During the conference, Luxemburg continued to denounce the Red Terror and censorship in the Soviet Russia . She also accused both Lenin and the Bolsheviks of having police state aspirations. She further expressed shame that her former colleague and friend, Felix Dzerzhinsky , had agreed to head
2618-413: A labourer—is synonymous with surplus labour, and capitalist exploitation is thus realised as deriving surplus value from the worker. In pre-capitalist economies , exploitation of the worker was achieved via physical coercion . Under the capitalist mode of production, workers do not own the means of production and must "voluntarily" enter into an exploitative work relationship with a capitalist to earn
2772-509: A large meeting: "If they think we are going to lift the weapons of murder against our French and other brethren, then we shall shout: 'We will not do it! ' " However, when nationalist crises in the Balkans erupted into violence and then the war in 1914, there was no general strike and the SPD majority supported the war as did the French Socialists . The Reichstag unanimously agreed to finance
2926-496: A materialist theory of history, Marx did not claim to have produced a master key to history and that the materialist conception of history is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche générale , imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself." In a letter to the editor of the Russian newspaper paper Otechestvennyje Zapiski (1877), he explained that his ideas were based upon
3080-659: A new wave of paramilitary warfare in Berlin and across Germany. Thousands of members of the KPD as well as other revolutionaries and civilians were killed, often as collateral damage . Finally, the People's Navy Division ( Volksmarinedivision ) and workers' and soldiers' unions, which had moved to the political far left , were disbanded. The last part of the German Revolution saw many instances of armed violence and strike action throughout Germany. Significant strikes occurred in Berlin,
3234-607: A political activist , socialist theorist and writer". Her reputation was tarnished by Joseph Stalin 's cynicism in Questions Concerning the History of Bolshevism . In his rewriting of Russian events, he placed the blame for the theory of permanent revolution on Luxemburg's shoulders, with faint praise for her attacks on Karl Kautsky which she commenced in 1910. According to Gammel, "In her controversial tome of 1913, The Accumulation of Capital , as well as through her work as
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#17328951951923388-610: A political necessity, making various negative comments about German culture during the German Empire in her private correspondence that was written in Polish; at the same time, she loved the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and showed an appreciation for German literature . However, she also preferred Switzerland to Berlin and greatly missed Polish language and culture . When Luxemburg moved to Germany in May 1898, she settled in Berlin. She
3542-415: A position to perform this task, its performance is not only a duty toward the proletariat, but its solution offers the only means of saving human society from destruction. Like Liebknecht, Luxemburg supported the violent putsch attempt. In a complete reversal of her previous demands for "unrestricted freedom of the press ", The Red Flag called for the KPD to violently occupy the editorial offices of
3696-610: A post that she occupied for 25 years. Having studied to become a teacher, Zetkin developed connections with the women's movement and the labour movement in Germany from 1874. In 1878 she joined the Socialist Workers' Party ( Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei , SAP). This party had been founded in 1875 by merging two previous parties: the ADAV formed by Ferdinand Lassalle and the SDAP of August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht . In 1890, its name
3850-403: A post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death." According to orthodox Marxist theory, overthrowing capitalism by
4004-576: A school of thought, Marxism has had a profound effect on society and global academia. To date, it has influenced many fields, including anthropology , archaeology , art theory , criminology , cultural studies , economics , education , ethics , film theory , geography , historiography , literary criticism , media studies , philosophy , political science , political economy , psychoanalysis , science studies , sociology , urban planning , and theatre . Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analysing
4158-521: A temporary release on bail was secured for her on 28 June 1906 for health reasons until the court trial; in early August from Saint Petersburg , she left for Kuokkala , which was then part of the Grand Duchy of Finland (an autonomous part of the Russian Empire). From there, in the middle of September, she managed to secretly flee to Germany. Luxemburg wanted to move to Germany to be at the centre of
4312-507: A way of life" and yet that the letters also challenge the stereotype of "Red Rosa" as a ruthless fighter. However, The Accumulation of Capital sparked angry accusations from the Communist Party of Germany . In 1923, Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow denounced the work as "errors", a derivative work of economic miscalculation known as "spontaneity". Luxemburg continued to identify as Polish and disliked living in Germany, which she saw as
4466-577: A wealthy businessman with transnational connections who could afford to provide for his children an education abroad in the German Empire . He supported the Jewish Reform movement , becoming a prominent member of the Zamość Maskilim . He was committed to Jewish emancipation , spoke Polish and Yiddish , and ensured that his children spoke these languages too; it is unclear whether he took part in
4620-685: A word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." Marx considered recurring class conflicts as the driving force of human history as such conflicts have manifested as distinct transitional stages of development in Western Europe . Accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production: While historical materialism has been referred to as
4774-408: Is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces." Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society (i.e. the ruling social ideas)
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4928-453: Is a study of educational reform in the U.S. and its relationship to the reproduction of capitalism and the possibilities of utilising its contradictions in the revolutionary movement. The work of Peter McLaren , especially since the turn of the 21st century, has further developed Marxist educational theory by developing revolutionary critical pedagogy, as has the work of Glenn Rikowski, Dave Hill, and Paula Allman. Other Marxists have analysed
5082-626: Is always the freedom of dissenters" ( "Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der Andersdenkenden" ) in criticizing Lenin and the Russian Revolution. She added: "The public life of countries with limited freedom is so poverty-stricken, so miserable, so rigid, so unfruitful, precisely because, through the exclusion of democracy, it cuts off the living sources of all spiritual riches and progress". Another article written in April 1915 when in prison and published and distributed illegally in June 1916 originally under
5236-401: Is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the property of society. ... This conversion will directly result in an immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour." The failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution , along with
5390-403: Is certain and that is that I am not a Marxist." The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or rather, the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of social phenomenon, removed two chief defects of earlier historical theories. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological motives of the historical activity of human beings, without grasping
5544-402: Is determined by the best interests of the ruling class. In The German Ideology , Marx says that "[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force." The term political economy initially referred to the study of the material conditions of economic production in
5698-449: Is divided between the rich and the poor, and that some people subjugate and exploit other people, you're lost in a forest, not knowing anything. — Cuban revolutionary and Marxist–Leninist politician Fidel Castro on discovering Marxism, 2009 This new way of thinking was invented because socialists believed that common ownership of the means of production (i.e. the industries , land, wealth of nature, trade apparatus and wealth of
5852-448: Is introduced. Because the surplus produced by the workers is the property of the society as a whole, there are no classes of producers and appropriators. Additionally, as the state originates in the bands of retainers hired by the first ruling classes to protect their economic privilege, it will wither away as its conditions of existence have disappeared. According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx , "Marx used many terms to refer to
6006-470: Is necessary to understand his later works properly. Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and interpretations of Marx rooted in the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser , Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenment humanism . Whereas other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as natural science , Marxist humanism reaffirms
6160-465: Is not prerequisite. In addition to criticism, Marx has also praised some of the results of capitalism stating that it "has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together" and that it "has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal arrangements." Marx posited that the remaining feudalist societies in the world and forms of socialism that did not conform with his writings would be replaced by communism in
6314-502: Is often critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats . Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France ; emphasising the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its destiny without the need for a vanguard party to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism , libertarian Marxism
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6468-761: Is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism . Libertarian Marxism includes currents such as autonomism , council communism , De Leonism , Lettrism , parts of the New Left , Situationism , Freudo-Marxism (a form of psychoanalysis ), Socialisme ou Barbarie and workerism . Libertarian Marxism has often strongly influenced both post-left and social anarchists . Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Maurice Brinton , Cornelius Castoriadis , Guy Debord , Raya Dunayevskaya , Daniel Guérin , C. L. R. James , Rosa Luxemburg , Antonio Negri , Anton Pannekoek , Fredy Perlman , Ernesto Screpanti , E. P. Thompson , Raoul Vaneigem , and Yanis Varoufakis ,
6622-412: Is the pride and strength of international socialism. That is why future victories will spring from this "defeat". "Order prevails in Berlin!" You foolish lackeys! Your "order" is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will "rise up again, clashing its weapons," and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be! The executions of Luxemburg and Liebknecht were the beginning of
6776-916: The Freikorps to suppress the Soviet-backed attempt at revolution, which was successfully crushed by 11 January 1919. Meanwhile, Luxemburg's Red Flag falsely claimed that the rebellion was spreading across Germany. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were taken prisoner in Berlin on 15 January 1919 by the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division of the Freikorps ( Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision ). The unit's officer commanding , Captain Waldemar Pabst , with Lieutenant Horst von Pflugk-Harttung , questioned them under torture and then, following an alleged telephone call to Defense Minister Gustav Noske , issued orders to summarily execute both prisoners. Luxemburg
6930-815: The Bremen Soviet Republic , Saxony , Saxe-Gotha , Hamburg, the Rhinelands and the Ruhr region. Last to strike was the Bavarian Soviet Republic which was suppressed on 2 May 1919. More than four months after the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, on 1 June 1919, Luxemburg's corpse was found and identified after an autopsy at the Charité hospital in Berlin. According to Russian historian Edvard Radzinsky, Soviet Premier Lenin retaliated for Liebknecht and Luxemburg's murder by issuing orders to Gregory Zinoviev for
7084-679: The Cheka , the then Soviet security agency, and asked Radek to convey her opinions about all these matters to the Politburo in Moscow. This same conference, however, ultimately led to the foundation on 1 January 1919 of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. Luxemburg supported the new KPD's participation in the Weimar National Assembly that founded
7238-591: The Communist Party of Germany (KPD). After the SPD supported German involvement in World War I in 1915, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League which eventually became the KPD. During the November Revolution , she co-founded the newspaper Die Rote Fahne ( The Red Flag ), the central organ of the Spartacist movement. Luxemburg considered the Spartacist uprising of January 1919
7392-866: The Grand Duke George Mikhailovich , the Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich , and the Grand Duke Dmitri Constantinovich . Private Runge was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for attempted manslaughter and Lieutenant Vogel to two years and four months for failing to report a corpse. However, Vogel escaped after a brief period in custody, with the help of Wilhelm Canaris . Captain Pabst and Lieutenant Souchon were never prosecuted. The Nazis later compensated Private Runge for having been jailed, but he died in Berlin in NKVD custody after
7546-652: The Kremlin Wall Necropolis , by the Moscow Kremlin Wall , near the Red Square . The funeral was attended by leading communists from all over Europe, including Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Krupskaya (Lenin's widow). After 1949, Zetkin became a much-celebrated heroine in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and every major city had a street named after her. Her name can still be found on
7700-636: The Middle Ages . Her doctoral dissertation "The Industrial Development of Poland " ( Die Industrielle Entwicklung Polens ) was officially presented in the spring of 1897 at the University of Zurich which awarded her a Doctor of Law degree. Her dissertation was published by Duncker and Humblot in Leipzig in 1898. An oddity in Zurich, she was one of the first women in the world with a doctorate in political economy and
7854-604: The November Uprising (1830–31) or not. Abraham's son Edward was Róża's father. He was born in Zamość on 17 December 1830, the eldest of ten siblings and heir to his father's timber business. Edward Eliasz Luxenburg lost his mother at the age of 18. He met his wife Lina Löwenstein through his stepmother Amalia, who was Lina's older sister. Lina and Amalia were daughters of the Rabbi of Meseritz , Isaak Ozer Löwenstein, and their brother
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#17328951951928008-508: The Petrograd Soviet on 18 January 1919, supporting her assessment of Bolshevism. Lenin posthumously praised Luxemburg as an "eagle" of the working class, and stated that her work would serve as an example to other socialist revolutionaries. Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky also publicly mourned Luxemburg's and Liebknecht's death. In later years, Trotsky frequently defended Luxemburg, claiming that Joseph Stalin had vilified her. In
8162-505: The Russian sector of Poland , after the country was partitioned by Prussia , Russia and Austria almost a century earlier. She was the fifth and youngest child of Edward Eliasz Luxemburg and Lina Löwenstein. Her father Edward, like his father Abraham, supported the Jewish Reform movement. Luxemburg later stated that her father imparted an interest in liberal ideas to her while her mother
8316-690: The Spartacist League , which later became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). She represented that party in the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic from 1920 to 1933. In July 1857, Clara Josephine Eißner (Eissner) was born the eldest of three children in Wiederau [ de ] , a peasant village in Saxony that is now part of the municipality of Königshain-Wiederau . Her father, Gottfried Eissner,
8470-579: The Tiergarten . His body, without any identification, was then dumped outside the railings of the Berlin Zoo . According to historian Robert Service : The symbolism was intentional. The enemies of the Spartacists looked on them as being less than human. Dogs were being given a dog's death. The Spartacists leaders met their ends with courage and dignity. Of their leaders, only Thalheimer and Levi survived, and it
8624-459: The proletariat assumed power and effected revolutionary changes in methods of production . She wanted the revisionists ousted from the SPD. That did not occur, but Kautsky's leadership retained a Marxist influence on its programme. From 1900, Luxemburg published analyses of contemporary European socio-economic problems in newspapers. Foreseeing war, she vigorously attacked what she saw as German militarism and imperialism . Luxemburg wanted
8778-464: The "sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society" and forms a society's economic base. The base includes the material forces of production such as the labour , means of production and relations of production , i.e. the social and political arrangements that regulate production and distribution. From this base rises a superstructure of legal and political "forms of social consciousness " that derive from
8932-481: The 1940s, the Western Marxist school became accepted within Western academia, subsequently fracturing into several different perspectives, such as the Frankfurt School or critical theory . The legacy of Critical Theory as a major offshoot of Marxism is controversial. The common thread linking Marxism and Critical theory is an interest in struggles to dismantle structures of oppression, exclusion, and domination. Due to its former state-supported position, there has been
9086-415: The Berlin leadership on the other is the mark of this latest episode. The leadership failed. But a new leadership can and must be created by the masses and from the masses. The masses are the crucial factor. They are the rock on which the ultimate victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were up to the challenge, and out of this "defeat" they have forged a link in the chain of historic defeats, which
9240-422: The Constitution (BVS) asserts that idolisation of Luxemburg and Liebknecht is an important tradition of the 21st-century German far-left. Despite her own Polish nationality and strong ties to Polish culture, opposition from the Polish Socialist Party due to her stance against the 1918 independence of the Second Polish Republic and later criticism from Stalinists have made her a controversial historical figure in
9394-432: The German revolutionaries. A little while ago the Germans had been assisting revolution in Russia. Now Lenin was reciprocating. The Bolshevik embassy became the headquarters of the German revolution." In November 1918, the USPD and the SPD initially shared power in the Council of the People's Deputies , the revolutionary government set up following the 9 November abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II . This took place during
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#17328951951929548-432: The Industrial Revolution which undermines the democratic agency of citizens. Marxists differ in their positions towards democracy. Types of democracy in Marxism include Soviet democracy , New Democracy , Whole-process people's democracy and can include voting on how surplus labour is to be organised. According to democratic centralism political decisions reached by voting in the party are binding for all members of
9702-500: The Luxemburg family and her early years show that "Rosa Luxemburg gained a lot more from her family than has previously been understood by her biographers. Not only in terms of her education, financial support and assistance during her frequent incarcerations, but also in terms of her identity and politics. Her family was a closely knitted support network, even when its members were spread out across Europe. This solid foundation, which supported and encouraged her at every step, gave Luxemburg
9856-410: The Parliament or Courts of Germany. In 1993, Gietinger's research on his access to the previously restricted papers of Pabst, held at the Federal Military Archives, found him as central to the planning of the murder of Luxemburg and the shielding of those who had acted under his orders from subsequent criminal prosecution. Shortly after Luxemburg's death, her fame was alluded to by Grigory Zinoviev at
10010-455: The Polish classic Pan Tadeusz . Rory Castle writes: "From her grandfather and father [Rosa] inherited the belief that she was a Pole first and a Jew second, her passionate opposition to Tsarism and her emotional connection to Polish language and culture. Although her parents were religious, they did not consider themselves to be Jewish by nationality, rather 'Poles of the Mosaic persuasion ' ". He also points out that more recent research into
10164-420: The Russification of Poles by the Russian Empire's absolutist government. After the 1905 revolution broke out, against the advice of her Polish and German comrades, Luxemburg left for Warsaw. If she were to be recognised, tsarist authorities would imprison her, but the October/November political strike, part of the upheaval in Russia with particularly active elements in Congress Poland, convinced Róża that she
10318-434: The Second International Conference of Communist Women, which was held in Moscow and was chaired by her, changed the date of the International Women's Day to 8 March. That has remained the date of the IWD. In summer 1922, Zetkin was part of the prosecution team during the Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries in Moscow, but at other times, she was critical of Moscow's influence over the German Communist Party within which she
10472-405: The Spartacus League and founded The Red Flag ( Die Rote Fahne ) newspaper, demanding amnesty for all political prisoners and the abolition of capital punishment in the essay Against Capital Punishment . On 14 December 1918, they published the new programme of the Spartacus League. Following the arrival of Soviet emissary and military advisor Karl Radek , between 29 and 31 December 1918
10626-509: The Weimar Republic, but she was out-voted and the KPD boycotted the elections. Leading up to the January 1919 struggle for power with the SPD, the improvised Spartacist Uprising began in Berlin. Luxemburg spoke at the founding conference of the German Communist Party on 31 December 1918: The progress of large-scale capitalist development during seventy years has brought us so far that today we can seriously set about destroying capitalism once and for all. No, still more; today we are not only in
10780-452: The administration of General Secretary Joseph Stalin , a great emphasis was placed on the adoption of Marxist archaeology throughout the country. These theoretical developments were subsequently adopted by archaeologists working in capitalist states outside of the Leninist bloc, most notably by the Australian academic V. Gordon Childe , who used Marxist theory in his understandings of the development of human society. Marxist sociology, as
10934-459: The analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems , the nature and origin of economic value , the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution . Although the Marxian school is considered heterodox , ideas that have come out of Marxian economics have contributed to mainstream understanding of
11088-509: The anti-Spartacist press and later, all other positions of power. On 8 January, Luxemburg's Red Flag printed a public statement by her, in which she called for revolutionary violence and no negotiations with the revolution's "mortal enemies", the SPD-led Republican Government of Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann . In response to the uprising, Luxemburg's former student, German Chancellor and SPD leader Ebert ordered
11242-442: The article "Hands Off Rosa Luxemburg!", Trotsky criticised Stalin for this despite what Trotsky perceived as Luxemburg's theoretical errors, writing: "Yes, Stalin has sufficient cause to hate Rosa Luxemburg. But all the more imperious therefore becomes our duty to shield Rosa's memory from Stalin's calumny that has been caught by the hired functionaries of both hemispheres, and to pass on this truly beautiful, heroic, and tragic image to
11396-414: The awareness—of itself and the social world—that a social class possesses and its capacity to act rationally in its best interests. Class consciousness is required before a social class can effect a successful revolution and, thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat . Without defining ideology , Marx used the term to describe the production of images of social reality. According to Engels, "ideology
11550-643: The ban placed on socialist activity in Germany by Otto von Bismarck in 1878, Zetkin left for Zürich in 1882 and then went into exile in Paris , where she studied to be a journalist and a translator. During her time in Paris, she played an important role in the foundation of the Socialist International group. She also adopted the name of her lover, the Russian-Jewish Ossip Zetkin [ de ] ,
11704-417: The capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy is the study of the means of production, specifically of capital and how that manifests as economic activity. Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blindfolded man in a forest, who doesn't even know where north or south is. If you don't eventually come to truly understand the history of the class struggle, or at least have a clear idea that society
11858-583: The central cemetery Friedrichsfelde , also known as the Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten (Socialist Memorial). In East Germany , the event was widely considered to be a mere show for Socialist Unity Party of Germany politicians and celebrities, which was broadcast live on state television. During the Peaceful Revolution , the annual parade in East Berlin honoring the deaths of Liebknecht and Luxemburg
12012-415: The complex dynamics of modern society." Influenced by the thought of Karl Marx , Marxist sociology emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim are considered seminal influences in early sociology . The first Marxist school of sociology was known as Austro-Marxism , of which Carl Grünberg and Antonio Labriola were among its most notable members. During
12166-399: The concept that "the fastest possible growth of productive capital " was best for wealthy capitalists and workers because it provided them with employment. Exploitation is a matter of surplus labour —the amount of labour performed beyond what is received in goods. Exploitation has been a socioeconomic feature of every class society and is one of the principal features distinguishing
12320-493: The doctrine that "man is the measure of all things"—that humans are essentially different to the rest of the natural order and should be treated so by Marxist theory. According to a 2007 survey of American professors by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, 17.6% of social science professors and 5.0% of humanities professors identify as Marxists, while between 0 and 2% of professors in all other disciplines identify as Marxists. The theoretical development of Marxist archaeology
12474-581: The early days of the German Revolution that began with the Kiel mutiny , which sparked the establishment of workers' and soldiers' councils across most of Germany to put an end to World War I and to the monarchy . The SPD leaders tried to prevent the establishment of a Räterepublik (council republic) like the soviets of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 by pushing for early elections to
12628-425: The economic base that conditions both the superstructure and the dominant ideology of a society. Conflicts between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production provoke social revolutions , whereby changes to the economic base lead to the superstructure's social transformation . This relationship is reflexive in that the base initially gives rise to the superstructure and remains
12782-526: The end of World War II . The Nazis also later merged the Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision into the SA . In an interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel in 1962 and again in his memoirs, Captain Pabst alleged that Defence Minister Noske and Weimar Republic Chancellor Ebert had both covertly approved of his actions, but his account has not been confirmed, nor has his case been examined by
12936-408: The end of class society, which Marx saw as the fundamental division of all hitherto existing history. Marx saw the fundamental nature of capitalist society as little different from that of a slave society in that one small group of society exploits the larger group. Through common ownership of the means of production, the profit motive is eliminated, and the motive of furthering human flourishing
13090-525: The enslaved and exploited, the force and power of their organization as well as to maintain their own physical existence. Before this compelling historical necessity, all inhibiting and dividing political, trade union, religious and ideological opinions must take a back seat. All those who feel themselves threatened, all those who suffer and all those who long for liberation must belong to the United Front against fascism and its representatives in government. She
13244-405: The failure of socialist movements to resist the outbreak of World War I , led to renewed theoretical effort and valuable contributions from Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg towards an appreciation of Marx's crisis theory and efforts to formulate a theory of imperialism . Karl Marx criticised liberal democracy as not democratic enough due to the unequal socio-economic situation of the workers during
13398-573: The fall of the uprising he became a target of the tsarist police and was forced into hiding in Warsaw, leaving his family behind in Zamość. During the 1860s and 1870s, Edward moved frequently and experienced financial difficulties; eventually the rest of the family, including two-year-old Rosa, joined him in Warsaw in 1873. Róża Luksemburg, actual birth name Rozalia Luksenburg, was born on 5 March 1871 at 45 Ogrodowa Street (now 7a Kościuszko Street) in Zamość. The Luxemburg family were Polish Jews living in
13552-496: The first Polish woman to achieve this. In 1893, with Leo Jogiches and Julian Marchlewski (alias Julius Karski), Luxemburg founded the newspaper Sprawa Robotnicza ( The Workers' Cause ) which opposed the nationalist policies of the Polish Socialist Party . Luxemburg believed that an independent Poland could arise and exist only through socialist revolutions in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. She maintained that
13706-491: The forms and pedagogical processes of capitalist and communist education, such as Tyson E. Lewis, Noah De Lissovoy, Gregory Bourassa, and Derek R. Ford. Curry Malott has developed a Marxist history of education in the U.S., and Marvin Gettleman examined the history of communist education. Sandy Grande has synthesised Marxist educational theory with Indigenous pedagogy, while others like John Holt analyse adult education from
13860-482: The foundation of a form of social organisation . Those newly formed social organisations can then act again upon both parts of the base and superstructure so that rather than being static, the relationship is dialectic , expressed and driven by conflicts and contradictions. Engels clarified: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave , patrician and plebeian , lord and serf , guild -master and journeyman , in
14014-405: The future in a similar manner as with capitalism. Marx distinguishes social classes based on two criteria, i.e. ownership of means of production and control over the labour power of others. Following this criterion of class based on property relations, Marx identified the social stratification of the capitalist mode of production with the following social groups: Class consciousness denotes
14168-544: The global economy. Certain concepts of Marxian economics, especially those related to capital accumulation and the business cycle , such as creative destruction , have been fitted for use in capitalist systems. Marxist education develops Marx's works and those of the movements he influenced in various ways. In addition to the educational psychology of Lev Vygotsky and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire , Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America
14322-508: The illegal Polish left-wing Proletariat Party (founded in 1882, anticipating the Russian parties by twenty years). She began political activities by organising a general strike ; as a result, four of the Proletariat Party leaders were put to death and the party was disbanded, though the remaining members, including Luxemburg, kept meeting in secret. In 1887, she passed her matura ( secondary school examinations). Róża became wanted by
14476-618: The immediate arrest and summary execution of four Grand Dukes from the recently deposed House of Romanov , all of whom were uncles of the Nicholas II , the last Tsar. Despite the pleas of Maxim Gorky on behalf of one of the condemned, the known progressive and noted historian Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich , all four men including Mikhailovich were shot on 30 January 1919 at the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petrograd . The other three men executed were
14630-445: The intellectual and personal confidence to go out and attempt to change the world". It is especially from Luxemburg's private correspondence that it can be seen she in fact remained very close with her family throughout the years, despite being separated by borders and spread out across countries. In 1884, she enrolled at an all-girls' gymnasium (secondary school) in Warsaw, which she attended until 1887. The Second Women's Gymnasium
14784-435: The last two men of German Social Democracy". In the debate on Revisionism at the turn of the 20th century, they jointly attacked the reformist theses of Eduard Bernstein , who had rejected the ideology of a revolutionary change in favour of "evolutionary socialism". Zetkin was very interested in women's politics , including the fight for equal opportunities and women's suffrage , through socialism. She helped to develop
14938-550: The latter claiming that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist. Marxist humanism was born in 1932 with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist humanists contend that there is continuity between the early philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation , and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works, such as Capital . They hold that grasping Marx's philosophical foundations
15092-426: The level of class struggle . Under the capitalist mode of production , this struggle materialises between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie ) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat ). Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs due to the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another,
15246-642: The maps of the former lands of the GDR. A street in Tula, Russia , named for Zetkin (ул. Клары Цеткин) as well as a street in Belgrade , Serbia (ul. Klare Cetkin). Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism , to analyse class relations, social conflict , and social transformation . Marxism originates with
15400-570: The material conditions and economic activities required to fulfill human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organisation, or mode of production , influences all other social phenomena, including broader social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations and the economic system form a base and superstructure . As forces of production (i.e. technology ) improve, existing forms of organising production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: "At
15554-535: The middle-class culture of Berlin, which she considered stifling to revolution. She further disliked Prussian men and resented what she saw as the grip of urban capitalism on social democracy . In the Social Democratic Party of Germany 's women's section, she met Clara Zetkin , whom she made a lifelong friend. Between 1907 and his conscription in 1915, she was involved in a love affair with Clara's younger son, Kostja Zetkin , to which approximately 600 surviving letters (now mostly published) bear testimony. Luxemburg
15708-407: The necessities of life. The worker's entry into such employment is voluntary because they choose which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve. Thus, exploitation is inevitable, and the voluntary nature of a worker participating in a capitalist society is illusory; it is production, not circulation, that causes exploitation. Marx emphasised that capitalism per se does not cheat
15862-511: The objective laws governing the development of the system of social relations. ... in the second place, the earlier theories did not cover the activities of the masses of the population, whereas historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions. — Russian Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin , 1913 Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses
16016-552: The party from 1920 to 1933 in the Reichstag . Until 1924, Zetkin was a member of the KPD's central office. From 1927 to 1929, she was a member of the party's central committee. She was also a member of the executive committee of the Communist International ( Comintern ) from 1921 to 1933. She also presided over an international secretariat for women, which was created by the Communist International in October 1920. In June 1921,
16170-473: The party struggle, but she had no way of obtaining permission to remain there indefinitely. Thus, in April 1897 she married the son of an old friend, Gustav Lübeck, in order to gain German citizenship. They never lived together, and they formally divorced five years later. She returned briefly to Paris , then moved permanently to Berlin to support Eduard Bernstein 's constitutional reform movement. Luxemburg disliked
16324-461: The party's policy of Burgfrieden (a truce between political parties the government and a promise to refrain from strikes during the war). Among other anti-war activities, Zetkin organized an international socialist women's anti-war conference in Berlin in 1915. Because of her anti-war opinions, she was arrested several times during the war and was in 1916 taken into "protective custody" from which she
16478-530: The party. Classical Marxism denotes the collection of socio-eco-political theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . As Ernest Mandel remarked, "Marxism is always open, always critical, always self-critical." Classical Marxism distinguishes Marxism as broadly perceived from "what Marx believed." In 1883, Marx wrote to his son-in-law Paul Lafargue and French labour leader Jules Guesde —both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles—accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and denying
16632-434: The population's living standards due to its need to compensate for the falling rate of profit by cutting employees' wages and social benefits while pursuing military aggression. The socialist mode of production would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through revolution by workers. According to Marxian crisis theory , socialism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity. The term Marxism
16786-679: The present-day political discourse of the Third Polish Republic . Little is known about Rozalia's great-grandparents, Elisza and Szayndla, but according to historical evidence it is likely they lived in Warsaw . Their son, Rosa's grandfather, Abraham Luxemburg probably lived in Warsaw before marrying Chana Szlam (Rosa's grandmother) and moving to Zamość . Abraham built a successful timber business there, based in Zamość and Warsaw but with links as far away as Danzig , Leipzig , Berlin , and Hamburg ; although coming from humble origins, he became
16940-500: The product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production—on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment." Marxian economics and its proponents view capitalism as economically unsustainable and incapable of improving
17094-571: The pseudonym Junius was Die Krise der Sozialdemokratie ( The Crisis of Social Democracy ), also known as the Junius-Broschüre or The Junius Pamphlet . In 1917, the Spartacus League was affiliated with the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), founded by Hugo Haase and made up of anti-war former SPD members. According to Russian historian Edvard Radzinsky , "The Bolshevik envoy in Berlin began secretly purchasing arms for
17248-571: The rebellion. Due to her pointed criticism of both the Leninist and the more moderate social democratic schools of Marxism , Luxemburg has always had a somewhat ambivalent reception among scholars and theorists of the political left . Nonetheless, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were extensively idolised as communist martyrs by the East German government. The German Federal Office for the Protection of
17402-518: The refusal of soldiers to follow orders. On that account, she was imprisoned for a year for "inciting to disobedience against the authorities' law and order". In August 1914, Luxemburg, along with Karl Liebknecht , Clara Zetkin , and Franz Mehring , founded the group Die Internationale ("The International"), which became the Spartacus League in January 1916. They wrote and distributed illegal anti-war pamphlets pseudonymously signed Spartacus , after
17556-608: The slave-liberating Thracian gladiator who led an uprising against the Roman Republic. Luxemburg's pseudonym was Junius, after Lucius Junius Brutus , the founder of the Roman Republic . The Spartacus League vehemently rejected the SPD's support in the Reichstag for funding the war and urged Germany's labor unions to declare an anti-war general strike. As a result, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were imprisoned in June 1916 for two and
17710-415: The social classes. The power of one social class to control the means of production enables its exploitation of other classes. Under capitalism, the labour theory of value is the operative concern, whereby the value of a commodity equals the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. Under such conditions, surplus value —the difference between the value produced and the value received by
17864-725: The social-democratic women's movement in Germany. From 1891 to 1917, she edited the SPD women's newspaper Die Gleichheit (Equality). In 1907 she became the leader of the newly founded "Women's Office" at the SPD. She also contributed to International Women's Day (IWD). In August 1910, an International Women's Conference was organized to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen , Denmark . Inspired in part by American socialists' actions, Zetkin, Käte Duncker and others proposed that "a special Women's Day" be organized annually, but no date
18018-603: The society) would abolish the exploitative working conditions experienced under capitalism. Through working class revolution, the state (which Marxists saw as a weapon for the subjugation of one class by another) is seized and used to suppress the hitherto ruling class of capitalists and (by implementing a commonly owned, democratically controlled workplace) create the society of communism which Marxists see as true democracy. An economy based on cooperation on human need and social betterment, rather than competition for profit of many independently acting profit seekers, would also be
18172-565: The struggle should be against capitalism , not just for Polish independence. Her position of denying a national right of self-determination provoked a philosophic disagreement with Vladimir Lenin . She and Leo Jogiches co-founded the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) party, after merging Congress Poland's and Lithuania's social democratic organisations. Despite living in Germany for most of her adult life, Luxemburg
18326-474: The study of sociology from a Marxist perspective, is "a form of conflict theory associated with ... Marxism's objective of developing a positive ( empirical ) science of capitalist society as part of the mobilisation of a revolutionary working class ." The American Sociological Association has a section dedicated to the issues of Marxist sociology that is "interested in examining how insights from Marxist methodology and Marxist analysis can help explain
18480-412: The sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. Marxism uses a materialist methodology, referred to by Marx and Engels as the materialist conception of history and later better known as historical materialism, to analyse the underlying causes of societal development and change from the perspective of the collective ways in which humans make their living. Marx's account of
18634-599: The theory is in The German Ideology (1845) and the preface A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). All constituent features of a society ( social classes , political pyramid and ideologies ) are assumed to stem from economic activity, forming what is considered the base and superstructure . The base and superstructure metaphor describes the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx,
18788-626: The tsarist authorities within the senior SDKPiL leadership, came to arrest them on 4 March 1906. They held her prisoner first at the ratusz jail, then at Pawiak prison and later at the Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel . Luxemburg continued to write for the SDKPiL in secret while in custody, with her works smuggled out of the compound. After two officers of the Okhrana were bribed by her relatives,
18942-685: The tsarist police due to her activity in Proletariat; she hid in the countryside, working as private tutor at a dworek . In order to escape detention, she fled to Switzerland through the "green border" in 1889. She attended the University of Zurich (as did the socialists Anatoly Lunacharsky and Leo Jogiches ), where she studied philosophy, history, politics, economics, zoology and mathematics. She specialised in Staatswissenschaft (political science), economic and stock exchange crises, and
19096-489: The unity of the working classes . In a speech that she delivered to the Second International in 1889, she stated: She viewed the feminist movement as being primarily composed of upper-class and middle-class women who had their own class interests in mind, which were incompatible with the interests of working-class women. Thus, feminism and the socialist fight for women's rights were incompatible. In her mind, socialism
19250-484: The value of reformist struggle. From Marx's letter derives Marx's famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, ' ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste ' ('what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist')." Libertarian Marxism emphasises the anti-authoritarian and libertarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, such as left communism , emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism . Libertarian Marxism
19404-538: The various schools of thought , which emphasise or modify elements of classical Marxism , several Marxian concepts have been incorporated into an array of social theories . This has led to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy , the defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms " dialectical materialism " and "historical materialism", though these terms were coined after Marx's death and their tenets have been challenged by some self-described Marxists. As
19558-515: The war was accepted. Luxemburg taught Marxism and economics at the SPD's Berlin training centre. Her former student Friedrich Ebert became the SPD leader and later the Weimar Republic 's first President. In 1912, Luxemburg was the SPD representative at the European Socialists' congresses. With French socialist Jean Jaurès , Luxemburg argued that European workers' parties should organise a general strike when war broke out. In 1913, she told
19712-574: The war. The SPD voted in favour of that and agreed to a truce ( Burgfrieden ) with the Imperial government and promised that SPD-controlled labour unions would refrain from strike action for the duration of the war. This led Luxemburg to contemplate suicide as the revisionism she had fought since 1899 had triumphed. In response, Luxemburg organised anti-war demonstrations in Frankfurt , calling for conscientious objection to military conscription and
19866-432: The worker. Alienation ( German : Entfremdung ) is the estrangement of people from their humanity and a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong to employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others and generate alienated labourers. In Marx's view, alienation is an objective characterisation of the worker's situation in capitalism—his or her self-awareness of this condition
20020-428: The works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought , and as a result, there is no single, definitive " Marxist theory ". Marxism has had a profound effect in shaping the modern world, with various left-wing and far-left political movements taking inspiration from it in varying local contexts. In addition to
20174-537: The young generations of the proletariat in all its grandeur and inspirational force". In the city of Berlin a Liebknecht-Luxemburg-Demonstration , shortened to LL-Demo , is organised annually in the month of January around the date of their death. This demonstration takes place on the second weekend of the month in Berlin-Friedrichshain , starting near the Frankfurter Tor and then to their graves in
20328-427: Was Levi who delivered the funeral oration for Luxemburg on 2 February. Radek went into hiding. Luxemburg's last known words written on the evening of her execution were about her belief in the masses and what she saw as the inevitability of a triumphant revolution: The contradiction between the powerful, decisive, aggressive offensive of the Berlin masses on the one hand and the indecisive, half-hearted vacillation of
20482-544: Was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist , orthodox Marxist , and anti-War activist during the First World War . She became a key figure of the revolutionary socialist movements of Poland and Germany during the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly the Spartacist uprising . Born and raised in a secular Jewish family in Congress Poland , she became a German citizen in 1897. The same year, she
20636-530: Was a member of the uncompromising left wing of the SPD. Their clear position was that the objectives of liberation for the industrial working class and all minorities could be achieved by revolution only. As Irene Gammel writes in a review of the English translation of the book in The Globe and Mail : "The three decades covered by the 230 letters in this collection provide the context for her major contributions as
20790-603: Was a recipient of the Order of Lenin (1932) and the Order of the Red Banner (1927). Soon after Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party took power in 1933, the Reichstag fire gave the Nazi government opportunity to outright ban the KPD and other dissenting political parties. Zetkin went into exile for the last time, this time to the Soviet Union . She died there, at Arkhangelskoye , near Moscow , in 1933, aged nearly 76. Her ashes were placed in
20944-489: Was a school that only rarely accepted Polish applicants and acceptance of Jewish children was even more exceptional. The children were only permitted to speak Russian. At this school, Róża attended in secret circles studying the works of Polish poets and writers; officially this was forbidden due to the policy of Russification against Poles that was pursued in the Russian Empire at the time. From 1886, Luxemburg belonged to
21098-489: Was a schoolmaster, church organist and a devout Protestant . Her mother, Josephine Vitale, who had French roots, came from a middle-class family from Leipzig and was highly educated. In 1872, her family moved to Leipzig, where she was educated at the Leipzig Teachers' College for Women. There, she established contacts with the infant Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD; Social Democratic Party). Because of
21252-531: Was active there in the left wing of the SPD in which she sharply defined the border between the views of her faction and the revisionism theory of Eduard Bernstein. She attacked him in her brochure Social Reform or Revolution? , released in September 1898. Luxemburg's rhetorical skill made her a leading spokesperson in denouncing the SPD's reformist parliamentary course. She argued that the critical difference between capital and labour could only be countered if
21406-526: Was awarded a Doctor of Law in political economy from the University of Zurich , becoming one of the first women in Europe to do so. Successively, she was a member of the Proletariat party, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), the Spartacus League ( Spartakusbund ), and
21560-455: Was changed to its modern version Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Around 1898, Zetkin formed a friendship with the younger Rosa Luxemburg that lasted 20 years. Despite Luxemburg's indifference to the women's movement, which absorbed so much of Zetkin's energies, they became firm political allies on the far left of the SDP. Luxemburg once suggested that their joint epitaph would be "Here lie
21714-401: Was first developed in the Soviet Union in 1929, when a young archaeologist named Vladislav I. Ravdonikas published a report entitled "For a Soviet history of material culture"; within this work, the very discipline of archaeology as it then stood was criticised as being inherently bourgeois, therefore anti-socialist and so, as a part of the academic reforms instituted in the Soviet Union under
21868-399: Was first knocked down with a rifle butt by Private Otto Runge, then shot once, in the back of the head, either by Lieutenant Kurt Vogel or by Lieutenant Hermann Souchon . Her body was then dumped in Berlin's Landwehr Canal . In what the militantly antisemitic Pabst later claimed was a gesture of grudging respect for his non-Jewish ancestry, Liebknecht was executed by firing squad in
22022-494: Was later released on account of illness. In 1916 Zetkin was one of the co-founders of the Spartacist League and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) which had split off in 1917 from its mother party, the SPD, in protest at its pro-war stance. In January 1919, after the German Revolution in November of the previous year, the KPD ( Communist Party of Germany ) was founded. Zetkin also joined it and represented
22176-423: Was needed in Warsaw instead of Berlin. She arrived there on 30 December thanks to her German friend Anna Matschke's passport and met up with Jogiches, who had returned to Warsaw a month earlier also on a false passport; they lived together in a pension at the corner of Jasna and Świętokrzyska streets, from where they wrote for the SDKPiL's illegally published paper Czerwony Sztandar (The Red Banner). Luxemburg
22330-477: Was one of only three members of the executive to vote against. In August 1932, despite having recently fallen gravely ill in Moscow, she returned to Berlin to preside over the opening of the newly elected Reichstag, as its oldest deputy. She used her opening address to call for workers to unite in the struggle against fascism: The most important immediate task is the formation of a United Front of all workers in order to turn back fascism [..] in order to preserve for
22484-465: Was one of the first writers to notice the 1905 revolution's potential for democratisation within the Russian Empire. In the years 1905-1906 alone, she made in Polish and German over 100 articles, brochures, appeals, texts, and speeches about the revolution. Although only the closest friends and comrades of Jogiches and Luxemburg knew of their return to the country, the Okhrana , thanks to a mole recruited by
22638-523: Was part of the right wing. She was removed from the Central Committee of the KPD when the left, led by Ruth Fischer , took control. She opposed a policy decision made in Moscow in 1928 to get communist trade unions in Germany to split from the main socialist-dominated federation and form the rival Rote Gewerkschaftsbund . When Joseph Stalin put this to the executive of Comintern, in December 1928, Zetkin
22792-693: Was popularised by Karl Kautsky , who considered himself an orthodox Marxist during the dispute between Marx's orthodox and revisionist followers. Kautsky's revisionist rival Eduard Bernstein also later adopted the term. Engels did not support using Marxism to describe either Marx's or his views. He claimed that the term was being abusively used as a rhetorical qualifier by those attempting to cast themselves as genuine followers of Marx while casting others in different terms, such as Lassallians . In 1882, Engels claimed that Marx had criticised self-proclaimed Marxist Paul Lafargue by saying that if Lafargue's views were considered Marxist, then "one thing
22946-448: Was religious and well-read with books kept at home. The family moved to Warsaw in 1873. Polish and German were spoken at home; Luxemburg also learned Russian . Although over time she became fluent in Russian and French , Polish remained Róża's first language with German also spoken at a native level. Rosa was considered intelligent early on, writing letters to her family and impressing her relatives with recitals of poetry, including
23100-451: Was specified at that conference. Delegates (100 women from 17 countries) agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote suffrage for women. The following year on 19 March 1911, IWD was marked for the first time, by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. However, Zetkin was deeply opposed to the concept of "bourgeois feminism," which she claimed was a tool to divide
23254-447: Was the only way to truly end the oppression of women. One of her primary goals was to get women out of the house and into work so that they could participate in trade unions and other workers rights organizations to improve conditions for themselves. While she argued that the socialist movement should fight to achieve reforms that would lessen female oppression, she was convinced that such reforms could only prevail if they were embedded into
23408-727: Was the principal theoretician of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP, later the SDKPiL) and led the party in a partnership with Jogiches, its principal organiser. She remained sentimental towards Polish culture, her favourite poet was Adam Mickiewicz , and she vehemently opposed the Germanisation of Poles in the Prussian Partition ; in 1900 she published a brochure against this in Poznań . Earlier, in 1893, she also wrote against
23562-523: Was the reform Rabbi Isachar Dov Berish (Bernhard) Löwenstein of Lemberg . Lina and Edward married around 1853 and lived together in Zamość, where Edward worked with his father. Like his father, Edward was a leading member of the Reform Jewish community in the city. When the January Uprising broke out, Edward delivered weapons to Polish partisans and organised fundraisers for the insurrection. After
23716-520: Was used by East German dissidents as part of their campaign, "to raise their unwelcome demands at embarrassing moments for the regime". On 17 January 1988, as Premier Erich Honecker was reviewing the parade, a group of dissidents broke through the ranks of the Free German Youth and unfurled banners bearing an infamous dictum from Die Russische Revolution , Rosa Luxemburg's book-length denunciation of both authoritarian socialism and censorship in
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