Revolutionary Marxist activist Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) has long been a major inspiration for activists on the left. But what can we learn from looking closely at her life today? Jon Nixon answers that question here, offering a clear, concise account of Luxemburg's biography and thought and setting it in relation to contemporary economic, political, and social debates. Nixon presents Luxemburg as not only an activist, but also as a major political theorist, showing how her thinking about global capitalism, state militarism, and other subjects can still be applied today, with powerful effects. By establishing a rich and distinctive account of Luxemburg, Nixon makes a compelling argument for the continuing relevance of her struggle for democratic renewal.

Provocative writings on the question of national self-determination and its relationship with socialism.

Rosa Luxemburg is unquestionably the most important historical European woman Marxist theorist. Significantly, for the purpose of creolizing the canon, she considered her continent and the globe from an Eastern Europe that was in constant flux and turmoil. From this relatively peripheral location, she was far less parochial than many of her more centrally located interlocutors and peers. Indeed, Luxemburg’s work touched on all the burning issues of her time and ours, from analysis of concrete revolutionary struggles, such as those in Poland and Russia, to showing through her analysis of primitive accumulation that anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles had to be intertwined, to considerations of state sovereignty, democracy, feminism, and racism. She thereby offered reflections that can usefully be taken up and reworked by writers facing continuous and new challenges to undo relations of exploitation through radical economic and social transformation Luxemburg touches on all aspects of what constitutes revolution in her work; the authors of this volume show us that, by creolizing Luxemburg, we can open up new paths of understanding the complexities of revolution.

This biography, first published half a century ago, remains the most detailed and comprehensive study of Rosa Luxemburg. Nettl's extensive knowledge of the social and political context of the European socialist movements in which she was active, and his engagement with her voluminous writings in German, Polish, and Russian (many of which are only now being translated into English), brings to light the multidimensional nature of her life and work. This new edition will enable a new generation to explore Luxemburg's effort to develop an emancipatory version of Marxism liberated from the constraints of both reformism and authoritarianism, as well as grasp the unique personality of this remarkable women theoretician and revolutionary.

Among the major Marxist thinkers of the Russian Revolution era, Rosa Luxemburg stands out as one who speaks to our own time. Her legacy grows in relevance as the global character of the capitalist market becomes more apparent and the critique of bureaucratic power is more widely accepted within the movement for human liberation. The Rosa Luxemburg Reader is the definitive one-volume collection of Luxemburg's writings in English translation. Unlike previous publications of her work from the early 1970s, this volume includes substantial extracts from her major economic writings—above all, The Accumulation of Capital (1913)—and from her political writings, including Reform or Revolution (1898), the Junius Pamphlet (1916), and The Russian Revolution (1918). The Reader also includes a number of important texts that have never before been published in English translation, including substantial extracts from her Introduction to Political Economy (1916), and a recently-discovered piece on slavery. With a substantial introduction assessing Luxemburg's work in the light of recent research, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader is an indispensable resource for scholarship and an inspiration for a new generation of activists.

The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions was written in 1906 by Polish-born revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. It brilliantly captures the fundamental lessons from the experience of mass workers' strikes and their role in the 1905 Russian Revolution. Luxemburg lived in a world in crisis - one characterised by the fast approach of the First World War - and in an era when revolutionary struggles and ideas broke out internationally. Now, over a century later, capitalism is lunging deeper into a crisis of mammoth economic, political, social and ecological proportions. The need for mass strikes that can spill over into revolution is now existential. In this short book, Luxemburg shows how strikes call into question the relationship between the working class and the employing class, how political and economic demands fuse in the course of such strikes, and how they can start to challenge the conservative approach of the trade union leaders. Her book is as relevant as ever in hel