Rosa Luxemburg

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Lore & Background

Rosa Luxemburg was born on 5 March 1871 in Zamość, a town in Russian-controlled Congress Poland, the fifth and youngest child of a moderately well-off, assimilated, secular Jewish family. At age five, she developed a hip disease, probably a congenital hip dislocation, misdiagnosed as tuberculosis, resulting in a year-long confinement in a cast during which she taught herself to read and write; the illness left her with a permanent limp. In 1880, she enrolled at the Second Girls' High School in Warsaw, where admission for Jewish students was subject to a quota. The 1881 Warsaw pogrom, which her family experienced, left her with a permanent fear of mob violence. While still in her teens, she became involved in clandestine student circles associated with the revolutionary Proletariat party. After graduating in 1887, she continued revolutionary activities as part of a cell of the 'Second Proletariat.' By 1889, threatened with arrest, she was smuggled out of Poland with the help of her mentor, Marcin Kasprzak. In Zurich in early autumn 1890, she met Leo Jogiches, a famous revolutionary from Vilna; they fell in love and by summer 1891 had become lovers, beginning a tumultuous fifteen-year relationship. In 1893, they co-founded the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), whose programme, largely formulated by Luxemburg, rejected the Polish Socialist Party's demand for Polish independence. At the Second International's third congress in Zurich in 1893, her mandate was challenged by the PPS delegation; small and frail, she climbed onto a chair to make herself heard and defended her cause with 'magnetism in her eyes and in such fiery words.'

Reader's Guide

Luxemburg's significance lies in her role as a leading Marxist theorist and revolutionary who challenged both reformism and authoritarianism. After moving to Germany in 1898, she became the foremost voice of the SPD's revolutionary wing. In her 1900 pamphlet Social Reform or Revolution?, she defended the necessity of revolution against the reformist theories of Eduard Bernstein, arguing that the struggle for reforms was a means to an end, not an end in itself. Inspired by the 1905 Russian Revolution, she developed a theory of the mass strike as the proletariat's most important revolutionary tool, emphasizing the spontaneous creativity of the working class. In her major work, The Accumulation of Capital (1913), she argued that capitalism's need to expand into non-capitalist regions to survive was the driving force behind imperialism. During World War I, she fiercely condemned the SPD's support for the war and was imprisoned for most of the conflict. From prison, she wrote the influential Junius Pamphlet, which declared the war a betrayal of the working class and popularized the phrase 'socialism or barbarism' to describe the choice facing humanity. While she celebrated the Russian Revolution of 1917, in a posthumously published manuscript she offered a sharp critique of the Bolsheviks' authoritarian policies, defending democratic freedoms and the need for a revolution rooted in mass participation. Released from prison during the German Revolution of 1918–1919, she co-founded the KPD and became a central figure in the January 1919 Spartacist uprising in Berlin. After the uprising was crushed by the Freikorps, a government-sponsored paramilitary group, Luxemburg and her comrade Karl Liebknecht were captured and murdered. Following her death, Luxemburg became a heroine and martyr for Marxists. Her legacy has been a subject of intense debate, with her emphasis on spontaneity and democracy celebrated by many on the left—particularly by the New Left and those in the libertarian socialist tradition—but sharply criticized by the Stalinist tradition, which denounced 'Luxemburgism' as a heresy.

Did You Know?

• At age five, Luxemburg developed a hip disease (probably a congenital hip dislocation) misdiagnosed as tuberculosis, leading to a year in a cast; she taught herself to read and write during that time, but the illness left her with a permanent limp.
• The 1881 Warsaw pogrom, which her family experienced, left her with a permanent fear of mob violence.
• At the Second International's third congress in Zurich in 1893, when her delegate mandate was challenged, she climbed onto a chair to make herself heard and defended her cause with 'magnetism in her eyes and in such fiery words.'
• From prison during World War I, she wrote the Junius Pamphlet, which popularized the phrase 'socialism or barbarism.'
• Luxemburg and her comrade Karl Liebknecht were captured and murdered by the Freikorps, a government-sponsored paramilitary group, after the January 1919 Spartacist uprising was crushed.