German lead-thinker, predicted the downfall of the Russian Revolution and knew the political spectrum of Europe better than anyone during her time...

She was killed by her own party...which displays the fact that they (the left-wingers) knew that she knew too much and may be deadly to their own party...messed up stuff eh?

thoughts on her?

Just one quick point, Reform or Revolution was an absolutely amazing work on destroying the idiotic theory of social democracy/democratic socialism.

Actually, Luxemburg was murdered by right-wing reactionaries. Many of whom later joined organizations such as Hitler's Waffen SS.

Luxemburg broke with the social-democrats because they supported World War I instead of organizing resistance. You could argue that they killed her, though. Indirectly.

Their whining idiocy murdered the whole working class of that time, actually.

She wasn't actually killed by her own party knowledge 666. though I can see why you think so. She was essentially betrayed by the centre left, as always the Leftists failed to achieve solidarity.

I think she was a great woman, in a time when women weren't considered leaders she was the driving influence between the Spartacists in Germany, willing to speak her mind she was very critical of how Lenin was forcefully implementing socialism in Russia.

Interestingly, though Weimar had a Social-democratic government at the time, the SPD (they're still in power today) the judiciary, the central bureaucracy, the police and the army were remnants of the old regime, the German 'revolution' it seems didn't change as much as it claimed.

The Presidnt at the time, Ebert, though supposedly left wing actually asked the Freikorps (right wing militant groups) to put down Luxemburg's Spartacist uprising. I see this as a great change.

I think what says a lot about how much real change had come about from the German 'revolution' is this: Rosa Luxemburg, attempting a coup was taken out and shot for treason. Adolf Hitler, attempting the same thing two years later, only with a right wing agenda received a mere 9 months imprisonment.

yeah? Woah...never knew. I was reading about her one day and it said that her own SDP killed her....then I had seen a German movie on her (english subtitles) and it had the same verdict...a member of her own party kills her...

weird...

Nothings ever been proved. She was supposed to be made "disappear" and while being taken away in a police van, she was shot with Karl Liebknecht and their bodies were thrown into the river. The order most likely came from high up, from someone within the SPD but possibly carried out by someone in the Freikorps.

You're right the SPD, in a way killed her. However don't forget that she was not a member of the SPD, she was a leader of the far more radical Spartacist group.

As BornofZapatasguns rightly pointed out, it was the Freikorps who physically shot her, however the order to put down the uprising (and its leaders) came from the President, Ebert, a member of the SPD. He knew very well that the order would likely end with her death.

I think it shows how Weimar's social democracy was undermined in the very beginning from a reliance on the right-wing elities. After all, the Right-wing made up these Freikorps who had fought in WW1.

why wasnt she more dedicated to the liberation of the woman? If she had led a feminist movement, do you think there would be more equality? Or would it have proven worthless?

Dont get me wrong, the starting of the sparticist party and predicting the Russian Revolution's failure is very very good, but as a leading female political thinker...would it have helped the feminist movement had she got involved?

was she an anarchist?

At the time when she was killed the "Spartakusbund" already was part of the KPD, the Communist German party, which was founded because of the reformistic and militarist developements within the SPD, which was "home" of many communists, including Rosa Luxemburg, until than.

Rosa Luxemburg Bio

A voice from Germany:

The annual demonstration for the memory of Rosa Luxemburg (accomplished by 10.000 Leftits) happened just a view weeks ago in Berlin. The remembership does still exist.

Her death: How somebody else said she was killed by the Freikorps-Organisation. But the Freikorps where one Adolf Hitler's NSDAP roots and because of that involved closely in her death.

No she most certaintly was not.

They where in Soviet Russia and Red China.

I wouldn't support her position on self-determination for nations.


Knowledge 666,

She wasn't a feminist because she was a Marxist. Radical feminism cannot be reconciled with Marxism. Feminism seeks to emphasise the differences between male and female rather than emphasise the fact that sex is not an issue whatsoever and that both are workers.

She rejected the self-determination of nations in general. I would't make this an universal rule, but if more communists and leftists in general would have had her stance, and would consitently reject the bourgeois concept of nation states, and especially the idea that every ethnic group needs it's own nation, and is allowed to fight for it by all means, than a lot of blood could have been spared, and lot's of useless wars could have been prevented. I deeply desipse the tendeny within the Left which uncritically supports "national self-determanition" above the true interests of the exploited and the working class.

Agreed. We do have to take into account the national aspirations of people at the same time of arguing a class perspective. I do understand the position from which Luxemburg took her stance on "self-determination" though and in a situation with quite an advanced revolutionary consciousness I think her position could be argued far more convincibly.

Seeing as you're quite the Luxemburgist, do you support that position on self-determination.

The hell she did. Disagreed with the Bolsheviks on some points,yes. But she strongly supported the revolution.

If you read her critical article on the "Russian Revolution" she even agreed that the Red Terror was necessary under the circumstances...just thought that the Bolsheviks were making a virtue out of a necessity.

Member of the party she led, the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, were active in the early Soviet government...including Felix Dzherzhinsky, the first head of the Soviet secret police (Cheka), and Karl Radek, the first Soviet ambassador to Germany. The Lithuanian Soviet government, before it was crushed, followed her policies.

If the Bolsheviks had followed her ideas on land and nationality policy, they could not have survived either IMO. Land-to-the-peasants, and letting nationalities leave Russia if they chose, were necessary to win support for the revolution.

I'd suggest that a lot of "unnecessary bloodshed" as somebody put it, could have prevented if the Soviet government had continued to follow a Leninist nationality policy, rather than forcibly suppressing the non-Russian nationalities of the USSR...that policy didn't even hold them in the USSR forever, did it?