2019 Paul Le Blanc
Published in 2019 by
Haymarket Books
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773-583-7884
www.haymarketbooks.org
ISBN: 978-1-64259-090-6
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This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace Action Fund.
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Cover design by Rachel Cohen.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In considering the people who helped me understand Rosa Luxemburg, I should probably begin with Shirley Dorothy Harris, who became Shirley Le Blanc. She was strong, cultured, warm, self-assured and outgoing, highly intellectual, critical-minded, highly principled, drawn to Marxism, dedicated to the cause of labor and to an end to all oppression and violence, animated by an elemental feminism and a belief that each person is worth something and should be treated with dignity. To a significant degree and in more than one way, she prepared me for an appreciation of Rosa Luxemburgin part as a mother, and in part as a teacher, an example, and a role model. This book is dedicated to her memory.
Among the Marxists who were my teachers and mentors, I think my friend Michael Lwy had the biggest influence on helping me to appreciate aspects of Luxemburgs contributions, but Ernest Mandel was also quite important in this regard. George Breitmanwhose early role in Pathfinder Press probably had something to do with the publication of Rosa Luxemburg Speaksalso deserves mention.
There are a number of colleagues with whom I have shared the experience of exploring the life and ideas of this wondrous revolutionary. Professor He Ping of Wuhan University has been one of these, helping to open China to me in ways that impacted powerfully on my understanding of Luxemburg and much else. Another Chinese sojourner who has been important to me has been Xiong Min. From Germany the friendship and challenging intellectual companionship of Ottokar Luban have also been a positive influence, in part despite and in part because of our disagreements (though there is much common ground). Kunal Chattopadhyay, Soma Marik, and Sobhanlal Datta Gupta in India are also very much a part of this network. Another Luxemburg soul mate is my friend and comrade Helen C. Scott, with whom I have had the good fortune to compare notes more than once and to co-edit the Pluto Press anthology Socialism or Barbarism: The Selected Writings of Rosa Luxemburg.
In the quest to comprehend and to share contributions of Rosa Luxemburg, two insane comrades have had the vision of creating in English The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg (a project that they sucked me into): a much-missed pal, the late Bill Pelz, and most especially the remarkable Peter Hudis, the keystone of the project. There is also George Shriver, a close political comrade for many years and through many battles, and also a brilliant translator who has been incredibly important in this project. All three of these friends have been with me on the projects editorial board, an entity that has been expanding too rapidly to cite all its individual members. And certainly the publisher of the Complete Works, Verso Books, should also be mentioned, and especially staff members Sebastian Budgen, the late Clara Heyworth, and Jake Stevens.
Central to the success of the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg has been the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, a German-based but genuinely global entity, just like its namesake. There are too many associated with it to name them all, and to name one or two would be unfair to the others. Their presence and assistance in continuing the work of Rosa Luxemburg has been felt not only in Germany, of course, but also throughout Europe, as well as in the United States, South Africa, Turkey, India, China, and elsewhere.
My profoundest thanks must go to comrades who have sustained Haymarket Books over the years, and especially to the hands-on editing work of Ida Audeh and Rachel Cohen.
Then there is my immediate family, and loving them has been an essential element in my balance, without which I could not have created this volume. Most wondrous are my grandchildren Sophia and Zach, their mother Rima Le Blanc, and their late father Gabriel, my beloved son. Closer to home is my other son, Jonah McAllister-Erickson, and his companion Jessica Benner. There are also my sisters, Patty Le Blanc and Nora Le Blanc, and my dearest loving friend, Nancy Ferrari.
INTRODUCTION
Growing numbers of people throughout the world are coming to know Rosa Luxemburg. Her passion and clarity, her critical and creative intelligence, her strength and courage, and her wicked humor and profound warmth and humanity are qualities that attract many. People are drawn to Luxemburgs analyses and ideas on how reality works and what we can do to overcome oppression and gain liberation, animated by that lively intelligence that is permeated with inspiring values. They are drawn to her penetrating discussion of the relationship of reform to revolution, to her sense of the interplay between revolutionary organization and spontaneous mass action, to her remarkable analyses of imperialism and militarism, to her unshakeable conviction of the centrality of genuine democracy to genuine socialism, and of the compelling need for both. All this and more.
As resistance and insurgency continue to be generated by the crises of our time, people turn to her ideas, and her ideas become more readily availablecertainly for those who speak English, thanks to the fact that Verso Books, in cooperation with the worldwide Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, has begun to make available The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, a project I have been proud to assist.
As more and more people are engaging with her ideas and life, I want to feed some of my own thoughts into the proliferating dialogue, in part with this collection of essays composed over three decades.
GETTING TO KNOW ROSA LUXEMBURG
I came to know Rosa Luxemburg gradually.
In 1962, when I was fifteen, I got a copy of C. Wright Millss book The Marxists, a mass market paperback, which was an essential initiation in my education as a Marxist.her head in the clouds, and I only half-understood the excerpts from her writings, but I knew this was someone I must get to know better.
Not long after, I found Bertram D. Wolfewhom I distrusted because he was a Cold War anticommunist and very much an ex-Marxistgiving me his latter-day take on her in his 1965 collection Strange Communists I Have Known (also a mass market paperback).
An essential part of my reading and understanding Luxemburg was my own particular context. My father had devoted most of his life to being part of the US labor movement, as a militant union organizer and capable functionary. This was a source of pride for him, and it very much spilled over to me. Yet I sensed that not everything conformed, in practice, to the high ideals that animated him. Some of what Luxemburg had to say seemed to shed light on that.
