How should socialists think about political tradition?
“Our task isn’t to guard a faith, a static tradition.”
Rosa Luxemburg on May Day and working class struggles
On International Workers’ Day, or May Day, rs21 presents two classic texts by the revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg on the history and significance of the day. What Are the Origins of May Day? (1894) The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in […]
‘I was, I am, I will be’ – 100 years after the death of Rosa Luxemburg
The deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht have haunted the imagination of the left for a century.
I Bring Her a Flower
On the 100th anniversary of the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, we republish a poetic tribute to her written by Sylvia Townsend Warner.
A critical week lies ahead in the West Virginia teachers’ strike
The West Virginia teachers’ strike marks the return of the mass strike to the US in 2018.
revolutionary reflections | The KPD and the United Front during the Weimar Republic
This article by Marcel Bois was originally published in a collection of essays in German by Marx21 on the German Communist Party (KPD). It sets out the history of the United Front in Germany from the years 1920 to 1926. The United Front was a tactic developed by the Communist International in the early 1920s and this […]
Review: Red Rosa
Caliban’s Revenge reviews Red Rosa, a graphic biography of German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg by Kate Evans. The uses and abuses of Rosa Luxemburg as a revolutionary icon are many, and they tend to focus excessively on the tragedy of her death or on her intellectual relationship with Lenin. Old Stalinists display great alabaster busts that […]
Extract: Order reigns in Berlin
On the 97 anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg‘s murder, Jonas Liston introduces an extract from her final article “Order Reigns in Berlin“. In November 1918, a revolt of German sailors and soldiers sparked a mass workers’ revolution that would see the establishment of democratic workers’ councils, the end of World War One and the abdication […]