#rosa Luxemburg

[anarcho-yorpism]

To all the communist transvestites, VOTE👏VON👏HINDENBURG👏

I'm just as radical as you; I'm a proud member of the great Social Democratic Party of Germany! I don't know what the crazy communists are telling you, but Paul von Hindenburg is our only hope to defeat the Nazis. After we elect him, then we can discuss other politics, but this is the BARE MINIMUM, and if you don't vote for him, you clearly have this crazy purity test that'll bring us all to fascism.

I know you might be worried about his "senility" and "failing health", and I know you may not like him because of his push to the right, and I know you may be worried about the brownshirts, and the recent persecution of Dr. Hirschfeld and his work, and maybe you STILL haven't gotten over the whole Rosa Luxemburg stuff,

but none of that really matters! We need to keep the SPD in power, or else Hitler will get in charge! This is the most important and most basic thing you could do to help Germany stay a democracy. In 6 years, then maybe we can find a better candidate, but no matter what you think about von Hindenburg, he's the best shot we have at keeping the fascists out of power. We can totally push him left!

Any vote against von Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler. #Hindenburg1932

[queercodedangel]

This doesn't mean that there is no value at all in reforms. But it does mean that the benefits of reforms are fragile and can be reversed at any point because the fundamental power structures of class society are still the same.

You can earn as many rights as you want, as long as class society exists they are in the hands of the capitalist ruling class and can be taken away at any moment.

Read "Reform or Revolution" by Rosa Luxemburg for more on this topic. You can read it for free in the Marxists Internet Archive

[probablyasocialecologist]

In the Marxist tradition, it was Rosa Luxemburg who attempted to develop the concept of ‘metabolism’ to conceptualize this unequal relationship between capitalist centres and non-capitalist peripheries as the essential condition for capital accumulation. In The Accumulation of Capital, Luxemburg criticized the destructive impact of capitalist development upon non-capitalist societies, even arguing that capitalism was borne fundamentally in a non-capitalist environment. In other words, capitalism is from the very beginning dependent on unequal exchange that provides not simply cheap but often free labour power of slaves as well as natural resources for the centre.

Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

[jareckiworld]

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), Promenading in Berlin, about a year 1914 [photo by Henry Guttmann Collection]

[unitedfrontvarietyhour]

Crazy times, eh? No quote this time, I think everything speaks for itself. Last 2 slides included for no "discernable" reason ;)

[davidhudson]

Rosa Luxemburg, March 5, 1871 – January 15, 1919.

[radiofreederry]

Happy birthday, Rosa Luxemburg! (March 5, 1871)

A Marxist economist, philosopher, and revolutionary of Polish origin and Jewish descent, Rosa Luxemburg became a socialist at a young age, joining the Polish Proletariat Party at 15 and helping to organize a general strike, which led to the execution of several Proletariat leaders. Fleeing to Switzerland, Luxemburg studied and earned her doctorate, unusual for a woman in those days. Becoming involved in the international socialist movement, Luxemburg’s ideas put her at odds with some other leading socialists such as Lenin, although they always maintained a mutual respect. Moving to Germany, Luxemburg became active in the Social Democratic Party’s left wing, opposed to the revisionist and reformist program of centrist Marxists such as Eduard Bernstein, writing the pamphlet Reform or Revolution in response and criticism to Bernstein’s ideas. As the SPD declared support for the German government in World War I, Luxemburg and other revolutionaries of the SPD left wing split and formed the Spartacus League, which would eventually become the Communist Party of Germany. As Germany plunged into chaos following the war, the Sparticists seized the opportunity to rise up in revolution, sparking socialist uprisings in Berlin. These were put down by the SPD government of newly republican Germany, which sent in the proto-fascist Freikorps paramilitaries, which captured socialist leaders including Karl Liebknecht and Luxemburg, murdering them.

“The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were on the heights; they have developed this ‘defeat’ into one of the historical defeats which are the pride and strength of international socialism. And that is why the future victory will bloom from this ‘defeat’. 'Order reigns in Berlin!’ You stupid henchmen! Your ‘order’ is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will already ‘raise itself with a rattle’ and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I will be!”

[matyas-ss]

Monument to Rosa Luxemburg, El Lissitzky, (1919-1921). The State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece.

[weil-weil-lautre]

What we're offered is precisely nothing but echoing phrases, hollow words screwed together. An unmistakable sign of this is that anyone who thinks clearly, and has a genuine mastery of his subject matter, also expresses himself clearly and understandably. Someone who expresses himself in obscure and high-flown terms, if he is not a pure philosophical idea-constructor or a fantasist of religious mysticism, only shows that he is himself unclear about the matter, or has reason to avoid clarity. We shall go on to show that the obscure and confusing language of bourgeois scholars as to the nature of political economy is not accidental, but actually expresses two things: both the unclearness of these gentlemen themselves, and their tendentious, stubborn rejection of real explanation of the question.

Rosa Luxemburg, "Introduction to Political Economy" in Complete Works vol. 1, p. 91

[dusleraleminde]

📜Neyin eksik diye soruyorsun. Yaşam, eksik olan bu işte! İçimde bir şeyler öldü gibi. Korku, acı, yalnızlık duymuyorum; bir cesetim ben.✨

~Rosa Luxemburg

[less-ismore]

Extrait de l'herbier de prison de Rosa Luxemburg, cahier composé en avril-mai 1915. Anémone hépatique et pâquerette. (Ed. Héros-Limite. DR)

De l'article de Frédérique Fanchette (Libération)

[damnesdelamer]

What flavour of communist and/or gay are you? /Gen

I'm not really sure what this means.

Not to spout clichés or take myself too seriously, but to some extent I think labels confine us within rigid structures which ultimately only serve our enemies. I know it's just a shortcut, but even the fact that you say 'flavour' kinda reiterates the idea that lots of the associated terminology positions us as existing for consumption.

Of course I know language matters. Indeed, I think a disproportionately large amount of leftist in-fighting is down to word choice and communication. More often than not, when anarchists refer to the state and Leninists refer to capital or bourgeois democracy, we're all talking about the same systems of harm and oppression. I also believe that what's most important is what we do, not how we identify.

I actively avoid the 'discourse' surrounding queer terminology. For years in my youth I railed against the word 'bisexual' because I didn't like that it implied I have two distinct sexualities, and for awhile I even called myself 'ambisexual' in an attempt to prompt a deconstruction thereof. But then I decided that I like the colours of the bi flag, which is really all that matters, because it's just aesthetics.

So I guess let me put it this way: I'm a trade union organiser who specifically represents queer union members. I grew up reading Marx, and some of the greatest influences through my adolescence on how I approach the world were Gramsci and Mao, and later Fanon and Butler. I spent a lot of my twenties questioning whether I count as trans, as I have always been very comfortable with both my masculinity and my femininity, but at some point I realised very clearly that the gender I was assigned at birth is not reflected in either.

I very strongly believe in the value of Lenin and Leninism to global struggle; but likewise I have taken a lot from Malatesta, Luxemburg, Adorno, and so on. I also think, while they are to be scrutinised rigorously, there is much to be gained from the likes of Trotsky, Foucault, or ‎Žižek. I am a staunch anti-Zionist, but Memmi nevertheless teaches us a great deal about the plight of the colonised.

I am probably closer to an orthodox Marxist than I am to a Leninist or anarchist, but ultimately I think all this orthodoxy reeks of bourgeois affectation. The questions we should be asking are: who is most impacted by the realities of a given situation, and what are they saying, what do they need? Once upon a time in the west, and certainly still in most cases, this is BIPOC and sexual others, so we read Davis and Feinberg and Öcalan and Ahmed and Tuck and Yang. It is the strength of the revolutionary to adapt to the material conditions at hand, and remain undaunted.

In the end, we have more in common with one another than we have with ruling classes, right? So let us gather together! If this is the final struggle, let each stand in our place.

[jadwiga-abremovic]

if you know more about soviet tanks than you do about labour disputes and prisoners rights in your own backyard, you're not a marxist yet

[konyvboritok]

[shroobles]