Rosa Luxemburg: Heroine of the Left

Michael D. Richards profiles the Marxist Revolutionary whose life was devoted to the Communist and Socialist movements in Poland and Germany.

The heroes of the New Left are many - Marx, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Guevara, Marcuse, Hayden, Cleaver, Newton, Chavez, to name the most prominent. The heroines of the New Left are few.

Undoubtedly the most important is Rosa Luxemburg, a heroine of the New Left, Old Left, Women’s Liberation Movement, a political theorist of great insight and a human being of compelling interest. She was one of the few political theorists in this century to present a detailed consideration of the problems and possibilities of revolution in urban areas. Most other activists have been preoccupied with revolution in rural areas or have tried to apply the concepts of rural revolution to the urban situation. She has also become, somewhat ironically, a symbol for Women’s Liberation movements of the successful feminist.

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