Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg was one of the most controversial and important figures in the development of European Marxism. In many respects, her role was unique; she was at once one of the founders of modern Communism and one of its severest critics. With the exception of Lenin, she was perhaps the only Marxist of the twentieth century who bridged the profound divide of the Bolshevik revolution; both pro-Bolsheviks and anti-Bolsheviks still look to her work and life as a source of inspiration.

Nettl’s biography, first published in the 1960s, was the first to appear in the West and remains today still unsurpassed in breadth and depth of scholarship. It is conceived on a large scale. Rosa Luxemburg’s political activity is dealt with in the full context of the German, Polish, and Russian Socialist movements in which she was active. Though the story concentrates on its central figure, a great many of her important contemporaries appear vividly in these pages. Particular attention was paid to her relationship with Kautsky in Germany and Lenin in Russia.

Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas are discussed in separate chapters. Nettl sought to analyse her views both in relation to current Marxist thinking and as a wider reflection of her times. Thus the revisionist controversy is examined in some detail; so are her controversial comments on the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and her quarrel with the German Party leadership. In particular, the author used both sociology and political theory as a means of illuminating Rosa Luxemburg’s career in its actual setting. But, beneath the political process, every effort has been made to capture the image of a scintillating, gifted woman. Unlike many revolutionaries, Rosa Luxemburg led an intense and rewarding private life, to which the author tried to do justice.

With the use of published sources, unpublished archival material, including many of Rosa Luxemburg’s letters, it is now possible for the first time to produce a rounded portrait of an important and fascinating personality.

Author Biography

John Peter Nettl (1926- 68) was born in Vienna, but lived in England from 1936. After serving with British army intelligence during the Second World War, he studied at Oxford. He died in a plane crash in the United States in 1968. His other books include The Eastern Zone and Soviet policy in Germany, 1945-50 (1951), The Soviet Achievement (1967), Political Mobilization: A Sociological Analysis of Methods and Concepts (1967).