Luxemburg’s life for Democracy and Socialism

Tomás Várnagy

Frontier | Vol 55, No. 1, Jul 3 – 9, 2022

Rosa Luxemburg (1871, Zamosc, Poland–1919, Berlin, Germany) is one of the most fascinating and imposing revolutionary figures in modern European history and, at the same time, one of the most discussed to date. Her friends and adversaries emphasize the penetrating acuity of her intelligence, her great willpower, her lively and impatient temperament, her strong combative nature, and her great moral rigour.

She was born in Poland in 1871, the year of the Paris Commune, the youngest of five children in a cultured and relatively wealthy Jewish family. Intelligent and brilliant in her studies, independent and rebellious in spirit, she was involved in socialist political activity from her early youth. When she was a little girl, as a typical cultured Central European, she spoke three languages: Russian, Polish, and German. She became an activist in the Proletariat Party, founded in 1882 (almost two decades before the founding of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), in which she organised and led striking workers. In 1886, four of its leaders were executed, while others were locked up and exiled.

Cuba Works on Vaccines Against New COVID-19 Variant

teleSUR | December 02, 2021

Cuban scientists working in the development of vaccines, Cuba, 2021 | Photo: EFE

BioCubaFarma announced on Wednesday that Cuban scientists are now working to develop new vaccines to fight the new strain of Coronavirus.

Eduardo Martinez, president of BioCubaFarma, announced on Wednesday, Dec. 1, that Cuban scientists are working to develop a new variant of vaccines to strike strains like Omicron of the Coronavirus.

Strategic Lessons of Revolutionary Social Democracy

Cosmonaut Magazine

A discussion and debate on the strategic lessons to be taken from the revolutionary social democratic parties of the Second International. Panelists are Eric Blanc, Ben Lewis, and Gil Schaeffer.

Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution

V. I. Lenin

Written: 14 October, 1921
First Published:Pravda No. 234,October 18, 1921 Signed: N. Lenin; Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pages 51-59
Translated: David Skvirsky and George Hanna
Transcription\HTML Markup:David Walters & R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

The fourth anniversary of October 25 (November 7) is approaching.

The farther that great day recedes from us, the more clearly we see the significance of the proletarian revolution in Russia, and the more deeply we reflect upon the practical experience of our work as a whole.

Very briefly and, of course, in very incomplete and rough outline, this significance and experience may be summed up as follows.

The direct and immediate object of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic one, namely, to destroy the survivals of medievalism and sweep them away completely, to purge Russia of this barbarism, of this shame, and to remove this immense obstacle to all culture and progress in our country.

And we can justifiably pride ourselves on having carried out that purge with greater determination and much more rapidly, boldly and successfully, and, from the point of view of its effect on the masses, much more widely and deeply, than the great French Revolution over one hundred and twenty-five years ago.

Vilma chose to live on the side of duty

On the 14th anniversary of Vilma Espin’s death, Cubans recall her as someone in love with life, who long after abandoning this world, continues at our side

Madeleine Sautié Rodríguez

Granma | June 18, 2021

Death is a definitive word, but there are beings for whom it is hardly fitting, since dying means that something has ended. Vilma is among those who, in love with life, would give it up for her people, to live on in glory. Even after abandoning this world 14 years ago, she continues at our side.

We could say a great deal about what she did, about the girl from Santiago – the second Cuban woman to graduate in Chemical Engineering – who chose a path that took her away from a comfortable existence, to Revolution.

Among the many images that come to mind is that of the young student conspiring to put an end to a corrupt, subservient regime, who began writing pamphlets and went on to become a member of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee and Political Bureau and president of the Federation of Cuban Women, the FMC, a huge organization fighting for women´s rights and dignity.

ROSA LUXEMBURG AND THE POLITICAL MASS STRIKE

ROSA LUXEMBURG

Rida Vaquas

Prometheus | March 06, 2021

This paper was delivered to celebrate Rosa Luxemburg’s 150th Birthday at a panel organised by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and the International Rosa Luxemburg Society. You can find a video of the complete panel and the discussion here.

If you ever went to an anti-austerity protest in the United Kingdom in the last decade, you may well have seen the ubiquitous placards demanding a ‘General Strike Now’. In the US ‘General Strike 2020’ briefly trended on Twitter in March 2020, spurred on by popular writers like Naomi Klein and Bree Newsom Bass. Most tellingly, shortly after this, multiple articles appeared explaining what exactly a general strike is. Of course, no socialist would be against a general strike were it to occur. But raising the demand for a general strike, through placards on demonstrations, or by popular tweets, suggests a decline in our ability to think about what mass strikes are, why they happen, and what can be achieved with them.

Conversation with Comrade Lenin

LENIN 151

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Awhirl with events,
packed with jobs one too many,
the day slowly sinks
as the night shadows fall.
There are two in the room:
I
and Lenin-
a photograph
on the whiteness of wall.

The stubble slides upward
above his lip
as his mouth
jerks open in speech.
The  tense
creases of brow
hold thought
in their grip,
immense brow
matched by thought immense.
A forest of flags,
raised-up hands thick as grass…
Thousands are marching
beneath him…
Transported,
alight with joy,
I rise from my place,
eager to see him,
hail him,
report to him!
“Comrade  Lenin,
I report to you –
(not a dictate of office,
the heart’s prompting alone)

This hellish work
that we’re out to do

will be done
and  is already being done.
We  feed and we clothe
and give light to the needy,

the quotas
for coal
and for iron
fulfill,
but there is
any amount
of bleeding
muck
and  rubbish
around  us still.

Without you,
there’s many
have got out of hand,

all the sparring
and  squabbling
does one in.
There’s scum
in plenty
hounding our land,

outside the borders
and  also
within.

Try to
count ’em
and
tab ’em –
it’s no go,

there’s all kinds,
and  they’re
thick as nettles:
kulaks,
red tapists,
and,
down the row,
drunkards,
sectarians,
lickspittles.
They strut around
proudly
as peacocks,
badges and fountain pens
studding their chests.
We’ll lick the lot of ’em-
but
to lick ’em
is no easy job
at the very best.
On snow-covered lands
and on stubbly fields,
in smoky plants
and on factory sites,
with you in our hearts,
Comrade  Lenin,
we  build,
we  think,
we breathe,
we  live,
and we fight!”
Awhirl with events,
packed with jobs one too many,
the day slowly sinks
as the night shadows fall.
There are two in the room:
I
and Lenin –
a photograph
on the whiteness of wall.

Lenin’s Birthday

LENIN 151

Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | April 22, 2021

Lenin, the proletarian revolutionary, was born on this day – April 22, 1870.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, led the Great October Revolution in 1917 in Russia that has changed the world forever.

The epoch-making revolution by the exploited stood as unparallel among all revolutions as the revolution overthrew all the exploiting classes while all the past revolutions replaced one exploiting class with another. Breaking the chain of imperialism, the proletarian revolution opposed imperialist war, and stood for emancipation of the peoples in colonies. The world shall never be the same since the Great October Revolution.

Rosa Luxemburg at 150: a revolutionary legacy

TRIBUTE TO A REVOLUTIONARY 

James Plested

Red Flag | March 5, 2021

Rosa Luxemburg, one of the great leaders in the history of the socialist movement, was born in Poland (then a province of the Russian empire) 150 years ago this month, on 5 March 1871. Luxemburg cut her teeth in the Polish revolutionary underground, but as an immensely talented political leader, she was drawn to the centre of the European workers’ movement in Germany, where, from the late 1890s, she became the driving force of the revolutionary wing of German socialism.

Lenin

REMEMBERING LENIN

Ernesto Estévez Rams

Granma | January 21, 2021

Photo: Pinterest

Describing the October Revolution in Russia, John Reed, in the prologue of his extraordinary book Ten Days that Shook the World, describes the forces vying for power, in the midst of a Revolution that had not yet managed to define its destiny.

On the one hand, what he calls the possessing classes who aspired to remove the Czar and replace him with a bourgeois power, in the style of the Western democracies of the United States and France; on the other, the Bolsheviks, who saw the Revolution as based on the class struggle and insisted on the necessity of the Soviets taking power.