Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution in the Twenty-first Century

HELEN SCOTT
University of Vermont, Burlington,
Society for Socialist Studies Journal

Rosa Luxemburg lived in a time and place very unlike our own. She was part of a mass labour movement with revolutionary socialist politics at its core, during a period when world socialist revolution was a tangible prospect.

At the start of the 21st century the United States labour movement is at a historic low point, organized socialist politics lacks a mass working class base, and capitalism brings crisis, war, and environmental destruction across the globe. But nonetheless across the United States, labour activists are confronting the corporate union model with class struggle unionism based on rank and file independence and left politics.

Luxemburg’s Reform and Revolution, written at a high point of socialist struggle, contains invaluable lessons for this new generation of activists as they confront the political and organizational challenges of the day.

Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution in the Twenty-first Century