On 15 January 1919, a soldier’s rifle butt smashed the skull of Rosa Luxemburg, ending the life of a revolutionary genius, fighter and thinker. She was killed by a far-right militia backed by the reformist German Social Democratic Party.
Luxemburg’s life and work require a serious assessment of her activities as well as her thoughts – they are inseparable. In the framework of a pamphlet, however, one cannot hope to do justice to both. In trying to avoid falling between two stools, this pamphlet concentrates mainly on Luxemburg’s ideas, as they contain her main permanent contribution to the international socialist movement.
A scientific socialist, whose motto was “doubt all”, Rosa Luxemburg could have wished for nothing better than a critical evaluation of her own work. This pamphlet was written in a spirit of admiration and criticism of its subject.