Rosa Luxemburg and Revolutionary Socialism
“Freedom,” Rosa Luxemburg wrote, “is always freedom for those who think differently.” Those are certainly her most famous words, but they must not be mistaken for a general piety of liberalism. For they are drawn from a comradely piece of criticism she directed at Lenin and his party in the wake of the 1917 revolution in Russia, written while serving a sentence in prison for her opposition to German militarism and World War I. Whatever our own political views may be, we might honor her memory with a closer reading of her words, and a sober consideration of her circumstances.