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This new, authoritative introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s two most important works presents the full text of Reform or Revolution and The Mass Strike, with explanatory notes, appendices, and introductions.

One of the most important Marxist thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century, Rosa Luxemburg is finding renewed interest among a new generation of activists and critics of global capitalism.

Rosa Luxemburg was a visionary socialist in Germany during the early twentieth century, who insisted that ordinary working people could fight and win battles for not only improvements in their daily working conditions, but also the struggle to create a society based on justice and equality. The Essential Rosa Luxemburg: Reform or Revolution and The Mass Strike presents the full text of Rosa Luxemburg’s classics “Reform or Revolution” and “The Mass Strike”, enhanced with extensive explanatory notes, appendices, and introductions. The two most pivotal concepts discussed are the questions of whether capitalism can be reformed and refined into a system of justice, and what efforts are most needed to bring about such a transformation? “Producers’ cooperatives can survive within capitalist economy only if they manage to suppress, by means of some detour, the capitalist-controlled contradiction between the mode of production and the mode of exchange. And they can accomplish this only by removing themselves artificially from the influence of the laws of free competition. And they can succeed in doing the last only when they assure themselves beforehand of a constant circle of consumers, that is, when they assure themselves of a constant market.” A treasure of political science history, offering valuable insights that transcend its time.

Author: Rosa Luxemberg
Edition: pb
ISBN: 1931859361
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Release Date: (February 1, 2007)
280 pages