ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION

BOOK REVIEW

ROSA LUXEMBURG, E. ETTINGER, VINTAGE PRESS, 1989

MARCH IS WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

If you need to know, and you should, what Rosa Luxemburg's contributions to Marxist theory were and about her struggles within various European left-wing socialist parties to fight for her revolutionary perspective then this is not the book for you. You need to read Rosa Luxemburg Speaks or read one of her eminent political biographers like P. Froelich or M. Nettl. If, however, you know Rosa's theories and political struggles then this book can provide some insights about what it was like to be a leading revolutionary socialist woman in early 20th century Europe.

Ms. Ettinger has based her work on various correspondences between Rosa and her political associates, women friends and her lovers, particularly the tempestuous and long time relationship with Leo Jogliches. In that sense this is a more scholarly work than what currently passes for the personal biography of political celebrities, and its shows by keeping speculation about personal motives within some kind of bounds. In short, it is a labor of love, not of political love because the author makes no bones that she is not in sympathy with Rosa's overall political strategy but of deep admiration for someone who listened to her own drummer. And did it in a very much male-dominated political world.

I read political biographies mainly to get a background look at what makes the subject of the biography tick. After reading this book it struck me once again that even revolutionaries, and particularly revolutionary women, cannot fully transcend the facts of their personal upbringing and their times. Clearly, Rosa was a liberated woman by any measure. However, I got the overwhelming feeling that she could never fully transcend the outsider-ness of being Jewish or of the terrible strain of breaking free of the mores of Victorian Europe. It may be a truism of Marxism but true nevertheless that it would take some generations before the `new' man and women would fully take on the attributes of socialist comradeship but after reading this book it is also clear that even the `vanguard' intellectuals of the movement can only go so far in transcending their capitalist environment. Nevertheless Remember Rosa Luxemburg-the Rose of the Revolution.