Rosa Luxemburg: a life of struggle
When Rosa Luxemburg was murdered 90 years ago this month, the international workers' movement lost one of its greatest revolutionaries. Here we reprint an evaluation of her life from a pamphlet by Socialist Workers Party founder Tony Cliff, first published in 1959.
Rosa Luxemburg was born in the small Polish town of Zamosc on 5 March 1871. From early youth she was active in the socialist movement. She joined a revolutionary party called Proletariat, founded in 1882, some 21 years before the Russian Social Democratic Party (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks) came into being. From the beginning Proletariat was, in principles and programme, many steps ahead of the revolutionary movement in Russia.