ROSA LUXEMBURG

On the occasion of International Women's day I searched for a write up on Rosa Luxemburg in media . Sadly no one remember her in the predominately capitalist's driven world of today . She was one of the bravest proponent of Marxist ideology and revolutionary who beleived in the power of masses; her birth day falls on 5th March . I fell for Rosa Luxemburg at that impressionable age when Marxism is panacea for all the ills of the world .Though Marxism as an ideology has failed Arthur Koestler described Marx as a " God That Failed" but it is an excellent intellectual exercise to read Marxism and those who are compulsive reader ;like me who must read something serious every day to remain sane;it gives inexhaustible supply of material . Rosa Luxemburg name itself is soothing in the otherwise dreary world of Marxist philosophers . She was born in Polish Russia in 1871 and at the young age of 22 only; she was an acclaimed Marxist . I read everything about her in available material even saw movie on her life and times (Rosa Luxemburg directed by Margretha Von Tropp) dubbed in English language .She left Warsaw and moved to Berlin there she was active in left wing politics of SDP (German socialist democratic party ) . Her excellent rhetorical skill made her spokesperson for SDP party . She obtained her doctoral degree from university of Zurich . She attacked Revisionism of Bernstein and presented her views as "Social Reform or Revolution"..In her views proletariat power and revolutionary changes in method of production can bring necessary reforms. She was critical of German militarism and predicted WW1 and predicted eastward expansion of Marxism to Russia instead of industrialised Britain and Germany. She had met Lenin and she was opposed to the his centralist policies propounded in the book "What is to be done" . To oppose the war efforts of Germany she started Spartacus league with Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring .Her thoughts are described as Dialectics of spontainity and organisation or Luxemburgism.Here spontaneity is a grass route level approach to the organisation for the class struggle .She failed to imbibe "marxist tendencies' in the masses or educate them due to which sizeable portion of SDP party workers remained in contact with bourgeois to defeat the revolution and later on formed the separate party. She lived with Leo Jogiches without caring for social sanctions and eventually married to Gustav Lübeck a German She had developed hip problem at the age of five which left her with a permanent limp . During the imprisonment she was murdered and her body was quietly dumped in a river near Berlin and after three months it was taken out and buried . The version given by the Government was contested by forensic experts as it did not bear resembelance to Rosa Luxemburg, even DNA test was inconclusive. At that place memorial is built and on 5th March masses gather there to remember her.