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Democracy and Dictatorship: Rosa Luxemburg’s Path to Revolution

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The German Revolution and Political Theory

Part of the book series: Marx, Engels, and Marxisms ((MAENMA))

Abstract

This chapter argues that Luxemburg’s central theoretical contribution during the German Revolution was to outline a method of revolutionary transformation in which the socialist revolution was understood not merely as a struggle for institutional power, but as the construction of a new way of life and new cultural understandings which would guarantee the liberation of a people’s “spirit.” Rather than envisaging the revolution as a single act, Luxemburg imagined a long process of economic and social change in which an active and mobilised population would overthrow the bourgeois social order and create new institutional and cultural forms for a post-capitalist society. For this process not to collapse into civil war or counter-revolution, it was essential for Luxemburg that it be carried out by a majority of workers with a commitment to basic political freedoms and democratic socialist institutions.

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Correspondence to Mayra Cotta .

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Cotta, M. (2019). Democracy and Dictatorship: Rosa Luxemburg’s Path to Revolution. In: Kets, G., Muldoon, J. (eds) The German Revolution and Political Theory. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13917-9_9

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