A Critical Reply to Stephen Eric Bronner

Abstract

What is the “salience for the present” of Rosa Luxemburg’s thought? That was the timely question posed by Steve Bronner’s article. Steve has done much to preserve Luxemburg’s legacy in his 1979 edited collection, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, and his 1981 book, A Revolutionary for Our Times: Rosa Luxemburg. Twenty years ago Steve wrote, “Luxemburg understood that it was Marx’s method, not anyone of his particular judgments, that provided the key to emancipation.”¹ Now Steve thinks the condi- tion for an appropriation of Luxemburg’s thought is a rejection of the dogmatic and teleological Marxist framework within which it was developed. I do not find this reversal persuasive. In Part 1 I suggest there are some general problems with this “post-Marxist” method of appropriating the legacy of Marxism. In Part 2 I challenge some of the new political conclusions Steve has drawn from his new Luxemburg.