The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume II - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Rosa Luxemburg's theoretical masterpiece

The second volume in Rosa Luxemburg's Complete Works, entitled Economic Writings 2, contains a new English translation of Luxemburg's The Accumulation of Capital: A Contribution to the Economic Theory of Imperialism, one of the most important works ever composed on capitalism's incessant drive for self-expansion and the integral connection between capitalism and imperialism. This new translation is the first to present the full work as composed by the author. It also contains her book-length response to her critics, The Accumulation of Capital, Or, What the Epigones Have Made Out of Marx's Theory--An Anti-Critique. Taken together, these two works represent one of the most important Marxist studies of the globalization of capital.

Also included is an essay on the second and third volumes of Marx's Capital, which had originally appeared as an unattributed chapter in Franz Mehring's book Karl Marx.

Thank you to David Gaharia for helping to support the translation of this book.

Review Quotes

"One cannot read the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, even at this distance, without an acute yet mournful awareness of what Perry Anderson once termed 'the history of possibility.'"
--Christopher Hitchens

"Luxemburg's criticism of Marxism as dogma and her stress on consciousness exerted an influence on the women's liberation movement which emerged in the late '60s and early '70s."
--Sheila Rowbotham, Guardian

"Rosa goes on being our source of fresh water in thirsty times."
--Eduardo Galeano

"One of the most emotionally intelligent socialists in modern history, a radical of luminous dimension whose intellect is informed by sensibility, and whose largeness of spirit places her in the company of the truly impressive."
--Vivian Gornick, Nation

About the Author

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was a Polish-born Jewish revolutionary and one of the greatest theoretical minds of the European socialist movement. An activist in Germany and Poland, the author of numerous classic works, she participated in the founding of the German Communist Party and the Spartacist insurrection in Berlin in 1919. She was assassinated in January of that year and has become a hero of socialist, communist and feminist movements around the world.