Socialism, Christianity, and Rosa Luxemburg Roland Boer
Rosa Luxemburg
“A curious piece of historical sophistry” — that is how J.P. Nettl in his classic biography (Nettl 1966 vol 1: 323; 1969: 221) describes Rosa Luxemburg’s treatise, Socialism and the Churches (2004 [1905]). A rather convenient dismissal, is it not? It does allow Nettl to sidestep the whole issue of religion in Luxemburg’s work and get on with what he regards as the more important issues in her life and thought. By contrast, I want to give this neglected text a little more justice than Nettl does. This essay, then, is a sustained engagement with that work by Luxemburg, along with her essay, “An Anti-Clerical Policy of Socialism” (Luxemburg 2004 [1903]). Despite all the beguiling simplicity of her style, the fascination that still surrounds her, or even the freshness of her work that makes it seem as though it were for today’s struggles, the reception of Rosa Luxemburg is bedeviled by two problems. Firstly, the vast majority of work on Luxemburg has focused on her biography; I was able to find at least eight biographies in the last four decades (Frölich 1969; Nettl 1966, 1969; Florence 1975: 79-158; Ettinger 1986; Jacob 2000; Abraham 1989; Shepardson 1996; Cliff 1980). That she was a woman is one obvious reason for focusing on her biography, especially the intimate and personal details. Another reason is that biography seems to be the fate of those on the Left who meet a grisly end or are visited by some scandal. For Luxemburg it was a sordid murder at the Copyright © 2007 by Roland Boer and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087