Rosa Luxemburg and the Constructing of a Political Subject

Abstract

Rosa Luxemburg is not only an economic author. In texts written in
dramatic days of 1905 revolution she presented a path-breaking account of construction
of political subjectivities, and thus revolutionary subject, in the very process
of revolutionary struggles. The political dimension of her interventions shed a
new light on her overall theoretical oeuvre. There is a constant tension between a
determination of revolutionary process by economy and a political construction of
revolutionary subject out of plurality of social demands. This article is an attempt
to “symptomally read” of her texts, as evidence – I argue – of her theoretical struggle
with the political – a radical contingency of the political dimension, which
emerged in the given historical circumstances. Therefore, her works from 1905
period could be read as a very early attempt to comprehend the problem, which
we are still dealing now in thinking revolutionary and emancipatory politics. However,
a “closure”in the certain intellectual horizon prevented Luxemburg from drawing
ultimate consequences of this condition. Nevertheless, the political is still an “invisible cause” generating tension and peculiar theoretical oscillation in Luxemburg’s

thinking.