On Rosa Luxemburg's Contribution To Women's Liberation Movement

Rosa Luxemburg was an outstanding woman revolutionary of Germany and international communist movement as well as Poland, a Marxist theorist, one of the leftists of German Social Democracy and the Second International, one of the founders of KPD (German Communist Party). Rosa Luxemburg as a revolutionary has been enjoying great respect; however, Rosa Luxemburg as a theorist has been given inadequate weight since long ago.Rosa Luxemburg was not only a revolutionary but a theory-giant, who was a revolutionary fighting eagle guided by theory. She was, and has been mentioning, quoting and studying. John Peter Nettl, the author of international influential English version Rosa Luxemburg (2 Volumes) published in 1966, mentioned that Rosa Luxemburg avoided involvement in the women's movement. Perhaps influenced by this biographer Nett1, few people have been studying on the narration of her women's issues. No articles on women's movement are included in Selected Rosa Luxemburg Writings (Chinese version). What is more, her writings or papers on women's issues are rarely available at home and abroad. Despite the fact that people have believed that Luxemburg showed little or no interest in women issue, in fact, her women's liberation movement views are scattered in her papers, writings, and letters to her friends as well as in writings of her contemporary peers and correspondence letters. By reading her original works and related writings, we can find that there are quite a few "flashpoints" in her women's liberation movement.This article makes an attempt to discuss and evaluate Rosa Luxemburg's contribution to women's liberation movement based on the available materials concerned with women issues, further understands her brilliant life and thoughts and restores its original historical feature. Luxemburg proposed that women liberate from the role of "family slaves", proposed that marriage be free and strive for proletariat women's political rights, believed that proletariat women all over the world should unite striving for peace and democracy, and criticized bourgeois feminist movement. All of those enriched and developed Marxist women liberation movement theory. Luxemburg considered women as a basic force of socialist revolution, and always saw women's liberation movement as part of proletariat liberation movement. Luxemburg's women liberation movement was not purely women liberation movement but rooted in revolutionary proletariat views. Luxemburg's women liberation movement theory played an important significance at that time in terms of enlightening and stimulating the mass proletariat women to strive for women's rights and devote to socialist revolutionary movement as well as strengthen class foundation of proletariat movement. However, due to times limitation, completely emphasizing class status of women movement, not acknowledging utilization and unity of bourgeois feminist movement in proletariat women movement and purely expelling the force of bourgeois feminist movement to some extent weakened & dispersed the possible united force and weakened action abilities of proletariat women movement.