Published Articles / Chapters by Rory Castle Jones
Contrary to what is widely believed, the Polish-Jewish anti-war activist was first and foremost a... more Contrary to what is widely believed, the Polish-Jewish anti-war activist was first and foremost a humanist, and both a victim and active opponent of anti-Semitism
Praktyka Teoretyczna, Dec 2012
The article explores Rosa Luxemburg’s background, youth
and family and their influence on her Po... more The article explores Rosa Luxemburg’s background, youth
and family and their influence on her Polish and Jewish
identities, as well as on her views on the Polish and Jewish
Questions. It examines the views of Luxemburg’s father and
grandfather, as well as other relatives, in order to understand
the origins of her own ideas about Jewish assimilation, Polish
nationalism and other subjects. Addressing the lack
of scholarship on this subject by Luxemburg’s biographers,
the article uses recent studies, newly available archival
material and extensive interviews with members of the
Luxemburg family to offer a new interpretation of the origins
of Rosa Luxemburg’s Polish-Jewish identity.
Thesis by Rory Castle Jones
A study of the identity, family, and background of the socialist thinker and revolutionary, Rosa ... more A study of the identity, family, and background of the socialist thinker and revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919).
Using a wealth of new and previously unknown sources, including extensive archival materials and interviews with Luxemburg’s relatives, the thesis investigates Luxemburg’s national, religious, cultural, and gender identities, and the important role which her family played in her life. Her identity as a Polish-Jewish woman is the focus of the study.
Chapter one introduces Luxemburg’s life and thought, with a focus on her identity. Chapters two and three examine Luxemburg’s relationship with her parents, exploring in particular her Polish-Jewish and gender identities. Chapter four inspects Luxemburg’s relationship with her only sister, investigating her gender identity from a new angle. Chapters five to seven look at Luxemburg’s relationships with her three brothers, exploring the importance of Polish-Jewish identity and familial ties. Chapter eight investigates Luxemburg’s early life in Poland and the origins of her Polish-Jewish and gender identities in detail. In chapter nine, the relationship between Luxemburg and her longtime romantic and political partner Leo Jogiches (1867-1919) is examined, revealing in particular new aspects of her gender identity. The final chapter explores Luxemburg’s Polish-Jewish identity in detail.
The thesis contributes significantly to scholarship on Luxemburg, as well as contributing to aspects of the wider fields of Polish-Jewish history and the twentieth-century European political left. It lays the foundation for new biographical study of Luxemburg and for new understandings of her life and thought.
Conference Papers by Rory Castle Jones
Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish Jewish woman, born and raised in an oppressive and autocratic state. ... more Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish Jewish woman, born and raised in an oppressive and autocratic state. At the age of seventeen, she left the Russian Empire for western Europe, where she spent the rest of her life (except for a brief revolutionary interlude in 1906). This paper presents some of the key findings of a doctoral research project into Luxemburg’s identity, family and background. Using a wealth of new and previously unknown sources, including extensive archival materials and numerous interviews with Luxemburg’s relatives, the paper investigates Luxemburg’s national, religious, cultural, and gender identities, and the important role which her family played in her life.
Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was an internationalist revolutionary socialist, politically active fr... more Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was an internationalist revolutionary socialist, politically active from her youth in Warsaw in the 1880s until her murder in Berlin during the German Revolution of 1918/19. Popularly known as ‘Red Rosa’, Luxemburg was a leading figure in both the Polish and German socialist movements and her writings on socialism, democracy, revolution, war and imperialism continue to influence the political left today.
This paper considers Luxemburg’s almost unique position as a woman in the leadership of the Second Socialist International (1889-1916). It explores her gender identity, her contribution to the Women’s Question, and her relations and interactions with male and female comrades. It also considers the sexist abuse directed at Luxemburg and her reactions to it. For example, when male socialist leaders composed witty epitaphs for Luxemburg and her friend the socialist-feminist Clara Zetkin, Luxemburg retorted that it ought to be: ‘Here lie the last two men of German Social Democracy’.
This paper challenges existing notions that Luxemburg was not a feminist, that she contributed little or nothing to gender politics (including the struggle for suffrage) and that she ignored women’s issues. It will be argued that her gender played an important role in her identity and radicalism.
This paper explores Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas around the concepts of revolutionary honour, sacrifice... more This paper explores Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas around the concepts of revolutionary honour, sacrifice and honour in death. In particular, it will examine Luxemburg’s writings on these subjects during the two revolutions in which she directly participated; the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the German Revolution of 1918/19. Using Luxemburg’s letters and writings, both published and unpublished, her attitudes towards the individual and collective honour of revolutionaries and their physical and moral sacrifices (ranging from neglect of personal and/or family life to illness, imprisonment and death) will be explored in detail. Luxemburg made frequent references to her willingness to sacrifice her own life in the cause of the revolution. From her youth, she held revolutionary martyrs of the past in high esteem, praising the executed Polish socialists of the 1880s as revolutionaries who had ‘met death for an idea with heads held high, and who in dying encouraged and enflamed the living’ (January-February 1903). During her imprisonment in Warsaw in 1906, Luxemburg was tormented by her jailers with a mock execution and later admitted that she was ‘ashamed’ to have felt fear in the face of death. During the November Revolution of 1918, she wrote that she was ‘comforted by the grim thought that I too will soon be sent to meet my Maker- perhaps by a bullet of the counter-revolution’ (18 November 1918). In her final days during the January Rising in 1919, Luxemburg claimed to have ‘only one wish… to meet my death in our cause’ (11 January 1919). After Luxemburg’s murder, there were frequent claims by friends, comrades and biographers that her death was the natural fulfilment of a lifetime of sacrifice in the cause of the revolution. The paper will investigate these issues and examine what Luxemburg’s writings from 1905 and 1918/19 can tell us about her attitudes towards revolutionary honour, sacrifice and death. Finally, the paper will ask what this can tell us about the development and importance of these concepts in the early twentieth-century socialist movement more generally.
Paper introducing the panel 'Socialism or Barbarism? War, Climate Change, and the Future of the P... more Paper introducing the panel 'Socialism or Barbarism? War, Climate Change, and the Future of the Planet' at the conference 'Rosa Remix: New Takes on a Longtime Classic' (organised by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - New York Office)
During the January Rising in Berlin in 1919, the Communist leader Rosa Luxemburg wrote to the wid... more During the January Rising in Berlin in 1919, the Communist leader Rosa Luxemburg wrote to the widow of socialist newspaper editor Wolfgang Fernbach- recently murdered by right-wing freikorps: ‘I press your hand in your grief. I have seen so many of my friends fall right and left at my side. This is the fate of the revolutionary fighter. I have now only one wish, also to meet my death in our cause. I press your hand and know you will be courageous'. Two months earlier, she had written to her friends Marie and Adolf Geck on the loss of their son on the Western Front, ‘I am only comforted by the grim thought that I too will soon be sent to meet my Maker – perhaps by a bullet of the counter-revolution, which is lurking on all sides’. On 15 January 1919, Luxemburg and her comrade Karl Liebknecht were themselves arrested by freikorps and were brutally murdered, instantly becoming symbols and martyrs of the German left. Her successor as Communist Party (KPD) leader, Leo Jogiches, told comrades that he would not flee Berlin as ‘someone must remain, at least to write our obituaries’.
The KPD, which was founded on 31 December 1918- 1 January 1919, was born in bloodshed and had no shortage of men and women willing to give their lives for ‘the cause’. This conviction and sacrifice was both encouraged and commemorated throughout the life of the party, and beyond. In the Revolution of 1918/19, the years of resistance to the Nazis, the Spanish Civil War, Stalinist purges and later in the German Democratic Republic, German Communists willingly gave their lives for the movement and were praised and remembered for doing so.
The origins of the concept of the ‘honourable death’ pre-date 1918, but the specific Communist Party culture and attitudes were shaped by the experiences of left-wing socialists during the First World War and, more importantly, during the German Revolution of 1918/19 and January Rising of 1919. The paper explores how the concept of ‘an honourable death’- exemplified by the deaths of Luxemburg and Liebknecht- developed and how it later shaped the actions, ideology and (sometimes suicidal) policies of the German Communist Party.
In 1913, the Polish-Jewish-German socialist Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was put on trial in Frankf... more In 1913, the Polish-Jewish-German socialist Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was put on trial in Frankfurt-am-Main for a speech in which she had called on German workers to refuse to shoot their French and British brothers in the event of war. In the courtroom, the prosecution labelled Luxemburg ‘rootless’ and a ‘creature without a home’. Luxemburg famously replied, in a speech which turned the trial into a moral triumph for the socialists, that she had a ‘dearer, greater home than any Prussian prosecutor… What other fatherland is there than the great mass of working men and women?’ Her socialism was radical, uncompromising and centred on her personal idea of internationalism, which led her to oppose the struggle for independence in her native Poland. For Luxemburg, the embodiment of her internationalism was the Socialist International, known as the Second International. Far more than the average delegate who travelled across Europe to attend its congresses between 1889 and 1914, Luxemburg had a passionate emotional, psychological and intellectual attachment to the International. When her beloved International failed to prevent the outbreak of war in August 1914, she contemplated suicide.
This explores Rosa Luxemburg’s socialist internationalism and her attachment to the Second International. She attended every one of its congresses between 1893 and 1914, sat on its executive International Socialist Bureau (as the Polish representative) for a number of years and was in many ways an internationalist par excellence, who genuinely believed in the International’s power and moral authority. Using letters, memoirs and her writings, the paper examines Luxemburg’s involvement in the Second International and re-evaluates her creed of internationalism using original research into her background, her upbringing and the origins of her internationalist perspective.
Abstract: Rosa Luxemburg’s views on revolution, democracy, socialism and the national question ar... more Abstract: Rosa Luxemburg’s views on revolution, democracy, socialism and the national question are well-known, and it is because of them that she is considered one of the most important figures ever produced by the international socialist movement. What is less understood is what produced this revolutionary intellectual, who left Warsaw in 1889 at the age of eighteen already a committed Marxist with firmly established views on all four of these issues. Biographical studies have typically devoted very little attention to Luxemburg’s early life, background and family. There are many reasons for this, including the lack of available sources, the silence of her relatives following her death and Luxemburg’s own extreme reluctance to discuss her family or personal life. This paper seeks to redress this imbalance and to examine the influence of Luxemburg’s family and background on her identity and outlook. Using extensive interviews with the Luxemburg family conducted over three years and important collections of letters, documents and photographs at the Hoover Institution (Stanford, California), International Institute for Social History (Amsterdam) and the National Archives (London), it will be argued that Rosa Luxemburg’s revolutionary outlook was shaped not only by her own experiences growing up in Zamość and Warsaw under Russian rule, but by the experiences of her siblings, parents and grandparents, particularly her father, who was active in both the Jewish Enlightenment and Polish revolutionary movements. It is hoped that this research will contribute to future biographical studies and offer new insight into the origins of Luxemburg’s views on revolution, democracy, socialism and the national question.
Key Words: Rosa Luxemburg, Revolution, Democracy, Socialism, National Question, Family, Background, Polish Identity, Jewish Identity
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Published Articles / Chapters by Rory Castle Jones
and family and their influence on her Polish and Jewish
identities, as well as on her views on the Polish and Jewish
Questions. It examines the views of Luxemburg’s father and
grandfather, as well as other relatives, in order to understand
the origins of her own ideas about Jewish assimilation, Polish
nationalism and other subjects. Addressing the lack
of scholarship on this subject by Luxemburg’s biographers,
the article uses recent studies, newly available archival
material and extensive interviews with members of the
Luxemburg family to offer a new interpretation of the origins
of Rosa Luxemburg’s Polish-Jewish identity.
Thesis by Rory Castle Jones
Using a wealth of new and previously unknown sources, including extensive archival materials and interviews with Luxemburg’s relatives, the thesis investigates Luxemburg’s national, religious, cultural, and gender identities, and the important role which her family played in her life. Her identity as a Polish-Jewish woman is the focus of the study.
Chapter one introduces Luxemburg’s life and thought, with a focus on her identity. Chapters two and three examine Luxemburg’s relationship with her parents, exploring in particular her Polish-Jewish and gender identities. Chapter four inspects Luxemburg’s relationship with her only sister, investigating her gender identity from a new angle. Chapters five to seven look at Luxemburg’s relationships with her three brothers, exploring the importance of Polish-Jewish identity and familial ties. Chapter eight investigates Luxemburg’s early life in Poland and the origins of her Polish-Jewish and gender identities in detail. In chapter nine, the relationship between Luxemburg and her longtime romantic and political partner Leo Jogiches (1867-1919) is examined, revealing in particular new aspects of her gender identity. The final chapter explores Luxemburg’s Polish-Jewish identity in detail.
The thesis contributes significantly to scholarship on Luxemburg, as well as contributing to aspects of the wider fields of Polish-Jewish history and the twentieth-century European political left. It lays the foundation for new biographical study of Luxemburg and for new understandings of her life and thought.
Conference Papers by Rory Castle Jones
This paper considers Luxemburg’s almost unique position as a woman in the leadership of the Second Socialist International (1889-1916). It explores her gender identity, her contribution to the Women’s Question, and her relations and interactions with male and female comrades. It also considers the sexist abuse directed at Luxemburg and her reactions to it. For example, when male socialist leaders composed witty epitaphs for Luxemburg and her friend the socialist-feminist Clara Zetkin, Luxemburg retorted that it ought to be: ‘Here lie the last two men of German Social Democracy’.
This paper challenges existing notions that Luxemburg was not a feminist, that she contributed little or nothing to gender politics (including the struggle for suffrage) and that she ignored women’s issues. It will be argued that her gender played an important role in her identity and radicalism.
The KPD, which was founded on 31 December 1918- 1 January 1919, was born in bloodshed and had no shortage of men and women willing to give their lives for ‘the cause’. This conviction and sacrifice was both encouraged and commemorated throughout the life of the party, and beyond. In the Revolution of 1918/19, the years of resistance to the Nazis, the Spanish Civil War, Stalinist purges and later in the German Democratic Republic, German Communists willingly gave their lives for the movement and were praised and remembered for doing so.
The origins of the concept of the ‘honourable death’ pre-date 1918, but the specific Communist Party culture and attitudes were shaped by the experiences of left-wing socialists during the First World War and, more importantly, during the German Revolution of 1918/19 and January Rising of 1919. The paper explores how the concept of ‘an honourable death’- exemplified by the deaths of Luxemburg and Liebknecht- developed and how it later shaped the actions, ideology and (sometimes suicidal) policies of the German Communist Party.
This explores Rosa Luxemburg’s socialist internationalism and her attachment to the Second International. She attended every one of its congresses between 1893 and 1914, sat on its executive International Socialist Bureau (as the Polish representative) for a number of years and was in many ways an internationalist par excellence, who genuinely believed in the International’s power and moral authority. Using letters, memoirs and her writings, the paper examines Luxemburg’s involvement in the Second International and re-evaluates her creed of internationalism using original research into her background, her upbringing and the origins of her internationalist perspective.
Key Words: Rosa Luxemburg, Revolution, Democracy, Socialism, National Question, Family, Background, Polish Identity, Jewish Identity
and family and their influence on her Polish and Jewish
identities, as well as on her views on the Polish and Jewish
Questions. It examines the views of Luxemburg’s father and
grandfather, as well as other relatives, in order to understand
the origins of her own ideas about Jewish assimilation, Polish
nationalism and other subjects. Addressing the lack
of scholarship on this subject by Luxemburg’s biographers,
the article uses recent studies, newly available archival
material and extensive interviews with members of the
Luxemburg family to offer a new interpretation of the origins
of Rosa Luxemburg’s Polish-Jewish identity.
Using a wealth of new and previously unknown sources, including extensive archival materials and interviews with Luxemburg’s relatives, the thesis investigates Luxemburg’s national, religious, cultural, and gender identities, and the important role which her family played in her life. Her identity as a Polish-Jewish woman is the focus of the study.
Chapter one introduces Luxemburg’s life and thought, with a focus on her identity. Chapters two and three examine Luxemburg’s relationship with her parents, exploring in particular her Polish-Jewish and gender identities. Chapter four inspects Luxemburg’s relationship with her only sister, investigating her gender identity from a new angle. Chapters five to seven look at Luxemburg’s relationships with her three brothers, exploring the importance of Polish-Jewish identity and familial ties. Chapter eight investigates Luxemburg’s early life in Poland and the origins of her Polish-Jewish and gender identities in detail. In chapter nine, the relationship between Luxemburg and her longtime romantic and political partner Leo Jogiches (1867-1919) is examined, revealing in particular new aspects of her gender identity. The final chapter explores Luxemburg’s Polish-Jewish identity in detail.
The thesis contributes significantly to scholarship on Luxemburg, as well as contributing to aspects of the wider fields of Polish-Jewish history and the twentieth-century European political left. It lays the foundation for new biographical study of Luxemburg and for new understandings of her life and thought.
This paper considers Luxemburg’s almost unique position as a woman in the leadership of the Second Socialist International (1889-1916). It explores her gender identity, her contribution to the Women’s Question, and her relations and interactions with male and female comrades. It also considers the sexist abuse directed at Luxemburg and her reactions to it. For example, when male socialist leaders composed witty epitaphs for Luxemburg and her friend the socialist-feminist Clara Zetkin, Luxemburg retorted that it ought to be: ‘Here lie the last two men of German Social Democracy’.
This paper challenges existing notions that Luxemburg was not a feminist, that she contributed little or nothing to gender politics (including the struggle for suffrage) and that she ignored women’s issues. It will be argued that her gender played an important role in her identity and radicalism.
The KPD, which was founded on 31 December 1918- 1 January 1919, was born in bloodshed and had no shortage of men and women willing to give their lives for ‘the cause’. This conviction and sacrifice was both encouraged and commemorated throughout the life of the party, and beyond. In the Revolution of 1918/19, the years of resistance to the Nazis, the Spanish Civil War, Stalinist purges and later in the German Democratic Republic, German Communists willingly gave their lives for the movement and were praised and remembered for doing so.
The origins of the concept of the ‘honourable death’ pre-date 1918, but the specific Communist Party culture and attitudes were shaped by the experiences of left-wing socialists during the First World War and, more importantly, during the German Revolution of 1918/19 and January Rising of 1919. The paper explores how the concept of ‘an honourable death’- exemplified by the deaths of Luxemburg and Liebknecht- developed and how it later shaped the actions, ideology and (sometimes suicidal) policies of the German Communist Party.
This explores Rosa Luxemburg’s socialist internationalism and her attachment to the Second International. She attended every one of its congresses between 1893 and 1914, sat on its executive International Socialist Bureau (as the Polish representative) for a number of years and was in many ways an internationalist par excellence, who genuinely believed in the International’s power and moral authority. Using letters, memoirs and her writings, the paper examines Luxemburg’s involvement in the Second International and re-evaluates her creed of internationalism using original research into her background, her upbringing and the origins of her internationalist perspective.
Key Words: Rosa Luxemburg, Revolution, Democracy, Socialism, National Question, Family, Background, Polish Identity, Jewish Identity