Work

The disappointment of Rosa Luxemburg: Rethinking revolutionary commitment in the face of failure

Year: 2023

Type: article

Abstract: Despite the recent revival of revolutionary commitment in response to left melancholia, I suggest that the contemporary academic left has not adequately addressed the difficulty of responding to failure as an inevitable aspect of revolutionary politics. The dominant tendency has been to try to offset the risk of failure by managing revolutionary action in line with a pre-given model of revolutionary change – only to limit the range of possibilities for revolutionary engagement. To address this problem, I draw on Rosa Luxemburg, a foremost revolutionary thinker, whose experiences of disappointment led her to rethink the notion of revolutionary commitment as a practice of learning from failure. This rethinking of commitment suggests a different way of engaging with failure – one that expands our imagination of political possibilities beyond the confines of the dominant contemporary responses to left melancholia and enriches their visions of revolutionary change.

Source: Philosophy & Social Criticism

DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184406

Author: Maša Mrovlje

Institution: University of Leeds

Language: English

Topic: Marxism and Critical Theory

Subfield: Philosophy

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,000