Despite his close relationship with Rosa Luxemburg, early KPD chairman Ernst Meyer is rarely remembered among the historic leaders of the German left. Yet his writing on “revolutionary Realpolitik” offers key insights for socialist strategy today.
Bernd Riexinger, co-chair of Germany's Left Party, talks about socialist strategy in the twenty-first century.
Franz Mehring joined the fledging socialist movement in Bismarck’s Germany and became one of its most brilliant propagandists. From his historical writings to his biography of Karl Marx, Mehring left behind a vital body of work for Marxists to draw upon.
From Winston Churchill to the Nazis, anticommunists have long blamed the spread of socialism on Jews. With the Left again on the rise, the antisemitic trope of "Judeo-Bolshevism" is back.
Rosa Luxemburg is rightly recognized for her enormous contributions to the international socialist movement. Yet the pivotal role that many other women played in the German Revolution is all too often ignored.
Lyndon LaRouche started off lecturing about dialectics and Rosa Luxemburg. By the 1980s, he was Glenn Beck with a private security force.
The Invention of Marxism is a rich group biography of the founding generation of socialists, who introduced millions to Karl Marx’s ideas. Even where it falls short, its details still charm and provoke interest.
The question of the party is back on the Left's agenda — and not a moment too soon.
Socialism is often conflated with authoritarianism. But historically, socialists have been among democracy's staunchest advocates.
Lenin's critics like to paint him as an authoritarian through and through. But that picture doesn't match reality.
Through butchery and sectarianism, the autocracies of the Arab world have survived this round. But in the long run, any order dependent on murder and bloodshed is doomed to collapse.
Unions and the Left across the globe have the power to defeat the billionaires. But Jane McAlevey explains that doing this requires we learn the best traditions of labor organizing — and that we talk to people who don’t already agree with us and win them over to our side.
The decisive battles of the German Revolution ended in March 1919 with the bloody crushing of the workers’ uprising. Why did it meet such a fate?
Dutch poet Henriette Roland Holst was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature — but also made her name theorizing the mass strike. Her life shows how a generation of militants linked revolution in the arts to the fight for a socialist future.
Joan Robinson established herself as one of the world’s leading economists in a deeply sexist field. Drawing on the work of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes alike, she left us with a vital legacy for the critical study of capitalism.
Germany’s radical left spearheaded opposition to a futile, destructive war after 1914. Alongside famous leaders like Rosa Luxemburg, there were lesser-known figures such as Johann Knief, whose political life illuminates this vital period of socialist history.
Lelio Basso was a major figure of the postwar Italian left who urged its parties to follow through on their revolutionary programs and avoid subordinating themselves to the ruling Christian Democrats. Italy’s Socialists and Communists should have heeded his advice.
The stakes are high in Brazil’s upcoming presidential election: four more years of the reactionary, corrupt, right-wing rule of Jair Bolsonaro or a return of the most transformative president Brazil has ever seen, Lula da Silva.
The February Revolution erupted 100 years ago today and swept away a blood-soaked monarchy.