The following report has been contributed by adjunct faculty member Peter Hudis. Also read about The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, which he co-edited with Kevin Anderson.

On November 21-22 an important international conference was held in Guangzhou, China on the theoretic contributions and contemporary significance of Rosa Luxemburg. Sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Society in Germany and the Institute of World Socialism in Beijing, the conference brought together historians, philosophers, and social theorists from China, Japan, Germany, Norway, Austria and France to discuss the life and work of one of the most important woman theoreticians in the history of the European labor and socialist movements. I was the only participant present from the Western hemisphere.

Luxemburg authored a pioneering study of what is today referred to as the “globalization of capital” with her Accumulation of Capital (1911). She is also widely acknowledged for having insisted on the inseparability of democracy from struggles for social transformation, as expressed in her critique of Russian Revolution of 1917 for restricting freedom of speech and expression. Her statement that “Freedom is always and forever only freedom for those who think differently” expressed her life-long commitment to creating a society freedom freed from all forms of patriarchy and hierarchy.

For many years Luxemburg has been ignored in mainland China. The conference in Guangzhou helped break through this veil of silence. All of the dozen scholars from China who gave papers on at the conference focused on Luxemburg’s critique of organizational centralism, elitism, and political monolithism. It was clear from the intense discussion that a number of philosophers, historians, and feminist theorists within China are searching for alternatives to the globalization of capital by drawing upon the democratic and pluralist spirit of Luxemburg’s work. Important papers were also given by scholars from Japan, Germany, and Norway on Luxemburg’s differences with Lenin and the contemporary relevance of her embrace of spontaneous, decentralized forms of organization.

My paper was entitled “New Perspectives on Luxemburg’s Writings on the Non-Western World.” It consisted of a comparison of recently-discovered manuscripts by Luxemburg on pre-capitalist communal forms (some of which are available in The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, co-edited by Kevin B. Anderson and myself) with Marx’s late writings on indigenous peoples and pre-capitalist societies. It sparked a considerable amount of discussion on the difference between Marx’s multilinear philosophy of human development and how “Marxism” has come to be viewed in contemporary China (as well as in the West.)

The fact that China remains a closed, authoritarian society in the political sphere, even as it opens itself up to the world market in the economic sphere, made the discussions at the conference all the more remarkable. The experience indicated to me that Luxemburg’s refusal to separate democracy from socialism, like her refusal to separate women’s rights from workers’ self-emancipation, remains a beacon in the effort to search for alternatives to existing society. This is sure to have further ramifications.

-- Peter Hudis