Spontaneity, Organization, Philosophy: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Marx

Rounding out the International Women's History Month, we will address how Rosa Luxemburg speaks to our time, having raised vital questions about organization, including its relationship to spontaneity and consciousness, and the nature of socialist democracy after the revolutionary conquest of power. These questions, brought to the forefront again with Arab Spring, became altogether new for the U.S. when Occupy Wall Street became an idea and a movement. Luxemburg’s concept of organization is measured against Marx’s, as integral to his philosophy of revolution, as we are facing the dilemmas encountered by revolutions today.