Richard D. Wolff

This article originally appeared at Roarmag.org

Rosa Luxemburg’s great work displays extraordinary merits. First, she explained key dimensions of the capitalism of her time in an exemplary application of Marxian economics. Second, she integrated foreign trade and imperialism into economic theory further and with more insight than most economists including Marx had yet done. Third, she showed the powerful insights available by using Marx’s basic value and price concepts: a remarkable testimony to the usefulness of the labor theory of value. Finally, she linked her theoretical work to the strategic concerns and debates of the workers’ movements of her time. She took sides with an open honesty rarely equaled since among economic theorists who sell themselves instead by pretending to be “scientists above politics.”