Toledo Translation Fund

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) is widely regarded as one of the most creative writers of modern socialism and the foremost female theoretician of European radicalism. Her wide-ranging and incisive works, which include studies on capitalism’s inherent drive for global expansion, the relation between spontaneity and organization, and the inseparability of democracy and socialism, have made her a pole of attraction for theorists and activists around the world. Her fiercely independent intellect and uncompromising defense of human liberty speaks more powerfully to our era than to any other.

The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg is in the process of making her entire body of work available in English. It will contain all of her books, pamphlets, essays, articles, letters and manuscripts, the vast majority of which has never appeared in English. This includes several thousand pages of writings that have only recently been discovered. The Complete Works will be published in at least 17 volumes of about 600 pages each, with comprehensive annotations and introductions.

Volume I, Economic Writings 1, was published in 2013; it contains the first full English translation of Introduction to Political Economy and eight recently discovered manuscripts on anthropology, economic history, and the theory of crises. Volume II, Economic Writings 2, contains a new translation of The Accumulation of Capital and the Anti-Critique; it was published in 2015.

Volume III, Political Writings 1, is the first of three volumes devoted to “On Revolution,” containing her writings on the subject to the end of 1905; it was published in 2019. Volume IV, Political Writings 2, contains her writings on revolution from 1906-09 and includes hundreds of pages (translated from Polish and German) that have never appeared in English translation; it will be published in 2021.

We are now in process of completing Volume V, Political Writings 3, which contains her writings on revolution from 1910 to 1919, and are mapping out four subsequent volumes on “Debates on Revolutionary Strategy and Organization.” However, we cannot move forward in our work without additional funds to cover the cost of translations. Although we have received welcome support from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, we need at least an additional $60,000 to move ahead with work on the volumes “Debates on Revolutionary Strategy and Organization.” These volumes will include her engagement with such figures as Eduard Bernstein, August Bebel, Karl Kautsky, V.I. Lenin, Clara Zetkin, Karl Liebknecht and many others over reform and revolution, spontaneity and organization, democracy and the transition to socialism. 

All funds raised for the Complete Works goes to pay translators for bringing her writings in German, Polish, and Russian to an English-language audience. The editors receive no monetary compensation and perform this work as a labor of love. But we cannot continue to issue further volumes without your assistance.

All donations over $100 will receive a free copy of the critically acclaimed Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, or a copy one of the volumes of the Complete Works. Donations over $250 will get both books and you can buy others at half price. If you’re able to donate $500 or more we’ll thank you on a donor’s page for the project, and donations of $1,000 or more will also be acknowledged in the book.