ABSTRACT

Teaching Marxist political economy Rosa Luxemburg considered the problem of wages only once, not in her opus magnum, The Accumulation of Capital (Luxemburg 1913), but in the lectures she gave at the party school of the German Social Democratic party. Every half-year, from October 1907 onwards, she taught a course on political economy four days a week. The arrangement lasted until summer 1914. Her focus was on economic history and the theory of political economy; in particular, she expounded the main tenets of Marx’s critique of political economy. In her view, as expressed many times in her correspondence, one could not understand economic history without understanding economic theory and vice versa. The eminent scholars of the German historical school, the economic historians, lacked theoretical training and insight as much as the votaries of pure theory of ‘economics’ lacked historical knowledge, both sides opposing each other in a rather sterile deadlock. Luxemburg was, according to many of her pupils, a demanding teacher and, to her surprise, a highly successful one, much respected and adored by her students, many of whom became top functionaries of the German socialist parties and/or the trade unions in later years.1