ABSTRACT
Eleanor Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and Raya Dunayevskaya all spent their lives immersed in Marxist theory and political action. Marxism was for all of them a theory of the process of change and practical tool for participating in the practice of making change. This chapter shows areas of their practice that clearly expressed the theoretical understanding they derived from Marx—and their practice and experience, in turn, shaped their choice and interpretation of theory. An important theme that weaves through the work of all three is the complex entanglement of revolutionary consciousness, human agency, and institutional structures. All three were organizers as well as being thinkers, and were continually confronted with questions of when and how and to what extent to institutionalize the social movements in which they took part. All three saw inequalities of class, race, and gender as inextricably linked and wrestled with the challenge of how to act on the knowledge when no action can tackle everything at once.
