Sometimes Rosa Luxemburg Was Depressed Too

”This is not Rosa Luxemburg. It is actress Barbara Sukowa playing Rosa Luxemburg in a 1986 film. There do not appear to be any historical photos of Mimi the cat, so we chose this one.“

Rosa Luxemburg was known as a ball of energy — “like a candle burning at both ends.” But like every person, she also suffered moments of despair.

Sometimes Rosa Luxemburg Was Depressed Too

Previously:

Comrade and Lover: Rosa Luxemberg’s Letters to Leo Jogiches

The Letters Of Rosa Luxemburg (Mimi & Lenin)

DeepSeek: What Would Lenin and Marx Say About Romantic Love

Vladimir Lenin, as a revolutionary and Marxist thinker, approached most topics through the lens of class struggle, materialism, and the broader social and economic systems. While he did not write or speak extensively about love as a personal or romantic concept, his views on human relationships were likely shaped by his Marxist perspective.

Here’s how Lenin might conceptualize love, based on his ideological framework:

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This Valentine’s Day, Let’s Look to Marxists to Reimagine Love, Romance and Sex

Prison Notebooks

This Valentine’s Day, Let’s Look to Marxists to Reimagine Love, Romance and Sex

It’s certainly fitting to think of what Gramsci was writing from a fascist prison in today’s political climate. But it’s also true that we’re in another sort of interregnum, one of romance, sexuality and gender itself. And this one comes with its very own set of morbid symptoms, as anyone who’s tried dating lately can attest. Dating apps are a plague, every week there seems to be a new term for bad behavior (“ghosting,” “breadcrumbing,” whatever), work demands more and more of our time, leaving less and less for love, and a constantly destabilized economy leaves us anxious and stressed even if we do happen to have stable work. Abortion is now illegal in a huge chunk of the country, and homophobic and transphobic violence — not to mention actual bans on trans healthcare and drag — are on the rise. And even if you do make it to coupledom and want to have children, our country still has precisely no support for working parents. The material basis on which you might have thought you’d be able to build a life is crumbling. 

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Communism vs. Feminism

Porn, Feminism & the Meese Report

Feminist theory is not just flawed thinking; it is the product of a middle-class view of the world. In the prosperity of the 1960s, radical feminism was marked by its extreme utopian nature. Demands like “smash sexism” and “abolish the family” abounded—with absolutely no program that could win them. Since feminists rejected Marxism and with it the one class that actually has the power to revolutionize society, their utopian maximalist rhetoric dissolved inevitably into the most pragmatic minimalism. In fact, because the reformist strategies of the ’60s—above all the overwhelming support of feminists for the Democratic Party—failed to bear ample fruit, a fertile ground for cynicism was laid. The root of the current feminist support for the thoroughly capitulatory Dworkin is the cynicism born of defeat.

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