Introduction: Transmitting Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg will be honoured, remembered, and celebrated as a figure from the past only when, in a future still to-come, the goals of social justice, peace and equality that she fought for are realised. As long as bitter struggles and widespread suffering continue, she is still living, a living substance that is part of the present and can inspire political engagement. The wider meaning of declaring Rosa Luxemburg our contemporary, then, is that the objectives she struggled for are still to-come, and the forms of violence and oppression she struggled against are still part of the material social conditions of today’s world. This coevalness can be pronounced because many issues at the heart of her thought and activism are still with us: from imperialism and the national question to what Nancy Fraser calls the 'back-stories' of capitalism. This special issue of New Formations aims to contribute to the transmission of this vital legacy by suggesting questions about relevance, memory and resonance: how does Luxemburg speak to us, how do her thoughts echo with our own? How can we prevent the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg from becoming heritage, a thing of the past? The essays and interviews included in this special issue grapple in different ways with the central question of how to assess the contemporaneity of Rosa Luxemburg without turning her into an object of commemoration.