Assignment (Due 3/21 )

Assignment (Due 3/21 ): Please choose a passage from one of Luxemburg's essays. Write out the passage. Explain the meaning of the passage and how it relates to politics today.

One thing is certain. The world war is a turning point. It is foolish and mad to imagine that we need only survive the war, like a rabbit waiting out the storm under a bush, in order to fall happily back into the old routine once it is over. The world war has altered the conditions of our struggle and, most of all, it has changed us. Not that the basic law of capitalist development, the life-and-death war between capital and labor, will experience any amelioration. But now, in the midst of the war, the masks are falling and the old familiar visages smirk at us. The tempo of development has received a mighty jolt from the eruption of the volcano of imperialism. The violence of the conflicts in the bosom of society, the enormousness of the tasks that tower up before the socialist proletariat – these make everything that has transpired in the history of the workers’ movement seem a pleasant idyll.

In this passage Luxemburg's breaks down the crises that is going on among countries. She reinforces that we should adapt or change to different behaviors because if we don't a bigger war will happen. She explains the war has to change us and in order for us to be happy we have to fall back into our old routines. A lot of countries feel that other countries should adapt to their political beliefs. By going to war the country feels they are more in control and have more power. Due to the all the world that occurs between countries effects and changes the condition of how people live in modern day society.