Appeal for Rosa Luxemburg Collected Works

Dear Friends,

 

We are writing to ask you to assist us in the effort to publish the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, which will bring the contributions of one of the most creative thinkers and activists of modern radicalism alive for our times.

 

The 14-volume Complete Works will contain everything Luxemburg ever wrote—all of her books, essays, pamphlets, essays, articles, letters, and manuscripts. Most of these writings—as much as 80 per cent—have never before appeared in English, and some will be published for the first time anywhere. New English translations will be provided for her works that have been published previously.

 

The project is being published by Verso Books with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLS) in Berlin. Although the RLS has provided important assistance, it cannot provide the full cost of translation and editing. We are therefore appealing to you to help us obtain additional funding to bring this project to fruition.

 

We urgently need $30,000 to fund the next volume in the series (so far we have raised $19,000 towards that goal). Tax-deductible donations can be sent to the newly-established Toledo Translation Fund—named after the twelfth- and thirteenth- century school of translators renowned for its translations from Arabic, Greek and Hebrew texts that helped pave the way for the Renaissance. All funds sent to the Toledo Fund for this project will be exclusively used to cover the cost of translating and publishing The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg.

 

We have so far issued (in 2011) a companion volume, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, which is the most comprehensive English-language collection of her letters ever published. It received widespread acclaim in such publications as The London Review of Books, The Nation, Atlantic Monthly, The Guardian, and Book Forum. In early 2012 the first volme of the Complete Works will appear, entitled Economic Writings I. It will contain the first full English translation of one of her most important books, Introduction to Political Economy, as well as eight recently discovered manuscripts on the history of ancient, medieval, and early modern societies, Marx’s Capital, and the causes and consequences of capitalist crises.

 

You can make a contribution by going directly to www.toledotranslationfund.org and filling out the online form for donations to The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg. Your help will be deeply appreciated!

 

If you are not in the position to contribute financially, we hope you can still collaborate in the project by working on translation, editing, and helping to publicize the forthcoming volumes in the series. We also hope that you can forward this message to others who may be interested in the project.

 

 

Sincerely Yours,

 

Peter Hudis, General Editor, The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg

Paul Le Blanc, Editorial Board, the Complete Works

Susan Weissman, Editorial Board, the Complete Works

William Pelz, Editorial Board, the Complete Works

Axel Fair-Schulz, Editorial Board, the Complete Works

Lea Haro, Editorial Board, the Complete Works