Rosa Luxemburg's view of World War I, as demonstrated in her political tract "The Workers and the War," was relatively simple. She vehemently protested against the war on political grounds, arguing that it actually represented a dissolution of the socialist principles which had largely animated Europe and large portions of Germany at the time. This fact is readily underscored by the notion that the author was imprisoned for the majority of World War I due to her protesting this war as violating many of the crucial tenets of socialism. The author's primary thesis is that large international conflicts such as World War I were fundamentally contrary to the ideologies of socialism, which strove to unite and empower the working class. Luxemburg widely believed that World War I and the very conception of nationalism itself merely led to the disempowerment of socialists, and regulated the working class to its substandard living...
[ View Full Essay]