A green Rosa: Toward a Luxemburgian environmental ethic

In this paper, I work toward a theory of eco-virtue for a radical environmental politics by enlisting the work of socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg’s “socialist civic virtues” highlight the place of virtue in anti-capitalist politics, orients eco-democratic theorists toward the problem of production, highlights the immoderate virtues of struggle necessary for any project of environmental moderation, and models a rhetorical mode for mobilization in disempowered times. I then turn to Luxemburg’s writings on animals and botany, developing two environmental ethics—Luxemburgian sympathy and the Mensch ethic—which facilitate care relationships across species divides and enable revolutionary resilience for radicals in dark times. My reading of Luxemburg presents a politics that joins a commitment to human emancipation with a desire for the flourishing of all organic life.