The Origin of the Problem: A General Outline of the Work

Rosa Luxemburg’s first economic paper was her doctoral thesis written in Switzerland in 1893, published in 1898 under the title Die industrielle Entwicklung Polens.1 This work was a historical economic monograph on the subject of the development of industry in the Kingdom of Poland and the dependence of that industry on Eastern markets. The author argued that industry in the Kingdom of Poland, to a large extent, owed its establishment and rapid expansion to the protectionist tariff policy of the annexing state Russia. In this way, the Russian occupiers sought to tie the interests of the Kingdom’s capitalist class to the Russian Empire. Consequently, capitalism in the Kingdom of Poland relied on the vast markets in the East (both Russian and Asian).