The contributions and contradictions of the African revolutions of the 20th century speak to today’s very different situation. These excerpts from Dunayevskaya’s ‘Philosophy and Revolution, from Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao’ aim not only to recapture the greatness of those revolutions, but also grapple with why they retrogressed after independence, so as to aid the creation of new beginnings now.
Ex-prisoner Faruq discusses the idea of freedom. Every one of our discussions has to center on liberation, what would real freedom look like? If revolution means anything, it creates seats for everyone at the table.
Abahlali baseMjondolo denounces the assassination of Lindokuhle Mnguni, discusses his character and activity as an intellectual/militant from below, and calls for solidarity as the struggle continues.
Faruq observes that the money going into the “homeless problem” is spent on mediators, not the people who are homeless, who must be related to as human beings, as part of setting afoot a new human being for the whole world.
Susan Van Gelder reviews the book “The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart” by Alicia Garza.
Hegel’s Absolutes never were a series of ascending ivory towers. Revolutionary transformation is immanent in the very form of thought. Our age can best understand Hegel’s Absolute because it has been witness to a movement from practice.
The great Tunisian-Jewish French writer Albert Memmi passed away May 20. Memmi’s complex identity registered the tensions of his century.
In the spirit of Black August Memorial, Faruq talks about the conditions of Black prisoners, the need to break race divisions between them and white prisoners, and the quest for the Idea of Freedom.
Ex-prisoner Faruq takes up the revolutionary history of Black August Memorial and relates it to his life and the historic Pelican Bay Hunger Strike.
The Sudanese Revolution demonstrated its depth, maturity and resilience as masses once again took to the streets following the June 3 massacre of protesters in Khartoum.
What is socialism? From Left to Right, this question is becoming central to political discussion. For me, it raises another question, too: What is philosophy? This is where I will begin, with the young Karl Marx.
The Syrian Revolution has been the physical and intellectual battlefield that defines our time. As early as 2012 it was clear that what happened in Syria would determine the next stage of world history.
A new book, “Frantz Fanon: Alienation and Freedom,” reveals that Frantz Fanon warned leftist Islamist Ali Shariati that, despite Islam’s anticolonialist potential, without the spirit of emancipation it risked diversion to sectarianism, approaching the past rather than future, like African nationalisms.
To observe the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, we present excerpts of a speech given by Raya Dunayevskaya for the Marx centenary year, originally titled “Marxist-Humanism, 1983: The Summation That Is a New Beginning, Subjectively and Objectively.”
Readers’ Views on Women’s Liberation struggle continue and voices from behind bars.
Review by a prisoner of the companion book to the documentary film “I Am Not Your Negro” on James Baldwin, whose title speaks to the liberation of New Afrikan people in Amerika. .
From a prisoner’s perspective, Faruq reviews “I Am Not Your Negro,” a documentary film and companion book produced by Raoul Peck that concentrates on the writings and life of James Baldwin.
Prisoner Baridi continues a dialogue about humanism with Urszula Wislanka sparked by California prisoners’ struggle to end the torture of long-term solitary confinement.
Black prisoner Faruq looks critically at Fidel Castro’s legacy, especially his turn to a one party state and the importance of freely associated labor for a true revolutionary process.
Bro. Faruq writes regarding the need of a philosophy of revolution that includes and, at the same time, goes beyond particular emancipatory actions.
Report of a discussion following the showing of the new movie “Concerning Violence” which took on Frantz Fanon and Black movements of the present.
Olga Domanski’s summary of the series on “Women as Thinkers and as Revolutionaries” by Raya Dunayevskaya.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s slaughter of Kurdish civilians and activists is viewed in the context of world revolution and counter-revolution.
The article excerpts a summary of a talk by Dunayevskaya to a conference on Women’s Liberation in Detroit. The purpose of the meeting was to help Dunayevskaya work out the final chapter of her book then in progress, Philosophy and Revolution. That last chapter would take up the “New Passions and New Forces” for the reconstruction of society. The Conference was also the beginning of the News & Letters—Women’s Liberation Committee.
Today’s African tragedies compel one to return to the great promise, and then great tragedy and betrayal, of the African Revolutions that emerged after World War II.
As a Black man, I asked myself: Why—through the dialectical crises of the social relations of production and the subsequent implosion of multiple outlived modes of production—has racism persisted? Why, despite the relations of property literally bursting asunder, does racism survive? How and why does racism, sexism, homophobia survive revolution after revolution? Will we again be left behind after the next revolution?
Protests erupted following the decision by a St. Louis County grand jury not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the cold-blooded murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Thousands marched under the slogan “Black Lives Matter!” These demonstrations grew in the wake of the equally outrageous decision of a Staten Island grand jury not to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo for the murder of Eric Garner.
From UPM: The formation of the Black Consciousness Movement in this country was a realization by Black people that we could no longer stand and be spectators of the game we are supposed to be playing. This election season continues to demonstrate the relevance of Biko’s teachings.
Capetown, South Africa—During the Christmas break we received the most shocking news from KwaZulu-Natal. The provincial traffic department advertised 90 positions for trainee traffic officers. More than 150,000 people applied, most of them between the ages of 18 and 20.
On Christmas Day 34,000 people received text messages saying that they had been shortlisted for these [=>]
The late Jayne Cortez was a major figure of the Black Arts Movement. She was a poet, musician and creative force unto herself. Born in Arizona, she was raised in Los Angeles’ Watts district. She married the great saxophonist Ornette Coleman in 1954.
Her work held “Free” at its center, its heart, as the great generation [=>]
REVOLUTION, COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND NEED FOR PHILOSOPHY
In the Draft of Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2012-2013, published in the last issue, while the global analysis is good, it is partial and emphasizes mass uprisings that may be a part of history tomorrow, i.e., Syria, while ignoring the long-term struggles that have a potential for raising a clear [=>]
When Terry Moon in her column in the last issue asks, “How deep does the dialectic need to become when the subject is woman, is Black woman?” she calls for more discussion of Fanon and Women’s Liberation.
Fanon, in breaking with Sartre’s Existentialist Marxism—which acknowledged only one Subject, labor, and consigned the Black dimension to a [=>]
Readers’ Views (part 2)
FROM FUKUSHIMA TO NEW YORK
Shut Down Indian Point Now! is calling a press conference immediately prior to a New York State Assembly hearing to determine energy alternatives to the Indian Point plant in January. As the Fukushima, Japan, meltdown shows, nuclear power can never be made safe.
People are becoming increasingly aware [=>]
Woman as Reason
by Terry Moon
Blogger L Boogie has written part one of “Fanon, Alienation and Sexual Harassment,” exploring Frantz Fanon’s 1952 Black Skin White Masks in an exciting way for feminism, by relating his thought to street harassment. (See http://nothingbutahuman.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/fanon-alienation-and-sexual-harassment/)
She begins by relating several incidents of harassment, noting that recollecting them reminded her of “how violent street harassment of [=>]
Lead
Protests began in September in Wukan, a village of 20,000 people in Guangdong province on the South China Sea, against seizure of more than 100 acres of Wukan’s common land to be sold to those with insider ties to the village Communist Party leadership. Village authorities escalated the conflict by identifying protest leaders and hauling [=>]
World in View
by Gerry Emmett
The arrest of former President Laurent Gbagbo by NATO and Ivorian opposition forces will not solve the problems that plague Ivory Coast. Gbagbo’s rise and fall does represent, in microcosm, the long tragedy of Africa’s unfinished revolutions.
Gbagbo’s fall began in earnest when he falsely claimed victory in last year’s long-delayed presidential [=>]
