Please join News and Letters Committees in a series of six discussions on:

Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy:
How to Begin Anew in Our Age of Crises?

Accelerating global warming is now the lived experience of the world’s populations. At the same time, a second Trump presidency would exacerbate all existing crises, including the possibility of a world war. As The Guardian warned: “…the international community has given up on intervention efforts to stop mass atrocities, leading to fears that such occurrences may become the norm around the world….The mass killing of civilians in Syria and Ukraine, and the internment of over a million Uyghurs and other Muslims in China, have been followed by war crimes in Ethiopia, and a resumption of ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s Darfur province, 20 years after the start of the genocide there.” As massacres continue in Sudan/Darfur, Gaza, Ukraine, Burma and other localities, today’s challenges can seem overwhelming, even the question of “Where to begin?”

It is crucial to remember that many of these areas contain populations that made revolutionary movements, including Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, Iran and more. And yet those revolutions were not sustained even though the impulse and desire for revolution continues. Today’s wars upon masses of humanity cannot obliterate the passionate desire for a different way of living, for new human relationships, and for a transformation of life and labor. The opposite to war that can bring forth an authentic peace can only be brought about through a social revolution that overthrows not alone existing rulers, but as well existing social relations, thereby opening a vista of new human beginnings.

Raya Dunayevskaya, the founder of the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S., faced the question of “Where to begin?” whenever the freedom movement reached an impasse or a new crisis arose. At the time of her death, she was working on what she believed was crucial for revolutionary thinker-activists to be able to uproot capitalism in its private and state forms, and create a society on truly revolutionary human beginnings. The working title of her book in progress was “Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy: the ‘Party’ and forms of organization born of spontaneity.” We live in an age of failed revolutions. How can we begin to move to a freedom-filled future?

The answer to that question can’t only be found in more and more activity. Rather, it is the hard question of working out the relationship between revolutionary organization, dialectical philosophy, and those revolutionary freedom movements that keep arising even in the darkest of times. News and Letters Committees want to begin working out these life-altering questions by delving into that needed relationship by holding six discussions on Dunayevskaya’s work in progress.

The six sessions are:

1. Part 1: Hegel’s Dialectic of Negativity–How It Speaks to a Revolutionary Organization of Thought and to Actual Revolutionary Organization
2. Part 2: Hegel’s Dialectic of Negativity–How It Speaks to a Revolutionary Organization of Thought and to Actual Revolutionary Organization
3. “The Philosophic Moment of Marx”—The Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
4. Marx, Philosopher of Revolution in Permanence—Critique of the Gotha Program as an Organizational Document
5. Lenin’s Revolutionary Philosophic Breakthrough’s Failure to Extend to Organization
6. Practicing Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy in News and Letters Committees, 1955-1987

 

The classes and their readings

 

Theme–Hegel’s Absolute Negativity: Reaching for Organization in Two Senses: Organization of Thought and Actual Organization

Two sessions:

 

Session 1. Focus on Absolute Knowing in Phenomenology of Mind

Readings–

Dunayevskaya:
New Introduction to Phenomenology of Mind Notes, May 1987 (excerpted here)
Remarks on conclusion of Phenomenology in REB Minutes of March 23, 1987 (RDC 10727-28)
“1953 as Concept vs. Experience,” May 13, 1987 (RDC 10923-41, excerpted here)

Hegel:
Absolute Knowing chapter of Phenomenology

Supplementary Readings–

Dunayevskaya:
Letters on Hegel’s Absolutes of May 12 and May 20, 1953
Presentation prepared for June 1, 1987

Gogol:
“Can ‘Absolute Knowing’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology Speak to a Dialectic of Organization and Philosophy?” chapter 9 in Toward a Dialectic of Philosophy and Organization.

 

Session 2. Hegel’s Third Attitude to Objectivity—Intuitionism versus a body of ideas and actual organization

Readings–

Dunayevskaya:
Letter to non-Marxist Hegel scholars on the Third Attitude to Objectivity, in The Power of Negativity, pages 331-33. (Included here.)
“Third Attitude of Thought Toward the Objective World,” found in Chapter 5, “Notes on the Smaller Logic from the Encyclopedia of the Philosophic Sciences,” Reproduced in The Power of Negativity, pgs. 82-84. (Excerpted here.)

Hegel:
“Third Attitude to Objectivity” found in Encyclopedia Logic 1830 edition

Supplementary Readings–

Gogol:
“Hegel’s Critique of the Third Attitude to Objectivity—Its Relation to Organization,” Chapter 12 in Toward a Dialectic of Philosophy and Organization.

 

Theme–Marx: Philosopher of Revolution in Permanence—Organizational Ramifications

Two Sessions

 

Session 3. Dunayevskaya’s 1987 Reading of the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844—The Philosophic Moment of Marx

Readings–

Dunayevskaya:
June 1, 1987 Presentation, RDC #10737, Part I “The Philosophic Point”
“An Aside” On Marx’s view of Hegel’s Phenomenology in “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic,” RDC #10994

Marx:
“Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic,” Dunayevskaya translation, found in Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution in Permanence for Our Day, pages 340-56.

Supplementary Reading–

Dunayevskaya:
(From 3/16/87) Why Phenomenology? Why Now? What is the Relationship either to Organization, or to Philosophy, not Party, 1984-87? RDC #10883-10900 (excerpted here)
“A. The 1840s: Birth of Historical Materialism” from Chapter 2, “A New Continent of Thought” in Philosophy and Revolution.
“3. Prometheus Unbound, 1844-48” from Chapter 9, “Marx Discovers a New Continent of Thought and Revolution” in Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution.

 

Session 4. Dunayevskaya’s Reading of Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program as an Organizational Document

Readings–

Dunayevskaya:
“The Philosopher of Permanent Revolution Creates New Ground for Organization,” Chapter 11 of Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, particularly section 1, “Critique of the Gotha Program.”

Marx:
“Critique of the Gotha Program”

Suggested Readings—

Dunayevskaya:
“New moments in Marx form trail to today”

Kelch:
“Essay: Meeting the challenge not alone from practice but from Karl Marx’s Idea”

Gogol:
“Critique of the Gotha Program: Marx’s Critique of a So-Called Socialist Program; his Projection of Communism; What Is Its Meaning for Today?” chapter 10 in Toward a Dialectic of Philosophy and Organization.

Dmitryev:
“Karl Marx’s ground for organization”

 

Theme–Lenin: Philosophic Breakthrough that failed to extend to Organization

Session 5.

Readings–

Dunayevskaya:
Chapter 2 “Dunayevskaya’s Changed Perception of Lenin’s Philosophic Ambivalence, 1986-87. Found in Russia: From Proletarian Revolution to State-Capitalist Counter-Revolution Several writings on Dunayevskaya’s Lenin including Letter to Non-Marxist Hegel Scholar Louis Dupre July 3, 1986.

Suggested Readings–

Dunayevskaya:
Chapter 3 “The Shock of Recognition and the Philosophic Ambivalence of Lenin” from Philosophy and Revolution

Lenin:
Dunayevskaya’s translation of “Abstract of Hegel’s Science of Logic” found in Chapter 1 of Russia: From Proletarian Revolution to State-Capitalist Counter-Revolution; also found here

 

Theme–Practicing Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy in News and Letters Committees, 1955-1987

Session 6.

Readings–

Original 1956 Constitution for News and Letters Committees
Last amended Constitution during Dunayevskaya’s life

Dunayevskaya:
The Myriad Global Crises of the 1980s and the Nuclear World Since World War II
A 1980s View: The Coal Miners’ General Strike of 1949–50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S. (order here)
25 Years of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S. A History of Worldwide Revolutionary Developments (Prologue is here)