Please join News and Letters Committees on Zoom 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, including the question of “Where to begin?”

Revolutionary movements occurred in many of these areas, such as Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, Iran. Yet those revolutions were not sustained even though the impulse for revolution continues. Today’s wars cannot obliterate the passionate desire for a different way of living, for new human relationships, and a transformation of life and labor. An authentic peace may only be brought about through a social revolution that overthrows existing rulers as well as existing social relations, 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 revolutionaries to be able to uproot capitalism and create a society on truly new 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 move to a freedom-filled future?

The answer can’t only be found in more activity. Rather it is the harder 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 questions in these six Zoom discussions, every two weeks beginning Monday, Oct 7, 6:30 Central Time.

Contact us at arise@newsandletters.org for the Zoom links.

1. Oct. 7:
   Part 1: Hegel’s Dialectic of Negativity–How It Speaks to a Revolutionary Organization of Thought and to Actual Revolutionary Organization
2. Oct. 21:
   Part 2: Hegel’s Dialectic of Negativity–How It Speaks to a Revolutionary Organization of Thought and to Actual Revolutionary Organization
3. Nov. 4:
   “The Philosophic Moment of Marx”—The Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
4. Nov. 18:
   Marx, Philosopher of Revolution in Permanence—Critique of the Gotha Program as an Organizational Document
5. Dec. 2:
   Lenin’s Revolutionary Philosophic Breakthrough’s Failure to Extend to Organization
6. Dec. 16:
   Practicing Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy in News and Letters Committees, 1955-1987

For information on how to participate and suggested readings, please visit https://newsandletters.org/dialectics-of-organization-and-philosophy-2024-syllabus/. Contact us at arise@newsandletters.org for Zoom links.