Continued from Part IV: Where is the Left?
Raya Dunayevskaya
The urgency of resisting the imposition of a fascist dictatorship makes the concrete working out and projection of a philosophy of revolution not less but more urgent. Marxist-Humanism was born from the moment of crisis when the outbreak of World War II made clear the transformation into opposite of Russia from proletarian revolution in 1917 to an imperialist, state-capitalist power that initially sided with Nazi Germany to conquer and divide Poland. That transformation into opposite called for a return to the Hegelian dialectic in which Marx’s philosophy of revolution was rooted, and a drive to comprehend the counterrevolution from within revolution not only politically but philosophically. For Raya Dunayevskaya it drove a return to the fully dialectical, revolutionary roots of Marx and the search for a philosophical foundation for a total opposite to both private and state-capitalism.
Today the history of 20th-century fascism and totalitarianism is being erased, especially by those who, consciously or not, are moving toward repeating it in new forms. At the same time, too much of the Left forgets the catastrophe of state-capitalism that passed itself off as Communism. The attraction some have to that false alternative must be resisted. Few suggest copying Stalin’s Russia, but too often it is taken for granted that capitalism means free markets and socialism means some combination of government intervention, nationalization, planning, and “democratization” of the state.
The true history of the 20th century reveals statist socialism to be a dead end. It is a substitute for the self-activity of the Subject, of masses in motion, which is the only basis for workers’ control of production and the labor process. That substitution is based on the dogma that the masses are backward and need an external force—a state, a vanguard party, or intellectuals—to lead and manage them. That attitude marked the period of state-capitalism ushered in by Stalin’s counter-revolution, the New Deal, European welfare states, and German and Italian fascism. Statism and an administrative mentality toward the masses became pervasive on the Left as well. In truth, socialism must be rooted in the self-activity of masses in motion, new human relations, revolution, and a philosophy of revolution, or it is nothing.[1]
MARX’S HUMANISM AND MARXIST-HUMANISM
Karl Marx
That is why Karl Marx’s philosophy of revolution is so crucial. From the beginning, he separated himself from what he called “vulgar communism,” whose adherents believed the abolition of private property was enough to solve humanity’s problems. He wrote that a focus on private property lends the appearance of a problem lying outside of the human being, whereas “when one speaks of labor, one is directly dealing with humanity itself.” In speaking of labor, one deals with the alienation of human beings from their own activity, and therefore alienation from themselves, from each other, and from nature. Through this contradiction within labor, and therefore within human beings who labor, they develop in the direction of overcoming the contradiction. Their own living labor, extracted from them in the capitalistic labor process, is turned into dead labor, that is, capital, an accumulated dead weight embodied in machines and the other material elements of production, acting as an alien power that oppresses the worker. In capitalism, dead labor dominates living labor—the total opposite of freedom and self-activity. Marx called this a dialectical inversion of subject and object.
Marx’s singling out of the workers’ struggles for freedom and self-determination, their “quest for universality” in his words, as against the condition of being reduced to an appendage to the machine, did not exclude an openness to what Marxist-Humanism would later make explicit as multiple Subjects of revolution, from women and youth to Black Americans and oppressed nationalities, from Indigenous peoples and people with disabilities to peasants in non-capitalist or partly capitalist lands.
Without these Subjects of revolution self-organizing and self-developing into masses in motion, socialism cannot escape from the bounds of capitalism; at the same time, without revolutionary humanist philosophical mediation those bounds will reconstitute around us and block the total reorganization of society. Spontaneity, resistance, revolt, and revolution are absolutely necessary—and at the same time the upsurge from below seeks out both self-organization of people and the kind of organization of thought that can unite theory and practice, philosophy and revolution, in a new relationship. Activity alone does not release “the reunification of mental and manual abilities in the individual himself, the ‘all-rounded’ individual who is the body and soul of Marx’s humanism.”[2] Emancipatory philosophic probing and projection—living the dialectic—is itself a force of social transformation.
We have a responsibility to help the movement set its direction by working at the concrete projection of a liberatory banner to act as a polarizing force for opponents of the turn toward fascism—at a time when there is a desperate pull for unity based on the lowest common denominator. This points to the need for the philosophy of revolution that can become the unifying force.
PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION DEMANDS AN ORGANIZATIONAL EXPRESSION
Last year we specified as one of our foremost tasks “to hold a series of classes on dialectics of organization and philosophy—and to hold it in a way that encourages outreach. The continued activity and growth of the Marxist-Humanist organization, News and Letters Committees, is crucial for enabling the projection of the philosophy it is founded on.”
We succeeded in holding a class series that was worthwhile and had some important explorations of the ideas of dialectics of organization and philosophy, but naturally it did not provide “the answer.” It drew in some participants but it did not lead to organizational growth. We need to work out a perspective of organizational growth in each of our activities this coming year, from writing and eliciting articles to participating in the multifaceted resistance, not as “recruitment mentality” but as it flows organically from our involvement and attempts to meet the reach for the power of the Idea that comes out of each social movement and each battle of political tendencies. Our organization is founded on, and tries to be the expression of, an Idea that is crucial for the forward movement of humanity, and yet without growth we are not in a position to do it justice. That is our foremost task. Other tasks should be conceived in relationship to it:
- Writing, eliciting, publishing, and projecting articles, as we strive to disclose the meaning of events in the ongoing counterrevolution and resistance
- Continuing to improve our individual theoretical work and collectivity, including correspondence as part of the process of development
- Finding new ways of arranging meetings and sharing our experiences participating in events and communicating with each other, and of relating to both the movement from practice and the movement from theory, as an organization of people that also always strives to be an organization of ideas
—The National Editorial Board of News and Letters Committees, April 28, 2025
[1] For a more in-depth discussion, see our pamphlet What Is Socialism? and the trilogy of revolution by Raya Dunayevskaya that it draws from: Marxism and Freedom; Philosophy of Revolution; and Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution.
[2] Raya Dunayevskaya, “The Todayness of Marx’s Humanism,” in Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution in Permanence for Our Day, p. 38.