The May-June 2015 issue of News & Letters, Vol. 60, #3, is available on the web.
View the issue online or as pdf.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2015-2016: Decaying social order shows need for philosophy, revolution
The fact that the old, crumbling order will not go away quietly explains why we mark the 60 years of activity of the Marxist-Humanist organization News and Letters Committees—not as an anniversary but as an open window onto the needed philosophy of revolution, without which all revolutions and freedom movements remain incomplete.
Contents:
A. Arab Spring: Revolution and war
B. Economic weakness and shifts in global politics
C. Whiff of fascism
IV. Marxist-Humanist organization and philosophy
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The dialectic and women’s liberation
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.
Workshop Talks: 1949 coal miners’ general strike today
We workers see from the inside that capitalism is coming apart. The 1949-50 Coal Miners’ General Strike is significant, not only because it highlights resistance to the early stage of automation, but because the miners’ self-activity signified “The Emergence of a New Movement from Practice That Is Itself a Form of Theory.”
World in View: Death in Yarmouk
The world’s attention was once more belatedly drawn to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, Syria, by the invasion by IS/Daesh terrorists, facilitated by another fundamentalist faction, Jabhat al-Nusra.
Woman as Reason: Afghan women demand justice
Is the March 19 murder of Farkhunda by a mob of men who beat her to death with stones and sticks, ran her over with a car, threw her body on the banks of the Kabul River and lit it on fire, a turning point for women in Afghanistan? Some are saying it is.
Voices from the Inside Out: Selma’s mindset
In reading Charles Denby’s “Continuing Magnolia Jungle terror exposes reality of ‘Great Society,’” one is struck by how poignant and presciently modern Denby’s thoughts were and how very little has changed today.
Rojava, revolution and today’s youth
The affinity of so many, including Black, Latino and Third World youth, with the struggle of Rojava’s Kurds—like that in Chiapas before—can be of the utmost philosophic importance.
South Africa bloodies Black workers
Durban, South Africa—On April 8 Abahlali baseMjondolo supported a march against xenophobia organized by our comrades in the Congolese Solidarity Campaign together with the Somali Association of South Africa and other migrant organizations. There was a permit for the march and yet the police would not allow it to go ahead.
Letter from Mexico: Zapatistas on praxis
The Zapatistas are not just creating a new world in practice, but in theory—as we have seen by the radical concept Compa/Work Day (CWD), which opens new possibilities to emancipatory social movements. Or, better to say: They can develop revolutionary theory because they develop simultaneously a revolutionary practice (and vice versa).
Seeking justice for 43 in Ayotzinapa
“Caravana 43” includes some of the parents of 43 students who were “disappeared” in September from the Normal Rural School Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, and are touring the U.S. Here are in-person reports from their trips to Berkeley, Calif., and Detroit, Mich.
More
Page 2
Review of ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’
Transgender women must fight for rights
Women WorldWide
Page 3
Fight for $15 and Dr. King
BP workers on strike
Celebrating 60 years: Marx spoke to 1975 economic crisis
UAW to fight two-tier?
Page 5
12 years in the SHU
Page 6
Readers’ Views
Page 11
University of Minnesota homophobia
Cop killings protested!
Youth In Action
Queer Notes
Page 12, World in View
New Kenya massacre
U.S. police blotter
Ukraine Leftists meet
Eduardo Galeano, 1940-2015
Obama meets Castro