View them at www.rayadunayevskaya.org
“The whole question of the relationship of any ongoing event with the past, with the very concept of Archives, depends on the two opposite words—continuity and discontinuity. Whereas only great divides in epochs, in cognition, in personality, are crucial, and may relate to turning points in history, no discontinuity can really achieve that type of new epochal ‘moment’ unless it has established continuity with the historic course of human development.”
—Raya Dunayevskaya
When Dunayevskaya donated her Archives to Wayne State University, she made two stipulations: first, that she would organize the Archives herself, and, second, that they would be open to anyone who wanted to study them.
Yoshimasa Yukiyama, translator of the Japanese edition of Marxism
and Freedom; Raya Dunayevskaya; and Charles Denby (1969)
The new website of the Raya Dunayevskaya Memorial Fund presents the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection as she organized it herself, together with the posthumous Supplement. Importantly, it makes the Archives available to anyone who can access the website: theoretically over three billion people. This is in addition to the entire 60 years of News & Letters newspaper available on the News and Letters Committees website. The first 55 years are also hosted on the Marxists Internet Archive.
Harry McShane
This is an incredible resource for revolutionaries and scholars, seeking not only to understand the history of freedom struggles and the conditions in which they occur but to advance them today so as to transform the world. The Collection encompasses the body of ideas of Marxist-Humanism developed by Dunayevskaya during a lifetime in the revolutionary movement. Its over 17,000 pages are a resource for students, researchers and activists in fields as diverse as philosophy, women’s studies, social theory, intellectual history and Black studies. Her writings spanned the world: her contributions to Soviet and East European studies, as well as to African and Middle Eastern regional studies, have been widely praised.
Raya Dunayevskaya and Natalia Sedova Trotsky in Mexico, 1938
Just a few of the correspondents included are Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Leon Trotsky, Natalia Trotsky, Adrienne Rich, Grace Lee Boggs, C.L.R. James, Cornelius Castoriadis, Meridel LeSueur, Nnamdi Azikwe, Tadayuki Tsushima, Louis Dupré, Sekou Toure and Maria Barreno.
Raya Dunayevskaya; Charles Denby, editor of News & Letters and author of Indignant Heart;
and Ethel Dunbar, “Way of the World” columnist and contributor to Indignant Heart
Herbert Marcuse called Dunayevskaya’s writings on the Marxian dialectic “an oasis in the desert of Marxism,” and stressed her argument that “Marxian economics and politics are throughout philosophy,” while “the latter is from the beginning economics and politics.”
Stay tuned as new additions to both websites go online in coming months.
THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION
Marxist-Humanism: A Half-Century of Its World Development
PART ONE: Birth and Development of State-Capitalist Theory
| Volume I | 1941-1947 -- Beginnings of State-Capitalist Theory (in the Workers Party) |
| Volume II | 1947-1951 -- From the "Interim Period" to the Final Split from the Socialist Workers Party |
| Volume III | 1949-1955 -- From the Miners' General Strike to the East German Revolt; From the Appearance of Differences in the Johnson-Forest Tendency to the Historic Reemergence of Marx's Humanism |
| Appendix I | Leon Trotsky: Letters, Conversations, Unpublished Documents |
PART TWO: Creation of Marxist-Humanism as Organization — News and Letters Committees — and as Theory for Our Age
| Volume IV | 1955-1958 -- Laying New Theoretical and Practical Foundations, Culminating in Marxism and Freedom, from 1776 Until Today |
| Volume V | 1959-1964 -- The Emergence of a Third Afro-Asian, Latin American World and a New Generation of Revolutionaries Also in the U.S. |
| Volume VI | 1964-1968 -- As Against Decadent Capitalism on the Rampage, New Stages of Mass Revolt |
| Volume VII | 1968-1973 -- Objective Crises Compelling Theoretic Clarification of Revolution, Culminating in the Work Around Philosophy and Revolution |
| Volume VIII | 1973-1975 -- Philosophy and Revolution as Book, as Characteristic of the Age |
| Volume IX | 1976-1978 -- Forces of Revolution as Reason; Philosophy of Revolution as Force |
| Volume X | 1979-1981 -- What is Philosophy? What is Revolution? How the Revolutions of Our Age Relate to Those Since Marx's Age: Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution |
| Appendix II | "Two Worlds" Columns by Raya Dunayevskaya, 1955-1981 |
| Volume XI | 1981-1985 -- Dialectics of Revolution: American Roots and World Humanist Concepts |
| Volume XII | Retrospective and Perspective -- The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, 1924-1986 |
SUPPLEMENT TO THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION
| Volume XIII | Raya Dunayevskaya's Last Writings, 1986-1987 -- Toward the Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy |
| Volume XIV | The Writing of Raya Dunayevskaya's "Trilogy of Revolution," 1953-83: The "Long, Hard Trek and Process of Development" of the Marxist-Humanist Idea |
| Volume XV | 1983-1985: From the Marx Centenary Year to Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution, and from Reagan's Invasion of Grenada to Raya Dunayevskaya's Work on "Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy" |
Donations to keep making additions to the RDMF website can be sent to:
The Raya Dunayevskaya Memorial Fund, 228 S. Wabash, Room 230, Chicago, IL 60604.
Announcement from the July-August 2015 issue of News & Letters