Readers’ Views on: Violence and Racism Still Put U.S. in the Dock; American Civilization on Trial; Critical Race Theory; Critical Thinking and Education; 2SLGBTQIA+ Good and Bad News; Is Covid Over?; Remembering the Vietnam War; Syria Genocide Whitewashed; Fanaticism of Reactionaries
American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2023-2024: Polycrisis and the need to transform reality. Part II
Erasing Black, Gay, and women’s history is part of a drive for totalitarian thought control. The hatred of Black Studies is because the Black dimension is linked with all freedom movements in U.S. history. The opposite is not only the restoration of true history but the actual freedom movements in unity with their universalization in thought, the philosophy of revolution in permanence.
Detroiters demand: ‘Stop Cop City!’
March 21, 2023Dozens of protesters marched in downtown Detroit chanting: “Stop Cop City!” They opposed the expansion of Camp Grayling to more than double its current police training grounds.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The vanguard role of Black masses in American freedom movements
March 18, 2023For the 60th anniversary of the groundbreaking “American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard,” we present a section from the introduction to the pamphlet’s first edition–at the very time when right-wing forces are trying to prevent the teaching and discussion of the true history of the U.S. and especially the freedom movements that run through that history.
The Todayness of a Marxist-Humanist Classic: American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard
“American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard” is a Marxist-Humanist classic that speaks directly to today’s situation.
Police murder of Tyre Nichols puts U.S. civilization on trial yet again
March 16, 2023The murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police reveals the racism permeating police departments and sparked protests across the U.S. calling into question the system in which the violence is rooted. The police murder of tree-sitter Tortuguita in Atlanta showed how deep the rot is and the uprooting needs to become.
Call for Convention, 2023
February 26, 2023Call for Convention of News and Letters Committees, 2023
Review: ‘The 1619 Project’
May 14, 2022‘The 1619 Project’ tackles U.S. history since the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia—from multiple perspectives. Each essay is grounded in original sources, scholarly works, interviews and oral histories. Historical events, photographs of ordinary African-Americans and poetry surround each essay, adding a human touch.
Review: ‘The 1619 Project’
April 22, 2022‘The 1619 Project’ tackles U.S. history since the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia—from multiple perspectives. Each essay is grounded in original sources, scholarly works, interviews and oral histories. Historical events, photographs of ordinary African-Americans and poetry surround each essay, adding a human touch.
Rittenhouse acquittal: U.S. criminal injustice system, vigilantes, politicians target liberation movements and ideas
December 11, 2021The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse gave a green light to reactionary killings. The uprisings after George Floyd’s murder, and the associated ideas of liberation, are the ultimate target of lynchers.
#BlackLivesMatter: Review of ‘The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart’ by Alicia Garza
September 22, 2021Susan Van Gelder reviews the book “The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart” by Alicia Garza.
Solidarity with Palestinians needed as state powers scheme
July 1, 2021The brief, dirty war that broke out May 10-21 between the Israeli government and Hamas, the Islamist group ruling Gaza had many reactionary consequences.
Editorial: Republicans savage democracy and history
The worldwide protests over George Floyd’s murder and other protests of Republican-led policies led them to erode, stifle, obfuscate, erase from memory and repress democracy, passing laws to subvert elections and teaching. Republicans decided that democracy must be destroyed so that they can rule in perpetuity, representing the 1% in the name of white Christian America.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2019, Part 1
September 1, 2019Readers’ Views on: Youth revolt, from China to climate strikes; Gunning for immigrants; Circling the abyss; Queer Notes; A prisoner responds; 1619 and today; Reading ‘N & L’; Elena Grigorieva; and Deborah Morris
Essay: What is socialism? Socialism, labor, and the Black dimension
May 1, 2019Marxist-Humanist Bob McGuire looks through history to Marx’s relationship to labor and the Black movement for freedom and then to our day and the relationship of Marxist-Humanism to labor and the Black struggle for freedom in speaking to the question many are asking today: What is socialism?
Editorial: Alabama Blacks beat Trump-Moore
January 28, 2018Black voters in Alabama, led by Black women, overcame blatant voter suppression—including discriminatory voter ID laws—to flood the polls and block Roy Moore from the Senate seat he expected that God would anoint him to.
Rising U.S. racism challenges all freedom movements
September 2, 2017A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the history and meaning of the rising of the right-wing neo-Nazi white supremacist movement, its relationship to President Donald Trump and his administration, and its challenge to the freedom forces arrayed against it who are fighting for a humanist world. .
II. The capital relation
May 17, 2017The capital relation is spelled out as alienated labor, automation, destruction of jobs, unraveling of the social fabric–fertile ground for reactionary ideology, scapegoating, and fascism. Yet the human Subject’s quest for freedom continues.
I. Trumpism as an excrescence of world capitalism’s crises
Trumpism’s self-perpetuating disorder is based on negation of social movements, trying to stifle the positive in their negation of this exploitative society. His deceit and power grabs express capitalism’s disintegration, exuding racism, sexism, and fascism.
Philosophic Dialogue: Dialectic of the party or dialectic of philosophy and organization?
July 5, 2016Eugene Gogol explores the point that the radical heart of Hegelian dialectics is the negation of the negation–the positive within the negative that constructs the new society. He traces this idea in Marx and Lenin and then how Raya Dunayevskaya saw this dialectic expressed in her breakthrough on Hegel’s Absolutes, where she ascertained a dual movement: a movement from practice that is itself a form of theory and the movement from theory to philosophy.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Racism, war and Muhammad Ali
July 4, 2016On the same day that General William Westmoreland waved the flag before Congress, Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army. While the general was applauded even by the doves, Ali was, within hours, stripped of his title of World Heavyweight Boxing Champion. War exposed the open nerve—”the Black Question”—which has always been the touchstone of U.S. history. It placed American civilization on trial before the world much more seriously than the “war crimes tribunal” in Stockholm.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Nixon’s ‘racist mayhem’ lingers today
May 18, 2016Our era, when racist police gun down Black men, women and youth, continues a history as old as the U.S. The piece excerpted here shows some of that history and how racism can be spurred on by this country’s leaders and would-be leaders, out for power. It takes up how Left movements respond to racism and the attempt to answer the question by funneling liberatory impulses into the dead end of electoral politics. The relationships between the Black freedom movement, anti-war youth, workers, and philosophy of revolution remain as critical today as when this article was written.
Youth In Action: March-April 2016
March 18, 2016Students protesting racism at US campuses get some wins; student movement The FeesMustFall student movement at South Africa’s University of Witwatersrand wins a temporary freeze on fees, call for campus jobs to remain on campus and making it more possible for more poor and working class students to be able to afford university; University of Georgia students arrested for calling on the university to grant in-state tuition for undocumented youth; University of Missouri students continue to agitate for racial justice by calling for more Black faculty.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2015
May 3, 2015Letters and comments sent in by readers or taken down, to and about the articles in News & Letters or current events.
Black Lives Matter
The long-simmering outrage of Black masses has broken out into a movement against this racist society, particularly its pattern of racist killings by the police. It has not only reverberated internationally, but also made itself felt in the battle of ideas and the sphere of theory.
60 Years of News & Letters (Readers’ Views, March-April 2015)
March 8, 2015Readers’ Views on the 60th anniversary of News & Letters and Terry Moon’s column on it.
Revolt surges against racist system destroying Black lives
January 27, 2015Protests erupted following the decision by a St. Louis County grand jury not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the cold-blooded murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Thousands marched under the slogan “Black Lives Matter!” These demonstrations grew in the wake of the equally outrageous decision of a Staten Island grand jury not to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo for the murder of Eric Garner.
New Spanish Translation of American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard
November 25, 2014Contradicciones históricas en la civilización de los Estados Unidos. Las masas afroamericanas como vanguardia: New Spanish Translation of American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard by Raya Dunayevskaya.
Hegel and Black history
September 30, 2014There is compelling evidence that the Haitian Revolution of 1803 was a source for Hegel’s narrative on the master/slave relation in the PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT.
‘A Dreadful Deceit’ and unceasing rebellion
March 30, 2014Jacqueline Jones’ new book, A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America, is not a call to ignore effects of the concept of race in law and practice. She finds the definition of race repeatedly twisted to suit the needs of the ruling class and wielded as a tool for subjugation of Black and white labor alike.
Readers’ Views, Nov.-Dec. 2013, Part 1
December 14, 2013Readers’ Views from Nov.-Dec. 2013 N&L: U.S. RACISM AND BLACK AND LATINO STRUGGLES; LABOR UNDER ATTACK; CTA vs. THE HOMELESS; DISABILITY AND HUMANITY; ABORTION IS A HUMAN NEED; EGYPT’S CONTRADICTIONS; DETROIT CRISIS; NUCLEAR PERIL; WHY A NEWSPAPER LIKE N&L?
The politics of degenerate capitalism
May 2, 2013The rulers are not about to sit back and let revolt freely develop. All sorts of reactionary ideas and attitudes have been ushered into the mainstream of politics and the media.
Setting the Historic Record Straight
March 14, 2008Setting the historic record straight in response to the attack of the “Marxist-Humanist Tendency” on News and Letters Committees.