Write, sell, be a bundle dealer for NEWS & LETTERS

July 7, 2014

Every page of News & Letters is meant to be part of an ongoing discussion about freedom with you, our readers.  If you have a story to tell about your work, about demonstrations happening where you live, about an article you’ve read in this paper, send it to News & Letters, 228 S. Wabash [=>]

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Readers’ Views, Jan.-Feb. 2014, Part 2

March 9, 2014

ENVIRONMENT UNDER THREAT

Recently I attended a talk near Berkeley, Calif., by a retired professor about the effect of environmental damage on political instability in the Middle East. He spoke disparagingly of Arab countries, but was full of praise for Israeli technology and “adaptive science.” He stated that autocracy was the best way to confront [=>]

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Left still can’t fathom Women’s Liberation

March 30, 2013

Women’s struggle for freedom has continued to develop into a worldwide movement with revolutionary content (see page 1). Unfortunately, much of the Left seems unable to hear this radical dimension of women’s struggles. A recent example is Sharon Smith’s essay,

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News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2013

March 7, 2013

OFFICIAL CALL FOR PLENUM
to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2013-2014

February 24, 2013

To All Members of News and Letters Committees

Dear Friends:

The world today is riven between the creativity of masses in revolt and the violent degeneracy of counter-revolution, whose destructiveness even extends to the revived specter of nuclear war two decades after the collapse of [=>]

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Now off the press: The Crossroads of History: Marxist-Humanist Writings on the Middle East by Raya Dunayevskaya

February 5, 2013

Now off the press:

Excerpts from the Foreword:

Nobody, least of all Marxists, foresaw the great historic divide which would be opened by the Arab Spring beginning in 2010. When Mohammed Bouazizi and Hussein Nagi Felhi killed themselves to protest the miserable conditions of life for Tunisian youth, they set off a year of revolutionary struggle that [=>]

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American Civilization on Trial: Black masses as vanguard and the dialectic of history

February 4, 2013

From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation

Editor’s note: This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Marxist-Humanist classic American Civilization on Trial,originally with the overline “100 Years after the Emancipation Proclamation,” whose 150th anniversary was January 1, 2013. The original subtitle, “The Negro as Touchstone of History,” was [=>]

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Study/discussion series: Global Crises, Global Rebellion, and the Needed Philosophy of Revolution

September 27, 2012

You’re invited to a nationwide series of five Marxist-Humanist discussions on:

Global Crises, Global Rebellion, and the Needed Philosophy of Revolution

Central to today’s reality is the worldwide capitalist economic crisis, the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the context for occupations and revolutions across the globe. We will explore the meaning of this [=>]

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September-October 2012 issue of News & Letters is online

September 9, 2012

Lead

Reactionary U.S. election shows capital’s contradictions

“We built it!” roared the delegates at the Republican Party convention in Tampa. It was the perfect expression of the presidential campaign and of capitalist thinking in general. The truth is that workers built the social wealth. Capitalists take it from the workers, and the government gets a portion.
Mitt Romney [=>]

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Readers’ Views, July-August 2012, Part 2

August 15, 2012

RICH AND DUNAYEVSKAYA: A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

Thanks for your In Memoriam to Adrienne Rich. It revealed a dimension that many who were appreciative of her poetry and feminism may not have known—Rich’s exploration of Marx’s ideas through her reading of Raya Dunayevskaya. One piece Rich wrote was titled “Dunayevskaya’s Marx.” It was crucial how you [=>]

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Commemorating the Los Angeles Rebellion

August 5, 2012

Los Angeles, Calif.—On April 28, people from the Black community, some from Occupy LA, and others gathered at the 71st and Normandie Ave. block party on the 20th anniversary of the 1992 LA Rebellion.

The event was moderated by Mollie Ball—long-time community activist and part of the LA-4-Plus Defense Committee. That committee was formed to support [=>]

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Trade unionism and revolutionary syndicalism

July 13, 2012

by Michael Gilbert

The theory and practice of how to organize workers to take power into their own hands and fight for a new social order has always been uppermost in the minds of all true revolutionaries, even in the darkest moments of capitalist and state-capitalist repression. Following Marx, the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, has [=>]

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Why Hegel’s Phenomenology now?

July 12, 2012

From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Why Hegel’s Phenomenology now?

Editor’s Note: 2012 is marked by potential historic turning points and the search for new beginnings. It also marks the 25th anniversary of Raya Dunayevskaya’s last writings. We present part of her unfinished “Why Hegel’s Phenomenology? Why Now?” which was an important aspect of her work on Dialectics of [=>]

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Marx’s Humanism today

May 15, 2012

From the May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters:

Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2012-2013

(continued from Part III)

IV. Marx’s Humanism today

“The commodity form of the products of labor became a fetish because of the perverse relationship of subject to object–of living labor to dead capital. Relations between men appear as the relation between things because [=>]

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New May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters is online

May 3, 2012

Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2012-2013

Counter-revolution’s rise shows need for a total philosophy

Revolution, having forced its way to center stage over the last year and a half, cannot easily be bottled up. That explains the viciousness of the counter-revolution, whether the violent police attacks on occupations from New York to Oakland or the Syrian state’s torture [=>]

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Situationists and Absolute Negativity

April 13, 2012

Philosophic dialogue

It was good to have Ron Kelch’s Essay, “Absolute Negativity, Occupy and Situationists,” in the Jan.-Feb. News & Letters open an overdue philosophic dialogue. As someone who discovered the work of Guy Debord and Raya Dunayevskaya at about the same time, I’ve given a lot of thought to their relation.

I consider Debord’s work, especially [=>]

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New Russian edition of Marxism and Freedom: Praxis Center needs your help

February 20, 2012

New Russian edition of Marxism and Freedom

Russian Marxism and Freedom

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From Readers’ Views, January-February 2012 issue of News & Letters:

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN RUSSIA: IN REVOLT, IN THEORY

I heard the news of the largest protests in Russia since the dissolution of the USSR twenty years ago at just about the same time I heard [=>]

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Frantz Fanon and women’s liberation

February 1, 2012

Woman as Reason
by Terry Moon

Blogger L Boogie has written part one of “Fanon, Alienation and Sexual Harassment,” exploring Frantz Fanon’s 1952 Black Skin White Masks in an exciting way for feminism, by relating his thought to street harassment. (See http://nothingbutahuman.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/fanon-alienation-and-sexual-harassment/)

She begins by relating several incidents of harassment, noting that recollecting them reminded her of “how violent street harassment of [=>]

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Dialectics of revolution in Africa, Asia

January 31, 2012

From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya

Editor’s note: The upsurge of freedom struggles from Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street makes it imperative to learn from the revolutions of a half-century ago in Africa, Asia and Latin America, not alone as the excitement of masses in motion but as illuminating the role of theory and organization, [=>]

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The masses as Reason

November 14, 2011

As Others See Us

This review by Abe Cabrera is excerpted from a Sept. 20, 2011, post on his blog, The Rose in the Crosshttp://elblogdelpelon.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/the-masses-as-reason/

* * *

Raya Dunayevskaya’s book, Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today, is the founding document of a small political movement, Marxist-Humanism. Opposed equally to the tyranny of “ordinary” capitalism and its counterpart in the [=>]

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Iran–philosophy and organization

July 20, 2011

From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Editor’s note: The letter excerpted here was a reply to a discussion article on “Iran–philosophy and form of organization” by an Iranian revolutionary activist and thinker, published in the December 1979 N&L. Written during the time of the Iranian revolution, it speaks profoundly to the Arab Spring today. The letter’s full [=>]

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Voices from the Inside Out: Remembering John Alan

May 18, 2011

by Robert Taliaferro

John’s writings are strikingly poignant and timeless, with a prosody that is uniquely old-school. The body of his work is eloquently instructive and historically prescient.

In reading his columns we are challenged to look upon his words as more than philosophical constructs; there is a timelessness that reminds us that history–if left to its [=>]

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Subjects of revolution: theory/practice

May 12, 2011

From the new issue of NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2011:

From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Letter to the youth
Subjects of revolution: theory/practice

Editor’s Note: Excerpted from Jan. 15, 1971, letter to Will Stein and other young revolutionaries in News and Letters Committees who had questions about the relationship of theory and practice, and about the “Subject.” The [=>]

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Revolution, organization and philosophy

May 10, 2011

From the new issue of NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2011

Parts IV and V of

Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2011-2012
Revolution and counter-revolution take world stage

Contents:

  • I. The Arab Spring
  • II. The wars at home
  • III. Japan: earthquake, tsunami and meltdown
  • IV. Revolution, organization and philosophy
  • V. Marxist-Humanist Tasks

(Parts I, II, and III were posted in the last two days.)

IV. Revolution, organization and [=>]

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Readers’ Views (March-April 2011)

April 2, 2011

THE MIDDLE EAST EXPLODES: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER?

The Middle East events are bringing lots of people to talk about 1979 as well as the 2009 movements in Iran. I appreciated Raha’s essay in the Jan.-Feb. issue, Philosophy and Iran’s revolution: Where to now? because it raises the question of what could go wrong right now in [=>]

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We need your help!

March 25, 2011

As the revolutions that began this year in Tunisia and Egypt spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, they were recognized by masses of men, women and youth throughout the world, not as “far off events,” but as a new moment struggling to be born everywhere.

That moment has enveloped the massive protests in Wisconsin trying [=>]

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International Women’s Day and Iran

March 21, 2011

From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya

Editor’s note: The first International Women’s Day was observed 100 years ago in March 1911. This year also marks the 32nd anniversary of the historic demonstration in Tehran, Iran, on International Women’s Day, March 8, 1979. On that day, women and supporters braved Islamic Guards and thugs allied with the [=>]

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In Memoriam: John Alan/Allen Willis

March 19, 2011

Allen Willis/John Alan–who would have been 95 on June 10 this year–died quietly on Feb. 23 in Oakland, California. The near-century of his life was filled with thoughts and experiences of Black life in America. One of his earliest recollections was as a three-year-old witnessing the 1919 race riots, seeing Black men being attacked and [=>]

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March-April 2011 issue of News & Letters available on the web

March 17, 2011

New issue of News & Letters is now available on the web:

News & Letters, Vol. 56, No. 2
March – April 2011

Lead
Revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya shake world order

The revolutionary movement that began in Tunisia in December, when 26-year-old street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi burned himself to death in protest at the confiscation of his unlicensed [=>]

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Readers’ Views (Jan.-Feb. 2011)

February 28, 2011

THE OPPOSITE OF WAR IS NOT PEACE BUT REVOLUTION

Your Statement, War threat over Korea,” issued on your website on Dec. 9 had it just right! “The continuing threat of war on the Korean Peninsula underscores the urgency of the Marxist-Humanist perspective that the opposite of war is not peace but revolution.”

And you had it right [=>]

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American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard

December 16, 2010

Part of the classic American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard, written by Raya Dunayevskaya, has been posted on the web at the Marxists Internet Archive. The entire book can be obtained from News and Letters Committees.

This was excerpted from Part V, “From Depression Through World War II.”

Source: American Civilization on Trial, Part V “From Depression Through [=>]

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Bordiga’s Marxism, no way to unite theory and practice

August 22, 2010

Bordiga’s Marxism, no way to unite theory and practice

Necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity. Everywhere the paths to freedom are open.
–Marx, Doctoral Thesis, 1841

Loren Goldner’s 1991 article, “Communism Is the Material Human Community: Amadeo Bordiga Today” was recently the topic of discussion among a [=>]

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