Workers in the U.S. have made 2021 a year that ought to panic giant corporations and small store owners alike. The wave of strikes and other job actions this fall have exploded and not just in numbers.
fetishism of commodities
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.
A Restatement of Some Fundamentals of Marxism against ‘pseudo-Marxism’
September 28, 2015Excerpt from the polemic Raya Dunayevskaya wrote in 1943 against a leading theoretician of the Workers Party, Joe Carter, on Marx’s concept of capitalist “production for the sake of production.”
Another look at Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Mind’
September 14, 2014From the January-February 2002 News & Letters
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Editor’s Note: We publish here a discussion of what Marx considered Hegel’s greatest philosophic work—The Phenomenology of Mind. The first piece is a letter written by Raya Dunayevskaya to an Iranian colleague on June 26, 1986[1] ; the original can be found in the [=>]
Communization theory and its discontents truncate Marx’s dialectic
July 5, 2013The persisting economic crisis has spurred new interest in Karl Marx including “Communization Theory” which projects Marx’s dialectic as a total break with capitalism but without posing a need for dialectical mediation beyond capitalism.
Monsters of the Market
March 3, 2013Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires, and Global Capitalism by David McNally (Haymarket Books, Chicago, July 2012).
“The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘a monstrous accumulation of commodities…’” Thus Marx states the theme of his magnum opus in the very first sentence: that capitalism is a [=>]
Readers’ Views, July-August 2012, Part 1
August 14, 2012REVOLUTION, COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND NEED FOR PHILOSOPHY
In the Draft of Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2012-2013, published in the last issue, while the global analysis is good, it is partial and emphasizes mass uprisings that may be a part of history tomorrow, i.e., Syria, while ignoring the long-term struggles that have a potential for raising a clear [=>]
Specter of Depression: Mattick’s Business as Usual
July 30, 2012Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism by Paul Mattick, Reaktion Books (London), 2011.
Paul Mattick’s Business as Usual is an attempt to come to grips in Marxist terms with the global economic crisis that began in 2007. It is an entry into a growing category of books which includes David Harvey’s [=>]
Marx’s Humanism today
May 15, 2012From 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 [=>]
Situationists and Absolute Negativity
April 13, 2012Philosophic 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 [=>]
News and Letters Committees Call for Convention 2012
March 5, 2012OFFICIAL CALL FOR CONVENTION
to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2012-2013
February 26, 2012
To All Members of News and Letters Committees
Dear Friends:
Where we must begin is with the world in upheaval, from Occupy Wall Street to Arab Spring, still going after more than a year.
Nothing better shows the old order’s bloody desperation to prevent a [=>]