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From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Automation and the New Humanism
November 14, 2021Questions raised by the actions and words of the workers in today’s militant labor insurgency demand a philosophical response. Marxist-Humanism in the U.S. began with taking seriously what workers have raised since the onset of automation in the coal mines: What kind of labor should a human being do?
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: A Post-World War II View of Marx’s Humanism, 1843-1883; Marxist Humanism, 1950s-1980s
September 8, 2021This essay probes ways to make new beginnings in a period of reaction. It includes some of the themes of her work toward the book she had tentatively titled “Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy: ‘The Party’ and Forms of Organization Born out of Spontaneity.”
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Need for a Total Uprooting: Down with the Perpetrators of the Palestinian Slaughter
July 1, 2021In light of the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, we present a piece that takes up the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the connected slaughter of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. This piece goes beyond exposé to explore the treacherous nature of halfway revolutions, which set the stage for counter-revolution. It thus illuminates today’s crisis.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Rival approaches to Marxist humanism
May 8, 2021Since the term “Marxist humanism” has once again become current, but subject to the most varying, and often sanitized, meanings, we present Raya Dunayevskaya’s 1961 writings on “Marxist Humanism in New Books and Reviews.” Once more, we face the questions she explored then: Why now, and how did these writers end up so opposite to where they seemed to be starting from?
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Dialectics of Liberation: The urgent need for new beginnings
March 11, 2021Hegel’s Absolutes never were a series of ascending ivory towers. Revolutionary transformation is immanent in the very form of thought. Our age can best understand Hegel’s Absolute because it has been witness to a movement from practice.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: What is philosophy? What is revolution?
November 27, 2020This Political-Philosophic Letter of Raya Dunayevskaya speaks to the need to return to philosophical roots at times of deep crisis, including addressing the question of how to maintain independence when fighting counter-revolution.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Remembering John Lewis and Bloody Sunday–Racist barbarity spawned new forms of revolt
August 29, 2020In the wake of the March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama, where the recently deceased John Lewis was one of the freedom marchers clubbed and beaten, News & Letters issued this statement highlighting both the new revolt that was sparked and the contradictions between the leaders and ranks in the Freedom Now movement in a way that speaks powerfully to today’s movement.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: From Black mass revolt to Freedom
July 1, 2020Excerpt from the pamphlet ‘Black Mass Revolt,’ issued in October 1967 following uprisings in Detroit and Newark: “Has Whitey got the message?” asked one of the Black militants. “Have our own leaders? The system has got to go.”
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The methodology of Perspectives
May 1, 2020History warns us of other critical periods…which give us historic proof that mere opposition to such monstrous degeneration (of capitalism) does not lead to new societies. On the contrary. It only assures the transformation of that type of bare opposition into one form or another of a halfway house.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: African revolutions at the crossroads
March 8, 2020This 60th anniversary of the “Year of Africa,” the turning point of the African revolutions, sheds light on today’s dilemmas. We reprint for the first time Dunayevskaya’s Weekly Political Letter written immediately after her 1962 trip to Africa.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Crises of retrogressive Changed World
January 22, 2020Raya Dunayevskaya explores the concept of the “Changed World’ of the 1980s, which followed the economic crisis and the restructuring that capitalist rulers imposed, with political retrogression, intensified militaristic imperialism, and ideological pollution.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Urgently needed in a time of political crisis: Philosophy and revolution as process
November 13, 2019Recalling the Watergate break-in and cover-up that led to President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation, the text goes into the discussion of practicing dialectics and working out the unity of philosophy and revolution for the current moment of crisis.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Permanent revolution and the dialectic
August 31, 2019Dunayevskaya relates the concept of revolution in permanence to the dialectic, especially dialectical mediation, the negation of the negation, the forces of revolution as reason, and the integrality of philosophy and revolution.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: China’s youth revolt vs. Mao’s legacy
June 26, 2019This article anticipated the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement in a way that sheds light on today’s realities by tracing the youth and labor revolt in 1980s China as well as the post-Mao Chinese Communist Party’s maneuvers in politics and ideology.
Readers’ Views: May-June 2019
May 6, 2019Readers’ Views on: Socialism and a philosophy of revolution; Sudan in revolt; Iran vs. Iranians; Flint, Mich., play captures voices; Notre-Dame and fracking on native land; gun control debate; labor strikes; debate on fascism; Trump and DeVos; and voices from behind bars.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The economy and dialectics of liberation
April 23, 2019Raya Dunayevskaya’s archives column explores taking “a further look into the [1976] economy, to measure the depth of the recession, not for statistical purposes, but for the relationship of dialectics of liberation to economic ills.” It bears striking relevance for what is happening in 2019.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2019, Part 2
March 11, 2019Readers’ Views on: Rosa Luxemburg’s revolutionary life; the Green New Deal; and voices from behind bars.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Women’s liberation, experimentation and revolution in permanence
March 10, 2019An interview of Raya Dunayevskaya by Katherine Davenport which aired on WBAI radio in New York City on International Women’s Day, March 8, 1984. It brings together women’s liberation and revolution in permanence, as Dunayevskaya discusses what life might be after revolution.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Karl Marx’s continuous development of the philosophy of revolution in permanence
December 3, 2018Marking the publication of writings by Raya Dunayevskaya on Marx’s philosophy of revolution in permanence, the article presents parts of a lecture in which she gave an overview of this concept in relationship to her just-completed book, “Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution.”
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: New moments in Marx form trail to today
May 10, 2018To observe the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, we present excerpts of a speech given by Raya Dunayevskaya for the Marx centenary year, originally titled “Marxist-Humanism, 1983: The Summation That Is a New Beginning, Subjectively and Objectively.”
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Iran–Unfoldment of, and contradictions in, revolution
January 30, 2018Excerpt from Dunayevskaya’s March 25, 1979, Political-Philosophic Letter “Iran: Unfoldment of, and Contradictions in, Revolution” that gives a history of revolt and speaks to today’s rebellions in that country by workers, women and youth.
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Historic initiative of the masses and Lenin’s philosophic break
November 14, 2017Raya Dunayevskaya’s outline for a 1948 speech in Pittsburgh for the Russian Revolution’s anniversary; and “Lenin and the Dialectic: A Mind in Action,” taking up Lenin’s philosophical preparation for revolution. .
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Why Phenomenology? Why now?
January 30, 2017Because of the urgency of the question of how to make new beginnings in such a reactionary world situation, we excerpt two of Dunayevskaya’s last philosophical writings, which confront “where to begin” as part of her work on dialectics of philosophy and organization.
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.