It is a question of working out how to actualize for this moment the relationship of philosophy, spontaneity, organization. We look at concrete tasks.
Marxist-Humanism
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.”
III. The reality and the myth of contemporary capitalism
May 5, 2018We look at the world economic situation that must be changed: the role of state-capitalism, labor, climate change, the law of value, exploitation, alienation, and revolution and counter-revolution in Syria.
Fight against Duterte’s fascism
May 4, 2018In-person report of the situation in the Philippines. The fragmented Left complicates the struggle against President Duterte and his fascist rule.
In Memoriam: Andy Phillips (1924-2018)
May 1, 2018We mourn the loss of a founding member of News and Letters Committees, who participated in the first national strike against automation in the coal mines and later co-wrote its history in “The Coal Miners’ General Strike of 1949-50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S.”
Philippines: Human rights vs. Duterte’s fascism
April 5, 2018In-person report from the Philippines.
Chicago March For Our Lives
March 25, 2018On a bitter cold morning on March 24, 2018, over 85,000 of us jammed into Union Park on Chicago’s west side to be part of the March For Our Lives and to join with protesters in 800 other cities across the U.S. and the world.
Review: Specters of Revolt
March 12, 2018Richard-Gilman Opalsky is a rare intellectual who recognizes revolt as a form of theory. Does his book “Specters of Revolt” grasp theory in a one-sided way and restrict the movement of negation of the negation? .
Struggle against solitary confinement continues!
March 10, 2018Bay Area Californians rally against all forms of solitary confinement including for those released from indefinite solitary into level IV general population who are experiencing conditions worse than they experienced in solitary.
#MeToo, Women’s Marches show the resistance deepens
March 8, 2018Women have changed the world through an incredible and sustained activism based on a humanism that runs like a revolutionary red thread through an amazing array of actions, demonstrations and statements. This development is based on over 50 years of a movement that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, characterized as “Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason.” .
Call for Convention 2018
February 25, 2018OFFICIAL CALL FOR CONVENTION
to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2018-2019
February 25, 2018
To All Members of News and Letters Committees
Dear Friends:
The deeply ingrained rape culture, already widely known but often hushed up, has been exposed in the broadest way yet by the #MeToo movement. How deep and total is the needed uprooting [=>]
Woman as Reason: The humanism of #MeToo
February 1, 2018The #MeToo movement, with roots in the 1960s, is part of a humanist revolutionary red thread that shows in a visceral way that revolution must deepen at every point in order to finally make the relationships we have with each other into actually human relationships.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2018, Part II
Readers’ Views on Women’s Liberation struggle continue and voices from behind bars.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2018, Part I
January 31, 2018Readers’ views on: U.S. Racism on trial, the right’s crocodile tears, creeping fascism, climate change, nuclear alarms, teachers as labor, Pat Hunt Presente! and Judy and Dan presente!
Readers’ Views: The Dialectic and the Meaning of the Russian Revolution
The dialectic and the meaning of the Russian Revolution.
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.
Iranian workers, youth reach for new radical beginnings
January 28, 2018The recent uprisings in Iran start where the 2009 revolt left off. This analysis focuses on the rebellious working-class youth as well as the interconnections to the Arab Spring, Vladimir Putin’s interference, Donald Trump’s racist agenda, and the philosophic-historic significance of the Bosnian and Syrian struggles against genocide.
Readers’ Views: Remembering Judy Tanzawa and Dan Perron
November 15, 2017Basho, S.B., and Terry Moon remember their Marxist-Humanist comrades, Judy Tanzawa and Dan Perron.
Dan Perron, 1959-2017
News and Letters Committees lost a wonderful comrade when Dan Perron (Oct. 12, 1959-Sept. 7, 2017) died. Dan was a lifelong activist for freedom and justice.
New book–Russia: From Proletarian Revolution to State-Capitalist Counter-Revolution: Selected writings by Raya Dunayevskaya
November 14, 2017New collection of writings by Raya Dunayevskaya on the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution titled: Russia: From Proletarian Revolution to State-Capitalist Counter-Revolution. .
Judy Tanzawa (Judy Tristan) 1939-2017
November 12, 2017In Memoriam for Judy Tanzawa who was a radical union organizer, Los Angeles Local Organizer for News and Letters Committees, fighter for human liberation in all its dimensions. .
Editorial: Abuser-in-chief trashes women
The Trump administration’s attack on both abortion rights and birth control panders to their anti-abortion fanatical base–in the process torturing a 17-year-old immigrant who tried to get an abortion after being locked up for illegally crossing the border. .
Puerto Ricans suffer as Donald Trump plays to his racist base
Puerto Rico is devastated by hurricanes, with climate change a factor, and by the administration’s racist malign neglect, atop an existing debt crisis the masses did not create. Real solidarity came from below. .
#MeToo
October 22, 2017Women’s liberationist and managing editor of News & Letters Terry Moon writes about why she posted #MeToo on social media and how women’s experiences must impact what revolution has to mean.
Appeal: Your help is needed to change the world
September 5, 2017An appeal for funds to keep Marxist-Humanism alive and to help News and Letters Committees continue to grow. .
Editorial: Venezuela: Which way forward?
Editorial on the situation in Venezuela including the deterioration of living conditions; the repression practiced by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and their attempt to gut Venezuela’s Bolivarian Constitution; and the personality cult built around Hugo Chávez, revealing contradictions in the movements for freedom. .
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. .
Now online! Guide to the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, the Marxist-Humanist Archives
August 29, 2017The new online Guide at www.rayadunayevskaya.org contains clickable links to all the documents in the Archives. .
New book: Dunayevskaya on Russian Revolution
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, a new book collects writings by Raya Dunayevskaya on the Revolution, counter-revolution, and their consequences, aiming to help create new revolutionary beginnings today. .
Now available online! Guide to the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, the Marxist-Humanist Archives
July 29, 2017The new online Guide with links to all the documents is an extremely useful finding tool that helps the reader or researcher locate items and grasp the structure of the Archives. The website of the Raya Dunayevskaya Memorial Fund presents the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection as she organized it, together with the Supplement.
Woman as reason: Syrian Familes for Freedom
June 30, 2017The activities and meaning of the new Syrian group Families for Freedom, which demands a stop to the forced disappearances of their husbands and children; and refuses to leave their relatives fate in the hands of armed actors.
VII. Tasks
May 17, 2017Although we do not have a daily newspaper, this crisis-ridden period compels us to strive to act as if we do. Organizational tasks as always are meant to include, not exclude, friends and new contacts who are not yet Marxist-Humanists.
VI. The Russian Revolution, 100 years ago and its meaning today
Whatever lip service is paid to the Russian Revolution’s 100th anniversary, its significance as a historic event and as a link to the thought and practice of Marx has been obscured because of the abandonment of revolutionary perspectives. It is high time to push to the forefront the role of the philosophy of revolution in permanence in facing the reality of dialectics of liberation, 1917 and 2017.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya, May-June 2017: The cooperative form of labor vs. abstract labor and despotic plan
May 2, 2017As part of observing the todayness of Marx’s Capital on its 150th anniversary, we present Raya Dunayevskaya’s analysis of Marx’s concept of Cooperative Form of Labor vs. Abstract Labor, as preparation for her book “Marxism and Freedom.”
Mass rallies denounce Trump and defend immigrants: N.Y. Yemenis strike
March 12, 2017Yemeni immigrants walk away from their jobs and rally in support of immigrants and against Trump’s first immigrant ban.
Women take the lead against world retrogression
March 8, 2017An in-depth Marxist-Humanist view of the state of the women’s movement in the U.S. and worldwide as it responds to the rising fascism of U.S. President Trump and other world leaders.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2017
February 26, 2017Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2017-2018
Readers’ Views: January-February 2017, Part 2
February 2, 2017Readers’ Views on: Practical and Theoretical Intervention; Syria and Humanism; International Crises; and Prisoners Speak.
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.
Confronting fanatics
January 28, 2017In person report of the demonstration against the anti-abortion fanatics so-called March for Life in Chicago.
Woman as Reason: Syrian women as force and revolutionary Reason
January 26, 2017Women’s Liberationist Terry Moon writes about the revolutionary force and reason of Syrian women including those in Raqqa fighting ISIS, in East Aleppo fighting Bashar al-Assad, in Salamiya and Daraya–documenting the forms they chose to fight for freedom.
Oakland, Detroit march on Martin Luther King Day
Reports by participants of celebrations and protests on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Oakland, Calif., and Detroit, Mich.
Democracy in the streets votes Trump out!
January 23, 2017Reports from the huge Women’s March from participants in Chicago, Ill., Detroit, Mich., Oakland, Calif., Nashville, Tenn., Memphis, Tenn., Los Angeles, Calif., and New York City.
Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt
The lightning move by Republicans in Congress to prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare—before Donald Trump even took office, with only the vaguest idea of what is to replace it, and with full knowledge that a large majority of Americans oppose the repeal of its most important provisions—gave a sign of how far the new single-party government intends to roll the clock back, with dizzying speed.
Essay: The masses in Latin America face a duality
November 30, 2016The essay takes a critical look at the “Latin American Pink Tide” (a decade of progressive governments in South America), its limits and contradictions, and poses the question: Is there a way forward that does not substitute statism for the action and thought of the masses?
Readers’ Views, November-December 2016, Part 2
November 27, 2016Readers’ Views on The Dialectic of History Vs. Retrogression; Prisoners, Supporters Speak.
Review: White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
Review of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg.
Spontaneity of action and organization of thought: In memoriam of the Hungarian Revolution
On the anniversary of the Hungarian revolution, we present a letter by Dunayevskaya whose concept of the relationship of spontaneity and party, and its inseparability from organization of thought, speaks to the dialectics of organization and philosophy.
Woman as Reason: Polish women show path forward
November 26, 2016As women in the U.S. face a bleak future when it comes to abortion rights, they can learn from Polish women who recently stopped anti-abortion legislation in its tracks, showing the need for revolutionary thought and activity.
Revisiting Fanon
Report of a discussion following the showing of the new movie “Concerning Violence” which took on Frantz Fanon and Black movements of the present.