Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2023-2024: Polycrisis and the need to transform reality. Parts VI & VII

June 15, 2023

Where will even the greatest movements from below lead so long as they lack a philosophy of revolution that would give these revolutionary struggles a direction? Any mass movement and any organization can regress and even transform into its opposite. This historic problem cannot be solved by the right program, leadership, or even form of organization. It highlights the indispensability of the need for a philosophy of revolution, the need for the organization of thought and its demand to be embodied in organizations based on the movement from theory.

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Kei “Basho” Utsumi (1935-2022): in remembrance

August 24, 2022

Kei Utsumi touched many lives before his death on July 15, a few days shy of his 87th birthday. In conversations with friends, in being present at countless demonstrations, or in putting pen to paper, his was a passionate, unyielding voice for freedom movements, which will be sorely missed.

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Voices from the Inside Out: End life without parole

July 20, 2022

Prisoner Sam Lint writes about working to change South Dakota’s lifer law as South Dakota is one of only two states that have no option for parole if you have a life sentence; and one of the only two states that will give a life sentence for manslaughter. “Life” is natural life here, and they don’t mind giving it out.

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Readers’ views, March-April 2021: part one

March 11, 2021

Readers’ Views on: Trumpism, Racism and the Specter of Fascism; Vaccine Inequality and Injustice; Organizing Amazon; Can Humanity Survive?; Criminal Injustice; Trust Women; Marx’s Humanism and Love; Why Read ‘N&L’?

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Readers’ views, November-December 2020: part one

November 28, 2020

Election battles, reaching for the future, and the pull of the past; Sabotage of the post office; Food recycling workers strike; Anti-labor statue downed; Oil and biden; COVID-19: where’s the vision?; Racism and fascism; Polish women’s revolutionary moment; News & Letters is back in print!

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From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Remembering John Lewis and Bloody Sunday–Racist barbarity spawned new forms of revolt

In 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.

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Nicaraguans rise up against Ortega

September 20, 2018

Nicaraguans rally in San Francisco to raise awareness and support for the spreading anti-government protests in Nicaragua against President Ortega and his government’s brutal oppression.

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Los Angeles Rebellion revisited

June 18, 2018

Report of a meeting in Los Angeles to commemorate the April 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion, which was a reaction to an accumulation of racist actions and policies in Los Angeles and the country, directed against Black people day after day and generation after generation.

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Chicago March For Our Lives

March 25, 2018

On 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.

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#MeToo, Women’s Marches show the resistance deepens

Women 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.” .

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Dan Perron, 1959-2017

November 15, 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.

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Readers’ Views: May-June 2017

May 1, 2017

Reader’s Views on Women vs. Reaction; Women and Philosophy; Syria and Humanity; Support Trans Children!; Animals and Us; Repression vs. Justice; Why Read “N&L”; Voices from Behind the Bars

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Essay: Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism

March 21, 2017

Trump’s barbarism in power is a crisis for bourgeois democracy and revolutionary thought. Opposition from below is far deeper than bourgeois opposition to Trump. To have efficacy today, Marx’s body of ideas must be grasped and projected as a whole. The movement from theory needs to meet the challenge of history, of freedom struggles and revolution.

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From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Racism, war and Muhammad Ali

July 4, 2016

On 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.

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