The Syrian Revolution has been the physical and intellectual battlefield that defines our time. As early as 2012 it was clear that what happened in Syria would determine the next stage of world history.
philosophy
Review: ‘Lesbian Revolution’
January 24, 2019Adele reviews “The Lesbian Revolution: Lesbian Feminism in the UK 1970–1990,” by Sheila Jeffreys, the first book documenting the history of British Lesbian feminism.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2018: Part 2
September 29, 2018Readers’ Views Part 2 takes up: the needed return to Marx’s Humanism, and Voices from behind prison bars.
Essay: Saito’s ecosocialism rejects Marx’s philosophic moment
July 23, 2018In “Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism” Kohei Saito brings to light some of the volumes of Marx’s unpublished research and growing concern over capitalism’s deleterious effect on the environment but wrongly rejects Marx’s 1844 philosophic moment.
Voices From the Inside Out: Prisoner reviews Specters of Revolt
July 22, 2018Prisoner-columnist Faruq reviews the book “Specters of Revolt: On the Intellect of Insurrection and Philosophy from Below” by Richard Gilman-Opalsky.
Editorial: Trump-Kim ‘peace’ threatens masses
July 18, 2018Marxist-Humanist analysis of the Trump-Kim summit and G7 summit shows Trump is not charting a path to world peace but rather toward a more openly brutal world order. .
World In View: Moishe Postone, 1942-2018
May 9, 2018In Memoriam for Moishe Postone whose critique of anti-Semitism as a fetishized form of anticapitalism came alive for those struggling with the betrayal of the Syrian Revolution by many “Leftists.”
Letter from Mexico: How will Indigenous movement organize?
March 12, 2018The National Indigenous Congress did not collect enough signatures to allow María de Jesús Patricio to run as an independent candidate for President of Mexico in 2018. This has deepened discussions of how to create horizontal, autonomous organizations born from below.
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!
Puerto Ricans suffer as Donald Trump plays to his racist base
November 12, 2017Puerto 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. .
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. .
Readers’ Views: July-August 2017, Part 1
July 2, 2017Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolt vs. Trumpism; Trump and the Left; Injustice to Immigrants; Anti-Woman, Anti-Labor Uber; ACT UP; From Iran; To Mexico; Why Read News & Letters?
Review: ‘I Am Not Your Negro’
June 5, 2017From a prisoner’s perspective, Faruq reviews “I Am Not Your Negro,” a documentary film and companion book produced by Raoul Peck that concentrates on the writings and life of James Baldwin.
Readers’ Views: May-June 2017
May 1, 2017Reader’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
Essay: Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism
March 21, 2017Trump’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.
Voices From the Inside Out: African-American History Month
February 5, 2017Prisoner Faruq looks at how African-American History Month came to be, stressing the importance of Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s vision and how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy included a critique of cultural and social relations as well as race, concluding that history is necessary for formerly enslaved people to move towards freedom.
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.
Voices From the Inside Out: Castro absolved?
January 26, 2017Black prisoner Faruq looks critically at Fidel Castro’s legacy, especially his turn to a one party state and the importance of freely associated labor for a true revolutionary process.
Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt
January 23, 2017The 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.
Review: Nature’s God
November 26, 2016Review of Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart, showing how the founders of the U.S. wanted democracy and not a theocracy.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2016, Part 2
September 16, 2016Readers’ Views includes: Politics; revolution and the power of philosophy; remembering Olga Domanski; the sports section; national prison action; and voices from behind the bars.
Essay: Epigones discard Marxist-Humanist philosophy
September 12, 2016The retreat of former Marxist-Humanists into post-Marx Marxism is analyzed by Franklin Dmitryev through the books “Marx at the Margins” by Kevin Anderson and “Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism” by Peter Hudis, which appropriate some of Raya Dunayevskaya’s conclusions while quietly dismantling their philosophical framework.
Help keep News & Letters going and growing
September 7, 2016An appeal for funds to help keep the paper, News & Letters, going and growing; and to help us expand our subscriptions to prisoners.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2016, Part 2
July 14, 2016Readers’ Views on Needed New Beginnings in Philosophy and Revolution; Making One Year Count; Subjugated Knowledge; Free Syria/May Day; and Voices From Behind the Bars.
Letter from Mexico: On ‘Life’ and feminism
May 18, 2016The late Revolutionary Olga Domanski is remembered for reminding us that Absolute Method is the only way for feminism, as part of a totally new society built on truly human foundations, to be completely realized.
IV. Counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa
May 13, 2016Part IV of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The renewal of Syrian demonstrations for freedom refuted the state powers’ belief that the idea of revolution can be destroyed by bombs, and highlighted a civilizational crisis and the need for international solidarity.
I. Discontent, revolt and reaction in the U.S.
May 6, 2016Part I of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Discontent is seething in the U.S. among workers, youth, Blacks, women, LGBTQ, including elements of the new society. Fear of revolution is powering neo-fascism opposing the revolt.
The need for new beginnings in thought and in action
April 25, 2016Contents: Introduction; I. Discontent, revolt and reaction in the U.S.; II. The worldwide war against women; III. Chinese labor in revolt; IV. Counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa; V. Toward organizational new beginnings. The fact that the old, crumbling order will not go away quietly explains why we print the Marxist-Humanist Draft Perspectives in the pages of the paper of News and Letters Committees. It is an open window onto the needed philosophy of revolution, without which all revolutions and freedom movements remain incomplete.
Letter from Mexico: Meaning of Mexican workers’ struggles
March 18, 2016Upsurge of workers’ struggles in 2015 in Mexico, from field workers in San Quintin, Baja California to maquiladora workers in Ciudad Juarez along with ongoing opposition to government educational “reforms” by teachers in the autonomous union CNTE, demonstrate workers’ resistance to the plans of capital and its state. How can organizations of activist-thinkers meet what workers have achieved in our own organizational response?
Essay: Revolutionary feminism and Hegel’s notion of Life
March 15, 2016Olga Domanski delves into G.W.F. Hegel’s section on “Life” in his Science of Logic to show its meaning for the women’s movement today, facing lethal attacks on abortion rights and an alarming increase in rapes, battering, poverty and unemployment as well as an ever-widening gap between feminist theory and the lives of Black and working women.
From The Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Women as thinkers and revolutionaries
January 24, 2016Olga Domanski’s summary of the series on “Women as Thinkers and as Revolutionaries” by Raya Dunayevskaya.
Counter-revolution in Middle East shows crisis of humanity
August 28, 2015From the signing of a nuclear weapons agreement by the U.S. and Iran, to the ongoing war in Syria including the roles of Turkey and of the Left, this wide-ranging article delves into the Middle East situation with an emphasis on the forces fighting for genuine freedom and a multi-ethnic society.
Letter from Mexico: The Zapatistas and Critical Thought
July 4, 2015An appreciative and critical look at the Zapatistas’ seminar held in Chiapas, Mexico, May 3-9 on “Critical Thought in Face of the Hydra of Capitalism,” by a participant.
Voices from the Inside Out: Selma’s mindset
May 7, 2015In reading Charles Denby’s “Continuing Magnolia Jungle terror exposes reality of ‘Great Society,’” one is struck by how poignant and presciently modern Denby’s thoughts were and how very little has changed today.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The dialectic and women’s liberation
April 30, 2015The article excerpts a summary of a talk by Dunayevskaya to a conference on Women’s Liberation in Detroit. The purpose of the meeting was to help Dunayevskaya work out the final chapter of her book then in progress, Philosophy and Revolution. That last chapter would take up the “New Passions and New Forces” for the reconstruction of society. The Conference was also the beginning of the News & Letters—Women’s Liberation Committee.
Celebrating 60 years: Marx spoke to 1975 economic crisis
In celebrating the first 60 years of News and Letters Committees, we reprint excerpts from the Draft Perspectives for 1975-76 by Raya Dunayevskaya, the first printed in News & Letters.
THE MOVEMENT KNOWS, of course, that the class enemy is at home, within each country. It knows full well that each existing state power is weighted down with fear of revolution. And it does not fail to appreciate that, no matter how deep the intra-imperialist rivalries, capitalist class solidarity holds tightest and strongest against its own people.
Reader’s Views, March-April 2015, Part 2
March 8, 2015The thoughts of News & Letters readers on: MARXIST-HUMANIST PHILOSOPHY IN THE WHIRLWIND OF EVENTS; SAVING THE PLANET; and VOICES FROM BEHIND THE BARS.
Women as Reason: 60 years of News & Letters, the women’s dimension
January 28, 2015As we celebrate 60 years of publishing News & Letters, a look back at the Women’s Liberation Movement encountering Marxist-Humanism and how the women’s movement was anticipated as well as documented in its pages. It is an ongoing perspective.
Dialectics of revolution: American roots and world Humanist concepts, Part II
September 14, 2014From the November-December 2010 News & Letters
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Editor’s note: For the centenary of Raya Dunayevskaya’s birth, we present excerpts from her March 21, 1985, lecture at the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, at the opening of a three-month exhibition of the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection (RDC). The [=>]
Another look at Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Mind’
From 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, 19861It was written to Janet Afary, author of The [=>]
‘On political divides and philosophic new beginnings’
September 7, 2014From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
From the May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters.
Editor’s Note: “On political divides and philosophic new beginnings,” written 25 years ago, is the last writing of Raya Dunayevskaya, who died on June 9, 1987. It was first published in the In Memoriam special issue of News & [=>]
Write, sell, be a bundle dealer for NEWS & LETTERS
July 7, 2014Every 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 [=>]
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The Free Speech Movement
Suddenly, a generation of new radicals was born to replace “the silent generation” of the 1950s. By winter 1964 a new form of revolt, with a new underlying philosophy, called itself the Free Speech Movement. It becomes necessary to view the moment when the student revolt culminated in a mass sit-in.
From the Preface to The Philosophic Moment of Marxist-Humanism
May 26, 2014Integral to Dunayevskaya’s work of 1986-87 was her concentration on a crucial problem of our era—the relationship between the search for non-elitist forms of organization and the dialectics of philosophy. That relation is crucial to work out if we are to overcome the legacy of unfinished, aborted, transformed-into-opposite revolutions. In singling out these 1953 Letters [=>]
Philosophy and organization
May 10, 2014Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2014-2015. IV. Philosophy and organization. A. The philosophic moment of Marxist-Humanism. B. Organizational tasks.
From the U.S. to Ukraine, crises and revolts call for philosophy
May 5, 2014Revolution and counter-revolution contend now, while the prolonged global capitalist economic crisis refuses to end. The question arises: where is the needed banner of total uprooting of the system and creation of new human relations as the goal? This objective need is present in every struggle from outright revolution in the Middle East to movements in the U.S. Beset by attacks and contradictions, they have in turn sparked counter-revolutions.
Readers’ Views, March-April 2014, Part 2
April 9, 2014Readers’ Views from the March-April 2014 issue of News & Letters, part 2.
Economism vs. Marx’s humanism
November 14, 2013Today’s revival of interest in Marx, especially since the onset of the 2008 economic meltdown, includes a significant strain of economism and has revived controversies and issues addressed by Dunayevskaya in this review-essay of Paul Mattick’s book Marx and Keynes.
Why Hegel’s Phenomenology now?
July 12, 2012From 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 [=>]
Iran–philosophy and organization
July 20, 2011From 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 [=>]