Marxist-Humanist Bob McGuire looks through history to Marx’s relationship to labor and the Black movement for freedom and then to our day and the relationship of Marxist-Humanism to labor and the Black struggle for freedom in speaking to the question many are asking today: What is socialism?
What is socialism? From Left to Right, this question is becoming central to political discussion. For me, it raises another question, too: What is philosophy? This is where I will begin, with the young Karl Marx.
This is the first in a series of four presentations on “What is Socialism?” Shorter versions will be published in News & Letters. The second essay is “Socialism, labor and the Black dimension”; the third is “Socialism and ecology”; and the last is “Socialism and Women’s Liberation.”
Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2019-2020
Jan. 15, 2019, marked the 100th anniversary of the day Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered by the forces that suppressed the 1918-19 German Revolution. To highlight how Luxemburg’s revolutionary life and thought are pertinent today, we present a critical review by Raya Dunayevskaya of “The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg,” edited by Stephen Eric Bronner.
Readers’ Views regarding: Thought-diving into revolution in permanence; murky waters[ the Church and oppression; why read N&L; and voices from behind bars.
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.
Readers’ Views on: Capitalism vs. the Planet; Anti-Semitism’s Inhumanity; Kavanaugh Travesty; Youth Rock!; Freedom Movements vs. Fascism across the Globe; Catholic Church Crisis; Voices from behind Bars
On the occasion of the publication of the new book “Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution in Permanence for Our Day: Selected Writings by Raya Dunayevskaya,” this essay explores Marx’s ideas on the basis of Dunayevskaya’s writings on them as a philosophy of revolution needed for our age.
Marking 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.”
The Oct. 27 massacre of 11 Jewish congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue is the single deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history. The motive, as stated by the terrorist himself, was a hatred of Jewish support for Middle Eastern and Latin American immigrants through the organization HIAS.
A new book, “Frantz Fanon: Alienation and Freedom,” reveals that Frantz Fanon warned leftist Islamist Ali Shariati that, despite Islam’s anticolonialist potential, without the spirit of emancipation it risked diversion to sectarianism, approaching the past rather than future, like African nationalisms.
The Oct. 27 massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue was a modern pogrom, with assault weapons, social media presence, and poisoned roots in the current stage of world counter-revolution represented by Trump, Putin, and their like.
With hate crimes, anti-Semitism, racism and anti-immigrant xenophobia on the rise, Israel’s “Jewish nation-state” law and fascism brewing globally, we excerpt two pieces addressing roots of these phenomena in capitalism’s crises.
Readers’ Views Part 2 takes up: the needed return to Marx’s Humanism, and Voices from behind prison bars.
Special offer for the book “Russia: From Proletarian Revolution to State-Capitalist Counter-Revolution: Selected writings by Raya Dunayevskaya.”
Readers’ Views on: Marx’s New Moments and Today’s Need for Revolution and Philosophy; Fetish of Property vs. Humanity and the Planet; Voices from Behind Bars
In “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.
At a time when the social crisis is total—political, economic, cultural, ideological—this clarion call for a return to the original form of the Humanism of Marxism speaks to today’s need for more than just political change, but for a total view and a total solution to global retrogression.
Prisoner-columnist Faruq reviews the book “Specters of Revolt: On the Intellect of Insurrection and Philosophy from Below” by Richard Gilman-Opalsky.
It is a question of working out how to actualize for this moment the relationship of philosophy, spontaneity, organization. We look at concrete tasks.
Readers’ Views takes up: women’s liberation, youth in the battle, Blacks vs. racism, border cop thugs, Middle East struggles, and voices from behind bars.
Rememberances of a News and Letters Committees founder, Andy Phillips, coal miner, activist, writer, thinker.
We 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.”
Richard-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? .
West Virginia public school teachers carried out a general strike across the state beginning Feb 22, first striking for two days with union approval, then forcing the union to extend the strike for two more days until the governor offered a 5% raise.
Excerpts from the introduction to the new French edition of Charles Denby’s book “Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal.”
In celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we present excerpts from Dunayevskaya’s “Luxemburg as Feminist; Break with Jogiches.”
On Dec. 28, 2017, demonstrations broke out in the city of Mashhad, Iran, the first of many that swept across Iran for weeks. Women were a vital part of the events, including strikes as well as protests against veiling, drawing on a long radical history.
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.” .
OFFICIAL 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 [=>]
The #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 on Women’s Liberation struggle continue and voices from behind bars.
The dialectic and the meaning of the Russian Revolution.
We honor the life of Narihiko Ito, one of the world’s foremost scholars on Rosa Luxemburg and a correspondent of Raya Dunayevskaya, and mourn his death.
Announcement of the French edition of “Indignant Heart: Autobiography of a Black American Worker,” by Charles Denby, followed by English excerpts of Denby’s “Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal.”
Raya Dunayevskaya y la filosofía del Raya Dunayevskaya y la filosofía del humanismo marxista: su significado hoy
Eugene Gogol
Introducción: sobre aniversarios, conmemoraciones y nuevos comienzos
El centenario de la Revolución Rusa, el 150 aniversario de la primera edición de El capital, de Marx, así como el bicentenario del nacimiento de este último, son momentos cruciales en los [=>]
Basho, S.B., and Terry Moon remember their Marxist-Humanist comrades, Judy Tanzawa and Dan Perron.
Raya 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. .
New collection of writings by Raya Dunayevskaya on the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution titled: Russia: From Proletarian Revolution to State-Capitalist Counter-Revolution. .
In 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. .
A 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. .
The new online Guide at www.rayadunayevskaya.org contains clickable links to all the documents in the Archives. .
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. .
Continuing to mark the 150th anniversary of Karl Marx’s Capital, we present excerpts from “Marx’s Transcendence of and Return to Hegel’s Dialectic,” taking up the profound humanist transformation from Marx’s Grundrisse into Capital.
The 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.
Readers’ Views on Cooperative Form of Labor vs. Abstract Labor; Marx vs. Trump-Putin; Voices From Behind Bars
Continuing to mark the 150th anniversary of Karl Marx’s Capital, Vol. I, we present excerpts from “Marx’s Transcendence of and Return to Hegel’s Dialectic,” a draft chapter for Dunayevskaya’s book Philosophy and Revolution, taking up the profound humanist transformation from Marx’s Grundrisse into Capital.
Former miner Andy Philips speaks about the interest in Marxist-Humanism at his assisted living facility.
Although 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.