Readers’ Views on Hate: Orlando to Brexit; Black Lives Matter; Muhammad Ali and Dr. King; Duterte in the Philippines; News & Letters Readers Unite!; and Deadly Assault on Women From the U.S. to Israel.
Raya Dunayevskaya
Philosophic Dialogue: Dialectic of the party or dialectic of philosophy and organization?
July 5, 2016Eugene Gogol explores the point that the radical heart of Hegelian dialectics is the negation of the negation–the positive within the negative that constructs the new society. He traces this idea in Marx and Lenin and then how Raya Dunayevskaya saw this dialectic expressed in her breakthrough on Hegel’s Absolutes, where she ascertained a dual movement: a movement from practice that is itself a form of theory and the movement from theory to philosophy.
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.
Britain’s hate-driven referendum a victory for the Far Right
June 26, 2016With Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the Far Right has been emboldened worldwide. As the economic and social crisis deepens, so does the brutality, while the Right seeks scapegoats for the results of capitalism’s objective laws, which only have force as long as humanity’s struggle to be free is not yet complete. The only solid ground for opposing this latest stage of reactionary retrogression is that of revolution in permanence.
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.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Nixon’s ‘racist mayhem’ lingers today
Our era, when racist police gun down Black men, women and youth, continues a history as old as the U.S. The piece excerpted here shows some of that history and how racism can be spurred on by this country’s leaders and would-be leaders, out for power. It takes up how Left movements respond to racism and the attempt to answer the question by funneling liberatory impulses into the dead end of electoral politics. The relationships between the Black freedom movement, anti-war youth, workers, and philosophy of revolution remain as critical today as when this article was written.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2016
May 17, 2016Readers’ Views on Women as Reason; Harriet Tubman; Racism and Internationalism; Bisexual Health; Trans Liberation and Feminism; Chinese State vs. Workers; Nuclear Arms Threaten All; Ireland’s Red Banner; Remembering Olga Domanski; Haggard but Not Tired; Voices from Behind the Bars.
V. Toward organizational new beginnings
May 13, 2016Part V of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Together with the depths of counter-revolution, the passion for philosophy points to both the need for and the potential for totally new beginnings in the transformation of society, for new banners of freedom as a polarizing force.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 2
March 30, 2016Readers’ Views on: The Movements from Practice and from Theory; Berta Caceres; Why Read N&L?; Women’s Liberation; Voices from behind the Bars.
Olga Domanski’s revolutionary life, 1923-2015 (March-April 2016 Readers’ Views)
March 22, 2016Readers’ Views from the March-April 2016 N&L marking the revolutionary life of Olga Domanski.
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: Racism, workers and freedom ideas
March 14, 2016With Trump’s appeal to racism and reaction winning support from part of the working class, we present Dunayevskaya’s letter taking up Enoch Powell’s racist speeches and their impact on the working class.
Olga Domanski: Part of ‘a generation of revolutionaries’
March 11, 2016Gerry Emmett remembers Olga Domanski as one who embodied “revolutionary” in organizational form, making the idea of freedom exist.
Call for Convention 2016
February 28, 2016Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2016-2017
Readers’ Views: January-February 2016, Part 2
January 25, 2016Philosophy, theory and News & Letters; Flint Part Ii; Mumia Abu-Jamal; Voices from behind the bars.
Comrades and friends remember Olga
Remembrances of Olga Domanski by comrades and friends.
Olga Domanski’s revolutionary life, 1923-2015: Readers’ Views
Readers’ Views on the revolutionary life of Olga Domanski.
In memoriam Olga Domanski, 1923-2015
January 24, 2016The world has lost a great fighter for liberation. Olga Domanski, one of the founders of News and Letters Committees, whose life’s work was the development and projection of Marxist-Humanism and the growth of its organizational expression.
From The Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Women as thinkers and revolutionaries
Olga Domanski’s summary of the series on “Women as Thinkers and as Revolutionaries” by Raya Dunayevskaya.
Woman as Reason: Olga Domanski: embodiment of Woman as Reason
January 23, 2016An in memoriam to Olga Domanski from a women’s liberationist’s point of view.
Olga Domanski, 1923-2015
January 7, 2016The world has lost a great fighter for liberation. Olga Domanski, one of the founders of News and Letters Committees, whose life’s work was the development and projection of Marxist-Humanism and the growth of its organizational expression.
Paris climate accord vs. humanity’s future
December 19, 2015Paris Accord reveals limits of what capitalism will do even in the face of catastrophe. The question is what kind of development can people in all kinds of countries achieve? So long as the vision of an alternative, liberatory path of development is not made concrete as the energizing principle of a movement, a vacuum is left for false alternatives.
From The Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Black masses, youth and the needed U.S. revolution: philosophy and reality
December 10, 2015From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: “Black masses, youth and the needed U.S. revolution: philosophy and reality” looks at the possibility of revolution in the U.S. and the importance of Black masses as vanguard.
Philosophic basis of News & Letters
November 20, 2015On the 60th anniversary of News & Letters we discuss its philosophic basis and invite readers to participate.
A Restatement of Some Fundamentals of Marxism against ‘pseudo-Marxism’
September 28, 2015Excerpt from the polemic Raya Dunayevskaya wrote in 1943 against a leading theoretician of the Workers Party, Joe Carter, on Marx’s concept of capitalist “production for the sake of production.”
Readers’ Views, Sept.-Oct. 2015, Part 2
August 31, 2015Readers’ thoughts on “Dialectics of Philosophy and of Forces of Revolution”; “Free Mumia!”; “Federico Arcos, 1920-2015”; and a section of “Voices from Behind the Bars.”
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: A revolutionary attitude to Archives
August 30, 2015To highlight the new online availability of the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, we present excerpts of her 1985 Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, which take up the development of the Marxist-Humanist concept of Archives out of the category made of the totality of Marx’s Archives as a new beginning for today.
After the referendum: The ongoing Greek crisis
July 8, 2015The two opponents facing off in Greece for five years have been the Greek masses vs. the European rulers and their institutions. The No vote manifested the revolt against austerity. We explore the meaning of these events.
Readers’ Views, July-August 2015
July 4, 2015Black lives as Subject; Russia in crisis; Nothing about us without us; Homelessness in L.A.; Central Canada Alliance; Perspectives and philosophy; Elderly to the streets?; Women and Yemen half-peace; Labor and climate justice; Dialectic and women’s liberation; Voices from behind the bars
Now available online! The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, the Marxist-Humanist Archives
June 28, 2015www.rayadunayevskaya.org presents the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection as she organized it herself, together with the posthumous Supplement. This is in addition to the entire 60 years of News & Letters newspaper available on this website.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The meaning of revolutionary archives
June 27, 2015In celebrating the online publication of the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, we present excerpts of her Introduction/Overview to Volume XII, which takes up the Marxist-Humanist concept of archives as not only retrospective but perspective, in the quest to establish “continuity with the historic course of human development.”
Things fall apart
May 6, 2015In the absence of successful social revolution, today’s total crisis is shown in a world capitalist order that is falling apart economically, politically, environmentally, and in thought. That does not mean that we can wait for capitalism to collapse and step aside for a new society. On the contrary. Its desperation makes it that much more vicious, and it threatens to doom all of humanity with it.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2015
May 3, 2015Letters and comments sent in by readers or taken down, to and about the articles in News & Letters or current events.
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.
Workshop Talks: 1949 coal miners’ general strike today
We workers see from the inside that capitalism is coming apart. The 1949-50 Coal Miners’ General Strike is significant, not only because it highlights resistance to the early stage of automation, but because the miners’ self-activity signified “The Emergence of a New Movement from Practice That Is Itself a Form of Theory.”
World In View: Africa, oh Africa!
March 11, 2015Today’s African tragedies compel one to return to the great promise, and then great tragedy and betrayal, of the African Revolutions that emerged after World War II.
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.
60 Years of News & Letters (Readers’ Views, March-April 2015)
Readers’ Views on the 60th anniversary of News & Letters and Terry Moon’s column on it.
Philosophic Dialogue: On the 1953 letters
In Hegel we witness subjectivity coming out of objectivity, and the opposite movement. Dunayevskaya’s May 20, 1953, Letter interprets the Hegelian dialectic in a revolutionary way. What philosophical-political conclusions can be made?
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Miners inspired Marxist-Humanism
March 7, 2015From the News and Letters pamphlet The Coal Miners’ General Strike of 1949-50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S. we excerpt from Raya Dunayevskaya’s “The Emergence of a New Movement from Practice that Is Itself a Form of Theory,” on miners’ contributions to the philosophic birth of Marxist-Humanism.
Los Zapatistas y los padres y estudiantes de Ayotzinapa: Una unión decisiva
February 16, 2015Carta Politico-Filosofica, Num. 3 praxisamericalatina@gmail.com
Un nuevo momento en la dialéctica de la lucha
LOS ZAPATISTAS Y LOS PADRES Y ESTUDIANTES DE AYOTZINAPA: UNA UNIÓN DECISIVA
Eugene Gogol
Desde [=>]
Aceptando el desafío de este nuevo momento en México: De la represión a la resistencia a la rebelión
Carta Politico-Filosofica, Num. 2 praxisamericalatina@gmail.com
¿Que hacer? Una dialetica de la organizacion y la filosofia
ACEPTANDO EL DESAFÍO DE ESTE NUEVO MOMENTO EN MÉXICO:
DE LA REPRESIÓN A LA [=>]
Philosophic Dialogue on Dunayevskaya’s May 12, 1953, Letter on Hegel’s Absolutes and Gramsci’s “organic party”
January 31, 2015Unlike vanguard parties, our goal is not the incorporation of a cadre into a certain fixed structure that Lenin advocated for in 1902 and rejected in 1905, but the development of “organic intellectuals,” thinkers and philosophers from the ranks of the Black masses as vanguard, women, youth, and workers.
Readers’ Views, January-February 2015, Part 2
January 30, 2015Dunayevskaya’s letters on Hegel’s Absolutes; Bhopal toxic disaster; Voices from behind the bars
Essay: ‘We all can’t breathe’–Reflections on Marx’s Humanism and Fanon
January 29, 2015As a Black man, I asked myself: Why—through the dialectical crises of the social relations of production and the subsequent implosion of multiple outlived modes of production—has racism persisted? Why, despite the relations of property literally bursting asunder, does racism survive? How and why does racism, sexism, homophobia survive revolution after revolution? Will we again be left behind after the next revolution?
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.
May 20, 1953, letter on Absolute Mind
Raya Dunayevskaya’s May 20, 1953, letter is one of the historic-philosophic writings included in The Philosophic Moment of Marxist-Humanism.
Revolt surges against racist system destroying Black lives
January 27, 2015Protests erupted following the decision by a St. Louis County grand jury not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the cold-blooded murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Thousands marched under the slogan “Black Lives Matter!” These demonstrations grew in the wake of the equally outrageous decision of a Staten Island grand jury not to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo for the murder of Eric Garner.
From Ferguson to Staten Island: The logic of racism is genocide
December 5, 2014Protests erupted after the cops who murdered Michael Brown and Eric Garner were let off. They mark a new moment of rebellion against a social order in which Black youth are made to live continuously suspended over an abyss of non-existence.
The passion to tear up this deeply racist society by the roots calls for the fullest development in activity and thought.