In this review of ‘Marxist Economic Theory’ by Ernest Mandel, Dunayevskaya criticizes Mandel’s denuding economic categories of their specifically capitalistic nature, and his distortion of Marx’s theory of crises.
USSR
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Need for a Total Uprooting: Down with the Perpetrators of the Palestinian Slaughter
November 29, 2023In light of the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, we present a piece that takes up the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the connected slaughter of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. This piece goes beyond exposé to explore the treacherous nature of halfway revolutions, which set the stage for counter-revolution. It thus illuminates today’s crisis.
From the Archives: Terrorism Is Not Revolution
The way some of the Left glorified the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of mainly civilians by Hamas calls for a deeper examination of the contradictions and retrogression underlying that type of pseudo-revolutionism.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Need for a Total Uprooting: Down with the Perpetrators of the Palestinian Slaughter
July 1, 2021In light of the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, we present a piece that takes up the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the connected slaughter of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. This piece goes beyond exposé to explore the treacherous nature of halfway revolutions, which set the stage for counter-revolution. It thus illuminates today’s crisis.
Need for a Total Uprooting: Down with the Perpetrators of the Palestinian Slaughter
June 12, 2021In light of the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, we present a piece that takes up the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the connected slaughter of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. This piece goes beyond exposé to explore the treacherous nature of halfway revolutions, which set the stage for counter-revolution. It thus illuminates today’s crisis.
Woman as Reason: U.S. in Afghanistan: 20 years of betrayal
May 8, 2021After the 2001 U.S. invasion Afghanistan had a chance of becoming a place where its citizens could enjoy some freedoms, but at every opportunity the U.S. stopped it. What’s going to happen next is not because the U.S. is leaving, it is because they are leaving after damaging the country and the people’s aspirations in unfathomable and hugely destructive ways.
World in view: Massacre in Tigray
January 30, 2021Thousands have died—including an undetermined number of civilians—and tens of thousands become refugees in the current conflict between Ethiopia’s central government and the regional government of Tigray. The central government of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is being aided in its war by the Eritrean regime of long-time dictator Isaias Afwerki.
Essay: Ecosocialism and post-Marx Marxism
March 8, 2020Franklin Dmitryev explores the limitations of how “ecosocialism” rethinks, partially, post-Marx Marxism, focusing on theoreticians Michael Lowy and Joel Kovel.
Essay: What is Socialism? Socialism and ecology
August 31, 2019The last of a series of essays on What is Socialism? This time, taking on the relation of anticapitalistic social transformation and climate chaos, in order to grasp what is essential to capitalism and its destructive environmental effects, and what kind of new society can transcend that.
Essay: What is socialism? Socialism, labor, and the Black dimension
May 1, 2019Marxist-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?
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.
Plutonium and death
May 18, 2016An anti-nuclear activist describes how plutonium has become deadly since World War II and advocates for humanity to reduce its impact.
Editorial: Putin’s retrogressionism
December 10, 2015Putin found a formula: to participate in genocide while claiming to be fighting “terrorism.” This says everything about the nature of his retrogressive rule, and about the hypocrisy of the U.S. and Europe
Racist election deepens reactionary direction of U.S.
November 20, 2014The U.S. government took an ominous, reactionary political turn in the 2014 midterm elections, with Republicans taking control of the Senate. Extreme pro-war Senators like Joni Ernst in Iowa and Tom Cotton in Arkansas join veterans like Senator “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran” John McCain, who will now control the Armed Services Committee and is hell-bent for new “boots on the ground” in Syria and Iraq. The whole Republican campaign—including these pro-war, pro-fossil-fuel, pro-“fetus is a person” candidates—ran on a cynically deceptive anti-Obama mantra….
Readers’ Views, July-August 2014, Part 1
July 7, 2014From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
RESPONSES TO MARXIST-HUMANIST PERSPECTIVES
The Marxist-Humanist Perspectives (N&L, May-June 2014) give a critical assessment of the polarization between the oppressive forces of capital’s social relations and humanity’s efforts to realize human dignity. It shows humans are not just passive victims of capital. First [=>]
Arctic ice in retreat
March 29, 2013World in View
by Gerry Emmett
Arctic ice in retreat
The National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA indicate that the extent of Arctic sea ice this January was the sixth lowest since satellite observation began. Air temperatures were 2 to 5 degrees Celsius higher than average across much of the Arctic Ocean (4 to 9 degrees [=>]
The Cuban Missile Crisis and its test of movements’ negative character
November 28, 2012From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Editor’s note: On the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, we present Raya Dunayevskaya’s analysis of how it tested not only the rulers’ rash folly but the anti-war movement’s short-mindedness–a lesson still urgent today. She wrote this piece as a Political Letter on Oct. 25, 1962, titled “Marxist-Humanism vs. [=>]
Essay: Dunayevskaya’s place in the history of the Left
November 9, 2010From the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:
Essay: Dunayevskaya’s place in the history of the Left
by Kevin Michaels
Raya Dunayevskaya deserves a prominent place in the historical self-understanding of the U.S. Left. She was acknowledged in her lifetime not only as a leader in theory by working-class militants like Charles Denby, author of Indignant Heart: A [=>]
Recollections of Leon Trotsky on the 70th anniversary of his assassination
August 20, 2010Image via Wikipedia
Tomorrow will be the 70th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky, one of the most important leaders of the Russian Revolution, by an agent of Stalin. For this occasion, News & Letters reprinted Raya Dunayevskaya’s “Some Memories of Trotsky,” written in 1965, in the July-August 2010 issue.
The signature from the [=>]