The thoughts of News & Letters readers on: MARXIST-HUMANIST PHILOSOPHY IN THE WHIRLWIND OF EVENTS; SAVING THE PLANET; and VOICES FROM BEHIND THE BARS.
V.I. Lenin
Aceptando el desafío de este nuevo momento en México: De la represión a la resistencia a la rebelión
February 16, 2015Carta 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.
Praxis en America Latina noviembre-diciembre 2014 edición
November 19, 2014La nueva edicion de Praxis en America Latina. Esperamos sus comentarios. Por favor, reenvíenla a sus redes y contactos.
Los normalistas de Ayotzinapa: Asesinato y criminalización de la juventud en México
November 7, 2014A la barbarie del Estado mexicano, sus adherentes y secuaces, nosotros le oponemos la necesidad de construir un nuevo humanismo, la unidad de teoría y práctica —en suma: la revolución en permanencia.
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, 1986[1] ; the original can be found in the [=>]
The Philosophic Moment of Marxist-Humanism
September 9, 2014From the May 2003 issue of News & Letters.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Marxist-Humanist Archives
Editor’s note: Raya Dunayevskaya’s “Letters on Hegel’s Absolutes” were a philosophic breakthrough that led to the birth of Marxist-Humanism. We are reprinting this 1987 commentary by her where she reexamined them in light of her effort to work [=>]
‘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 & [=>]
Essay: Karl Marx’s ground for organization
August 30, 2014Today’s vital debate about revolutionary organization is illuminated by Marx’s concept of organization in his “Critique of the Gotha Program.”
On THE Philosophic Point and Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy
March 14, 2014To understand today we must begin at the beginning, that is to say, as always, with Marx. Specifically the two periods are: the first and the last, the first being the philosophic moment, 1844 [Marx’s Humanist Essays or Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts]. That laid the ground for all future development. The last being the long hard trek and process of developments–all the revolutions, as well as philosophic-political-economic concretizations, culminating in Capital. Yet the full organizational expression of all came only then, i.e., the last decade, especially the 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. Why only then?
Charles Denby, worker-editor
February 8, 2014As a contribution to Black History Month we reprint Raya Dunayevskaya’s memorial for Charles Denby (1907-1983), her comrade of 35 years, Editor of News & Letters from its founding in 1955 until his death and the author of Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal.
Tahrir three years later
February 7, 2014Three years ago, the Egyptian Revolution was fighting for its life in Tahrir Square. For 18 days and nights, the women and men of the Square faced off against President Hosni Mubarak’s security forces and thugs. In the end Mubarak was forced to follow Tunisia’s President-for-life, Ben Ali, into retirement and shame. The light of freedom spread–Square to Square, occupation to occupation. It was a historic turning point.
It was this global struggle that the military coup that ousted Morsi, and led to the massacre of over 800 of his supporters, was meant to stop short. Now, revolution continues, and the freedom idea lives, but the old world has tried hard to destroy it. Egypt’s newest new Constitution, passed Jan. 15 under the military rule of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, evokes only faint echoes of Tahrir. As artist Hanaa Safwat said, “The referendum is stained in innocent people’s blood. It has been built on the dead bodies of 800 people in Rabaa al-Adawiya.”
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.
Hegel’s Absolute Idea is for workers
May 5, 2013Although we, as a state capitalist tendency, had been saying for years that we live in an age of absolutes, that the task of the theoreticians was the working out materialistically of Hegel’s last chapter on The Absolute Idea, we were unable to relate the daily struggles of the workers to this total conception. The maturity of the age, on the other hand, disclosed itself in the fact that, with automation, the worker began to question the very mode of labor. Thus the workers began to make concrete, and thereby extended, Marx’s profoundest conceptions, for the innermost core of the Marxian dialectic, around which everything turns, is that the transformation of society must begin with the material life of the worker, the producer.
Now off the press: The Crossroads of History: Marxist-Humanist Writings on the Middle East by Raya Dunayevskaya
February 5, 2013Now off the press:
Excerpts from the Foreword:
Nobody, least of all Marxists, foresaw the great historic divide which would be opened by the Arab Spring beginning in 2010. When Mohammed Bouazizi and Hussein Nagi Felhi killed themselves to protest the miserable conditions of life for Tunisian youth, they set off a year of revolutionary struggle that [=>]
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. [=>]
Absolute Negativity, Occupy and Situationists
February 2, 2012Essay
by Ron Kelch
[Absolute negativity] is the simple point of the negative relation to self, the innermost source of all activity, of all animate and spiritual self-movement, the dialectical soul that everything true possesses and through which alone it is true; for on this subjectivity alone rests the sublating of the opposition between concept and reality. –Hegel on second negation in [=>]
Revolution, organization and philosophy
May 10, 2011From the new issue of NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2011
Parts IV and V of
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2011-2012
Revolution and counter-revolution take world stage
Contents:
- I. The Arab Spring
- II. The wars at home
- III. Japan: earthquake, tsunami and meltdown
- IV. Revolution, organization and philosophy
- V. Marxist-Humanist Tasks
(Parts I, II, and III were posted in the last two days.)
IV. Revolution, organization and [=>]
International Women’s Day and Iran
March 21, 2011From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Editor’s note: The first International Women’s Day was observed 100 years ago in March 1911. This year also marks the 32nd anniversary of the historic demonstration in Tehran, Iran, on International Women’s Day, March 8, 1979. On that day, women and supporters braved Islamic Guards and thugs allied with the [=>]