Month: May 2015

(1) For the Record: The Johnson-Forest Tendency, or Theory of State-Capitalism, 1941-1951; its Vicissitudes and Ramifications,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, 1972. A polemic against the magazine Radical America which had attempted to rewrite the history of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, presenting it all as “the James group” and deleting Forest’s game from documents. Also included are two other contribution by Dunayevskaya: “A Critique of Johnson’s Facing Reality” (letters from 1958, sent to a comrade then in France), and “A Critique of C.L.R. James’ Notes on the Dialectic,” (excerpts from a letter in response to a professor’s inquiry.)

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(4) 8 to 3: High School Prison Notes,

Nov. 1970; a News & Letters Youth pamphlet published together with the Radical Student Union, Los Angeles. A collection of articles written by high school students about their experiences, including articles on walkouts, what is education. By white, Black, and Latino students.

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(3) China: Voices of Revolt,

excerpts from “Whither China?,” document of Sheag Wu-lien (Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee), printed by News and Letters, Jan. 1970. Document of a revolutionary opposition movement that emerged in China during the Cultural Revolution. For an analysis, see “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung,” in Philosophy and Revolution.

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(1) American Youth Revolt, 1960-69,

Youth Report by Eugene Walker to News and Letters Committees Plenum, Sept. 1969. A survey or the decade beginning with the Black youth sit-ins, Freedom Rides and Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, through the Free Speech Movement of the mid- 1960s, to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and anti-war activism.

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(2) Hegelian Leninism,

a paper delivered by Raya Dunayevskaya to Telos Conference in Waterloo, Ontario, Oct. 10, 1970. Published in Towards a New Marxism, Grahl and Piccone, eds., Telos Press, St. Louis, Mo. 1973.

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VOLUME VII:1968-1973 — OBJECTIVE CRISES COMPELLING THEORETIC CLARIFICATION OF REVOLUTION, CULMINATING IN THE WORK AROUND PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION

The failure of the highpoint of 1968 to bring forth completed revolution, but at the same time the continuing passion for a new society by masses worldwide, meant a decision by Raya Dunayevskaya to complete the working out of a philosophic expression of revolution in what was to become Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao. At the same time, the objective compulsion of a need for philosophy was made crucial by the intensity of the youth revolts against Nixon’s extension of the Vietnam War through the unprovoked bombing of Cambodia, as witness the massacres at Kent and Jackson State Universities and at Augusta, Ga. (See News & Letters, June-July 1970.)

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(6) Czechoslovakia: Revolution and Counter-Revolution,

Oct. 1963; published jointly by News and Letters Committees and the Marxist-Humanist Group, Glasgow, Scotland. An analysis of the events in Czechoslovakia 1963 including eyewitness report by X, a Czechoslovak; report by Ivan Svitak; editorial statement from News & Letters; Foreword by Raya Dunayevskaya and Harry McShane.

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(4) Mao’s China and the “Proletarian Cultural Revolution,”

by Raya Dunayevskaya, Dec. 31, 1967, written for New Politics, Spring 1968 and reprinted by News and Letters. (This essay appears as the final chapter in the 1971 edition of Marxism and Freedom, “Cultural Revolution or Maoist Reaction.” Microfilm version is as reprinted in The Revolution is Dead, Long Live the Revolution, by the 70s Group, Hong Kong, 1976.)

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(1) State-Capitalism and Marx’s Humanism, or Philosophy and Revolution,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, 1967; a News & Letters pamphlet. An essay originally written as a contribution to a discussion on state-capitalism with a Japanese Marxist, Tadayuki Tsushima. Both articles, by Dunayevskaya and Tsushima, were first published in a special issue of News & Letters, Dec. 1966. This pamphlet includes as Appendix Dunayevskaya’s 1946 “Analysis of Rosa Luxemburg’s Accumulation of Capital” (see Vol. I, Sec. IV).

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(6) Philosophical Essays,

by Raya Dunayevskaya. Published in Japanese, 1967. Essays include: “Marx’s Humanism Today”; “The Theory of Alienation: Marx’s Debt to Hegel”; “Afro-Asian Revolutions.”

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(3) The Challenge of Mao Tse-tung,

a chapter from Marxism and Freedom by Raya Dunayevskaya. Published in Chinese by the Union Research Institute, Hong Kong, in China Monthly, No. 39, June 1, 1967. (Microfilm also includes chapter in English.)

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(2) Hong Kong Interview: Alienation or Revolution,

in News & Letters, June-July 1966. An interview Raya Dunayevskaya conducted while in Hong Kong with a Chinese refugee of the Left. This refugee was sufficiently impressed with the chapter on Mao in Marxism and Freedom that she translated it into Chinese. It was published by the Union Research Institute, Hong Kong, in China Monthly, No. 39, June 1, 1967.

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Section II The Trip to Hong Kong and Japan

Ever since the 1960 snake dances of the youth which stopped Eisenhower’s trip to Japan, it became evident that a very new voice from the Orient had emerged. They had proceeded to publish a Japanese translation of the Humanist Essays of Marx. At the same time, there had been an independent analysis of Russia as a state-capitalist society by Tadayuki Tsushima, an original founder of the Communist Party in Japan. A letter from him, saying he had begun translating Marxism and Freedom, reached Dunayevskaya while she was in Africa. There was also contact with one section of the Zengakuren. Those who had broken with the Communist Party helped to arrange a tour of Japan by Dunayevskaya, which was preceded by a trip to Hong Kong.

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(1) Marx’s Humanism Today,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, an essay written for the International Symposium, Socialist Humanism, edited by Erich Fromm, Doubleday, 1965. Contributors to the Symposium included Irving Fetscher, Germany; Karel Kosik, Ivan Svitak, Czechoslovakia; Bronislaw Baczko, Poland; Mihailo Markovic, Yugoslavia.

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VOLUME VI: 1964-1968 — AS AGAINST DECALENT CAPITALISM ON THE RAMPAGE, NEW STAGES OF MASS REVOLT

With U.S. decadent capitalism on the rampage, as manifested in the Goldwater campaign of 1964, and as coming to a climax in Lyndon Johnson’s raining bombs on Hanoi in 1965, there arose a new great mass anti-Vietnam War youth movement. The mass movements, of youth especially, in 1968 — be it in the so-called Cultural Revolution in China, or in Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, or the Columbia occupation in New York — came to a climax in May 1968 in Paris; but still without a total philosophy. The Sino-Soviet dispute that had now become open Conflict, the war in Vietnam and in the Middle East, the 1968 of Czechoslovakia and of France: all showed at one and the same time the non-viability of capitalism on a world scale, the new subjective forces of revolution in motion abroad and at home, and the need for revolutionary philosophy as the missing link for social revolution. We had reached a turning point in both theory and practice, which Marx called “History and its process.” This volume therefore begins with the International Symposium on Socialist Humanism in 1964, followed by Dunayevskaya’s trip to Hong Kong and Japan, and culminating in the theoretical and practical preparation for Philosophy and Revolution.

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(1) American Civilization on Trial,

ÒThe Negro as Touchstone of History, 100 Years After the Emancipation ProclamationÓ, A Statement by the National Editorial Board of News & Letters, May 1963; a News & Letters pamphlet. (A third edition, subtitled ÒBlack Masses as Vanguard,Ó was published in August 1970, and contained as Appendix ÒBlack Caucuses in the UnionsÓ by Charles Denby.)

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Section IV Pamphlets on the Black Revolt at Home

Ever since the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56, News and Letters Committees have participated directly in the Black struggle. First there were in-person reports on Montgomery by News & Letters editor Charles Denby. Next were reports and participation in all of the activities, from the sit-in movement, South and North, to the Freedom Riders of the early 1960s, the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, the Maryland Freedom Union and the rebellions in the cities from Watts to Detroit of the mid and late 1960s. The first News and Letters pamphlet on the Black struggle was Freedom Riders Speak for Themselves.

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e. The Young Marxist-Humanist, 1963;

a News & Letters pamphlet. This is the first youth pamphlet written by young Marxist-Humanists. Includes ÒWhy the Young Marxist-HumanistÓ by Robert Ellery; ÒThe Heritage and the ChallengeÓ by Raya Dunayevskaya; ÒFrom the Pen of Karl MarxÓ; and a number of contributions by young members and friends.

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f. The Time is Now,

Perspectives Report by Raya Dunayevskaya to 1962 News and Letters Committees Convention, Sept. 1962. The emergence of a Third World in an advanced capitalist world in crisis is taken up. The Bulletin also includes excerpts from a speech, ÒThe Organizational Story of the Philosophy of Freedom,Ó Oct. 12, 1962.

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(1) Weekly Political Letters, by Raya Dunayevskaya.

The weekly political letters were begun on April 22, 1961 after the Kennedy speech following the invasion of Cuba, when Raya Dunayevskaya felt the necessity of being able to respond immediately to world developments without waiting for a monthly issue of News & Letters. This first series covered the widest range of political subjects spanning every continent and major development for a period of some 16 months. A second series of political letters was begun on Oct. 25, 1962, in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis.

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Section III 1961-1963 — Establishment of Weekly Political Letters; the Africa Trip; and New Youth Developments

There were two series of Weekly Political Letters. The first series was begun in opposition to the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961; the second began when the world was thrown to the brink of nuclear disaster by the Cuban Missile Crisis, in Oct. 1962. This was also the period of great activity around the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in which Marxist-Humanists participated. The first series included the letters from Africa, which were published in Africa Today.

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(9) Workers Battle Automation,

by Charles Denby, editor of News & Letters, Nov. 1960; a News & Letters pamphlet. Workers from various industries speaking for themselves about Automation: auto, steel, the mines. Includes ÒM.D.Ó writing on medical effects of automated production.

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(7) Summaries of HegelÕs Major Writings.

In Late 1960 and early 1961 Raya Dunayevskaya completed summaries of HegelÕs major writings. (These summaries were published together with other commentary on Hegel in Dialectics of Liberation, 1974; a News & Letters pamphlet.): a. Notes on HegelÕs Phenomenology, completed Dec. 12, 1960. b. Notes on Science of Logic, Jan. 26,1961. c. Notes on Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Feb. 15,1961.

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(1) Resolution on Workers Battle Automation,

Pre-Convention Bulletin, June 1960. (This was preceded by struggles of workers against Automation in the U.S. and England, and inspired some English co-thinkers to establish a special section of News & Letters, called ÒBritish Labour News,Ó Jan. 1960. Although it was published only two years, until Dec. 1961, Harry McShane, the outstanding revolutionary labor leader and Marxist, continued to issue ÒThe Scottish Marxist-HumanistÓ in mimeographed form.)

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(2) Report on Organization,

Bulletin of Oct. 1959. Report of National Chairwoman to expanded Resident Editorial Board meeting that was held in place of News and Letters Committees Plenum in 1959.

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(1) Nationalism, Communism, Marxist-Humanism and the Afro-Asian Revolutions,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, August 1959; a News & Letters pamphlet. The pamphlet first appeared as a supplement to the June-July 1959 issue of News & Letters. In 1961 a new edition appeared, published by the Left Group, Cambridge University Labor Club, England. It included a Forward by Peter Cadogan; a new Introduction, ÒAfrican Realities and World Politics,Ó by Dunayevskaya, April 1961; Appendix I, ÒThe New Humanism: African Socialism,Ó by Dunayevskaya; and Appendix II, a review of Marxism and Freedom by Cadogan. (The pamphlet was translated into Japanese in 1965. Its writing preceded Dunayevskaya’s trip to Africa.)

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VOLUME V: 1959-1964 Ñ THE EMERGENCE OF A THIRD AFRO-ASIAN, LATIN AMERICAN WORLD AND A NEW GENERATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES ALSO IN THE U.S.

After Marxism and Freedom was published, Raya Dunayevskaya undertook a number of international trips. They established new international relations both in Europe and in Africa. In 1959, under the impact of the retrogressive move of De GaulleÕs coming to power, the state-capitalist tendencies of Europe and the U.S. decided to hold an international conference in Milan, where Dunayevskaya spoke and where it was decided to publish a forum for international discussion, for which purpose a separate section of Prometo (Milan) was created. In 1962, Dunayevskaya made a trip to Africa where a new Third World had been developing since the establishment of an independent Ghana in 1988. At home these were the years of News & Letter participation in the movements of workers, Blacks, and anti-Vietnam war students.

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(1) Marxism and Freedom . . . from 1776 until today,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, 1958, published by Bookman Associates, N.Y. and distributed in England by Vision Press, London. Preface by Herbert Marcuse. The 1958 edition included the first English publication of two of Marx’s 1844 manuscripts and Lenin’s Abstract of Hegel’s Science of Logic. (Second American edition, 1964, by Twayne, contained new Introduction and an additional chapter on “The Challenge of Mao Tse-tung.” In 1971, Pluto Press brought out the first British edition, with a Preface by the British Marxist-Humanist Harry McShane; this edition contained a new chapter on “Cultural Revolution or Maoist Reaction.” Second British edition, 1975, by Pluto Press. Foreign language editions: Italian, 1962, by La Nuova Italia; Japanese, 1964, by Modern Thought; French, 1971, by Champ Libre; Spanish (Mexico), 1976, by Juan Pablos.) (The text of Marxism and Freedom is not included on the microfilm.)

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Section III From the Hungarian Revolution to the Publication of Marxism and Freedom and its Ramifications

The new epoch opened by the Hungarian Revolution, which was hailed at once by Dunayevskaya in News & Letters (Nov. 13, 1956) in her Two Worlds column entitled “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary,” entered into the last part of Marxism and Freedom as one of the three new pages of freedom?East Germany 1953, Vorkuta 1957, and Hungary 1957?in Chapter 15, entitled “The Beginning of the End of Russian Totalitarianism.” Though the publication is dated 1958, Marxism and Freedom was actually off the press in 1957. Moreover, while correcting the galley proofs, another world event occurred—Mao’s famous speech, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People.” Dunayevskaya at once added a footnote (#17) which anticipated the Sino-Soviet conflict-to-be.

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(5) Speeches and Resolution

presented publicly to the plenary sessions of the national Editorial Board, News and Letters Committees, Labor Day weekend, 1957. Includes National Chairwoman’s Report on “The Roots of Marxism in the World Today and Our Development,”

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(3) Constitution and By-Laws for News and Letters Committees,

adopted July 8, 1956, by the first national News and Letters Convention. Establishes News and Letters Committees and News & Letters newspaper, whose editor shall be a worker. Singles out workers, Black masses, women, and youth as the forces in the United States searching “for totally new relations and for a fundamentally new way of life.” Assigns the task of setting forth an interpretation, in book form, of Marxism for this generation.

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(2) News & Letters newspaper.

Vol. I No. 1 came out on June 23, 1955 commemorating the second anniversary of the East German uprising, June 17, 1953. The paper was edited by Charles Denby, the only Black production worker-editor of a Marxist paper. From its beginning the conception of News &. Letters was to be a combination of workers and intellectuals. The two focal points for the conception have been Dunayevskaya’s “Two Worlds” (TW) column and Charles Denby’s “Worker’s Journal.”

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(1) Conference Bulletin, No. 1,

Chairman’s Report by Raya Dunayevskaya, April 1955. Her “Political Organizational Report” included discussion of Johnsonism, of the new book to be written, of the form of the paper, and of the political perspectives of the organization. Also included is Watkins’ letter. This report was translated and publishes in the Italian Marxist journal Prometeo, Spring 1956. Appendix: Letter on method of Johnsonism. (Reissued by News and Letters Committees, 1980.)

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VOLUME IV: 1955-1958 — LAYING NEW THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL FOUNDATIONS, CULMINATING IN MARXISM AND FREEDOM, FROM 1776 UNTIL TODAY

In the period of McCarthyism and war clouds over Formosa, on the one side, and, on the other side, the last European revolts, wildcats against Automation in America, and the birth of the Civil Rights Movement with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-56, News and Letters Committees was founded and began its practical-critical activity. At one and the same time, it established the newspaper News & Letters and completed the writing of Marxism and Freedom by its National Chairwoman Raya Dunayevskaya, with the aim of establishing the American roots of Marxism and the re-establishment of Marxism in its original form, which Marx called “a thoroughgoing Naturalism or Humanism.” Marxism as the unity of theory and practice was analyzed both philosophically and politically, and shown to be in the very structure of Capital, which Marx completed under the impact of the Civil War in the U.S. and the Paris Commune.

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PART TWO

CREATION OF MARXIST-HUMANISM AS ORGANIZATION — NEWS AND LETTERS COMMITTEES — AND AS THEORY FOR OUR AGE

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(1) State-Capitalism and Marxism

by Raya Dunayevskaya, 1947. This 80- page outline is the first draft of what became Marxism and Freedom. The outline was submitted to Oxford University Press and to Professor Joan Robinson, the British economist, whose critical notes accompany the text. For the development of State-Capitalism and Marxism into Marxism and Freedom see Vols. III and IV.

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(9) The Nature of the Russian Economy

in N.I., Dec. 1946 and Jan. 1947. The revised Part II of “The Nature of the Russian Economy” (see Vol. I. Sec. II A). (Reproduced by News and Letters Committees as part of Russia as a State-Capitalist Society, 1973.) Included here is Johnson’s review of Leon Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed, “After Ten Years,” first published in N.I., Oct. 1946.

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(1) Outline of Marx’s Capital Volume One.

A series of 14 lectures covering all eight parts of Marx’s Capital. It is a 54-page teaching guide including questions for the various lectures. Prepared originally for Educational Department, Workers Party. (Reissued by News and Letters Committees, 1979.)

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(2) Negro Intellectuals in Dilemma

Myrdal’s Study of a Crucial Problem, by F. Forest, in N.I., Nov. 1944. A critique of Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democrat, with critique also of the role of Negro intellectuals who worked with him.

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(1) Production for Production’s Sake

A Reply to Carter, submitted Dec. 1942 to one of the editors of N.I. and printed in Bulletin of Workers Party with statement of the Secretariat, April 1943. Dunayevskaya’s “A Restatement of Some Fundamentals of Marxism Against Carter’s Vulgarization” came to Johnson’s defense in a much expanded thesis.

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b. A New Revision of Marxian Economics

in AER, Sept. 1944. A commentary on “Teaching of Economics in the Soviet Union.” Because the timing of the revision occurred in the midst of World War II when Russia and the West were allies, whereas Dunayevskaya’s critique said it signified the beginning of world competition between the two, the article hit the front page of the New York Times in Oct. 1944. It became the subject of a year-long debate within the pages of the American Economic Review, in 1944-1945. For Dunayevskaya’s response, see “Revision or Reaffirmation of Marxism? A Rejoinder.”

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a. Teaching of Economics in the Soviet Union

translated from the Russian by Raya Dunayevskaya, in American Economic Review (AER), Sept. 1944. This article from Pod Znamenem Marxizma (Under the Banner of Marxism), No. 7-8, 1943, marked a dramatic shift in Russian economic theory. Where previously Russian political economists had said the law of value did not operate under socialism, they now claimed that it did. To accompany this reversal they proposed beginning the teaching of Marx’s Capital not with Chapter One on “Commodities.” Dunayevskaya’s analysis of this drastic revision immediately followed her translation.

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(3) A Restatement of Some Fundamentals of Marxism Against Carter’s Vulgarization

Nov. 14, 1943. (Mimeographed Bulletin, March 1944.) A defense of Johnson’s short article “Production for Production’s Sake” (see Vol. I, Sec. IIE) that had been subject to debate within the Workers Party, in particular a response by Carter. Forest’s discussion of Marx’s economics concentrates on the mode of production rather than the will of the capitalists as being the dominant factor. (Reprinted by News and Letters Committees, 1978.)

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(2) On Quoting Trotsky

Nov. 10, 1943. A short polemic against the National Committee Majority Resolution of the Workers Party on the European situation which exposes their distortion of Trotsky’s position on the relation of fascism to the possibility of proletarian revolution.

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c. Politics and Economics

Unpublished typescript of Part II of “The Nature of the Russian Economy.” Includes a section entitled “Stalinist Russia: A Bureaucratic Collectivist or State Capitalist Society” (page 90). A revised Part II was published as “The Nature of the Russian Economy” (see Vol. I, Sec. IVA).

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b. Labor and Society

Introduction to Part II of “The Nature of the Russian Economy.” In “Labor and Society,” Marx’s Humanist Essays were first brought into the development of the State-Capitalist Tendency. “Labor and Society” remained unpublished until mimeographed by the Johnson-Forest Tendency in the “Interim Period.” (See Vol. II). (For the first English translation of Marx’s Humanist Essays see Essays by Karl Marx selected from the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts, Vol. II , Sec. ID. For first publication see Marxism and Freedom, From 1776 until Today, 1958 edition, Vol. IV, Sec. III.)

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a. An Analysis of Russian Economy

in New International (N.I.), Dec. 1942, Jan. 1943, and Feb. 1943. Part I of a study of the Russian economy. This study of the first three Five-Year Plans was the first anywhere based on original Russian documents. The analysis was widely referred to in the world press as well as in books such as The Yogi and the Commissar by Arthur Koestler, 1945 (p. 158). (This study along with published Part II (see Vol. I, Sec. IV) was reissued by News and Letters Committees, Detroit under the title Russia as a State-Capitalist Society, 1973.)

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Section II

1942-1944 — In the Midst of World War II: Further Developments on the Russian Question and on Europe

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