Month: May 2015

B. “Talking to Myself”: Dunayevskaya’s Notes for the “book-to-be”

In June, 1986, Dunayevskaya began writings of a new kind for the book-to-be, which she variously called “Talking to Myself”, “Random Thoughts”, or just “Notes”. As she sought to deepen new philosophic insights for her work on “Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy”, she re-examined her own body of ideas on Hegel, Marx, Lenin and Marxist-Humanism. Some of the documents are drafts for works later developed in another form; others contain material Dunayevskaya discussed only here. These documents are presented as Dunayevskaya left them. They have not been edited, nor were they checked by Dunayevskaya for publication in any written form.

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7. Presentation by Dunayevskaya written for REB meeting of June 1, 1987,

and characterized by her as “Pre-pre-Post Plenum, i.e. Executive Session Type of Talk”. This manuscript, which Dunayevskaya had prepared for oral delivery, was not checked by her for presentation in written form. It is included here in two forms: 1) as published in a mimeographed bulletin by News and Letters Committees in November 1987, and 2) as originally prepared by Dunayevskaya on June 1, 1987. Also included is a “reading outline” for the talk by Dunayevskaya on June 1, 1987.

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5. Presentation by Dunayevskaya to the REB on March 23, 1987.

On “What has happened to our projection of Marxist-Humanism — that a difference seems to have emerged in two aspects of the dialectics of organization between 1) the concept, and 2) organizational growth as a ‘practical question’?”. Also includes excerpts from “Dear Friends” letter of March 24, 1987 on the presentation. Marginalia on both documents made by Dunayevskaya, May, 1987.

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4. The Year of Only 8 Months.

Mimeographed bulletin published by News and Letters Committees Jan. 12, 1987. Includes: Report to the meeting of the Expanded Resident Editorial Board of News and Letters Committees, Jan. 3, 1987 by Raya Dunayevskaya; report during discussion by Eugene Walker, Managing Editor of News & Letters; an exchange of correspondence between Raya Dunayevskaya and non-Marxist Hegelian scholars. Copy here includes marginalia by Dunayevskaya, and her “Talking to Myself” letter of Jan. 21, 1987, which she appended to this bulletin. Also includes original contents page for Dunayevskaya’s Jan. 3, 1987 talk, and excerpts from her “Dear Friends” letter of Jan. 13, 1987, on the Bulletin.

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(20) Marxist-Humanism as a body of Ideas: a special bulletin.

A collection of writings on “Dialectics of Revolution: American Roots and World Humanist Concepts”. Includes a presentation given by Raya Dunayevskaya in Chicago on Jan. 27, 1985 and new developments since the move of the Center of Marxist-Humanism to Chicago. Also includes: Dunayevskaya’s “In Memoriam” to Charles Denby and essays on News & Letters, on the Marxist-Humanist Archives and on Women’s Liberation by Eugene Walker, Michael Connolly and Olga Domanski. Published as a News & Letters pamphlet. March, 1985.

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(18) The Fetish of High Tech and Karl Marx’s Unknown Mathematical Manuscripts.

A News & Letters discussion bulletin containing, the first American discussion of Marx’s 1880-82 Mathematical Mss., a part of which appeared in English in 1983. Includes: articles by Ron Brokmeyer and Franklin Dmitriev, and letters by Raya Dunayevskaya and others. Dunayevskaya examines the roots of Russian distortions of the Mss. in Bukharin’s 1931 presentation to the International Congress on the History of Science and Technology. Nov. 1984.

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(7) A 1980s View: The Coal Miners’ General Strike of 1949-50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S.

A News & Letters pamphlet, with an account by Andy Phillips of “A Missing Page from American Labor History”, and an essay by Raya Dunayevskaya on “The Emergence of a New Movement from Practice that is Itself a Form of Theory”. Includes as appendix a list of 35 letters from the 1949-50 philosophic correspondence between Raya Dunayevskaya, C.L.R. James and Grace Lee (Boggs). (See Vol. III for the letters themselves.) Published June 17, 1984, on the 31st anniversary of the East German workers uprising, and the 29th anniversary of the creation of News & Letters, whose first issue honored that revolt.

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(5) Page One of Jan.-Feb. 1984 News & Letters.

At the Jan. 1, 1984 meeting of the Resident Editorial Board of News & Letters, a motion was passed to continue to represent the Black and proletarian dimensions of our movement on the front page of the newspaper after the death of Charles Denby with two new columns: “Workshop Talks,” by the Labor Editor, Felix Martin and John Marcotte; and “Black World” by Lou Turner. (For earlier writing by Felix Martin, see his review of Denby’s Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal in N&L Jan.-Feb., 1979.) Included on the microfilm is Lou Turner’s “Black World” column: “Significance of Marcus Garvey study.”

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(1) Eleanor Marx in Chicago,

by Terry Moon. A Women’s Liberation-News & Letters publication, this mini-pamphlet focuses on the American tour of Eleanor Marx in 1881, and her trip to Chicago at the time of the Haymarket events. Jan. 1984.

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(20) American Civilization on Trial.

Statement of the National Editorial Board. Fourth expanded edition published on the 20th anniversary of both the 1953 March on Washington and the first edition of this News & Letters pamphlet. This 1983 edition includes “A 1980s View of the Two-Way Road Between the U.S. and Africa,” by Raya Dunayevskaya. Published Aug. 1983.

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(17) Constitution and By-laws of News and Letters Committees,

as amended at Constitutional Convention, Sept. 4, 1983. Amendments included addition of Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution as theoretical foundation for the Committees, along with the other two works of what were now called ‘a trilogy of revolution’ — Marxism and Freedom, and Philosophy and Revolution.

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(13) Pre-Convention Bulletin #4.

This 95-page discussion bulletin, with 25 contributions, represents a part of the vital ferment of ideas that preceded the special 1983 Constitutional Convention of News and Letters Committees. Includes “Revolutions and Philosophies,” letter by Dunayevskaya written Aug. 1, 1983. Bulletin published Aug. 1983.

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(4) Guatemalan Revolutionaries Speak.

A News & Letters pamphlet with Indian, peasant, and women’s voices from the Guatemalan struggles. Includes “The 1954 Guatemalan Coup” by Raya Dunayevskaya, and “The Peasant dimension in Latin America”, by Michael Connolly. March, 1983.

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(33) Brochure by Humanities Press, 1982,

announcing the publication of Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution by Raya Dunayevskaya. Offers at the same time new printings of her Marxism and Freedom and Philosophy and Revolution.

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(25) Dialectics of Liberation,

by Raya Dunayevskaya. New cover to this 1974 News and Letters pamphlet was created after critique by Dunayevskaya pointed to the lack of a listing of Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind as a subject of her May 20, 1953 letter on Hegel’s Absolutes.

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(7) Today’s Polish Fight For Freedom,

first printing March 1980, second edition, Nov. 1980, bilingual (Polish-English); a News & Letters publication. Includes: excerpts from Robotnik; letter from Dunayevskaya on Polish satire; “All Eyes on Polish Workers” by Charles Denby (reprinted/translated from “Worker’s Journal” column, News & Letters, Oct. 1930); Karl Marx, “In Defense of Poland.”

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(5) Today and Tomorrow,

Perspectives Report by Raya Dunayevskaya to News and Letters Committees Convention, Aug. 30, 1980. Bulletin includes also Convention Reports by Olga Domanski, National Organizer, “Theory and Our Archives,” and Michael Connolly, Co-National Organizer, “On Organization.”

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c. Women as Reason and as Force of Revolution,

a pamphlet collection of writings by Raya Dunayevskaya on Women’s Liberation, issued for International Women’s Day, March 8, 1980. Includes also “Women’s Suffrage and Class Struggle” by Rosa Luxemburg, and “Thoughts on March 8” by Ding Ling.

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(4) Outline of Marx’s Capital Volume One,

by Raya Dunayevskaya (Freddie Forest), 1979; a News & Letters pamphlet. Reproduction of the outline originally prepared in the mid-1940s (see Vol. I, Sec. IV), for study along with Marxism and Freedom and Philosophy and Revolution. (For full pamphlet, see Vol. I, Sec. IV.)

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VOLUME X: 1979-1981 — WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? WHAT IS REVOLUTION? HOW THE REVOLUTIONS OF OUR AGE RELATE TO THOSE SINCE MARX’S AGE: ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN’S LIBERATION AND MARX’S PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION

Draft chapters of Dunayevskaya’s new book, Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, which had been circulating in 1979, greatly illuminated the revolution in Iran as it was developing and as it related to the first Persian Revolution in 1906. What few knew was that that first revolution, which had developed under the impact of the 1905-06 Russian Revolution, had manifested so great a uniqueness of its own that out of it—for the first time anywhere in the world — there developed a Woman’s Anjumeni (Council). (See Dunayevskaya’s “Two Worlds” column, News & Letters, Dec. 1978, “Iran’s Revolutionary Past — and Present.”) The 1979 Revolution signaled nothing short of a shift in global power, since it not only overthrew the Shah but undermined the U.S.’s dominance in the Gulf region. The present, ongoing, deep, global recession, with its ever-expanding militarization, has reached nuclear heights that threaten Apocalypse Now, and make it imperative to grapple with the dialectics of revolution under the whip of the counter-revolution. This becomes especially urgent because the revolutions in our era — from Iran to Poland, from the Black Revolt in South Africa to the revolution in El Salvador — must contend not only with the mailed fist of counter-revolution in their own countries, but with the struggle for global power by the two nuclearly-armed Titans, U.S. and Russia, which are now threatening the very existence of humanity. The primary reason for News and Letters’ designating 1980 as “the year of the book” was not merely as deadline for the completion of Rosa Luxemburg, Wo- men’s Liberation and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, but because its three elements — Rosa Luxemburg, as great revolutionary theoretician whose appreciation of the spontaneity of the masses illuminates the present revolutionary struggle for new forms of organization; women’s liberation today, as a new revolutionary force; and Marx’s philosophy of revolution, rooted in his discovery of a whole new continent of thought and of revolution — create ground for us to contend with the reality of the crises today by working out revolutionary perspectives for the 1980s.

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(5) Marx’s Capital and Today’s Global Crisis,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, Jan. 1978; a News & Letters pamphlet, published jointly by News and Letter, Committees, Detroit, and Great Britain. Includes: “Today’s Epigones Who Try to Truncate Marx’s Capital” (a polemic primarily against Ernest Mandel and his Introduction to the 1976 Pelican Marx Library edition of Capital); “Tony Cliff Reduces Lenin’s Theory to ‘Uncanny Intuition’” (a polemic against Vol. II of Cliff’s Lenin); and four chapters on Marx’s Capital, reproduced from Marxism and Freedom. Preface by Harry McShane. Microfilm does not include the four chapters from Marxism and Freedom. A syllabus for study of Marx’s Capital and Today’s Global Crisis is added here.

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(2) New Essays,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, 1977; a News & Letters pamphlet. A collection of four essays, written from 1974-1976: a. Post-Mao China, What Now? Written one month after Mao’s death, this analysis was published also as Appendix to the Italian, Spanish, and German editions of Philosophy and Revolution. b. Dialectics of Liberation in Thought and in Activity: Absolute Negativity as New Beginning. Written as an address to the 1974 conference of the Hegel Society of America, this is a Marxist-Humanist paragraph-by-paragraph interpretation of the final chapter on Absolute Idea in Hegel’s Science of Logic. c. Leon Trotsky as Man and as Theoretician. Written for Studies in Comparative Communism, Summer 1977. The article is followed by a comment by Ernest Mandel and a rejoinder by Dunayevskaya. d. Commentary: a critique of B.J. Harrell’s “Marx and Critical Thought.” Written for Paunch, May 1976.

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(3) The Latin American Unfinished Revolutions,

a Political-Philosophic Letter by Raya Dunayevskaya, May 15, 1978. Looks at Latin America’s unfinished revolutions in terms not alone of U.S. imperialism but also lack of an independent Marxist philosophy of revolution. Covers Cuba, Trotskyism in Latin America, and Silvio Frondizi.

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(2) La Lucha Latina Para La Libertad Y La Filosofia Marxista-Humanista De Liberacion,

Nov. 1978; a News & Letters pamphlet. Spanish translations of “The Latin American Unfinished Revolutions,” by Raya Dunayevskaya, including her correspondence with Silvio Frondizi; and articles on struggles in North and South America, the U.S. coal miners’ strike of 1977-78, International Women’s Year, and excerpts from Frantz Fanon, Soweto and American Black Thought. (Microfilm edition contains only the author’s special introduction, in both Spanish and English.)

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(4) Revolutionary Feminism—Women as Reason,

1978; a Women’s Liberation-News and Letters Committees pamphlet. Collection of articles on International Women’s Day, Women in the Paris Commune and Black Women’s Liberation, Rosa Luxemburg, Critique of Joan Smith’s “Women and the Family.”

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(2) Working Women For Freedom,

by Angela Terrano, Marie Dignan and Mary Holmes, 1976; a Women’s Liberation-News and Letters Committees pamphlet. Written by working women on their experiences. Includes as Appendix essay by Raya Dunayevskaya, “Women as Thinkers and as Revolutionaries.”

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Section III Woman as Revolutionary Force

As Dunayevskaya had shown in the six lectures on women she had been asked to give at the Wayne State University-University Center for Adult Education (WSU-UCAE) for International Women’s Year, women have been a crucial revolutionary force throughout history —whether we are talking about the early 20th century, including the 1917 Russian Revolution, the 1919 German Revolution, or the Aba uprising is Africa in 1929; or whether we are talking about the 1974 Portuguese Revolution in our own decade — and that has held true whether we are talking about working women, the Black dimension, literature and revolution, or the women theorists of today.

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(1) Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal,

by Charles Denby, 1978, published by South End Press, Boston. A new edition of the book published in 1952, with a new Part II dealing with the quarter of a century from 1953 to 1978, after Denby became editor of News & Letters. (A British edition was published by Pluto Press, 1980; a German edition by Rotbuch Verlag was published in 1981, entitled Im reichsten Land der Welt.) (The text of Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal is not included on the microfilm.)

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VOLUME IX:1976-1978 — FORCES OF REVOLUTION AS REASON; PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION AS FORCE

1976-1977 were the years of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, of the Soweto Rebellion and the murder of Steve Biko. These were also years of development in Women’s Liberation. News and Letters Committees published works on the Black movement in South Africa and America, on the Women’s Movement, and on revolutionary forces in early American history. Raya Dunayevskaya wrote a new series of Political-Philosophic Letters covering world events. A collection of four of her philosophic essays (New Essays) was also issued.

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(6) Where Do We Go From Here?

Draft Perspectives Thesis, in News & Letters, Aug.-Sept. 1975. Beginning in 1975, News and Letters Committees decided to publish their Draft Perspectives directly in the pages of News & Letters.

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(5) El Humanismo de Marx en la Actualidad,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, Sept. 1974; a News & Letters pamphlet. Erich Fromm’s Symposium Socialist Humanism had been translated into Spanish, and Dunayevskaya’s essay, “Marx’s Humanism Today,” was issued separately by News and Letters Committees. (See Vol. VI, Sec. I.)

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(3) Dialectics of Liberation,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, issued Sept. 1974. A collection of Dunayevskaya’s writings on Hegel and Lenin. Summaries of Hegel’s major works (see Vol. V, Sec. II); excerpts from 1953 Letters on the Absolute Idea (see Vol. III, Sec. IE); Lecture Notes: Lenin on Science of Logic (see Vol. VI. Sec. III)

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Section II. Revolution and Counter-Revolution: Where do we go from here?

The 1970s had revealed the arduous labor of the dialectics of revolution when it must develop under the whip of the counter-revolution in the context of the myriad global crises. Thus, although the second stage of the African .Revolutions — Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau — helped produce the revolution in Portugal, and the Latin American revolts continued unabated, U.S. imperialism continued to hold in its iron grip NATO and Latin America, as well as the Middle East.

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(2) Constitution and By-Laws of News and Letters Committees,

as amended on Oct. 21. 1973, to include: Philosophy and Revolution as well as Marxism and Freedom as theoretical foundation; the rise of the Women’s Liberation Movement; and the intensification of the Black struggles in the 1970s. A report of the Constitution session appeared in News & Letters, Dec. 1973.

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(1) Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre, and from Marx to Mao,

by Raya Dunayevskaya, 1973, published by Delacorte Press, N.Y. in hardcover and Dell, N.Y. in softcover. (Foreign language edition: Spanish (Mexico), 1977 by Siglo Veintiuno; Italian, 1977, by Feltrinelli; German, 1981, by Europa Verlag. All foreign editions have a new chapter, “Post-Mao China.”) (The text of Philosophy and Revolution is not included on the microfilm.)

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Section I. Actual Publication of Philosophy and Revolution

The book, containing three major parts — “Why Hegel? Why Now?”; “Alternatives”; “Economic Reality and the Dialectics of Liberation” — has in Chapter One a Marxist-Humanist interpretation of the major works of Hegel. In Chapter Nine, there is a discussion of today’s new passions and forces of social revolution in America, as well as an analysis of Castro/Debray focoism. Chapter Eight was written in collaboration with East European revolutionaries. The “Alternatives” part contains not only chapters on Mao vs. the revolutionaries of the Sheng Wu-lien, and on Trotsky, but as well on Jean-Paul Sartre as “Outsider Looking In.” A special Convention was held in October 1973 to amend the News and Letters Committees Constitution to include Philosophy and Revolution as theoretic foundation.

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(3) Notes on Women’s Liberation: We Speak in Many Voices,

Oct. 1970; a News & Letters pamphlet. First issued in mimeographed form, Jan. 1970. A collection of articles on the newly emerging Women’s Liberation Movement in the United States, written by Black, Latina and white women; working women, welfare rights activists, women’s liberation activists. Includes an essay by Raya Dunayevskaya, “The Women’s Liberation Movement as Reason and as Revolutionary Force.” Microfilm includes Dunayevskaya’s 1969 speech to a Chicago Women’s Liberation group.

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