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Official Call for Plenum to work out Perspectives for 2005-2006To all members of News and Letters Committees and Marxist-Humanists internationally June 2, 2005 Dear Friends, The past year has been fraught with contradictions. Whereas several openings have emerged for advancing the idea and actuality of human liberation, an assortment of challenges have emerged that compel us to concretize anew Marxist-Humanism's unique contributions. I. One of the most important of these challenges is the situation in Iraq, which is torn between the Iraqi masses' aspirations for democracy, on the one hand, and the "two terrorisms" of the U.S. military occupation and the attacks of ex-Ba'athists and Islamic fundamentalists, on the other. Contrary to the predictions of some western leftists, many Iraqis came out to vote in the January 2005 elections, showing that they are determined not to allow the attacks of the fundamentalists to define their destiny. Nevertheless, developments since the elections have failed to resolve the overall crises facing the country. The constant bickering among the Iraqi political parties; the ongoing terrorist violence; and the heavy hand of the U.S. military occupation is leading to a growing sense of alienation and frustration throughout Iraq. This doesn't mean that the only choice facing the Iraqi people is to support either the occupation or the Ba'athist and fundamentalist armed "resistance! ." Many Iraqis are increasingly voicing opposition to it, even as they demand that U.S. troops leave the country. This view is especially evident in Iraq's small but growing labor movement. The Southern Oil Company Union has set up workers' councils in 23 areas in southern Iraq and opposes the Islamic fundamentalists and the U.S. occupation. The same is true of the Union of the Port Industry, established by dock workers at Um Qasr. The Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq recently announced the formation of an Iraqi Freedom Congress dedicated to creating a secular and multiethnic Iraq. Meanwhile, Iraqi women are speaking out against the threat that the future Iraqi Constitution will severely restrict the rights of women by imposing Shari'a law. One of them, the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, has been especially active in calling for the creation of a secular Constitution that guarantees women's rights. Many threats confront Iraq today-from the possibility of civil war to the growing power of the Shi'a fundamentalists, who enjoy significant mass support. While the democratic Left and labor and women's movements in Iraq remain weak, we must extend a hand of solidarity with them. The failure of much of the antiwar movement in the West to do so thus far, as seen in the reluctance on the part of many activists to criticize the Ba'athist and fundamentalist armed "resistance" and forge connections with the genuine forces of liberation in Iraq, has prevented it from living up to its full potential. As Marxist-Humanists, we have a responsibility to show that another perspective for the movement is urgently needed. The most serious challenge facing us is Bush's wars at home. His lie that the November elections provided him with a "mandate" is part and parcel of the Republicans' effort to impose total political and ideological control over American society. The determination with which Bush is pressing ahead with plans to gut social security, medicare, and other programs, despite opposition from much of the U.S. public, is especially ominous. He is already beginning to shape the terms of the debate over Social Security, both with his mystifying rhetoric about it being headed for "bankruptcy" and his proposal to cut benefits for higher income workers. The latter is even more threatening than his efforts to introduce private accounts, which has been met with widespread opposition. If Bush manages to introduce a system of scaled-back benefits based on income levels, Social Security will become a welfare system. If such proposals go through, mass support for Social Security will erode, whi! ch will enable the Right to introduce massive cuts in the program further down the road. This is extremely dangerous at a moment when corporate America is trying to defraud workers of their pensions in order to prevent a further erosion of capitalism's rate of profit. What aids Bush's drive to implement his policies-be it his effort to gain total control over judicial nominees; his promotion of "moral values" at the expense of gay rights, women's rights, and freedom of expression; or his continuing threats to use armed force overseas-is the fostering of the illusion that there is no alternative to existing society. That state of affairs is bolstered by the lack of ideas among the Democrats and the Left. The Perspectives that we adopted at our September Convention pointed our organization in a completely different direction. We were not thrown off course by the November 2004 elections because, as our Perspectives showed, the problems of U.S. capitalism are structurally rooted in the economic and geopolitical nature of globalized capitalism and are not a mere result of Bush's personality or the Republican Party alone. We also were not disoriented by the events in Iraq, because our Perspectives argued that the anti-war movement will not be able to surmount its contradictions unless it opposes both U.S. imperialism and the reactionary "anti-imperialist" currents by forging solidarity with the genuine forces of liberation in Iraq. Most important, our Perspectives projected ground for surmounting the pessimism and accommodationism that has taken hold of many contemporary radicals by insisting that now is the time to develop a philosophically grounded alternative to capitalism by! directly grappling with such works of Marx as his Critique of the Gotha Program. By launching us on the path that led to our nationwide series of classes on "Beyond Capitalism," our Perspectives had us come face to face with Raya Dunayevskaya's concept of the integrality of philosophy and organization: namely, working out organizational responsibility for the philosophy of revolution that can help spell out "what happens after" the revolution before it occurs. The classes on "Beyond Capitalism," undertaken as we embarked on a new, bimonthly News & Letters, was the highpoint of our effort over the past year to concretize our perspectives. At a moment when large numbers of people around the world are asking, in one way or another, about whether there is an alternative to the seemingly unassailable domination of capital, we took it upon ourselves to do something very few other activists and theoreticians have the audacity to even consider-probing into the future, into the realm of absolute freedom itself. II. The need to continue and expand this perspective is borne out from the objective events of the past year. Efforts by masses of people to shape their own destiny clearly continue. It's seen in the mass protests that brought down the governments in Bolivia and Ecuador; in the unrest in China, where 60,000 unauthorized strikes have occurred in the past year; and in the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine. Yanukovych's effort to steal the election from Yushchenko, who campaigned on a promise of greater democracy and civil rights, led to a nonviolent insurrection that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets of Kiev and other major cities. Student groups like Pora, which called some of the first rallies, hoped that 20,000 would show up at them-and they were pleasantly shocked when almost a million poured out into the streets. The "Orange Revolution" that brought Yushchenko to power has so far led to an expansion of civil liberties, a reform of the state-controlled media, and a ! modest increase in social spending. The new government, however, is governed by pro-capitalist interests that are steering the country closer to the U.S. and European Union. While Ukraine did not experience anything close to a social revolution, the events there this year have helped stimulate a resurgence of pro-democracy sentiment in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and even Russia. If Putin's increasingly authoritarian rule becomes threatened by pressures for democratic change from inside the country, it can have a dramatic effect on the entire global situation. The growth of pro-democracy movements this year extends from Georgia and Lebanon to Ecuador, Bolivia, and from Mexico to Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Togo. And as we saw from a trip that a Marxist-Humanist was able to take to China, the thirst for democratic change is palpable there as well-as can seen in the intense interest, shown by participants at a conference on Rosa Luxemburg, in her concept of socialist democracy. Movements for democratic transformation have repeatedly arisen over the past 25 years-from the mass struggles in South Korea and the Philippines in 1986, to the revolts that brought down the state-capitalist regimes that called themselves "Communist" in East Europe in 1989, to the growing pressures for democracy in Egypt, Iraq, and Iran today. The less that the Left addresses this quest for democracy, the more the field is left open for Bush to claim to be its "defender"-even as he moves to scuttle basic democratic rights here at home. The great contradiction that exists in these democratic movements, however, is that they have stopped short of undertaking a fundamental transformation of social relations. The tendency to focus on needed political changes, while not addressing how to fundamentally uproot the social relations of capitalism, shows itself not only in struggles that openly accommodate themselves to neo-liberalism. It also shows itself in movements that explicitly aim to transform reality, as is evident from today's movements against global capital. As we saw from our participation this year at the World Social Forum in Brazil, many around the world today know that capitalism is bankrupt, that the planet is facing ecological destruction, and that it's crucial to show that "another world is possible." At the same time, a certain modesty characterizes this generation of radicals in that few would claim that they have the "answer" as to what is the alternative to capitalism (such modesty does not characterize the old vanguardist Left, which few listen to in any case). This helps explain the great emphasis that the movement places on decentralized forms of organization and open dialogue. However, there are an array of different approaches to the question of what is an "alternative" to existing society. Some go no further than posing the need for a redistribution of global resources while refraining from any socialist or revolutionary perspective. Others consider themselves revolutionary but what they really mean by this is! carving out "autonomous zones" freed from the impact of capital wherein they can "try to live differently." Others realize that only a social revolution that uproots the capital relation can save humanity, but they do not know how to address how that can be done in a way that avoids the aborted revolutions of the past 100 years. As a result, there tends to be a lack of concrete, direct, theoretically rigorous discussion about the actual content of a new society in the movements against global capital. For many years post-Marx Marxists spoke of transforming the mode of production-by which, however, they usually meant state control of industry or nationalized property. The disastrous outcome of that approach may explain why for the past 25 years the radical movement has virtually dropped any discussion of transforming the mode of production, focusing instead on civil society, democracy, culture, "self-expression," etc. These issues are important, but what's been left aside is any discussion of how to transform the economic structure of capitalism. The bankruptcy of unilinear evolutionist or economic reductionist perspectives has led to a new situation in which many now embrace either multilinear or non-economic approaches to social change. Yet the latter do not represent a transcendence of the limited position of the former. The failure by post-Marx Marxists to transform production relations because they fetishized property forms has led many to now act as if the most we ! can reach for is transforming the political and cultural superstructure of capitalism. In both cases transforming alienated labor and the capitalist mode of production is left untheorized. In sum, the problem we face today is not "economic determinism." The problem is discussing everything except transforming the social relations of capital. It is not up to us to choose what ideas should or should not be contested by Marxist-Humanists. History decides that for us. We are judged by whether we look in the historic mirror and respond accordingly. III. The experiences of the past year show that our organization is not the only one to "defend" the idea of spontaneous self-activity. Nor are we the only ones to say that mass practice gives rise to new theory. In the aftermath of the failure of statist "socialism," the emergence of new social movements, and postmodernism, many now say that common peoples' actions are expressions of theory. What none except the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism says, however, is: 1) the movement from practice is a form of theory-a form, not the form; 2) theory is not the same as philosophy; and 3) the philosophy that is needed is not just any philosophy but Marx's philosophy of "revolution in permanence" developed to its next stage of dialectical development. The fact that there is little discussion of Marx's Marxism, including in the movements against global capital, pinpoints the historic-philosophic barrier to working out an alternative that remains to be resolved. The root of the problem is n! ot the concept of "self-limiting revolution" per se. The root of the problem lies deeper, in the evasion and outright rejection of Marx's philosophy of revolution. It is this which has led people to assume that there is no alternative other than to accept a self-limiting revolution. When Raya Dunayevskaya first took issue with the idea of the "self-limiting revolution" in the 1980s, she did so by noting its main author, Jacek Kuron of Poland's Solidarnosc, had earlier declared that he had gone "beyond Marxism." She wrote: "Why choose between either of the two global superpower alignments? Does 'beyond Marxism' mean you have given up the class struggle?" She said that despite the great self-activity of Polish workers, "the philosophic rudder of Marx's Humanism is yet to be embraced by the organized working class."1 This was the decisive issue. The collapse of any effort to connect mass activity to Marx's philosophy of revolution led to a void that enabled the idea of the "self-limiting revolution"-as well as paens to religion and the "free" market-to take hold. The basic problem facing us today is rejecting or taking for granted the totality of Marx. Totality means the whole-the economics, politics, and philosophy. Restating Marx's Marxism entails being responsible for the whole of Marx's concept of "revolution in permanence." The perspective of working out what Marx's Marxism means for today on the basis of the totality of Marx's body of ideas is a unique contribution of the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism.2 How can we follow through on the work we have only begun to do in developing a philosophically grounded alternative? It is not possible to develop an alternative to capitalism without studying and building upon the forms of self-organization that have emerged from past and ongoing freedom struggles. Dunayevskaya intended to explore this in her planned book on "Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy." It remains one of the hardest "chapters" of dialectics of organization to write, however, because what has been achieved by the masses in moments of revolt has so often been passed over by intellectuals and historians. For instance, we have yet to get a comprehensive account of what has really transpired in Chiapas. What forms of self-organization have been worked out that might intimate the content of a non-capitalist society? What problems and contradictions have the autonomous communities there encountered? We can ask the same unanswered questions of many revolts, from th! e movement that brought down Mobutu in the Congo in the 1990s to today's labor struggles in China. Yet while exploring spontaneous forms of struggle is a crucial part of developing an alternative, we "can't solve the problem here," as Dunayevskaya wrote in "one possible outline" to "Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy" in 1987.3 The reason we "can't solve the problem here" is spoken to in one of her last writings: "The point is that of the years 1924-29, 1929 to today, World War II, and all those national revolutions, the rise of a Third World and the endless continuing struggle, and nowhere in sight, not even in telescopic sight, is there an answer to the questions, what happens after the conquest of power? Why so many aborted revolutions? What type of party or organization? What have the various forms of spontaneity-councils, soviets, committees, associations, communes-achieved? And why when they did come close to power, it was the political organizations that didn't take them over so much, as that they themselves looked to be taken over?"4 Masses of people do not only spontaneously create their own forms of struggle and organization. In the period leading up to and following the revolutionary seizure of power they also spontaneously search out groupings different from their own in order to gain a sense of how to reorganize production and human relations. Yet when no organization exists that can help spell out the path to a new society, they end up being "taken over" by groups that aren't defined by the development of a philosophically grounded alternative to capitalism. We no longer live in a time when "transitions, revolutions seem sufficient to bring forth the new society."5 Even revolution, crucial as it is, will not lead to a new society if the organizational embodiment of a philosophy that can answer "what happens after" is missing. This problem led the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, to initiate a far-reaching reexamination of the work of Hegel, Marx, and Marxist-Humanism in the last years of her life. At issue was the inseparability between dialectical philosophy and organization. The predominant approach toward organization among post-Marx Marxists has been to stress the need for either an elitist vanguard party or decentralized forms of organization that arise from spontaneous struggles. Dunayevskaya sought to go further, by exploring the role of "a group like us" who "know that nothing can be done without the masses, and are with them, but [such groups of] theoreticians always seem to be around too."6 In exploring this issue in 1986-87, she returned with new eyes to the philosophic moment of Marxist-Humanism, her 1953 "Letters on Hegel's Absolutes." A new reinterpretation of Hegel's Absolutes is central to Marxist-Humanism's original contributions. In contrast to those who stress Hegel's method while rejecting his Absolutes as some mystification, Dunayevskaya held that the realities of our age made it imperative to unearth the vision of freedom that is contained in the culmination of Hegel's system in Absolute Knowledge, Absolute Idea, and Absolute Mind. The first work of Marxist-Humanism's "trilogy of revolution," Marxism and Freedom, singled out "the vision of the future which Hegel called the Absolute and which Marx first called 'real Humanism' and later 'communism'" (p. 66). Her next work, Philosophy and Revolution, projected the new category of "Absolute Negativity as New Beginning." This emphasis on the importance of Hegel's Absolutes was not put aside in the third work of the trilogy, Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution. It instead led her to further explore the Hegelian dialectic "in and for itself." This culminated in Dunayevskaya's writings of 1986-87, in which she returned with new eyes to her 1953 "Letters on Hegel's Absolutes" from the vantage point of the problem of organization. She was not simply concerned with! defining the "right" form of organization. On the contrary, she insisted that in her commentary on the final three paragraphs of Hegel's Philosophy of Mind "I end not with the form of organization, but instead say, 'we have entered the new society.'"7 Dunayevskaya's work on the "dialectics of organization and philosophy" showed that the historic right to exist of a Marxist organization centers on assuming responsibility for the philosophy that spells out "what happens after" the revolution. Her development of this unique Marxist-Humanist concept of organization caught the link of continuity with Marx's concept of organization. Marx fully concretized his "philosophic moment" of 1844 for organization in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program, which contained his most detailed discussion of a future socialist society. It isn't that post-Marx Marxists were unaware that in 1875 Marx posed the ultimate goal of a new society as "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." It's that they failed to grasp the significance of the fact that Marx projected the path to this goal in an organizational document. As Dunayevskaya wrote in Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution, "..! .'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' to this day remains the perspective for the future, yet the Marxists who keep quoting it never bother to study just how concretely that arose from the critique of the supposedly socialist program, and what would be required to make that real" (pp. 156-57). Our age is crying out for a philosophy that can address "what happens after the revolution" and for an organization that takes responsibility for that philosophy. It cannot be achieved without a direct encounter with Hegel, especially with his concept of "absolute negativity," any more than it can be achieved without the contributions of Marx and Marxist-Humanism. To even begin to make progress on the dialectics of organization we must take off from the ground that Marx left us. It doesn't mean that Marx supplies "the answer" to every issue. While Marx provides the ground, we also need a roof. But we can't get to the roof unless we grasp the foundation. And we must not take the foundation for granted in an era when an entire generation of revolutionaries have abandoned Marxism. To work out the many unanswered questions associated with working out an alternative to capital, we must hold firmly to and delve further into the totality of the Hegelian-Marxian dialectic through ! the mediation of the unique historic-philosophic contributions of Marxist-Humanism. IV. Our classes on "Beyond Capitalism" were held as we embarked on a new bimonthly News & Letters. We went to a bimonthly to provide the time and space needed to develop a publication and an organization that brings together the questions being posed from below with the philosophic restatement of Marx's Marxism. This involves ensuring that we have theoretical material that addresses the central problems of our times. It involves ensuring that we elicit the questions and sentiments of common people that can make it clear what those central problems are. Most of all, it involves having an active organizational dialogue between the voices from below and philosophy. Only through this process can we meet the challenge of organizational growth. That is why we need to continue the work that we have done since September in the battle of ideas in the pages of News & Letters and in outside presses. We also need to intensify the elicitation of voices from below in our paper and organizati! on as part of engaging in an active philosophic dialogue. Most important of all, we need to continue the effort to develop a philosophically grounded alternative to capitalism, even when this means challenging some of the core assumptions of many in the movement. The need for an organizational expression of the effort to work out a philosophically grounded vision of a new society means that the locals and center will need to communicate more directly on what kinds of meetings, forums, and activities they can be engaged in over the next year to further develop our perspectives. For this reason, we envision that a major focal point of our 2005 Plenum be the collective organizational work needed to compile a new collection of Raya Dunayevskaya's writings on Marx. Though we have spoken of this project for several years as a way to follow through from our issuance of The Power of Negativity, the objective and subjective situation compels us to complete this work over the next year. This will entail renewed discussion of many writings in the Archives of Marxist-Humanism as well as new venues for presenting our ideas in movement events, conferences, in News & Letters and in outside presses. The REB will issue a Draft for Perspectives, to be published in the July/August issue of News & Letters. Pre-Plenum discussion opens with the issuance of this Call. The NEB will meet to work out an agenda and chairs on Friday evening, Sept. 2. The Plenum will open on Saturday morning, Sept. 3, and will continue through Sunday, Sept. 4. All sessions will be open to members and invited friends approved by the locals, who are given the same privileges to the floor for discussion. We are asking the Chicago Local to host the Plenum. Pre-Plenum discussion bulletins will be issued throughout the summer; the deadline for the first bulletin will be July 8. Those who wish to submit material for pre-Plenum bulletins are asked to have them in the Center no later than Aug. 7. Material for discussion after that must be brought to the Plenum. -The Resident Editorial Board -- NEWS & LETTERS / NEWS AND LETTERS COMMITTEES TEL 312 236 0799, FAX 312 236 0725 NOTES 1. See "The Trail in the 1980s for Transforming Reality," by Raya Dunayevskaya [Sept. 5, 1981], in _The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection_, no. 7108-7109. 2. For Dunayevskaya's concept of the need "to grasp Marx's Marxism as a totality," see _The Myriad Global Crises of the 1980s and the Nuclear World Since World War II_ (Chicago: News and Letters, 1986), p. 8. 3. See "One possible outline for Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy" [May 11, 1987], in _Supplement to the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection_, no. 10922. 4. "Another 'Talking to Myself,' this time on what has happened since 'Not by Practice Alone,' 1984-87" [May 19, 1987], in _Supplement to the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection_, no. 10955. 5. See "Letters on Hegel's Absolutes," in _The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx_, by Raya Dunayevskaya, p. 22. 6. See "Presentation on the Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy," in _The Power of Negativity_, p. 7. 7. See "Talking to Myself," [May 13, 1987]," in _Supplement to the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection_, no. 10932. |
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