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"[Today’s realities] show that simply saying ‘no’ does not represent a forward step in the movement for liberation. Much, much more is demanded. The key is not whether one opposes specific aspects of today’s reality but whether one develops a concept of the transcendence of capitalism. If the radical movement refrains from the arduous theoretic and practical labor needed to meet that challenge, it will repeat the errors of the past instead of posing a viable alternative.”—Marxist-Humanist Perspectives Thesis for 2005-2006 Developing a
Philosophically Grounded
Alternative to Capitalism
A series of open discussions on the
central perspective of News and Letters Committees—developing a
philosophically grounded alternative to existing society in today’s ongoing
struggles against racism, sexism, imperialist war, and capitalism. For
readings, schedules and more information,go to Contact Us. Watch this
space for links to selected readings. 1// The Indispensable Foundation Internalizing Marx’s Works as a Totality—on Class,
Gender and Revolution “We must turn to Marx—the whole of Marx. Without his philosophy of revolution, neither Women’s Liberationists nor the whole of humanity will have discovered the ground that will assure the success of the revolution....Clearly, there is no substitute for the totality of Marx as organization man, as political theorist, as visionary of a future social order.”—Raya Dunayevskaya (1981) • Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2005-2006: Introduction, Parts 1 and 2 • Dunayevskaya: “Marx’s ‘New Humanism’ and the
Dialectics of Women’s Liberation in Primitive & Modern Societies” (1983)
in Women's Liberation and the
Dialectics of Liberation Letter to Adrienne Rich (1986) Supplementary • Olga Domanski: “On
the 50th Anniversary of News and Letters Committees” (2005) 2// What is Philosophy? What is its Relationship to Revolution? “Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being”—Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945) • Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2005-2006: Part 4 • Dunayevskaya: “Marx’s Debt to Hegel” (1965) “Roman Rosdolsky and Marx’s Grundrisse” (1978) “What is Marxist-Humanism?” (March 8 and 16, 1987) Supplementary • Peter Hudis: “Organizational
Responsibility for Developing a Philosophically Grounded Alternative to
Capitalism” (2005) • Theodor Adorno: “Introduction” to Negative Dialectics 3// Spontaneity, Everyday Resistance, and the Need for a New Relation of Philosophy and Organization “[Rosa Luxemburg] was absolutely right in her emphasis that the Marxist movement was the ‘first in the history of class societies which, in all its moments, in its entire course, reckons on the organization and the independent, direct action of the masses.’ However, she was not right in holding that, very nearly automatically, it means so total a conception of socialism that a philosophy of Marx’s concept of revolution could likewise be left to spontaneous action.”—Raya Dunayevskaya (1981) • Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2005-2006: Part 2 • Dunayevskaya: Rosa
Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution,
chapter 4; “Presentation on the Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy” [ “A Post-World War II View of Marx’s Humanism, 1843-83; Marxist-Humanism in the 1950s to 1980s” (1987) in Bosnia-Herzegovina: 'Achilles Heal' of Western Civilization • Marx: Letter
to Bracke of May 5, 1875 • Constitution of News and Letters Committees Supplementary • Hardt and Negri: Multitude Chapter 2.1, "The Becoming Common of Labor" "Excursus 1: Method in Marx's Footsteps" Chapter 3.3, "The New Science of Democracy: Madison and Lenin" 4// Not by Politics Alone What Is To Be Done with The State? “[The Paris Commune was] the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor....The Commune was therefore to serve as a political lever for uprooting the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule.”—Karl Marx (1871) • Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2005-2006: Part 3 • Dunayevskaya: “The “Marx and Engels’ Studies Contrasted:
Relationship of Philosophy and Revolution to Women’s Liberation” (1979) in Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of
Liberation • Marx: The Civil War in France, part 3 Critique of the Gotha Program, section 4 Supplementary • John Holloway: Epilogue
to 2006 edition of Change the World
Without Seizing Power 5// A New Humanism? Marx's Concept of the Transcendence of Value Production “Within the cooperative commonwealth based on the social ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor embodied in the products appear here as the value of these products...since now, in contrast to capitalist society, the individual labor no longer exists as an indirectly but as a directly constituent part of the total social labor.”—Karl Marx (1875) • Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2005-2006: Part 4 • Dunayevskaya: “A New Revision of Marxian Economics” (1944) “Revision or Reaffirmation of Marxism” (1945) “Exchange of Letters with Herbert Marcuse on Automation” (1960) Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, chapter 11, section 1 • Marx: Critique of the Gotha Program, section 1 Capital, chapter 1, section 4, “The Fetishism of Commodities” Supplementary • Kevin Anderson, “On Marx...and the Dunayevskaya-Marx Book” (2005) • “The Teaching of Economics in the 6// What Does Marx’s Concept of “Revolution in Permanence” Mean for Today? “Have we faced the harsh reality that, unless the inseparability between dialectics of thought and of revolution does exist, any country that does succeed in its revolution may retrogress, since the world revolution cannot occur at one stroke everywhere and world capitalism continues to exist.”—Raya Dunayevskaya (1985) • Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2005-2006: Parts 1 through 4 • Dunayevskaya: Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, chapter 12, section 4 “Letters on Hegel’s Absolutes” (1953) in The Power of Negativity “Africa: Neocolonialism and the World Economy” (1968) • Marx: “Address to the Communist League” (1850) Supplementary • Dunayevskaya: “Letter to Dupré” and “Letter to George Armstrong Kelly” in The Power of Negativity (pp. 326-333). |