Raya Dunayevskaya
Encyclopedia
Raya Dunayevskaya was the founder of the philosophy
of Marxist Humanism
in the United States of America. At one time Leon Trotsky
's secretary, she later split with him and ultimately founded the organization News and Letters Committees
and was its leader until her death.
. By the following year she found a group of independent Trotskyists in Boston
, led by Antoinette Buchholz Konikow, an advocate of birth control
and legal abortion
.
Without getting permission from the U.S. Trotskyist organization, she went to Mexico
in 1937 to serve as Leon Trotsky
's Russian language secretary during his exile
there. Having returned to Chicago in 1938 after the deaths of her father and brother, she broke with Trotsky in 1939 when he continued to maintain that the Soviet Union
was a "workers' state" even after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
(also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact). She opposed any notion that workers should be asked to defend this "workers' state" allied with Nazi Germany
in a world war
. Along with theorists such as C.L.R. James, and later Tony Cliff
, Dunayevskaya argued that the Soviet Union had become 'state capitalist'. Toward the end of her life, she stated that what she called "my real development" only began after her break with Trotsky.
Her simultaneous study of the Russian economy and of Marx's early writings (later known as the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
), led to her theory that not only was the U.S.S.R. a 'state capitalist' society, but that 'state capitalism
' was a new world stage. Much of her initial analysis was published in The New International in 1942-1943.
In 1940, she was involved in the split in the Socialist Workers Party that led to the formation of the Workers Party
(WP), with which she shared an objection to Trotsky's characterisation of the Soviet Union as a 'degenerated workers' state
'. Within the WP, she formed the Johnson-Forest Tendency
alongside C. L. R. James
(she being "Freddie Forest" and he "J.R. Johnson", named for their party cadre names). The tendency argued that the Soviet Union was 'state capitalist
', while the WP majority maintained that it was bureaucratic collectivist.
Differences within the WP steadily widened, and in 1947, after a brief period of independent existence during which they published a series of documents, the tendency returned to the ranks of the SWP. Their membership in the SWP was based on a shared insistence that there was a pre-revolutionary situation just around the corner, and the shared belief that a Leninist party must be in place to take advantage of the coming opportunities.
By 1951, with the failure of their shared perspective to materialize, the tendency developed a theory that rejected Leninism
and saw the workers as being spontaneously revolutionary. This was borne out for them by the 1949 U.S. miners' strike. In later years, they were to pay close attention to automation
, especially in the automobile industry, which they came to see as paradigmatic of a new stage of capitalism
. This led to the tendency leaving the SWP again to begin independent work.
After more than a decade of developing the theory of state capitalism
, Dunayevskaya continued her study of the Hegelian dialectic
by taking on a task the Johnson-Forest Tendency had set itself: exploring Hegel's
Philosophy of Mind
. She advanced an interpretation of Hegel's Absolutes
holding that they involved a dual movement: a movement from practice that is itself a form of theory and a movement from theory reaching to philosophy. She considered these 1953 letters to be "the philosophic moment" from which the whole development of Marxist Humanism
flowed.
In 1954-1955 Dunayevskaya and C.L.R. James engaged in a split. In 1955, she founded her own organization, News and Letters Committees
, and a Marxist-Humanist newspaper, News & Letters, which remains in publication today. The newspaper covers women's struggles, the liberation of workers, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual rights and the disability rights movement, while not separating that coverage from philosophical and theoretical articles.
Dunayevskaya wrote what came to be known as her "trilogy of revolution": Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today
(1958), Philosophy and Revolution (1973), and Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (1982). In addition, she selected and introduced a collection of writings, published in 1985, Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution.
In the last year of her life she was working on a new book which she had tentatively titled, Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy: The 'Party' and Forms of Organization Born Out of Spontaneity.
Raya Dunayevskaya's speeches, letters, publications, notes, recordings and other items are located in the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University
in Detroit. Microfilm copies of the collection are available from the WSU Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs. Guides to the collection are available from News and Letters Committees.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
of Marxist Humanism
Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx espoused his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural...
in the United States of America. At one time Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
's secretary, she later split with him and ultimately founded the organization News and Letters Committees
News and Letters Committees
News and Letters Committees is a small, revolutionary-socialist organization in the United States. It is the world's most prominent Marxist-Humanist organization....
and was its leader until her death.
Biography
Of Jewish descent, Dunayevskaya emigrated to the United States and joined the revolutionary movement in her childhood. Active in the American Communist Party youth organization, she was expelled at age 18 and thrown down a flight of stairs when she suggested that her local comrades should find out Trotsky's response to his expulsion from the Soviet Communist Party and the CominternComintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
. By the following year she found a group of independent Trotskyists in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, led by Antoinette Buchholz Konikow, an advocate of birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
and legal abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
.
Without getting permission from the U.S. Trotskyist organization, she went to Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
in 1937 to serve as Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
's Russian language secretary during his exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
there. Having returned to Chicago in 1938 after the deaths of her father and brother, she broke with Trotsky in 1939 when he continued to maintain that the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was a "workers' state" even after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
(also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact). She opposed any notion that workers should be asked to defend this "workers' state" allied with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
in a world war
World war
A world war is a war affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theaters....
. Along with theorists such as C.L.R. James, and later Tony Cliff
Tony Cliff
Tony Cliff , was a Trotskyist who was a founding member of the Socialist Review Group which went on to become the Socialist Workers Party...
, Dunayevskaya argued that the Soviet Union had become 'state capitalist'. Toward the end of her life, she stated that what she called "my real development" only began after her break with Trotsky.
Her simultaneous study of the Russian economy and of Marx's early writings (later known as the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 are a series of notes written between April and August 1844 by Karl Marx. Not published by Marx during his lifetime, they were first released in 1927 by researchers in the Soviet Union.The notebooks are an early expression of Marx's analysis of...
), led to her theory that not only was the U.S.S.R. a 'state capitalist' society, but that 'state capitalism
State capitalism
The term State capitalism has various meanings, but is usually described as commercial economic activity undertaken by the state with management of the productive forces in a capitalist manner, even if the state is nominally socialist. State capitalism is usually characterized by the dominance or...
' was a new world stage. Much of her initial analysis was published in The New International in 1942-1943.
In 1940, she was involved in the split in the Socialist Workers Party that led to the formation of the Workers Party
Workers Party (US)
Not to be confused with the modern Marxist-Leninist party, Workers Party, USA.The Workers Party was a Third Camp Trotskyist group in the United States. It was founded in April 1940 by members of the Socialist Workers Party who opposed the Soviet invasion of Finland. They included Max Shachtman,...
(WP), with which she shared an objection to Trotsky's characterisation of the Soviet Union as a 'degenerated workers' state
Degenerated workers' state
In Trotskyist political theory the term degenerated workers' state has been used since the 1930s to describe the state of the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in or about 1924...
'. Within the WP, she formed the Johnson-Forest Tendency
Johnson-Forest Tendency
The Johnson–Forest tendency, sometimes called the Johnsonites, refers to a radical left tendency in the United States associated with Marxist theorists C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya, who used the pseudonyms J.R. Johnson and Freddie Forest respectively...
alongside C. L. R. James
C. L. R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James , who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J.R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts...
(she being "Freddie Forest" and he "J.R. Johnson", named for their party cadre names). The tendency argued that the Soviet Union was 'state capitalist
State capitalism
The term State capitalism has various meanings, but is usually described as commercial economic activity undertaken by the state with management of the productive forces in a capitalist manner, even if the state is nominally socialist. State capitalism is usually characterized by the dominance or...
', while the WP majority maintained that it was bureaucratic collectivist.
Differences within the WP steadily widened, and in 1947, after a brief period of independent existence during which they published a series of documents, the tendency returned to the ranks of the SWP. Their membership in the SWP was based on a shared insistence that there was a pre-revolutionary situation just around the corner, and the shared belief that a Leninist party must be in place to take advantage of the coming opportunities.
By 1951, with the failure of their shared perspective to materialize, the tendency developed a theory that rejected Leninism
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
and saw the workers as being spontaneously revolutionary. This was borne out for them by the 1949 U.S. miners' strike. In later years, they were to pay close attention to automation
Automation
Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and services. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization...
, especially in the automobile industry, which they came to see as paradigmatic of a new stage of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. This led to the tendency leaving the SWP again to begin independent work.
After more than a decade of developing the theory of state capitalism
State capitalism
The term State capitalism has various meanings, but is usually described as commercial economic activity undertaken by the state with management of the productive forces in a capitalist manner, even if the state is nominally socialist. State capitalism is usually characterized by the dominance or...
, Dunayevskaya continued her study of the Hegelian dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
by taking on a task the Johnson-Forest Tendency had set itself: exploring Hegel's
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
. She advanced an interpretation of Hegel's Absolutes
Absolute (philosophy)
The Absolute is the concept of an unconditional reality which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence. It is sometimes used as an alternate term for "God" or "the Divine", especially, but by no means exclusively, by those who feel that the term "God" lends itself too easily to...
holding that they involved a dual movement: a movement from practice that is itself a form of theory and a movement from theory reaching to philosophy. She considered these 1953 letters to be "the philosophic moment" from which the whole development of Marxist Humanism
Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx espoused his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural...
flowed.
In 1954-1955 Dunayevskaya and C.L.R. James engaged in a split. In 1955, she founded her own organization, News and Letters Committees
News and Letters Committees
News and Letters Committees is a small, revolutionary-socialist organization in the United States. It is the world's most prominent Marxist-Humanist organization....
, and a Marxist-Humanist newspaper, News & Letters, which remains in publication today. The newspaper covers women's struggles, the liberation of workers, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual rights and the disability rights movement, while not separating that coverage from philosophical and theoretical articles.
Dunayevskaya wrote what came to be known as her "trilogy of revolution": Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today
Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today
Marxism and Freedom: from 1776 Until Today is a 1958 book by the philosopher and activist Raya Dunayevskaya, the first volume of her 'Trilogy of Revolution'....
(1958), Philosophy and Revolution (1973), and Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (1982). In addition, she selected and introduced a collection of writings, published in 1985, Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution.
In the last year of her life she was working on a new book which she had tentatively titled, Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy: The 'Party' and Forms of Organization Born Out of Spontaneity.
Raya Dunayevskaya's speeches, letters, publications, notes, recordings and other items are located in the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University
Wayne State University
Wayne State University is a public research university located in Detroit, Michigan, United States, in the city's Midtown Cultural Center Historic District. Founded in 1868, WSU consists of 13 schools and colleges offering more than 400 major subject areas to over 32,000 graduate and...
in Detroit. Microfilm copies of the collection are available from the WSU Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs. Guides to the collection are available from News and Letters Committees.
Quotes
- "He who glorifies theory and genius but fails to recognize the limits of a theoretical work, fails likewise to recognize the indispensability of the theoretician. All of history is the history of the struggle for freedom. If, as a theoretician, one's ears are attuned to the new impulse from the workers, new "categories" will be created, a new way of thinking, a new step forward in philosophic cognition." –from Marxism and Freedom
- "Precisely where Hegel sounds most abstract, seems to close the shutters tight against the whole movement of history, there he lets the lifeblood of the dialectic – absolute negativity – pour in. It is true Hegel writes as if the resolution of opposing live forces can be overcome by a mere thought transcendence. But he has, by bringing oppositions to their most logical extreme, opened new paths, a new relationship of theory to practice, which Marx worked out as a totally new relationship of philosophy to revolution. Today's revolutionaries turn their backs on this at their peril." –from Philosophy and Revolution
- "It is true that other post-Marx Marxists have rested on a truncated Marxism; it is equally true that no other generation could have seen the problematic of our age, much less solve our problems. Only live human beings can recreate the revolutionary dialectic forever anew. And these live human beings must do so in theory as well as in practice. It is not a question only of meeting the challenge from practice, but of being able to meet the challenge from the self-development of the Idea, and of deepening theory to the point where it reaches Marx's concept of the philosophy of 'revolution in permanence.'" –from Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution
External links
- Biography
- News and Letters Newspaper
- Raya Dunayevskaya Collection at Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University
- Archive at struggle.net
- Libertarian Communist Library Raya Dunayevskaya holdings
- Marxists Internet Archive Raya Dunayevskaya Archive
- Marxist-Humanist Dialectics
Books
- Trilogy of Revolution
- Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until TodayMarxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until TodayMarxism and Freedom: from 1776 Until Today is a 1958 book by the philosopher and activist Raya Dunayevskaya, the first volume of her 'Trilogy of Revolution'....
. [1958] 2000. Humanity Books. ISBN 1-57392-819-4. - Philosophy and Revolution: from Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao. Third ed. 1989. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-07061-6.
- Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution. 1991. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-01838-9.
- Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today
- Other
- Women’s Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution: Reaching for the Future. 1996. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-2655-2.
- The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism. 1992. News & Letters Committee. ISBN 0-914441-30-2.
- The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegal and Marx. 2002. Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-0266-4. Image
Articles
- "The Shock of Recognition and the Philosophic Ambivalence of Lenin". TELOSTELOS (journal)Telos is an academic journal published in the United States. It was founded in May 1968 to provide the New Left with a coherent theoretical perspective. It sought to expand the Husserlian diagnosis of "the crisis of European sciences" to prefigure a particular program of social reconstruction...
, No. 5 (Spring 1970). New York: Telos Press.
Introductions
- Frantz Fanon, Soweto & American Black Thought by Lou Turner and John Alan ; new introd. by Raya Dunayevskaya. – new expanded edition, Chicago : News and Letters, 1986
Archives
- "Raya Dunayevskaya Collection--Marxist-Humanism: A Half-Century of Its World Development." Held at the Wayne State University Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Detroit, Michigan 48202. Labor and Urban Affairs Archives home page
- Supplement to the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection. Held at the Wayne State University Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs.
Writings about Dunayevskaya
- Afary, Janet, "The Contribution of Raya Dunayevskaya, 1910-1987: A Study in Hegelian Marxist Feminism," Extramares (1)1, 1989. pp. 35–55.
- Anderson, Kevin, chapter 8, From 1954 to Today: "Lefebvre, Colletti, Althusser, and Dunayevskaya," in Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism: A Critical Study, University of Illinois Press: Urbana, 1995.
- Anderson, Kevin, "Sources of Marxist-Humanism: Fanon, Kosik, Dunayevskaya," Quarterly Journal of Ideology (10)4, 1986. pp. 15–29.
- Chicago Literary Review, "Marxist-Humanism, an Interview with Raya Dunayevskaya, Chicago Literary Review, March 15, 1985.
- Easton, Judith, "Raya Dunayevskaya," Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain (16), Autumn/Winter 1987. pp. 7–12.
- Gogol, Eugene, Raya Dunayevskaya: Philosopher of Marxist-Humanism, Wipfandstock Publishers: Eugene, Oregon, 2003. http://web.archive.org/web/20090728210138/http://geocities.com/rayabook/
- Greeman, Richard, "Raya Dunayevskaya: Thinker, Fighter, Revolutionary," Against the Current, January/February 1988.
- Hudis, Peter, "Workers as Reason: The Development of a New Relation of Worker and Intellectual in American Marxist-Humanism," Historical Materialism (11)4, pp. 267–293.
- Jeannot, Thomas M., "Dunayevskaya's Conception of Ultimate Reality and Meaning," Ultimate Reality and Meaning (22)4, December 1999. pp. 276–293.
- Kellner, Douglas, "A Comment on the Dunayevskaya-Marcuse Dialogue," Quarterly Journal of Ideology (13)4, 1989. p. 29.
- Le Blanc, Paul, "The Philosophy and Politics of Freedom," Monthly Review (54)8. http://www.monthlyreview.org/0103leblanc.htm
- Moon, Terry, "Dunayevskaya, Raya," in Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. pp. 238–241.
- Rich, Adrienne, "Living the Revolution," Women's Review of Books (3)12, September 1986.
- Rockwell, Russell, "Hegel and Social Theory in Critical Theory and Marxist-Humanism," International Journal of Philosophy (32)1, 2003.
- Schultz, Rima Lunin and Adele Hast, "Introduction," in Women Building Chicago 1790-1990, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.