organisation
11. The Struggle Against the State
The fact that the modern State is the organizational form of an authority founded upon arbitrariness and violence in the social life of toilers is independent of whether it may be "bourgeois" or "proletarian." It relies upon oppressive centralism, arising out of the direct violence of a minority deployed against the majority.
World Revolution and Communist Tactics - Pannekoek
Pannekoek surveys the possibilities and obstacles for communist revolution in 1920.
Practicing philosophy and revolution
Raya Dunayevskaya's letter to her colleagues on the National Editorial Board of News and Letters Committees in which she takes up the position on needing to go beyond merely "understanding" dialectics to "practicing" them.
PRACTICING PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor's Note:
When Raya Dunayevskaya wrote the following letter to her colleagues on the National Editorial Board of News and Letters Committees, she had just completed a draft of her second book, PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION (published 1973). In it, she takes up the just completed class series on philosophy that the organization had undertaken and the need to go beyond merely "understanding" dialectics to "practicing" dialectics. The full text of the letter can be found in THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, Microfilm no. 14036-14038.
Marxist-Humanism's concept of 'Subject'
Marxist-Humanism's concept of 'Subject'
Editor's Note: In early years of the 1970s leading up to the completion of her book, PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION: FROM HEGEL TO SARTRE AND FROM MARX TO MAO, Raya Dunayevskaya engaged young revolutionaries in the ideas presented in that work. An example is a Jan. 15, 1971 letter, excerpted here, to young members of News and Letters Committees. Her discussion of the connection between subjects of revolt and philosophy speaks to concerns presented in our "Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives" (See pp. 1, 5-8). The original can be found in Supplement to THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, 14110-11. Footnotes are by the editors.
Marxism and 'the party'
Marxism and 'the party'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor's Note:
As part of our commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Marx's COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, we publish Raya Dunayevskaya's 1980 critique of John Molyneux's MARXISM AND THE PARTY, a 1978 work by a British Trotskyist which largely focused on the MANIFESTO. Written as a letter to an Iranian Marxist-Humanist on Sept. 4, 1980, the critique has been slightly edited and shortened; we have also supplied headlines, footnotes, and the material in brackets. The original is in the SUPPLEMENT TO THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, microfilm no. 15235.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Raya Dunayevskaya/Founder of Marxist-Humanism
A manifesto of emancipation: Marx's "Marginal Notes to the German Worker's Party" after 125 years
Paresh Chattopadhyay's investigation on Marx's little-read "Marginal Notes to the German Worker's Party" arguing in favour of its strong emancipatory message and counter-poses it to Bolshevik-style state socialism.
Marx's "Marginal Notes" of 1875 or what he called in a letter (to Bracke, May 5, 1875), a "long scrap of paper," was a purely occasional text which its author felt compelled to compose, in order to underline what he thought to be the serious shortcomings in a workers' programme.
Spontaneity and Organisation - Paul Mattick
"Taking refuge in the idea of spontaneity is indicative of an actual or imagined inability to form effective organisations and a refusal to fight existing organisations in a 'realistic' manner. For to fight them successfully would necessitate the formation of counter-organisations, which, by themselves, would defeat the reason for their existence."...
Anarchism and Organisation
Organization which is, after all, only the practice of cooperation and solidarity, is a natural and necessary condition of social life; it is an inescapable fact which forces itself on everybody, as much on human society in general as on any group of people who are working towards a common objective.
Characteristic theses of the party
Amadeo Bordiga's essay on the role of the communist party in which he attacks political opportunism of Leninist-inspired communist parties.
(Produced at a Party meeting held in Florence, 8-9 December, 1951)
[b]I. THEORY [/b]
The workers have to deal with their own reality and that transforms them
Based on his experience in auto factories, Glaberman discusses the contradictions of the union's role.
