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June 1, 2007 To all members of News and Letters Committees and
Marxist-Humanists internationally
Dear Friends,
I.
The duality that defines today's objective situation was shown last month
when George Bush applauded Congress for dropping the demand for a timetable for
withdrawing troops from Iraq, on the grounds that it will enable the U.S. to see
the war through to its end-even though a significant section of the U.S. ruling
class has concluded (as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid put it) that "the war
is lost." Bush's insistence on continuing the war despite massive opposition at
home-including from active-duty soldiers and former generals-recalls Nixon's
prolonging the Vietnam War even after it became clear that it was a lost cause.
Bush's decision to throw ever-more lives into the sinkhole of a botched war
seems so shortsighted that it may appear he has lost all touch with objective
reality.
However, it is a dangerous illusion to attribute Bush's intransigence on Iraq to
subjective or personal factors alone OBJECTIVE factors make it hard for
U.S. imperialism to admit defeat and leave Iraq. Foremost in this is the U.S.
drive for single world mastery. Bush did not create that drive; it created him.
Iraq has shown the obstacles in the path of the U.S.'s effort to translate its
global power into total global domination. Yet that doesn't mean that the drive
for single world domination is no longer a factor. Bush does not want to
withdraw from Iraq since doing so would undermine the U.S.
drive for world domination, and yet he cannot remain there over the long term
because of the war's drain on troop morale and the U.S. economy and the growing
public opposition to the war. The U.S. faces an OBJECTIVE dilemma that is also
felt by the Democrats. Instead of cutting off the funding for the war, they have
capitulated to Bush by turning their backs on their earlier non-binding
resolutions that called for future troop withdrawals. Their capitulation to Bush
isn't just driven by fear of being accused of not supporting the troops. It most
of all flows from the Democrats' reluctance to be blamed for undercutting the
U.S. drive for world domination that they long supported. Bush's push to
continue the war cannot change the fact that the U.S. has suffered the most
serious setback in its effort to
impose its imperial will on the globe since its defeat in Vietnam. This is
leading to growing dissatisfaction with much of Bush's policies-from his gutting
of government spending on social programs to his attacks on abortion rights and
his
assault on civil liberties. Bush's policies have their origin in concepts
championed by Ronald Reagan, who reversed 50 years of New Deal legislation by
breaking unions, cutting social welfare, and presiding over a massive
redistribution of wealth from labor to capital. The disaster after Hurricane
Katrina was its end result. Reagan attacked abortion rights while extending his
blessings to the
Christian Right. The end result was the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld
the outlawing of a procedure for late term abortion-a prelude to a possible
reversal of Roe v. Wade. And Reagan embarked on a major military expansion,
attacking Grenada and Libya. His expansive globalism, continued by Bush Sr. and
Clinton, led to the war in Iraq. So does the growing discontent with the Iraq
war and Bush's domestic policies mean we are finally beginning to emerge from
out of the shadow of Reagan's retrogression? In many respects Bush faces a
very different situation than did Reagan. Reagan largely got his way; there was
a sense that the wind was in his sails. Today, in contrast, the U.S. is
unpopular and has lost much of its ability to influence events. Bush lacks the
political opportunity to use much of his power, which is why he has held
discussions with Syria and Iran and signed a nuclear arms deal with North Korea.
However, although Reaganism's edifice is wearing thin in some respects, it is
not dead. While many who initially supported Bush's "war against terrorism" have
broken ranks with him over Iraq, most Democrats are as committed to the
conceptual basis of Reaganism as are the Republicans insofar as capitalism is
concerned. This was seen not just from Clinton's policies, which went further
than Reagan in gutting welfare, promoting a surge in the prisoner population
with his "three strikes and you're out" policy, and pushing through a host of
"free trade" agreements. It is also seen in the recent actions of the
congressional Democrats, who made a deal with the White House on May 10 to
promote a package of free trade agreements-with virtually no public discussion.
If passed, the agreements will outsource thousands of U.S. jobs, force millions
off the land in Latin America and Africa, and weaken environmental standards.
The package supports Bush's "free trade" agreement with Colombia and gives him
"fast track authority" to negotiate more trade deals. Nancy Pelosi, Charles
Rangel, and Max Baucus all supported the package. Whatever their divisions on
Iraq, the ruling class is one in agreeing that "there is no alternative" to
"free trade" and capitalist globalization. This is because they all support some
form of Reaganism. Reaganism was a response to economic contradictions that
remain unresolved. Its roots go back to the Vietnam War of the 1960s, when U.S.
capitalism could no longer afford the high costs of both militarization and the
welfare state. A crisis point was reached in 1973-74, when a global recession
showed that capitalism was suffering from a decline in the rate of profit.
Capitalism responded with a three-decade long effort to cut wages, benefits, and
social programs in order to obtain the surplus value needed to meet capital's
thirst for self-expansion. Central to this was the taking down of barriers to
the movement of commodities and capital to make use of lower wages and more
efficient production techniques. The falling rate of profit, which drove these
policies, eliminated the economic basis of liberalism. Since the mid-1970s, it
has become clear that welfare state policies conflict with the expansionary
requirements of capitalist value production. As a result, a disproportionate
amount of wealth is being absorbed by capital and richer states. Whereas in 1960
the northern industrialized states received 67.3% of direct global investment;
in 1983 they received 75.5%; in 1990 they got 83.1%. The figure is even higher
today, despite China's massive growth.
That adequate social services and a rising standard of living for workers is
no longer compatible with the accumulation of capital on an ever-expanding scale
is dramatically shown by Nicolas Sarkozy's election as France's President. He
has proclaimed the goal of making a "clean break with the past" by ending
Gaullist policies that favored a strong state role in the economy. He advocates
weak trade unions, tax breaks for big business, and cuts in the national health
system. He won by appealing to Le Pen's racist base by viciously attacking those
of non-European descent and calling for hiring more police, building more
prisons, and taking punitive measures against the restless, unemployed Black and
Middle Eastern youth. He has also stated that the legacy of the French
student-worker revolt of 1968 must be "liquidated" As one commentator put it,
"What Sarkozy's victory means for France is something closer to the so-called
'Reagan Revolution' in the U.S. that began in 1981 the process of dismantling
and destroying the institutional New Deal legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt"
(French Elections: What Sarkozy's Victory Means," by Doug Ireland, May 6, 2007).
Whether it is the U.S. or France, West Europe or Japan, South Africa or India
(which is now experiencing levels of economic growth comparable to China's), the
world's rulers are committed to the policies of capitalist globalization, no
matter what other differences they have among themselves. This is not a matter
of ideological posturing on their part. They MUST pursue the policies of
state-imposed "free market" globalization because the capitalist law of value
compels it. We are therefore not likely to see a reversal of the legacy of
Reaganism unless social change comes not from above but from below, from masses
of people who contest and find a way to UPROOT capitalism.
II.
Important struggles for freedom continue to arise. While the anti-war rallies
have yet to reach the level attained on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion,
anti-war sentiment continues to grow in the U.S. and is prominent in many high
schools and colleges. Women's groups are increasing their activity in light of
the Supreme Court decision outlawing a procedure for late term abortions. An
important measure of the development of the forces of revolt in the U.S. will be
the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta in June, at which a number of Black
organizations and Civil Rights groups who had not been involved in the
anti-globalization movement will hold workshops and events.
The foremost expression of new social struggles is the immigrant rights
movement. Despite predictions that this year's rallies would be much smaller
than those of last year, 200,000 marched in Chicago on May Day, and smaller but
significant marches were held in a dozen cities around the U.S. These immigrant
marchers have been directly impacted by "free trade" agreements, cutbacks in
social spending, and political repression in their native lands. They have an
understanding of the ravages of capitalist globalization that U.S. workers
increasingly face in the form of declining real wages, layoffs, and reductions
in health insurance benefits. While anti-immigrant attacks are being used as a
wedge to pit worker against worker, immigrant struggles are helping to reawaken
a spirit of activism in U.S. labor. Campaigns are underway at UPS, Smithfield
Foods, and Verizon to extend collective bargaining to thousands of workers who
are not now covered by union benefits. At Smithfield's Tar Heel plant in North
Carolina, the UFCW has built up a sizable network of labor and community
supporters, including immigration rights activists. Important lessons have been
learned by this spring's victory of the Immakolee workers' boycott of McDonalds
that this country sorely needs a new kind of union movement that combines
workplace issues with social and community activism.
Meanwhile, the movement against global capital continues overseas. In May
thousands staged demonstrations across Germany against the G-8 summit, scheduled
there this month. Protests were held in Berlin, Cologne, Leipzig, and Hanover. A
recent visit to South Africa by our national co-organizer revealed widespread
grassroots movements against the policies of its government. And all over the
world movements against environmental destruction and global warming are heating
up.
The key test facing all movements is whether opposition to
capitalism-imperialism becomes inseparable from solidarizing with those
resisting repressive regimes and fundamentalist ideologies that target women
especially. This underlines the importance of the recent letter of protest sent
out by Iranian women and girls who appealed "to all human rights organizations
to not abandon us." Signed by Roya Payan, it states: "We are witnessing an
attack on all women in the name of defending the veil...Do not let the
experience of March 8, 1979 repeat itself. At that time, Iranian women came into
the streets to protest against the decree to wear the headscarf. We chanted, 'We
did not make a revolution to go backward.' Few political
and international human rights organizations defended this demonstration. We can
see the results of that inaction now...We are appealing to all women's rights
activists around the world and political organizations and social activists to
defend
us."
The effort to roll back today's retrogression has a long way to go-and not just
because more activity is needed. The problem was identified by Raya Dunayevskaya
in 1987, when she wrote: "The abysmal lower depths that the Reagan retrogression
has sunk the world...have polluted the ideological air, not only of the ruling
class, but have penetrated the Left itself" (Power of Negativity, p. 337). One
of the foremost expressions of this ideological pollution today is the failure
of theoreticians to develop a philosophically grounded alternative to
capitalism. The restructuring of global capital undermined not only the basis of
liberalism, but also versions of radicalism that reduced "socialism" to
nationalized property and state control of industry. Yet anti-Stalinist leftists
opposed to the false identification of state-capitalism with "socialism" have
failed to advance an
alternative concept of a new society, often on the grounds that such a concept
must first arise from spontaneous struggles. This reluctance to concretely
address what is needed to transcend capitalist value production has left the
door open for narrow and regressive tendencies to step and offer various false
alternatives.
One expression of this is that many responded to the collapse of
state-capitalism that called itself "Communism" in the 1980s and 1990s by
dropping any talk of socialism in favor of "radical democracy." Many have by now
even dropped the word "radical." The embrace of various forms of BOURGOIS
"democracy," as expressed by postmodernists and theorists like JŸrgen Habermas,
is very different from the expansive notion of SOCIALIST democracy developed by
Rosa Luxemburg. The tendency to fetishize political forms of decision-making
flows from a failure to THINK OUT an alternative to both state-capitalism that
called itself "socialism" and the actual force behind "free market" capitalism.
As Dunayevskaya wrote in 1987, "We must not, I repeat MUST NOT, look for a
crutch just because a new epigone is using the word 'democracy' to mean
more than one party..." (PON, p. 10). The elevation of the political over the
economic is also true of those who uphold the need for workers' control of
production while failing to theorize how to transcend the capitalist law of
value.Many in the anti-vanguardist, autonomist and anarchist Left stop dead at
affirming the need for workers' control without considering how value production
subordinates
the workers' activity to an alien power even when workers have POLITICAL control
over some aspects of the labor process. A new society does not arise by taking
over the forms of labor and association that characterize the presently existing
labor process. Marx opposed this Proudhonist fallacy in writing: "If cooperative
labor is not to become a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist
system" it must "be under [the workers'] own control" (Civil War in France, MECW
22, p. 335). And production is not truly under the workers' own control so long
as the law of value and the world market continues to exist. We in News and
Letters Committees are not exempt from Dunayevskaya's critique of the
anti-Stalinist Left's failure to
develop a philosophically grounded alternative to capitalism. In the 1980s she
emphasized the need for us to respond to the question of "what happens after the
revolution" by working out what the TOTALITY of Marx's Marxism means for today.
Crucial to that, she held, was that Marx's CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM-the
work in which he projected his most extensive discussion of a post-capitalist
society-must become the ground for organization. Although she did not live to
complete her planned book on "Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy," her
writings on this subject point to the major task we have set ourselves in recent
years: theorizing how to uproot value production and alienated labor as part of
laying the basis for establishing a totally new society.
III.
Today's crises underline our work to theorize an alternative to capitalism by
first of all exploring Marx's critique of
value production from the vantage point of the 40-year development of
Marxist-Humanism. Our classes and Perspectives Theses over the last several
years neither represent a turn away from philosophy towards "economics" nor a
diversion
from developing Marxist-Humanism on the basis of its uniqueness. They are
instead part of an effort to come to grips with the objective challenge of
working out the dialectics of organization and philosophy.
Capitalism's hegemonic rule has not changed in any fundamental way since
Dunayevskaya summed up the 40-year development of Marxist-Humanism as a
perspective for the future in a series of writings of the 1980s, in which she
responded to what she called the "changed world" of Reaganism. In these writings
she stressed that just as there is no break between the "young" and "late" Marx,
so there is no break between the theory of state-capitalism of the 1940s and the
philosophy of Marxist-Humanism. She emphasized "how much of philosophy was
already present in the years prior to 1941, and in 1941 itself, where
'personal,' historic and dialectic were all already there in my questions, in my
ritings... It is true that 1941 was the year when I worked out the theory of
state-capitalism, and that that was a dialectical, historic happening. Indeed,
had I fully known dialectics before I was conscious of that word in a
philosophic way, I would have seen that my 1941 analyses showed that I was
already reaching for precisely that in the economic studies...the truth is that
the Absolute determines all perspectives" (Supplement to the Raya Dunayevskaya
Collection, 11019).
The "absolute" that "determines all perspectives" is MARX'S Marxism. She wrote
in ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN'S LIBERATION AND MARX'S PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION,
"Every moment of Marx's development, as well as the totality of his works,
spells out the need for 'revolution in permanence.' This is the absolute
challenge to our age." In 1986 she noted that no generation faces a more
difficult task than ours when it comes to working out what Marx's Marxism means
for today. The tendency of left theorists to move away from Marx has become even
more palpable today. Were it not for our focus over the past several years on
reexamining issues like the law of value, Marx's CAPITAL, and the CRITIQUE OF
THE GOTHA PROGRAM, we might have lost our moorings to the point of becoming
non-Marxist Humanists. It is not possible to become continuators if we make of
Marx whatever we want. An understanding of Marx's concepts-and their difference
from those of other thinkers-is essential.
What stands in the way of such needed philosophic comprehension, in U.S.
society especially, is the tendency to substitute individual opinions and
subjective judgments for a universal standpoint. Philosophic development BEGINS
by recognizing the difference between subjective judgments and ideas whose
objectivity has been proven by history. Ideas are objective not only insofar as
they are generated by mass struggles but also insofar as serious thinkers
comprehend the MEANING of history. As Dunayevskaya wrote shortly after the
publication of PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION, "Subject isn't all there is to
subjectivity, in a universal sense, because subjectivity in the universal sense
includes the theory. It cannot be
complete until you're just as good in taking down that self-determination of the
Idea as you are at taking down the Subject talking" (Raya Dunayevskaya
Collection, 5622).
The problem of taking individual opinions and personal judgments as the
standpoint instead of the objectivity of the Idea itself is spoken to in the
philosophic work that Dunayevskaya reexamined in her last decade-Hegel's
PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT. Its forthcoming 200th anniversary makes it important to
return to it anew. Hegel's PHENOMENOLOGY traces out the journey of consciousness
through myriad stages of development. Hegel aims to show that the "absolute,"
the transcendence of alienation, is not external to the standpoint of "ordinary
consciousness." He does not dogmatically counterpose the "absolute" to the
journey of consciousness through its various stages; the absolute instead
emerges from a
development through its myriad contradictions. However, no single stage of
consciousness represents the absolute. Each one is "defective." As Dunayevskaya
put it in her "Notes on Hegel's PHENOMENOLOGY," "In the struggle to realize
freedom, we confront various attitudes of mind that sound heroic, but are in
fact adaptations to one or another form of servitude" (PON, p. 36). Until the
alienated soul has "stripped itself of its Ego" it "will not be able to execute
the leap to Reason."
Hegel shows that many become wary of the long trek to the goal and take refuge
in an "appeal to the 'heart' which 'inwardly' tells what they mean..." (PON, p.
38).Dunayevskaya notes, "Hegel hits out against this form of self-expression."
While the
"absolute" is immanent in each stage of consciousness, "the human spirit has not
been able to shake off alienation" until consciousness makes itself the object.
It is only when we reach "the unity of the real world and the notions about it"
do we
attain "the "organization of thought and activity" which "anticipates the
future" (PON, p. 47).
Hegel, Marx and Marxist-Humanism all stress the OBJECTIVITY of cognition.
Marx wrote, "The PRACTICE of philosophy is itself THEORETICAL. It is the
critique that measures the individual existence by the essence, the particular
reality by the Idea" (MECW 1, p. 85). Achieving this begins by WORKING OUT
theory by tackling a SPECIFIC problem that hasn't yet been answered in light of
a BODY of ideas. That is very different than repeating conclusions that have
already been worked out. Practicing philosophy theoretically requires
approaching issues with the assumption that we don't know the answer by tackling
yet-unresolved theoretical problems that have us discover something new about
history, philosophy, and the world. Dunayevskaya challenged us in her final
writings to concretize this by becoming "co-authors" for her work on "Dialectics
of Organization and Philosophy" in working out analyses of new objective events
as they occur for our publication, NEWS & LETTERS. This remains crucial for
working out dialectics of organization and philosophy. As Dunayevskaya stated on
May 8, 1984, "When I established as a principle that a workers' paper was to be
where theory/practice were broken down and insisted that if intellectuals were
serious about theory they not only had to submit to a critique by the rank and
file but had to begin where the masses were by contributing the highest kind of
theory to illuminate, not 'popularize,' the objective situation Marxistically,
they all went the other way. Now, when it comes to ourselves, we seem to all
agree. In fact, however, we do not work hard at theory and keep taking it for
granted, as if repeating conclusions can be called theoretic development. What
is worse, we portray activity as if that is theory. Theory is a very hard
taskmaster...this needs further serious development." Positively responding to
this critique is needed now more than ever, now that we do not have the presence
of the founder who was actively developing the self-determination of the Idea.
The task now falls on the collective shoulders of an organization. It is a
retrogressive step backwards to take concepts rigorously worked out by an
epochal thinker and treat them as conclusions that aren't DEMONSTRATED on the
level of the specific realities of our time. The learning is in the DOING of
theory.
IV. To work our perspectives we will need to take a look back on the last
two decades. This summer marks 20 years since we faced the task of developing
Marxist-Humanism without the presence of the founder. There is much to build on
from what we have done in the past 20 years. We have kept the foundational works
of Marxist-Humanism, the "trilogy of revolution," in print. We have secured new
translations and international editions of them-Persian and Chinese editions of
MARXISM AND FREEDOM and PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION, Slovakian and Russian
editions of PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION, a new Spanish translation of MARXISM AND
FREEDOM, a German edition of ROSA LUXEMBURG,
WOMEN'S LIBERATION, AND MARX'S PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION, and forthcoming Arabic
and Russian editions of MARXISM AND FREEDOM. We have edited and gotten published
a collection of her major writings on dialectics, THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY; a
German edition will appear this year. We have issued a new edition of AMERICAN
CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL: BLACK MASSES AS VANGUARD and published it alongside a
statement on contemporary Black America-DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES.
These works have helped keep Marxist-Humanist ideas alive. We have taken them
out to new audiences in the U.S., as seen in our work in the prisoner solidarity
movement, in struggles against racism and sexism, and in discussions with youth
involved in the fight against global capital. We have also taken these ideas out
to new audiences overseas, as seen in our participation in meetings in Mexico,
Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, China, England, Holland, France, Italy,
India, Finland and South Africa. No less important is developing our ideas in
the face of unforeseen objective events in a way that bears the distinctive
stamp of Marxist-Humanism. We sought to do this by working out a series of
original analyses of the Los Angeles rebellion of 1992, the wars in Bosnia and
Kosova in the 1990s, and in our analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks and
critique of Islamic fundamentalism. These political analyses have shown that
Marxist-Humanists have something of unique importance to say about today's
crises. We still have much more work to do in this regard, both in analyzing new
political and economic realities and responding to ideas being debated by
today's revolutionaries-especially in feminist theory, autonomist Marxism, and
radical theory. All of our tasks depend on deepening our understanding of the
totality of Marx and Marxist-Humanism. This was the core of our classes on "Marx
for Today," which is part of our preparation for putting together a new
collection of Dunayevskaya's major writings on Marx, from the 1940s to 1980s.
None of these tasks are separate from measuring ourselves in the historic mirror
in terms of where we stand on "the dialectics of organization and
philosophy"-the basis of which is contained in the "philosophic moment" of
Marxist-Humanism, the 1953 "Letters on Hegel's Absolutes." The experiences we
had this year from an international trip to South Africa, where an unprecedented
level of dialogue and discussion occurred with revolutionaries interested in
alternatives to both the elitist party to lead and spontaneism, underlines the
urgency of developing our work in this area. Practicing philosophy theoretically
is an ORGANIZATIONAL challenge, since our reason for existing as an organization
is to alter prevailing ways of thinking by not just ASSERTING that another world
is possible but developing a conceptual awareness of that world and how a
revolution can create it. This cannot be achieved by having an assortment of
individuals working on separate interests and agendas in lieu of coming together
as an organization. It takes working on a common problem, a common project,
through face- to-face interactions within the organization and with those who
are not now part of it. The REB will issue a Draft for Perspectives in the
August/September 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, Aug. 31. The Plenum will open Saturday morning,
Sept. 1 and will continue through Sunday, Sept. 2. 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 through the summer.
The deadline for the first bulletin will be June 30. Those who wish to submit
material for later bulletins are asked to have them in the Center by July 31.
Material for discussion after that must be brought to the Plenum. -The
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