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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2004Woman as Reason'Revolution in permanence' and women’s liberationby Terry Moon In the discussion after the workshop, "Women and the Anti-War Left: Coalition or Conflict?" at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in June (see "NWSA shows revitalized women’s movement," N&L July 2004), women wanted to talk about the question of genocide. One woman asked, "How can we stop genocide? Is the UN or the trials at the Hague effective?" The question flowed from our presentations. I had spoken on women’s militancy and reason during the conflict in Bosnia 1992-1995, when women worldwide critiqued the Left’s inaction and demanded that the massive number of rapes against mostly Muslim women be seen as a crime against humanity. Sonia Bergonzi had spoken on Iraq and how many on the Left support opponents of the U.S. who want to restrict women’s freedom. Women are challenging this narrowing of revolution to anti-U.S. imperialism. AGE OF GENOCIDE While we all agreed we must use every means to stop genocide now, women also wanted to know how, in what some call our "age of genocide," can we change the conditions from which it springs. Far from posing an alternative, the Left often fails to practice solidarity with the victims of "ethnic cleansing," from Bosnia to Sudan. That narrow concept of revolution is something the Women’s Liberation Movement has long critiqued. It reveals the necessity for a different kind of revolution than those the world has experienced, one that transcends the alienated human relations of our capitalist world. Bergonzi and I tried to tackle this question by talking of Marx’s concept of "revolution in permanence." The women’s movement has consistently raised: "Why is most of the Left’s concept of revolution so narrow that it doesn’t include women? How do we create a society where women can experience freedom?" To me they demand looking into how the Marxist-Humanist feminist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya made a category of Marx’s concept of "revolution in permanence" and developed it further for our age. How Dunayevskaya took up Marx’s concept of "revolution in permanence" in her 1973 work, PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION, shows, in embryo, what will be developed fully later: "Had Marx not broken with bourgeois idealism in its philosophic form as well as its class nature, he would not have been able either to disclose the algebraic formula of revolution inherent in the Hegelian dialectic, or to re-create the dialectic that emerged out of the actual class struggles and proletarian revolutions, and sketch out that, JUST THAT, SELF MOVEMENT into ‘permanent revolution’" (p. 288). In this same chapter she articulates what characterized the Women’s Liberation Movement then, and the global women’s movement today: women are demanding "an end to the separation of mental and manual labor, not only as a ‘goal,’ not only against capitalist society, but as an immediate need of the Left itself, especially regarding women" (p. 279). In ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN'S LIBERATION, AND MARX'S PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION (RLWLMPR), Dunayevskaya develops revolution in permanence thoroughly, creating an explicit category that she traces throughout Marx’s life including his last decade. It is integral to the entire work. There, revolution in permanence is tightly related to the spontaneity of the masses and Hegel’s negation of the negation. She makes clear that it is not simply a revolution that does not stop with the overthrow of the existing capitalist relations and thus continues all the way to socialism--although it encompasses that. Marx’s and Dunayevskaya’s concept goes further, insisting on a different kind of revolution altogether. THE CHALLENGE FOR OUR AGE Part of what this means is taking the highest point of the previous revolutions as the point of departure for the next; that revolution must be total from the start and be FOR new, truly human relations, including ending the division between mental and manual labor; it means a never-ending openness to, and search for, new forces of revolution whose Reason has the capacity to expand the concept of freedom. While in the 1970s we saw women in the midst of revolutions, in our more reactionary times the reaching for revolution in permanence continues to shine forth in women’s struggles. Look at the women in Darfur who in the midst of genocide are the ones demanding that the world take heed (see "Our Life and Times"). It is seen in that the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq’s founding statement begins: "Women’s freedom is the measure of freedom and humanity in society". It is seen in how a woman leader of the Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras states: "...unity among women and men is primary...we can’t have unity when men dominate our struggle. We can’t reproduce the problems of the power structure within our own country." So important had revolution in permanence become to Dunayevskaya by the 1980s that RLWLMPR ended with this challenge: "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" (p. 195). Women are oppressively aware that no revolution has freed us, which is why revolution in permanence is such an important concept. This column is the barest beginnings of exploring it for today. We welcome discussion from you, the reader, on these ideas. |
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